Right Livelihood

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01.09.08

I arrive at Ursa Minor Arts + Media in Marin brimming with the abstract questions of the technological novice. What part does technology play in our future? How can media design or sound and video production benefit the world? Can technology, which on one level seems to be destroying us, be used instead as a tool for our rejuvenation? What makes Ursa Minor green, other than the fact that it is certified by the Bay Area Green Business Association? (Becoming certified by the Green Business Association is not an easy process and requires meeting a rigorous check-list of green innovations and practices, but that doesn’t change the fact that marketing is for profit, not world change. Or is it?)

Because Ursa Minor boasts an in-house chef who creates vegetarian and local organic meals for lunch, an open-office design that uses fewer materials and allows for natural light, and a myriad of other fine details from natural and sustainable building materials to digital communications in order to eliminate paper load, I expect to be impressed. I’m not disappointed.

The Ursa Minor building is smaller than I expected, but visually dynamic—think gorgeous old barn beams coupled with earth tones, sweeping lines, sparkling equipment and a kick-ass kitchen. Still, the question remains: After the compost gets taken out, and the last hybrid- or bio-diesel-driving, public-transit-riding employee has exited the building, how has Ursa Minor helped to create global change if what it does exceptionally well is help people sell their stuff?

I’m given a tour of the premises by cofounder and producer Robin Livingston, COO and bus rider George Kao and Dan Shane, Ursa’s “integral media consultant.” It doesn’t take long for me to see how a vibrant combination of exceptional talent and commitment to creating media that change the way people interact with the world could be an effective means for empowering the environmental and global consciousness movement. From what I can glean from their triad of voices, Ursa Minor focuses on connecting and giving movement to world-changing organizations, producing records for musicians with global visions and marketing books and ideas for visionaries, philosophers and writers.

Experts in green marketing, the Ursa Minor team follow this mission statement: To leverage the maximum range and reach of media and technology to propel human potential and to create a better world. This seems like a lot to take on, but founder and CEO Benjamin De Pauw is clearly committed to making what may seem an idealistic goal into a reality.

De Pauw—who founded Conscious Sound Productions back in 1989 before launching Ursa Minor in 2002—and Livingston are committed to working on visionary projects and promoting conscious media. Past clients include such as Marin philosopher Ken Wilbur and North Indian classical musician Deepak Ram. Livingston, who is all about the music, walks me though Ursa Minor’s state-of-the-art recording studio, built with floating floors so that the sound bleeds clean. I get to see the green screen, which creates the ideal background for shooting (something to do with the color spectrum), the private editing rooms, the sound stage and the circle of web and graphic designers and IT geniuses busily working away.

For someone who grew up without a television or a radio, I have a remarkable number of old and meaningless advertising jingles dancing about in my head. These jingles remind me of a rule of thumb I learned from Lew Brown, creator of www.wearenotbuyingit.org: If I’ve heard of it before, I shouldn’t be buying it. Random prior knowledge indicates that I have been the victim of an aggressive advertising campaign. With this in mind, who stands in a better place to help spread a new global consciousness than the producers and marketers? And if this power dynamic is already in play, how much more important is it that progressive movements strive to reach and connect with the widest range of people, in order to facilitate the greatest possible change?

Ursa Minor is currently looking to expand its artistic team with like-minded professionals who hold a strong creative vision for changing the world. To find out more, visit [ http://www.ursaminor.com ]www.ursaminor.com.


Letters to the Editor

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12.19.07

Knight in Shining LeMonde Livre

Who is this James Knight? (“Bonehead Grapes 101,” Jan. 2.) The guy is a fantastic writer: creative, witty and knowledgeable (about more than wine, I have a feeling).

Please give us more of him.

Marlene Alves

Santa Rosa

The good news is that we do give you more of James Knight, each and every week with his Swirl and Spit column, a creative, witty and knowledgeable look at area winetasting rooms, found in this issue on p20.

No heroes

I am heartened by Hannah Strom-Martin’s expression in her recent “Imagine 2008” essay (Jan. 2). Old enough to be her father, I have a handful of nephews and nieces her age with whom I enjoy infrequent yet meaningful dialogue on such things. As one who saw through the window that briefly opened in the ’60s and early ’70s (I was at Woodstock in ’69), I continue to monitor those among us who retained the vision, those who no longer believe it and those who forgot or lost it due to preoccupations with career, family and mortgage payments. I also regularly ponder how people Strom-Martin’s age regard those times as well as the issues that now confront us all. Too often I have felt that following generations were too swept up by these accelerated times and/or too consumed with “fitting in” to seriously question authority, much less the powers that strive to dominate us all.

I share Strom-Martin’s concerns that few creative expressions are really saying anything truly constructive, much less truly challenging, to the New World Order.

Is everyone really too afraid, tired or resigned to speak out with conviction? The old-style protest no longer has the teeth it once had. Grassroots activism is the only hope as corporate-owned media decides what flies on the air, and young, once-rebellious voices quickly and predictably sell out once they taste material success.

I appreciate Strom-Martin’s work and her refreshing voice. Keep it up!

Malcolm Clark

Occidental

White Peril?

I was surprised to see the racist heading “Yellow Peril?” over a letter to the editor (Dec. 26) complaining about lead-tainted toys from China. Your paper is usually much more conscious than that.

Besides, I have not seen the term “white peril” used in regards to U.S. corporations’ pollution of other countries, nor in regards to unsafe products manufactured here. Nor has it been used in reference to uranium used while “liberating” the people of Iraq, nor in regards to uranium tailings left on Native American land in the Southwest nor in reference to the dumping of oil refinery effluent into a Nigerian river. Are we trying to kill them?

This is not just a matter of hurting people’s feelings. Wars and genocide, including WW II and the genocide in Rwanda, were preceded by media propaganda manipulating people’s real fear and anger, and directing it against a particular group of people.

The Bohemian seems to work hard to educate and inform as well as entertain, so what’s up?

Barbara Bochinski

Santa Rosa

In this instance, what was up was that the letter-writer was insinuating that the Chinese were deliberately trying to kill American children by insidiously poisoning their toys. Thus the question mark in the headline, to underscore the ridiculousness of such an assertion.

what a concept

Regarding the “Killer Gifts” article (Nov. 28), I can’t tell you how profoundly hurt by this whole subject [of foie gras] I am. One more thing for the gourmet culture to unfeelingly consume at the expense of the innocent.

That issue of the Bohemian presented an article on toxic toys on one page but promoted eating toxic livers from distressed ducks on another! What’s wrong with this picture? Maybe our children should give up the toxic toys, gourmands should give up the toxic liver and we should all let the children and ducks grow up together. What a concept. Thanks for listening.


Salt Sauna

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Salt Sauna

01.09.08

W riting with a feverish sparkle not commonly found in the jaded prose of veteran food journalists, Los Angeles Times correspondent Russ Parsons penned a glorious ode in November to the marvels of salt-roasted foods. He was evidently served two salt-encrusted shrimp tableside at a fashionable L.A. restaurant and pronounced them “profound.” He went directly home and embarked on a two-week salt-roasting odyssey that found not even pears safe from his new mania.

For reasons the National Salt Institute can’t perfectly parse, salt-roasting does not at all produce salty food. Rather, the salt melts at high heat and forms a protective layer around the comestible, both roasting and steaming the food, which is subsequently extracted from its white blanket, often encased in a shell so hard it needs to be cracked with a hammer.

All of which sounded intriguing to this exhausted holiday-maker, something good to maybe try someday. And then I went to a party where a sport fisherman was happily mixing up a bowlful of what looked like dirty snow in a kitchen packed full of people jostling for more wine and another stick of satay. He was preparing to salt-roast a five-pound salmon he had caught this fall, but I was the one hooked.

Stirring six cups of kosher salt in a huge bowl, he added a scant half-cup of water, six beaten egg whites and a large handful of chopped rosemary. Preparing a deep-sided pan just larger than the salmon, he lay a bed of the salt about a quarter of an inch thick down before putting the fish, which was cleaned but still had scales, a head, dead little eyes—the whole bit—into the pan.

Then he inserted a thermometer, mounded the rest of the salt onto the fish and put it into a 350-degree oven for 20 minutes. When the fish’s internal temperature hit just 125, he pulled it out and let it rest in the pan for another 20 minutes. The fish was then disinterred to reveal a crust just like Parsons promised. That was broken with a heavy spoon, the fish lifted out and its body cleaned with a dry pastry brush to remove errant crystals.

Indeed, the salmon was profound, the salmony-est of fish, the sweet, buttery essence of its truest flavor, a salmon to make Plato himself proud.

With wild salmon out of season until May, the true stay-at-home-and-futz-in-the-kitchener can rejoice that potatoes and pork loin also take brilliantly to this preparation. Omit the egg whites in the salt mixture and sear the pork loin first to ensure that the New White Meat remains a slogan and not your dinner. The oven should be hotter, 400 degrees, but the meat needs only 20 minutes in before coming out to rest. Nothing need be done to the potatoes—fingerlings are the darling of the salt-roasting set—other than a good scrubbing. Again, layer a pan larger than the loin with the prepared salt, place the seared meat and the clean potatoes in, and mound over. The rosemary infuses both foodstuffs delicately and they emerge at the perfection of pork and pinnacle of potato. Perfecto.

Quick dining snapshots by Bohemian staffers.

Winery news and reviews.

Food-related comings and goings, openings and closings, and other essays for those who love the kitchen and what it produces.

Recipes for food that you can actually make.

First Bite

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01.09.08

E ditor’s note: First Bite is a new concept in restaurant writing. This is not a go-three-times, try-everything-on-the-menu report; rather, this is a quick snapshot of a single experience.

There’s a trend in Japan right now of teenagers going gaga for mayonnaise. The youths, or “mayolers” as they’re called, add it to everything: sushi, noodles, tempura, even tequila for a disturbing drink called a mayogarita. On a recent trip to the country, I saw kids toting squirt bottles of the slimy stuff in their backpacks.

So perhaps it’s a nod to this niche group that’s led Toyo Japanese Grill owner David Lin to feature the condiment as a star ingredient on the menu at his three month-old restaurant in northwest Santa Rosa. He offers sushi and teriyaki, but also honey-mayo prawns, deep-fried mashed potato croquettes with mayo, battered oysters with mayo and calamari tempura with mayo.

Perhaps, bobbing in a sea of North Bay sushi houses, Lin is just trying to snag some wave. Located in the strip-mall space that used to house Wharf Seafood Bar, Toyo makes an effort to break out of the everyday Asian affair with a lengthy menu of more than a hundred items. Happily, the standard dishes here are well-crafted, and most of the offbeat attempts are remarkably good.

Among the standouts are an excellent (real crab!) rainbow roll ($11.95) and such lively sushi as spicy salmon and daikon wrapped in Vietnamese rice paper ($8.95) and spicy prawn and red snapper in shiso leaf ($12.95). Alongside the feather-light-battered vegetable tempura ($12.75), there’s moist and fleshy salted mackerel ($14.75), grilled until the skin blisters and crackles, then served with a splash of tart ponzu to cut the oiliness.

Katsu comes as the typical chicken or pork, but also as halibut ($16.50). The panko-encrusted fingers are delicate if a bit dry, but revive quickly with a dunk in either tonkatsu sauce or sweet lemon sauce. And while yaki stir-fry usually features ramen-style soba, Toyo serves udon ($12.75). The plump, slippery noodles are wonderful, piled with shrimp, dark meat chicken chunks and vegetables in sweet soy.

Fluttering dried bonito flakes over gently fried logs of agedashi tofu ($5.75) is another marvelous touch. The smoked fish melts into the custard and ginger-kelp-mackerel broth for one of the best renditions of this dish I’ve enjoyed. A generous serving of crunchy wakame ($4.25), meanwhile, includes a bonus mound of salad greens marinated in sesame oil.

The details are painstaking. We start our meals with oshiburi , eat with expensive wooden chopsticks and drink out of thin-rimmed, oversized wine glasses. Even the standard green salad and miso served with entrées are better than ordinary, thanks to sparkly vinaigrette on the crisp iceberg and perfectly balanced dashi broth stocked with lots of tofu and seaweed.

Lin stops by the tables frequently, flashing a big smile and asking if there’s anything else he can do to make our meals more enjoyable. Thanks, but no, it feels good to simply sit there amid shimmering gold curtains, green tea painted walls and a soothing fountain separating the sushi bar from the more formal dining room.

And while dessert offers mochi ice cream and a banana tempura split, I’m content to savor a simple glass of plum wine ($4.95). No extra mayo needed.

Toyo Japanese Grill, 3082 Marlow Road, Santa Rosa. Open for lunch and dinner daily. 707.527.8871.


Quick-and-dirty dashes through North Bay restaurants. These aren’t your standard “bring five friends and order everything on the menu” dining reviews.

Green Housekeeping

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01.02.08

Considering the circumstances of 2008—a time of looming recession, political fracas and environmental crisis—it seems as if a deeper examination of the ritualistic New Year’s resolutions is in order. I ask around and am told by an exuberant reader that to find out about things that matter, I have to talk to Green Mary, the queen of green.

Green Mary engages in greening on a professional level and actively contributes to waste diversion and eco-education. I soon discover that she is here to talk about what most people try so desperately to ignore: our garbage, and what happens to it after we throw it away.

Attend any greened event from here to San Jose, and it’s quite possible that Mary will be there with her crew, providing trash-diversion opportunities at every step and generally greening up the premises. At the end of an event, the garbage is sifted through by hand: the compostables are composted; the recyclables, recycled; the reusables, reused. This is how diversion happens, with people elbow deep in garbage, sorting, sifting and saving the rest of us from smothering to death in our own crap.

I ask Green Mary, who has greened events for literally millions of people, to supply me with a list of must-do’s for 2008. The following list has been paraphrased by me and is not ordered by level of importance. Consider it a grab-bag of planetary opportunity. If everyone picks away at it, then surely change will be inevitable.

— Where are our good earth-keeping skills? Many of us have conscious good housekeeping skills, but for some reason, as soon as we enter the real world, we become incapable of behaving in a green manner. We throw things away, don’t compost, consume and toss in the trash and generally behave as if nothing done outside of the home really counts. Big mistake. Rethink this one.

— We suffer from carelessness collectively. Find the recycle guide in the center of the phone book, or visit www.recyclenow.org. Familiarize yourself with what can be recycled or reused and where, and then form a collective on your block. Do a toxic roundup (this includes pharmaceutical drugs, which now contaminate 80 percent of our streams). Offer to take in a neighbor’s leftover house paint, or take turns doing battery runs. Help each other keep toxic crap out of the landfills.

— What can we share? Stop being so fearful and share your leafblower with your neighbor. Does everyone on the entire block need his own leafblower? Share tools, share mowers, split the maintenance bills, buy less.

— Collect all compostable food waste and toss it in the yard waste bin. Remember, in the tricounty area, only Sonoma County has no landfill. The landfill is closed! This means that all of Sonoma County’s trash is shipped to Marin. Once that fills up, there is talk of shipping Sonoma County’s trash via train to Nevada.

— Instead of buying something new, go to Garbage Reincarnation’s wonderful Meecham Road salvage yard, Recycletown, and find treasures of all sorts: futons, free house paint, firewood, salvaged lumber, cheap compost and more. For more info on compost, visit Sonoma Compost Company at www.sonomacompost.com or call 707.578.5459.

— Do not buy plastic, disposable water bottles. Ever.

— Bring your own bags, cups, utensils and mugs with you when grabbing takeout or attending a festival—anywhere you might be given styrofoam or throwaways. Even to-go food can be put in reusable containers. Figure it out and make it happen! Generally, used paper coffee cups, styrofoam, plastic cups, straws, lids and utensils are not recyclable. They are garbage.

— Why do we always have to be one step behind Europe? Learn about the California Product Stewardship Council at www.caproductstewardship.org. Demand producer responsibility.

— To many of us, the outdoors has become an abstraction, something we dash through during trips from the car to indoor areas. Volunteer in the natural world. Spend your weekends outside. Eat lunch in the sun. The more we experience and see the world around us, the easier it is to care about it.

— Take a tour of the nearest landfill anytime motivation and commitment begin to waver.


News Brief

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01.02.08

NORTH BAY LAND TRUSTS

The Sonoma Land Trust‘s $13 million deal in November to buy the 1,665-acre Roche Ranch in southern Sonoma County is one of the highlights of a year that’s included considerable progress in protecting agricultural lands and other open spaces throughout the North Bay.

The Roche Ranch is a significant asset because of its sweeping ridge top views, rare wildlife species and dazzling spring wildflower displays. Its purchase also means that 7,500 acres between the bay and Sonoma Mountain will now remain as uninterrupted habitat. The trust intends to keep the Roche Ranch property for about three to five years. “We’ve been working closely with Sonoma County Regional Parks with the intent to, in the future, add this property to Tolay Lake Regional Park, which will double the size of the park,” says Wendy Eliot, conservation director for Sonoma Land Trust.

The trust’s other major 2007 acquisition is its $970,000 purchase in September of the 27-acre Lower Pitkin Marsh on the Gravenstein Highway, between Graton and Forestville. Prior to this deal, this wetlands property had been slated to be developed as a 24,000-square-foot residential care facility. About $400,000 of the total purchase price came from the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, which also kicked in $2 million for the Roche Ranch deal.

Other significant 2007 purchases by the open space district include: $2.56 million for an easement on the 874-acre Tremari Ranch; $600,000 to add 41 acres to Sonoma Valley Regional Park; $7.78 million to buy the 248 acres Clover Springs, which will eventually be managed by the city of Cloverdale; $4.85 million for the 1,235-acre Poff property, slated to become part of the Sonoma Coast State park; $3 million for the 340-acre Cresta property, earmarked to become a regional parks open space preserve.

Elsewhere in the North Bay, six easements were donated to the Land Trust of Napa County in 2007 and the organization is wrapping up five others. The land Trust of Napa County’s main thrust is a $26 million campaign to preserve and protect more than 4,000 acres at Wild Lake and Duff Ranch. It purchased more than 3,000 acres at Wild Lake in 2006, and the trust hopes to acquire the Duff Ranch property soon.

And the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) paid $1 million for the development rights on Crayne Ranch on Dillon Beach Road, and has two other easements in the works which are due to close soon. “Every year’s different because each project takes one and a half to two years to go from start to finish,” says Elisabeth Ptak, MALT’s associate director. “We have about 12,000 acres we hope to protect over the next five years.”


Wine Tasting Room of the Week

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Wine Tasting Room of the Week


I t’s time to wipe the slate, cleanse the palate and buy a new calendar as soon as they’re discounted 60 percent. In this new year, I resolve: to observe a moratorium on Sideways references—it’s been fun for three years, but it’s time to cork it; to step out of the debate of Champagne vs. sparkling, but to drink more of each; to lay down wine for longer than a few days’ storage on the kitchen counter, so as to note how nuances of bouquet develop after, say, three weeks; and to give the topsy-turvy ex–Topolos Vineyards another chance, and see what’s going on there now. Hey! I can take care of that last one right now.

Last time Swirl ‘n’ Spit dropped in on Russian River Vineyards was in February 2006. Ownership was up in the air, and the restaurant had cleared the tables for the last time. Topolos, with its distinctive North County architecture—part hop barn and part Russian fortress—was a funky favorite for locals and visitors alike. The vintages could be at times uneven, but memorable. I still recall an evening more than 10 years ago, when my neophyte palate was stunned by a 1994 Topolos Piner Heights Zinfandel, not quite sure if the wine was shockingly overextracted and overoaked, or simply, brutally, glorious.

It’s got a new, classy label, and while some of the funky details are gone, there is a sense that it’s not done with its makeover. If asked, hosts will still show curious guests a bottle of Topolos’ infamous “Stu Pedasso” brand.

The nicely priced 2005 Rosé of Pinot Noir ($12.99) is a tasty, dry pink wine with substance. Save it for summer or turn up the heat and have it now. You might note Russian River Valley cola notes in the 2002 Pinot Noir ($39.95), enjoying perfumed raspberries on the way to an herbal, rustic finish. I have no problem with blueberry Sharpie accenting the leathery bouquet of a 2005 Dry Creek Syrah ($24.95), but with the 2005 Dry Creek Petite Sirah ($34.95), we finally move into the deep purple territory of luxury tannins that sweep roasted nut aromas and blackberry-pie flavors to their happy home.

The tasting room star that everyone seems to show up for is the just-released 2004 Redwood Valley Barbera ($31.95), a bright and food-friendly table wine. Watch for the upcoming 2003 Napa Valley Charbono ($29.95), sure to be a special treat. Also on the horizon is the return of the Old Vine Zin that was a darling of the Topolos crowd. With all that coming on line, and the restaurant reopened as the new location of Greg Hallihan’s Stella’s Cafe, there’s little reason in the new year to pass up this friendly, rambling old landmark.

Russian River Vineyards, 5700 Gravenstein Hwy. N., Forestville. Open daily 11am to 5pm, tasting fee $5. 707.887.3344.



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Future Unsounds

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Future Unsounds

01.02.08

Once again we stand on the precipice of a new year rife with musical possibility. What old ghosts will haunt us? From whence emerge the saucy upstarts who will burst onto the scene, gasping minty-fresh sounds that will obliterate the cynicism of nay-sayers and reawaken the dead-bird souls of burnouts? We have just a few suggestions for the future.

In 2008, the Bureau of Better English Usage will bar music critics from using the term “shimmering pop” on the principle that pretending a bunch of fairly generic music which generally fails to shimmer even a little as a genre is both lazy and inaccurate. (Furthermore, employing the phrase “shimmering pop confection” will become a capital offense.)

Televised awards programs will require all live performers to take drug tests; those who test negative are denied the right to perform. Backstage platters of lunch meats and lukewarm melon pieces will be replaced with coke-lined mirrors and buffets of crack pipes, and the chocolate drained from fondue fountains to be refilled with rubbing alcohol. After all, what’s better for ratings and YouTube viewership than the very public meltdown of a drugged-up has-been?

The new Apple BioPort will debut. The BioPort will plug directly into a gelatinous bodily orifice (available for installation at your local Apple store) and allow users to download music, photos and video files directly to the brain, replacing memory previously occupied by multiplication tables and state postal abbreviations. The limited-edition Billy Corgan/Smashing Pumpkins BioPort will come with an exclusive extra dose of pompous self-importance.

Congress will pass a constitutional amendment allowing foreign-born citizens to run for president with the hope that Arnold Schwarzenegger will supplant Mitt Romney’s flagging popularity and become the frontrunner for the Republican Party. But the Democrats, fearing that Americans want neither a woman nor an African American in office, will seize the opportunity and announce Bono as their candidate, with the Edge supporting him on the ticket. A showdown of massive proportions will ensue, with the Schwarzenegger campaign showing the better TV ads, but the Bono campaign getting the better theme song, “Pride (In the Name of Love),” which has nothing to do with the American presidency but everything to do with stirring the emotions.

Britney Spears’ head will explode, spraying a throng of paparazzi lenses with scalding oil and tiny metal gears, and there will be some ‘splaining to do. Britney’s reps will reveal that she is actually a prototype entertainment droid whose programming backfired, just like HAL 9000’s did in 2001. It will be revealed that Britney’s parents, Disney, Justin Timberlake and her record labels were in on it the whole time, though, unsurprisingly, K-Fed will not have had a clue.

It will be busy year for Rhino Records, whose Led Zeppelin Box Set Box Set will include roughly a thousand CDs, plus a 2,500-page volume of liner notes by William T. Vollman.

At the premier of the Iggy Pop biopic The Passenger, Elijah Wood will be attacked on the red carpet by a mob of grizzled Stooges fans. Thinking fast, Wood will slip on the burdensome but momentarily handy One Ring to Rule Them All, become invisible and escape.

Bob Dylan will fall asleep on the sofa while watching a DVD of I’m Not There that he picked up at Blockbuster. “I don’t know,” he’ll say in a later interview. “It was confusing and overrated.”

Courtney Love’s new album, How Dirty Girls Get Clean, will come out, but no one will buy it, because . . . ick. Meanwhile, she and Yoko Ono will start a support group, Hated Widows of Lauded 20th-Century Rock Musicians.

The term “emo” will officially lose all meaning when, at 12:30pm on March 21, 2008, my 65-year-old conservative veteran father will use it in casual conversation.

Cassette tapes will once again fail to come back into retro-vogue on a wide scale, and will still be easily purchased at garage sales, thrift shops and used record stores for less than the price of a candy bar. This means that, for the microscopic anti&–Apple BioPort contingent who still cling to Walkmans, the world is their oyster. But only if they like Rob Bass and the lesser albums of Heart.

Hip-hop will continue to flourish, increasingly revealing itself to be the most relevant, malleable and creatively fertile genre of pop music in our day. Meanwhile, straight-up rock will be, for the hundredth time, assumed dead, only to resurrect itself fiercely in some quiet pocket of the world in a way no one can presently predict.


Letters to the Editor

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12.19.07

ASHES TO ASSES

Why is it that we are born with nothing and can’t take anything with us when we die, but spend the time in between shopping, consuming and hoarding as much stuff as we can get our hands on? (The Green Zone, “Buy Nothing Month,” Dec. 19.) We think of ourselves as such a smart species. Clever and inventive, perhaps. Blinded, fearful and superstitious might round out the description a bit. It’s going to take more than just being green. We’ve run amok, but our well-honed denial mechanisms won’t let us see it.

Luda Fiske

SANTA ROSA

BUY NOTHING CONCRETE POETRY

produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce consume produce

Buck Duke

Santa Rosa

DUCK DUCK GOOSE

I was hoping someone would write regarding Gretchen Giles’ “Killer Gifts” article (Nov. 28) and the recommendation of buying foie gras as a holiday present. Sadly, it seems to have gone unnoticed by any human who cares about animals. Why do we need to torture ducks to have something else to eat? Ms. Giles obviously has not seen the documentary on how ducks are force-fed. She mentions the ducks are free-range, but how is that possible with a tube stuck down your throat? How is that humane treatment? Foie gras is a killer, not a gift.

Karen Zimmerman

Santa Rosa

Dude, Ms. Zimmerman, you are not alone. For over a month, we in editorial have been decrying the senselessness of writing a humor piece in which the consumption of foie gras is recommended and the phrase “But enough of that PETA crap” is used and what? No one responds? You’ve restored our faith in the readership. Thank you, thank you, thank you.


REWIND

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REWIND

current reviews |

INSOMNIAC: Henry Gayle Sanders stars in ‘Killer of Sheep.’

By Richard von Busack and Michael S. Gant

K iller of Sheep: The Charles Burnett Collection’ (Milestone; $39.95) Director Charles Burnett made his 1977 indie film Killer of Sheep for around $15,000 on 16 mm film. This movie was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1990 and became perhaps the most important restoration of 2007 when it was blown up to 35 mm by the UCLA Film Archive, with a little help from the Stanford Theatre Foundation. It is now clear that the roster of the 1970s renaissance filmmakers—Scorsese, Coppola, Altman, De Palma—needs to include Burnett.

The film stars Henry Gayle Sanders as Stan, who has lost his ability to sleep and is trapped in a soul-killing job he can’t afford to lose. His best friend, Bracy (Charles Bracy), tries to cheer him up without luck. Stan is also distanced from his unnamed wife (Kaycee Moore) and his child, Stan Jr. (Jack Drummond).

Visually, Burnett puts his seal on L.A.’s Watts—a sandy, distant railroad-crossed prairie with oases of lush plants—as surely as Jean Vigo put his seal on fog and canal boats in France. Uninterested in melodrama, Burnett shows the gentleness that surpasses all oppression.

The set includes a perceptive essay by critic Armond White; before-and-after versions of Burnett’s lost feature My Brother’s Wedding (1983/2007), now restored by the PFA; and an interesting new two-scene short about Hurricane Katrina, Quiet as Kept. This affectionate dialogue among a weary, cash-strapped family is the antithesis of a sitcom. —RvB

‘Battlestar Galactica: Razor’ (Universal Studios; $26.98) The BG hiatus has become nearly unbearable (season four doesn’t start till April, so say we all), so the SciFi channel rustled up Razor and got it out on DVD just two weeks after its broadcast. Razor jumps back to the appearance of the Pegasus, commanded by Adm. Helena Cain (the name echoes The Caine Mutiny, and Michelle Forbes’ nervous-finger routine recalls Humphrey Bogart’s ball bearings). The familiar faces—Starbuck, Number 6, et al.—appear, but the story concentrates on a new figure, Kendra Shaw (Stephanie Jacobsen), Lee Adama’s choice for XO of the Pegasus when he takes over.

In a series of flashbacks to 10 months ago and 41 years ago, Razor amplifies several backstories, while also charting a dangerous mission to a cylon ship. The jumbled chronology will confound all but devotees. Still, there’s plenty to like, especially the first cylon-human hybrid marinating in its bathtub. The disc includes both the broadcast version and the “unrated, extended” version, which adds about 15 minutes. Cast and creator interviews, behind-the-scenes how-to’s and the web “minisodes” round out the package. —MSG

‘Lady Chatterley’ (Kino Video; $29.95) In three versions of his novel, D. H. Lawrence tried to combat English prudery with a pastoral vision of love in the story of a cross-class affair between titled Constance and gamekeeper Mellors. Director Pascale Ferran adapts John Thomas and Lady Jane, the least known of the three versions. As played by Jean-Louis Coullo’ch, Oliver Parkin—the mild-tempered divorced gamekeeper—bears almost no resemblance to the studly Mellors. Ferran has stripped the Englishness from this account. Gone, too, is something fragrant: the Northern English dialect that proved that Constance Chatterley (Marina Hands) and her lover were literally speaking different languages.

The film won a scad of French Academy Awards—one of them for costuming, which sounds like a joke (unless nudity is the best clothing). And it would be a joke, except that Constance wears vixenish hunter’s reds and scarlet velvet, matched with the golden reds of the woods. Lady Chatterley is probably the best fall-colored movie since the rousse Rene Russo starred in the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.

This is a woman’s film, so most of the sexuality takes place in the faces, not in the bodies. And it finishes on a precise moment of realized happiness. It’s the way one wants an affair to close if it is closing: with sad satisfaction and no guilt. The minimal extras include the English and French trailers and a photo gallery. —RvB



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