I rarely go to a theater to see a movie. I usually just watch them in the comfort of my home through various audio/visual means. I could write a whole blog entry on the merits of home vs. theater movie viewing. Every now and then I am compelled to go to an actual movie theater to take in a film. Sometimes it’s on invite but today it was because word of mouth.
I went to see Inception a few days ago at the Metreon IMAX theater. In the last week or so it just kept coming up in conversations around me so I had to go see it. Inception has people talking. I spent an hour listening to Ali, the owner of the neighborhood coffee house, try to describe to me his impressions of the film without giving away the plot. My producer at my temp job said Inception is going to change the way people view films. Publications were hailing Christopher Nolan as the next Kubrick. I’ve seen his body of work and Momento by far is my favorite Nolan film. It had a well executed concept that if you really understood, could really be devastating in it’s comprehension. Nolan took us there by taking the narrative out the standard linear context, creating an experience similar to what protagonist Leonard Shelby struggles with in constructing a reality without the aid of memories, discombobulation and disconnection. With Inception, through the use of dreams, he again examines a concept similar to Momento…what is controlling or what are the controls of reality? What are the rules? What are the tools? What are the consequences when we try to play god with the natural order of things? How fragile or how durable is our identity? There are of course many subtexts to all these questions and Inception offers enough layers to illuminate the many ideas that spring from the well of metaphysics and philosophy. There’s a lot to chew on in this movie.
While watching Inception several films came to mind, most notably, The Matrix. Not only do the stories have many parallels, they also share many visual techniques and post fx work, like bullet time slow motion, shattering fragmenting glass and concrete, and squibs galore. Inception is being marketed as a “thinking person’s” film but it has a healthy dose of action sequences and just about as much gun play as The Matrix but not nearly as stylized. There were times when I found the action to be distracting because of the way the movie deals with real time which lead some of the action scenes to be really drawn out. In what is possibly the key scene of the movie, violence plays out in several dream sequences simultaneously but at different rates of time. What is seconds in waking reality is hours in a dream layer, which can be weeks in a deeper layer, which can be decades in the deepest layer. This is one of the subtexts that can really get your mind going while watching the movie. It is in this aspect that the film is reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey but unlike 2001, Inception doesn’t quite take you to the point of psychedelic revelation or even more literal revelation as you have in The Matrix when Neo takes the red pill and is “awakened” and discovers the truth of his reality. Inception is more open ended and it is not so much about revelations as it is self discovery.
Another theme explored is the origins of ideas and how they take root in our conscious and unconscious mind. Where as the dream layers deal with the Cartesian the idea theme is firmly rooted in Freud and the active and uncontrollable unconscious mind. Characters in the movie are able to be “architects” of dream worlds fully able to control and create at will but the beings populating these dream worlds spring from the subconscious so not only are they uncontrollable, they have to be bamboozled by the architects if specific outcomes are to be achieved.
Have you ever had an original idea? Has anybody ever had an original idea or do all ideas have external origins? Is the idea of God original? In the modern world marketing and advertising make heavy use of subliminal messaging planting the seeds of ideas in our heads that take root and prompt us to specific action. This was the foundation of John Carpenter’s underrated film They Live. I was just reading about the concept of “dog whistling” in journalism where rhetoric goes out over the media airwaves with certain coded language that is meant to effect a certain demographic. Some people believe that the assassination of abortion doctors are a result of “dog whistle” messages in the propaganda of anti-abortion groups. Some think the right wing anti-Obama movement is full of dog whistle messages which is why certain terms are used over and over again to describe him by his detractors. He’s a Muslim, he’s a socialist, he’s a Nazi, he’s a communist, and he needs to be gotten rid of. It’s as is they are saying someone needs to assassinate President Obama. Not quite the Manchurian Candidate but you get the picture.
This is a vital key to the plot of Inception, the planting of an idea in the subconscious mind through dreams to bring to fruition a desired result. This was also explored in an episode of the Outer Limits called The Inheritors. On a symbolic level it begs the question of mind control. Do we control our thoughts? Does “I think therefore I am” still apply? The rise of artificial intelligence has given us many challenges to the idea of consciousness, self awareness, identity, and life itself. It is at the heart of Bladerunner, the Terminator films, and The Matrix films except with Inception it is not about artificial intelligence, it is about our own organic and spiritual intelligence with emotion as the wild card.
We know we are conscious beings, so where do we go from there? For thousands of years humankind looked up at the stars and imagined the heavens while becoming masters of the earth. In 1969 humankind walked on the moon, we reached the next closest celestial body and walked upon it planting a flag of stars and stripes and claiming a giant leap for the race but in the context of this new frontier, this new environment, it was merely the first step of a newborn into a paradigm we weren't equipped to handle, infinite space. We are firmly rooted in the alpha and the omega. We take creating and sustaining life for granted while death has become our obsession and we fetishize mass destruction.
We have evolved as linear beings and perhaps we have gone as far as we can go with linear thinking and a linear reality. For all of our technological progress we are still beings ruled by superstition and propaganda living in absurdity as if it was bath water. We don’t even believe what our eyes tell us. It is arguable that we prefer dogma and propaganda over being responsible for developing our thoughts and actions, which ultimately is free will. Consciously we want to feel that we are in control and that we make choices in life but unconsciously perhaps we desire to be controlled, to be told what do and how to live, to conform to some kind of standard. Is it not the point of all of our major institutions? Education, religion, family, the workplace, consumerism, finance, politics, and the military are hardly bastions of free will. What is demanded is our obedience. Dissent is tolerated but it’s not exactly a virtue. Tradition is revered while radicalism is viewed with suspicion and distrust.
In Inception, the act of inception, at its basest form, is fraud. It is having an idea that is thought to be self generated, and thus owned, actually be a third party implant. It is fitting for our times to have the vehicle for the plot be corporate espionage, an acknowledgment of where corporations stand today, at the center of our universe in the modern world. They are shaping the world more than any other singular force, much more so than governments, armies, and the collective people. It is so ubiquitous the movie doesn’t even bother telling us if it is taking place in the present or the very near future. With a wink and a nod the movie tells us it’s already here (corporate control), like it or not, present or near future, it has arrived.
In Ursula K. LeGuin’s 1971 book, Lathe of Heaven, protagonist George Orr is an everyman who discover’s malevolently that his dreams can literally change reality. For Orr this extraordinary ability is not a gift but a curse. He can’t control it. He submits himself to psychiatric care where his therapist, Dr. Haber, discovers his powers and tries to use George to create the perfect world, but in trying to create a liberal utopia through manipulating George’s dreams Dr. Haber destroys himself while inflicting much harm on the world. The doctor was using inception on his patient, becoming the harbinger of unseen and deadly consequences. Psychiatric institutions, universities, and the government were dominant in the world of the Lathe of Heaven. Corporations were barely mentioned. My how times have changed. Leonardo Di Caprio plays the protagonist in Inception, yet in many ways he is like Dr. Haber in Lathe of Heaven. Initially he tried to use inception in a benevolent way and it ended up costing him everything, but as in every hero quest, and this is a hero quest, he must return to the belly of the beast, to the scene of the crime, to confront, who else, but himself.
Therein lies the inherent danger of inception. In manipulation of systems there are always side effects and unintended consequences and then there is the danger of abuse and addiction. If you get in too deep you may not be able to get out. As you watch the film you get drawn in, deeper and deeper, trying to keep the pieces together, and at times you are not sure if you are watching reality or another dream layer. The movies final action, literally, leaves it (the answer) on the table in a brilliant display of ambiguity. In our brave new world of technological socializing and virtual environments people line up overnight for the latest hand held device. Once you get a taste there is no going back, gotta have the best and the latest device. In my day the only thing we ever lined up for overnight were concert tickets. We had a different agenda.
The last movie comparison I want to make is with the Wizard of Oz, another film of dreams and alternate realities. We live in the age of the Conspiracy Theory. There is a certain paranoia that exists that says do not trust anything in this age of corporatism. The New Order is out to get you. Just as Dorothy and her crew of misfits travel Oz looking for the way home, so does Cobb (Di Dcaprio) and his crew of misfits, traveling in multidimensional dream worlds, trying to get back to reality. Dorothy finds the man behind the curtain, unveiling the Great Conspiracy, will Cobb do the same? You’ll have to see the movie to find out, no bean spilling going on here but I do feel we live in times that find many of us looking for the man behind the curtain, to uncover the great conspiracy. Dorothy returns from her dream and all is as it should be. We return from the dream world in Inception and we aren’t certain of anything, which is the perfect metaphor for these times we live in, uncertainty.
I found Inception to be a very intriguing movie when it focused on it’s concepts and it’s opened endedness but often the movie veers off into straight action shoot em up territory. It is a large budgeted Hollywood film so I really can’t sit here and begrudge that. For my own personal taste I would have like to seen more time given to the esoteric of the dream state and less time spent on people shooting and blowing shit up but that’s me. Action and violence aren’t the heart of this film, emotion is, not just any emotion but intimate emotion that is the result of familial bonding as shown through a husband/wife marriage relationship and a father/son relationship. The two most driven people in the movie are the ones driven by their memory of people lost to them. Corporate theft may be the catalyst for the plot narrative but it’s emotional issues that motivate the characters in the movie. Why all the subterfuge?
Before the movie began I met a young guy who was a triathlete and he had ridden his bike to the Metreon from South San Francisco. He was new to the the Bay Area from St. Louis. I asked him what kind of lock he had and he told me it was a cable lock. I warned him that his bike was in danger of getting stolen if all he had was a cable lock. I took the bus to the movies instead of riding my bike because I didn’t want to lock it outside. He went out to check on it before the movie and it was still there but when we walked out into the daytime light after the movie his bike was gone. Someone had stolen it. I felt bad for the guy but I did try to tell him that San Francisco was a different reality. There are written rules as well as unwritten rules, he just learned one the hard way.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Justice
"You go down there looking for justice and that's what you find, just us!"
Richard Pryor on the court system.
The justice system is inexplicably tied to the history of black people in the United States. The Greek goddess Themis, the symbol of justice, wears a blindfold, and carries a sword in one hand a scale in the other. It is arguable that justice is hardly blind or balanced. The sword may be the only true symbol of justice because very often justice is used as a weapon and black people have been on the wrong end of it too many times.
Johannes Mehserle, the BART officer who shot Oscar Grant in the back, killing him, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter last week and not guilty of murder. Has justice been served? Well, as always, it depends on who you ask. Grant's family doesn't think so and neither does Mehserle's defense team.
I remember very well the night of the incident. I was home on New Year's Eve watching all the ceremonies and celebrations when news reports on tv and on the internet started humming about someone being shot and killed by police at the Fruitvale BART station. From the very beginning the so called legitimate media outlets were spinning the story of police dealing with a riot like situation and the shooting being justified. It wasn't until the videos appeared that it became clear that this was no ordinary police shooting. An officer had shot someone in the back at point blank range and there was no "riot", just a lot of angry and shocked citizens who witnessed what they considered to be police brutality that culminated in the shooting of an unarmed man.
Once the videos appeared the media began to shift the focus to Oscar Grant and his background, specifically his criminal background. The media was also the first to introduce the idea that Mersherle may have mistaken his gun for a taser as this was not information that came from Mehserle. He didn't speak to anyone or make any statements for over a week, yet in the immediate hours after the shooting Grant's criminal background and the mistaken-gun-for-a-taser was the story the media was running with. It seems to me the media was taking the position that Oscar Grant was dangerous, but because he was unarmed the shooting had to be a mistake or an accident.
A line in the sand was being drawn. In the public commenting sections of the internet Mehserle was getting a lot of support from people who saw Grant not as a victim but as a thug who got what he deserved. He had a criminal record and he was allegedly resisting arrest, even though the many videos show the police in complete control of the situation. The flip side was the public outrage brought on by the videos showing Mehserle shooting Grant in the back. There are clearly those who see the police as the good guys and those who see them as the bad guys but they represent the extremes. For most people it's situational or it's based on personal experience. Black people for sure have a specific view given our history with law enforcement.
I have experienced hostile police behavior directed at me just because I am black. In my early adult years I was stopped often by the police for "DWB", driving while black even though I have a spotless record and have never committed a crime. When I was stopped it wasn't for suspicion of a crime, it was just a "phishing" expedition. They would run my plates and my license to see if any warrants came up. Usually I would be sitting on the curb in the flood of patrol car headlights where I was clearly visible to anyone driving by, looking like I was being arrested for committing a crime, but in the end I was always let go because they had nothing on me. That still didn't stop officers from getting up in my face and calling me names and trying to get me to do something I would regret. If I was stopped in a "nice" neighborhood the police's first question was always, "what are you doing here?" I remember running out of gas in Glendale, California late one night. I was 17 and wearing my letterman's jacket, walking and carrying a 5 gallon gas tank. The police stopped me and asked me what I was doing. I hesitated, looked at the gas tank and then looked at them and said what I thought was completely obvious, I had run out of gas. They asked me where I ran out of gas and what I was doing in Glendale. I told them the truth, I had been at a party celebrating our football team winning a playoff game. They took a closer look at my jacket and saw it was from St. Francis, a nearly all white, football worshipping, catholic school. They let me go. When I asked for a ride to the nearest gas station they just ignored me and drove off. Some years later I was leaving a club with my friend Joey Kraut, who is white, and we were pulled over by the cops as soon as we left the parking lot. We were in Joey's 1965 powder blue VW van and he was driving but when we were pulled over I was the one who was harassed. It was the classic good cop/bad cop routine. The one cop asking Joey for his license and registration was being very polite but the other cop came to the passenger side and started busting my balls ordering me in a drill sergeant voice to put my hands on the dashboard and then ordering me out of the vehicle. There I was again sitting on the curb with the headlights shining on me. Lucky for me Joey's father was a sergeant with LAPD. Joey handed them his father's card. The one officer went back to his car and got on the radio. A few minutes later he came back and apologized and said we were free to go. Never at any time did the officers say why they stopped us. Joey felt bad for me and he was more pissed off than I was. I think it was the first time he had seen this type of harassment.
That is not uncommon when my friends who are white witness blatant racism against me. They get angrier than I do and it is only because for them it is a reality they don't live with and rarely encounter so they are not used to it, but for me, it is a reality that is constant. One could even say it is a rite of passage for any young black man in America, to be harassed by law enforcement. I joke with my friends and tell them that I started riding bicycles because I was tired of being stopped and questioned by the gestapo. Of course that is not the reason but it has been a nice by product. Until they actually see it happen, many white people just don't get it and some feel that a black person's suspicion of law enforcement is just paranoia. Sometimes it is just paranoia but most of the time it's just how law enforcement sees black people. We are seen as a threat and in their minds it is their job to neutralize the threat.
I don't know Johannes Mehserle but like many white police officers I would bet money that he lives in a community that has very few black people and that a majority of his experience with black people was through his job as a police officer. I would bet money he has never had a black friend. These are all huge assumptions that I am making and I could be totally wrong but I am going out on a limb here to say I think many law enforcement people have negative opinions about black people and I think it affects the way they do their jobs. I think it goes back decades to when a large part of the police's job was to enforce segregation laws and to keep black people confined to their place designated by segregation, whether it be actual laws on the books or local custom. It was once the domain of the police to keep black people confined to their side of the tracks but that domain was not undisputed. During the period of lynchings mobs would overrun police stations to get at black suspects and would threaten the lives of any police officer who tried to stop them. Some were killed but most would step aside and let it happen. It was endemic that the evolution of law enforcement would be shaped by this. The public's message was you (the police) keep the black people in line or we, the lynching public will.
Of course this is all made possible by our court system. Where the police are tools, the court is the weapon. It is a system that can be wielded and manipulated. There was a time when white people could blatantly commit assault and murder against black people without fear of prosecution or arrest. The case of Emmitt Till and the Birmingham church bombings are classic examples. When these atrocities occurred everyone in the communities knew who did it but the local law enforcement and the courts wouldn't even bother trying to prosecute because they knew all white juries would not convict a white person for killing a black person, even if it was a child. It was only through the petitioning of the federal government that this changed, thus invoking the battle between the federal govt. and state's rights. It is almost ironic that the greatest victories for black people in the United States has been through the court system. Plessy v Ferguson was the first attempt to topple legal segregation back in 1896 and although it did not end segregation it did introduce the concept of "separate but equal" which at the time was considered progress. Over 50 years later the victory would be won in the 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education case which ended legal segregation with constitutional amendments. Neither case was an accident. They were both organized and planned to bring cases to court that would end segregation and bring equality, at least on paper, to black people.
Here we are in 2010 with what could be called Grant v Mehserle. It is the kind of case for the greater community to use a gauge as to where we stand now, the verdict and public reaction acting as barometers measuring our progress, or lack of, in relationships between black and white people, and black people and institutions. Back in the 90's we had the Rodney King beating caught on video. The video is key as it is the "witness" that is needed to move the non believers. The Civil Rights movement became a real movement in 1961 when the Freedom Riders were attacked in Alabama, their busses lit on fire by mobs with the backing of local law enforcement. The intent was not to scare but to kill. It made the front page of newspapers worldwide and the international press saw it for what it was, straight up terrorism. How could the United States be the leader of the free world if they let this happen within their own borders? What moral high ground was there to stand on when citizens exercising their rights are violently attempted to be murdered under the authority of law enforcement? The international press "bore witness" and it changed forever the course of the Civil Rights movement and the United States. In the Oscar Grant case cell phone videos provided "witness". Without the video I am completely convinced that Mehserle would not only be free, he probably would have never gone to trial. Rodney King had video of his beating and the officers still walked and people wonder why there was rioting.
So what happened that night at the Fruitvale BART station? Oscar Grant and a few others were taking off the train by BART officers because of a report of fighting. Not for assault, but for fighting. The officers had sufficient number to handle the situation and though there were some local and agitated onlookers nobody was making any attempts to interfere with the BART officers. Grant was on his stomach with Mehserle on his back and another officer with his foot on Grant's neck. Grant was unarmed. Mehserle rose up, pulled his firearm, aimed, and shot Grant in the back, causing his death. In his trial Mehserle claims he was attempting to use a taser on Grant. My question is, if he meant to taze Grant why did he draw his gun instead? Why didn't he draw the taser? He is a trained law enforcement officer. From the moment he drew his gun he had opportunity to realize he was holding a gun and not a tazer. Why did Mehserle draw his gun? Who knows? Only he knows. The fact is he drew his gun and killed Oscar Grant. Do we need to know why? No, because it won't bring back Oscar Grant. Should Mehserle be held accountable? Yes he should because homicide is a crime. He killed someone. Those are the facts. What he meant to do, that is a debate that can never be solved. In the court of law can we be allowed to walk if we didn't mean to do what we did? Or do we prosecute people for what they actually do?
Mehserle put on a badge and carried a gun and it was his responsibility to act within certain guidelines for the use of his weapon. He did not. Drawing the gun by mistake is one thing but drawing it, aiming it, and pulling the trigger is a conscious act not a mistake. Only Mehserle knows what was going on in his head at the time but what we all know is he drew his weapon and shot and killed Oscar Grant, that is a fact. The court system operates on facts and those are the only facts in this case. He was in control of himself in a rational state when he pulled the gun and shot Oscar Grant. He had other choices available to him but pulling his gun and shooting it was the choice he made, now he has to pay the price for that. He has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
The jury didn't buy the taser defense. Should they have? I wasn't a juror at the trial but in my following of the shooting from the day it happened through the trial I never heard any satisfactory explanation of why he drew the gun and not the taser. I'm not buying that he thought the gun was a taser. He's a trained professional. If Mehserle was found not guilty it would give rise to a new defense precedent in court, the "I meant to" defense. In my opinion, in the court of law, what we mean to do is outweighed by what we actually do. Trials are for what actually happens and in this case one man shot another unarmed man in the back, that is what actually happened. Oscar Grant may have had a criminal record but as far as we know he never hurt anybody. He didn't commit violent crimes. Nobody has come forward during this media saturated trial to say that Oscar Grant had raped, robbed, assaulted, libeled, or slandered them. His offenses were most likely drug related. He did not cause the shooting. He had never taken a life. Johannes Mesherle, on the other hand, has taken a life. He has killed another human being.
Oscar Grant was shot and killed by Mehserle. It was a homicide the jury felt was unjustified but at the same time they were not certain if he intended to kill Grant, that is a big maybe, just as the taser vs gun is a maybe. When we remove the maybes and look at the facts Oscar Grant lies dead, shot in the back by Johannes Mehserle. Whether you think the guilty verdict was just or unjust, that is a window into your own soul. Look deep, look hard.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
12 Hours Part 2
The second half of my 12 hour ride…
Cruising the silent streets of San Francisco I arrive home about 2:15 am. What to do, what to do, what to do…stay up until 7am for the US vs. Algeria World Cup game or try to get a few hours of shut eye?
I spied a blu ray disc I rented from Film Yard Video and decided to feed it to the PS3 and watch Matt Damon in Green Zone. It’s an Iraq war movie about a rank and file army captain who uncovers a faulty intel plot/conspiracy in the search of WMD’s. It’s decent entertainment, I didn’t put me to sleep. In watching the bonus features I discover the movie is directed by Paul Greengrass, a British film maker. Greengrass has only been on my radar since last week. I was not familiar with the name until I rewatched the film Bloody Sunday, the 2002 definitive movie about the massacre of Irish protesters in their hometown town of Derry, Northern Ireland, by British paratroopers in 1972. It’s the Sunday in U2’s song, Sunday Bloody Sunday. Last week, after 28 years, the British govt. absolved the protesters of any wrongdoing and condemned the British forces for the killings. Bloody Sunday is in my collection so after hearing about the ruling I wanted to watch it again. I was curious about the director because the entire film is shot like a documentary. On perusal I find out the director is Paul Greengrass. I also find out he directed two of the last three Bourne movies. I had no idea he was the director of Green Zone but after watching it I was curious who made it because the style was familiar. Well, there you go.
I was not able to stay awake but amazingly I was able to wake up in time to go watch some soccer. I resuscitated at about 6:15am, after maybe one and a half to two hours sleep. I freshened up and was out the door by 6:30am. It seems that no matter where the World Cup is held, if you live in San Francisco you will find yourself in a bar sardine packed with people guzzling beers and cheering at the top of your lungs at some ungodly hour. It is rather strange when you start your night of drinking at 2:30am. The last time I remember watching a game at a decent hour was the 1990 World Cup which was won by West Germany (yes kiddies, there used to be two Germanys) winning out over a Maradona led Argentina. It was the first time I really understood the global power of the World Cup.
That summer I was working at Pepperdine University in Malibu, taking care of 92 European high school kids as part of an ESL program. The students all came from upper middle class backgrounds from around the globe (Tahiti, Mexico, China, India) but most were European. 60 of the students were split between Italy and France which became the two rival camps in the program, the historical animosity present even in these fresh faced students. These two groups kept me busy as I was playing the role of policeman in the dorm. While most of the students were polite and followed the rules the French and Italian students were always breaking curfew and making a ruckus. The difference was when I told the Italian kids to be quiet and go to bed they would apologize and be quiet but in no time at all they’d be loud again and not really giving a damn. The French kids on the other hand, when I tried to tell them anything they just completely ignored me. They were just too good for the rules. One thing was clear, the two groups did not like each other.
The first thing the students wanted to know was where they could watch the World Cup Games. Me and the other staff at first had a “whatever” attitude about them watching the Cup, we simply had no idea how into it they were but we learned quickly. It was the main concern of every student in the program. There was not one kid who was not a huge soccer fan. They begged and pleaded us so we found a space big enough to accommodate the group with a tv in one of the student lounges. When the games were on everything stopped and they watched the games. They were as hardcore as any Superbowl fan and I was impressed. I understood they had to watch these games so I made sure to schedule activities around the games. The Italian kids were devastated when Italy lost in the semis. We had a few German students so of course they were happy when West Germany beat Argentina for the championship. Most of the students were rooting for the Deutsch since they were representing Europe so there was a lot of good energy for the game but it was nothing in comparison to watching the 3rd place game between England and Italy the day before. They Italians were crushed just a few days earlier when they lost the semis but here they were, rabid as ever, cheering on their team to victory. It was way more exciting than the finals game. They tried talking me into buying them some champagne to celebrate and they didn't take to kindly to being rebuffed. At home they drink wine, beer and champagne but I had to explain to them in the US there were age limits to who could drink. They just couldn’t get over that, especially when we had a couple of 18th birthdays where it is tradition for Italians to drink champagne. Despite that, it was a ridiculous summer, as in, ridiculously good. I’d wake up from my dorm room to bright sunshine and walk out my door treated to a close up view of the Pacific Ocean. Pepperdine is on a hill and right on the Pacific Coast Highway so no matter where you are on campus you have an unblocked view of the ocean. It was like living in paradise.
Some say San Francisco is paradise which I will agree with but only on sunny days when the skies are clear and blue and the arctic summer winds have subsided. Leaving my apartment to go watch soccer at 6:30am it was your typical June morning, cold, overcast, and foggy. It had the feel of one of those days where there is no time. Without the sun it looks the same all day, 7am is indistinguishable from 7pm. I stop at the corner and enter Central Tea and Coffee, my local java spot and order my usual tall dark roast. I’m almost shocked to see Michael working behind the counter. He just played the Yoshi’s gig, just hours ago I had seen him schlepping to his car with his guitars and amp in tow. Usually he doesn’t open the morning after a gig but there he was, looking like he could use eight hours of sleep. On his advice he pours a shot of espresso into my coffee. Good call since the screaming is set to begin in 30 minutes, gotta be ready. I walk the eight or so blocks to Mad Dog in the Fog sipping my brew. I walk past another pub, Danny Coyle’s, and it is jam packed so I know Mad Dog will be just the same, even more so, since it is a more popular place and has seniority. I’m meeting my friend David who has one of the coolest surnames on the planet, Cervantes. You have to be born cool to have the name Cervantes and David certainly is. He’s Brazilian American so he has that Brazilian appetite for life combined with the cultural broadness of being American and it makes him an interesting guy. He has an astute mind and an impressive vinyl collection. He never made the transition to digitized music, one of the rare people who hasn't ( I guess there is no transition if you were born after 1987). When I go to his house he's usually spinning some classic jazz from the 40's and 50's. He's married to a French gal name Pascal and she‘s into grand prix racing, especially the Le Mans. He actually has to leave the game a little after half time because he’s flying to the south of France to do some vacationing with the wife and her family. Nice life if you can get it.
As I approach Mad Dog I can see a line and two guys taking money at the door. Cover charge? Hmmm, I could watch the game at home for free or at many other places nearby. I usually watch World Cup soccer at Kezar Pub, which is always packed for sports but they never have a cover charge. As I contemplate whether I want to pay to get in I catch a whiff of the deal. $10 get’s you in but you also get two drink tickets so I decide it’s not such a bad deal after all so I give up a Hamilton and enter the fray. The energy level is high and so are the patrons. Everybody has a beer, many double fisted, which in this case a is wise choice. It was worse than a rugby scrum trying to get to the bar. Once there it only made sense to cash in both your drink tickets since you didn’t want to have to drill your way through the crowd to make good on your second. I made my way to the bar while miraculously texting David. He was finding a parking space. I let him know it was crowded beyond belief and he wasn’t too keen on paying the cover so he suggested we meet next door at Café International. I agreed to meet him there but with beer finally in hand I had my doubts I could get back to the front door. Like a salmon swimming upstream I muscled my way through the crowd and after about 10 minutes I could see the glow of foglight that was the front door and I exited the place like a fetus being jettisoned from a womb.
Café International was full of people but not body-to-body packed like Mad Dog. There were tables and chairs and a small couch in the middle which had been commandeered by a laptop wielding college student. Having only one big screen television, it made the crowd more intimate as we were all watching the same game. Mad Dog has tv’s everywhere and were showing both the US game and the England game and there were plenty of people there to root for the English. David ordered us some food and a few beers. The food was actually donuts. I used to do the donut/beer combo a lot in my LA and Mexico days but it was not something I brought with me to San Francisco, mostly because San Francisco is the bush leagues when it comes to donuts and LA is a donut paradise, at least it was when I lived there. I knew places in LA where you could get donuts right off the rack, hot and buttery, melt in your mouth donuts. Getting them hot off the racks usually meant showing up at about 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning. That just hilights a major shortcoming of San Francisco, the lack of 24 hour consumerism. In LA there was a 24 hour store for everything, usually with a drive thru attached. 24 hour places like Canter’s Deli and Tommy’s Burger were legendary. Donut shops, led by the homegrown donut chain Winchell's, were 24 hour a day places so no matter how hungry or lost you were in the wee hours of the morning in LA, you could always stop and get a donut and your bearings. Taco trucks, burgers, and donuts, it’s what you do after 2:30 in the morning in LA.
David and I are settled near the back of the International enjoying the game. England scored earlier in their game so the US had to score or be sent packing. For most of the game we had been treated to several “almost” scores. Soccer is the only sport where almost scoring is as exciting as scoring. Soccer goals develop so when a score seems imminent the anticipation of the crowd hits a crescendo that either erupts for a score or collapses mightily for a missed shot, the closer the miss the more dramatic the collapse. That is why 1-0 and 0-0 games can be terribly exciting. There have been three or four times when it looked for sure the US would score, so sure you already had your hand in the high five position, only to be let down by an errant or high kick. David had to bail about a half hour before the game was to be over and it wasn’t looking good for the US when he departed. It was 0-0 and neither Algeria or the US seemed like it would score as the game wore down. Algeria started playing for the tie as they kept most of their players back on defense. The US was getting more desperate because time was running out. Regulation time was over and now we were into Injury Time. Only a few minutes remained. For some unknown reason Algeria decided to attack and got a decent header shot but it was smothered by the American goalie. This gave an opportunity for the US to attack and the goalie quickly released the ball to teammates streaking down the sideline. A few quick forward passes later a US player was taking a good shot on goal which was deflected by the goalie, rebounded by a US player, and again deflected by the goalie but this time he had taken himself way out of position. For an eternity the ball spun around as frantic players tried to react and off screen out of nowhere comes Donovan to boot the ball into the goal, a clean shot the goalie had no chance to make a play on. The place erupted. It was fantastic. Most of the people in the place were thinking the WC for the states was soon to be over but in an instant everyone was reborn. People were jumping up and down, high fiving, hootin and hollerin, and hugging the nearest stranger. Pints were hoisted in honor of the goal and the win. It is a great feeling, it feels good to make the 6:00am wake up call and the breakfast beers seem worth the effort. I was feeling a bit delirious from the goal and the beers and I was loving every minute of it. When people combust spontaneously in a good way it’s like everybody gets high off of it. It’s the natural high, that’s why people love it world over, even us late-to-the-world-party Americans, who are finally catching on.
I headed back over to Mad Dog, I still had one drink ticket to dispense. The place was a mess but now path to the bar was clear. There were still a lot of people but they had spread out to the sidewalk in front and the patio in back. I saw a quite a few people with that happy stagger, them that enjoyed the game immensely but maybe had two beers too many. There is an afterglow in the place that can still be felt despite all the spilled beer on the floor. I drank my beer and watched the replays of the game on the dozen or so screens around the bar. On one tv there was a Wimbledon match being shown and I remember the score being 26-27. I thought that was odd because that was a ridiculously high score ofr a tennis match, and they were still playing! We were so into the soccer victory myself and the other people in the bar didn’t pay much attention to that score. Later on in the evening I found out the match would set a record for the longest tennis match of all time. It was so long they had to postpone it and finish it the next day. I stayed at Mad Dog talking to inebriated strangers about soccer and the chances of the US advancing to the quarterfinals. After a few more pints I decide it was time to head home. I wondered what we are all going to do for the rest of the day since we already shot our wad. It’s only 10:00 in the morning. There is still practically an entire day waiting to be lived. All I can think about at this time is getting out of the chilly fog and getting wrapped up in some blankets for deep sleep and dreaming.
As I lay me down to sleep I see that it is 11:00am. 12 hours ago I was starting one adventure and now I am ending another. It was a good 12 hours, all the fun and adventure made it seem like a vacation. 12 hours...you can change your life in 12 hours.
Cruising the silent streets of San Francisco I arrive home about 2:15 am. What to do, what to do, what to do…stay up until 7am for the US vs. Algeria World Cup game or try to get a few hours of shut eye?
I spied a blu ray disc I rented from Film Yard Video and decided to feed it to the PS3 and watch Matt Damon in Green Zone. It’s an Iraq war movie about a rank and file army captain who uncovers a faulty intel plot/conspiracy in the search of WMD’s. It’s decent entertainment, I didn’t put me to sleep. In watching the bonus features I discover the movie is directed by Paul Greengrass, a British film maker. Greengrass has only been on my radar since last week. I was not familiar with the name until I rewatched the film Bloody Sunday, the 2002 definitive movie about the massacre of Irish protesters in their hometown town of Derry, Northern Ireland, by British paratroopers in 1972. It’s the Sunday in U2’s song, Sunday Bloody Sunday. Last week, after 28 years, the British govt. absolved the protesters of any wrongdoing and condemned the British forces for the killings. Bloody Sunday is in my collection so after hearing about the ruling I wanted to watch it again. I was curious about the director because the entire film is shot like a documentary. On perusal I find out the director is Paul Greengrass. I also find out he directed two of the last three Bourne movies. I had no idea he was the director of Green Zone but after watching it I was curious who made it because the style was familiar. Well, there you go.
I was not able to stay awake but amazingly I was able to wake up in time to go watch some soccer. I resuscitated at about 6:15am, after maybe one and a half to two hours sleep. I freshened up and was out the door by 6:30am. It seems that no matter where the World Cup is held, if you live in San Francisco you will find yourself in a bar sardine packed with people guzzling beers and cheering at the top of your lungs at some ungodly hour. It is rather strange when you start your night of drinking at 2:30am. The last time I remember watching a game at a decent hour was the 1990 World Cup which was won by West Germany (yes kiddies, there used to be two Germanys) winning out over a Maradona led Argentina. It was the first time I really understood the global power of the World Cup.
That summer I was working at Pepperdine University in Malibu, taking care of 92 European high school kids as part of an ESL program. The students all came from upper middle class backgrounds from around the globe (Tahiti, Mexico, China, India) but most were European. 60 of the students were split between Italy and France which became the two rival camps in the program, the historical animosity present even in these fresh faced students. These two groups kept me busy as I was playing the role of policeman in the dorm. While most of the students were polite and followed the rules the French and Italian students were always breaking curfew and making a ruckus. The difference was when I told the Italian kids to be quiet and go to bed they would apologize and be quiet but in no time at all they’d be loud again and not really giving a damn. The French kids on the other hand, when I tried to tell them anything they just completely ignored me. They were just too good for the rules. One thing was clear, the two groups did not like each other.
The first thing the students wanted to know was where they could watch the World Cup Games. Me and the other staff at first had a “whatever” attitude about them watching the Cup, we simply had no idea how into it they were but we learned quickly. It was the main concern of every student in the program. There was not one kid who was not a huge soccer fan. They begged and pleaded us so we found a space big enough to accommodate the group with a tv in one of the student lounges. When the games were on everything stopped and they watched the games. They were as hardcore as any Superbowl fan and I was impressed. I understood they had to watch these games so I made sure to schedule activities around the games. The Italian kids were devastated when Italy lost in the semis. We had a few German students so of course they were happy when West Germany beat Argentina for the championship. Most of the students were rooting for the Deutsch since they were representing Europe so there was a lot of good energy for the game but it was nothing in comparison to watching the 3rd place game between England and Italy the day before. They Italians were crushed just a few days earlier when they lost the semis but here they were, rabid as ever, cheering on their team to victory. It was way more exciting than the finals game. They tried talking me into buying them some champagne to celebrate and they didn't take to kindly to being rebuffed. At home they drink wine, beer and champagne but I had to explain to them in the US there were age limits to who could drink. They just couldn’t get over that, especially when we had a couple of 18th birthdays where it is tradition for Italians to drink champagne. Despite that, it was a ridiculous summer, as in, ridiculously good. I’d wake up from my dorm room to bright sunshine and walk out my door treated to a close up view of the Pacific Ocean. Pepperdine is on a hill and right on the Pacific Coast Highway so no matter where you are on campus you have an unblocked view of the ocean. It was like living in paradise.
Some say San Francisco is paradise which I will agree with but only on sunny days when the skies are clear and blue and the arctic summer winds have subsided. Leaving my apartment to go watch soccer at 6:30am it was your typical June morning, cold, overcast, and foggy. It had the feel of one of those days where there is no time. Without the sun it looks the same all day, 7am is indistinguishable from 7pm. I stop at the corner and enter Central Tea and Coffee, my local java spot and order my usual tall dark roast. I’m almost shocked to see Michael working behind the counter. He just played the Yoshi’s gig, just hours ago I had seen him schlepping to his car with his guitars and amp in tow. Usually he doesn’t open the morning after a gig but there he was, looking like he could use eight hours of sleep. On his advice he pours a shot of espresso into my coffee. Good call since the screaming is set to begin in 30 minutes, gotta be ready. I walk the eight or so blocks to Mad Dog in the Fog sipping my brew. I walk past another pub, Danny Coyle’s, and it is jam packed so I know Mad Dog will be just the same, even more so, since it is a more popular place and has seniority. I’m meeting my friend David who has one of the coolest surnames on the planet, Cervantes. You have to be born cool to have the name Cervantes and David certainly is. He’s Brazilian American so he has that Brazilian appetite for life combined with the cultural broadness of being American and it makes him an interesting guy. He has an astute mind and an impressive vinyl collection. He never made the transition to digitized music, one of the rare people who hasn't ( I guess there is no transition if you were born after 1987). When I go to his house he's usually spinning some classic jazz from the 40's and 50's. He's married to a French gal name Pascal and she‘s into grand prix racing, especially the Le Mans. He actually has to leave the game a little after half time because he’s flying to the south of France to do some vacationing with the wife and her family. Nice life if you can get it.
As I approach Mad Dog I can see a line and two guys taking money at the door. Cover charge? Hmmm, I could watch the game at home for free or at many other places nearby. I usually watch World Cup soccer at Kezar Pub, which is always packed for sports but they never have a cover charge. As I contemplate whether I want to pay to get in I catch a whiff of the deal. $10 get’s you in but you also get two drink tickets so I decide it’s not such a bad deal after all so I give up a Hamilton and enter the fray. The energy level is high and so are the patrons. Everybody has a beer, many double fisted, which in this case a is wise choice. It was worse than a rugby scrum trying to get to the bar. Once there it only made sense to cash in both your drink tickets since you didn’t want to have to drill your way through the crowd to make good on your second. I made my way to the bar while miraculously texting David. He was finding a parking space. I let him know it was crowded beyond belief and he wasn’t too keen on paying the cover so he suggested we meet next door at Café International. I agreed to meet him there but with beer finally in hand I had my doubts I could get back to the front door. Like a salmon swimming upstream I muscled my way through the crowd and after about 10 minutes I could see the glow of foglight that was the front door and I exited the place like a fetus being jettisoned from a womb.
Café International was full of people but not body-to-body packed like Mad Dog. There were tables and chairs and a small couch in the middle which had been commandeered by a laptop wielding college student. Having only one big screen television, it made the crowd more intimate as we were all watching the same game. Mad Dog has tv’s everywhere and were showing both the US game and the England game and there were plenty of people there to root for the English. David ordered us some food and a few beers. The food was actually donuts. I used to do the donut/beer combo a lot in my LA and Mexico days but it was not something I brought with me to San Francisco, mostly because San Francisco is the bush leagues when it comes to donuts and LA is a donut paradise, at least it was when I lived there. I knew places in LA where you could get donuts right off the rack, hot and buttery, melt in your mouth donuts. Getting them hot off the racks usually meant showing up at about 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning. That just hilights a major shortcoming of San Francisco, the lack of 24 hour consumerism. In LA there was a 24 hour store for everything, usually with a drive thru attached. 24 hour places like Canter’s Deli and Tommy’s Burger were legendary. Donut shops, led by the homegrown donut chain Winchell's, were 24 hour a day places so no matter how hungry or lost you were in the wee hours of the morning in LA, you could always stop and get a donut and your bearings. Taco trucks, burgers, and donuts, it’s what you do after 2:30 in the morning in LA.
David and I are settled near the back of the International enjoying the game. England scored earlier in their game so the US had to score or be sent packing. For most of the game we had been treated to several “almost” scores. Soccer is the only sport where almost scoring is as exciting as scoring. Soccer goals develop so when a score seems imminent the anticipation of the crowd hits a crescendo that either erupts for a score or collapses mightily for a missed shot, the closer the miss the more dramatic the collapse. That is why 1-0 and 0-0 games can be terribly exciting. There have been three or four times when it looked for sure the US would score, so sure you already had your hand in the high five position, only to be let down by an errant or high kick. David had to bail about a half hour before the game was to be over and it wasn’t looking good for the US when he departed. It was 0-0 and neither Algeria or the US seemed like it would score as the game wore down. Algeria started playing for the tie as they kept most of their players back on defense. The US was getting more desperate because time was running out. Regulation time was over and now we were into Injury Time. Only a few minutes remained. For some unknown reason Algeria decided to attack and got a decent header shot but it was smothered by the American goalie. This gave an opportunity for the US to attack and the goalie quickly released the ball to teammates streaking down the sideline. A few quick forward passes later a US player was taking a good shot on goal which was deflected by the goalie, rebounded by a US player, and again deflected by the goalie but this time he had taken himself way out of position. For an eternity the ball spun around as frantic players tried to react and off screen out of nowhere comes Donovan to boot the ball into the goal, a clean shot the goalie had no chance to make a play on. The place erupted. It was fantastic. Most of the people in the place were thinking the WC for the states was soon to be over but in an instant everyone was reborn. People were jumping up and down, high fiving, hootin and hollerin, and hugging the nearest stranger. Pints were hoisted in honor of the goal and the win. It is a great feeling, it feels good to make the 6:00am wake up call and the breakfast beers seem worth the effort. I was feeling a bit delirious from the goal and the beers and I was loving every minute of it. When people combust spontaneously in a good way it’s like everybody gets high off of it. It’s the natural high, that’s why people love it world over, even us late-to-the-world-party Americans, who are finally catching on.
I headed back over to Mad Dog, I still had one drink ticket to dispense. The place was a mess but now path to the bar was clear. There were still a lot of people but they had spread out to the sidewalk in front and the patio in back. I saw a quite a few people with that happy stagger, them that enjoyed the game immensely but maybe had two beers too many. There is an afterglow in the place that can still be felt despite all the spilled beer on the floor. I drank my beer and watched the replays of the game on the dozen or so screens around the bar. On one tv there was a Wimbledon match being shown and I remember the score being 26-27. I thought that was odd because that was a ridiculously high score ofr a tennis match, and they were still playing! We were so into the soccer victory myself and the other people in the bar didn’t pay much attention to that score. Later on in the evening I found out the match would set a record for the longest tennis match of all time. It was so long they had to postpone it and finish it the next day. I stayed at Mad Dog talking to inebriated strangers about soccer and the chances of the US advancing to the quarterfinals. After a few more pints I decide it was time to head home. I wondered what we are all going to do for the rest of the day since we already shot our wad. It’s only 10:00 in the morning. There is still practically an entire day waiting to be lived. All I can think about at this time is getting out of the chilly fog and getting wrapped up in some blankets for deep sleep and dreaming.
As I lay me down to sleep I see that it is 11:00am. 12 hours ago I was starting one adventure and now I am ending another. It was a good 12 hours, all the fun and adventure made it seem like a vacation. 12 hours...you can change your life in 12 hours.
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