The Sheepdogs, a band from Saskatoon I interviewed back when both our careers were taking off, landed on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. They are the first unsigned band to ever grace its cover.
Congratulations, you hairy heroes!
Photo courtesy of nlewis039 on Creative Commons
An article I wrote for the San Francisco Classical Voice. Scheduling complications killed the article shortly before the event.
Musicians have been forever teetering along the compendium of silence and sound. ‘Quiet,’ insofar as it relates to contemporary classical music, dances on the divide between intellectualism and brute sensation (an ‘either or’ and never the twain shall meet). In silence, or perhaps the austere, classical music blooms. In silence, abstract is internalized. In silence, the ear finds its holy land.
And yet this isn’t quite the case. Even in our separate solitudes, in the spaces we carve for silence and reflection, we’re greeted with loud and aggressive forces competing for our attention. Noise without sound. In music: the precipice of Cage’s creative catharsis 4’33’’.
It is also the niche Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) hopes to explore in Smart Night Out, a scattered reintroduction to our senses in the form of a contemporary arts happening.
YBCA turns the hallowed space of art exhibition on its head. With an assortment of art performances aimed in the deconstruction of art consumption itself, YBCA creates a space voided of the typical, mechanized modes we use to absorb art. And in this disquieting, uncomfortable silence between experience and memory is something quite unique.
“We were inspired by the current exhibit we have up right now by a Chinese artist named Song Dong,” said Nick Colin, Community Engagement Associate at YBCA on Dad and Mom, Don’t Worry About Us, We Are All Well. “We were thinking about how to bring energy and audience to this show and how to relate an event that’s a social event with an aesthetic that’s related to [Song Dong]—one of quiet, one of peace, one of meditation, one of solitude. And so that got us thinking in terms of Smart Night Out, and how to create an environment that was at once social, but also meditative.”
So came a series of activities and workshops in congress with the ‘quiet’ concept.
“It started with Joanna, actually,” Colin recounted of Smart Night choreographer Joanna Haigood. “She became really fascinated and bewitched by the Song Dong exhibit [and] was interested in creating an interactive piece that [used the] Song Dong exhibit as a jumping off point.”
For her portion of the exhibit, Haigood has created a series of meditative movement exercises she calls ‘poetic haunts.’ Gathering inspiration from exhibits both past and present, Haigood invites individuals to haunt YBCA both in creative spirit and as reflecting its former tenants. Movements are related to participants on picture cards rather than through verbal command.
“It will be an interactive, engaging experience, but it will also be quiet and be a group experience,” Colin explained. “It embodies ‘being alone together,’ which is another goal [of ours].”
In this capacity too, Smart Night Out explores ideas of communication and structure. Haigood invites audience members to conform to the rules of choreography, but invites creativity and communal creation.
Silent Disco, another Smart Night activity, builds upon the idea of isolated engagement. Individuals are invited to groove to the sounds of Hard French and Kid Kameleon, as transmitted through rented headphones.
“My first impression was that this was an anti-social, weird, depressing manifestation of our obsession with technology in every form,” Colin said curtly. “We [are] so inward, so insular, so cut-off that we have to wear headphones all the time, even at clubs. But what I’ve learned is that discos are actually even more social, engaging, and collaborative than your typical dance party.”
“It’s no secret that we’re super connected technologically, spiritually, physically in our contemporary lives,” Colin continued. “It’s something we all understand and recognize, but something that we all universally have trouble dealing with and subverting—the invasiveness of relentless connectivity in our lives. So I think the solution doesn’t have to be high-tech, the solution doesn’t have to be overwrought or necessarily high-concept. It’s about scaling back and it’s about not responding immediately to. It’s about being quiet. It’s about taking time to reflect as opposed to refine.”
Silence is an invaluable element to the creation, appreciation, and performance of music; so anytime artists, of any genre, pick it up and mold it into awkward and interesting shapes it’s worth noticing.
“I think it’s valuable for any person involved in the arts, and especially music, to come to events like these at culture centers to see first-hand how cultural centers in the 21st century are engaging audiences,” Colin said. “And I think it’s a valuable lesson to see how arts centers, museums, and cultural centers are responding to audiences’ changing needs and changing expectations especially as an arts-creator.”
“It’s important to be cognizant of trends and trajectories that culture centers are creating and following,” Colin continued. “That theme, that concept that these artist and workshop leaders are grasping at, not necessarily in a musical context, but in a theoretical context, I think, will be enriching and fodder for musical exploration.”
Smart Night Out debuts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (701 Mission St, San Francisco) on May 28, 7-11:30pm. Admission is free with RSVP. Visit http://ybca.org/smart-night-out-soar for more information.
This is an audio slideshow I created as a supplement to an article on SBCC’s Edible Book Festival. As an economically-challenged journalist, most of my multimedia content is produced on a PC (through curses, tears, and prayers to the secular Mac gods for brighter tech days ahead).
The article was, unfortunately, killed. Still, bon appetit!
A cavalcade of tastes collided at the Third Annual Edible Book Festival held at Santa Barbara City College’s Luria Library.
The Edible Book Festival is an international event that celebrates Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the father of modern gastronomy and famed French author of Physiologie du gout.
The event was founded in 2000 by Béatrice Coron and Judith Hoffberg, an art librarian and curator whose collection of books resides, in part, at UCSB.
The competition at City College was born a grassroots effort. “The festival is a celebration of culture, food, books and creativity,” librarian Elizabeth Bowman told Channels Newspaper. “The purpose is to get people interested in books, to bring people into the library, and to just have some fun.”
Fun and frenzy laced this year’s competition, with poor weather, last-minute arrivals, and a dental condition afflicting one of the judges stampeding their way through Bowman’s office.
“We have somebody who was making a sugar sculpture and it fell apart because the humidity is terrible,” Bowman recounted after a series of visitors calmed to a trickle. “One woman has been here with her cake for four hours. I hope she had lunch.”
“In the first year, no one knew what to expect…now they know and the expectations are high,” Bowman recounted. “Last year we forgot the plates and forks…this year we’re a little bit more organized. It’s still seat of the pants because it’s just fun,” she chuckled. “[But] it’s still a very low key, fun, encouraging, no pressure event.”
Then, suddenly: “Oh, Catch-22 just had a little accident,” Bowman charged exasperatedly, sweeping from her half-seated position to attend to a drooping piece of pastry.
Enthusiasm surrounding this year’s competition was palpable. Though it only boasted a roster of 43 entrants, the contest saw many students, staff, faculty, and retired faculty submissions in the final, water-logged hours.
Despite the last minute entries, Bowman assured us that contestants have been planning tirelessly over the past year. “People who were here last year have been thinking about it. They’ll go to the front desk and ask for suggestions of books or say, ‘Here’s my book can you think of how I can do it?’”
“I was going to do something by myself, but I figured as a team effort we could get a lot more accomplished. It was still a long process,” detailed Sybille Kroemer, a culinary arts student. “We started on Saturday and we worked pretty much continuously every night. We were up until about 1am last night. And then I got up at 3:30am to finish it.”
Kroemer and partner Jackie Woo went through several iterations before submitted their ornate cake clothed in water-colored fondant (based on Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). “I’m exhausted, but it was worth it. It was a lot of fun…I’ve learned a lot from this process. Jackie and I are already planning next year.”
“I made John drive to Albertsons last night to buy shredded wheat,” said Pegeen Soutar, artist behindJack and the Beanstalk, to a friend, as husband John stood in tow. “The little ones [weren’t] going to cut it.” Soutar and her son Josh created quite a stir with their installation of passion fruit-flavored marshmallow clouds and almond cake, which stood nearly two-feet in height.
“It’s cool what they can do,” said SBCC student, Ashley Medina, dazed by the flurry of activity whirling around her. “I liked the train [Murder on the Orient Express], it looks pretty cool.”
“The reason I pick a teacher, a student, and an alumni,” said Bowman on her selection of contest judges, “is because they all bring a different perspective. But they have to come to consensus. Sometimes it’s very hard.”
Sometimes the judges don’t come to a consensus at all, opting to create new categories to reward contestants for their innovation and creativity.
This year’s stock, largely vying for the ‘punniest’ award, were not as fortunate.
2011 Winners:
Highest Literary Merit: Murder on the Orient Express
Best Visual Presentation: Jack and the Beanstalk
Most Appetizing: Treasure Island
Most Nutritious: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
Most Easy: Alice in Wonderbreadland
Funniest/Punniest: If You Give a Pig a Pancake
Great Books: Catcher in the Rye
Best Collaborative Creation: Middle March
Inspired by the 2011 SBCC Reads Book: The Immortal Mitosis
Least Appetizing (category addition): Naked Lunch
Best in Show: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Photo licensed under creative commons by Christa
A Colorful Debate
By Jessica Hilo
Across the street from Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort rests a sallow, geometric monument to disregard. The steel, once rainbow-colored sculpture, Herbert Bayer’s Chromatic Gate, stands 21 feet high and weighs a hefty 12.5 tons.
With Santa Barbara’s continuous flow of collegiate and sun-lusty tourists, it’s easy to forget that this town has remarkable and passionate history. While the city is very much a modern work in progress, the graying beast of Bayer’s Gate is an ever-present reminder that our legacy, at times, is left in the shadows.
Herbert Bayer
The Chromatic Gate represents a modern and abstract period for its famed creator, Herbert Bayer. Bayer was an industrial, environmental, and graphic designer who dabbled in architecture, painting, sculpting, and photography. He, however, is best known as the last surviving master of Germany’s renowned Bauhaus school. There, Bayer studied mural painting and typography under the likes of legendary artists, like Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy.
Bayer eventually taught advertising layout and typography at Bauhaus. He is responsible for much of the school’s iconic pieces of text—later to influence the creation the Helvetica font. In 1928, Bayer left Bauhaus to become the Art Director of Vogue magazine’s Berlin office.
A decade later, motivated by the war, Bayer immigrated to the United States where he worked in Aspen, Colorado. He eventually moved to Montecito in 1975 to live out the remaining years of his life.
Bayer’s work steeped with a utopian vision. He embraced interdisciplinary art, gathering inspiration from an assortment of sources—even furniture or stage design. He believed art should be stripped to its barest essentials, but that it needed to enrich the modern world by daring to push aesthetics.
History of the Gate
Bayer’s Chromatic Gate was brought to Santa Barbara’s East Beach in 1991. It was constructed as a memorial to both Bayer and his wife Joella, by Paul Mills, the longest-serving Art Director at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
“There was a certain amount of frustration when Paul Mills and I went before city council to get approval for the installation of the sculpture,” said Paul Hobson, the technical coordinator and curatorial assistant of the sculpture at the time of installation. “Mayor Lodge made the statement that there was no need for public art in Santa Barbara…that the art is in the gardens and red tile roofs.”
The monument was funded privately, the largest portion of money donated from the ARCO company, for whom Bayer had worked as a design consultant in the 1960s. The area in which the monument stands is dubbed ‘the Arco Circle.’
To many residents, the Gate was an aesthetic failure. The city and county fielded complaints that its colors ran too bright. “I used to joke that you had to put a red tile roof on top of a sculpture to get something accepted in Santa Barbara,” joked Rita Ferri, Visual Arts Coordinator and Curator of Collections at the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission.
“There’s a lot of misunderstanding about it,” said Ginny Brush, Executive Director at the County Arts Commission. “I’ve heard everything from, ‘it’s a Chumash rainbow,’ to ‘it’s a gay symbol,’ to I don’t know what all.”
Restoration
Regardless of its aesthetic appeal, the Chromatic Gate has suffered from extreme exposure to its marine environment. The salt air and bright sun of its ocean-side view has oxidized its metal and blanched its color. Restoration requires much work. “Paint chips were kept in a vault inside the museum,” Brush explained. “Because there was a standard to be matched [in restoration]; which, now, doesn’t meet environmental standards.”
“I would say the challenges are the same as any other piece of public art,” said Ferri. “Anything that’s out in the public, whatever material, starts decomposing the moment you put it up. That is a big issue: all public art requires maintenance.”
At the time of its construction, the Chromatic Gate set aside money for maintenance and restoration, which was used for over a decade. “This is a nationwide problem,” said Brush. “The people who put public art [together] never thought about sustainability or on how to maintain it over the long haul. There’s [no] funding vehicle in place to do that.”
The County Arts Commission is working in conjunction with the city’s Committee for Visual Art in Public Places to find resources for restoration on all its public art.
“I think we, like everyone else, are looking more to the private sector,” said Brush.
“I’m raising private funds,” said Ferri. “I’m having to go to Los Angeles or Colorado—going to art dealers—and I have been appealing to all those people to come up with funds.”
“There really is very little public money out there that saves public art,” Ferri continued. “We rely on passionate individuals who [want to] try to protect and save art.”
Beyond relying on private foundations and the generosity of individuals, the county and city are working together on institutionalizing procedures regarding public art.
The County Arts Commission is working with the City Arts Advisory Committee on a cultural arts advancement plan that will designate how to make public art self-sustaining and how to develop funds for its maintenance.
In the last several years, there has been a concentrated effort on developing maintenance manuals and schedules for every piece of public art displayed.
Regardless of innovative modes in collaboration, public art, and especially the Chromatic Gate, fields its share of public criticism.
At a recent meeting of the city’s Parks & Recreation Commission, the Gate saw pushback in conjunction with redevelopment to its neighboring Cabrillo Ball Field.
“I would like to…add something [of] a little more historical value to actually encourage tourism,” suggested Matt La Vine, general manager at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort. “Maybe something that reflects the old Santa Barbara, so we get some more value out of that than just some rainbow arch that really no one understands… I’m all about art but let’s get something out there.”
“Take out the rainbow Chromatic Gate and relocate it somewhere else,” said Theresa Pena. “I’ve lived in Santa Barbara all my life and when that went up…so many people, friends and family, were like, ‘What? A rainbow gate? Ok, well, how does that represent Santa Barbara?”
How It Represents Santa Barbara
“Public art, in some instances, defines [cities] as destinations,” said Brush. “Art adds a certain ambience; it helps to define the region.”
Though people were not enthusiastic about the Chromatic Gate at its inception, Brush contends that overtime it has come to define the waterfront. “It’s a part of what people expect,” she said, “and what they’re used to seeing.”
Beyond defining the landscape of Santa Barbara, public art, Brush argued, has added to its local economy. Materials used for public art are purchased in the city and its artists continue to spend revenue downtown.
In 2007, nonprofit arts and culture in Santa Barbara County was a $77.6 million industry and one that supported 2,288 full-time jobs (one of which was held by this fledgling reporter). The arts generated $7.62 million in local and state government revenue and built audiences at local restaurants, hotels, retail stores, parking garages, and other local businesses.
The County Arts Commission has recently announced that it will participate in an economic impact study to evaluate this revenue stream in the current fiscal climate.
Gateway to the Future
“When you think about all the famous people that have lived in Santa Barbara—” said Ferri. “there’s a picture of Albert Einstein on the beach; we read about famous authors [like] T.C. Boyle—Santa Barbara is really in some ways a Mecca for very creative, talented, brilliant people.”
Ferri had the honor of meeting Bayer in the early 1980s. “I always remember this story: he and his wife Joella lived in Montecito, but they also lived in Morocco in the 1950s. He was always impressed by the bright colors and strong contrasts of the sun and the shadows [there]. And that started him using those progressive pigments.
But he also loved the fact that when he would travel in Morocco, sometimes he would come to a place where there would be gates out in the desert…there would be no people living there. There would be an archway and nothing else.
He saw that as a beautiful symbol. A lonely symbol. That man leaves everything behind. A life once lived there. But an archway was a dimension. A romantic gesture.
If I had my druthers, the Gate would be in the sand where it’s supposed to be.”
Bayer always felt that a modern city needed a symbol of human thought. And indeed, in the great cities of the nation, from St. Louis to New York, you do find iconic arches.
“It has become a little bit more of our culture,” Ferri said wistfully. “I think it would be rather sad to lose something like that simply because nobody cared. He left a piece of art in Santa Barbara and hoped that we would take care of it.”
Herbert Bayer’s Chromatic Gate is located on the corner of East Cabrillo Blvd. and Calle Puerto Vallarta
Christine O’Donnell’s latest gaffe is an undeniable blow to the G.O.P:
In the spirit of this pre-Halloween treat, here is a list of ten pop culture witches who would make a better candidate choice for Delaware’s senate seat than Ms. O’Donnell.
10. The Witches of Eastwick- fun, fabulous, and connected with gypsies, tramps, and thieves (also known as lobbyists)
9. Sabrina Spellman- a little green, but certainly a people pleaser.
8. Witch Hazel- can take a political beating. And the lady knows how to cook.
7. Hermoine Granger (the Harry Potter reference everyone expects)- Ms. Granger’s mudblood ensures her support of social justice and civil rights.
6. The Blair Witch- already skilled in the use of scare tactics
5. Ursula the Sea Witch- would devise a jazzy platform against off-shore oil-drilling
4. Grand High Witch (the Roald Dahl reference no one remembered)- she’s the leader of all witches on Earth. That certainly gives her sparing cred with Nancy Pelosi.
3. Sarah Jessica Parker (no, not her character in Hocus Pocus)- anyone who can sell ethnic insensitivity at her level of box office success can’t possibly fail in the legislative branch, right? (Rand Paul).
2. Wicked Witch of the West- a technophile (flying monkeys) with her fiscal wits (ruby slippers) about her. Also, a family woman.
1. Endora- because at the end of the day, aren’t all congressmen Darrin Stephens?
In the eighth grade I submitted an annual science fair project that tested for what stressed the body more: mental or physical exertion. The conditions were hardly lab-worthy; I gathered my friends together and staked my affection for a few jumping jacks and rounds on Milton Bradley’s popular toy, Simon. The judges at the science fair, despotic rulers on high from Genentech, were not impressed—dolling out a paltry third place (the last of three rankings given to everyone who participated). Short of conferring the title of ‘Miss Congeniality’ or slapping me upside the face, this was a giant banner of disapproval from the minds I embraced as kin (my mother inviting this idea through years of indentured service in a UCSF laboratory). Needless to say, I found myself exiled with the other misfit toys deep on the island of Arts and have since there remained.
And though I obviously hold no discernible grudges against the scientific community (shove it!), I do feel as if my experiment deserves a second glance. For though the conditions of my research proved that physical strain overpowered all; new evidence reported in the New York Times shows that in this age of mediaddiction, psychological stress can overwhelm and overrun the body.
Take that Genentech. Hell, maturity be damned. I’m a writer. I can’t limit ego-scratching, as much as I can promise watching my salt-intake after a certain age. There are some days when healthy mental habits are simply impossible—even more so when you’re a journalist.
This takes us to today.
With an unimpressive dossier building in Los Angeles, and virtually no room for improvement (outside opportunities in dog walking and homelessness), I resigned hopes of staying in the City of Angels to move back to the clear skies and clean beaches of Santa Barbara—accepting a fellowship with Miller-McCune magazine.
I walked into what is now my professional home for the next nine months and was given an office uniform fit for a person my age: the cubicle. (And not just any cubicle, but one that invites onlookers the luxury of making my neck hair stand on end. If I was ever intellectually erect, the placement of this cubicle thoroughly ensures creative impotence. ) Still, this was not what caused unbearable stress.
The cubicle, my duct-taped life raft in the tumultuous sea of Journalistic making-it-tude, was besieged today by an apocalyptic infestation of crickets. It isn’t bad enough that we have to endure sweatshop conditions in churning out news soma for the mediaddicts, now I have to nurse belabored creativity from the festering onslaught of bush bodies. And SEO specialists scoff at bloggers’ reluctance to update their sites.
So it seems I’ve been prized with an eternal last place. But there are days when the relentless assembly line of life as a working-wage reporter gives a moment or two of respite. And while undoubtedly cozied next to a glass of wine, and finally updating my blog out of guilt, I’m happy that the chirping of my actual crickets has given way the numbed buzz of metaphorical ones. Even misfits enjoy their island lifestyle.
From the catacombs of rock obscurity, The Wedding Present sings once more. British alt-rock band, The Wedding Present, formed in 1985 from the ashes of forgotten band, Lost Pandas. Their sound was an eminent mix of lovelorn self-pity and cynicism undoubtedly influenced by the Buzzcocks, Gang of Four, and Morrissey—whose romancing idleness rang popular at the time. Founded by Keith Gregory and David Gedge, the band’s only constant member amidst turbulent changeovers, The Wedding Present reached commercial success in 1989 with “Kennedy,” the band’s only top 40 hit (charting 33 on this list.)
Twenty years later, singer-songwriter Patrick Stump, of Fall Out Boy acclaim, covers The Wedding Present’s “My Favorite Dress” for the AV Club. Stump brings a wry, poppy, and earnest soul to the song—no doubt inspired by his latter day forays into production and remixing. It won’t be long before “My Favorite Dress” hits rock band upgrades near you.
The Wedding Present:
Patrick Stump:
Steve Martin (taken from creative commons)
The first few exits on the freeway, once entered, sprint by. Perhaps it’s the distractions of merging, or the performance rituals of driving in your mid-twenties (rolling down the window, finding the right music, ticking things off an unending to-do list), or maybe it’s the distance between where you are and where you are going—in both a metaphysical and geographical sense. In those brief few meters, I enjoy, if not intrinsically, the sensations of what it must be like to live in Los Angeles—its smoky wind, its autumnal sun, and its noise, welcomed, of course, to steal away precious years from my ignorant, youthful ear drums.
I came to Los Angeles by necessity—which is what I imagine a lot of people say when they don’t want to admit that they like it here. I don’t like LA. Its decay, its intolerable hatred of its own history, its meaninglessness leaves me for wont of inspiration and, at times, severely depressed. This is a dangerous state of being for someone who calls herself a writer, as I’m already tussling with the struggles of my own neuroses—let alone the shackles and sweaty desperation of making ends meet. My drug, if you will, the thing that pulls me up from the dregs, or perhaps in reality shoots me through an escape portal, is comedy. So, one fateful evening of too much light beer, I planned an all-day Steve Martin festival amongst friends. Let me pause to explain the subtleties behind the decision: it’s Steve Martin.
Waiting For the Light to Change
The festival was held at the apartment complex of my friends Matt and Amanda—both former film students, which means (if you, too, are in the industry) that they have probably called you, gotten you coffee, or shared a night with you in a sticky dive bar and judged as you complained about your unemployment check. They live in the valley, which for some reason is likened to a leper colony. As I waited at a light, somewhere near Van Nuys Blvd, I noticed a man in his sixties walking on a raised cement platform above the sidewalk. He was wearing Dockers, a cotton shirt that was too big for him, and, of course, the uniform watch that all men in their sixties wear. Eyeing the curb that separated his cement path and the sidewalk below with the youthful delight of someone three-quarters his age, the man, arms extended, balances himself and walks, placing his feet strategically. Then he tumbles. And the light turns greens. I drive past, having been the sole witness to the scene despite the seven bus patrons waiting at a nearby stop. Last I saw he was crawling on the sidewalk.
Capitalism: A Love Story
I arrive at the apartment an hour late, which in Los Angeles, of course, means I’m on time, and I find Matt and Amanda embroiled in Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (the perfect appetizer for a night of comedy.) One more festival-goer was yet to come, the much-reputed Mike Birkhead—a friend of a friend whose exploits in comic books and
Mr. Mike Birkhead
cynicism were larger than life. I wait, toying with Steve’s autobiography Born Standing Up (unwilling to give it back to Amanda who had let me borrow it a week or two before.) “I’m not sure what I meant, but I wanted to use the lingo and it was seductive to make these pronouncements,” I read. “Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.” Genius. That Steve can pen such haunting prose makes him the Bob Dylan of fart joke peddlers. Mike arrives and breathes the first words I’d hear. Anticipation sets in—what will the demi-god say? “I’ll take a whiskey coke.” Genius.
St. Louis? No, Navin Johnson
One of the most intricate elements to Steve’s autobiography was the regretful, intimate, and romantic way he talks about the women who have graced, and truly they have, his life. (Ammunition, I imagine, that makes for a successful wanderlust.) “Mitzi was simply too alluring to be left alone in a foreign country,” he wrote, “and I was too hormonal to be left alone in Hollywood.”
As the festival commenced, with a showing of The Jerk, I learn that Mike, newly unemployed, intends to break up with the girl he has been dating—the girl he, and we, affectionately call ‘Mexican’t.’ Through the movie he wonders, aloud, if he should do this over the phone or in person:
SM: “Lord loves a workin’ man, don’t trust whitey, see a doctor and get rid of it.”
Matt: “Words to live by.”
Amanda: “So are you going to go?”
Mike: “I don’t know.”
Me: “Why are you breaking up with her?”
Mike: “Because I’m unemployed.”
Me: “Well, what if she says that that doesn’t matter?”
Mike: “I don’t give a fuck.”
Me: “Steve Martin has very dark hair.”
Matt: “What? He’s got the whitest hair I’ve ever seen.”
Me: “Well, he’s a silver fox. But, no, look at his body hair to hair ratio. It’s off.”
Mike: “He’s a silverback.”
The movie ends. The festival is off to a knock-kneed start, which I imagine gives it the righteous, comedic reputability it needs to be taken seriously. Mike absconds to Amanda’s room to break up with Mexican’t over the phone. Matt pours another round of whiskey for the festival-goers and puts a few pizzas in the oven (inspired by ‘Pizza in a Cup,’ naturally.) After five minutes, Mike returns to the festival space with the worn, but giddy look of a man who got away with murder. “Sixteenth girlfriend done,” he says, taking a sip from his replenished drink. I feel a pang of guilt for observing, and even promoting through my presence, trespasses unto my kind—which I reconcile through beverage and the comforting thought that this woman has been freed to find someone who wouldn’t break up with her over the phone. I am Susan B. Anthony once again.
Jungle Fever
Our festival continues in chronological order with The Man with Two Brains, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, My Blue Heaven, and LA Story. Drinks also continue with feverish propensity, which makes for a very uninteresting and improperly documented blog. Suffice it to say, the haze that was the next few movies, and tiresome hours, can only be recalled through the few notes scrawled into my notebook at the time:
Mike: “For Christmas my friends got me a sweater…but what I really wanted was a moaner and a screamer.”
Amanda does the fabulous glove into dove trick
Amanda: “Don’t do that. Wait until I swallow.”
Me: “Christ! Guys! Steve Martinis! How did we not think of this before?”
“Amanda has jungle fever. Mike also has jungle fever but insists it’s not gay…even though he has it for Isaiah Mustafa.”
Cocktail recipe: Scotch and apple juice
Steve Martin blog idea: Men who wear concealer (how deep.)
As the night tears on, I realize, or maybe it’s the self-deprecating writer-character I wear as an accessory who realizes, that I had not accomplished what I had hoped for in this festival. Having found recent employment outside Los Angeles, I suppose I had wanted Steve Martin night to be a valentine to the man who writes valentines to the city—avoiding the unpleasant reality that I might actually miss Los Angeles. Honoring by proxy. As with any moment with promise in meaning, all that I had hoped to infuse or extract that night floated effervescently around and through me.
Rules for a Sgt. Bilko Drinking Game:
Admittedly, our top five movie choices for the festival did not include Sgt. Bilko. It’s a rather lackluster Steve Martin film, despite its funny moments. Still, it was one of few selections available to us on short notice. And being the reckless, half-inebriated, post-collegiate group of adults who threw together a haphazard film night that we were, we decided to turn the viewing into a drinking game. The rules, as forged by us (since an internet search proved fruitless), include:
Drink whenever Steve Martin is in a robe
Drink whenever you find Steve Martin sexy
If Matt finds Steve Martin sexy drink twice (Matt must drink three times)
Drink whenever Chuck Berry is referenced
Drink whenever a military theme is referenced in the score
Drink whenever the unit dupes its superiors
Drink whenever you see Rita Robbins
There are a few missteps to this game. First, contrary to the film’s marketing, Steve Martin appears once in a robe through the duration of the film. Second, that we would punish Matt for his homosexual inclinations runs counter to our real political beliefs—and I’m pretty sure it trudges upon the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. (Mea Culpa, Matthew.) Third, my contribution to the game rules involving the film’s score was tragically underused (punishment for being a band geek.) Composer Alan Silvestri references themes used in other military-inspired movies, but does not directly reference military themes in his score. We got around this with incidental music like Taps and other such revelry.
Taking a Bowfinger
Twelve hours, a package of veggie dogs for me and hot dogs for my compatriots (a reference to Father of the Bride), and Reese’s peanut butter cups (a reference to The Three Amigos) later, we rounded the corner to our final film: Bowfinger.
Matt prepares a kosher meal
“You know she’s supposed to be Anne Heche,” Amanda tells me of Heather Graham’s character. As the plot unfolds, and we see young Heather, or Anne as it were, take feminism (as it is imagined by Steve Martin) down a few pegs, a noticeable, heavy weight is placed on the viewers. We’re disinterested, tired, and sober—waiting for the film to end. (Sorry to spit upon everyone in Matt and Amanda’s industry who worked on the film. Sometimes art consumption is as troublesome as art-making.) The movie ends. I manage my goodbyes and drive home.
It takes me a couple days to navigate my feelings on the experience—jostled, too, by more pending deadlines and the insufferable pings of an ice cream truck playing demonically below my window. “Twopence halfpenny and a Joey-twopence halfpenny,” I think, referencing Orwell. “His mind was sticky with boredom. He couldn’t cope with rhymes and adjectives. You can’t, with only twopence halfpenny in your pocket.”
I recreate the drive home in my mind. It is a dazed, blinding, twinkling whir of city lights (easily ignored by the speed in which I moved—both metaphysically and geographically.) My quick year residency has finally given into a fine layer of spiritual calluses. It prevents me from seeing the absurdity, the glamour, and the chaos of Los Angeles at night. My drive happens around me. And I think, “Thanks a yahoo. I’m getting out of this town.”
There was a grey malaise on top of the usual dense, smog-filled morning I have learned to enjoy since moving to Los Angeles. Some call it ‘June Gloom,’ but since it is neither June nor do I reside in the vicinity of a marine layer, I had to grind my wheels towards a different conclusion. Could it be the unemployment? The depression-filled days squandered by lack of interesting things upon which to report? Is it because I ran out of coffee yesterday?
No. This undulating, everlasting nothing was the warning shots for what I would discover with my morning cup of PG Tips: the Right Network.
Now, owning a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science adorns you with a certain amount of sensitivity, humor, and stomach for the more absurd things that come out of the political spectrum. After all, mine is a generation that grew up with Dan Quayle and hocked Bill Clinton as its patron saint.
Nevertheless, when viewing the following advertisement for this independently-owned media company, launching this summer, I found I had a visceral reaction to the news:
Maybe it was my liberal upbringing. Maybe it was the way in which Fraiser Kelsey Grammer adopted Tim Gunn’s snarky attitude and used it against a leftist agenda. Or maybe because amongst the things Grammer listed as ‘wrong with the world,’ baby carrots and bailouts for billionaires were fundamentally equated, while cotton-ribbed thermals paired with a suit and tennis shoes were entirely forgotten.
Liberal cheap shots aside, I still found this move towards the clever, flavored, and cool discomforting. While I appreciate the sense of humor and down-to-earth mission behind the video, I can’t help but feel a little distrustful. Is this the right-wing’s way of hipping Sarah Palin into our ballots come 2012? Or is this a way of wooing back the younger, middle-class breed of would-be conservatives by rebranding the right-wing image as one chic, stylish, and hip (enlisting a growing number of bohemians who have a little more money to spend or what California calls ‘fiscal conservatives’).
Take a quintessential right-wing Hollywood ‘smart guy’ (in this case Dennis Miller must have been busy), leave out the typical icons of Americana (Chevy trucks, Budweiser Clydesdales, tractors), add a dash of charisma and suddenly you have the new Republican Party.
Sinking into the self-deprecating abyss that is my faithlessness in humanity and its inability to wade through bullshit, I sought out more information on this Right Network and found this advertisement, geared to, I assume, the ’less cynical, slightly-more-right-of-center’ Right-wing class:
I wheezed a belabored sigh of relief (yes, another joke about Central LA). The topsy-turvy of the morning had settled and clouds parted to reveal the same musty sunlight.
All is Right with the world.
