Kenneth Cleaver

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Consumer Correspondent

Federal Bureau of Investigation J. Edgar Hoover Building 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

Dear FBI:

I am currently deep in pursuit of a delicious graduate student who considers herself subversive. Frankly, I have never understood the academic Marxist. They just can’t understand that the bourgeoisie will only tremble upon threat of having to read one of their interminable treatises. Common sense aside, I am in love and have been trying, with little success, to ingratiate myself with this woman through the following seditious behavior:

* Repeated violation of Starbucks’ “customers only” bathroom policy

* Abstinence from Hooters

* Viewing all the films of Susan Sarandon

* Public library membership

Rather than perform a radical stunt, I thought I might enlist your services. Might you create one of your famous dossiers chronicling my “career” as an insurgent? Perhaps more effective would be to stage a shakedown with a couple of your most intimidating agents. For her to witness me enduring state repression would do much for my plight without causing any threat to the global marketplace.

Recognizing that it is not good form to conceive a relationship through deceit, I ultimately feel that these actions are necessary and that history will render them “sweet,” possibly even “romantic.” I know that I am not cut out for the enemy-of-state lifestyle, but I am indeed suited for this woman.

Sincerely, Kenneth H. Cleaver

Dear Correspondent:

Because of current budget cuts and the large volume of mail received by the FBI, our resources will not permit us to individually answer each communication we receive. We have personally reviewed your communication, however, and have determined that it falls within . . . the following categories:

No violation within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI was identified.

Your material is being returned as it may be of further use to you.

John E. Collingwood Assistant Director Office of Public and Congressional Affairs

From the July 26-August 1, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Sonoma Museum of Visual Art’s Burning Man Exhibit

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Sonoma Museum of Visual Art’s Burning Man Exhibit

Local Commotion

By Marina Wolf

Like the wild art party that inspires it, the exhibit of Burning Man art at the Sonoma Museum of Visual Art is a little disconcerting. It transplants art created for the desert to a green lawn next to the hum and blur of Highway 101. It also strips away the debauchery, leaving works that are both challenging and . . . family friendly?

“This is out in community space,” acknowledges Gay Shelton, director of SMOVA, which is showing six works from Burning Man through July 28. “That community is a different community than Burning Man, and different from museum community. How do you create an intersection for these communities? That’s what this show attempts to do.”

In addition to a G-rating, Shelton and co-curator Sarah Stoller selected for aesthetic values and craftsmanship. But most important, they sought the Burning Man essence: participation. “As an artist, I don’t think you’ll ever get as good an audience as you get at Burning Man,” Shelton says, strolling past Byron Chell’s giant welded Playa Bells. “At an art show or museum, people kind of expect to go in and have it given to them. At Burning Man people expect to complete the piece.”

SMOVA’s Burning Man show–sponsored by the Northern California Bohemian–is the museum’s first totally outdoor exhibit, and a possible prototype for future Burning Man art exhibits outside the borders of Nevada’s Black Rock City. But Shelton is careful to specify that the event is not Burning Man.

“It’s not intended to be Burning Man,” says Shelton, who first visited Burning Man herself last year. “We simply wanted to create a container for this interactive art activity and bring it into the world. A lot of people are never going to go to Burning Man, but they can take a real ride on these works.”

SMOVA’s Burning Man Ignition Party takes place Saturday, July 28, from 6 to 11 p.m. The no-alcohol, family-oriented festivities include drumming, fire and snake dancing, and excerpts from the fire opera Prometheus’ Revenge. Admission is $10; people in costumes get in free. For exhibit info, call 707/527-0297.

From the July 26-August 1, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Spins

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MJQ reissues are timeless classics

By Greg Cahill

The Modern Jazz Quartet European Concert (Atlantic/Label M)

The Modern Jazz Quartet with Laurindo Almeida Collaboration (Atlantic/Label M)

In the past two years, death has silenced the phenomenal talent of three-quarters of the Modern Jazz Quartet, first drummer Connie Kay, then vibraphonist Milt Jackson, and most recently, pianist John Lewis. Their passing, after 50 years of creating some of the most influential and vibrant music of the jazz era, makes the reissue of these two classic albums all the more notable.

During the 1950s, when Miles Davis and John Coltrane were exploring the fringes of jazz with a sound that many found too demanding, MJQ lured listeners with a more structured approach that nonetheless required the group’s members reach new levels of improvisation. It’s a real blessing to have these albums, particularly the digitally remastered European Concert, recorded in Scandinavia in 1960 and considered by many to be MJQ’s finest recording. Despite the formality, the result is often soothing–as on Lewis’ composition “Vendome”–or hitting a hipster groove, as with the Hilton original “The Cylinder.” Ultimately, as these albums prove, their music was graceful, sometimes even delicate, frequently beautiful, and always stimulating, drifting on the ethereal sonics of Jackson’s peerless vibes playing.

Collaboration is less satisfying, though there are many fine moments and the album overall is an interesting melding of two cultures. It marked the first time that MJQ had worked with Brazilian guitarist Almeida–then a budding twentysomething wunderkind–and was recorded in 1964 at RCA’s Webster Hall in New York City. The project, originally intended for a performance at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival, is noteworthy because it moves beyond the bossa nova craze of that period to encompass a broad range of styles and compositions, from Bach’s “Fugue in A Minor” to Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “One Note Samba” to a trio of Lewis jazz compositions.

Kudos to Label M chief executive and former Atlantic producer Joel Dorn for doggedly pursuing the licensing for these two welcomed reissues.

From the July 26-August 1, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Open Mic

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Open Mic

Open Mic

Flower Power

SINCE I FIRST HEARD the news last week–a short, sad radio report announcing that activist and folksinger Mimi Farina had died of cancer at age 56–my mind has been drifting back, at odd moments, to the brief but unforgettable conversation I once had with the groundbreaking founder of Bread & Roses, the organization that brings music into the lives of prisoners and other people cut off from the mainstream of society.

It was January 1996. I’d called the Bread & Roses offices in Mill Valley to invite Farina to see the film Dead Man Walking, a true-life story about Sister Helen Prejean and her controversial friendship with a convicted killer marked for execution. The invitation was part of my ongoing project, a collection of taped conversations with interesting individuals, responding to the emotions and ideas within challenging movies. Farina graciously accepted.

After the film–through which she cried, openly–we took a walk along the streets of Mill Valley. Farina was determined to come up with an explanation for why people like Prejean–and herself–would turn their lives to the needs of others.

“When I look at the whole work of Bread & Roses–performing for convicts in prison, seniors who are isolated, children in kids’ wards who may never come back out again–I realize it comes from my deep, deep need to try and make some sort of community for them. Sister Helen does it by bringing them a sense of God,” she said. “I do it by bringing them music.”

“But what do you get out of it?” I asked.

“It’s not that tangible,” she replied, with a sigh. “It’s not the money, certainly. Bread & Roses is not driven by the bottom line.” She continued walking, musing silently before adding, “I think it’s just so I can rest within myself, within my soul. Also, sometimes, I know it’s so I have a place to be, that I’m proud of. And literally a place to go during the day, a place that I’ve created and that is meaningful to me.”

At that point she stopped. Smiling an enormous, face-brightening smile, Farina laughed. “Oh, I don’t know why I do this. And I’ve just decided that it doesn’t matter. Sister Helen says she didn’t know why she was doing what she did–and neither do I.

“I’m just thankful, so thankful, that I get to do it at all.”

From the July 26-August 1, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Startup.com’

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‘Startup.com’

Dotcom Dash

Flick traces rise and fall of website

By

EVEN IF YOU HATE dotcommers, you’ll love Startup.com, an intimate, harrowing documentary about the boom and bust of govWorks.com. In a way, it’s a two-character drama about govWorks.com’s founders: the hard-charging Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and his quieter pal from childhood, Thomas Herman, a reticent beta-male seemingly better with the technical side of affairs.

The film’s subjects are so closely observed, so open to the unobtrusive camera, that you soon forget they’re not actors. Co-director Jehane Noujaim was the college roommate of aggro but weirdly teddy-bearish Tuzman, and their friendship must count for the remarkable access the filmmakers had to the birth and death of this business. Tuzman is a supremely confident bodybuilder who tells his assembled employees that he never loses a fight (though we see him praying to Krishna when no one is looking except the camera).

Noujaim and directing partner Chris Hegedus, interviewed during their visit to the San Francisco International Film Festival, claimed that neither of them knew how long the dotcom roller-coaster ride would be.

“We thought they’d hit the IPO in six months,” Noujaim said, “and that we’d be following them to exotic places and swimming pools. But the first six months went by, and there we still were.”

The two filmmakers boiled down 400 hours of footage into about two hours. Far from being a round of parties and perks, the film shows the hours of work and desperation, the pale faces at the terminals. And we’re cheated of the sense of hubris coming home; govWorks.com does sound like a viable site. At least it sold something worthwhile–better access to city governments. Hegedus put it crisply, “It wasn’t Gesundheit.com.”

Eventually, Herman de-cides to blow off a mandatory weekend of work to visit his daughter (he’s apparently divorced). From Kaleil’s reaction, we see that this absence signals the growing wedge between them. Soon Herman is pushed to the quit-or-be-fired point.

The endgame scenes at govWorks.com are especially brutal. Herman, sick and shaken, looks like Death dressed down for casual Friday. (He wears a rainbow-colored sweatband on his skinny arm. The wristlet looks like someone’s perk-up gift to a terminal patient.)

GovWorks.com hired and fired more than 100 people at its offices in New York and Burlingame. Its peak burn rate was a million dollars a month. However, Startup.com makes the breakup of the partnership between Kaleil and Herman seem like the hugest loss of all.

Startup.com, like the similarly themed but radically different The Center of the World, serves as a kind of obituary for a manic era. It was a time that affected everyone in the Bay Area–those who rose with the tide and those who simply drowned. Sometimes even the filmmakers were surprised at the local hostility–Hegedus often faced difficulty getting labor from San Francisco: “People told me, ‘I’m not sure I want to film dotcommers,’ ” he has noted

Admittedly the dotcommers were straw men and women who took the blame for the gouging by opportunistic merchants and landlords. And they did bring jobs to California.

Yeah, so did the conquistadors. But watching both Herman’s vulnerability and Tuzman’s bluff front allows one to feel something novel–a sense of sympathy for the absurd grandness of a dream stretched out in the dust today.

‘Startup.com’ screens at Rialto Cinemas Lakeside, |551 Summerfield Road, Santa Rosa. For details, see , or call 707/525-4840.

From the July 26-August 1, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Burning Man

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Burning Man

Revel without a Cause

Blinded by brilliant chaos at Burning Man

By Marina Wolf

IT WAS MY FIRST night behind the counter at the all-night cafe. In three short hours I had seen a lot, but not enough to prepare me for the blonde man’s simple question. “Will you give me a latte if I stick this steak knife up my nose?”

That’s the kind of place it is, the cafe at the center of Burning Man, the now-legendary outsider arts romp and bonfire that pitches camp in Black Rock Desert, Nev., every summer. In 1999, my first year, I worked at the cafe in exchange for my ticket. It was a matter of finances. But the cafe quickly became my benchmark for craziness amid the brilliant chaos of Burning Man.

Like the time we were held up. The group blocked the counter, their faces masked by bandannas. “Taking money goes against the fundamental spirit of Burning Man,” yelled the leader at the line of bleary-eyed humanity that snaked out of the tent. “No money at Burning Man!”

The barrista, a laconic young man with fast hands and a slow smile, leaned over the counter. “What are your demands?”

The leader rambled on for a few minutes about liberating Black Rock City from the oppressive system of money-based monopoly, but then stopped and said, “We’ll come back tomorrow and perform on our unicycles if you give us a gallon of chai mix.” A jug of chai was passed across the counter, and the band of coffeehouse bandits melted away.

Burned Out? Has Burning Man sold out?

Local Commotion: SMOVA hosts an exhibit of Burning Man art.

The guerrilla girl was basically right: other than the admission fee, cafe drinks, and ice–which is sold to benefit neighboring towns–there is no commerce at Burning Man. But there are other ways to get what you need out here in the desert. One camp barters with pancake breakfasts, and its parameters for exchange are pretty loose. I watched one hungry gentleman wrestle with an inflatable sex doll for a short stack.

However you get your pancakes, Burning Man organizers are adamant on one point: no spectating. It bothered me mightily that first year. No matter how deftly I handed out change, I couldn’t delude myself that serving coffee was art. Then I saw my chance to break through the veil, a traveling bar that drew photographers like flies to a porta-potty. Clueless voyeurs were grabbed by a dominatrix and brought to face the tipsy tribunal. “SING, DANCE, OR DROP YOUR PANTS!” they roared. Hoping to avoid the humiliating prologue, I walked up to the hostess in leatherette and offered to sing “Happy Birthday to You” in Russian. In return I got a paper cup of vodka and cranberry juice and some weak applause. Didn’t matter. I had officially, through a megaphone, participated.

For this year’s festival (which starts Aug. 27), I’m hooking up with a woman from Southern California who’s creating a temple to the snake goddess, complete with snakes. Whatever. I just want to dance. The woman says choreographed performances are rare, and I think she’s right. Most of Burning Man is an unscripted, uncensored funhouse, full of flame twirlers and croquet lawns and titty bars and adult-sized teeter-totters.

OF ALL THE ARTS, sculpture and assemblage are best represented, with artists from around the world using anything from cow bones to scrap metal to state-of-the-art computer light displays. Everything manmade stands out as though in a spotlight; the desert is an excellent backdrop, blank and unblinking and dusty as hell.

Of course, it takes a lot of work to live and make art in the desert. Labyrinths and geodesic thunderdomes and espresso drinks for 30,000 people are incredibly labor-intensive enterprises. By necessity, Burning Man is an experiment in various levels of community and collaboration. With more than 70 volunteers, the cafe community is loose but lavish with perks: a clean porta-potty, free java, and even free ice from time to time. The ice man took a fancy to me; once, when I was fighting a sore throat, he gave me half of his mango. Now that’s community. Or maybe just lechery. I’m still not sure.

The mango was a rare treat. Fruit doesn’t last long in the desert; the hot wind sucks the juice out of everything. People dress for the heat differently. I went for total coverage (the drag queens next door called me Nanook of the Desert), in contrast to my friend, a naked, green-glittered cowboy who busted through every open outhouse door we passed and shot his special-effects ray gun at the people who forgot to lock behind themselves. “They won’t forget again,” he said, pushing back his hat and ambling on.

That’s about the only enforcement of law or public decency that I’ve seen at Burning Man. People have the right to be as flamboyantly foolish as they like here. Which brings me back to the man with the steak knife.

While the line behind him crowded around, he licked the blade of the knife, tilted his head back and slowly, carefully inserted the blade up his nose to the hilt. The crowd gasped, and I turned to my co-worker as the knife sniffer removed the knife and began flossing his nasal cavity through his mouth. “Give that man a latte,” I murmured. “Make it a triple.”

Burning Man runs from Aug. 27 to Sept. 3 at Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Tickets are now $200. For details, 415/TO-FLAME.

From the July 26-August 1, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Bush-Bashing Websites

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Bush-Bashing Websites

Anti-Bush Majority

The Internet abounds with Bush-bashing websites

By Tamara Straus

ACCORDING to a Fox News poll taken in late June, 58 percent of Americans are still angry about the 2000 presidential election. That’s Fox News, TV’s most conservative network. And that’s June, more than six months after the Supreme Court handed over the presidency to George W. Bush.

Polls often aren’t reliable. They can be easily manipulated. But a 58 percent anger rating among Americans toward an election that has widely been called a stolen election, an illegitimate election, and an undemocratic election feels right. Americans who reside in the blue states, to put it bluntly, are pissed.

Still, there has been very little press attention on anger about the Florida ballot debacle. No major news documentaries have been made on the subject. A senior producer at Frontline proposed one this spring, but supposedly it was shelved because “there was no story” in it. (However, Globalvision, the New York-based independent media company, is completing an investigative film, Counting on Democracy, that will likely go to the underbelly of the Florida election.)

The corporate-owned media also have been working extra hard to avoid the subject. Only the briefest coverage was given to the June Civil Rights Commission report on the election, which found, among other voting disasters, that black voters’ ballots were 10 times more likely to be thrown out than those of white voters.

Log onto the Web, though, and type “anti-Bush,” and you will be faced with a different vision of American public opinion. There are now approximately 800 sites whose mission is to analyze, attack, and especially ridicule the 43rd president of the United States. Anti-Bush websites may not be visited by all the Americans of the Fox News poll, but they do show that the Internet has become home to the largest, most underreported political coalition in the United States–what I call the anti-Bushies.

FIRST STOP on the anti-Bushie Web tour should be Anti-Bush.com. There you will find links to hundreds of sites that not only give in-depth accounts of Dubya’s past and current dealings (often barely reported by the mainstream press), but offer information about protests, letter-writing campaigns, and strategies to “take back the dark night of American politics.”

Or go to Hated.com, another top anti-Bush hub, whose tag line is “The Will of the People vs. the Never-Elected President,” and from there embarks on what amounts to a cathartic online journey for those who loathe the president. Sites of this sort include GoBackToTexas.com, BushonCrack.com, and LickBush-2000.com, the last of which seeks to put “racy back in democracy.”

What’s amazing about anti-Bush websites is not just their sophomoric humor but the steadfastness with which some follow the president. BushReport.com, for example, offers on a daily basis 20 to 40 “handmade, linked headlines” on any gaffe or guarantee the president makes. And there are a few more, such as DemocraticUnderground.com and Democrats.com, which not only aim to skewer Bush but do so in a sophisticated, hard-news fashion, with tiny staffs who often get no pay. The editors of these sites say they receive on average 200,000 monthly visits.

Why is the readership of these 1- or 2-year-old zines so high? Well, according to the editor of BartCop.com, one of the most irreverent anti-Bush sites, it’s because “people can’t believe the media [are] giving Bush such a free ride.”

David Allen, the editor of DemocraticUnderground.com, also says he is fueled by anger at the press, which he argues is one of the reasons anti-Bush websites are so acerbic. “At first we were typical liberals,” says Allen, “bent on being fair and understanding the opposition’s point of view. But then we said to ourselves: ‘Why should we, when they don’t bother to understand ours?’ ” Democratic Underground’s most popular feature is a weekly column called “The Top 10 Conservative Idiots,” which Allen says is a joy to publish.

Allen is in a good company among those who “get a guilty pleasure” from bashing Bush. I spoke to one woman who lives in a gated community in North Carolina who said that the maintenance of her site, BushIsNotPresident.com, is pure therapy. “It’s so satisfying,” says Kim (who asked her last name be withheld). “I’ve gotten so much e-mail thanking me for my work, which means a lot since I live in an area where there isn’t much outrage against the administration.”

Are the anti-Bushies, then, just a disconnected coterie of angry, tech-oriented liberals? Not so, according to Bob Fertik, editor of Democrats.com, a daily news service and grassroots networking organization. Fertik argues that websites critical of Bush, and the people who are drawn to them, are just one manifestation of the “tremendous anger and frustration felt by an enormous [number] of Americans” toward the White House.

“You have to realize that every place Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Reinquist, and Scalia have gone, there [have been] protests,” he says. “And none of these protests have received the slightest media coverage.”

Fertik argues that the websites, the protests, or any actions or opinions that are highly critical of Bush’s policies are “systematically denied by the mainstream media.”

ANTI-BUSH sites did have a very small day in the media sun in May. Tipped off that he was being eviscerated on the Web, Bush filed a legal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against the creators of the satirical gwbush.com. And, in an attempt to quash the cyber-rebellion, Karl Rove, Bush’s White House adviser, used his Karl Rove & Company to buy up 57 anti-Bush domain names.

The result: no FCC lawsuit but 6 million visits to gwbush.com and only 30,000 to Bush’s official site. Now when you go to Karl Rove & Company’s BushSux.com or BushBites.com, you are redirected (for an even greater joke) to the placid Bush site. Go anywhere else on the anti-Bush cyber-realm, though, and you get “600 pages of documented lies,” “T-Shirts That Tell the Truth,” and an encyclopedia of Bushisms with hourly additions.

The desire to bash Bush and to read such bashing has also been good for all manner of progressive publications, which have seen their readership increase with every new article damning Dubya. AlterNet.org’s lead story in June was “Bush Speak: An Interview with Mark Crispin Miller,” who also has been enjoying hearty sales of his book The Bush Dyslexicon. The Nation, The American Prospect, and The Progressive assault Bush at every turn. Salon.com can’t seem to get enough of Bush bashing. Its new section, , was conceived of as a journalistically pleasurable moneymaker.

Explains Gary Kamiya, Salon‘s executive editor, “We launched Bushed! because it was just too painful to suffer through the term of this reactionary bumbler in silence, and because we suspected that there were many people across this great country who would pay money to see a whoopee cushion placed under him on a daily or even hourly basis.

“That money would allow us, in Bush’s words, to put food on our family.”

IT IS NOT CLEAR that Salon is putting food on its family by asking its readers to pay for its Bushed! rabble-rousing. Nor does anyone know how many anti-Bushies are out there, or if they even vote. But given the amount of time and energy being expended on sites blasting Bush and the fact that the lead ones have received millions of visitors, there is no doubt that the Internet has replaced the soapbox for left-wing Americans.

“Naturally, Bush websites could not exist without two ingredients, Bush and the Internet,” offers Jerry Politex, editor of BushWatch.com.

“If Bush has not been selected as our president by the Supreme Court, there would be no need for Bush sites. If the Internet did not exist, we would be passing out broadsheets about Bush on street corners.”

But imagine if all the anti-Bush messages went beyond the confines of cyberspace. Imagine if they were echoed by the networks and written about in the mainstream dailies. Then the anti-Bushies would be considered an unavoidable political group.

In fact, a majority coalition in an era of apathy toward politics.

From the July 26-August 1, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘My Little Blue Dress’

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‘My Little Blue Dress’

‘My Little Blue Dress’ remembers a wild life that never was

By Sophie Annan

BRUNO MADDOX revived the satirical Spy magazine to “within spitting distance of its former glory” but then “accidentally drove it out of business,” as the author’s note on his latest book explains. But that adventure still left the young English writer the entire spectrum of 20th-century literature to spoof, and he does so hilariously in My Little Blue Dress (Viking; $24.95).

This bogus memoir of a 100-year-old Englishwoman dying in New York’s Chinatown isn’t entirely a joke. Maddox explores the opportunities for 20-somethings in a world where “[h]istory has ended and we don’t need people to have fixed identities anymore because the world is now finished, there’s nothing more that needs doing.”

If you don’t get the joke from the cover, which evokes self-published memoirs by people you’ve never heard of, or from the contents page, “1910-1919-Puberty + War: knits blue dress to kill time while deflowerer is away at war,” you surely will by page 19, when the 5-year-old narrator tells a panel of rustic May Queen judges “a community is a great deal more than just a bunch of people ‘oose ‘ouses are quite close by each other, it’s . . . it’s an organism.” Right. That’s just how you’d expect a tot in an English village to speak in 1905.

You should be chortling long before you hit the first batch of the author’s bold-faced notes to self: “thirties, thirties, thirties, come on THINK.” If not, you might be happier reading a different book.

The fictional Bruno Maddox, desperately trying to fake the memoir of a woman born on Jan. 1, 1900, is a self-obsessed young man in search of fortune, fame, attention-getting outfits, and a creative project with an irresistible gimmick.

As the reputed 100-year-old narrator moves from decade to decade, she drifts into literary styles from D. H. Lawrence to Anaïs Nin, Hemingway, and more. Of course, she’s not really writing this, you remember, and the fictional Maddox knows next to nothing about history, and less than nothing about women. So, in the ’30s we find our heroine hidden away as a reclusive, Mary Poppins-style nanny: “Beyond the playroom windows, the nineteen thirties were whizzing by without entangling me one iota in their complexity.”

In an early romance, she constantly sidesteps her lover’s whimpers that they need to talk about the relationship. Later, in Paris, she becomes a lesbian, since the author does know something about being attracted to women.

It’s a brilliant send-up, not just of literary styles, but of lifestyles: the post-WWI artistic stampede to Paris, the tidal wave of appliances in ’50s America, Andy Warhol, hippies, the money dances of the ’80s and ’90s.

It all starts because the fictional Bruno stumbles into caring (well, sort of) for his dying neighbor in a very nasty cheap apartment. He soon discovers a contract for her memoir–a million-dollar contract, with an imminent deadline. Thus the mad dash to write something for which he is totally unequipped.

Along the way, he worries about himself–is he suffering from the burnout of Caregiver Syndrome? No danger there. He feeds his charge a bowl of guacamole for supper and disappears for days at a time, pursuing his nonexistent career and a probationary girlfriend.

The two young/old male/female voices blend eerily, until finally it’s tricky to know which mind is speaking–or to interpret the note that it was “stupid stupid stupid” to kill the old woman.

Are we to take this literally? Or is killing the old woman a metaphor for abandoning old values, hard-won life lessons? With the macabre joke, is Maddox telling us that history and old folks have something to offer the trendy young?

From the July 26-August 1, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Riders in the Sky

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Riders in the Sky

Fair Play

Cowboy chaos from Riders in the Sky

CHAOS IS a cowboy’s best friend. At least it is if the cowboy is Ranger Doug, the guitar-strumming frontman for the Riders in the Sky, arguably America’s strangest assemblage of singing cowboys.

“Chaos,” proposes Ranger Doug, “is a lot more interesting–and theatrical–than are calmness and order. So I like a little chaos now and then.”

That explains a few things. Riders in the Sky have a well-earned reputation for wild live shows in which the unexpected can and does happen. These cowboys are chaos junkies.

Currently enjoying a surge in popularity because of their kitschy contributions to the Toy Story 2 soundtrack, the Nashville-based Riders are also celebrating their first Grammy, picked up for the spiffy spinoff CD Woody’s Roundup Featuring Riders in the Sky.

Together for 25 years, the team of Ranger Doug, Woody Paul, Too Slim–with the recent addition of Joey the Cow-Polka King–have won themselves a devoted audience. Fans are attracted to the group’s melodious western harmonies and the goofball cowboy-shtick they’ve built around original tunes like How the Yodel Was Born and such classics as Tumbling Tumbleweeds, Rawhide–and, of course, Ghost Riders in the Sky.

Riders in the Sky routinely perform in classy, predictable places like theaters and concert halls. But Ranger Doug admits that the band members’ need for unpredictability is what steers them toward doing so many outdoor shows at big county fairs.

“We like fairs,” Ranger Doug says, talking on the phone from Ojai, where they’ve just performed, “mainly because we like the atmosphere.

“Sure, you don’t have the kind of devoted attention you get in a theater show, where people have paid a hard ticket to see you, and they’re hanging on to your every word,” he continues. “But you gain all that wonderful activity, things going on all around you.”

As an example, he mentions a recent show at a fair in Placerville, where the Riders found themselves performing right next to a bungee-jumping attraction. “Regular as clockwork,” Ranger Doug recalls, “about the middle of every song, there was some new person up there going, ‘Oh, ah, oooh, ah . . . . AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!’ as they’d leap off and plummet through the air. . . . We see stuff like that as an opportunity. So we worked it into the act.”

Riders will be bringing a little of that patented cowboy chaos to the North Bay on Aug. 2, when the group performs at the Sonoma County Fair for the second time. “For a fair show, with a family audience, naturally we’re going to tone down the double-entendres a little,” Ranger Doug says. “But it’s not like the show’s laden with them anyway.”

Oh no? What about the time that Woody’s onstage science experiment–he electrified a dill pickle using two forks duct-taped to an extension cord–resulted in an escalating barrage of fried-pickle jokes? “Gettin’ your pickle fried on a Saturday night,” observed Too Slim. “Now that’s the Cowboy Way!”

The episode culminated in the spontaneous onstage appearance of a woman who sagaciously sucked a large dill pickle while Ranger Doug heroically attempted to finish the gentle love song he’d just begun.

“Well, yeah, there was that time,” Ranger Doug allows with a lengthy chuckle. “Sometimes we even surprise ourselves.”

There may be more surprises in store for the Riders. When animator Chuck Jones and Looneytoons.com launch the new Web-only cartoon series called Thomas T. Timberwolf, the group will be heard singing the cartoon’s bouncy theme song. Are the Riders poised to become the new Theme Song Kings?

“That’s not such a bad thing, is it?” Ranger Doug replies happily. “It wouldn’t break my heart.” At the very least, it might pack the fair audiences with chaos-loving cartoon fans.

“And that,” says Ranger Doug, “can only be good for the show.”

Riders in the Sky perform Thursday, Aug. 2, at 6 and 8 p.m. at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, 1350 Bennett Valley Road, Santa Rosa. Free with fair admission; reserved seats are $7. 707/545-4200.

From the July 26-August 1, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Wine and Fast Food

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Wine and Fast Food

Dirty Dozen

What goes best with Krispy Kreme donuts? Wine pairings for the real world

By Bob Johnson

AS THE PACE of life continues to accelerate, and we seek to strike a balance between our professional and personal endeavors, we find ourselves shopping on the fly and eating on the run. We have become less concerned with what we put in our bodies than in getting the meal over with and moving on to our next computing class, conference call, or soccer practice. We have become a nation of junk-food junkies. As tech stocks nose-dive, Krispy Kreme skyrockets.

Yet even as we sacrifice quality for convenience, we still seek to embrace elements of the “good life.” We want it all, but getting it is restricted by the ticking clock and the deduction-decimated paycheck. Which brings us to the burning culinary question of the day: Is it possible to match junk food with wine? The short answer: Yes. And to prove it, we’ve put together a Dirty Dozen list of palate-pleasing, time-conserving pairings–a smorgasbord of name-brand and generic junk-food dishes, each accompanied by an appropriate wine selection. We present this list countdown style, with apologies to David Letterman, Casey Kasem, and NASA (not to mention anyone who ever has appeared on the Food Network). . . .

McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese Tell ’em to hold the cheese, and you’ll not get not only a look of confusion and mild panic as your order taker searches for the appropriate button on his cash register keypad, but a burger that actually tastes more like beef than assorted condiments. Wine match: cabernet sauvignon. Dependable (and affordable) brands: Estancia, Markham, Huntington.

McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish As the world’s leading purveyor of junk food, Mickey D’s merits two spots on our “Dirty Dozen” list. Even though the “filet” is smothered in tartar sauce and topped with a slice of cheese (must McDonald’s put cheese on everything?), a mild white fish flavor manages to emerge. Wine match: sauvignon blanc. Brands: Dry Creek, Meridian, Firestone.

Starbucks Maple-Oat Scone Not only does the McDonald’s of coffeehouses have the market cornered on brewed beverages; it also is a leading purveyor of pastries. And even though the Maple-Oat Scone is normally consumed with a Caramel Macchiato or decaf Sumatra, this calorie-intensive snack also can be vino friendly. Wine match: muscat canelli. Brands: Benziger, Callaway, Lava Cap.

Jack in the Box Apple Turnover Often overlooked on Jack’s dessert menu, this flaky pastry actually tastes like apples. Wine match: fruit-forward chardonnay. Brands: Alice White, Santa Julia, Chateau Souverain.

Popcorn Specifically, the kind you purchase in movie theaters for about $49 an ounce, soaked in melted butter or facsimile. Wine match: “California” chardonnay. Brands: almost anything you’d care/dare to pull off the supermarket shelf. Purchasing tip: look for the words “malolactic fermentation” on the back label.

Arby’s Original Roast Beef Sandwich (Plain) Please hold the Arby’s and Horsey sauces. Although still many moons away, this sandwich is about as close as you can get to prime rib in a fast-food establishment. Wine match: pinot noir. Brands: Armida, Saintsbury, Schug.

Sweet-and-sour chicken (or pork or shrimp) Regardless of what it smothers, a sweet-and-sour sauce dominates the flavor of the dish. This calls for a slightly sweet (off-dry) liquid companion. Wine match: chenin blanc. Brands: Pine Ridge, Milat, Barton & Guestier (Vouvray).

Mrs. Field’s milk chocolate chip cookie Soft and gooey when just out of the oven, the milk chocolate morsels melt in your hands–the antithesis of M&M’s. That leaves plenty of room in your mouth for an accompanying liquid elixir. Wine match: port. Brands: Prager, Ficklin, J. Filippi.

KFC Original Recipe Chicken Has anyone ever figured out exactly which 11 herbs and spices the Colonel concocted for the crust of his fried chicken? No matter. When spices dominate the flavor of the fowl, there is an absolutely perfect wine for which to reach. Wine match: Gewürztraminer. Brands: Husch, Navarro, Mill Creek.

Carl’s Jr. Western bacon cheeseburger Its zesty sauce and pair of onion rings make this the fast-food version of a backyard barbecue. Both the sauce and the way the beef is cooked–charbroiled–call for a wine with lots of fruit and spice. Wine match: zinfandel. Brands: Sausal, Mayo, Quivira. (Note: When you add mayonnaise to the Western bacon cheeseburger, you create perhaps the greatest menu item in fast-food history. The mayo mellows out the barbecue sauce, and that calls for a wine with a similarly mellow profile: merlot. Brands: Ferrari-Carano, Blackstone, Niebaum-Coppola.)

Pepperoni pizza Here is the fast-food choice that has become the last-minute dinner staple of countless families, not to mention a worthy substitute for popcorn on a stay-at-home Blockbuster night. While it matches nicely with “real” zinfandel (the red stuff), we’ve found it to be even more enjoyable next to a chilled glass. Wine match: white zinfandel. Brands: Shenandoah, DeLoach, Sutter Home.

Rice cakes Man, it would have been a hoot to sit in on the concept meeting that produced this suddenly red-hot, and just as suddenly ice-cold, snack. “Let’s create a new product: no calories, no fat, no flavor!” It was like selling air. P. T. Barnum would have been proud. Wine match: you name it! Because rice cakes possess no flavor, you can pop the cork on any wine you want, red or white, dry or sweet, still or sparkling. Anything goes. And in the world of wine and food matching, that makes the rice cake the ultimate junk food.

From the July 26-August 1, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

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