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5.21.05 turn right at greenland

The last time I visited Stockholm was in 1999, and yet I expect it to stay exactly the same, like some Nordic Brigadoon. I was shocked when my favorite pizza place, which has been around for decades, had a new logo and a new menu. And the pizza wasn't bad, but it was... different. Here I had been looking forward to it, only to discover that it's only about a tenth as good as Gioia's in Berkeley. I shall have to find a new place sometime in the next nine days, before I go home.

At least there is the Eurovision Song Contest, which is always reassuringly inane yet fabulously entertaining. An astonishing 39 countries (for the purposes of Eurovision, Israel and Russia, among others, qualify as "European") compete in an event which merits Super Bowl-level coverage in Sweden. The songs tend to be either soggy Celine Dion-style power ballads or glittery Eurodisco, with the odd ringer (this year's Norwegian entry, by the group Wig Wam, is a retro slice of hair metal that sounds way too much like Bon Jovi circa 1982).

The Swedish press has trumpeted banner headlines for days now about the national champ, Martin Stenmarck. Everyone seems convinced that he has no chance of winning (Greece is favored). Random celebrities are interviewed; "I think we'll come in twelfth. The song isn't catchy enough," said one. Martin's song, "Las Vegas," features lyrics like, "I'm leaving with a million dollar smile/ The hotel manager can check my file/ Fred the limo driver's asking polite/ 'Leaving Las Vegas tonight?'" Personally, I'm rooting for Moldavia's entry, Zdob si Zdub, an Eastern bloc Red Hot Chili Peppers knockoff whose song title translates as "Grandma Bangs the Drum." The best part is that there's a real live rosy-cheeked grandma on stage with them, sitting in a rocking chair, and -- you guessed it -- banging on a huge drum. (Presentation is all-important in this contest, which is decided by viewers' phone-in votes; nearly all of the female singers sport impossibly low-cut dresses.)

I'm not quite sure if Eurovision is supposed to be taken seriously. The Swedish papers' music critics fill pages with hilariously snarky commentary ("About as cool as your mother break-dancing in front of your friends," wrote one about a Spice Girls knock-off that didn't make it to tonight's finals). Despite the high production values, there's something almost lovably amateurish about the whole enterprise. Last year's winner was from Ukraine, so that country is hosting this year's contest; every time the unibrowed male and hyperenthusiastic female Ukrainian TV presenters come on screen, all I can think about is how easily Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph could impersonate them on "Saturday Night Live."

Catch Eurovision fever at eurovision.tv.

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5.15.05 foggy

As I mentioned in the last entry, I was considering "rebranding" this blog with a catchy name/identity. During another bout of midnight mental wandering, I came up with what I thought was a great name: Blog in the Fog, A Journal of Bay Area Arts & Culture. I could use a cool photo of the San Francisco skyline blanketed in fog!

Then I Googled "Blog in the Fog," and it turns out someone else has beaten me to it. Of course, it's rather different from my blog.

Sample from "Blog in the Fog": "Well, an era has passed with the passing of this giant, known as Pope John Paull II (sic). Words truly fail me when I try and convey what I feel and think about it all."

Sample from me: "The film is a must for [Peter] Sarsgaard fans... it is the second movie in a row (after 'Kinsey') where the actor drops trou for a homosexual love scene."

Sample from "BitF": "For those of you who are interested in software to assist you in the task of biblical exegesis, here is a review I wrote of BibleWorks 6.0, which is a really, really good program!"

Sample from me: "We learn about Charlotte's introduction to women's clothing, encouraged by a lesbian aunt..."

Sample from "BitF": "You have to hand to those Walmartians... they're on top of the game in spreading their gospel around the world! China is grooving in big time to the tune of the smileyface. This is American brilliance at it's (sic) finest."

Yes, I don't believe anyone would ever get the two of us confused. Nevertheless, I think I'll leave the title to him.

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5.13.05 more short attention span

• "Kill Reality": "Reality Stars: love 'em , hate 'em or want to kill 'em? Only E!'s new series, 'Kill Reality,' will let you do it all. This behind-the-scenes series captures the dramatic tension that arises when you give reality stars what they really want... the chance to ACT." Features former cast members from "Survivor," "Joe Millionaire," "The Real World," etc. But what if they don't want to act -- say, they'd rather participate in goofy athletic contests? Can they still be humiliated on national television?
• "Battle of the Network Reality TV Stars": I'm ancient enough to remember the original "Battle of the Network Stars," in which Howard Cosell hosted relay races, tug-of-war, etc. featuring the likes of Scott Baio, Jamie Farr, Kristy McNichol and Gabe Kaplan. The Bravo press release for "Reality TV Stars" promises Richard Hatch and Omarosa. This is not an improvement.
• "Hit Me Baby One More Time": "You loved them 'then,' but will you love them now? Hitmakers from the past take the stage in a new competition in which you're the judge! Former Top Ten artists return to perform their trademark hit song along with one of today's current hits. The audience decides which 'veteran hit maker' deserves a second chance in the limelight!" Didn't VH1's "Bands Reunited" and "Where Are They Now?" thoroughly mine this territory? Are there any has-beens who haven't been overexposed lately?
• "Dancing With the Stars": Former "Bachelorette" Trista Rehn Sutter, ex-Mrs. Rod Stewart Rachel Hunter, former heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield, "New Kid" Joey McIntyre, "J. Peterman" John O'Hurley, and soap star Kelly Monaco will be paired with professional ballroom dancing partners in this competition. Each couple will be judged by viewers and a panel of dance experts. One couple will be eliminated each week. Yes, televised ballroom dancing. Imagine the excitement.

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5.12.05 three items, all tangentially related to alcohol

In brief:

I smelled of gin. Not just casually, as if I had taken four or five drinks of a winter morning to get out of bed on, but as if the Pacific Ocean was pure gin and I had nose-dived off the boat deck. The gin was in my hair and eyebrows, on my chin and under my chin. It was on my shirt. I smelled like dead toads.

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5.11.05 sechs stunden in deutschland

I am going to have to spend six hours at the Frankfurt Airport next week during a layover. At first, I figured I'd be incredibly bored, but perusing the airport's web site, I notice that it has its own casino, featuring "blackjack, numerous slot machines, and a central roulette table." I can also check out the on-site supermarket, which features, among other things, "a very multifarious assortment of beverages." Unfortunately, they don't have MetroNaps, which sounds to me like the best airport innovation since the duty-free store.

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5.9.05 i am my own fever pitch

A one-man show about a East German transvestite, or a romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon? Hmmm, why not both?

In "I Am My Own Wife", playwright Doug Wright has incorporated himself into the story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, nee Lothar Berfelde, who managed to survive the Nazi and the Communist regimes. Wright is captivated by Charlotte's unique history and perspective, so he travels to Germany to interview her over a series of months, intending to make a play from her life story. We learn about Charlotte's introduction to women's clothing, encouraged by a lesbian aunt; her brutal father; a frightening episode in which she was almost executed by the Nazis; and, above all, we become immersed in her "museum," an amazing collection of antique furniture, old gramophones and clocks. (What appears at first to be a very simple set is revealed to be marvelously complex.)

Wright eventually learns that Charlotte cooperated with the Stasi, the East German secret police. She has an explanation for everything, but further research proves that she's not necessarily being truthful. Of course, that puts everything Charlotte has told Wright (and us) so far in quite a different light.

Tony Award winner Jefferson Mays plays Wright, Charlotte, and every other character in the production, while wearing a simple black dress and a string of pearls -- you can see a photo of the real Charlotte here. I felt very drawn to the character of Charlotte, and could understand Wright's fascination with her. I loved Mays' lilting German accent, while Joe had a little trouble understanding it at times. (Perhaps my years of college German came in handy.)

However, despite the beautiful set design, I really wish I could have seen this play somewhere other than the cavernous Curran Theater, which seats over 1,600 people. There is something fundamentally intimate about the play, which is essentially an extended conversation between Wright and Charlotte, that doesn't translate to the big stage. Interestingly, the last thing I saw at the Curran was Elaine Stritch's one-woman show, "At Liberty"; that production involved a lot of musical numbers, though, and she was talking directly to the audience instead of performing a dialogue. I looked at the tour schedule, and after the San Francisco run ends, "Wife" will be performed in a 500-seat theater in La Jolla; I think the lucky people who get to see it down there will have a richer experience.

After "Wife," we finally caught "Fever Pitch," the Americanization of Nick Hornby's story about an obsessive soccer fan. In "Pitch," the main character is devoted to the Red Sox. The idea for this film is a stroke of genius, because normally, no man would ever want to go see a Drew Barrymore/Jimmy Fallon romantic comedy. But now, all of us rom-com-lovin' women can say to our husbands and boyfriends, "But it's about baseball!"

"Pitch" is entirely charming, despite the fact that we all know how the '04 baseball season turned out for the Sox, and that we can all pretty much guess that Drew and Jimmy's characters will overcome all obstacles and wind up together right before the credits roll. Still, I had a great time. Maybe I was craving a major Hollywood movie after all the hoity-toity film festival fare, but "Pitch" scored a home run with me (har har).

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5.7.05 blogging pays off at last

Last month, I mentioned that I'd gotten a nice note from Brian Copeland, who had seen the review I'd written here of his one-person show, "Not A Genuine Black Man." He invited me to come see the show again as his guest, and to meet him afterwards. I asked if any of my readers wanted to go along, and I never got a response (shocking!), so I invited my friend Pam, who is a fellow theater buff. We went last night.

I had assumed Copeland had found my review via Google, but incredibly enough, he said that somebody told him he had seen the show because he'd read about it in my blog. I was stunned to hear that. I am a tastemaker! Anyway, Copeland was sooooo nice. We talked about the HBO series he's developing with Rob Reiner, in which he will play himself (a child actor will play the young Brian, despite the fact that he does an excellent job of portraying himself as a kid in his show -- I guess TV is such a literal medium).

He asked what I did, and I told him about the record company, and how we came to found it. It turns out that Copeland was once asked to be a lifeline on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" when his friend Rudy Reber went on the show. However, Copeland wasn't by his phone when an ABC producer called, so they went with another of Reber's phone-a-friends -- comedian Will Durst. This led to one of the most infamous episodes in the show's history, in which Durst was "positive" that John Landis directed Michael Jackson's "Bad" video. Turns out it was actually Martin Scorsese, and Reber left the show with $32,000 instead of six figures. Copeland said he was extremely relieved he had missed the call, because he would have made the exact same mistake as Durst, who received hate mail after the show aired.

So anyway, I'm delighted that something really, really cool happened as a direct result of my writing this blog. It was a welcome relief after the Sarsgaardlessness of Thursday night.

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5.6.05 sfiff, the conclusion: an unfortunate event

Unless you truly lead a charmed existence, you learn early on that life is about disappointment. You don't make the team; the person you have a mad crush on doesn't ask you out; you never get to go to Disneyland. It prepares you for adulthood, with its crummy jobs, broken marriages and midlife crises.

OK, so perhaps I'm sounding too bleak today, but yesterday was a bit of a downer. It was the closing night of the film festival, and we had tickets to the big finale, Craig Lucas' "The Dying Gaul." As soon as I saw that title listed in the program, I knew I was so there. Why, you ask? As all of my dear readers know only too well, the official Favorite Actor of interbridge.com is Peter Sarsgaard, who happens to be the star of "The Dying Gaul." Not only would I be able to see Peter on the screen in his newest feature, but he was scheduled to turn up in person at the post-show Q&A.

In preparation, I arrived at the theater nearly two hours before showtime. There were two people already in line. I went across the street to buy a slice of pizza; by the time I returned, there were four people in line. The theater, by the way, seats over 1,800 people.

When the doors were opened, I made a beeline for the front of the theater. Most of the "good seats" were reserved for people who paid extra for V.I.P. tickets. I snagged two center seats in the row immediately in front of the reserved section.

Finally, at 7 PM, festival director Roxanne Captor took the stage to thank us all for coming. She introduced Lucas, female lead Patricia Clarkson, and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski. No sign of Peter.

As for the film, it is about a young screenwriter named Robert (Sarsgaard) who has written a script based upon his experiences caring for his lover, who died of AIDS (the story is set in 1995). A big-shot producer (Campbell Scott) loves it, except for one thing: he wants Robert to rewrite the script, changing the dying lover from a man to a woman, in order to improve its commercial prospects; he says something along the lines of, "No one will go see a movie about gay people!" See, the irony here is that "The Dying Gaul" is a movie about gay people, and as far as I can determine, it hasn't yet been picked up for national distribution. It played at Sundance and has been shown at a couple gay & lesbian film festivals.

Anyway, Robert needs the money, so he agrees to do the rewrite. He also becomes romantically entangled with the producer, who happens to have a wife (Clarkson) and two small children. Clarkson's character finds out about the affair, and decides to play mind games with Robert. She learns that he is a big fan of chat rooms, discovers his online identity, and pretends to be a gay man in order to infiltrate Robert's cyber hang-outs. That leads to several scenes where Sarsgaard and Clarkson type at each other.

The film is a must for Sarsgaard fans -- I will add here, simply as a matter of record, that it is the second movie in a row (after "Kinsey") where the actor drops trou for a homosexual love scene -- but I was a little underwhelmed by it. The ending is so heavy-handed, and there are a few major plot holes. But the real star of "The Dying Gaul" is the incredible glass-walled Malibu mansion where Scott and Clarkson's characters live. I had a serious case of house envy throughout the film.

Joe cornered Captor after the film, and managed to find out that Sarsgaard was unable to attend because he had to do some reshoots (I'm guessing either for September's "Flightplan" or November's "Jarhead"). Ah well... another dream denied.

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5.5.05 i hate traffic

Thwarted celebrity sighting!! According to yesterday's Chronicle, Winona Ryder was in attendance at the screening of "Murderball" that we attended last week. I totally missed her. Darn.

I love the Bay Area. It's the best place I've ever lived. But there is one awful, nasty thing about it, and that is the traffic.

I have gotten pretty good about avoiding traffic. I take BART a lot, and if I have to drive to San Francisco, I try to do it during off-peak times. But sometimes, I have no choice. I must face the horror of driving in bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go traffic.

For some reason, traffic is always much, much worse when it's raining. It really shouldn't be raining now; it's May, and the rainy season should be over. But yesterday, it was pouring down rain. Joe and I were supposed to meet a couple of out-of-town visitors, our friends Aaron and Diane, at Greens, a fancy vegetarian restaurant in the Marina District of San Francisco. Since Greens is nowhere near a BART line, we needed to drive.

First, I had to pick up Joe at his office, which is located 11 miles away from our home. It took me exactly one hour to get there. Traffic was absolutely crawling -- not just on the highway, but also on the surface roads.

We had 40 minutes to travel the 15 miles to Greens in time for our 6:45 PM reservation. We didn't make it -- we arrived about 20 minutes late, mainly due to the horrendous backup at the Bay Bridge toll plaza.

So, to sum up: I spent two hours in the car and covered a distance of 26 miles. I will say that we had a lovely time, and I savored the rare pleasure of dining at Greens, a restaurant I've only been lucky enough to visit twice before. But good God, y'all, two hours. I could've made it to Ukiah in that amount of time.

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5.3.05 sfiff, part vi: son of sfiff

The movie gods do not always smile upon us. The last couple films I saw were a bit on the meh side.

First up: "The Syrian Bride," an Israeli feature about a Druze woman living in the Golan Heights. Mona (Clara Khoury) is engaged to marry a Syrian TV star whom she has never met. To marry him, she will need to cross the border into Syria, which means she may never return to the Israeli-occupied Golan. On her wedding day, she will also have to say goodbye to her family, including the sister to whom she is so close.

To be honest, I would never have picked this film on my own -- I avoid anything involving the Middle East like the plague, since my feeling is that the region is a hopeless quagmire. This was the annual free members' screening, and the title of the film is never announced in advance. I enjoy a gamble, so why not? If nothing else, there are free bagels. Actually, "The Syrian Bride" wasn't bad; I appreciated its evenhandedness. Both Syria and Israel are portrayed in a fairly negative light, as Mona's attempt to cross into Syria on her wedding day becomes entangled in red tape. Just not quite my thing, and I didn't care for the ending. (I kept trying to recall where I had heard about this film before; turns out it was featured on All Things Considered earlier this year.)

Second: "Following Sean," which is, as of this writing, not featured on the IMDB. If a film is not on the IMDB, does it truly exist? This documentary was directed by Ralph Arlyck, who, in 1969, made an award-winning short film called "Sean," profiling the precocious 4-year-old son of two Haight St. hippies. Years later, Arlyck decides to track down Sean to find out what happened to the "wild child."

Like "Stone Reader," this is a documentary that turns out to be much more about the filmmaker than about its putative subject. We learn about Arlyck's loneliness when his French wife goes to spend a few years teaching in her country, his mom's attachment to her grand piano, his sons' thoughts about the Telegraph Avenue scene, etc. etc. And, oh yeah, Sean turns out to be a perfectly normal guy, working in San Francisco as an electrician. When Adult Sean is first introduced, he is said to be 31 years old, which distracted me for at least 10 minutes. Wait a second -- if Sean was four in 1969, how can he only be 31 now? The confusion stems from the fact that Arnyck follows Adult Sean with his camera for several years, but that only becomes apparent later on. Sean gets married, buys a house, has a son, separates from his wife. Yawn. I suspect Arnyck couldn't stop filming Sean because he kept waiting for something to happen. I think "Following Sean" would have made a much better short film than a feature. There's just not enough here to sustain a 90-minute running time.

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