Archived entries for
All About the Subtext
If you have the patience, the results are well worth it. Sitting in the exact same spot from where I listened to him lecture last year following the premier of Astra Taylor’s Zizek, on Sunday night, I spent two and a half hours watching the same Slovenian philosopher explain why movies matter.
A collaboration with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema isn’t as overtly transgressive as the title implies. What’s radical (hence ‘perverted’) about it is how Pervert simplifies a decidedly complex, psychoanalytic approach to interpreting films for a non-academic audience.
Replete with footage of Zizek in San Francisco (on city streets, standing by the Golden Gate Bridge, etc.) Pervert is also a curious study in the intersection of his career with the Bay Area. A fan of the many Hitchcock and Coppola dramas shot here, most of Zizek’s discussions of them ( The Birds, for example) were filmed in SF.
Worth noting is Pervert‘s sixties-style editing and visual detail. At times resembling an avant-garde documentary – imagine a vintage public television feature on Jean-Luc Godard hosted by Marshall McLuhan – Pervert is as stylistically rich as it is intellectually stimulating. Or, to put it simply, dope.
Commercial Break
If you live in San Francisco, and you like smart, genre-defying music, this gig is just for you.
A brilliant pairing of two of Europe’s most creative, dub-influenced producers, this promises to be one of the best local shows of the year.
For more information and tickets, click here.
California Orientalist
The mental health ploy had worked. She’d just gotten excused from her army service, and had come to the United States to go to art school. Standing in the kitchen of my old Richmond district apartment, K. [her pseudonym] sampled two versions of hummus: one from Trader Joe’s, the other from a local Armenian deli. "Oy, they’re horrible," she exclaimed. "However hard they try, Americans cannot make hummus."
Thus, the perennial refrain of most Israelis living in the Bay Area. And its true. In nearly every instance, American hummus is consistently terrible. Either there’s not enough tahina (or any), or for some reason, ingredients such as mayonnaise, cream and salt are present. Even the so-called ‘organic’ versions are offensive, oftentimes sporting vegetable flavorings. Imagine an exotic wheat paste sprinkled with paprika. That’s what it tastes like.
Though my Israeli house guest is long gone from San Francisco (she now lives in NYC), we finally have a restaurant where the hummus is competitive with the best that the Middle East has to offer. As good as anything I’ve had at Yafo’s Abu Hassan, or Akko’s Hummus Said, this hole in the wall, run by several wonderful guys from Jerusalem, has made the Bay Area a better place to live.
Located in the heart of SF’s Mission district, the unsurprisingly titled Old Jerusalem, serves another dish of equal significance: Salat Turki. A standard at most Israeli fast food places, try and find it in the US, and you’ll be totally disappointed. Though its not listed on the menu, it is indeed available, and it absolutely kills. A fifteen minute walk from our house, Jennifer and I eat at OJ at least once a week.
"Never trust an Israeli’s judgement of Arab food," a Kuwaiti graduate student friend once joked to me as we inhaled Turkish coffee together in Toronto. "They’re all one-dimensional orientalists." I thought about these hilarious, stinging words as a Lebanese colleague of mine worked his way through the hummus the other night during an editorial meeting we held at the restaurant.
"Bloody hell," he blustered as he dipped a thick piece of pita into the hummus. "This stuff is so good, you’d think they started this place just for us."
Long Live Independent Publishing
Have you ever read The New York Review of Magazines? In the new issue, there’s a great feature on the collapse of Indy Press Newsstand Services. Once the largest distributor of independent magazines in the US, ranging from Mother Jones, Harpers and ReadyMade to Punk Planet, Bitch and Tikkun, IPNS closed its doors at the end of 2006, leaving an enormous number of periodicals in serious financial crisis.
The article, Independent Publishing is Dead. Long Live Independent Publishing, covers an enormous amount of territory, talking to nearly all of the hardest-hit titles in the IPNS drama. My good friend, Punk Planet publisher Dan Sinker, is in brilliant form throughout, while former IPNS chief Richard Landry issues forth the expected. Tikkun’s former editors – Jo Ellen Green Kaiser & myself – are also included.
To read my initial reaction to the closure of IPNS, click here.
This is the Modern World
For anyone who watches BBC America with any degree of regularity, I’m sure you’ve seen the New York Times ad that runs towards the end of every week. A pitch for The Weekender, a Friday-Sunday discount subscription package, the presentation is truly seductive. Featuring a multiethnic array of attractive, hip adults (ages 27-40, I’d wager), even though the background music is annoying, the commercial makes an excellent case for buying a three day subscription to the ‘Times. Despite the fact that I’ve seen it over a hundred times, it still leaves me feeling positively predisposed towards the newspaper.
That is, until I read the Saturday edition. As Jennifer has noted time and time again, its always a little too thin. Nine times out of ten, compared to the rest of the week, there’s rarely a feature story that holds our interest. Looking over today’s paper, I had to agree with her. Even though there was one or two pieces that briefly caught my eye, nothing quite grabbed my attention as compared to the Sunday edition, which while like any news periodical, can be inconsistent, is always a bit more compelling.
Part of this I chalk up to the fact that there’s only so many days in a week that a daily newspaper can be half-way reasonable. And, part of this I attribute to the fact that American news media tends to focus on Sunday as its “big” day, when, as someone who has lived a fair amount of their life abroad, I am used to Friday and Saturday newspapers being the Sunday-equivalent for said periodical mass. Thus, for example, if I could buy the print edition of Friday’s Haaretz here in the US, I probably would. I’d read that well into Saturday, and likewise follow it up with Saturday’s edition of The Guardian. Sunday would be ‘Times day.
Though I could seek my fix out online every Saturday morning, my solution to this problem is to mix things up. Drinking my first cup of coffee, I watch a half-hour’s broadcast of the BBC news, followed by another thirty minutes of Mosaic, the daily aggregation of Middle Eastern television news offered by Link TV. Then, I follow it up with an initial perusal of the new issue of The Economist, which we receive in the mail every Friday afternoon. Between these media, I get the equivalent of a foreign weekend paper, and, for all intents and purposes, a respectable alternative to Saturday’s New York Times.
This is why, when fellow editors bemoan the falling circulation rates of established periodicals like the ‘Times, (“They’re all fleeing for the web!” or so the refrain goes) I tend to bristle. People aren’t necessarily fleeing any specific medium. For one reason or another (think of my rather exaggerated example here), they’re simply diversifying how they get their news and culture. With so many new choices, online, on TV, and in print (like the increasing US availability of UK periodicals), can you blame them?
I Heart Ms. Dynamite: Illa State Records Presents A Little Darker
He Loved Us, Too
My vinyl copy of Johnny Cash‘s now out of print 1969 account of his visit to the West Bank’s holy sites. Briefly reissued by Harmony records in the late nineties, right after Cash died in 2003, I investigated licensing it on behalf of my former label. From what I recall, the cost would have been far too prohibitive.
Needless to say, this thirty-eight year old half-spoken word, half-sung recording of Johnny & June getting off in places like the Garden of Gethsemane is at its peak of cultural relevance. Christian, Zionist, basking in the significance of Israel’s June ’67 victory, The Holy Land is in serious need of a critical revival.
Touch Me, I’m Sick
Yesterday morning, I woke up with a runny nose. As I pulled myself out of bed to make coffee, I began to sneeze. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, my sinuses felt like bricks had been stuffed inside them. Waiting for my coffee cup to fill up, I finally realized what was going on. I’d gotten a cold – the first one of the year.
Like most people, I have an established regime for dealing with these things. I dissolve an Airborne tablet in a small glass of water, and follow it up with Boiron’s Oscillo, numerous little white thingies that quickly melt on my tongue. Luckily we had both on hand, and by today, though not feeling absolutely fabulous, I’d dried up, so to speak.
Not surprised I fell ill. The last few weeks have been exceedingly rough for both of us. Running around Los Angeles for three days, attending a funeral, and doing all of the follow up emotional work has been hard. Factor in the traveling we’ve had to do down south and back, and voila. I’m looking forward to things slowing down a bit and becoming less serious.
Dub Me Healthy: King Tubby’s Special 1973-1976: King Tubby, The Observer Allstars & the Aggrovators.
Back in Black
We’re home. And already thinking about how we’re going to get out of bed tomorrow morning. Brazilian espresso, anyone? Its absolutely wonderful, makes a first-class crema, and only costs eight dollars a pound.
Word up to my homey Ron, who shouted me out today about the WBAI show getting posted. For folks interested in listening, click here. An MP3 will load up immediately, courtesy of the always amazing Doug Henwood.
I just listened to the program over dinner, and was really surprised that the background noise didn’t drown it the least bit out. Big up to the Bob Hope Airport intercom for being our friend.