Engineer's Daughter

show 102

playlist

Um, you guys?  Rule.  We raised $2085 during my shift today, which combined with the total from last week is almost a tenth of the fundraiser total.  KALX thanks you, and so do I.

Before my shift I swung by Wonderfest (also taking place on the Cal campus today) to hear a good-natured debate between Dan Werthimer, chief scientist on the SETI@home project, and Geoff Marcy, a Cal astronomy professor whose team has been discovering new planets left and right.  Werthimer styled himself as the optimist who believes we will yet find signs of other intelligent life in the cosmos, while Marcy laid out why that scenario seems quite unlikely to him.  Mostly it was just a terrific chance to geek out with a huge group of other space nerds, and I got all bouncy when Werthimer briefly referenced the Arecibo message.  Discovering I was sitting a row away from legendary astronomer Jill Tarter, that did not suck either.  After the talk I ran into Raven and Jeremy selling their wondrous wares at the Bay Area Science Expo, and Raven gifted me with a couple of her serotonin temporary tattoos, the better to help me get through the next few dreary months.

And as we barrel through the next 48 hours toward what I sincerely hope is a concession speech from McCain, I'd like to point out the reading at Moe's tomorrow night for the new book Veeps: Profiles in Insignificance, written by Bill Kelter and illustrated by Wayne Shellabarger.  Their timing is impeccable, and the book looks hilarious.  May we all find ourselves in a mood to laugh soon and not, you know, in miserable despair.

the state i am in

Super-special KALX fundraiser DJ shift tomorrow!
3 - 6pm PST, Sunday, October 25
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm
Sidja will be joining me on air as I politely ask for your spare change and play as much awesome music as I possibly can.  I'm so jazzed I'm putting this right at the top of my post instead of burying it at the bottom like I usually do.  If you miss this installment there's always next Sunday, but I recommend pledging early and pledging often.  Now back to your regularly-scheduled programming...

In anticipation of my energy levels plummeting come winter-time, I headed out into the gorgeous weather today to soak up much sunshine.  Eventually I found myself sitting in Dolores Park with a cone of salted caramel ice cream from Bi-Rite in hand, watching hipsters improvise a slip-n-slide on the grassy hill with a hose, feeling absolutely and perfectly content.  While I was there I poked around ART RESPONSE!'s Silent Painting Protest, taking great care to avoid the orbit of the shirtless fellow with a "Free Love" sign taped to his waist.  Overall I couldn't detect much difference from a typical Saturday afternoon in the park, just with some added prayer flags thrown in for artsy measure.

From the Mission I took the bus over the hill to the Haight for Christian Lander's reading at the Booksmith.  If by some slim chance you're not already familiar with his blog Stuff White People Like, go there immediately.  In honor of tonight's appearance Lander read six entries that he felt particularly applied to San Francisco, including #82 (Hating Corporations) and #88 (Having Gay Friends) and of course #91 (San Francisco).  Though Lander insists the success of his blog since it launched in January and his subsequent book deal was mostly just dumb luck, its popularity in a year where discussions of race in the media have at times been less than direct is telling.  I mean, Barack Obama is #8 on the list.  Lander is incredibly insightful in his observations, and I love that he can simultaneously make me laugh and cringe at myself.  Like on the BART ride home when I pulled out my Lonely Planet guide to Bangkok for my upcoming trip and suddenly thought, "#19: Traveling."  There's certainly nothing wrong with having passions, it's just when white people think that as individuals they're so darn unique in said passions that they leave themselves wide open for ridicule.  At least coming from Lander it's wrapped in humor.

That said, let me recommend another something I like a lot: the Fruitvale Dia de los Muertos Festival, which is taking place all day tomorrow right next to the Fruitvale BART stop.  The altars there are guaranteed beautiful and the sugar skulls plentiful.  I can't deal with the costume-making that goes along with American Halloween, but the emphasis during Dia de los Muertos on the remembrance of departed loved ones and the acknowledgement that death is always close by is much more my style.  Especially as I try not to notice the days keep getting shorter.

state by state

I headed into the city yesterday afternoon with the intention of making the SF Greek Food Festival (spanikopita! baklava!) my first stop in the Mission, but at the last minute I decided that what I really needed was a walnut tart from Mission Pie.  With fresh whipped cream on top, no less.  Then from 25th and Mission I walked up to Dolores Park, said hi to KALX and Mount Vicious at the Expo for Independent Arts, and then stretched out in the grass to listen to the awesomely rockin' Aerosols for a bit.  Not bad for a gorgeously sunshiney day.

Evening found me over in the Haight for Sean Wilsey's presentation about his new book State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America at the Booksmith.  Using the WPA's old American Guide series as their inspiration, Wilsey and co-editor Matt Weiland recruited an impressive variety of writers to contribute a new piece of writing for the book, one for each of the 50 states.  So just for starters you get Joshua Ferris on Florida, Carrie Brownstein on Washington, Anthony Bourdain on New Jersey, Alison Bechdel on Vermont, William T. Vollman on California.  Wilsey screened a short film produced by Powell's Books that featured 19 of the State by State authors discussing their experience on the project and reading from their work, and then he answered questions and talked about trying to get J.D. Salinger in the book and how Vollman ended up in a San Francisco S&M club in drag as research for his chapter.  If you need a virtual road trip in this election year, I think this is the book for you.

I picked the Booksmith over Film in the Fog's screening of An American in Paris in the Presidio last night, but once I got home I rented the movie from iTunes and happily settled in for two hours of Vincente Minnelli's lavish candy-coated vision of love and art French-style in what was certainly a more cozy environment.  I love all the familiar Gershwin tunes and that final ballet in which Gene Kelly's athleticism and Leslie Caron's elegance serve as perfect counterpoints to each other.  I had forgotten how cool the Toulouse-Lautrec sequence is too, with characters taken straight out of the artist's paintings.  Who cares if the whole thing was shot on a soundstage, it still made me want to run away to Paris and swan along the Seine.

Oh and I sadly won't be able to make it, but you should know that one of my favorite artists Marilyn Minter, she of the uncomfortably-realistic almost-pornographic glamour-shot paintings, is lecturing at the San Francisco Art Institute tomorrow night.  Highly highly recommended.

You should also know that I'm DJing today:
3 - 6pm PST, Sunday, September 28
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm

outpost

I had big plans for today, including the Julie Heffernan show at Catharine Clark Gallery, the Power to the Peaceful Festival in Golden Gate Park and the Nathan Russell opening at Mollusk Surf Shop.  And then a gas pump fell out of my car right onto my toe while I was refueling earlier this afternoon, so now I'm laid up at home praying the swelling goes down soon.  Tears of sadness.

But last night well before this calamity Sasha and I took advantage of the warm night and hit up the Oakland Art Murmur.  My favorite things were at Johansson Projects, which is currently hosting a show called Outpost featuring the art of David Hamill and Jeff Konigsberg (whose Blue painting is pictured above).  Both artists use geometry to explode traditional ideas of architecture, and I was absolutely entranced by Konigsberg's obsessively detailed lines.  Hamill's work reminded me of the fantastically impossible designs of Lebbeus Woods, and he also contributes a large installation that weaves in and out of the gallery's interior archways.  Seriously awesome stuff, all of it.  I also liked the politically-charged work of Filipino collective Kwatro-Kantos over at 21 Grand, which uses huge collages of computer-generated imagery merged with painting and photography to take on everyone from Christopher Columbus to Mickey Mouse.  After Art Murmuring we headed down to Flora for killer cocktails and salted caramel pudding, which might explain why we didn't feel the earthquake even a bit.

Toe or no toe, I'm still DJing tomorrow:
3 - 6pm PST, Sunday, September 7
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm