Stardate 04112003
This is actually last week’s column but it’s running here because nobody thinks it’s cute anymore when they have to scrape me off the sidewalk and splash some Paco Robanne on me before pushing me into a cab and sending me off to work. There is a reason they are called DEADlines.
So what the hell. It’s like a re-run that never ran. Kind of out of date, but still packed with entertainment value.
I did, however, add a few new items which I will denote with the a big, glaring NEW!. I don’t know if that also means IMPROVED!
Let’s try a few rounds so you can see how the game is played.
NEW! The lingering hangover since the start of the “conflict to liberate the Iraqi people from a cruel and evil dictator – with the added side bonus that the newly liberated Iraqi people can repay us and pay for the restoration of their country with all that light sweet crude.”
IMPROVED! I have to say one thing (many things, but go with it for a mo’) – I don’t get this sudden French-bashing. It’s ridiculous, not to mention bigoted. Not that America has had any problems with institutionalized bigotry. No sirreeee. But people who have never thought of the French, don’t know anything about France, haven’t met a single French person or watched a French subtitled film or looked at a Monet or heard the word “existentialism,” don’t know Marie Antoinette from Alex deToqueville or watched Jacques Cousteau (which would be approximately 94% of all heterosexual anglo males), suddenly have a rabid, unrepentant hatred for all things French.
This French-bashing is so out of control, my friend went to In and Out (a West Coast hamburger chain) and when her order came, the guy at the counter said, “Here are your freedom fries.” After determining that she wasn’t suddenly in the Twilight Zone, she grabbed her pommes frites and ran. “Was he supposed to call them that? If that’s what he was supposed to do then that’s just scary,” she said to me. And then she asked me to hold her. And then she moved to Canada. Where you can get
pommes frites with your le Big Mac if that’s the kind of crap you like to stuff down your gullet.
As Tina Fey said during a recent SNL news update. “Why are you eating French fries anyway? We are the fattest country on the planet, FATASS!” Man, when she gets going, you just better LOOKOUT!
Well, I know what’s been going in the clubs and the bars and the stadiums and on TV and in Hollywood … but as you may imagine, that is hardly where my thoughts are these days.
I live in Marin County where all the old Vietnam era peace activists and counter-culturalists ended up after they got a haircut and became lawyers. But the war has brought all their old sensibilities out of the woods and there is nothing goin’ on but talk about the war. If you go to a club, they sing a protest song. If you go out dancing, everyone stands around talking about the war. Nobody is pretending that we aren’t in a war.
And I so wanted to bring you comedy as a respite from all the war madness.
So here’s a picture of a monkey.
Monkey’s like bananas.
Eat, Monkey, Eat.
I used to work in local college radio. KALX Berkeley , and as you can imagine, Berkeley being Berkeley and University students (especially the history of Cal Berkeley) are anxious to be heard outside of the official channels, KALX has been a collection tank for all the protest songs coming from Green Day, R.E.M, The Beastie Boys, etc.
DJ Shadow’s SIX DAYS 12" charted #1 at KALX this week!
DJ Shadow and Zach de la Rocha.
Green Day .
Thurston Moore of SONIC YOUTH set up an online Protest Records label
featuring tracks from Beastie Boys, Cat Power, Damon and Naomi, Scott Amendola, Jim O'Rouke and more. There is an area on the website with protest "stencils" to
download as well as anti-war graphics .Protest Records .
Even Lenny Kravitz has jumped in. He wrote and performed the track for Iraq's #1 pop star, Kazim Al Sahir which can be found at the Lenny Kravitz website.
NEW! KALX also sponsored the University of California Radio Network conference this past weekend. Local radio and music luminaries convened with college radio renegades to bask in the glow of each other’s majestic presence. I went to the very popular seminar “Careers After College Radio,” because I’m an entertainment journalist, so I went to meet the other entertainment related people in my area. Because that’s how I do my job. And here is the choice quote that made the whole day worthwhile. Neva Chonin, the pop music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle said, “ROLLING STONE is a good example of how music magazines have shied away from a critical voice and now they want you to write as if you are an extension of the publicist. They want you to write short and punchy articles at an 8th grade reading level. They want you to say how fun and great the band is.”
Which is why my gig here at MoviePoopShoot is more precious than gold. I get to use multi-syllabic words and say what’s really on my mind. Why ROLLING STONE still has all the glamour is beyond me. Oh, wait. It’s a clear channel to millions of consumers. I’m not sure if ROLLING STONE is owned by one of the major media companies (and it would be easy to find out if I were being a thorough journalist rather than a flaky pundit).
If so, then through the magic of vertical integration, the band from a record label owned by the same company that publishes the magazine can just push their programming right up your ass while they stuff their hand in your wallet. This is a very tricky business for the independents.
Is media consolidation business genius? Or is it homogenizing pop-culture and conditioning us to consume, rather than create. “Radio should focus on regional programming, not national programming,” said Nicole Sawaya, general manger of local NPR affiliate KALW. KALW 94.7 has a new show called INVISIBLE INK (Sundays at 2pm if you are local to SF) that’s all about the world of ‘zines. It seems then that some ambitious person with the right skills should also produce a radio show about comic books, with guest interviews, reviews and promotions. And then get it nationally syndicated through NPR.
If I were a public affairs director at an independent radio station, I’d be cultivating the talent for that as we speak. EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! RED ALERT!
Instead of cavorting backstage with the limousine set as I so frequently do, just after the war broke out, I went to an outdoor film one night film festival hosted by Whispered Media in Dolores Park just south of the Castro district. Way back when Spaniards were setting up their El Camino Real (The Royal Road) dotted with catholic missions along the coast of California, Dolores Park was part of the land that “belonged” to Mission Dolores, founded by Father Junipero Serra. Today, Dolores Park is called “Dolores Beach” by the sunbathers who stretch themselves out on the grassy hills to maintain that summer bronze.
In recent, ozone-depleted years, it seems many people are turning to the bottle for their bronze, but you know, some guys, they just like to get together in a place where other guys can see them in as little as possible.
Dolores Park is the same place where one of many affiliated peace vigils took place the Sunday before the war officially began.
The one night film festival screened to a crowd of maybe 300 people, all dressed in what I like to anarchist chic. A sea of black. The festival featured mostly footage from protests against the 1991 gulf war and footage from recent San Francisco marches. They were remarkably similar. The festival was interrupted several times as organizers relayed information about a small group of protesters moving up Market street and encountering police. “You can stay here and watch this or you can go downtown. It’s your decision.” Some people got up immediately while others took some time to decide how to respond to their anger and sense of powerlessness.
Whispered Media produces films, documentaries and shorts with left socio-political critical stance. The Lost Film Festival – a traveling festival that sets up every year at Park City concurrent with Sundance as well as parks, backyards and even the side of a truck in an industrial parking lot – has a similar aim. You won’t find a lot of meat-eaters at those screenings.
You will find a fair amount of militancy, though. I frequently hide behind my press credentials when I’m at these things to not have to engage in dialogue. I may be sympathetic but I believe in free will, not fascism.
They are trying though, to provide a forum for an alternative perspective to develop.
Alannis Morissette is going to give a concert for peace with WE THE PLANET April 20th in San Francisco as part of a mini-tour. The event is hosted by Julia Butterfly Hill, the Earth-First activist who gained notoriety during her now legendary tree-sit in Humboldt county. Her tree, Luna, was subsequently granted special protection only to later suffer an attempt to cut down the 1000+ year old tree by angry loggers whose livelihood is directly affected by the attempts of the protesters to change the methods logging companies use and to save the last stand of old growth redwoods in the world.
Arianna Huffington came to the famous Book Passage bookstore in Corte Madera to give a talk about her new book PIGS AT THE TROUGH – an analysis of the exposure of recent corporate scandal with a focus on how CEO’s who drove giant companies into bankruptcy escaped not only without prosecution, but with enormous retirement and bonus packages.
Huffington says, “Don’t put your money in the stock market. You’ll get a better return if you buy a senator.”
Kelly Osbourne is on tour! I was out on Haight Street yesterday and saw the flyer. I hardly ever go there anymore because it has long ceased to be a vibrant center of expression or resistance against the status quo, although it’s still fun and cool and every store plays good music.
I HAVE to go that show. I tried to interview Kelly Osbourne early on but the Osbourne publicist said no. And then she shows up on the cover of YOUNG MISS. So maybe this time I’ll get a photo and maybe Jack will show up.\
I’ve been having bizarre dreams, probably from falling asleep to war coverage. But last night takes the cake. My friend DeeDee from high school, who I haven’t talked to since 12th grade, way back in 1987, showed up in my dream saying, “Don’t you remember? We want to grow up, not blow up?” She drew this cartoon of a punk, a jock and a more scholarly looking student for the schools literary magazine INNER VISIONS that we both worked on and contributed to. (We also helped run the school newspaper together. When she joined the cheerleading squad, we stopped hanging out and I’m not sure if it was because of my own prejudice or her desire to no longer be treated like a freak.)
One afternoon, for no reason whatsoever, DeeDee, myself and another friend of ours, Paula, blocked the A Hall to protest for peace. We spent way too much time in Berkeley which was still reeling from Vietnam which had ended just 15 years before. We sang John Lennon songs and people would stop and ask us what we were doing (which was the idea) and we’d say, “We are having a sit-in for peace.” Oh yes, we were the school freaks par excellence. Those were the Reagan Years so we had ample opportunity to engage in political dialogue with leftists and radicals, many of whom are right now still battling the legacy of those years as it has now manifested itself in the administration of George Bush Jr.
And then later in the dream, I was at an estate set in rolling hillsides, like a country manor. And my whole family was there on vacation. My grandmother, however, was in a room being watched over by some attendant I didn’t know. She was wearing a jeweled head covering and she was looking around like she was blind saying, “What evil spirit do you think caused this?” And then she reached out a bony hand and grabbed me, smiling and saying, “look, it’s my oldest.” And I reminded her that I’m not her oldest anything, neither son or grandson.
And then Matt Damon showed up and we took a walk outside and sat together on the grass and started making out.
And you know what I said to him? “What if the press is here?”
In my dream, he was as very tender kisser. (Because I’m writing about a celebrity, I have to say that there is no apparent connection between this dream and my waking reality, so don’t send me any creepy Matt Damon fan mail that goes too far in your appreciation for his acting skills.)
I don’t usually get visits from celebrities I don’t know in my dreams. The last one was Winona Ryder several years ago. We were best friends or brother and sister or something.
Didn’t Matt Damon and Winona Ryder date once or twice?
What’s the significance? I DON’T KNOW. Remember PEE WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE? The year that came out, it was summer and my friend, the aforementioned DeeDee, she of the dream, and I both had to go to summer school because we never went to the classes we hated. Every afternoon after school we’d go to the local cineplex to watch the matinee. After a couple weeks we started to bring props and turned our movie watching into a ROCKY HORROR like thing, much to the annoyance of anyone else who was in the theatre. When Pee Wee gets all those people in the basement of the bike shop for “the meeting” he has “217 bits and pieces of information. EVIDENCE!” And while he’s trying to link up all these random, disparate pieces of information, he asks the crowd, with a deranged look in his eye – “What’s the significance. I DON’T KNOW.”
It’s getting weird out there for any American entertainer who had an opinion against the war in Iraq -losing jobs, being passed over for honors that are rightfully theirs and being shunned by the media. We have to protect the right to dissent and speak out or else America is just a sham. And the terrorists win.
P.S. I love you.
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