Engineer's Daughter

show 137

playlist

land of sunshine and adventure

I'm DJing tomorrow:
9am - noon PST, Sunday, August 23
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm

Yesterday I took a long lunch down at Fort Mason, where I dined at Greens and then poked my head into the Firehouse for the annual preview show put on by Vintage European Posters.  A few choice originals were displayed on the walls including some incredible TWA posters advertising destinations like San Francisco and Chicago, but then there were also two huge stacks of oversize images lying on tables that VEP assistants sorted through for we browsers to admire.  I am hugely obsessed with the poster as an art form and found myself wishing over and over again that I had an extra grand to drop, especially for that Boeing ad pictured right that had me in a dead swoon.  And don't even get me started on the lust in my heart for all the travel posters.  VEP has each poster treated to remove any acid and then mounted on linen for longevity, and there were many serious collectors present eager to snap up these new finds fresh from Europe.  I was just delighted to have the chance to see so much amazing and rare work.

sleeping where i fall

I had long heard that Peter Coyote is kind of an amazing person, what with his roots in the very birth of the '60s San Francisco counterculture along with his past time spent on communes and his current activism.  Now, having heard him speak at the Booksmith last night, I can say with certainty: he is an amazing person.  His extraordinary memoir Sleeping Where I Fall has just been published in a new paperback edition with a fresh 2009 postscript, and after reading a couple passages last night he answered questions from the audience that allowed him to muse on where America is at right now, engaged in the age-old struggle between ignorance and wisdom.  He talked about how perhaps the great mistake of the '60s was the attempt to create an alternate culture in the hopes people would flee to it when the dominant culture collapsed, instead of merely staying present and trying to effect change from within.  I so relate to that idea, and it comes up again in the afterword to his book when he talks about taking his son and his son's friend to the site of a commune Coyote lived on in Olema and the reflections on his hippie past the visit evokes:

Our relative innocence and the impending century of struggle I envision as the heritage for these boys and their children is cold comfort as I gaze out over the Olema hills.  The world is not as I once imagined it or hoped it would be, but then neither am I.  Neither revelation is a total disappointment.  We are, finally, our intention, and we will be known by the footprints those intentions leave.  In this moment, what I can attend to are these boys.

cool-down

Tonight SF Camerawork offered a much-appreciated opportunity to see all three of their summer exhibitions before they close this weekend in the form of a "cool-down" party, and I walked over right after work to catch myself up.  In the front room: winners of the 2009 James D. Phelan Art Award in Photography Doris Jew Conrath and Jim Stone.  Both photographers are California-born and work with color photography, but then their techniques diverge.  Conrath digitally composes panoramas of some of suburbia's more surreal drive-up coffee stands so seamlessly that I didn't at first realize I was looking at all four sides of the building at once, while Stone takes large-scale portraits of Americans that despite their oversize dimensions nevertheless managed to startle me with their empathy.  Intimacy is a theme in the gallery's second room as well, where the central column is pinned floor-to-ceiling with candid black-and-white photos from SF's Cutter Photozine to mimic the process its editors use to lay out an issue.  Select images are blown up larger on the surrounding walls, and I was particularly struck by a picture of a couple sitting in a darkened kitchen while fireworks explode in the sky right outside their window.  Amos Mac's photo pictured above is another stand-out.  Finally, Camerawork's back room contains the results of their "Ersatz" project in which the curators distributed an open call for mail art and then put the pieces on display exactly as they came in.  The result is a mesmerizing collage of scraps, pictures, and even a star map.  The works have also been collected into a beautiful book you can preview here, but I highly recommend seeing everything in person.  If you have the time do rush over there before Saturday.

the fate of the world is on the line

Most Americans will not recognize Armando Iannucci's name, but in Britain he is known for working with Steve Coogan on the Alan Partridge show and for creating the BBC's political satire The Thick of It, of which Iannucci's brilliant film In the Loop is a lengthy spin-off.  In both the series and the film Peter Capaldi plays Malcolm Tucker, the British prime minister's director of communications notorious for spitting hilarious vitriol at everyone who crosses his path.  In the Loop follows Tucker as he tries to do damage control after the British minister for international development (as played by a sheepish Tom Hollander) says one word in an interview that sets off a riot of speculation in the press about Britain's support of a war in the Middle East that the U.S. just might maybe be thinking of starting.  No one on either side of the pond is spared ridicule as documents are leaked, intel is faked, and political alliances are made and just as quickly broken.  The script is lightning-quick and razor-sharp, and frequently I was laughing so hard I was gasping for breath.  But though In the Loop aims its volleys from behind the safety of farce, the ease with which I could believe the events of the film might actually happen is ultimately not comforting at all.  All the more reason to see it immediately.

micropsia

Anonymous, Li Ling Ping Pong c.1860 (China).  I'm not quite sure where the Redstone Press dug this photo up, but it fascinates me.  On the one hand, that woman is bad-ass.  On the other hand, it leans a little toward the more questionable stereotypes perpetuated by films like The Shanghai Gesture, no?  At any rate, I want her outfit.  Opium pipe optional.

kick the balls

The Edinburgh Castle is a very cozy place to sit with a pint on a Saturday night, what with some of my favorite beers on tap, excellent music on the jukebox, and the friendly bartenders.  Last night one of said bartenders, Mr. Alan Black, was on the other side of the bar to celebrate the paperback publication of his book Kick the Balls, entertaining the crowd with a hilarious passage about the unfortunate cuisine at his hometown football stadium while he was growing up in Glasgow.  Scotch meat pie washed down with a warm cup of Bovril beef extract, anyone?  Black also blogs for sfgate.com, whose commenters are notoriously mean-spirited trolls, so he finished up with a brilliant rewrite of his more critical feedback done as a horse race.  I believe The Most Boring Thing I Ever Read won the lot, barely edging out Call Yourself a Writer.

There will be more goings-on for the literary-minded at Moe's tomorrow night when Eileen Myles stops by to read from her new collection The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays on Art, which apparently includes amongst many other things a substantial piece about Björk.  Expect to see this book on my bedside table very very soon.

show 136

playlist

we are blood

After copious amounts of rest all day yesterday by evening I was feeling much better and actually a little stir-crazy, so I walked up to Ashby BART and to find John Benson's big ol' bus, a former AC Transit bus that has been repurposed into an awesome movable performance space.  It's a wonderfully joyful thing to watch bands load in and out of the vehicle, as well as to feel it actually rock and roll once the music gets going.  The always-fabulous locals DADFAG were first up last night, followed by two bands from Arkansas, the candy-sweet girly-pop of Color Club and then the more darkly psychedelic Church of the Snake.  I keep my own work connections to Arkansas very much on the DL, but it's always nice to see that some good does come out of AR.  The show wrapped up with local female noise duo the Awesomes, whose act when I saw them Wednesday night at the Doomed Fest (I was standing right next to the author of the above video) involved processed meat products and a lot of rolling around on the floor.  This time there was more nudity and more fake blood, though just as much screaming.  Suffice it to say they're quickly becoming one of my favorite local groups.  After the Awesomes the bus was packing up to travel to another show in West Oakland (with a band playing while they were en route, of course), but I headed off home in the gloaming with a goofy smile on my face and a smear of vermillion down my cheek.

asistencia opcional. pasión requerida.

I'm DJing tomorrow:
9am - noon PST, Sunday, August 16
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm

Still feeling under the weather and home from work yesterday I decided it was time for another movie on the couch, namely Lone Scherfig's 2000 film Italian for Beginners.  Do not be fooled into thinking this is another insipid romance if you happen to see the DVD cover which features a pair of comely female legs stretched out in a gondola.  This is a Dogme film, which means it features raw digital video and zero production frills, and in this case there is also superb acting and a surprisingly moving story about a group of adults in a small Danish town who connect through the city council's free Italian class.  Though the plot thrives on the sort of implausibilities that generally sink Hollywood rom-coms the movie rarely feels contrived, perhaps due to the genuine emotion all of the actors bring to their roles.  The perfect diversion for a sick day.