Berlioz, Foss and Brahms

After a Society Opening Night at the beginning of the month and a short tour to the Lucerne, Switzerland festival where they played Mahler's Eighth Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony finally opened their season this week with a bizarre, unsatisfying program.



Though it's nice that Franklin Templeton was "sponsoring" the concerts, I'm wondering why the price of the inexpensive Center Terrace seats have been jacked up to $25 this year. Management should actually have made them cheaper, since the most fanatically devoted consumers of classical music tend to be the very old and fairly young, many of them with very limited budgets.



Michael Tilson Thomas has been a wonderful and exciting music director for the San Francisco Symphony, but like all conductors, there's certain music he's great with and other music where I'd much rather listen to somebody else. Unfortunately, two of the composers who belong in the latter category are Berlioz and Brahms, who were featured in the concert Friday evening. After hearing MTT conduct excerpts from Berlioz's "Romeo et Juliette" one time, my friend Jerry Morgan said, "He makes it sound smoothed-out and plush and creamy, which is all wrong. The fun thing about Berlioz is how weird his music really is, and you want to hear that." Friday evening's rendition of the "Benvenuto Cellini" overture only proved Jerry's point.



The second piece on the program was the 1960 "Time Cycle" by Lukas Foss, which started out interestingly but became duller as the four movements went on until the audience was nearly comatose.



MTT gave a long and impassioned lecture/defense of the music and its composer but it was for naught. (Note to Davies Hall sound engineers: you can barely make out what MTT is saying from Center Terrace because there is so much reverb.)



The "Time Cycle" consists of four songs for soprano and fairly spare orchestration, and the soloist was Dawn Upshaw who is a controversial figure in the opera world, as some people worship her and others can't stand her voice. I'm in the total worship category and could listen to her sing the phone book, which might have been more interesting than "Time Cycle."



In the early 1970s I attended a 12-hour Bach Marathon held at the Hollywood Bowl, where general admission was $1 for the entire event (these were hippie days when there was still a trace of egalitarianism in the air). The conductor was none other than Lukas Foss and he was one of the most charming hosts and conductors I've ever encountered live. He also sat down at one point to a grand piano, apologizing for it not being a harpsichord, and gave a wild, crackerjack performance of the Brandenberg Concerto No. 5 that I can still hear in my brain.



So please, MTT, play something else by Mr. Foss because you're not doing him any favors with "Time Cycle."



Many people repaired to the bar to get ready for the Brahms Fourth Symphony, which Joshua Kosman called "a little overstuffed" (click here for the full review) and which I would characterize as just plain vulgar. The performance wasn't boring and certainly had a lot of commitment but it sounded like Mahler on steroids, not Brahms.



I bought a stereo with the proceeds from my first job at age 13 bagging groceries at a proto-WalMart, and with a streak of perversity one of my first purchases was a monaural boxed set of the Brahms Four Symphonies conducted by Bruno Walter in Carnegie Hall. The reason I bought it was that the set was cheap and being remaindered (stereo was pushing out monaural) and also it had a great quote on the front of the box from "Esquire" magazine to the effect that "these performances are so perfect there is no reason to ever record these symphonies again," and as it turned out he was right. Even Bruno Walter's own later set in stereo of the same music wasn't quite as good. So check out these recordings, MTT, for a clue on what to do with this music, and according to the knowledgeable commenters at Amazon (click here), you need to get the FRENCH Sony recording and not the bad Italian Sony transfer or the CDs will sound like crap.

Stand With Us Against The War

As the Iraq War/Invasion drags on, and the United States Senate and Congress vote for institutionalized torture...



...one of the few places that feels sane anymore is the weekly peace vigil...



...in front of the Federal Building on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco.



The loosely affiliated religious groups and peaceniks who attend regularly and irregularly every Thursday from noon to one have been silently standing for justice and truth to power for almost five straight years now.



They are holding a "5th Anniversary" commemoration two weeks from now on Thursday, October 12, at their usual noon to one in the afternoon...



...so I joined Markley Morris, the organizer of the vigil, on a stroll through City Hall inviting the 11 City Supervisors and their staffs to the anniversary event.



Aaron Peskin's receptionist was lovely and friendly when we handed her the invitation and promised to pass it on to the supervisor, but she most definitely didn't want her picture taken.



The staff of the new political operator in Sacramento, Fiona Ma...



...didn't look particularly amused by our presence but was perfectly polite.



It was at District 11 Supervisor Sandoval's office that we received a royal reception.



While prowling around City Hall for this blog during the last year, I've met a lot of the volunteers and paid staff for the various politicians, and with the possible exception of Boris in Supervisor Mirkarimi's office, the smartest, most charming, and most helpful person there is Lupita Figueiredo, seen below to the right in a truly terrible photograph. (Please forgive me, Lupita, you look much better than represented.)



She gave Markley simple, accurate information about distribution to media outlets for his anniversary, and when she found out that he was a District 11 resident, proceeded to invite him to a special districtwide party for the "Chicanos" exhibit at the deYoung.



In contrast, at Supervisor Ammiano's large northwest corner office, his two aides were busy on the phone and didn't even acknowledge us, and neither did the Supervisor himself as he came out to the front desk to find some paperwork.



Note to Ammiano: I like your politics, but your people skills suck.



Though the staffs of reliably reactionary Supervisors Dufty, Alioto-Pier and Elsbernd were not particularly welcoming...



...at least they went through the motions and were polite.



At Supervisor Daly's office, we were greeted by a volunteer...



...who seemed to find everything hilarious.



Supervisor Maxwell's office was guarded by a receptionist...



...who couldn't have been more pleasant and who promised to make sure her boss get the invitation.



At Supervisor Mirkarimi's office, we ran into another lovely volunteer who was enthusiastic and helpful, and who said she would probably be showing up herself.



So, to everybody who reads this blog, you are also officially invited to this event, Thursday, October 12, noon to one pm. There will no stupid speeches or screaming or nonsense, simply people who are witnesses to institutional war and the evil it represents, and who are trying to change the world. Join us.

Vision and Art

One of the great art shows each year in San Francisco is held in the basement of City Hall.



It's presented annually by The Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired (click here for their website)...



...and the 35 artists are all either blind or visually impaired.



The handsome programs for "Insights 2006," as they're calling it, are printed in two editions, one in color and another in Braille.



Part of the interest of the show is also in the artist's statements that are printed next to the art, such as Dona Wilson from Richmond, CA who took the almost-abstract photo of a fishing boat at Malta above:

"Ten years ago I was diagnosed with Macular Degeneration. I now see much less but what I do see means a great deal to me."

Velma Stiers, "And Then Begin Again," oil on canvas above:

"I touch the surface of my work more now, whether they be in oils or pastels. I see the world in soft focus and have difficulties seeing in the distance, so my landscape paintings are from my memory long ago when I had perfect vision."

Annie Hesse, Bellevue, WA, above:

"The camera's lens enables me to "freeze" time and focus on the details that I wouldn't ordinarily see or which are otherwise invisible. In other cases, I am inspired by the play of light and shadows. My intention is to show the viewer not only what I see, but how I see it."

The pieces are fascinating not just because of the inherent pathos...



...but because they are all charged with the energy of people who are literally and intensely thinking about Seeing.



Kristi Dean, Richmond, CA has a couple of extraordinary sculptures made of Tinker Toys and toothpicks.

"I use my sense of touch instead of sight. I "see" by feeling the sunshine on my face of the textures of my art materials."

Some of the art seems to take the viewer straight into the world of diminished sight, such as this landscape by Ida Berkowitz from Tiburon.



Tara Arlene Innmon, Minneapolis, MN was one of the three major award winners of the exhibition, and it was easy to see why. Her series of paintings of bus interiors with people were wonderful.



Another award winner, Kurt Weston from Huntington Beach, CA had a series of large photographs with the major foreground figures crudely sketched out.



He writes:

"In 1996, I became legally blind due to AIDS-related CMV retinitis. I see the world very differently than a sighted person, very blurred with speckles of light, like an impressionist painting."

All of the art in this exhibit is for sale, and it's priced at amazingly low prices, with everything under $1,000 and most of it under $400.



However, these two colored pencil landscapes by Lois Ann Barnett from Oakland are no longer available because I bought them this morning.



Thanks above all go to Sarah Millett, the Exhibition Coordinator, who is pictured above by one of her favorite paintings, Velma Stiers' "Road with No End." She took a check from me and made sure it would get to Lois Ann.

Falafel and Fries

On one of the most miserable stretches of Grove Street in Civic Center...



...across from the Main Branch of the San Francisco Public Library...



...and just up the block from the vile Burger King on 8th and Market...



...there is a Middle Eastern restaurant called Gyro King that is a wonder.



It's not only inexpensive and crowded with happy diners all day...



...but it has a burrito-sized falafel that is one of my favorites in all of San Francisco.



Plus, there's a big photo of The Homeland on the wall, in this case Turkey...



...and the patriarch of the joint looks a bit like Akim Tamiroff in "Topkapki."



There are even the occasional celebrity diners such as District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly along with his son and his political staff.



If you cross Civic Center Plaza, passing the World Can't Wait people in front of City Hall, who are having another big rally on October 5th (click here)...



...there's another charming cheap eatery on Hayes Street called Frjtz.



It's a young hipster joint specializing in crepes, salads...



...and their specialty...



...big servings of "Belgian fries."



For years, the place was called Mad Magda's Tea Room, complete with tarot readings by Real Gypsies.



The best part of the joint is still the beautiful little garden in the back...



...surrounded by faded Victorians.



Beautiful young people hang out here...



...whiling away the hours...



...and talking with friends.



There's even the odd celebrity spotting here, too, such as Eve Batey from SFist, above, who is one of the serious Queens of the Blogosphere in San Francisco.

Palm Springs Life 3: Whirlwind Unveiled

On Thursday morning the 21st, a small collection of notable Palm Springs citizens...



...gathered for the unveililng of a new public sculpture in the rose garden of lovely Ruth Hardy Park.



The emcee was Mike Stern who introduced the political celebrities and proclaimed how Art helped Tourism which was The Business of Palm Springs.



Ron Oden, the charming, openly gay mayor of the city was the next speaker. He's a controversial character lately, neither for his race nor his sexual preferences, but because he's been the front man for a couple of dreadful real estate development schemes that are going to obscure everyone's views of the beloved San Jacinto Mountains.



The four-foot high "Whirlwind VI" turned out to be a quite beautiful mirrored steel sculpture by Gary Slater from Tempe, Arizona.



Slater was genuinely pleasant when I spoke to him before the unveiling, but he looked shy and uneasy at the podium so he didn't stay up there long.



In his published Artist's Statement, Slater writes:

"Whirlwind" is a series I started several years ago and the form of the spiraling steel reminded me of the whirlwinds that spring up in the desert in the summer."



"Whirlwind VI is so far the most dramatic of the series, with more blades than the previous "Whirlwinds."



My favorite feature of the sculpture is that it looks completely different from every angle, gracefully reflecting the world around it.

21/One

In the bowels of the Tenderloin district...



...across the street from the infamous gay porn Tea Room Theatre...



...the San Francisco franchise of the "Fringe Festival" set up camp...



...at the collection of small black boxes called the Exit Theatre.



The show I went to see, "21/One" by the Boxcar Theatre Group, was slated to take place in a Mexican bus cruising the streets of San Francisco rather than in one of the actual theatres.



My favorite detail about the Exit theatre complex was the signage on the door of their bathroom.



Usually, one is instructed not to flush various items down public lavatories, but here the problem seemed to be the opposite, so that one was urged to "Please Flush Toilet."



Groups of people were waiting outside on Eddy Street for the bus to arrive while being panhandled by the local denizens.



All attendees to the "21/One" play were issued nametags along with the option of unlimited beer and Jello shots for an extra $10.



The nametags were a brilliant touch because it helped confuse the already murky line between who were the actors and who were the audience during the following hour of a mock-bachelorette party gone amok.



This led to one of the greatest theatrical coups of my life. I was standing on the sidewalk with a very beautiful black couple named Lisa and Harold when the bus arrived from an earlier performance, and Harold darted between two cars to the bus. However, one of the empty cars had people in it and they started backing it up, nearly crushing Harold's knees in the process. Lisa and I both screamed and he escaped within an inch of serious injury.



The two of them sat behind me on the bus (which unfortunately WASN'T a Mexican bus as advertised) and looked slightly amused and slightly put-off by all the young white people's drunken foolishness which constituted the plot of the playlet as we drove through South of Market neighborhoods. About thirty minutes into the affair, Lisa turned around to the character playing the bachelorette's ex-boyfriend and started delivering scripted dialogue, and I don't think I've ever been so surprised and shocked in the theater. My fellow audience member was a brilliant plant.



More discombobulating events occurred as we pulled into a deserted parking lot and a huge animated projection with sound gave us a short history of the bachelorette's relationship with her ex.



This was followed by bits of thespian business created by actors in various locations around the city as we looked out the windows of the bus, which turned everything one saw on the streets into a potential piece of theatre.



As I stumbled off the bus, drunk from one too many Jello shots, I asked Lisa if the near-injury of Harold was real or staged, and she said, "Oh, that was very real." It was quite an amazing evening of theatre.

Bad Art, Bubbles, and Politicians 1

August was dull and unpopulated in San Francisco's Civic Center, with no opera, no symphony, no art openings, no ethnic cultural festivals, no politicians and no demonstrations. September has started off with a bang, however, and it's difficult to step out the front door without stumbling across some odd and interesting activity.



On Thursday the 14th there was an art opening at the San Francisco Art Commission gallery in the Veterans Building and it was mobbed.



The show was an annual juried exhibition of 26 young artists in fancy colleges like Stanford and the San Francisco Art Institute who were nominated by their professors for the $2,500 scholarship award.



$2,500 will hardly pay for a month's rent and tuition in the Bay Area, so the amount struck me as rather cheapskate.



Plus, the Murphy and Cadogan Fellowships in the Fine Arts awards are a branch of the monstrous San Francisco Foundation (click here for their website) which had assets of over $800 million in 2005 while giving out less than $20 million in "philanthropy," about 2.5%.



The crowd was young and cute but the vast majority of the art seriously sucked.



To check it out, click here for the SF Art Commission's page.



The next afternoon, at h. brown's Burrito Salon, the celebrity guest was Starchild (in the foreground), a District 8 supervisorial candidate running against the creepy Bevan Dufty. For an article on the exotic dancer/escort and some of his outrageous legal troubles with law enforcement in Fremont, click here. If I lived in the district, he'd certainly be my candidate.



Later in the afternoon in Civic Center Plaza, a group of bubble enthusiasts were having a get-together.



By bubble enthusiasts, I'm referring to soap suds, not economics.



San Francisco seems to have a niche group for just about everything...



...and to find a half-dozen people enjoying blowing bubbles with each other...



...was a happy occasion.



A few kids in the plaza felt exactly the same way.

Bad Art, Bubbles, and Politicians 2

Across from the bubbly plaza, there was another art opening at City Hall...



...in City Supervisor Mirkarimi's office.



The event was showcasing three different artists...



...and most of their efforts were even worse...



...than the expensive college effforts...



...across the street at the Art Commission gallery.



It didn't matter, since most attendees at these events are political junkies...



...who are there to schmooze and gossip with each other, not to look at the art.



As usual, Supervisor Mirkarimi was a calm, genial host...



...and as usual h. brown was flirting with all the pretty women while the recently-divorced-from-The-Sentinel Luke Thomas looked on.



Back across the street in Civic Center Plaza, a stage had been assembled...



...for a day-early celebration of Mexican Independence Day, el 16 de septiembre.



One of the local Spanish-language television stations seemed to be sponsoring the event...



...on what turned out to be a punshingly chilly evening.



Yolanda and her co-host introduced the Mexican consul-general in San Francisco...



...along with Mayor Gavin Newsom himself.



Gavin apologized in English for not speaking Spanish to the crowd, which was the language of every other speaker...



...and tried to make a joke out of the fact that he'd studied French and Italian in school which has since done him absolutely no good.



The short, clunky speech didn't sound much like English, either, since he kept using all those San Francisco Foundation nonprofit euphemism words like "partnering" and "celebrating diversity" and "stakeholders."



The Norteno band that followed him was a blessed relief.

Die Fledermaus

There are a few operas whose music I can listen to repeatedly on a CD, but which I generally avoid seeing live, because they just don't work for me as theatre.



Mozart's "Magic Flute" is one example and Johann Strauss, Jr.'s "Die Fledermaus" is another.



It seems that not a lot of other people are clamoring to see this latest production of "Die Fledermaus" at the San Francisco Opera either, because on Thursday the 14th you could have shot off a cannon in the balcony without harming anyone.



The 1874 operetta has a libretto that's like a coarse, dumbed down version of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" with a licentious upper-class husband in Vienna married to a pretty woman who has a young admirer, along with a savvy chambermaid who dresses up in one of her lady's gowns to go to the big ball.



There are a whole series of would-be comic male characters and everyone spends the evening in a series of masks, disguises, and mistaken identities.



Unfortunately, the opera is German + comic which = oxymoron in my experience, and though the music is J. Strauss at his most exquisite, the going can get a bit thick.



However, I read a few reviewers who found themselves surprised at how much they enjoyed the production.



Kosman in "The Chronicle" and Cedichou at "SFist" were right. From top to bottom, the cast was in top form and the music director, Donald Runnicles, turned out to be an impressive Straussian, waltz-division (who knew?).



Who really carried the production, however, was Wolfgang Brendel who used to be the reliable barihunk of the San Francisco Opera in the early 1980s. His local debut in 1979 as Rodrigo in Verdi's "Don Carlo" was one of the sweetest and sexiest performances of anything in my lifetime.



So after much too long an absence, he's back at age 60 filling the stage with energy.



His wife was sung by the debuting Christine Goerke, who has an awesome soprano at her disposal, and the maid Adele was played expertly by Jennifer Welch-Babidge.



It's a great time in the theater, but there was no way I was going to tempt fate and stick it out through Act Three, which is one piece of comic drunken jailer schtick after another. Some things are unredeemable.

Modern Art at the Asian

One of the coolest things about the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco...



...is that they circulate their works of art so prodigiously that the museum looks half-new every time you visit the permanent collection.



Though I love all the old Buddha sculptures...



...and items like "The Womb Mandala," (above) donated by poet Gary Snyder, no less...



...my favorite artworks in the museum tend to be contemporary, such as the Korean mountain painting above.



In the Japan wing, there's a whole new selection of modern baskets...



...that are not only miracles of design but really stretch the idea of "basket" to unheard of places.



In the ancient Indian wing on the third floor...



...a large contemporary painting depicting a religious pilgramage is being exhibited...



...along with other works by Anjolie Ela Menou.



On the main floor, there is a small exhibition of six Pakistani artists who are all alumni of "The Miniature Department" of the National College of Arts in Lahore.



They collaborated through the mail on a series of works...



...and though they are interesting enough...



...the really amazing pieces are by the individual artists working on their own.



Saira Wasim, in particular, delivers an extraordinary punch...



...with her illuminated manuscript illustrations of modern non-mythological monsters such as Cheney and Bush.

Opening Night at the Opera 1

Friday, September 8 saw the opening of San Francisco Opera's 84th Season...



...which is traditionally the Highest Holy Day of San Francisco's High Society.



This gala event was precipitated by a week's worth of labor..



...by a small army of workers assembling red carpets...



...and elaborate tents for a Gala Ball...



...complete with a sit-down dinner.



The most amusing lackeys were the parking valets...



...who were seen running at breakneck speed from various parking lots scattered thoughout the neighborhood back to their Van Ness perch.



There were the traditional anti-fur protestors, this time singling out Burberry for special scorn...



...although as usual, the society ladies ignored them...



...and wore what they pleased.



Over the years, raucous protests have taken place on Opening Night...



...both inside the opera house and outside...



...protesting everything from the Vietnam War...



...to the grotesque distribution of wealth in the world...



...to insufficient AIDS funding during the ACT UP days in the 1980s.



That was before the entire world seemed to have been taken over...



...by not so benevolent corporations.

Opening Night at the Opera 2

The corporate influence at San Francisco Opera's Opening Night extended to the outdoor balcony on the Grand Tier level...



...which had been commandeered for some "Private Corporate Reception."



The Reception didn't seem very popular, however...



...as everyone was rubbernecking each other in the Box bar...



...or in the large marble lobby, which was beautifully lit this evening.



As usual, the opening night crowd was a terrible audience for the opening night opera, which happened to be Verdi's masterpiece, "Un Ballo in Maschera."



It's a tricky opera to pull off in any case because there are so many different tones, from the sparkling music of the doomed Swedish King Gustavus to the sinister occult of Ulrica praying to The Devil, not to mention the huge romantic duet for the tenor and the soprano in the graveyard where criminals are hung.



The audience dutifully clapped here and there throughout the performance, but one had the feeling that the actual watching of the opera was a chore to be endured for a large percentage of the crowd.



Perhaps, though, the audience was merely being discerning since the less said about the opening night performance the better.



The tenor and soprano singing King Gustavus and the Page Oscar repectively were okay, but not much more that, in roles that can steal the show in a second.



In roles that were written specifically to steal the show, the mezzo singing Ulrica the Fortuneteller and the baritone singing Gustuvus' best friend and eventual assassin ranged somewhere between mediocre and awful.



The superstar of the production, Deborah Voigt, fresh from her obesity surgery, has one of the world's most beautiful voices, and I've heard her live at the San Francisco Opera giving definitive performances of Elizabeth in Wagner's "Tannhauser" and the title role in Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos."



She probably shouldn't be singing Verdi, however, who requires a completely different voice and style than Ms. Voigt.



The conductor, in the quicker sections of the score (and there are many), was completely out of sync with his principal singers...



...and the production, direct from the "Florida Grand Opera," couldn't have been clunkier or more provincial-looking, and the direction/staging was inept, with some of the clumsiest chorus entrances and exits I've seen in some time.



None of this is the fault of the new General Manager, David Gockley, who has inherited one of the dullest, most conservative-looking seasons on record from the supposedly cutting-edge Pamela Rosenberg, who fled back to Germany after her five-year tenure here.



To give Gockley credit, the new mini-supertitle screens in the back of the Orchestra section have made those seats (with their muffled sound from the overhang) quite a treat, since you can finally read the supertitles again.



Maybe the "Un Ballo" production will improve during the course of the run, with a better audience and better musical coordination. However, I needed to go home and put on a great old bargain recording with Leontyne Price, Carlo Bergonzi, Shirley Verrett, Robert Merrill, and Reri Grist with Leinsdorf conducting, just to get a good performance back into my ears.

Palm Springs Life 2

The 10-unit Palm Springs condo complex where my Partner Domestique bought a "vacation rental" property...



...has turned out to be even more beautiful than we remembered.



The view from the front porch is of the San Jacinto mountains a block away...



...along with my favorite new palm trees in the entire world.

Josh Wolf Is Out of Jail

On a Van Ness Muni bus, there was a middle-aged gentleman trying to read a history book about the Civil War while a young woman on a cell phone proceeded to bore the crap out of the entire last half of the bus with her current life story as related to a friend, in betwen "like....like....like...."



It's only the first day of September, but she wins the Most Obnoxious Cell-Phone User in Public of September award.




A new free daily, sort of the low-rent version of the San Francisco "Examiner" had an extraordinary, unintentionally funny headline about the Afghani who ran over all the pedestrians earlier in the week in San Francisco. He'd actually wanted to run over cops, but of course as anybody knows who lives in San Francisco, there are no pedestrian cops in San Francisco. They all hang out in their vehicles, doing god knows what, except when they're overpopulating parades and marches while on overtime.



So in frustration he ran over civilian pedestrians instead.



Thanks for protecting us, San Francisco Police force.



The paper also mentioned the other big news, which was that the Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals demanded that Josh Wolf be allowed bail, which essentially meant that he was free of the draconian sentence that the Federal Grand Jury and the venal Federal Judge Alsup had imposed upon him, namely jail for a year unless he snitched on his friends.



Across the street from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals at 7th and Mission, a huge, postmodern glass skycraper has been rising for the last three years and it's quite a doozy.



When I asked the various journalists hanging out for Josh Wolf who was actually going to be using the building, they all answered that it was going to be a Federal building, but other than that, nobody had a clue who was actually going to be using the place.



Josh showed up with his lawyer for a press conference at 1PM and the surprised smile on Josh's face at seeing so many familiar friends/supporters was delightful.



I remember bumping into Josh in the Civic Center right after FBI agents had come after him, and he told me the absurd story of his day, which involved being locked out of his own apartment because he'd forgotten his keys, while simulteneously having to waylay crazy, pushy FBI agents who wanted "original" tapes of an anarchist march from 2005 and who wanted to go into his apartment.



The media swarm at the press conference was gratifying to see.



The federal government's militarization of local police forces, through Homeland Security, is beyond creepy and everything about this case points to what is actually going on.



The only politician who showed up was the Green Candidate for Congress, Krissy Keefer, and the fact that she didn't say a word or intrude in any way was quite charming. I wish a few other politicians had done the same thing.



h. brown showed up about five minutes late, in a very good mood from a bottle of Chandon, and he said...



...surveying the crowd, "there's got to be an FBI/police undercover person in the middle of that crowd...



"...shouldn't be hard to pick him out, it's probably the guy in the green cap."



Now I'm sure h. brown was just being paranoid and is completely wrong, but if the guy in the green cap or anybody who actually knows him wants to leave a message to that effect in the comments, I'd like to hear it.



Because not only had nobody ever seen him before...



...but he kept pretending to be taking pictures of Josh while taking pictures of everybody else in the crowd, including me.



It doesn't matter.



These jerks may be on the right side of power, but they're on the wrong side of history, as h. brown would have you know.

Food Chain Mural Part 3

Brian Barneclo's Food Chain Mural on Shotwell between 14th and 15th Streets is getting closer to completion.



Though "Milk" stands proudly in the center of the 200-foot mural about San Francisco and The Food Chain in General...



...the central section has also gone carniverous...



...though there's a pointed vegan-ecological joke involving a "Mad Cow Burger" in another section.



This Sunday, from noon to 3 pm, there's going to be a party with a BBQ, a DJ, a raffle, and "PAINTING for kids!" as the email invitation stated.



You are invited to stop by and meet Brian Barneclo (it's also his birthday), hang out with the neighbors, congratulate donors, and have some snacks.



Enter to win free T-shirts, dinner for two, and more! Raffle at 3pm.



The mural itself is getting more whimsical, with ant birthday parties...



...taking place underground with hipster worms crawling in and out of skulls.



I can't wait to see what he does with Chinatown.

Minor Disasters

At the incongruously elegant Herbst Theatre in the Veterans Building this afternoon...



...there was a free, four-hour presentation to graphics professionals from Adobe Corporation called "InDesign Inside and Out."



InDesign is the page layout software that is the successor to Pagemaker, which used to be the lesser alternative to Quark Xpress, but now everybody seems to be migrating to InDesign because it's supposedly integrated so well with Adobe's other products such as Illustrator and Photoshop.



However, the presentation was awful, with unreadable PowerPoint screens and demos of arcane "Tips and Tricks" for InDesign delivered by a nice Lebanese marketing lady with an accent so thick it sounded like a bad joke. The whole thing made me want to sell off all my Adobe stock in my IRA account.



I lasted less than an hour and walked out the back door of the Veterans Building where there was another minor disaster.



Some poor Asian fellow who didn't speak English had crashed into a tiny meter maid vehicle on Franklin Street.



Nobody was hurt, but you'd think that Mayor Gavin Newsom had been run into from the overreaction that had police blocking an entire lane for a good hour.



At least there was a hunky emergency crew, and all I could think of was the blogger Beth Spotswood (click here), who is an unrestrained admirer of firemen in all their pulchritude.