Apr 30 2006
SFiFF: Day #11
Morning after report.
MP3 File
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
A word on membership in the San Francisco Film Society.
MP3 File
To get you in the mood. They had a mini concert before
the screening of this movie.
MP3 File
Film: The Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela
What is it?
Documentary about 12 members of the African National Congress Youth League who lived in exile for 30 years after fleeing from their native South Africa. Made by the stepson of one of the men.
Why did I see it?
Growing up in the 1980s, seeing A Dry White Season and reading Athol Fugard, loving the Amandla! soundtrack, I've been fascinated by South Africa for many years.
Did I Like it?
Almost. I wanted to. It's got tons of soul and passion for its subject but lacks perspective. It assumes the history of apartheid is common knowledge, that terms like "pass law" and "Soweto Riots" mean something to everyone. If they don't, the significance of his father's history and how it parallels that of his homeland are unmoored from the heart of the film.
Also, and this issue came up with Metal: A Headbangers Journey which I saw earlier this week, it's difficult to do both a documentary about yourself and about a subject much larger. The subject almost always get short shift, acting uncomfortably as both set decoration and lead actor and throwing into question how what's being left out because it makes the documentarian uneasy. So mucha s I applaud Thomas Allen Harris's efforts, he's given us a good 3/4 of a film in need of one more edit and about two giant steps away from it.
Can you see it? Release date June 9.
Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006): "Murder can be both an act of intent and of neglect."
In the reading queue this week...
*Why we hate self-published authors (via the Powells.com blog).
*Sarcastic take on what it takes to be an artist in NYC (via Butts in Seats).
*Depressing but probably true assesment of publishing in the UK (via Buzz, Balls & Hype).
*Salon's Audiofile now has a podcast (via Large Hearted Boy).
*A look at the 5 year history of Netflix envelopes (via Signal v. Noise).
*A tribute to the departed Lingua Franca magazine (via Arts Journal).
*The San Francisco International Film Festival has begun!
*It's my brother's 30 birthday this week. Happy Birthday Matt!
My first screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival. We're off to a great start.
MP3 File
Important links from this screening.
*Plug-in Partners. Advocating for electic cars.
*Calcars.org can turn your Prius into an all electric vehicle. They're doing one today at Maker Faire.
So I'm at my friend Min Jung's birthday last night at this bar and I look around and geeks have just consumed the joint. Literally everywhere you look, someone has just come from a venture capital meeting, sold something (perhaps even a kidney) to Yahoo and, as I did, feels completely in their element yelling insults based on tag clouding.
Oh and there's karaoke. My "where's the party" friend Glenda belting out "I Feel For You" did not surprise me. Nor did my kareoke hero Ernie knocking "Don't Stop Believin'" out of the park. But please tell me someone has pictures of his duet partner, the unassuming, quietly-taking-over-the-world Andy Baio, hitting the high notes?
And then it was my turn. I have trouble being near a singin' machine and not wanting to do my one and only song U2's "With or Without You." I've embarassed myself with it before. A lot.
So I do my thing. Glenda joins in. I sing every other line because its safer than harmonizing (harma-what now?). When I finish, I slink away. I run into my friend Lucia who remarks...
"That just made my night."
I think it's time to take those singing lessons I've been talking about. One of my life's ambitiions is to be a decent karaoke singer. Maybe I'm on my way.
you're called an "arrogant asshole" by a panhandler who then quotes a Bible verse.
And a very good morning to you too.
would a headline great you on a Saturday morning asking "Is this the Greenest House in SF?"
Today is the opening of the San Francisco International Film Festival. I wasn't feeling well so I stayed home and missed the opening night festivities which makes me kinda sad.
In previous years, I've just seen movies at Festival and not many at that. But this year I'm not just an excited attendee but an employee. Well, a "consultant" which is 2006 for "employee."
I've been hired by the Festival to create and manage a "Citizen Media Press Corps" or in English, to find a group of Bay Area bloggers/podcasters/photobloggers/videobloggers and give them press accreditation to cover the festival. As one of our members, Eddie Codel, put it "full media access for bloggers, hells yeah!'.
Eddie's one of a stellar list of citizen media makers (20 to be exact) that'll be providing commentary and analysis on the over 200 films at this year's Festival. I'll be linking to each of them as the Festival rolls on.
Nearly all screenings are open to the public although the ticketing policy does require some time to figure out. Take it though. Looks like a great crop this year.
I'm laying low tonight after throwing up my dinner but hopefully I'll be back in the game come this weekend. There are 22 documentaries out there, each with some rendition of my name on them.
A giant ass database of all the free junk the world has to offer (via Techcrunch).
I moved into my house. In honor of that, I'm going to spend the whole day cleaning it.
My friend Heath Row recently outlined a subscription model for books. The Book of the Month Club still exists I think and is an example of this as is McSweeney's Book Release Club and Re/Search Publications' system where you lay down a chunk of money and they send you books until your "tab" runs out. if you're still into it then, you re-up.
Business models like this work on a couple of conditions. 1) The publisher most roll books out slowly enough so the reader doesn't become overwhelmed and 2) The publisher have a strong brand since the system is all about trusting what they're sending you. It's why The Subscribtion Model works so well in the music world where you can atomize content (a song instead of a whole album) and build a recognizable brand through careful selection (nobody expects to get their polka fill from SubPop).
Sadly, large publishers are terrible at both of these. They have to roll out books quickly to recuperate the advance they've already paid the author. Editorial judgement is diffuse, spread across several imprints and staff members, each with their own tastes. "Branding" to many old timers is a still a dirty word, smacking of advertising so it barely exists. Knopf and Vintage paperback might sorta mean "quality" but just what are you getting when you buy a book published by Harper Collins?
Smaller houses have the upper hand here just like, in the age of mass customization and individual delivery of culture, smaller producers are simply more fleetfooted and able to create an identity quicker. They wont have the reach of the giants but perhaps they don't need or want it.
If I were a betting man or a billionaire (I am neither), I would guess that, within a decade, two things will happen. We will see a mini-conglomerate of independent content providers acting in loose confederation to share advertising dollars (John Battelle's Federated Media in the online space for example) but remain autonomous editorially (will they acknowledge federation membership? Not sure yet). Second, a wave of high-end media customization services will come along, a Platinum Membership book/music/movie club if you will. In platinumland, you'll pay a high fee not just for media customized to your taste but a personal relationship with your media curator. Like a personal trainer, he/she will have an individual relationship withb you and your tastes and make suggestions accordingly.
With the glut of culture offered to us everyday, services that allow us to turn off the noise and focus(Tivos, rss, podcasts) are both where we're at and where we are headed. The challenge will be how to break in on an audiences already predefined menu of choices and how to catch them when they are looking for new media and culture. I hope, as cultural producers, we're ready for this brave new world, because we just woke up in it.
Today is the anniversary of the Warshaw Ghetto Uprising (via The Writer's Almanac).
As we remember th San Francisco Earthquake of 1906...
"History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again."
Today is the 100th anniversay of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, still one of the worst natural disasters in United States History. This fire hydrant was one of the few that survived the quake. It's water put out raging fires throught the Mission District. Every year on April 18th, it gets a fresh coat of gold paint.
Media coverage rains ubiquitous so take your pick.
Since I moved here almost 6 years ago, I've been asking myself "Am I ready?" and, really the answer is no. Which is why in the coming weeks, I'm going to spend some time, and money, on these.
Street Fight (2005): "Welcome to democracy--brutal, bloody and fragile."
Sharpe James drank Snapple at a Newark strip club. Go him.
"Newark is a proud pheonix rising"
"When you run a choir boy campeign, if you stumble, you fall hard."
1) Whenever the narrator says the words "Cory Booker" Drink Once.
2) Whenever Sharpe James does something shady Drink Twice.
3) Whenever something ghetto happens, Drink Everything You Have.
All across San Francisco tonight, folks are watching the movie Street Fight, in honor of the opening of the San Francisco International Film Festival. The city-wide Movie Watch is the creature of Ironweed Films, also based here in San Francisco.
Us blogging folk, some members of the festivals first ever Citizen Media Press Corps are watching the movie tonight over at Min Jung Kim's. Attendants include Ted Rheingold, Jason Schultz, Steve Rhodes, Josh Wolf, and the incomprable Nicole Lee.
I'll be blogging it as best I can throughout the evening.
When you're at BevMo and a stranger offered to let you use their club number and they've got it memorized.
The simply awesome Erin McKean (who blogged at Powells last week) had a neat thing at her blog about giving your clothes some personality
I prefer my clothes to have complicated backstories. Like, "I bought this shirt at Jim Smiley's, when he was in New Orleans, before he moved to New York." Or "This coat was $13 at Nordstrom Rack!" or "My sister-in-law gave it to me and she has the best taste!" or "It was my mother's, she wore it in college." How can "I ordered it from the J. Crew catalog" compare?
...You don't want fast-food, assembly-line, prefab-McMansion clothing, not just because it's boring and soulless and blah, but because there are no ideas behind it. Nobody smiled making it, or envisioned you wearing it, just like nobody outside the TV commercials smiles about making you a Whopper Jr.
Something to think about.
The Pulitzer Prizes were announced today. I know exactly none of these people.
I recently subscried to the NPR Book Podcast which I enjoyed enormously while waiting in line at the Whole Foods.
This week's episode had an interview with the poet Edward Hirsch, who had two fabulous things to say about poetry. One was a quote from Robert Frost about the value of carrying a notebook.
"How many times must something happen to you before it occurs to you?"
The second was the Four Subjects of Poetry as developed by the poet William Matthews.
1. I went out into the woods today, and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious.
2. We're not getting any younger.
3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey.
4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent, and on what we know not what.
I love that.
In the reading queue this week...
*Charlie Chaplin was born today, Easter Sunday, in 1889. He died on Christmas Day, 1977 (via The Writer's Almanac).
*Artful takedown of Michiko Kakutani in Slate (via TEV).
*The Financial Times analyzes Web 2.0 (via Micropersuasion).
*Why two tier book pricing needs to go (via New Pages).
*Erin McKean was the guest blogger at Powell's this week, where she had this great essay about the future of dictionaries. I'm a huge fan.
*Merlin's Mann's five suugesed Flickr tags. My favorite was #3. "“My Defenseless Child In A Funny Shirt I Made Him Wear." (via Kottke).
*Valleywag charts what your social network choice says about you.
*I had such fun doing this list that I'm going to write another real soon. Maybe even today.
*Film Festival starts this week. Yay!
So all sortsa freaky business happening at Odeo and the latest episode of "Your 10 Minute World" wasn't showing up. Now it's here. Using this here URL to subscribe
http://odeo.com/channel/54150/rss
in your favorite podcast reader, you should be all set.
I just make a point of checking the Laughing Squid blog each day because my buddy Scott knows everything interesting happening in San Francisco. This Saturday, tax day is not only Lap POP! (hosted my my friend Min Jung) but another showing of the Life Sized Mousetrap and something called Bunny Jamb I've never heard of. How to decide?
My friend Lucia's list of what a home needs is way spot on. I think mine is a little long on communication devices, a little short of balance. I'm working on that.
A bumper sticker, amongst several dozen, that read "Voting is a Witch's Rite."
Yes. Yes, it is.
Justing sent me this this interview in Chicagoist with Perry Farrell about Lollapalooza (Farrell has a blog on the site which can't be linked to for some stupid reason) which I'll be attending this summer in Chicago. Since I'm origjnally from cold climes, Im really looking forward to the misting tents he's talking about. Oh and the 130 bands on 8 stages doesn't hurt either.
While listening to an interview with Kurt Vonnegut on Bookworm this morning, he, in the course of making an unrelated point, sad this. In place of "When the shit hits the fan."
"When the excrement hits the air conditioner."
I thought that was brilliant.
When I tell people I live in San Francisco, they'll usually follow up with "Lucky you. That's one of the world's most beautiful cities." I agree. But that's easier to notice on a weekend nature hike then a Wednesday morning trip to the dry cleaner.
This great column in SFGate makes this point in three elegant ways.
1) San Francisco is a city with stunning views and natural features which makes it all too easy to neglect how things look at street level, where we live our lives.
2) San Francisco can't market itself as a world class city and look like a decaying also-ran. Cities like Copenhagen are leaving us in the dust.
3) Every dime of this city's budget is an all-or-nothing battle royal for special interests. Or as the article puts it better...
"Why invest in parks when there are homeless people on the streets? Why fix a plaza when the education system is in tatters? Why spend money on "aesthetics" that could go toward social programs? Or health services?"
Here's why. If a city doesn't look nice, people don't move there. Current residents see less of a reason to stay. No people means less tax money, fewer businesses setting up shop, depressed economies which leads to cuts in social programs anyway.
San Francisco has earmarked funds for the improvement of parks of an major boulvards like Valencia St. I'll be eager to see how these turn out.
I really like McSweeney's Lists so the other night I felt inspired to write my own. Thus I present...
Climate/Animal band names turned down in favor of "Arctic Monkeys"
The next episode of my podcast has been, eh, podcasted.
On my mind and in the Weekend-trip-tp-the-gym reading queue...
*The Grups article everybody's yapping about (via Matt Haughy).
*Slate sees Lou Dobbs going batshit as the beginning of the end of objectivity in journalism.
*Salon interview with Michael Pollan about his new book The Omnivore's Dilemma where he looks at the enivronmental and social impact of our favorite sorts of meals.
*There's a generational change happening in the upper reaches of America's elite magazines. The new editors of the New Republic, The Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly and Harper's are all under 40 white males. So perhaps its not that radica l (via Arts Journal).
*Molly Ivins rips Tom DeLay a well-deserved new one.
*How to make yourself miserable as an artist. Sound advice (via Willo).
*I <--heart--> point and click games.
*All Over Coffee is one gorgeous cartoon.
*As jealous as I am that the Hot Docs Film Festival is going on in Toronto right now, our own San Francisco International Film Festival is right around the corner. Yay! (via Consolation Champs).
Am I the only geek out there who saw a trailer listing for Flicka and thought, for a second, that someone had made a movie about our favorite photo sharing site?
The Loveline Archive, simple but oh so dangerous. I've been a Loveline listener since before they went national in the early 90s. It was summertime, I was 19, working 100 hours a week as a grunt at Warner Bros. Studios in L.A., lonely and very sad. Loveline and a long drive home were my only friends.
When Adam Carolla left Loveline this January to head up his own morning show, I figured my history with the program was over (Adam was pretty much why I listened). In mourning, I went over to their page on Wikipedia and found this. Oy lord, just pump it into my veins.
Now before we get huffy at the giant copyright violation that makes this thing happen, Westwood One, who produces and distributes Loveline has done a horrible job promoting this program. Until maybe 2 years ago, there was no website for the show. They still don't have an online list of affiliates so good luck if you move and still want to listen. Old shows vanish into the ether even though Westwood would made a mint by release an occasional Best of Loveline CD. They shoulld thanking these people all over the place.
All things Chuck Klosterman. Meghan Daum's columns for the LA Times.
I'm set.
I listen (ugh) religiously to the Nextbook podcast, which is all about contemporary Jewish literature and culture. Recently they had an episode about Allan Sherman, a former television producer who later made his name writing song parodies by giving european standards Jewish American themes. His version of Frere Jacques went like this...
Sarah Jackman,
Sarah Jackman,
How's by you? How's by you?
How's by you the family? How's your sister Emily?
Still a Jew?
This was the early 1960s where you could still get away with advertising a job or an apartment as "Gentiles Only." How to assimilate, how not to appear "too Jewish" weighed heavily on the minds of Allan Sherman and his contemporaries. Most of songs reflected the awkwardness and humor in these situations.
His most famous creation "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" has become a campfire classic. I always thought it was a Downey detergent commercial but I didn't spend a lot of time at summer camp.
Sherman didn't have a very happy life: failed marraiges, alcoholism, classic success gone-to-your-head story. But did create a few doopy little tunes that endure.
The whole story is here. Listen. It's thrilling.
A nearby leprechaun just baked me a loaf of the world's most delicious Irish Soda Bread. A tremendous, echoing repreive. All praised due to Agnes O'Sullivan who created the original recipe.
Like every other Apple head, I celebrated when the iTunes music store launched. Finally a pain-and-guilt free way of downloading music. Then I looked closer. Then I got screwed.
Everything you download from Apple is given protection from copying called DRM (Digital Rights Management). That means you pretty much can't do anythng with the music you buy other than load it on to your iPod. Can't send it to a friend, can't dice it up for your podcasts, can't really even copy it onto another computer. And if you buy a replacement iPod/computer/friend, be prepared to go through your entire music collection to see if it's still there.
I finally got so annoyed with this setup that, if I wanted a song, I'd buy it on iTunes, download it illegally then delete the iTunes version. At least this way, I'd paid for a song and could use it how I liked. Also at this time, I maintained a membership with emusic (still do), which offers songs in free-and-clear mp3 format but has a catalog largely focused on indepedent and overlooked music. It's a noble endeavor but I'm simply not that cool.
Enter All of MP3, a music store with both a deep catalog and worry free formating. It charges based on song size so an average 5 minute tune is roughly $.20, a full album $1.50. I hear they are based in Russia because I can't imagine how else they get away with this.
No matter. Finally I'm both paying for music (which feels good) and getting it free from silly restrictions. Which feels better.
Today, April 3, is Herb Caen's birthday. Herb Caen wrote the column "It's News to Me" for the San Francisco Chronicle, from the late 1930s (shortly after the building of the Golden Gate Bridge) until 3 weeks before his death in 1997. He moved it to the competition, the San Francisco Examiner, from 1950-1958 and took time off to serve in WWII. Otherwise, he filed 1,000 a day, six days a week for 58 years. The lobby of the Chronicle keeps Caen's typewriter on display to this day.
Caen's column were a blend of local gossip and poetic pap about the city he loved. I say "pap" because Caen admitted he starting writing them as inch filler when he ran out of items. Nontheless, in those musings, he popularized the terms "hippie" and "beatnik" and coined the city's nickname "Baghdad by the Bay."
My old insurance man Dean once told me than when his father immigrated to San Francisco from Japan, he learned English by checking the newspaper out of the library and reading Herb Caen.
Sometimes I don't think much of myself as a journalist or as a San Franciscan. At my worst, I practice both sporatically. On good days I think of Herb Caen, his consistency, his drive and his unending love for a city he wasn't born into but that embraced him, most because he embraced them first.
Shortly before Caen's eath, The city of San Francisco renamed a stretch of the Embarcader "Herb Caen Way." During the dedication Caen said this...
"I think when I go to heaven, I'll do as all San Franciscan's do when they die. I'll say 'Heaven? It ain't bad. But it's no San Francisco."
So true. I hope I meet Mr. Caen someday so I can say thank you. And tell him how our city is doing (via The Writer's Almanac).
Thank You for Smoking (2006) "About as satisfying and as lasting as a really good smoke ring."
Elizabethtown (2005): "A 'personal project' is too personal when, as an audience member, you feel like you've crashed a stranger's funeral."
Seen on a wine bottle bag on my flight to Denver to attend this.
"Life is a Cabernet!"
I thought that was cute.
