The Red Vic Has Gone Solar: OK, so you know about our organic popcorn served in wooden popcorn bowls and that we serve our (fair trade) coffee in mugs instead of disposable paper cups. In fact, we have done so ever since opening in 1980 – we were “green-minded” before the term even existed! (Not to mention the fact that we have washed a zillion dishes since then). We also use eco-friendly cleaning products and this calendar is printed on recycled paper with soy-based ink. Well, thanks to our fabulous landlord we have now gone solar with the assistance of Sunlight Electric (http://sunlightelectric.com/). There is an impressive array of solar panels on our roof and our electric meter is now running backward. Our solar panels are the equivalent of 21,962 pounds of CO2 not emitted per year, or equal to planting 3 acres of trees. We fortunately share our building with like-minded businesses; the Alembic is all about the local, sustainable slow-food scene and Escape From New York Pizza has a robust composting program. So, on your next visit to the Red Vic, as you munch away on popcorn in your wooden bowl and take a sip from a ceramic mug of coffee, you can also give a thought to the power of the sun and to communities working together – if you are not too engrossed in the movie that is!

I just like that little bit enough to share. Now when I sit in one of their cozy chairs, I can watch the movie using solar power. (I guess they run the meter forward at night, though, so probably it’ll be utility coal power for the movie but you know, its the overall impact that counts.)

Today I took myself out to a movie. I couldn’t find anyone else who was interested in “The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai” at the Red Vic. But now I know the answer to the question of what might happen if a Tokyo call girl gets shot in the forehead, giving her super intellectual powers, and then finds in her possession the cloned trigger finger of George W Bush, and is thus chased by North Korean agents looking to control a Russo-Uzbek doomsday device. I’m not sure if it is a porno or a porn parody, but especially the early part of the movie involves excessive quantities of semen. For that reason I am glad that I was shy about asking friends to go see it. This movie is wrong in so many ways that I see why it has become a cult classic.

If you live in San Francisco and possess a sufficiently perverse sense of humor and politics, its run at the Red Vic concludes tomorrow Monday August 20, with showings at 7:15pm and 9:15pm.

Last year I read Imperial Life in the Emerald City after seeing Rajiv Chandrasekaran on “The Daily Show” . . . someone saw me reading it on the train and inquired. “It reads like a Vonnegut novel,” I replied.

What I read in “The Week” is that this film is less Michael Moore-style polemic and more along the lines of people involved telling their stories as to how we managed to screw things up, over and over, in the worst ways possible. This is exactly how Chandrasekaran’s novel goes, but with a sort of wry feel, which yes, reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut.

http://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/11/driving-to-long-beach-ca/
http://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/12/long-beach-ca/
http://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/13/vegas-baby/
http://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/14/forlorn-stuck-in-moab-again/
http://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/15/bad-starter-dont-stop/

That’s what I have written up so far . . . as a spoiler: I made it to Pueblo just fine, replaced the starter myself, I bought a new camera, we celebrated Gwen’s birthday, had some quality time, and then since I couldn’t spend enough time in Pueblo, I took Dad back to San Francisco with me, where he spent a week that we both enjoyed a great deal. I dropped him off in Emeryville and he took the train home. Last Wednesday I went with a friend to see the awesome movie “The Valet” and on the way to the movie I got a call from Dad that he had driven the car to Wal*Mart, which had been a scary ride for Gwen, but proof that he could help drive on their own road trip to Chicago later this month.

At any rate, I hope to write a bit more about these things, but I make no promises. Along the way, I am still uploading pictures, so keep an eye on Flickr, and if the remainder of the trip interests you, you can skim over the “Colorado Road Trip April, 2007″ collection.

Next, we visited the Korean Friendship Bell, a bronze bell in a beautifully-painted pagoda overlooking the Pacific, which Korea gave us for the Bicentennial. There is a youth hostel next door, which I would check out next time I may decide to visit Long Beach, if I did not already have accommodation. We drove further along the coast, visiting the Wayfarer’s Chapel, which is a beautiful glass church on the coast, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We arrived during a wedding, as this is a very popular venue for weddings, so we couldn’t enter the chapel, and the lady at the visitor’s center advised that visits are best planned for odd hours–11am, 1pm, 3pm–since weddings are scheduled on even hours.

My original plan had been to take off in the evening and drive about four hours to Las Vegas, and crash at either of two youth hostels I had found online, or perhaps a hotel room, since accommodations are cheaper in Vegas during the week. But I changed my plans to join my friend for a late night of clubbing in Hollywood. Having no particular agenda and an evening to kill, we moseyed further along the coast, and my friend decided to give Santa Monica a shot. We found a parking spot near the beach, and noticed a movie theater. We were just in time to catch “The Namesake” which is a movie we had both wanted to see, and which we both enjoyed.

Afterwards we strolled along the beach, catching the sunset. We then embarked upon several hours of groovy carousing in the Southern California style.

As memory serves, the first movie that I saw was “Lawrence of Arabia” in which an eccentric, talented, idealistic, and iconoclastic young man with blond hair and dreamy blue eyes gets mixed up in the Arab revolt against British colonial rule. When you meet him as a young man in an office in the middle of the desert somewhere, he is explaining to his companion, in the third person, how boring his current job is . . . he extinguishes a match against his hand, just because, and when his friend hurts himself copying the move, and wants to know the trick, Lawrence explains “the trick is not to be bothered by the pain.” The movie is about three and a half hours long, which is insane, but then so is the subject matter, and three and a half hours is not so long to find yourself lost in the mystery of Arabia. I believe I watched this movie twice, and my description doesn’t do it justice.

The next is “Doctor Zhivago”, that movie we’ve all heard about but none of us has ever watched. Well, I watched it. I don’t remember it as well as Lawrence, but I do remember that this was another epic 1960’s film in which you could get lost in the lead actor’s face, his eyes. You again have the impression of a remarkable man in remarkable times, and the three and a half hours is spent guiding the protagonist through the vagaries of the Russian Revolution and World War II, ending up in this enchantingly weird “ice palace” toward the end. I look forward to an occasion to re-watch this . . .

. . . the third film–and there’s a good chance that you have never heard of it–is Zhang Yimou’s “To Live” . . . at a modest two hours and thirteen minutes, you witness the story of a guy whose wife leaves him because he won’t stop gambling, and he gambles everything away, and then he’s drafted into the war to fight the Japanese, then he finds himself fighting the Communists, then he finds the Communists have pretty much won, he makes his way home, is rejoined by his wife, and it turns out that having lost his material wealth is a good start for Communism . . . the film just barely starts there, and you travel through another decade or two of their life together under the various kinks of Chinese rule. In that it is an epic that brings you through WWII and a Communist revolution, this movie is a lot like Zhivago, but more focused on action and narrative than on the character of the protagonist. I think it is more approachable.

And, more precious. It is out of print and the DVD was over $50 on the Amazon.com Marketplace!

I am thinking I will have to have friends over some nights for epic movie watchin’. If you happen to be interested in getting in on a viewing, let me know, right?

Love After Love
Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

On Labor Day I took myself out on a date: we went to Peet’s, then had some pizza, and then popcorn and soda while watching the new Woody Allen movie at the local theater. “I was born in the Hebrew faith, but when I got older I converted to Narcissism,” said Woody.

Yesterday I again had pizza and a movie. “Quinceañera” blew me away! The title refers to a Spanish coming-of-age ceremony for a girl who becomes a woman on her fifteenth birthday (quince años) . . . the movie starts with youthful self-indulgence and then eases its way into a really powerful story, about . . . well, among other things, the strength that people find when rejected by their family. One thing the plot does really well is to introduce a character, and give you a chance to pass your initial judgement, then it elaborates on the character’s story, and you get to revisit your initial assumptions. Delicious!

Today, after church, I dropped in at Samovar Tea Lounge, which is one of Karen’s favorite haunts. I had a really great time, reading my magazine over an English Tea Service. That is a good way to kill an hour or more! Then I walked through the sunny streets of the Castro, up, up and up into the fog on Portola, entered the fog, and wound my way back home in the inner sunset.

I will likely see myself for sushi this evening. This is another regular “date” I have where I take my laundry down to The Lost Sock and while the hour away sucking down raw fish at Shimo.

Friday night, volunteer at a “single professionals” party. Dig that I am the youngest person there. Some of the old ladies are looking fine, but I’m in for people-watching. Their hopes inspire.

Saturday night, first date. A woman I like, more than I should just now, but hey. We take it easy.

Sunday morning, setting up for church, sermon, farewell, lunch, strawberry shortcake.

Home to chat with a friend on the phone.

Out to San Francisco for the Haight St Fair. Crowded bus, cheek to cheek with a beautiful stranger. Disembark, greeted by an aged Chinese flowergirl, lemonade fried mushrooms and high with old friends. Dancing to raggae on a crowded sidewalk.

Floating to the mission, sangria, calamari, and salad.
Switch dates.
Potatoes, chicken, and more sangria. A walk with a pretty philipino and a furry lhaso apso.

Ride home with a doggy in my lap, crash, and wake up restless but groggy at 4am, determined to keep on.

Oh, hell yeah. It is midnight Monday now, I am completely exhausted but still a bit euphoric. I will add that “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” is a freaking bad-ass, hard-core, balls-to-the-wall awesome movie. Watch it! Ah yes, and I squeezed in a thoroughly platonic date with a second lady this evening. We had a good time, touching only with our eyes. Works for me! Good week, everyone!

“So he was kidnapped by black pillar.”

That’s as good an explanation of that movie as any other I have heard.

Last week, I caught a special preview of “Spanglish,” starring Adam Sandler. While the megaplex messed up the first few minutes of the film, and didn’t re-start it, I can not complain, because this movie was thoroughly awesome in many ways. It wasn’t over-acted, it wasn’t so predictable, I dug the characters … I then snuck in to “Oceans 12,” which was kind of an overwarmed, incoherent, self-applauding rehash of “Oceans 11.” It was a fun waste of time, but nothing great. Totally hot chick, though. I guess that goes without saying.

This week, I saw two movies with indistinct, one-word titles which I can not keep straight from each other. The one I paid to see, “Closer,” was not so good; Two hours of self-absorbed twits fucking eachother. “Sideways,” while also two hours of self-absorbed twits fucking each other, was a far better movie, because I came to sympathise, first with the twit’s friend, who wanted the protagonist to get laid, then the twit protagonist himself, who showed development as a person as the fucking went from kind of sad to completely unbelievably and hilariously insane.

My scoring?

1. Spanglish
2. Sideways
3. Oceans 12
4. Closer

Please note that I now evaluate movies based in part on what my wife would like to see, and if I were not thinking with my ring, so to speak, I would probably rank “Sideways” first, as that has the greatest appeal to single young guys.

For those short on remembering indistinct, one-word movie titles, remember, the one with Sandra Oh, where the two guys drive off to the California wine country together, is like “The Big Lebowski,” but with golf, while the one set in London with Julia Roberts, is the sort of film that the nihilists’ from “The Big Lebowski” would write. And if you haven’t seen “The Big Lebowski,” you should catch that movie too, just remember that when you get to the megaplex, the SoCal wine twit movie is better than the London whine twit movie.

The highlights were:

• Bananas for 40c/pound. This is Devon Avenue prices. Walnut Creek is 80c. I bought some Bananas just because.
• A black lady taking a break from her salon complimented me on my hat. Actually, on Thursday, Bill remarked that it looked like an old Italian guy’s hat, and I told him that actually I did buy it in Italy.
• I had a decent cheeseburger in a Korean-run, downtown lunch cafe.

I made my way back to Walnut Creek, and still had a Saturday Evening to kill. I wandered downtown, where there is a movie theater. Unfortunately, it is mostly crap. They were playing “Ray” on one screen but I would have to wait two hours. I settled on “The Grudge” which was a horror movie in the “Lost in Translation” genre, meaning it was about Americans in Tokyo — I think the Japanese government must be promoting this stuff — and it was with the hard-to-follow a-linear plot format. The nice thing about that, from the producer’s point-of-view, is that you can hide the problems with the plot that way. Anyway, it was a fairly scary mess of a movie. I watched it because Yayoi might enjoy it, except it would probably be too scary for her, so it is okay if she missed it, if that makes any sense. Really I was just bored and lonely.

After the movie I walked past crowded bars that revealed to me the awful flip-side of Walnut Creek’s Soccer Mom Weekdays — Frat Boy Nightlife! That was creepier than monsters running around a suburban Tokyo house. One drunkish guy eyed me and my old Italian guy’s hat and French sweater and muttered “fag” . . . I could only take that as a compliment. Next time I hope to respond in kid, “frat boy” and we can all get along with our labels. Dan Savage’s words just brought me back to last night’s exchange:

For at least the next four years, American lefties, artists, and queers should not consider this land our land, it is not a land of opportunity that spreads from sea to shining sea. No, we live on a chain of islands, an archipelago, not a continent. Sane people live on our islands–New York, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Madison, Austin, Boston, and on and on, basically all the cities, in red states and blue, that voted for Kerry–and we may not be the majority right now, and it may feel like sea levels are rising, but, hey, we own all the best real estate. We’ve got the cities, the Northeast, the Midwest, and West Coast. And what have they got? The Wal-Marts, the West Virginias, the Alabamas, the McMansions, and the mega-churches. Fuck ‘em. Let ‘em have that crap. We’ll fight the fuckers in two years during the midterm elections and take back Congress. And we’ll take ‘em on again in four years and take back the White House. In the meantime, enjoy island life.

Today I walked through a church parking lot, in the outskirts of the San Francisco metroplex, and spied an illegally-parked Toyoto Prius with a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker in the rear window. There was a printed note on the windshield reminding the driver that they had parked inappropriately. But I had to stare a few moments at the Hybrid Car with the Oilman Endorsement. It is not so simple as islands in a sea of red — the truth is that America is schizophrenic, and while I happily cast my lot with the queers, it is the ability to understand and articulate our own ideas with the rest of our countrymen that is going to bring us success. The Republicans know how to talk to America, even if their message is crude and backwards. We, the articulate liberals, can do better. We must do better. We will do better. We can not insulate or isolate ourselves from the people who out-voted us. We are married to our backward cousins, and we must bring them with us in to the light, because we can only go together.

We may live on a chain of islands, but like Barack Obama, the distinguished Senator from Illinois, we can and must walk without fear among the Red Sea with words of compassion, and understanding and unity. Call me a fag, and I’ll call you a frat boy, but from there we have to have enough good humor to get together and have a beer and work it out.

But not in Walnut Creek, the lines at the bars are too long.

I mean, this is funny, because Tom Brokaw is like a big-time news anchor. You’d think he’d be aware of “The Nation of Islam” movement in the United States. Maybe he’s seen the movie “Malcom X”? Okay, well, maybe not. But maybe he’d understand that, aside, possibly, from Saudi Arabia, there is no Nation of Islam. As Al points out, there are Islamic nations …

Okay, but then he tries to pass as sophisticated by sliding under the words “movement” and “transcend” … like all over the world, people are coming together under the banner of Islam as a response to contemporary challenges of globalization and the excesses of the right wing policies of the Bush administration.

Well, actually, I don’t know what he was thinking. I’m just highly amused that he’s running a Presidential debate, mistaking contemporary world Islam with a 1960s era black power movement, and choosing to deploy the term in a question to Reverend Sharpton.

No wonder we are so doomed.

/danny

Julia is a high-strung Asian-American lady, who found the preview for “Last Samurai” where Tom Cruise goes to Japan and shows them how to fight, and of course gets some nooky along the way, to be just way too awful. And I explained that, well, he’s in Japan, so the action scenes are going to be more exotic and interesting, and he’s in Japan, so the love interest is going to be Japanese, and don’t we all know that stuff is sellin’ (out?)

But then Sunday rolls around, and I’m watchin’ HBO, and I stay tuned for “The Transporter” because it beats getting out of the chair. Oh my … I had to e-mail Julia, Richard and Vern:

dudes.

i just saw a movie that would make julia scream, and i just had to share.

the transporter was made in association with canal plus. of course, everyone speaks english. it is about an american man, a soft-spoken, hard-working veteran who knows fast cars, working as a driver for shady types in the south of france. the local detective has his suspicions, but they are buddies. oh, and it turns out he is a pro in hand-to-hand combat.

ooh la la.

but one day he violates one of his own rules. he notices the “package” he is transporting moves. it turns out to be a woman. a beautiful chinese woman who spends the first half of the movie in bondage.

but after the guys figure out that he looked at the package, they blow up his car. he goes back and kicks their asses and steals another car and finds the woman, tied to an office chair, in the back of the car.

they go back to his place, she makes breakfast, the bad guys blow up his house, they go scuba diving from his personal blue grotto and steal some clothes after she offers herself to him in gratitude (i shit you not, and he has to think about it, at first, of course, before he wraps his mouth around hers.) uhmmm, and then there’s a lot of action and violence and action and violence and they meet her dad, who’s a real asshole, that she is trying to rebel against, but her dad doesn’t approve that she’s falling for a low-life american white boy, and then there’s some more action and fighting and violence and action and a hijacked airplane and a final big scene and then they open up the trucks they’ve been race-driving for the past twenty-minutes to rescue the 400 chinese migrants who have been in a pair of shipping containers for the long boat ride over from china.

I mean, I can kind of sympathize with a movie that very obviously tries to appeal to various elements of fantasy that are marketable these days. I mean, it is Sunday night on HBO so some implausible “soft porn” is perfectly acceptable, but then to try and justify it by putting Chinese folks in containers, like its some sort of expose of contemporary geopolitical concerns … I mean, that’s just gratuitous.

Which means that the movie has a little something to offend as many diverse sensibilities as possible. And that’s no small feat. Bravo!

/danny

Perhaps the classic Stallone-Snipes-Bullock movie “Demolition Man” may be more than just a great movie, but also prophecy. In this movie, Stallone plays a cop who gets framed for a crime, and cryogenically frozen until such a time as he can be reformed by society. He is thawed in to a future in which Los Angeles and San Diego have merged in to a single administrative region named San Angeles, sex is entirely virtual, and Arnold Schwarzenegger has served at least one term as president, thanks to the sixty-second amendment, which was passed specifically for him.

It turns out that in July, Orrin Hatch sponsored an amendment to the Constitution, stipulating that, “a person who is a citizen of the United States, who has been for 20 years a citizen of the United States, and who is otherwise eligible to the Office of President, is not ineligible to that Office by reason of not being a native born citizen of the United States.”

Those who live outside California ought to watch out, for they may be next; Schwarzenegger became a citizen in 1983. I think this might be a good time to invest in Taco Bell, as this was the only restaurant to have survived the Franchise Wars that took place while Stallone’s character was playing popsicle.

/danny

Most of the movie is the grueling preparations leading up to the attack - intercepted Japanese communications, confusion in the American chain of command, ambivalence about how the Japanese should handle America and Japanese commanders voicing their opinions on the wisdom of engaging the sleeping giant. There’s one guy the Japanese nick-named Gandhi as he meditated long and hard in seclusion upon the perfection of the planning for Pearl Harbor.

My favorite scene was just before the attack itself, where the Japanese pilots were heartened by the beautiful image of the morning sun exploding in to light rays from behind a cloud - like the flag of their empire - certainly a good sign! I’ve long been fond of sun rays poking out from clouds, but I’ve never thought to connect them with the Japanese Imperial Flag.

As they make Oahu the first plane they encounter is an older bi-plane, with a woman who is training a kid to fly in the cold morning conditions. They suddenly see squadrons of war planes rushing past them, look around in excitement, and realize that they are surrounded by a foreign armada. “Oh shit,” I could hear the woman thinking, as I wondered if the Japanese would take her down as their first, easiest kill.

In this first, infamous sneak-attack on American territory, the warriors charge proudly past the civilians, their bullets and bombs reserved for the bodies of soldiers and warships. All the same, the woman wasn’t taking any chances, she barrel-rolled away from the Zeros in to the empty air over her home town. This brought me a weird moment of vertigo, as civilian airplanes in the space over our cities were precisely the target of that second, infamous sneak-attack on American territory.

Two years and two weeks ago.

/danny