Stardate 01232004
This column looks so impoverished without candid action photos. Publicity photos are great because they add a necessary visual element but there isn’t the same sense of authenticity – of seeing life as it is actually lived. Creating the visual texture is always an interesting design challenge and working from pre-formed chunks of imagery is like making a collage. I can still juxtapose images to let a third story emerge but it’s not the same as documenting actual, matter-of-fact, this-is-what-it-looked- like moments. Am I documenting or am I marketing? Sometimes, a little bit of both.
I finally figured out what I’ve been doing for the past year and half. I think I am now ready for a “definition.” One time and one time only, I have broken up this week’s column into sections that reflect basically what I write about. I’m having moments of clarity so I better integrate them before I devolve back into protozoic mish-mash. I realized that I’m a lot like the younger Michael Musto and a little bit like Mark Morford and a snibben of Hunter Thompson and Jack Kerouac, and a dash of Pauline Kael. What we all have in common is the pleasure we take in writing with unapologetic integrity.
It may not seem that thrilling to you, but to me, it’s a revelation. ABOUT TOWN is my look at lifestyle, entertainment and culture. Why I ever described it as a gossip column about “the industry” I’ll never know because it’s never been that and never will be that. In the beginning “gossip column” just sounded more in line with the principals of “pop” culture.
The Music and Club Scene
Rilo Kiley, whose music was used by Morgan Freeman in his film DESERT BLUE starring Christina Ricci, Casey Affleck and Kate Hudson, performed a sold-out show at the Bottom of the Hill. Rilo Kiley is Jenny Lewis (vocals), Blake Sennet (guitar), Pierre de Reeder (bass) and Jason Boesel (drums). Vive le four-piece rock standard.
The Mission Creek Music Festival had its first Winter Ball at StudioZ.tv. The six band line-up featured local San Francisco bands, a local designer fashion show and a couple of DJ’s spinning everything from Thomas Dolby to the Talking Heads to Kraftwerk which are the old “new” bands currently in vogue in the electro-minimalist scene or Electro-punk, Electro-wave, Electro-clash, whatever you want to call it. It’s kind of the 80’s underground new-wave club scene refined from its expressive anarchy and turned into a definitive style. It’s very hip, whatever it is. It’s got that punk do-it-yourself mentality with an interest in glamour, beauty and fashion.
I can’t figure out if it’s a working class subculture or an upper class subculture because it has the aesthetic values of the upper class (decadence, extravagance, self-interest and waste) with the limited resources of the working class.
Ultimately, the whole scene is about “life-as-performance” and I’m not averse to hanging out with a bunch of self-proclaimed rock stars. The energy of it is the same whether it’s a nationally recognized act or the local cyclone of creativity and sexuality. More people should be their own rock star.
The six-band line-up of The Winter Ball featured The Vanishing who bill themselves as a Sci-Fi Horror Disco Band. On Thursday the 29th they are playing with Von Iva at the Bottom of The Hill – the place Rolling Stone magazine called “the best place to see shows in San Francisco.” Not that I care what Rolling Stone says about anything, but it makes this all seem that much more mainstream.
Von Iva is an all-female four piece standard. When I think of “girl band” I usually think of The Go-Go’s, The Bangles and The Donnas, in that order. The only thing they all really have in common is the all-female deal. The all-girl band portrayed in PREY FOR ROCK AND ROLL starring Gina Gershon, Lori Petty, Drea de Matteo and Shelly Cole, was rough, raw, desperate and ragged. That movie came and went through the theatres but since I was on the topic of Estro-Rock I thought I’d mention it. The film is inspired by the life of a real person but it’s a long way off from being biographical.
The authors of the underground meet and greet The Unhappy Hour at the Parlour Club in Los Angeles now have a new host, Clint Catalyst and he’s looking to put together a show every week and is looking for performers. Specifically, he is looking for “tricked out performance artists, the scary, the ridiculous, the sublime. Folks who challenge the confines of gender, of skin, of sexuality, of life as we know it.” If you are going to be in the Los Angeles area and you are the real thing and want a place to do your unspeakable damage to our fragile psyches, give him a holler at toucheclubtouche@yahoo.com.
There are a few other cabarets of the absurd, macabre and bizarre happening at irregular intervals. Sleight of hand magician and proprietor of the Climate Theatre Paul Nathan performs in and produces the Dark Kabaret about once a year. The DNA Lounge hosted Cabaret Verdalet last Sunday with a line-up that included my favorite chorus line, The Devilettes. And Spectacular Spectacular will return once again from the grave for a show sometime in the spring. It’ll be an Addams Family Reunion.
Film
Joe Simpson, who Chris Ryall wrote about in last week’s ONE HAND CLAPPING, was supposed to make an appearance at a screening of TOUCHING THE VOID at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, California but was unable to make it due to “scheduling conflicts.” TOUCHING THE VOID is based on the book written by Simpson about his miraculous and harrowing survival after falling into an ice crevice and being abandoned by his hiking companion. The Smith Rafael Film Center (Formerly The Rafael Film Center until a generous grant from Christopher B. Smith was honored with a name change) is the exhibition home of The California Film Institute who produces the Mill Valley Film Festival every year.
In other local film news, Sean Penn, who has been a critical favorite this year, has once again left for Iraq to be a special correspondent for The San Francisco Chronicle.
Sony Pictures is distributing two animated features that are worth seeing , THE GODFATHERS OF TOKYO and THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE. TRIPLETS tells a lot of story without a lot of dialogue. Champion, who is only happy when he’s riding his bike, gets kidnapped while racing in the Tour De France by two mysterious French Mafioso. Champion’s grandmother takes off with her dog to find him and ends up in the metropolis of Belleville where she meets the eccentric, once-famous music hall singers, the Triplets of Belleville.
GODFATHERS brings together three homeless people who find a baby in a garbage dump on Christmas Eve. While searching for the babies parents, the three rescuers – a transvestite, a runaway girl and a former bicycle champion, must confront the reality of their lives and reclaim their dignity and sense of self-worth.
Sylvain Chomet who wrote and directed TRIPLETS and Satoshi Kon who wrote and directed GODFATHERS are both 41 years old. Pauline Kael, who is widely hailed as one of the great film critics of our time, didn’t turn her attention to film until she was in her 40’s.
BAFTA, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced the nominees for the equivalent of the British Oscar, the Orange award. THE LORD OF THE RINGS, THE RETURN OF THE KING garnered 11 nominations in 19 eligible categories, including Best Picture. BIG FISH, LOST IN TRANSLATION and MASTER AND COMMANDER also figure large in the nominations. Paul Bettany (MASTER AND COMMANDER) is going against Ian McKellan (Gandolf) for Best Supporting Actor. That’s a tough call. McKellan is a fine, seasoned performer who faithfully recreated a famous literary character but Bettany showed the range of an already accomplished, yet maturing actor.
Film Festivals
The Goethe Institute sponsored the Berlin and Beyond Film Festival featuring the best of modern German Cinema. Austria entered their “Best Foreign” Oscar bid with FREE RADICALS which is a conceptually interesting examination of fate with typical expressionist angst but I lost the thread somewhere and gave up on the film which seemed like it was never going to take another turn down Plot Highway.
Politics Mixed with Nightclubs and Celebrities
Not all fund-raising and political rah-rahing happens at 500 dollar a plate dinners and through shadow organizations and corporate slush funds. Even people without two dimes can still vote and get involved in campaigns. The folks at MoveOn.org put out a call for 30 second commercials critical of the Bush Administration and found an impressive celebrity panel to judge the contest called Bush In 30 Seconds. Margaret Cho, Moby, Al Franken and of course, Michael Moore were among the celebrity judges. The 26 finalists were finally winnowed down to a winner in 4 categories – Best Overall, Funniest, Best Animated and Best Youth.
Margaret Cho has had an enormously successful run with her Revolution Tour and there will soon be a movie. Ms. Cho received an Emmy nomination for REVOLUTION, the CD.
StudioZ, a hotbed of subcultural cultural exhange, also hosted, last weekend, a “yay we lost” party for Green party San Francisco Mayoral “almost” Matt Gonzalez, who then showed up two days later for a rally for Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic presidential hopeful that may as well be a member of the Green Party. While the 2000 election was exciting as the first election with a strong third party showing, thus proving that there is a more diverse political landscape than the traditional Republican/Democrat duality, we learned a hard lesson. In 2004, the left has to find a way to not split the vote and organize around the sole purpose of moving George Bush out of office.
While Kucinich only garnered one percent of the nomination votes during the Iowa caucus, he was still out there, sending his message. It’s worth it to make a bid for public office if your sole goal is just to seed the public imagination with some good ideas. I’m sure Kucinich really wants to win the presidency and I’d like to see that, but I don’t want to risk having to live under the conservative yoke of the right. A friend of mine who is in a panic, like many of us, over the 2004 election, says, “If we don’t elect a Democrat, we’ll go right back to back-alley abortions and women will die.”
That’s a good reason. I can think of a dozen others. The big question still looms large - who will be on the Democratic ticket? And can everyone put aside their micro-issues and just concentrate on one guy? First things first, we can work out the details later. (It is very easy to conduct your own voter registration drive if you want to support your party and get out the vote. Just pick up voter registration forms for your county, go to where the people are, and ask them if they are registered to vote and would they like to register. Get
creative in your approach and tailor your message to your target demographic. Myself, I’m interested in people who are progressive minded but apathetic about voting so I tend to stand around tattoo parlors, coffee houses, nightclubs and record stores. But a great many churches are more “Democrat” than “Republican” so run your own campaign if you don’t like the message coming out of the pulpit – if you practice a religion that has that kind of top-down conservative authoritarianism.)
Coming up on the Thom Fowler Calendar
The Digital Independence Conference – a seminar on creativity, technology and democracy – January 30th – December 1st in San Francisco.
Human Rights Watch International Film Festival – 3 days in Berkeley, Four weekends in San Francisco.
According to The List, Von Iva is playing a show with The Vanishing at The Bottom of The Hill on January 29th. That’s a lot of bang for the buck.
Meat’s 2-year anniversary – February 19th. Meat and Bones only 2 dollars! TWO DOLLARS … WHERE’S MY TWO DOLLARS!
INFORUM hosts a seminar on same-sex marriage on January 27th.
And finally …
Thomfowler.com – nothing there now, but it’s real estate and I expect it to grow. “You gotta make it the total Thom Fowler brand lifestyle website,” said Helen from my burning man camp, You Are That Pig. Phase one is a simple on-line writing portfolio with collections of stuff what I wrote but I expect to add more links and content and community centers for the left progressive cultural creative vanguard and others who are personally invested in promoting progressive, just, humane, healthy, sane and environmentally sound cultural values now and in the future.
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