cultural cocktail

victory for venus

2007-07-09T22:22:00.000-07:00

What is it that I love about the Williams sisters? Both Williams are never dull to watch. Even when their play starts off inconsistent, both women are fighters and are able to battle back to reverse what often look like dire and unwinnable matches. And they've changed the game of women's tennis, putting more power and excitement into the game since they came on the scene in the late '90s. Both athletes were waylaid by injury in the last couple of years, only to return this year seemingly fiercer than ever.

As I sat watching Serena on July 4th get beaten by the #1 ranked Justine Henin in Wimbledon's quarter-finals, I despaired, fearing the Belgian would win the whole deal (I've already mentioned my loathing for her in a previous post). But then Henin was unexpectedly upset in the semis by Marion Bartoli (a 23-year-old French player) who wiped the court with her competitor after being down a set!

Aside: I can't fathom how these players can summon the will to maintain a high level of play when they're down a set (or two, in the case of the men, who play best of five sets, as opposed to best of three for the women). To come from behind like that -- especially against the #1 player on the women's circuit is incroyable! Mais, oui!

Anyhow, Venus, fought her way through some tight matches during the tournament's fortnight (facing match point in the first round and a close match in the third round along with rain delays). By the time she reached the finals, she had a pretty easy time with Bartoli. Venus blasted her serve and got to everything that Bartoli sent back to her. That girl can cover a lot of court with her 6'1" self. The women's final wasn't chock-a-block full of suspense (for that, you just needed to tune in Sunday to watch the stunner between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer), but I was a bit anxious for Venus at the outset having watched her play in a final at the Bank of the West Open a couple of years ago, when Venus was mentally checked out in the finals against Kim Clijsters. The latter handily won.

But this was different. This was Wimbledon, the Slam that the Williams sisters started tracking back during the reign of Pete Sampras. They love the place, and are great on its grass surface. It seems to bring out the best in them.

Still, I don't know that anyone could have predicted V. would win Wimbledon this year. Sure, she won back in 2005 against Lindsay Davenport -- that one was a tight three-set battle -- but this year's victory was even more of a shocker. since she hadn't been playing that much in 2006 and came into the tournament ceded 23. (She is the lowest cede ever to win the women's title.)

So, how about this for confidence and resolve? Back in January, Venus text-messaged NBC commentator Mary Carillo and their mutual friend Renee Stubbs that she was going to win the big W. Sheer bravado? Apparently not.

the lives of others

2007-06-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

The Monday-morning quarterbacking at the water cooler has come and gone. Now the"real" Sopranos fans are crawling out of the termite-infested woodwork, one of who altered series creator David Chase's Wikipedia entry: “David Chase (…) is a homosexual American television writer, director and producer.” Aw. c'mon, get over it. HBO, network of the Sopranos and many other highly addictive series, markets itself cleverly: "It's not TV. It's HBO." Well, as Fresh Air's TV critic David Bianculi said (more or less) in his post-mortem of the series finale on Monday, "It is TV."

Kudos to David Chase (flanked above by James Gandolfini and Edie Falco, who play Tony and Carmela Soprano, for anyone who's been living under a rock) for making us care so much about the conclusion of Tony and his famlies' stories. And bully for all of us in getting so involved, but at the end of the day, we all have our own lives to lead. The rabid Sopranos fan who felt compelled to deface Chase's Wikipedia entry is perhaps just a more extreme version of the viewers who couldn't hang with the fact that Chase didn't fashion an ending that would give viewers a sense of finality (Some of the righteous would have been cheered to see Tony buy the farm, others may have wanted him to name names and enter the Witness Protection Program). But David Chase was never about tying about loose ends in the way many movies, fiction, and TV shows do these days. Our culture loves story (and has from time immmemorial). And why not? The neat, narrative arc is seductively symmetrical.

When the story doesn't turn out in the way we expected, we are disappointed and sometimes even a bit pissed off. I've had the experience more than once vis a vis American Idol (yeah, I know, I know), most recently when the most excellent Melinda Doolittle was sent packing prematurely. I'm not much of a sports fan, but when Serena Williams lost at the French Open a couple of weeks ago to the positively feral Justine Henin (who happens to be ranked number one in women's tennis rankings), I was peeved and felt out of sorts for the rest of the day. No matter. We choose our heroes (or our anti-heroes, in the case of Tony and company), and we want to see certain outcomes. There's nothing wrong with that, I suppose, so long as we can maintain perspective, something the Wikipedia whacko was unable to do.

unsuffer her

2007-06-08T16:31:00.000-07:00

I first saw Lucinda Williams perform 17 years ago at Slim's, a small club in San Francisco, as part of a singer-songwriter showcase. She was one of five performers, on a bill with John Doe, Dave Alvin, Butch Hancock (a member of the Flatlanders), and Syd Straw (hullo!). Lu was painfully uncomfortable on stage back then. Back in 1990, I had already been listening to her music for a year or so, thanks to a prescient friend who had her finger on the pulse of all things alt country.

Lucinda has long ceased to be a reticent performer. Though Lu will never be tapped to host SNL or the MTV Awards (well, why would that ever be the case?), she seems like she's enjoying herself on stage and is relatively relaxed. She's not big on patter, but I don't necessarily want to hear musicians talk. When she does talk, she's pretty funny and dry (and this fuels my fantasy of one day getting to interview her. Now that would be cool).

Just compare Lucinda with Kelly Joe Phelps, her boring opening act, at last Thursday's show at Oakland's Paramount Theater. After my friend Dawn and I suffered through too many of his meandering songs, we skipped out to hang in the theater's beautiful lounge and bar area. The Paramount, by the way, features incredible art-deco architecture and is truly a thing to behold. Maybe it was the sound system, but I couldn't make out some of KJP's lyrics. Not so with Lucinda -- though longtime fan that I am, most are etched in my brain after repeated listenings to her CDs. In concert, Lu spits out her words, and is often powerful, raw, and vulnerable within a single song.

Thursday's show featured songs from Williams' latest CD, "West," along with tunes from "World Without Tears," "Essence," and "Car Wheels." No Lucinda oldies, i.e., "Passionate Kisses," "Sweet Old World," "Changed the Locks," or my favorite from the eponymous CD, "Side of the Road." She started things off on a mellow note with a string of four or five ballads, and I wondered if this was going to be an uncharacteristically low-key concert.

One thing I found unnerving: Lu was packing extra pounds, like a prize fighter whose muscle had gone to fat. She's always been rail thin, but no more. She had a poochy gut, and more than a bit of booty. Superficial stuff, since Lucinda proceeded to rock and rocked hard. Highlights included "Everything Has Changed," "Come On," and "Unsuffer Me," from "West," and "Righteously" and "Ventura" from "World Without Tears." With these recent CDs, Williams has simplified her songwriting (well, to my ears). There's more repetition within some songs, and the lines are often short. When Lu sings them, the effect is often incantatory, like a Southern gothic preacher who's delivering her version of gospel for the pissed off and heartbroken. Or maybe it's a countrified version of rap? When I first listened to "West," "World Without Tears," and "Essence" (the post-Car Wheels recordings), I wasn't always initially taken with what I heard (hell, I thought she might be suicidal on first hearing "Essence"). Some of the songs' lyrics felt unnaturally stripped down, but with persistent listening, their simple beauty and genius became apparent.

Other highlights: A Delta-blues tune by Little Willie Jackson and "Marching the Hate Machines Into the Sun," with lyrics by Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne and music by Thievery Corporation.

Another aside: Dawn was seeing Lucinda perform for the first time, and was quite impressed. She thought Lucinda was much more compelling on stage than on CD.

Williams told the crowd at the Paramount that she's now content and in a relationship (apparently, she's engaged to be married). Then she played a couple of new, unrecorded tunes that inspired by that happiness ("Honeybee" and "Tears of Joy"). There were some slightly nauseating lines in the former (the new love's honey dripping on her stomach), but I can deal. Lucinda has shared so much heartbreak through her songs. (Imagine being her new guy and knowing that if things go south, your idiosyncracies will be immortalized in song.) Well, I hope that this time Lu stays happy. She deserves it.

one good turn

2007-05-24T21:48:00.000-07:00

Couldn't resist posting another photo of the little beast.

new arrival

2007-05-24T21:29:00.000-07:00

About a month ago or so, I succumbed to a dangerous form of procrastination, kitten porn. I came upon a photo of this little orange guy and his brother, and the wheels started spinning. On impulse, I put in an application and, to forego the tale's twists and turns, a month later, I brought home this kitten on Sunday. Rufus (not named after young Mr. Wainwright) is your typical kitten: He just wants to play, explore, play, eat, explore, play, play, oh, and sleep (not that I've witnessed much of the latter, but he's in repose here). He's quite the talker, something I've not experienced in most of my other felines. Damn fine jumper, like most four-month-old kittens.

I've given him the spare bedroom at night and while I'm at work, since my five-year-old gray tabby, Lucy, is afraid of the little fluff ball. Seems odd but one of my friends who's expert in such matters says it's not unusual. So, life has gotten a little crazier, and my houseplant (yep, singular) is a bit worse for wear, but I hear change is good.

By the way, be sure to note the pink toepads.

it's always Monk time

2007-05-20T18:35:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to hear Jason Moran (my favorite musician, pictured above) re-create Theolonius Monk's 1959 Town Hall concert. Along for the ride were T.S. Monk (son of Theolonious) on drums and Taurus Mateen (bass player in Moran's trio, the Bandwagon), along with seven musicians on a variety of horns -- from French tuba to trombone to sax to trumpet. Actually, it was more like a re-imagining than a performance that hewed to the original. Moran created some looping sections based on old tapes of the original concert that had been recently discovered. Each member of the horn section had a brief opportunity to show off his stuff while a bit of the loop played behind him. It worked, though by the seventh solo, I wasn't as enamored of the idea. Better was when the group of 10 took on those great original tunes (Crepscule with Nellie, Monk's Mood, Off Minor, Little Rootie Tootie, et. al.) and Moran-ized them. That translated to adding a lot more notes to the originals. That's what Jason Moran does: He packs a lot of playing into his music, but somehow all those notes makes a complex, beautiful collage of sound.

Nonetheless, as a longtime devotee of Monk's music, I gotta say this: These are not tunes that can be improved upon. Along with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Theolonius Monk was one of the great musical geniuses of the 20th century. But Jason and T.S. Monk had a lot of fun with playing these gorgeous works, and it was a thrill to hear them live. Credit must go to Duke University and SF Jazz, which have commissioned Moran for the task. Makes perfect sense. Monk was a great pianist of the 20th century, and Moran (who is incredibly impressive and smart), is one of the greats of this young century.

T.S. Monk told a great story about his father. Theolonious never pressured him to go into music. In fact, he never asked him about it all. When T.S. turned 15, he began to be interested in playing. So, Theolonious called up his friend Max Roach and asked him to show his son the ropes. For five years T.S. played drums in the family's apartment, and he says his father never asked him how it was going. Then, five years later, Theolonius needed a drummer and asked his son to sit in. Just like that. Trial by fire. But also a really cool example of parenting.

I was lucky enough to interview Jason Moran last fall. To read that article, past this URL into your browser
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2006/10/26_Moran.shtml

robbed

2007-05-16T22:14:00.000-07:00

Warning: Loss of ironic detachment.

You know what sucks? America. I realize I can only blame myself for getting pulled in by American Idol (yep, I succumbed to another season), but c'mon, people. It will be a teeny-bopper finale with Blake Lewis (okay, he's 25) and Jordin Sparks (17, immensely likable and impressive, and a solid performer). I hope the latter wins, 'cause she's the better singer.

Does that matter? Apparently not, given the fact that Melinda Doolittle was far and away the best vocalist on the show this season, and she didn't garner the votes to get into the damn final next week. WTF? Would that I didn't care a whit about this, but I do, I do. Hope Melinda gets a big fat recording deal and sells lots of CDs. She's a classy gal. And, damnit, she can sing. Maybe this will cure me of watching this addictive crap.

scary movies

2007-05-13T20:33:00.000-07:00

Forget about the summer scare flix. Last week at the San Francisco International Film Festival I saw "Strange Culture," a documentary by Lynn Hershman Leeson. Leeson, a Bay Area filmmaker, tells the unresolved tale of professor Steve Kurtz, an artist who awoke one morning in 2003 to find his wife, Hope, dead. The two had been collaborators in an experimental art collective that had been working on an installation about bioengineered food. When the paramedics showed up, they saw Petri dishes in the couple's home, suspected the Kurtzes of bioterrorist activity, and contacted the FBI. In no time flat, agents in HazMat suits had entered Steve Kurtz's home, and left with his wife's body, his computer, and books. Kurtz is still awaiting trial. He's low on legal fees, and his life is in limbo. Leeson takes an experimental approach to tell the story: Tllda Swinton plays Hope Kurtz, Josh Kornbluth is enlisted as a colleague of Kurtz at SUNY Buffalo. Both Kurtz, who must avoid topics directly related to the trial, and an actor playing Kurtz have roles. Though it might sound confusing, the film never is hard to follow. What is difficult to grasp, however, is why the U.S. Justice Department is out to destroy an innocent man. Perhaps Kurtz's art might cause American consumers to question the "wisdom" behind GMO foods (backed by the very powerful agriculture lobby)? Like so many modern-day tales of come-uppance, this one has yet to reach a conclusion.

I watched another powerful documentary last night, "Jesus Camp," that's as scary as anything I've ever seen. While they might not be on most liberals' radar, evangelical Christians are busy at work planting seeds for the future. Their cultivation efforts are focused on young, susceptible children who are vulnerable to their brainwiashing tactics. It's an awful thing to behold. The film's focus is Pastor Becky Fischer's "Kids on Fire Summer Camp" in North Dakota. Many of the kids who attend are primed by their parents to ridicule Darwin's theory of evolution, and see Christ as their savior. They pray before taking their turn at the bowling alley, proselytize to strangers, and learn most of their lessons at home (53% of them are home schooled). What makes the film especially powerful is that filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady bear witness; they know that their story is powerful in and of itself and needs no editorializing. In fact, the only voice of sanity they include is that of Mike Papantonio, a famous trial attorney who takes on the fundamental Christian movement on his Air America show, "Ring of Fire." "Jesus Camp" was nominated in the best documentary category at this year's Oscars. It's a good reminder that ignorance -- or at least unawareness of what the extremists are up to -- is not bliss.

serena rocks!

2007-01-26T22:43:00.000-08:00

Oh, yeah, baby. Girlfriend pummeled Maria today at the Australian Opens (6-1, 6-2). Unquestionably, Sharapova contributed to her own demise, with a horrendously low first-serve percentage (under 50%), but she was bested, no doubt, by Serena Williams. The photo says it all. Serena came on court calm, intense, and determined. There was no sign of the woman who can sometimes sabotage herself. She was fierce and certain, breaking Sharapova's serve twice in the first set. What's amazing is that Serena came into the Australian Open ranked 81 in the world. Now the computer has her at number 14 -- and that's with a bullet. I don't care if she thanks Jehovah before she acknowledges anyone else, including her mother who's her coach. Serena rocked the house tonight. Amen, Sister Serena. Amen.

high on this tasty bud

2006-09-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know I'm a bit behind the eight ball on this one, but in just 24 hours I've watched six episodes of Weeds, the Showtime dramedy starring Mary Louise Parker as Nancy Botkin, a widowed suburban mom who turns to dealing dope to maintain her upper-middle class lifestyle. By all accounts, she shouldn't be terribly sympathetic. Her two sons are in school, why can't she get a real job, ferchrisake? I guess 'cause we've all seen that show before. But who cares? It's Mary Louise Parker, and she makes me feel like piecing together my ripped up lesbian card, even if it takes several hours to do so.

Anyhow, back to the show's silly premise: You got a white suburban mom selling pot, and that's reason enough to have her interact with the tough yet ever-so-likable grandmother-to-be black dealer in the dicey part of town. In episode four (or three? I've embarrassingly binged and they're all a jumble), Nancy/MLP is visiting the house in the 'hood, restocking her supply, and the bullets start to fly. The dealer family (grandma dealer's grown kids live with her) go on auto pilot, and lunge for cover, while Nancy stands dazed and clueless until the hunky son, Conrad (Romany Malco, who seems to be dating MLP now in "real life"), pulls her down to the floor. It's a funny moment, trust me.

While Elizabeth Perkins' character on the show, Celia, initially seems as tightly wound as a Swiss clock, circumstances cause her to loosen up remarkably in the span of six episodes. Even though MLP is the dope dealer, Celia is the really whacky customer. Anyhow, suffice it to say, I'm hooked and looking forward to burning through the next six installments.

let's carp about classic rock

2006-09-13T21:20:00.000-07:00

"Jackie Wilson said, 'I'm in heaven when you smile,'" so sang the formidable man on the stage of Berkeley's Greek Theater. That man, of course, was none other than Van Morrison, who was playing to a sold-out crowd, many of whose members had shelled out $125 to hear him sing tunes old and new. The good news is that Van is in fine voice. Morrison has gotten one of the best blues vocal instruments around. There's no disputing he's a legend. Even as a fairly recent fan, I'd heard that he is unpredictable in concert. I decided days before the show to risk it, and picked up a pair of tix for $150. You only live once, right, and here was a chance to hear one of the greatest pop/rock artists in my back yard. What the hell.

At 7:30 p.m., the sun making a hasty exit, Van's band came out to warm up the audience. They were just a tease, though, and soon enough, Mr. Morrison made his way to the stage. Van opened with a tasty mix of songs, including the title track from 1990's "Enlightenment," a couple of tunes from "Pay the Devil," including "There Stands the Glass." It was all wonderfully pleasant, though I kept wanting him to kick it up into a higher gear. His cover of "St. James Infirmary" was soulful, hot, and really lovely. Afterwards, he segued into "Moondance," "Jackie Wilson Said," "Brown-Eyed Girl," "Gloria," and that's where the trouble started.

The aforementioned songs are indubitably part of the rock 'n' roll canon, but as served up last night, their vitality was diminished, the edges were all gone. It was as if Van had turned his own songbook into Muzak. He exited after giving most of the crowd what they wanted. I just felt jaded after barely 90 minutes of entertainment. I kept thinking of the musicians whose music I love that really work hard to please their fans: Lucinda Williams, Elvis Costello, even the eccentric Rickie Lee Jones.

In the case of last night's Van Morrison show, I'm willing to cop to being a crank, a curmudgeon. But I wasn't grooving like the rest of the (mostly) boomer crowd, and felt my familiar fish-out-of-water self. Yep, it sucked. I'd like to be able to revel in such moments, instead I was outside, looking in, the disgruntled observer. As I write this, I'm listening to Van's "St. Dominic's Preview," so I guess all is not lost.

absentee blogger's guilt

2006-08-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's the posting where I promise to do better by my blog. I swear. This summer has been lovely, thanks to my new abode and the aforementioned gardening jones that has gotten the most of my time. Blissful, though, and incredibly calming.

I told a friend tonight that I've become the kind of person who thinks that getting the latest issue of Sunset magazine in the mail and checking out gardening tasks for the upcoming month is a good time. Oh, lawdy, what has become of me?

On top of being mistress to the weeds, I immersed myself in water this summer, attempting to learn how to swim the right way (i.e., not twisting my neck and gulping to breathe while doing the front crawl) in middle age. Hey, lemme say, it's not easy. Can there be a learning curve in the water? I think so.

Best part of the summer: Taking what can only be called an intimately sized poetry class through the ASUC Art Studio at UC Berkeley with three other students. Our teacher, Cody Gates, one cool guy who's passionate about poetry was nothing if not encouraging (what every beginner needs). I think my poems evolved in the short six-week class, and now I'm committed to keep going. Am looking for a new class, because there's nothing quite so inspiring as a deadline. More later. I promise.

how did jill soloway get inside my head?

2006-07-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

Why, I read her book, Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants by Jill Soloway, thanks to my savvy writer friend, Bonita, who loaned me the slim, immensely enjoyable volume that's a hybid: part memoir, part personal essay, part rant. And rant Soloway does, but it's all laugh-to-yourself hilarious (I never found myself chortling aloud, but in my mind I was chuckling, and saying, "Yeah, you're dead right about that."). Soloway, who was a co-executive producer for HBO's Six Feet Under, lives in L.A., but she grew up Jewish in Chicago, and that's why I think I can so relate to her view of things.

For instance, Soloway spends an entire chapter! deconstructing women who use disposable toilet-seat covers (gotta love it). I've always found those things befuddling -- what are you going to catch from the back of someone else's thighs -- but she digs deep into the subject. The woman hits on all kinds of pet peeves and some of them may be yours. A recommended, laugh-filled distraction.

california uber alles

2006-06-25T09:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of very good novels set in this lovely, complicated golden state have roused me from my blogging slumber: The Ruins of California by Martha Sherrill and This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes. The books have little in common, though both were written by women and have men as fairly primary characters (Paul Ruin, the father in Sherrill's coming-of-age tale, figures prominently, while Homes' protagonist is Richard Novak, an extremely well-off trader who undergoes a major transformation during the course of the novel). I'm pairing them here simply because both offer strong senses of (this) place, one that all too easily can be characterized in broad stereotypical brush strokes. Neither author falls into that particular trap.

The Ruins of California is a kind of expanded coming-of-age story in which the protagonist, Inez Ruin, first begins her story at age 7. Her parents are divorced and she lives with her mother and Abuelita (Peruvian grandmother) in Southern California. She visits her father, an entreprenur and ladies man, who lives in Northern CA, throughout the course of the story, which ends when Inez is in her early 20s. One of the surprises in the book is that the focus eventually becomes Inez's relationship with her father, who turns out to be a more complex and interesting character than I suspected at the outset. From her father's first marriage, Inez has a half-brother, Whitman, who grows up to be a surfer dude, fleeing responsibility and growing up. I'm a sucker for reading about sibling relationships and this one is rich and beautifully drawn. These characters stayed with me for several days after I'd finished the novel. None of them are static. They all change and grow and struggle. Their stories play out against a backdrop of California, starting in 1978 and moving up to 1990. Sherrill is lighthanded yet quite effective in using the styles and historical landscape in the story without making the details seem forced. A very enjoyable read.

My first encounter with A.M. Homes' writing was back in 1990 when I read her fine, edgy collection of short stories, The Safety of Objects. While I haven't kept up with her work, I'd read laudatory reviews of her latest novel, This Book Will Save Your Life (and really, who can resist a title with such a clever marketing bent? Not me). The story begins with Richard Novak reflecting on a bout with pain that felled him the day before and landed him in the hospital. Middle aged and divorced, his house tettering above a sinkhole in the Los Angeles hills, Novak suddenly finds that solitary existence he's cultivated and grown to love leaves him feeling empty in the wake of his medical scare. Through a series of strange encounters, Novak expands his world to include the owner of a donut shop, a woman he meets crying in the produce section of the grocery store, an incredibly friendly next-door-neighbor who's a well-known actor, and a famous reclusive author. Homes makes Novak symphathetic, not an easy thing to do with such a privileged guy who has a devoted housekeeper, personal trainer, and nutritionist. The emotional stakes get higher when Novak is faced with the prospect of seeing his 17-year-old son Ben who doesn't exactly rate as estranged but their relationship is strained and awkward. While the denouement of the novel was not to my taste, I really got caught up in Homes' story. Novak's struggles offered grist for my personal mill, and for that alone, I recommend this book. Homes, by the way, got blurbs from disparate and cool corners: Stephen King; Lily Tuck; filmmaker John Waters; writer, psychotherapist , and JuBu Mark Epstein; and Michael Tolkin, who wrote The Player.

some kind of doc

2006-05-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

Want to do see the therapeutic process in action? I've seen no better example than the documentary Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which captures the two-year regrouping the heavy-metal band underwent with the help of Kansas-city based therapist/performance coach Phil Towle after bassist Jason Newstad jumped ship. When I professed my enthusiasm for this doc to one friend, he immediately assumed I was a fan of the music. HUH? That so doesn't fit. Naw, dawg (as Randy Jackson says, and yeah, for the record, I have watched too much AI), it's the voyeurism here that's the thang. To watch Metallica's lead singer, James Hetfield, hardly Mr. Touchy-Feely, go through soul-searching moments with drummer Lars Ulrich (an aside: the man has a stellar art collection) who articulates his frustration with the narciscistic lead dude by saying "fuck" over and over, which is surprisingly articulate given the circumstances, is far more fascinating than reading People. Whether you've written the band off after their Napster temper tantrum or never gave them the time of day because metal isn't a genre you traffic in, well, no mind. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster isn't about any of that. It's about the group's collective creative process as they work through all the hardships involved in creating their CD, St. Anger, and they learn to see each other anew after 20 years of working together. Ultimately, this is a film about long-term relationships, a subject fthat holds some interest for us all. Fuck, yeah.

freedom of what?

2006-05-08T14:46:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I was reading my favorite SF Chron columnist Neva Chonin (Live! Rude! Girl!) who enlightened me about the news event of the past week I'd managed to miss when I took two days off work. Chonin was bringing readers like me up to speed regarding Stephen Colbert's brave speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner in which he roasted the Commander-in-Thief over an open flame. Colbert isn't a "real" journalist, whatever that means in this day and age of wimpy press that cower down to their corporate owners. He comes from cheekier, braver stock: His Comedy Central show, The Colbert Report, is a spin-off of Jon Stewart's much ballyhooed The Daily Show.

Some news outlets, such as C-SPAN, are pulling the video of Colbert's dry-as-a-James-Bond martini speech from the web, in deference to the freedom to squelch creativity and genius, I suppose. Who needs the truth, sigh, when we can have freeze-dried pellets of news that come straight from the presidential press secretary? Bully for Colbert! In this seemingly never-ending era of deception and Orwellian doublespeak, a guy with his cajones is just what we need.

the giant buddhas: a brilliant doc

2006-04-29T22:59:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has ever attended the San Francisco International Film Festival knows that selecting films to see is akin to rolling the dice. After viewing a couple of decent, though ultimately unsatisfying narrative films last Sunday, I got lucky today with a documentary, The Giant Buddhas, by Swiss director Christian Frei.

Frei tells the story of the Taliban's destruction of the stone Buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan from a multiplicity of persepectives: Sayyed (pictured above), who belongs to a refugee group that lived in the caves near the Buddhas, until the Taliban wiped out most of the clan; an Al Jazeera reporter who risked his life to document the demolition of the Buddhas; Xuanzang, a Chinese monk from the 7th century whose journey from China to India took him to the valley where the Buddhas once stood (in his journal he not only describes two Buddhas but also a third reclining statue that perhaps has gone undiscovered for centuries); Dr. Tarsi, an Afghan archaeologist, a university professor in France, who organizes a dig to discover the missing 300-meter-long Buddha; and Nelofer Pazira, an Afghan/Canadian author and actress who lives in Toronta and travels back to her homeland to visit the site where the Buddhas once stood and retrace family history.

Okay, that turned into more of a summary than I'd like. But I wanted to hint at this documentary's marvelous complexity. What is harder to convey is how emotionally moving it was. I recall reading in The New Yorker about the Taliban's decimation of the Buddhas and being terribly affected and saddened by the wanton destruction of the statues and being frightened by the intolerance of their actions. Frei, with a very even-handed voiceover, tells the story of these statues and the fallout from religious fundamentalism, as he travels to locations in Afghanistan and China. This film manages to be very affecting without ever coming close to being polemic. Don't miss it, if you get the chance to see it.

tending the garden

2006-04-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

How do you lose credibility in the blogsphere? Easy. Letting your blog languish untended like a garden rife with weeds. So, where I've been? Well, in the literal garden, pulling weeds like nobody's bidness. Therapy of the soil. It's been feeding me on a beautifully unanticipated deep level. Here's how much I love pulling up the unwanteds: Got home at quarter of eight last night from work, dog tired of the computer keyboard and the airless office. The last rays of the sun were still in the sky, so I got in about 20 minutes in the garden. Somehow, this proved more grounding (okay, pun very much intended) than the hour that followed watching American Idol. Why that should be mysterious, I don't know.

Here's another wonder: Just got back from my temple, Yoshi's Nitespot, home of worldclass jazz. A fellow jazz compadre and I went to hear Dave Douglas and his quintet play tunes from their latest recording, Meaning and Mystery. My friend, Paul, bless his open-minded self, was willing to accompany me on faith alone, since he was unfamiliar with the great trumpeter, DD. How cool is that?

Dave Douglas and his quintet delivered a great set of what I dubbed tonight white boy intellectual jazz. Not to say there wasn't funk and soul -- there was -- but mostly when Uri Caine was playing the Fender Rhodes. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure trying to follow Douglas's aural thoughts, accompanying him on the sometimes sweet, sometimes edgy ride. These guys (Donny McCaslin on trumpet, James Genus on bass, Clarence Penn on drums, as well as Caine and Douglas) were so tight, so incredibly in sync, in the way that the best musicians are. Kind of seems like a miracle when the music is that good, but it's not, of course. Dave Douglas has a new music label, Greenleaf, which is an old family name he told the audience tonight. Honestly, not the herb, mon, no. Dave Douglas is also penning a blog, a real jazz lover's nectar.

fanfare for the common man

2006-04-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

This country of ours is fame crazy. That's not news but I got an up-close-and-personal introduction to one fame-obsessed man who really should know better. Barry Welsh is an astrophysicist, ferchrisakes, who became driven to grab his piece of the limelight. His notion of success? He nabbed a slot for himself and his family on the Fox Network's reality-TV program "Trading Spouses."

I interviewed Welsh, who works at UC Berkeley's Space and Sciences Lab, by phone. He was a bit over the top (or OTT, as they say in England, from whence Welsh hails) but I initially found him charming. Well, not so, after I viewed the first of his two episodes last Friday. Obnoxious and narcissistic were the two words that kept popping into my head. If you want, you can read a bit about Welsh and find out how "Trading Spouses" works.

This also seems like an opportune moment to cop to the fact that I've succumbed to watching "American Idol." While some of the singers may be talented in a generic way ("Hey, you've got a great voice! Wow!), none of the participants that I've heard this season have voices that seem noteworthy, exciting, or uniquely interesting. Maybe I'm drawn to "AI" (like artificial intelligence, a coincidence?) because it's one big popularity contest. Like one that a good portion of the country has bought into (Note: I haven't started to vote for contestants. Yet.)

Not to get all insider baseball here, but last week when Mandisa (a large black woman with a soulful voice who had been told by the judges that she could sing the phone book and people would listen) was eliminated, I was stunned. I actually shed a handful of tears, no common occurence for me. Judge (and oftentimes scathing critic) Simon Cowell, when questioned by puppy dog MC Ryan Seacrest about Mandisa's dismissal, chalked it up to Mandiva's poor choice of country song. That rationale didn't quite work for me. Plenty of the other contestants had chosen dopey country songs (Taylor sang John Denver's cloying "Country Roads" -- it doesn't get much worse than that). Is Mandisa just too unapologetically fat to be an AI? Maybe. We'll never know.

amazing zadie

2006-03-28T18:06:00.000-08:00

Zadie Smith demurely and preemptively claims to be bad at writing novels. Ah, to be so unsuccessful that Michiko Kakutani pronounces your latest work "glorious" and "wonderfully engaging" is a paltry achievement indeed. It's possible to quibble with On Beauty's overly plotted march to its finale (though I found the ending of White Teeth, which gathered all the characters in an auditorium much more problematic and just plain clumsy). But then Smith is paying homage to Forster and Howard's End in On Beauty, so how can she be faulted?

I found On Beauty's story of two very different families a wildly entertaining read. At its center is the liberal Belseys helmed by an Englishman named Howard (who's a Rembrandt scholar at a fictional academy named Wellington in Boston), his African-American wife Kiki, and their three nearly grown children, Jerome, Zora, and Levi. The lives of the Belseys get entangled with those of the Kipps, a Christian, reverent bunch, headed by Trinidadian papa Monty, his sympathetic wife Carlene, their son Michael, and daughter and sexual provacateuse Victoria. What makes Zadie Smith such a joy to read is her remarkable ear for dialogue and her ability to very convincingly enter into the thoughts of her characters, whether it's a middleaged man or his teenaged daughter. She gets bonus points, too, for really capturing family dynamics. Highly recommended.

like being 17 again

2006-03-22T09:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I went with my friend Fernando to a concert to hear the Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers (truly an unfortunate name) and Belle and Sebastian, a Scottish group whose lead singer has been interviewed by Terry Gross. As I dimly recall, I hadn't been to a medium-sized concert hall in several years. At this one, the Concourse Exhibition's Design Center in San Francisco, the doorfolk scanned my ticket's bar code, like the checkers do at the grocery store. Anyhow, the place turned out to be a long, cavernous venue, one certainly not built for musical performances. By the time we arrived after 8 p.m., the New Pornographers had taken the stage, a fact we were wise to as we hustled down the street and could hear music blasting from the Design Center.

Brief interruption: I love the NP's CD, "Twin Cinema." It's power pop, heavy, heavy, heavy on the drums and guitars, the kind of CD that's made for rocking out to in the car (and I do so, whenever I have the chance). I didn't cotton to the disc on first listen, but when I gave it a second try, the music got under my skin and quickly became my interior soundtrack.

But back to the show: I tend to avoid concerts where I feel less like an audience member and more like a cow in the herd. Yeah, we got to stand around to watch the show, or, in my case as one of god's little people at 5'2", I got to stand and listen to the bands while I gazed at the back of people's heads or watched a gaggle of gals gyrate to Belle & Sebastian (I'd never thought of them as a dance band, but for some fans, they seem to be). A friend turned me on to Scottish popsters Belle & Sebastian some years ago. I have "The Boy With the Arab Strap" and "If You're Feeling Sinister" and like both CDS. Like, not love. Ninety minutes of their pleasant but not particularly interesting performance was more than enough for me.

The sound system was unkind to the NP. Regardless, when the band played songs I recognized from "Twin Cinema," I closed my eyes and swayed to the music, bilssfully unconscious of how I, a mid-lifer and not much of a dancer, looked in my attempt at rythmic moving. Ah, but nevermind, because the NPs music makes me feel young -- like the world is spread out before me ripe with possibilities. B&S attracts a smart, seemingly sensitive group of fans. The girls and guys looked urban hip, dressed but not dressed up. For the evening, I was one of them, even as I observed more than partcipated (a familiar vantage point), I had three-minute pop song moments of feeling like anything could happen, a fantasy worth the price of admission.

Gogh modern

2006-03-18T15:09:00.000-08:00

About the word "modernistic" in my URL: "Modernistic" is the title of one of my favorite jazz CDs by a great pianist, Jason Moran, who hails from Houston and studied with Jaki Byard. "Modernistic" is Moran's solo outing. It demonstrates quite beautifully how JaMo pays homage to past jazz greats and puts his own gangsta spin on the music, blending past and present and creating music that gives me hope for the future of the genre. I've noticed that when I've had a couple of (okay, well, several) drinks at home with friends, I put on Moran's music and subtly proselytize (well, I'd like to think I'm subtle, but that's doubtful).

ola from oakland

2006-03-18T13:34:00.000-08:00

I am caving in to the admittedly light pressure exerted by a blogging friend and have decided to join the legions who are sharing their thoughts, views, and passions with the masses (or those that happen to alight on their blogs). I feel certain that posting pictures of my cats is a prerequisite to blogger fame and fortune.