Friday night, Slim's:
Erase Errata
I had this idea that if no one showed up for salon, I could at least go hear Erase Errata, especially as I've been digging their new album. But I shouldn't have worried. Nice people did show up, and we had most excellent conversation about THINKING. The next salon will probably take place in November and the topic will probably be HOME. I will post the invite here again, but please let me know if you want on the email list.
The Shotgun Players consistently provide good local theater, and their latest play, Ragnarok: The Doom of the Gods, is no exception. I went to go check it out Saturday afternoon at Berkeley's John Hinkel Park, and as a former classics major was delighted with these tales of the Norse gods done classic Greek drama style, complete with masks and song. I could have probably done without the framing story, but I can see that the authors were trying to use it to parallel the crises in the world today. The thing is the myths themselves resonate so strongly that you really don't need to add much to them. After all, they were created to help explain the same questions human beings have been grappling with for centuries.
At Giant Robot - Heisuke Kitazawa aka PCP: We're Going to Miss You. I had my heart set on a Hukilau dinner Saturday night, but arrived at the restaurant to find the detritus of a Spam-eating competition including a pile of drunken revellers but not much to be had in the way of food. So I went to the Citrus Club instead for my standard garlic beef/shiitake mushrooms noodle bowl, and walked over to Giant Robot afterward for this opening. Kitazawa creates haunting otherworldly images, gorgeously rendered in a modified superflat style and with an amazing amount of detail. My favorite was a small print that showed a kitty cat's thoughts of birds and other prey creeping out of its head in a sort of surreal thought balloon.
Saturday night, Swedish Hall:
Mark Eitzel & the Lost Anchors of the Pacific Ocean
It seems wrong that I've lived in the Bay Area for over nine years and had never once heard Mark Eitzel perform live, neither with American Music Club or on his lonesome. I finally rectified that situation Saturday night, and there was probably no better venue to do it in than the Swedish Hall. Performances are just so wonderfully intimate there. It's interesting how a singer's voice can instantly fill you with a sense of familiarity too, despite never having met them in person.
I'm sorry I missed the outdoor screening of Best in Show at Dolores Park
Saturday night, because it would have been the perfect way to see one
of my favorite movies...huddled in a parka on a San Francisco summer
night. But I can still give you a quote:
"I used to be able to
name every nut that there was. And it used to drive my mother crazy,
because she used to say, 'Harlan Pepper, if you don't stop naming
nuts,' and the joke was that we lived in Pine Nut, and I think that's
what put it in my mind at that point. So she would hear me in the other
room, and she'd just start yelling. I'd say, 'Peanut. Hazelnut. Cashew
nut. Macadamia nut.' That was the one that would send her into going
crazy. She'd say, 'Would you stop naming nuts!' And Hubert used to be
able to make the sound, he couldn't talk, but he'd go 'rrrawr rrawr'
and that sounded like Macadamia nut. Pine nut, which is a nut, but it's
also the name of a town. Pistachio nut. Red pistachio nut. Natural, all
natural white pistachio nut."
Not pulling her punches:
Last year, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu
was so frustrated by Bush's inept response to Hurricane Katrina that
she threatened to "punch him." Alternet posts her response to the recovery effort a year later,
lamenting that only 12 percent of the $110 billion Katrina
relief package has actually reached the people who need it most.
Bruce McLean: Blue Tree, silkscreen, UK