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’ve got myself a master plan. A foolproof master plan. Here’s the ultimate five step plan to finding housing in San Francisco. Use it with caution, as it may result it having to pay rent.

Somewhere between reading “Design of Dissent” and trying not to vomit over Target Green, I wondered, “In this age of cynicism and corporate co-option, is there anything capable of authentic revolution?” The answer may surprise you!

What is the business of artists? Are we brilliant creators, fashioning the world into our own mad fantasies or are we discoverers, research scientists of pre-existing aesthetic patterns? And what does this have to do with the Wizard of Oz?

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.

A broken storefront, left shattered by a car accident, was covered in silent flats of heavy particle board when he arrived. A skinny, white guy in a skinny, white t-shirt, he seemed an unlikely suspect for what was to come next.

Yep, I’m in Japan. Watch the video podcast for the full details.

The cover of Friday’s Chronicle reported a flurry of comments from GOP leadership (among which I’m including O’Reilly) on “San Francisco Values”. These three words are intended to scare voters into voting Republican, keeping SF Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi out of the Speaker position.

It was not poor planning, but rather mutual ignorance, that led to the simultaneous scheduling of the Commonwealth Club‘s lecture by Geoff Nunberg and the smartMeme reportback on the STORY project. Only because they offered such a chance to rub elbows with intelligent people did I break a sweat running through the streets in order to attend both. I’m glad I did. I don’t think anyone else noticed that the two were talking about exactly the same things.