Sunshocked

A rash of informative but irrelevant signs have gone up in my neighborhood lately, reminding me of the perennial flaw of activism in today’s accelerated and alienated world.

I called my friend Brant to attend a screening of “Everything’s Cool” at the SFIFF last weekend. It turns out that he was already there, as a panelist. That was only the first of many “Think Globally, Act—Hey I Know That Guy!” moments from the film.

When I lived in Indiana, I dreamt of San Francisco as a Bohemian paradise of art, love, and radical politics. Though my fantasies lacked specifics, I could have easily been thinking of the San Francisco International Film Festival, which begins today.

Al Gore. Affable, amiable, genial… he’s charmed America with his 1337 Powerpoint skills and put us on the right path to addressing the looming menace of climate change. Moral to a fault, no one has ever questioned his motives. Until now.

Having grown up in northwest Indiana, the very epicenter of the SuperBowl, I would be sorely remiss if I did not mention it at least in passing. But now that I have, let’s talk a moment about a much larger game being played, with much higher stakes.