Fact or Friction*#!... 02/02/03

Some Velvet Morning Page 2...

Further down Market, slowly we creep, or rather, swirl. Only in SF can an orderly march take on vestiges of a nonlinear narrative. A to B to C does not happen here. As I slide from sideshow to sideshow of this ambulatory carnvial, I noticed that I had somehow managed to back up about 1 and 1/2 blocks from my position of thirty minutes earlier. "Haven't I seen that giant red paper mache head of GW Bush with horns before, or did he move? Did I? Is it the same one?

To summarize, the planned 11am to Noon March became an 11am-3:30pm crawl.

A man standing on an SF Chronicle vending machine wearing a Homeland Security cap and Total Information Awareness T-shirt points to people to get their attention then pretends to video tape them with his ridiculously oversized cardboard camera.

A woman walks up to a man wearing a GWB mask and politely asks, "Can I kick your ass?" He obliges, and she gives him a swift but rather soft shoe to the bum. I doubt the real GWB would have received such consideration.

A strange sensation comes over me. A memory of a dream clicks in at the moment GWB takes a foot to his arse.>>>

Peter penguin gets fishcake and a kitten for his birthday. He and the kitten both love the fishcake. He and the kitten sit by themselves at the table [the kitten, polarbear white, actually sits on the table itself, happily munching] while Peter's parents are in the other room watching the colorful fish in the aquarium. I awake from this dream crying uncontrollably. Have I had some sort of nervous breakdown. In the dream, I watch the Peter scene on an old black and white telly. In the dream, I am also crying uncontrollably. Do I cry because the ceiling collapses from the weight of a giant fishcake onto Peter and the kitten. No. This makes them happy. Very happy. More fishcake than they could every want in their entire lives. Is it because Peter's parents are in the other room, leaving him all alone on this birthday, with just a kitten and an enormous fishcake? Is it because Peter is later shown all grown up, all grumpy, mad, and hating his boss while marching to get on an airplane, cellphone in pocket, scowl on face? Is it because I'm so uptight and besieged by other peoples uptight, incessant whining and complaining that such a little childlike image wells-up my heart to such size that it crashes through the hard crusty exterior like an earthquake, or better yet, a volcano, all those tears so much fucking lava.

So the swirl of madness goes on until 3:30pm.

Oh yeah, did I mention the Earth Mama that felt me up in front of the Warfield? Didn't think so. Shocking at first. But pleasant. She gave me a wry smile. Figured she was doing it to all the guys. I turned around to watch her interact with her next victim, but she and her flowing garb went into some kind of yogic trance. She stretched arms to the sky, stood on tip-toes and just stood like that quietly like no one else was around. 200,000 people became invisible to her. For a moment, I felt special in a non-short bus sense for the first time in a long time.

I moved on, realizing the last time I was felt up by an unknown woman- strange woman would be an excessively loaded description - was by a Security babe before the Nick Cave show at the Warfield in April of 2002. I made a mental sticky note to go to the Warfield more often. Paul Weller's there 2/8/2003. Guess I'll be going to that one.

3:30pm. Finally, the Civic Center. The Alien trees in the East mall are swamped with humanity. Voices on loudspeakers ring out in the distance. I have no clue where the speakers are. Martin Sheen. Don't care. Bonnie 2nd Rait starts singing. Don't care. Bored. Walk off.

I wander around a bit, ambling north looking for California Street. I hit it in about 15 minutes, being that it's only 6 or 7 blocks away from Civic Center via Larkin. I hit California, look left and see the Lumiere on the right side of the street.

At the ticket booth, I drop the Scottish accent on the movie's title after the second, "What?" from the clean cut kid behind the glass. I Americanize it- "Morvern Collar" - for the kid and get my $9 ticket for the 4:45pm showing.

It's not yet four, a few minutes shy. In my disheveled state- still half or maybe three quarters asleep - I almost forget to pay for the coffee I order at the concessions counter. Politely reminded by yet another white shirt, black-panted kid behind the counter- "$2 please." I amble to the restroom, then back onto the street. I head in again. I'm just nervously pacing now, trying to stay awake for another 45 minutes. I look for something to read among the movie rags and weeklies- the Bay Guardian, the SF Weekly - stacked on several metal racks against a wall in the middle of the lobby. I take a few publications, without really noticing what I'm picking up. I spot an empty faux fifties comfy chair at the other end of the lobby and make hasty tracks toward it, lest someone take it before I can get there.

Midway there, a man's voice chirps "Great march." At first, I could have sworn he was talking about my present determined march across the lobby when I realized that MLK gave away where I'd just been.

I look down to see a man, perhaps in his mid-fifties/early sixties, long, thinning pony tail falling just beneath the collar of his tweed jacket. He wears a blue workshirt beneath the jacket, jeans, and sneakers. He has any easy air about him. He seems like one of those approachable cool Freshman year Philo or History profs who has an open door office hours policy and no compunction when it comes to talking about how many times he was arrested for protesting the Vietnam war.

Smiling right next to him is a frumpy, yet shining woman, about the same age as the man, in typical upper west coast "I'm a mature earth mama" garb- birkies, really soft-looking clay colored and very loose fitting shirt and pants. Her pale green eyes shine from her beautifully weathered face. Like the man next to her [never figured if they were married, friends, lovers, or DPs], she is rather friendly and easy going. I have struck up a conversation with Bruce and Barbara who live just a few blocks north of the Lumiere. Being that this is Nob Hill, they both have money coming from somewhere. I successfully fight the urge to ask "What do you guys do?" or even more crass, "Where the hell do you get all the money to live in this neighborhood?" I'm my somewhat reserved self at first - as I usually am around moneyed types - but one of Bruce's smiles revealed a gold-plated incisor. That raised my comfort level considerably. Money or not, a guy with a gold tooth isn't trying to be uber yuppie any time of the week.

The conversation ambled among numerous subjects:

Number of people at the March;
How sinister those hovering copters over the crowd were;
The crazy Penguins at the SF Zoo that I really wanted to see;
What a fucker GW Bush is;
How I basically resolved to leave Texas when GWB was elected;
The big difference between SF and Sacto;
Frida and Trotsky;
The cross of St. Andrew and its relation to Southern Scottish Heritage;
The next March slated for 2/15/03;
The abrupt shit in attention from Osama Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein;
How the rest of the nation perceives California;
The East/West- Conservative/Liberal split of the state:
The Trail of Tears;
and some other topics I can't remember.

This went on for at least 30 minutes. I didn't mind kneeling down on the floor to talk to them despite the growing pain in my overexerted, aged knees. The time passed quickly. They were fun conversationalists. Plus, I realized that such a pleasant interaction among strangers could never happen in uptight bureaucratic Sacramento. So I milked the event for all I could.

Bruce and Barbara went in to see Frida at 4:30pm. I was a bit sad to see them part. They asked about Morvern Collar and I told them it was Scottish.

"Ah, getting back to your roots," Bruce said as they walked away.

I spent a few minutes on the bench they had just deserted and stared into space. I was so out of it that I hadn't noticed that Barbara had come back into the lobby to buy popcorn.

"You have Paul McCartney eyes" said a female voice that seemed shot toward me.

I looked up, surprised, saw Barbara, popcorn in hand giving a little wave before zipping back into the auditorium. I managed to give her a little wave back with a smile before she disappeared.

I straggled into the auditorium where Morvern Collar was playing.

Less than ten minutes to showtime. Rather than build up my anticipation of the lovely Samantha Morton, and nonstop Scottish accents flying in from all directions and filling my ears like sickly sweet candy, I stare at the ceiling. The place is not rococo, but faux rococo- like it was done in the 70's. For some reason, it makes me think of Herbie the Love Bug.

The previews start. I realize that my shoulder bag that must way over 30 pounds now, is still around my neck. I remove the bag and feel like I'm weightless.

Morvern Collar-

flashing lights. Christmas lights. Samantha Morton and a man's naked back. Oh, Samantha's Morvern Collar is in bed with her lover. She strokes his back tenderly, caresses his neck. Oh yes, no doubt, Morvern is having a bout of insomnia as her lover sleeps soundly.

Camera pulls back. They are not in bed, but on the floor. Morvern's man has offed himself right in the doorway connecting the kitchen and living area of his and Morvern's nowhere coastal Scottish town flat. Dried blood streams from his wrist. He's dead, Jim.

And Morvern- she just leaves him there- for days, weeks. She reads his bland, self-absorbed suicide note and barely sheds a tear. She doesn't move the body at all. It just stays there rotting in the doorway. She hops over him to get between the rooms. His corpse is an obstacle, and as the movie progresses you get the nagging feeling that dead boy was pretty much an obstacle for Morvern when he was alive- so much dead weight. So the relationship between the two hasn't changed much. She just doesn't have to listen to his self-absorbed twaddle anymore and plan her life around him. She merely has to jump over his pompous little corpse from time to time.

But Morvern eventually gets tired of dead boy being in the way and breaks up with him. I'll spare you how it happens. You'll just have to see it yourself. And if you are to any degree still a thinking feeling human which I hear is getting rarer and rarer these days, the breakup scene will remain burned on your mind's VCD or DVD [choose your own format] for some time to come. It's a rental you cannot take back.

The film's twist comes when Morvern finally gets something out of her stuffy old corpse of a boyfriend. By the way, when friends and family inquire after his whereabouts, Morvern simply says, "He left." With his suicide note, left in electronic format on the a computer [bastard couldn't have the decency to print it out!] Dead boy leaves instructions to print out his novel and send it to a list of publishers.

Well, plucky Morvern types her name in place of his, and you can guess how it goes from there in that subplot. In fact, plot, subplot here- it's simple, dreamy, not rushing anywhere- in fact, not sure where it's going. Gosh, kinda like the title character. Hmmm. In the hands of lesser talents, this work would have been a trifling little bore of so much celluloid yardage. In fact, from all reports [sorry, ain't read it meself- but hey, you can trust what the film and book crits say, can't you?] the 1995 book upon which the the film is based is a wee bit lacking in the interesting department. But the film- well - as they pound into the little brains of inchoate directors in narrative tragedies classes at film schools around the world- it's not the tale, it's the telling, and Director Leigh Ramsey does a cracker of a one-nil job of telling .

This is not so much a movie, as a fevered dream fueled by 20-something lust and angst, and a deadly spot-on soundtrack courtesy of the mix tape [simply labeled Music for You] left as a final affectionate act by Dead Boy. Probably his first and last attempt at such sentiment.

One song on the tape- and Morvern wonders around in a haze incessantly listening to this tape on her Walkman- probably one reason the book fails vis a vis the movie- shutting out the rest of the world around her whether she's at the supermarket where she works as a produce girl or at a raging rave or drug-driven libidinous New Year's gathering- can be construed as the cornerstone of the film, and the text from which the story, and more importantly, the mood, springs. It is Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra's "Some Velvet Morning." And SVM springs from a culture of chemical-induced hallucinations [Some velvet morning when I'm straight- Hazelwood's matter of fact deep voice croons, walking a razor's edge between Leonard Cohen and Ian Curtis.] and tragic Greek Goddesses.[ I'm gonna tell you about Phaedra.]

But for Morvern, the hallucinations come not from the drugs, but the music, and her physicality, her pure and simple Phaedra side -- and Morvern is ravenous for new sensations whether it's sexual [anonymous, playful sex is far from absent in Morvern's and her best bud's world] or other simpler sensations- Morvern is no small fan of the wind on her body as created in the backseat of a moving vehicle -- is fed by she and her best bud's drug of choice - ecstasy - Texas' most loved contribution to the world - the anti GWB - next to maybe Willie Nelson, of course.

So, with Dead Boy disposed of [I'm not telling!], all the money for his funeral that he left behind to the tune of about 4K pounds sterling is drained from his bank account. Morvern and best bud then say screw aimless meandering in soggy old Scotland - and decide to take up meandering in Spain's Costa del Sol at a godawful prepackaged resort called Youth Med surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands of horny Eurotrash rave wash-ups all housed in what looks like less than glorified college dorms.

Morvern indulges, mightily. But her already obvious distance from humanity becomes even more magnified. Sure, she fucks like a bunny, but where is she? It's not that she's distraught about her Dead Boy. The troubling thing is there is no she there. She's a walking Oakland. For Morvern, no, she's not a blank cutout like the kids in Godard's Breathless or Masculine/Feminine, there is blankness on the surface with only a hint of what hints to roil beneath the exterior. And therein lies the genius of Morton and the film. It gives nothing, but leaves everything. Hmm. Kinda like Deady Boy.

Out onto California street, as the sun has already set, the night is not as frightfully cold as the morning. The wind has stilled and the air is filled with the bustling of yuppies. SUVs line up for the parking garages of the various ritzy hotels and restaurants. People in evening dress chat on the patio drinking Chard. They hardly look human.

The valets have quick and easy smiles, and spring in their steps as they accept cash from their patrons.

When I get back to Market Street, about 30 volunteers from International Answer are scurrying about on bikes and in VW vans, picking up fallen news machines that had been toppled by the annoying members of the Black Front- a Berkeley-based group who are the bad apples spoiling the whole barrel. News media accounts put the Black Front's numbers at anywhere from 200 to 400 misguided souls. One volunteer told me that it was maybe only 20 idiots. SFGate.com, the Chronicle's website took absurdity to new heights (or lows) in stating the numbers at 400. The damage, which included graffiti and a vandalized Starbucks- of course, I would vandalize Starbucks, but as an aesthetic statement, and not a political one - could have easily been done by two people. But the Chron's comedy really took off when it reported that the 400 Black Fronters eluded police, by running into the Market Street BART station, jumping the turnstile and disappearing on a train. 400 people! Those are the fastest 400 people on the planet, with hella timing, too. Nice story, Chron.

Further down Market. Gotta get to Transbay by 7:30pm. A transient, perhaps, no, definitely, crazy, yells from the BART station plaza.

"How the hell did it happen people?"

He had an audience of hundreds captive- getting on and off the BART, milling about.

"One minute, Osama Bin Laden is the most evil man on the planet, then the next it's Saddam Hussein! How did this happen people? How did we make that leap?"

No one answered. No one could.

Back at Transbay, I'm searched like a criminal. "Got any alcohol, drugs, firearms, mace, pepperspray?" the security lady asked.

I had to dump everything from my bag onto a table much to the chagrin of the 20 or so people behind me waiting to get searched, too. This took about 10 minutes, including an extensive exam with a metal detector wand, before I was allowed onboard. I finally got on the bus painted as a giant ad for the Sands Hotel and Resort in Reno. Numerous people in full cowboy gear got on the bus. It was a drunken, going to Reno crowd. All the talk all the way to Sacto was about gambling. This is how far our culture has fallen. We're on the brink of war of imperialism, economic collapse, and god knows what else we're in store for thanks to el Vaquero Loco en la Casa Blanca- and all the masses can think about is blackjack and beer. Maybe we deserve to collapse. As Rome spreads its empire throughout the world, back home, it's rotting to the core. We've been reduced to seekers of artificial stimuli, and nothing is real anymore. Our only purpose in our lives is to consume, seek pleasure, avoid pain- a set of chemical, souless, actions and reactions. Bread and Circuses, y'all. I realize that perhaps I'm a bit cracked, but it seems like the justified reaction to the cultural pustule around me.

To sloganize-

Anyone who doesn't react to the present state of American culture and politics with relative madness is absolutely insane.

In screenwriter Menno Meyjes' directorial debut [he is most notably responsible for screenplays and stories as The Siege, Foreign Student, Ricochet, The Color Purple, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade among others], Max, a German officer tells 30-year-old corporal Adolf Hitler [played splendidly by Australian actor and Nick Cave look-alike, Noah Taylor] who has just come back from the trenches of WWI to nothing- no family, no friends, nothing- that "Germany stands on a razor's edge. The questions is- will it fall to the left or to the right?" Herr Hitler of course, being the good military man he is, sees the army as controlling the answer to such question, which naturally translates into "the Right."

This should make one ponder these United States in these times. I ponder our fate and, unfortunately, it appears that we've already fallen to the right of the razor. Did it fall with the Supreme Court's dubious selection of the winner in the 2000 election?

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BJR