‘Ben Franklin: Unplugged’

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‘Ben Franklin: Unplugged’

Channeling Ben Franklin: Josh Kornbluth takes on a quintessentially American character in his latest monologue.

Ben and Me

Josh Kornbluth’s ‘Ben Franklin: Unplugged’ plugs in at Napa Valley Opera House

By Sara Bir

Josh Kornbluth, who regularly performs to acclaim from Alaska to Philadelphia, is still basking in the glow of his feature-film debut, Haiku Tunnel (based on his secretarial-odyssey monologue of the same name). The film pulled more Josh Kornbluth appreciators into the rather San Francisco­ centric audience who know’s him best.

His latest monologue, Ben Franklin: Unplugged, which Kornbluth will perform at the Napa Valley Opera House on Sept. 7, was written over two years ago. Most recently, Kornbluth wrote the script for this summer’s San Francisco Mime Troupe production, Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan.

In monologues such as Red Diaper Baby and Haiku Tunnel, ex­New Yorker Kornbluth’s endearingly self-deprecating spiels never ran afoul with navel-gazing–partially because Kornbluth’s childhood as the son of communist Jewish parents is fascinating enough to supply a lifetime of monologues, and partially because Kornbluth’s reflections ultimately end up being enlightening and poignant rather than indulgent.

The story behind Ben Franklin: Unplugged goes that Kornbluth stumbled upon the initial spark while shaving one morning. He suddenly noticed that his own visage bore a remarkable similarity to the dude on the hundred dollar bill: plump, round face, round glasses, nearly identical balding patterns.

In the show, Kornbluth further explores his relationship with his eccentric communist father by paralleling it to Franklin’s disowning of his son, William, a staunch Loyalist who was appointed Royal Governor of New Jersey at the same time Franklin was emerging as our infant nation’s greatest patriot.

Kornbluth, unlike his animated onstage persona, has a calm, soft-spoken voice over the phone, making it difficult to catch all of the subtle jokes he wryly stashes away in his responses. We spoke shortly after he had returned from a trip back East, researching a new piece about the tax code.

What’s “unplugged” about the show?

Well, there’s no electric instruments. The thing I found to be unplugged from Franklin was any sense of who he really was. He really was a person as opposed to his image, and I was curious to find out more if I could. The thing that drew me in–and that the piece in part focuses on–is his relationship with his son. . . . I hadn’t known he had a son! That his son ended up being probably the preeminent loyalist during the Revolution was really fascinating to me.

Were you interested in Ben Franklin prior to realizing that you look like him?

No, not really. . . . I’m interested in the [American] Revolution, partially because my dad told me I’d lead another one. But I’m interested in becoming more connected with history, and it appealed to me that I could do it through this person. Or I could try, through this guy who turned out to be so protean. He was involved with so many aspects of what happened in America that it turns out I’m really glad I met him.

Originally I was going to do a show where I was going to play Ben Franklin, like Hal Holbrook [playing Mark Twain], but I quickly found that that wasn’t my thing.

Would Ben Franklin have made a good monologist?

I’m not sure. I did what, for me, was voluminous research on him, but of course I’m not a Franklin scholar. But from what I’ve read, he was actually very shy about speaking in front of others and was very charming personally. But he was really incredible in pretty much every way. He was an incredible swimmer! He’s in the [International] Swimming Hall of Fame. You find out some things when you start researching Franklin.

He invented the grabber, the thing where if you’re in a grocery store and you want to reach for a high shelf and then you have that thing and you squeeze it, and it sort of has, like, an R2-D2 kinda hand on it–he invented that. That’s pretty cool. I mean, aside from the American Revolution and stuff like that . . . the grabber! That’s neat.

A monologist like me is sort of self-focused and talks about himself all the time. Franklin, in a way, was kind of a reverse. In print he used at least a hundred aliases, and that’s also an interest, how he would take on other characters and seem to be comfortable with them–including, I think, the character of Ben Franklin, ultimately.

It seems like Ben Franklin is a figure we sort of forget as we grow older–like in grade school, we learn about the guy who flew a kite and did Poor Richard’s Almanack and all, but the effect he had on the shaping of our country never really sinks in. Does our Franklin awareness go downhill?

Lately, *NSYNC has done so much more, so I think they get a lot more attention. Although I believe, even though I’m not an expert on *NSYNC, that Franklin wrote his own stuff.

The relationship to history is very strange. I myself am a Jew and my grandparents came here to America, and yet I feel the connection, though it’s sort of vague, to the Founding Fathers and to historical figures like Ben Franklin. Why? That’s really sort of weird to me.

Did you notice any similarities between Franklin’s ideals and your own communist upbringing?

Near the end of the piece, I make that claim. It took me the whole journey that I take the audience with to get to that point, because he would seem to be about as far away from my left upbringing as you can imagine. It’s partly just my bias too, I’m sure.

Franklin was raised a Puritan, and there’s a lot to be said about the connection between the American Puritans and the American communists. I don’t think enough has been done on this scholarship. . . . I’m just kidding about that. I don’t think that anybody gives a shit.

But there is a lot of connection to me, for real. What my parents were about, especially my father, was making the world better. They talked about living a life that was moral and ethical and helped people, and the Puritans did that as well. That was a big part of Franklin’s upbringing. But there was something about trying to do good, and the shining city on the hill . . . it’s very utopian.

But one difference between my parents and Ben Franklin–well, there are a number of similarities: both Ben Franklin and my father liked to run around nude in the apartment–one thing that really struck me is that Franklin really went through a revolution, and my parents talked about one. Franklin went through it and had a lot to do with it.

When I was growing up, revolution for little communist kids was very glorious–the idea of it, the songs and the slogans. But the actual revolutions are incredibly painful and difficult for the people who are revolting and being revolted against too, probably. The energy to make a revolution is really violent and strong and angry, and how do you deal with that?

This isn’t part of my piece, so it isn’t helpful at all, but it’s really interesting. I guess how important it is to–and I think Franklin’s really good at this–to emphasize to people how, after the revolution had happened, the continuities and traditions that were not violent.

Total change of subject, but do you use any props in the show?

It’s my most prop-laden show ever. I have a desk, a rolling chair, and about four cardboard boxes. I bring actual Franklin books with me, an also some letters that my mom sent me when I was a teenager.

There tends to be a lot of smooth jazz and chamber music in Napa Valley. A little Josh Kornbluth seems like a welcome change of pace.

If it’s not going well, I could just bust into a Kenny G thing. I guess I’d have to get some hair plugs.

Hmm. Maybe that’s why it’s unplugged.

Josh Kornbluth will perform ‘Ben Franklin: Unplugged’ at the Napa Valley Opera House on Saturday, Sept. 7, at 7:30pm. 1040 Main St., Ste. 100, Napa. $32. 707.226.7372.

From the August 29-September 4, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Peter Miguel Camejo

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Peter Miguel Camejo

Green Power

Simon-hating Republicans and Davis-dreading Democrats may find a nice place to vote in Green Party candidate Peter Miguel Camejo

By Loren Stein

Green Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Miguel Camejo stands before his loyal followers–a motley crowd of twentysomethings and ’60s leftovers gathered at a San Mateo church–and gamely launches into his stump speech. “Davis won by a 20 percent landslide and then worked to alienate every group that has supported him,” he says in his characteristically fast clip with just a touch of lilting Latin rhythms.

“Simon’s main qualification is no one knows anything about him yet,” he adds. As he preaches the gospel to diehard Greens, it’s hard to imagine that Camejo, a millionaire and guru of socially responsible investing, might once again prove to be one of the 10 most dangerous men in California–a label he was once awarded by former California Gov. Ronald Reagan.

With incumbent Gov. Gray Davis and Republican nominee Bill Simon locked in what appears to be a close contest of lesser evils (Democratic voters have turned away from Davis in droves while Simon’s recently revealed financial debacles have practically doomed his candidacy), Camejo may be about to turn conventional wisdom on its head.

Pollsters say voters usually won’t support third-party candidates because they fear they might be throwing away their ballots. But this time around, the stars may be in alignment: the two leading contenders in the 2002 governor’s race are so distasteful to large blocks of both moderate and left-leaning voters that Camejo may capture a surprisingly high number of their votes.

That theory got a major boost when the latest poll put the virtually unknown Camejo at 5 percent, a notch or more above the 3.8 percent that prominent consumer advocate and Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader scooped up in California in 2000. With Simon losing ground to Davis, Camejo’s chances shrink. But if the race closes in again, Camejo’s votes might also prove to be the margin of difference that tips Simon–a conservative multimillionaire investor, philanthropist, novice office-seeker, and son of former President Nixon’s treasury secretary–into office.

Which makes Camejo a candidate worth watching. “Davis has alienated mainstream liberals with his petty, conservative Democratic politics and his hard-driving fundraising tactics,” says Bruce Cain, director of UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. “[Camejo] would be the repository of people’s disaffection, a place to dump their dissatisfaction with the party. In that very specific sense, he could be an important player.”

Camejo, a 62-year-old grandfather of two and Walnut Creek resident, is a curious blend of capitalist business savvy and left-wing politics. Born in New York to one of Venezuela’s wealthiest families, he’s the chair and cofounder of Progressive Asset Management, which promotes socially responsible investments.

As a ’60s activist who made fiery speeches alongside Mario Savio during the free speech movement at UC Berkeley (winning Reagan’s “most dangerous man” label), Camejo was arrested and expelled from the university for speaking, he says, at an unauthorized rally.

He ran for president in 1976 for the Socialist Worker Party. (Was he a Socialist? Is he now? He won’t really say.) He only voted Democratic once, he says, to back Jesse Jackson’s run for president. He’s one of the original U.S. Green Party members, dating back to when the party registered in 1991. Camejo also has the distinction of being perhaps the only gubernatorial candidate who’s sailed in the Olympics (with his father in 1960 for Venezuela).

His radical credentials also include forming the Environmental Justice Fund, traveling through Latin America to free political prisoners, and creating an organic farming firm in Nicaragua that helped the county to become the world’s largest producer of sesame. He was deported from Mexico while trying to free his activist brother, who was at the time imprisoned in Mexico City.

Earlier in the race, he said he held no illusion that he would actually snag the governor’s seat. But now he’s changed his mind–or at least his rhetoric. “I can win this race,” he says. “What are the odds? Very low. But Davis has weakened terribly in the last four months, what with the Oracle debacle and other continuing scandals. As I talk and tour, I hear over and over, ‘I will not vote for Davis, and I cannot vote for Simon.'”

On the stump and in interviews, Camejo blends his deep commitment to the Green Party with tough talk and a natural comedic flair on such issues as environmental protection, social justice, and energy policy. He bounces excitedly from one point to another, gesticulating freely and making wisecracks at his own expense.

How did he get drafted into running? “I wish I knew,” he sighs, before explaining that he wants to do his part to support the Greens. “I don’t like to claim I can get votes,” he says later during a speech. “My wife will vote for me, and I think my daughter might.”

But he’s also quick on the attack. “Davis capitulated and gave the energy companies $43 billion at the top of the market, which is now worth $11 billion–the worst investment in the history of the world,” he says. “If he were the head of a company, he’d be sued.”

He advocates universal healthcare, saving old-growth forests, gay and lesbian rights, living-wage laws, solar power requirements, a crash program in affordable housing, and repealing the “Three Strikes” law and the death penalty. He’s also a staunch opponent of what he calls U.S. aggression in the war on terrorism.

“The major parties are corrupted at the top because of corporate domination in the politics of America,” Camejo says. “The Greens are a new phenomenon, but we’re by far the largest third party and our votes increase in every election. Davis is underestimating our strength.” (The other third-party candidates are from the American Independent, Libertarian, and Natural Law slates.)

Bob Mulholland, a top strategist for the state Democratic Party, disputes the notion that the Greens are a force to be reckoned with. After 10 years of organizing, the Green Party has signed up just 146,000 people, representing less than 1 percent of the state’s registered voters, he says. In contrast, California has 6.8 million registered Democrats and 5.3 million Republicans.

“Like other minority parties, they’ll get 2 [percent] to 3 percent [of the vote],” Mulholland says. “They’ll drink all night celebrating. It’s their 15 seconds of fame.”

The Green Party has made some inroads recently, especially in left-leaning towns. They’ve won several dozen local offices, including city official seats in Santa Monica and the North Coast’s Arcata, and a San Francisco Supervisor seat for Matt Gonzalez. For the first time, the Greens have put together a full slate of seven statewide candidates, including an African-American woman for lieutenant governor, Donna Warren, and two other female candidates.

Are California Democrats taking the Greens seriously? “Obviously we pay attention to [third-party candidates], but we’re not too concerned he’ll peel away votes from us,” says Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the Davis campaign. Adds Mulholland: “He’s not on the radar. We have meetings all the time, and no one ever mentions the guy.” (Davis hasn’t met Camejo.)

“I’m sure Davis is not taking Camejo seriously, but I’m equally sure that he should be,” says Dan Schnur, a prominent Republican campaign consultant. “As Nader proved, you don’t have to have a lot of votes to have a major effect in a close campaign.” In March’s statewide primary, he says, about 20 percent of Democrats supported candidates other than Davis, although he had no real competition. “That speaks to real voter dissatisfaction among traditional Democrats,” he says.

To draw ahead in the race and repair Davis’ tattered image, Democratic Party strategists are counting on a fierce new negative TV ad campaign that they hope will demolish Simon’s reputation with voters. But Simon may have done that himself by revealing to voters the darker businessman within when he refused to release his tax returns and the investment firm he owns was convicted of corporate fraud.

“In the last two years, Davis has been hammered by [gubernatorial hopefuls] Richard Riordan, Bill Jones, and Simon, and we’ve had a pretty tough time getting out our side of the story,” acknowledged Davis’ Salazar, before the fraud was declared. “But this isn’t my first barbecue; we know what we’re doing.” Salazar may be right: the ads won Davis a slim but crucial seven-point lead in early July, and now Davis has shot ahead by 17 points.

Simon’s strategists are of course delighted that Camejo may siphon votes away from the governor. Davis’ “mismanagement of the state” will help Camejo “chip away at his already weak base,” says Mark Miner, a Simon campaign spokesperson.

As for Simon, Camejo says that he’s in a “time warp” and should be debating the Founding Fathers over the separation of church and state. Simon opposes a woman’s right to choose and favors a moratorium on gun control legislation. In addition, the candidate, who has no experience in elective office, hasn’t voted in California state primaries since 1992, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters.

Camejo knows that if Green votes ultimately help elect Simon–whose political views are more onerous than even Davis’–he’ll be labeled a spoiler in much the same way Ralph Nader was in the controversial 2000 presidential election. (While a great admirer of Nader, Camejo says he doesn’t agree with Nader’s oft-quoted statement that Democrats and Republicans are one and the same.)

To offset that criticism, Camejo and the Greens have been calling for instant runoff voting, where voters rank the candidates. If their top choice doesn’t win, their vote passes instantly to the next candidate of their choice.

Defeating Davis might help push Democrats to institute the new system. “The day we have runoffs, the vote of the Green Party will explode,” says Camejo, believing that voters will more readily vote their conscience and send a message to second-ranked candidates that they weren’t their first choice. “But Democrats prefer Republicans to be elected rather than see free elections.”

Predictably, the Democrats’ Mulholland scoffs at the idea of runoff voting. “When third parties can’t win the hearts and minds of voters, they come out with all these tricks–they can’t do it naturally. They want to take a 1 percent party and make it [a] 5 percent [party] on the basis of trick math.”

What Camejo also needs is money and visibility. At this point, he’s raised $40,000, “an equivalent of one drop of the ocean,” he says, and a far cry from Davis’ war chest of nearly $32 million and the roughly $6 million raised by Simon, who’s been loaning his own money to his campaign on an as-needed basis. Participating in any upcoming gubernatorial debates would also go a long way toward raising his profile with state voters.

Due to his national stature and star power, “Nader had the ability to take voters who were not going to vote at all,” says political scientist Bruce Cain. “Camejo can’t do that. But if he spent money, he could have a chance.”

Adds Cain: “The Green candidate is an interesting guy; he’s not a total kook. But he’s certainly not a household name or attracting people to the ticket because of his achievements or charisma.”

Camejo is hoping to draw the support of Latino voters and other ethnic minorities, whom Davis desperately needs to hold off Simon. “I think the minority community is so disillusioned with the governor that Camejo has the ability to spark that interest and do more than just [be] a protest vote,” says John Gamboa, executive director of the San Francisco­based Greenlining Institute, which advocates for minority businesses. “The governor treats the minority community as if he has their vote because there’s nowhere else to go, that he’s the lesser of two evils. But [minorities] will vote for their needs rather than throw [their votes] away.”

Camejo met with minority leaders to discuss their concerns and win their support after getting a letter from Gamboa stating that neither majority party addresses their issues and that 20 percent to 30 percent of the minority vote could be captured by the Green Party candidate. (He also noted that in the past the Greens have appealed primarily to middle-class whites.)

“Our party is like the abolitionists 175 years ago–we stand up and say unpopular things,” says Camejo. “You can agree or disagree with us, but no one can deny that we care about the economy, people’s rights, democracy, and nonviolence.”

From the August 29-September 4, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Metropolis’

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‘Metropolis’

Refining a Masterpiece

Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ shines even brighter

By

Let’s get to the point. The newly restored Metropolis reveals that Paramount Picture’s butchering of this silent masterpiece in its initial U.S. run is an act of studio vandalism as infamous as the ruining of Erich von Stroheim’s Greed or Orson Welles’ Magnificent Ambersons.

Sometimes the rereleased versions of classics are not that epochal; sometimes they’re just a welcome excuse to favor an old classic instead of a brand new Hollywood runt. The 1927 Metropolis is the most watched of all silent films today. It was never a huge success in its day, this famous story of a cyclopean city of the future with its heavenly towers and hellish guts. But it’s since been plagiarized, imitated, and even brought back in various restored versions (including the popular 1984 version supervised by Giorgio Moroder, with a soundtrack of the decade’s most banal bands).

So how is this Metropolis different? In every way. There’s still a little less than 3,000 feet of film missing, but at nearly 1,000 feet longer than the last restored version in 1987, it’s been digitally cleansed and timed, and assembled from parts in film archives from Paris to Canberra. Gottfried Huppertz’s dramatic original orchestral soundtrack has been newly recorded, missing subplots retrieved or described, and censored material brought back.

Now the mad scientist Rotwang (Rudolph Klein-Rogge, who looks like John Lithgow) is revealed as a tragic, vengeful lover. His scheme to set a robot agent provocateur into Metropolis slums evolves from an old score to settle. This Metropolis is a male world, and thus it is ruthless. Essentially, the only woman in it is the saintly Maria (Brigitte Helm), an evangelist cloned by magic technology and held prisoner while her robot-double lies and prostitutes itself.

The hero, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich), the princeling son of the boss of Metropolis, is no longer a forehead-smiting muffin in jodhpurs. Now he’s a true action hero whose risky descent into the heart of Metropolis frees its slaves. Though Freder is brave, he’s also fanciful. His poetic hallucinations inspire him to fight. He imagines that the furnace is warming Metropolis as the flaming Babylonian idol, Moloch, actually feeds on human beings.

Director Fritz Lang makes this an intoxicating mix of dripping romanticism and Biblical fury. It’s the cinema’s most articulately expressed case of future shock. Metropolis is as pungent as a brilliant editorial cartoon, and it’s not dated either. The drones marching into the city’s dungeons still chafe the conscience.

Metropolis‘ repeated motto urges compromise: “Between the mind and the hands, the heart must mediate”–that only common decency can end the war between the haves and the have-nots. This ending was despised by the right and the left alike. Today, it seems insipid–and patronizing too: who decides whether someone’s born a “head” or a “hand”?

And despite this film’s pleas for order in a Germany that was already falling apart as the film was completed, something worse than a revolution happened. Instead of a rebellion, the German people marched into a Moloch of Hitler’s own construction. More than an entertainment, Metropolis is a cautionary tale. For us, it’s not too late.

‘Metropolis’ opens at the Rafael Film Center on Friday, Aug. 30.

From the August 29-September 4, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Fictional Food

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Fictional Food

Fictional Food

The way to a child’s mind is through the stomach

By Gretchen Giles

On a single day, young Almanzo Wilder polishes off a sandwich of homemade bread and butter with sausages, eats two doughnuts, has an apple, four turnovers, a plate of baked beans, a serving of salt pork, a pile of mealy boiled potatoes with brown, ham gravy, more bread with butter, some mashed turnips, a helping of stewed pumpkin, spoonfuls of plum preserves, strawberry jam, and grape jelly, a few spiced watermelon-rind pickles, a piece of pumpkin pie, as much hot buttered popcorn as he can swallow, another apple, and a refreshing draught of cider. He longs for some fresh milk in which to douse his popcorn but doesn’t wish to disturb the heavy cream that’s rising atop the milk can, so consoles himself with yet another apple and drink of cider.

After chores the next morning, he tucks into a bowl of oatmeal with thick cream and maple sugar, lavishes himself upon fried potatoes, has as many golden buckwheat cakes with sausages and gravy and butter and maple syrup as he wants, selects among an enduring abundance of preserves and jams and jellies and homemade doughnuts, and ends his repast with “two big wedges” of spicy apple pie.

The boy is eight, that was breakfast, and we’re only up to page 37.

Over the course of Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s biographical book about her husband’s childhood, young Almanzo will enjoy chicken pot pie with the meat of three hens bubbling under the crust, spoon up wild strawberries with cream, have stuffed roasted goose for Christmas dinner, wait hungrily for the crisp, crackling roast pig to be sliced, watch his mother fry cornmeal-battered trout, and, as Mrs. Wilder describes it, simply “eat and eat and eat.”

While there is character arc and a sturdy plot line to this seminal children’s book, it also ably acts as an I Ching of childhood food fantasies. Throw a coin onto almost any page, and the characters are certain to be either cooking, eating, planting for later eating, feeding animals, sugaring sap, or sneaking doughnuts, warm cookies, and full round cakes of maple sugar into their pockets. Even the prize pumpkin that Almanzo raises for show is solely fed on fresh, warm milk intricately wicked up from bowl to vine with candle string. Add some schoolyard fisticuffs, break a colt, and that’s the book.

Of course, Wilder hardly butters new ground by larding Farmer Boy handsomely with food references. Winnie the Pooh’s obsession with honey is a legendary character trait; Robin Hood was known to dine only upon roasted venison; Pippi Longstocking regularly ate more than her weight; and readers of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are have long associated mastication with affection, as when Max, the main character, is told by his parents that “we love you so much, we’ll eat you up.” Sendak also entertains directly from the Night Kitchen and extols the lovely, numeric pleasures of chicken soup with rice.

From book springs book–or at least product. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory launched its own enduring line of Wonka candy, just as Harry Potter produced an actual brand of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans, featuring tastes from mango to snot to root beer to vomit. The Thousand Acre Wood gang have at least two children’s cookbooks detailing Winnie’s gastronomic devotions, and Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series has several lavishly researched cookbooks based upon it.

Even the Care Bears have a sugary little tome–Beatrix Potter’s characters too. (Remember the blackberries and cream Peter Rabbit eats to solace his adventures? Yum.) Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes draws from his extensive oeuvre to describe, among other things, the process required to create the “Mosquitoes’ toes and wampfish roes / Most delicately fried / (The only trouble is they disagree with my inside)” so lustily sung about by the centipede in James and the Giant Peach. While the centipede may boast of enjoying hot noodles made from poodles, toes ‘n’ roes actually fall to earth in the form of fried cod sandwiches rolled in sesame and poppy seeds, making poodle noodles sound all the better.

And speaking of James, how about that peach! Some scholars liken the role of food in children’s literature to that of sex in adult reading. When James first approaches the massive fruit, so large that it rests upon the ground, he notices a hole in its soft skin and climbs in. Finding this to be a tunnel entrance, he crawls forward. Dahl writes that “the floor was soggy under his knees, the walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious. . . . Every few seconds he paused and took a bite out of the wall. The peach flesh was sweet and juicy, and marvelously refreshing.”

You needn’t be a Freudian analyst in order to cop a wink-wink­nudge-nudge leer from the edible return-to-the-womb sensuality of this description. Yet its very innocent physicality endures; few of us who read James as children can eat a ripe peach today without reflecting sweetly on this boy’s wild adventure in fruit.

Similarly, there is a wholesomely salacious abandon to the endless round of bubbling doughnuts and hot, spicy pie found in Farmer Boy, to the milk-chocolate river that finally seduces Augustus Gloop in Charlie, and to the wantonly-appearing platters that makes boarding school all the more appealing to fans of Harry Potter. Voldemort is a lot easier to battle if there are “roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs” on the table, as there is at Harry’s first Hogwarts repast. We have, alas, yet to meet a children’s book hero other than Babar who adheres to a vegan diet.

So yeah, sure, right–food is to kids what sex is to adults, at least when we’re reading. Perhaps. But how about food is safety, comfort, security, and stability to children as . . . it is, in fact, to adults? The superabundance, the outrageous portions and proportions described in these books all underscore the satiation of “enough.” Enough love, enough comfort, enough warmth and shelter, and enough attention are all expressed in the serving of way more than enough food.

The Grapes of Wrath specter of Hooverville kids hungrily ringed around Mrs. Joad’s empty stew pot, hoping to swipe a fingerful of sop from the pot’s sides, rarely appears in children’s literature. Brian Jacques, the English author of the Redwall series of fantastical juvenile lit, regularly features such fare in his tales as cakes made from arrowroot and pollen flours, chopped chestnuts, honeyed damsons, sugared violets, raspberries, and wild buttercup and blackberry creams finished with crystallized young maple leaves. The mice and moles that people his books feast regularly on such dainties while sipping rosehip-honey-strawberry nectar.

Visiting Sonoma on tour some years ago, Jacques declared that he began writing because he was tired of kids’ books that had a muddle of antiheroic protagonists who occupied an unclear middle ground between right and wrong. There’s good and there’s bad, he explained to the children ringed rapt around him, and good always wins.

Particularly, it seems, when it’s fictional and marvelously well-fed.

From the August 29-September 4, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Fully Committed’

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‘Fully Committed’

Character Actor: Argo Thompson brings his characters–all of them–to life.

No Reservations

‘Fully Committed’ offers finger-lickin’ fun

By Patrick Sullivan

Mystery novel readers encounter it constantly: the locked-room riddle, in which a detective has to figure out how a victim has been strangled, shot, or stabbed while sleeping alone in a secure room. The world of theater offers something similar: the one-person play, in which a single actor alone onstage for 90 minutes or so must figure out how not to kill the show or be murdered by a fickle audience.

But in Fully Committed, now onstage at Actors Theatre in Santa Rosa, actor and director Argo Thompson makes it look so damn easy you wonder what all the fuss is about.

Thompson plays Sam, an out-of-work actor paying the bills by manning the red-hot reservation line of Manhattan’s most popular four-star restaurant. (Thompson took the stage opening night; he alternates with actress Kimberly Kalember during the play’s run.) Thompson also brings to life about 40 other characters, including a great many irritated would-be diners wondering why they can’t get reservations at this exclusive eatery.

“God, Sam, I don’t know how you do it,” a rival actor snidely informs him. “If I had your job, I’d shoot myself.” And suicide does start to seem like a sensible option after the audience gets a taste of Sam’s workday.

Sam’s boss, simply known as “the Chef,” is a celebrated master of global-fusion cuisine. He is also a hilariously over-the-top control freak who delights in humiliating his employees. When a customer gets disgustingly sick in the restaurant bathroom, the Chef forces Sam to clean things up: “It’s not part of your job?” the Chef practically shrieks in disbelief. “Your job is to do whatever I goddamn tell you to do.”

Sam’s co-workers don’t offer relief. Instead of showing up to pitch in, the reservations manager prank-calls Sam and then makes up lousy excuses for running late. Jean-Claude, the extremely French maitre ‘d, alternates between icy imperiousness and very French attempts at humor.

But the biggest cross Sam bears are the customers who call up expecting him to deliver the impossible, the inconceivable, or the incomprehensible. They want a table for this weekend at a restaurant that’s fully booked for the next two months. They wonder how many feet they’ll be sitting from the lighting sconce. They want to know why they should pay $150 for jicama-smoked Scottish wood squab. And they’re willing to beg, bribe, and threaten to get their way: “We’re just two tiny, tiiiiny people,” one Southern belle pleads. “Isn’t there any way you can fit us in?”

Thompson wrangles this array of roles with impressive skill. He’s got great comic timing, a flair for accents, and a highly expressive face and body. The audience can only marvel as it watches him go from playing an 82-year-old woman to an icy New York socialite to the French maitre ‘d to Sam making fun of the maitre ‘d then back to the 82-year-old woman–all in about two minutes.

Of course, a play featuring a character called Laryngitis Guy may skirt dangerously close to Saturday Night Live territory. But Fully Committed offers much more than one-liners.

The play has a well-crafted narrative arch, and there’s rich satisfaction in watching Sam come to terms with the bizarre personalities around him. After all, these characters–psychotic bosses, abusive co-workers, and eccentric customers–are so funny on the stage because people in the audience know how unfunny they can be in real life.

‘Fully Committed’ continues through Sept. 28 at Actors Theatre in the Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Rd., Santa Rosa. For details, call 707.523.4185.

From the August 29-September 4, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Simone’

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‘Simone’

Real Enough to Touch: The mysterious Simone is a director’s dream: no tantrums or outrageous demands.

Idol Worship

Al Pacino finds his Galatea in ‘Simone’

By

Lately Al Pacino has been responding less and less to his fellow actors; that flickering, lizardlike gaze is clouding up. Pacino is better than usual in the comedy Simone because he has so many scenes in his own company.

Pacino plays Viktor Taransky, a director on the skids, who was fired from his own picture thanks to a conceited star (Winona Ryder). He’s approached by a mad computer genius named Henry Aleno, played by Elias Koteas. The madman has a gob of cotton in his eye, held in by a patch. Metastasized eye cancer, he explains. In his last few days of life, he wants to give this cult director he loves a present: software containing a synthetic performer named “Simone.” (A young actress named Rachel Roberts is the source for the synthetic girl.)

It dawns on Taransky that he can outwit the egotistical stars who have ruined his career–all those “supermodels with SAG cards.” He can use Simone to finish his interrupted project, a movie tautologically titled Eternity Forever.

Simone is an enormous success, and the fact that she won’t appear in public makes her all the more fascinating. A pair of bumbling detectives (Pruitt Taylor Vince and Jason Schwartzman) try to track her down but can’t expose the synthespian.

Simone is based on an old story. In the Greek myth, Pygmalion carves a marble statue of the goddess of beauty, Aphrodite, and falls in love with it. The goddess finds out and grants the statue life. The former statue takes the name Galatea, and creator and creation live happily ever after.

The myth’s happy ending confounds our expectations. We’re raised with the stern warning not to worship idols. And ever since George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (the source for My Fair Lady), we also suspect that a girl shaped by a mentor must rebel.

Director Andrew Niccol, who did the well-conceived but far too mannered Gattaca and scripted The Truman Show, is satirizing some of his own ideas about artistic manipulation. Taransky isn’t just a misunderstood genius. The clips we see of his films look excruciatingly arty; it’s easy to understand why they’re not selling tickets.

To contrast the grating aestheticism of Taransky’s films, Niccol cleverly uses backgrounds of vintage Hollywood décor, circa the 1920s, when designers went nuts over Spanish colonial. Simone is so full of Moorish tiles and courtyard fountains that it looks like it was shot in Granada.

The 1920s references recall the movie industry in the days when it was most seriously prone to illusion and star creation. That Spanish fanciness also refers to the age of Garbo, when reticence was more exciting than total media exposure.

It’s certain that Taransky’s adoring young daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) will be the one to expose Simone as an electronic phantom, but why does it take so long? And why does her mother (Catherine Keener) also think Simone is so precious?

Keener keeps Pacino off-balance, while his eerily perfect imaginary co-star exposes Pacino’s tendency toward hermetic acting. That’s why the slumping ending is redeemed by the first two acts. For once in a long time, Pacino doesn’t seem like a synthespian himself.

‘Simone’ opens Friday, Aug. 23, in the North Bay.

From the August 22-28, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Pearl’s Home Style Cooking

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Pearl’s Home Style Cooking

Look, No Hands: Pearl’s owner, Sylvia Park, pours on the creamy goodness.

Pearl Jam

Pearl’s Home Style Cooking, where the world is not your oyster

By Sara Bir

Before we get too far into this story, I need to say that I bruised my tailbone when I fell out of my raft while white-water rafting recently, and since then I have not been the same. Beyond waddling around in a painkiller-induced head-haze, I’ve noticed that my appetite has altered. Like a TV show where a character gets bonked on the head and assumes a new personality, I get cracked in the ass and crave canned foods. The other night, I went to the grocery store specifically to buy a can of Chef Boyardee beef ravioli. I had been thinking about it all day, in fact.

And I can’t even walk right. I was shuffling around like Tim Conway’s old-man character on The Carol Burnett Show, but since then I’ve discovered that waddling covers more ground. I sure as hell can’t run, and running is my main artillery against my broken ass getting bigger from all these restaurant reviews.

So I go running to defend myself against obesity, but mainly because it feels good to run and because running is the time when I come up with all of my wonderful writing ideas (like, “Hey! I’ll start off this restaurant review by talking about my butt!”). But now I have no dynamic rumination time, only waddling time.

Now you can envision the frame of brain and body I was in during my experience with Pearl’s Home Style Cooking in Sonoma. I craved canned food and my mind was on my behind, not the most professional of composures. Unfortunately, Pearl’s didn’t do much to help either the butt or the composure.

Pearl’s opened up early in 2000 in the Sonoma Market shopping center. Even with joints like the Breakaway Cafe and the Garden Court, I can see how Sonoma could be in the market for clean, unassuming, unfancy, hearty food, what with all the fancy bistros and restaurants there–even wine country tourists need regular American-style breakfasts. And I had heard Pearl’s was a good breakfast place.

I love a big breakfast. I love eggs and potatoes and toast and cured pork products and cups and cups of coffee. Big breakfasts, though, are curious. Like alcohol, they feel wonderful at the time, and you only want more–until suddenly your stomach lurches, and then comes the breakfast hangover that will poison you for the rest of the day.

Combine an alcohol hangover with a big breakfast, however, and the two somehow manage to cancel each other out. I figure it accounts for the English not being extinct by now; they are both drinkers and eaters of the biggest breakfasts in the world.

My first breakfast at Pearl’s was on a weekday, around 9-ish. I strolled in after the morning rush. Most of the folks in there looked to be late-morning regulars or day trippers through town. I like the interior. It has a classic home-cookin’ cafe ambiance, with a few ’50s kitschy doohickeys here and there, but nothing too cheesy or neodiner slick. The bald dude at the counter is very friendly. Everyone there is, actually; it’s quite noticeable.

I got the daily scramble (veggie) and a coffee. The coffee is served in these deep, cobalt-blue mugs, and it’s a big step above typical breakfast-joint coffee. I rooted through the Press Democrat I had bought to keep me company and sipped my good-quality coffee out of the cobalt-blue mug.

And then disaster struck! The food section was missing! You read the paper and look forward to the food section on Wednesday all week long, and then when you actually splurge the 35 cents to buy your own paper instead of borrowing your editor’s copy, the food section is missing!

Muddled and downhearted because of my missing food section, I contemplated my eggs. They were not what I had anticipated. The veggie scramble was more of a frittata than a scramble, retaining the shape of the pan it was cooked in rather than being in loose, creamy curds. And there was a ton of melted cheddar cheese on top. You could have peeled it off in a single layer. Eggs are not pizza! Despite peppers, onions, tomatoes, and mushrooms, plus all that cheese, it didn’t taste like much.

The hash browns were the saving grace. I love hash browns when they are made correctly. When I ordered, the friendly waitress asked, “Would you like your hash browns extra crispy?” And I said, “Why, yes! I would!” It’s actually very difficult to make good hash browns–I can’t, at least. And neither can most breakfast places.

But Pearl’s hash browns were a deep and even golden brown, all fused together in one crispy cake. I dumped tons of ketchup all over them and dug in. But even after only eating about half of my breakfast, I wound up being full all day long–which was economical, yes, but a bummer. Waddling around, I felt like a bursting slug.

A few days later, I returned and got a short stack of French toast with a side of chicken-apple sausage ($6.85). How short is a short stack? Try two little triangles of bread, tiny and stark against the whiteness of the plate. Turns out my shorted stack was just fine being short, because I would not have been able to eat more than one slice’s worth: this French toast looked and tasted deep-fried. That’s what they do with those French-toast sticks at fast-food restaurants. The batter on the outside was unappealingly dark and crunchy, while the inside was oily and not custardy at all. A real drag.

The sausage helped little–four greasy links lined up on the plate next to my deep-fried French toast. I had ordered a side of chicken-apple sausage in the interest of going the extra mile as a working gourmet. The links tasted like regular sausage, only for 90 cents extra. Why is chicken-apple sausage more expensive than regular pork sausage? Both chicken and apples cost less per pound than pork. I don’t see what the big deal is.

Since Pearl’s serves dinner and lunch too, it was only right to have some nonbreakfast food. I was hoping it would be an improvement. I scheduled a Mr. Bir du Jour and we had a late lunch: he, a BLT ($5.50); me, a grilled chicken sandwich ($6.50). Both came with sides of fries.

My sandwich was a big, plump chicken breast with lettuce, tomato, and cheese, just as you would expect. What you would not expect was that it was on focaccia, though it didn’t add any special dimensions to the experience. You can’t dress up a plain chicken sandwich just by throwing it on fancy bread. The chicken itself was tender and moist, but it needed of some kind of seasoning. The fries were pleasing, crisp, and not soggy at all. Pearl’s does seem to have a way with potatoes.

I asked Mr. Bir du Jour how his sandwich was. He said, “Um, fine. The bacon’s a little fatty, but bacon is fatty.” Then he said, “Why are we here again? Why are you reviewing this place?”

I didn’t know the answer anymore. “We could have just gone to Denny’s,” he said. Hmm. Denny’s staff is not as nice, their coffee is not as good and isn’t served in big, cobalt-blue mugs, and their hash browns can no way be as good as Pearl’s. But Denny’s does not deep-fry their French toast. Pearl’s calls itself a “homestyle cooking” restaurant; you might do better to do some home cooking yourself. If you have recently bruised your tailbone, let me suggest a can of beef ravioli. You won’t be at Pearl’s, but the world will be your oyster.

Pearl’s Home Style Cooking, 561 Fifth St. West,Sonoma. Breakfast and lunch daily, 7am-2:30pm; dinner Wednesday-Saturday, 5pm-9pm. 707.996.1783.

From the August 22-28, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Cotati Accordion Festival

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Cotati Accordion Festival

The New Face of the Accordion: Musician Mark Growden wields his accordion with the respect it deserves.

Photograph by Alcina Horstman

Pump and Squeeze

Leave your knickers and your kitsch at home –accordion players take over Cotati

By Jeff Chorney

That the accordion is no longer dorky isn’t really noteworthy to Isabel Douglass or Mark Growden, although it’s good for the rest of us to know. Douglass plays the squeeze box in a romantic ensemble called Amaldecor. Growden leads three eclectic bands in similar, arm-pumping fashion. To them, the accordion is simply a means to make known the music churning through their heads.

Not everyone sees the instrument that way.

A short history of the modern attitude toward accordions would probably begin early last century, well before the electric guitar and well before anything could be called kitsch. Waltz, klezmer, Gypsy, tango–all were spoken in reeds, keys, chords, and buttons, and mostly by men wearing vests and funny pants who wielded their instruments like medicine balls. Fast forward through the decades, and the accordion falls out of favor with popular musicians though remaining a favorite of street and folk artists.

The accordion became less used mostly because popular music itself changed. Rock and jazz took over, and music made with accordions was banished to that section of the music store where most people wind up only when lost.

Its place there shouldn’t be undervalued. Anyone who has ever swung to zydeco or found themselves secretly enjoying Mexican radio while cruising through the Central Valley knows that, for some genres, the accordion never waxed or waned.

But when it comes to innovative, popular music, the accordion’s place is a little more complicated. A couple decades ago, the instrument started creeping back into popular formats, mostly as novelty or kitsch. While not exactly back-of-the-record-store stuff, it wasn’t Top 40 either. On Tom Waits’ 1987 album Frank’s Wild Years, which has Waits playing an accordion on its cover, the instrument is used on a few songs.

Some players, including Growden, don’t think Waits is the best example of accordion mainstreaming. Instead, he points to local musicians taking up accordions for real evidence of newfound popularity.

At any rate, for now we can agree that, Waits excepted, years ago only geeks and goobers played and listened to accordions. And if the rest of us were involved with the things, we did it just because it was kitschy enough to be cool. Cool in the same way that a grown woman carrying a Sesame Street lunch box is cool, or hosting B-movie pizza parties or wearing a Leave It to Beaver T-shirt.

Fast forward to 2002, and the accordion’s reputation has changed again. According to a new generation of players, the kitsch value is gone. Not just gone, but now irritating to artists who, although they don’t need to be taken too seriously themselves, at least want their music to be.

Understand? Go listen to Douglass’ and Growden’s bands. Both are playing at the 12th annual Cotati Accordion Festival, which takes place Aug. 24 and 25.

“Even people onstage can be really kitschy with [the accordion]. That just drives me crazy,” Growden says.

Growden, an energetic 32-year-old who lives in Oakland, reserves particular derision for performers who play up the cheese factor. Throwing on a mock shit-eating, crowd-pleasing grin, Growden rises in his chair to mimic a vest-wearing doofus, pumping bellows in the air in front of him. That brand of performer helps keep the accordion in the realm of the silly, where the instrument no longer belongs, he says.

Mark Growden’s band Electric Piñata, which formed about three years ago, will close the festival’s first day. He has two other backing bands, the Acoustic Piñata and the Prosthetic Piñata (it’s a cover band, get it?). Growden also performs solo.

His sound is hard to pigeonhole. Some have called him a more cabaret Tom Waits. Others have given him an “at-the-crossroads-of” label that places him in between folk, avant-garde, and who-knows-what. A typical show might have him on accordion, banjo, electric guitar, and lap steel guitar.

Growden, who also teaches music to children, is one of those rare musicians who plays a variety of instruments. “When I’m onstage and I’m performing, it’s all about the music; it has nothing to do with the instrument. The fact that I’m playing the accordion is totally irrelevant to me,” he says.

That’s why it irritates him that some still use the instrument as a prop.

Growden was introduced to music in school. For a long time, he concentrated on the saxophone and bass clarinet. He moved to the Bay Area about 10 years ago and came to the accordion after all of his other instruments were stolen.

That was about seven years ago. With nothing at home left to play, Growden found an old accordion in the basement of the elementary school where he was working.

This is Growden’s first year at the festival. It’s also the first time for Douglass’ band, Amaldecor. Don’t bother trying to figure out the name. Douglass says it’s a bastardization of a French phrase that means “heartache.” The five band members play old French and Eastern European tunes, occasionally delving into klezmer and jazz.

Douglass, whose first instrument was the piano, is 23 and has been playing accordion for seven years. She works at Boaz Accordions in Berkeley, and both she and Growden speak highly of owner Rubin Boaz, who repairs and sells accordions. Cotati Festival cofounder Clifton Buck-Kauffman gives much of the credit for the event’s ability to attract high-caliber performers to Boaz and his connections.

After picking up the instrument because she was traveling and wanted something portable, Douglass hooked up with an old Gypsy man in Romania. They played–and drank heavily–about five hours a day for a month, even though they didn’t speak the same language, Douglass says.

“I started playing music with the idea of it being something you do around the fire. It was an easy way to exchange [ideas] and meet people,” she says.

While that sentiment might itself sound kitschy, it’s surely one of the reasons why people continue to flock to Cotati’s festival. Besides modern sounds like Growden and Douglass, this year’s festival features performers playing ethnic music, such as Rahman Asadollahi, from Azerbaijan; Tameem, whose family is from Afghanistan; and Ramon Trujillo and the Mariachi Jalisco.

There are also some more folky gigs, as well as local performers, such as Petaluma’s O’Grady Family, who probably have never heard of Tom Waits and who brag about watching The Lawrence Welk Show together.

And, of course, there’s Dick Contino, who is to the accordion what Dick Dale is to surf guitar–a cheeseball virtuoso who, no matter how old he gets, still gets props for inventing a genre.

If you have trouble finding the festival, just look for the life-size bronze statue of cofounder Jim Boggio, another virtuoso who was playing in a local zydeco band when he met Buck-Kauffman, co-owner of Prairie Sun Studios.

The pair hatched the idea in a local bar. Boggio died a few years later. Buck-Kauffman likes to say that the statue is so realistic because they just dipped Boggio in bronze and mounted him in the park after he passed on.

Now the festival is a small town’s wet dream (it attracts 3,500 to 4,000 people each day; Cotati’s population is about 6,200). Not only does the multicultural event put Cotati on the map, it also raises tens of thousands of dollars each year for several community groups.

Buck-Kauffman says it works so well for a fairly simple reason: “Because the community is involved. When the [nonprofit] beneficiaries get so much money, there’s really an impetus for them to get involved. It’s just interwoven into the fabric of the community.” Among other things, those groups provide volunteers to staff the festival.

By performing there, musicians like Growden and Douglass become part of that community, expanding its boundaries, geographically and otherwise. Look for them onstage, but don’t expect them to be speaking kitsch. Instead, they’ll just be pumping away, all the while improving the reputation of the poor, misunderstood accordion and its reeds, keys, chords, and buttons.

The 12th Annual Cotati Accordion Festival takes place Aug. 24-25, 9:30am-7pm, at La Plaza Park, Cotati. $10 one-day admission, $18 two-day admission; free for children under 15. 707.664.0444. www.cotatifest.com.

From the August 22-28, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Fall Arts

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Fall Arts

It’s the Season: As a new season blows into town, Ned Kahn’s sculptures (shown here:’Wind Cube’), on display at SMOVA, reflect the changing winds.

Falling . . .

A season’s worth of arts and entertainment

By Davina Baum and Sara Bir

Ahh, fall. It makes you think of art, does it not? And there’s no shortage of culture in the North Bay for you to run out and plunge yourself into. So dive in!

August

Sausalito Art Festival

Sausalito Art Festival

This most celebrated of events has art enthusiasts flocking to little Sausalito over Labor Day weekend, reveling in both the magnificence of the city and the beauty of the art that bedecks it. This year, the festival’s 50th anniversary will be celebrated in style, with 20,000 works of art in one place, as well as 30 performers on three stages. Entertainment includes the revered New Orleans funkster Dr. John, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and the local, hard-working Jerry Hannon Band. Aug. 31-Sept. 2. Downtown Sausalito. $5-$20. 415.331.3757. www.sausalitoartfestival.org.

September

Sonoma County Reads!

The Grapes of Wrath is a long book–455 pages, to be exact. So start now. And why? Well, besides being a hallmark of modern American literature, The Grapes of Wrath is the book at the center of Sonoma County Reads!, a month-long literary event that encourages library usage, promotes good reading habits, and builds community togetherness. The Sonoma County Library has purchased 1,000 copies of the book, so getting your hands on one should not be a problem. Then, as you read, participate in a variety of related activities, including book discussions, movie screenings, and sing-alongs. Information on the related events will be posted at www.sonomalibrary.org.

Marin Poetry Center Summer Traveling Show

So why is this thing listed here if it’s a summer traveling show? I’ll tell you why: Autumn begins on Sept. 23. So in the late summer/early fall, gather with lyrically minded poets as they share eclectic verse in one of the largest poetry reading series to be found. Hear what your neighbors–from workshop addicts to accomplished and well-published writers–are feeling. Call 415.893.1447 or visit www.marinpoetrycenter.com for times, dates, and locations.

Charles M. Schulz Museum

If you ain’t heard already, there is now a big, shiny new museum for the millions of “Peanuts” fans in the world. Remember when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opened up in Cleveland and there was all this hype, and then it turned out to be pretty lame and not worth the price of admission? Well, here’s to hoping that Snoopy won’t let us down. Remember: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame does not have a 51′ by 57′ labyrinth in the shape of Snoopy’s head, nor does it have an ice rink next door (maybe it should). After opening with many bangs, now you can pop into the Charles M. Schulz Museum and see for yourself (though you might want to wait a few months until the fuss dies down). 2301 Hardies Lane, Santa Rosa. 707.579.4452.

Sonoma Valley Museum of Art

Aug. 31-Oct. 20, “Story Cloths of Bali” presents the endangered art form with over two dozen Indonesian embroidered story cloths. Then, Oct. 30-Nov. 3, the SVMA, in cooperation with the La Luz Center of Sonoma, shows “Dia de los Muertos,” commemorative altars celebrating departed family members in the tradition of the Mexican Day of the Dead. Local Latino families and organizations will create the altars in the museum. 551 Broadway, Sonoma. 707.939.SVMA. www.svma.org.

Napa Valley Opera House Cafe Theatre

Shiny and newly renovated, the Napa Valley Opera House has launched right into an impressive fall season of events, held in the cabaret-style seating of its Cafe Theatre. Spend intimate evenings with classical guitarist Paul Galbraith (Sept. 6); Haiku Tunnel monologist Josh Kornbluth (Sept. 7); viola, flute, and harp Marin Trio (Sept. 15); opening night of the San Francisco Comedy Competition (Sept. 17); mezzo-soprano Elena Bocharova (Sept. 21); the Banana Slug String Band (Oct. 13); as well as others too numerous to mention. Whee! Check out this exciting new/old venue. Napa Valley Opera House, 1030 Main St., Napa. 707.266.7372. www.napavalleyoperahouse.org.

Jazz on the River

Kick back on the Russian River for two days of world-class hot and cool jazz. Al Jarreau, Boney James, Peter White, Rick Braun, Joey DeFrancesco, the Benny Barth Trio, Julia Fordham, David Sanchez, and 14-year-old Julian Lage will play, along with Cedar Walton’s tribute to Art Blakey. Sept. 6-7. Johnson’s Beach on the Russian River, Guerneville. $37.50-$180. 510.655.9471. www.jazzontheriver.com

Macbeth

Marin Shakespeare turns out a leather-clad version of the sinister, witchy, and Scottish mainstay of the Bard’s oeuvre as the closer in its 2002 season. Sept. 6-28 (call for specific dates and times). Forest Meadows Amphitheater, Grand Avenue and Acacia, Dominican University, San Rafael. $22 general; $20 senior; $12 18 and under. 415.499.4488. www.marinshakespeare.org.

Occidental Arts & Ecology Center

Learn how to enrich and simplify your life through the OAEC’s events and classes. Sept. 6-8, nationally renowned seed-saving expert Doug Gosling leads “Seed Saving: From Seed to Seed,” an intensive residential course. Sept. 13-15, “Creative Inspiration in Nature” shows how to draw inspiration from nature and become more expressive artistically. The one-day “Cooking from the Garden” on Sept. 22 takes you through the center’s garden and then into the kitchen to create a lunch and dinner. Sept. 28-Oct. 11, get a handle on the basics of sustainable living in “Permaculture Design.” On Sept. 8, the OAEC leads its Green Building Tour, with an emphasis on natural building elements and recycled materials. The Center invites the public for a tour on Sept. 15, or stop by for open house on Oct. 11. Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, 15290 Coleman Valley Road, Occidental. 707.874.1577. www.oaec.org.

Film Night in the Park

Summer’s niftiest film series, held on grassy knolls in various Marin County parks, stretches on into fall. It’s like a drive-in without the car! Which makes it more difficult to neck, as they say, but this is more for families than it is for horny teenagers. Films remaining in the series include Shrek, The Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, North by Northwest, The Parent Trap, Tootsie, and Chicken Run. Sept. 6-28. $5 adults; $2 children. 415.453.4333. www.filmnight.org.

Petaluma Art in the Park

Walnut Park gets arty for two days with many marvelous media by lots of local artists, with watercolor, oil, sculpture, ceramics . . . you know, all the regular stuff. Sick the kids on the playground, and get some of your holiday shopping out of the way. Sept. 7-8, 1-4pm. Walnut Park, Petaluma Boulevard and D Street, Petaluma. 707.769.0429. www.petaluma.org.

Napa Valley Open Studios Tour 2002

Tool around Napa Valley’s art scene and get an up-close look at artists in their natural habitat: their studios. Painters, sculptors, photographers, ceramists, and craftspeople alike throw open their doors to inquisitive tourists and locals. The Napa Valley Museum is hosting its Open Studios Tour Exhibition Sept. 13-Oct. 6 to showcase works by participating artists, so you can go and sneak a look before striking out. Sept. 28-29 and Oct. 5-6, 10am-5pm. Free. 707.257.2117.

Bring a Buddy

The “Bring a Buddy” workshop goes down in September when Guerneville artist Inya Laskowski gives participants a minitour of her “Western States Small Works” show. Then you and your buddy will embark on your own artwork. Buddies ages five to 105 are welcomed with open arms. $25 for you and buddy; $5 each additional buddy (limit four per group). Then take a few moments to visit the sculpture garden in the courtyard, where works by Ned Kahn and Edwin Hamilton will astound you. Saturday, Sept. 14, 2-4pm. Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. 707.527.0297. www.lbc.net.

Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival

After 46 years in the business, this festival has it down. Over 140 artists and craftspeople gather in the shade of Old Mill Park to show their wares. Music plies the ears, food and drink ply the stomach, art plies the eyes (and perhaps the wallet). Sept. 14-15. Old Mill Park, Mill Valley. 415.381.8090. www.mvfaf.org.

30th Annual Trade Feast

The Marin Museum of the American Indian hosts Trade Feast, an event grown out of a long-standing tradition of California indigenous peoples who gathered every year to exchange foods, tools, supplies, songs, stories, and dances. Trade Feast, which brings together contemporary and traditional artists, dancers, weavers, and many different tribes of Native Americans, deviates little from this pattern. Children’s activities include baking bread, beading necklaces, and playing traditional games. Munch down on fry bread and meet actor and artist Michael Horse, who has appeared in Twin Peaks and the 1980 remake of The Lone Ranger. Sept. 14-15. Miwok Park, 2200 S. Novato Blvd., Novato. $5. 415.897.4064. www.marinindian.com.

River Appreciation Festival 2002

Love your river at this benefit for the Friends of the Russian River’s Riverkeeper Project, the Environmental Center of Sonoma County, and the Russian River Environmental Forum. Come for a late summer afternoon at Hop Kiln Winery and hear guest speaker Rick Dove of the Waterkeeper Alliance. Suck back world-class wine and munch on barbecue, wander through informative booths, and bid on items in a silent auction. Sunday, Sept. 15, 3-6pm. Hop Kiln Winery, 6050 Westside Road, Healdsburg. $35. 707.578.0595.

Heritage Homes of Petaluma Biennial Tour

Experience Petaluma’s rich and diverse agricultural heritage (the berg was known as the “world’s egg basket,” yo) with the Heritage Homes of Petaluma Tour. Walk through a two-story Spanish revival and a miniature Tudor cottage, as well as other notable abodes in Petaluma’s historic downtown. Saturday, Sept. 15. $25 advance; $30 day of tour. 707.769.0429. www.petaluma.org.

San Francisco Comedy Competition

Hundreds audition, few are chosen. Only 30, to be exact. And even if it is called the San Francisco Comedy Competition, that does not mean it all happens there. Comedians who are actually funny go through six-minute sets, with celebrity judges scoring the results. This year the Napa Valley Opera House (Sept. 17, opening night), the Marin Civic Center (Sept. 20), and the Luther Burbank Center (Oct. 5) all host installments. www.sanfranciscocomedycompetition.com.

Sonoma County Book Fair

Book nerds, literati snobs, and nice, normal people who just plain like to read can congregate at the third annual Sonoma County Book Fair in Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square. Over 2,500 people attended last year to check out readings, vendors, and storytelling. Guest writers this year include Joelle Fraser, Dorothy Allison, Robert Mailer Anderson, and Sandro Meallet. Saturday, Sept. 21, 10am-3pm, Old Courthouse Square, Santa Rosa. 707.544.5913.

Sebastopol Sustainability Conference

The inaugural year for what could become an annual event, the Sustainability Conference and Festival aims to inform the community on the many aspects of sustainability. Speeches, booths, performances by poets and musicians, gardening demonstrations, an art exhibit, a sustainable film series, and workshops for all ages are slated for the festival. Those interested in pitching in with the creation of the festival are invited to show up each Sunday until the event in the Sebastopol Plaza from 1-2:30pm for a planning committee meeting. The Festival itself goes down on Sept. 21 with a benefit concert, and Sept. 22 with the conference. 707.829.7153.

Petaluma Poetry Walk

Walk and wax poetic in downtown Petaluma. Workshops, readings, neat storefronts to look at, and hella poetry! Sunday, Sept. 22, noon-8pm. Downtown Petaluma. Free. 707.769.0429.

Literary Arts: A Writer’s Sampler

Wielders of ye mighty pen, hone your noble craft with spirited, homework-free sessions with some of the area’s premiere instructors. Join writers Susan Bono, Daniel Coshnear, Robert Pimm, Michele Anna Jordan, John Fox, and Clara Rosemarda in helping focus your skills. Bring a pen and notebook and your wonderful little imagination. Mondays, Sept. 23-Oct. 28, 7-9pm. Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 6780 Depot St., Sebastopol. $15 per class; $65 for all six classes. 707.829.4797.

Art for Life Art Auction & Preview

The region’s finest contemporary artists come together and donate unique and beautiful works whose sale helps raise funds for Face to Face/Sonoma County AIDS Network. Since 1988, Art For Life not only has raised over $1 million for AIDS services to the community, but it has also provided a showcase for the Bay Area’s finest artists. Come by the auction preview to view all 250 submissions and plan your bidding strategy, then show up at the auction to see the action. Preview: Sept. 26-28, noon-5pm (noon-6pm, Sept. 27.) Free. Auction: Sept. 29, 2-6pm. $50. Friedman Center, 4676 Mayette Ave., Santa Rosa. 707.544.1581. www.f2f.org.

Camera Art 4 Photography Festival

Art photographers will share art, ideas, and philosophies with the community at the Camera Art 4 Festival, which welcomes all photographic media, including digital images and experimental forms. Guest speakers will be Amy Saret of the Saret Photographic Gallery in Sonoma, and John LeBaron, retired Santa Rosa Junior College professor. Sept. 28-29, 10am-5pm. Montgomery Village Court Mall, Santa Rosa. 707.539.1855.

Sausalito Floating Homes Tour

Nope, these are not houseboats: a floating home is a legally permitted structure with no means of self-propulsion that occupies a permanent berth (hey, you don’t gotta pay property tax with these things!). Float through this self-guided tour of 20 buoyant abodes. Featured are the “Train Wreck,” built from an antique Pullman car, and “Absolute Magic,” with two stories filled with the owners’ contemporary art collection. Docents will be floating about, too, to describe the history of these overlooked waterfront curiosities. Sunday, Sept. 29, 11am-4pm. $25. 415.332.1916. www.floatinghomes.org.

October

Sonoma County Harvest Fair

Pie, potbellied pigs, potted plants, painted pumpkins–Sonoma County residents enter a cornucopia of homemade and homegrown goodies at the Harvest Fair (and don’t worry, not all of them begin with p). A 10-K run, grape spit, pumpkin toss, craft boutique, and lovable livestock give an active person plenty to stay occupied. Entries close on Sept. 5, so if you want to participate and not just look, pick up a guide book soon (try a Sonoma County library). Oct. 4-5, Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Santa Rosa. $5 general; $2 children. 707.545.4203. www.harvestfair.org.

Savage Jazz Dance Company

The explosive, dynamic dance company led by artistic director Reginald Ray-Savage comes up from Oakland to perform Lullaby, set to the music of George Gershwin. A live jazz orchestra will perform with the company. Oct. 12-13. $21-$25. Spreckels Performing Arts Center, 5409 Snyder Lane, Rohnert Park. 707.588.3434. www.rpcity.org/performingarts.

ARTrails Open Studios Tour

Hit the road and scope out Sonoma County artists from the Russian River to Petaluma. You know the jig: get your map, jump in the car, hang out at a friendly artist’s studio, and nosh on crackers with Brie. Maybe you can even buy something. ARTrails’ opening reception gala gives you a chance to preview work of participating artists while you drink wine out of plastic cups and listen to live music. Ah, culture! Opening Night Gala: Friday, Oct. 4, 5-8pm. Old Town Furniture, 7th and Wilson streets, Santa Rosa. $5. ARTrails: Oct. 12-13 and Oct. 19-20, 10am-5pm. Free. 707.579.ARTS. www.artrails.org.

Di Rosa Preserve Director’s Cut Auction

Award-winning independent filmmaker Les Blank is documenting the di Rosa Preserve’s 2,000-work strong collection of Bay Area art through interviews and intuitive cinematography. To raise funds for both the preserve and Blank’s documentary, the preserve is holding “Director’s Cut,” a silent and live auction that marks the culmination of a special three-month exhibition. Enjoy dinner, dancing, and a 15-minute clip of Blank’s film-in-progress, Absolute Native Glory. Saturday, Oct. 12. Di Rosa Preserve, 5200 Carneros Highway, Napa. $150. 707.266.5991. www.dirosapreserve.org.

Santa Rosa Symphony

The Santa Rosa Symphony hits the big one (or a big one–75!) this year. Help the symphony celebrate harmonious longevity as its 2002-2003 season begins with a bang. Composer John Adams will guest conduct the symphony with his Century Rolls, with SRS conductor Jeffrey Kahane at the piano. Works by Copland and Rachmaninoff–plus preconcert dinners under a grand tent outside–add to the ambiance. October 12- 14. Luther Burbank Center Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. $30-$55. 707.546.8742. www.santarosasymphony.com.

Russian River Chamber Music

Join RRCM for its 11th season, with ensembles from Boston, Germany, Russia, and beyond. This year’s season kicks off with the Autyn Quartet, featuring Ukranian cellist Natalia Khoma for Schubert’s Quintet in C Minor. Saturday, Oct. 12, at 7:30pm. Healdsburg Community Church, 110 University, Healdsburg. Call for prices. 707.524.8700.

Halloween & Vine Original Folk Art Show

It’s all Halloween all the time at Madonna Estate Winery’s Folk Art Show, quite possibly the only exclusively Halloween-themed folk art show on the West Coast. Celebrate fall with spooky, folky stuff, and skilled folk artists. Saturday, Oct. 19, 9am-3pm, Madonna Estate Winery, 54000 Old Sonoma Road, Napa. 707.255.8864.

Halloween LesBiGay Comedy Night

Oooh! Scary lesbians! Threatening gay men! But combining humor with all that terror will lighten the mood, for sure. Suzanne Westenhoefer, a funny, funny lesbian, will make you scream–with laughter! She was the first lesbian to have her own HBO comedy special (eat that, Ellen) and has been seen at all the right places, including Comedy Central and The Roseanne Show. A costume contest with celebrity judges brings you, the audience, in on the action. Don’t forget your fangs! Oct. 25. Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road., Santa Rosa. $20-$35. 707.546.3600.

November

Poets Laureate

On Nov. 1, poetry comes to town. Famous poetry, that is. Poetry in the form of the two men who are considered tops in their field, the superstars of American letters. They are, of course, Billy Collins and Robert Hass, who have managed the herculean (and controversial) task of making poetry popular. At this Copperfield’s Books Readers Series event, these two titans of the word will wax lyrical on all matters. Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. 707.546.3600. www.lbc.net.

Marin Theatre Company

A ’50s hit musical with a score by Leonard Bernstein, Wonderful Town (Nov. 7- Dec. 8) follows two small-town Ohio girls as they cut loose in New York City. Also look for MTC’s January production, a world premiere Tennessee Williams play. Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley. 415.388.5208. www.marintheatre.org.

Janeane Garofalo

It’s that cute sneer that gets you, the idea that she’s right with you in thinking that most of the world exists in a state of complete absurdity. It’s her role to expose the absurdity. And she does, and it’s funny. Gen X’s favorite comedian, actress, and reluctant celebrity comes to the Luther Burbank Center to set you afire. Nov. 16, Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. 707.546.3600. www.lbc.net.

Shanghai Ballet

The acclaimed Shanghai Ballet tiptoes into town on Nov. 17 at the Marin Civic Center. The Chinese company, organized in 1979, performs classical and folk ballets. For this performance–its only in the Bay Area on this tour–the Shanghai Ballet will perform its much-lauded work The White-Haired Girl, a Maoist-period work adapted from the opera of the same name. Marin Center, 10 Avenue of Flags, San Rafael. $18-$45. 415.472.3500. www.marincenter.org.

From the August 22-28, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Burning Man

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Burning Man

B-Man Bylaws

The million commandments of radical self-expression

By Gretchen Giles

“Please keep in mind that you are responsible for yourself at all times in every regard once you enter Black Rock City. . . . Everyone is requested to help ensure our collective survival by following very simple rules relating to public safety and community well-being. Everyone is expected to abide by these standards. . . . Any violation of these requirements could result in ejection from the community.”

–Burning Man Survival Guide, 2002

Before reading any further, please take a moment to rehydrate yourself. That’s right, get a glass or a bottle of water and chug it. Wipe mouth. Repeat. Good, now you’re ready to contemplate living for a week with 25,000 other people on a high desert playa where temperatures swoop up to the occasional three figures and nary a spigot exists.

Burning Man is an outdoor temple to the concept of radical self-expression, but it is emphatically not an exercise in anarchy. Such radicalism is best attained through rigorous adherence to a rather lengthy set of rules and regulations governing behavior, comportment, and self-sufficiency. The Burning Man organization demands that you read their survival guide regardless of how many times you’ve been, and it truly offers more admonitions and tenets for behavior than any other outdoor festival you might ever attend. Those fogies who think that an announcement to avoid the bad acid that’s going around is too restrictive may wish to rethink this summer jaunt to the Nevada desert.

We hereby offer the Compleat Newbie’s Guide to Burning Man, a quick summation of what you will and won’t be doing during this week-long, art-drenched bacchanalia of free-thinking fun. Please do have another sip.

During your stay Aug. 26-Sept. 2 in the instant nation of Black Rock City, you may be purely nude or covered in body paint or draped solely in an obi you’ve fashioned from the flag of the former Czech Republic. Perhaps you’ll be moved to dress as a fetishist soccer player or pagan nun or New Age ancient mariner. There are seven full days to consider, and it’s your call.

You won’t, however, be sporting such little floaty bits as sequins, glitter, or feather boas. At Burning Man, such finery is filed under “trash, other people’s,” and your exploratory dress-up romp will earn you all-around censure and plenty of extra time grubbing about the playa trying to pick it all up again.

You will be wearing shoes with socks. Not just sandals and not bare feet, unless you’d like to get a rampant case of alkali dust chap more commonly known as “playa foot.” Pack some Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap to soak those dogs; it’s biodegradable and smells nice too. You should also have at least three pairs of clean, new, extra socks–over and above your ordinary sock needs–to give away or wear as you like.

Your dog will remain at home. So will your guns, your drug habit, and your occasional desire to engage in public sex acts.

Feeling a little cranky? Please pause and take another gulp of water.

If you have a menstrual period scheduled for the end of August, pack extra Zip-lock baggies. If you never intend to menstruate again or otherwise, pack extra Zip-lock baggies. If you know no one who knows no one who’s ever even menstruated once, pack extra Zip-lock baggies.

Perhaps for the first time in your life, you’ll be paying lavish attention to single-ply toilet paper. If you wish to be popular with thousands of new friends, you will often have single-ply toilet paper actually upon your person. Single-ply toilet paper will also be the single thing to accompany your exertions into the many problematic port-a-potties that ring the playa.

You won’t sell anything during your stay at Burning Man, nor will you purchase anything with ordinary U.S. currency beyond ice and espresso, the twin staffs of life. Bring the intangible or the useful–socks!–to utilize in the trade, barter, and gifting society you will be joining. Everything that you need to eat, drink, wear, make art with, listen to, read, and sleep on, in, or with will arrive with you. Every pull tab, bit of plastic, food waste, pork rind wrapper, ciggie butt, employed condom, magazine subscription card, and empty sunscreen bottle will depart with you.

Remember that if you give someone a watermelon, they will have to carry, store, eat, and dispose of the remains of said watermelon. Give them a poem or a massage or a kiss or a drink or a handful of sand and a piece of melon instead. Take their chewed rind and spitted seeds gratefully and put them into the compost pile you intend to bring home with you in a special, lidded, plastic garbage can that you’ve brought exactly for this purpose. Consider the brevity of seedless grapes.

If you smoke, carry an ashtray. If you eat, leave extra packaging at home. Recycle in Black Rock City, and have weighted or tied garbage bags–secured so that they can’t blow away–at the ready. Schedule two hours of free time during the lengthy exodus at the event’s conclusion to cheerfully help clean up the desert.

Don’t dump your trash in the nearby towns of Empire and Gerlach, because they can’t handle the influx. Giggle only in the privacy of your car, not in the town grocery store, upon realizing that Gerlach can be correctly pronounced as “Girl Lack.” Consider donating a daughter to that town in the future.

If your garage doesn’t contain an RV or trailer but your desires do, you will cover up the name of the rental company upon arrival. You won’t embarrass yourself and others by sporting a G*P T-shirt that screams its logo across your chest, nor will you wear the ubiquitous N**e check mark on your cap. Such items may be humbly turned inside out or discarded in strict favor of pagan nun gear.

Yet reverse snobbery is to be avoided at all costs. Should some hapless souls stroll misguidedly by clad in such T-shirts or caps, you will not scream obscenities at them or otherwise demean their essential humanity. You will instead offer them from your satchel an extra wimple woven from fresh reeds and sunflowers. Participation is everything, and even those seemingly wandering about in corporate symbols gawking at nekkid people may be subversively attempting an art you don’t know about. Ask.

(The sole exception to the “essential humanity” rule are ravers, who are universally shunned and detested. You, however, will strive to be kind even to them.)

Excuse yourself for a pee. Was it clear? Excellent. Have another sip.

Unless the Department of Mutant Vehicles has designated your vehicle an “art car,” it will remain parked for the entire length of your stay. Gifted people have at least two extra sets of car keys scattered somewhere where they can be easily retrieved. Those most intelligent of all simply keep their keys stored in the ignition, where they belong.

Your funky old cruiser bicycle is the best way to tour the many miles of shimmering Burning Man diaspora. String LED lights on the handlebars or invest in a cheap headlamp. Night biking will be your gig for the next week, and being able to see and be seen is a distinct advantage.

If your shelter is roped, flag those ropes with reflective tape. If your structure is held down with rebar, duct-tape soft Dubya dolls on the steel ends or cover them with liter bottles. Think ugly ankle gashes stinging with alkali dust. Think headlong bikes colliding with night-shrouded tent ropes.

This year’s nautical theme, the “Floating World,” demands that your math mind get a short workout. All directions are laid along the smarty-pants lines of latitude and longitude. Take a minute to figure this out, and save yourself the seasick stomach of someone who can’t find her way home again.

The politics of fire and water–yes, good reminder; please take a drink–are huge. Suffice it to say that neither should touch the playa floor. Fire may only be ignited on the many burn platforms erected for this purpose. And please pick up that fallen match.

Police officers of all denominations are among Burning Man’s bubbling crowd. Some of them will be undercover. They can and will arrest you if so inclined. Your tent, teepee, RV, or yurt, however, is your residence while in BRC, with all the civil rights and liberties–however rapidly devolving–of your residence at home. You do not have to allow entry. The Black Rock Rangers with their distinctive Burning Man symbol are volunteer mediators, not officers. Use them early and often to help diffuse potential problems with other Burners.

When packing, don’t forget your art, a hat, a good camping knife, extra batteries, rope, earplugs, sunscreen, Wet Wipes, warm and cool clothes, something to write with, Vitamin C hard candies, a first-aid kit, scarves, money for ice and coffee, and a well-prepared sense of forgiveness and wonder.

Because after you’ve settled in and adhered to the many, many rules designed to allow almost 30,000 people to be wholly free all at the same time, you’ll find that you can be too. But come on, please–have just one more sip.

Download the Burning Man Survival Guide from www.burningman.com.

From the August 22-28, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

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B-Man Bylaws The million commandments of radical self-expression By Gretchen Giles "Please keep in mind that you are responsible for yourself at all times in every regard once you enter Black Rock City. . . . Everyone is requested to help ensure our collective survival by following very simple rules relating...
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