Gay Nazis For Christ

I once belonged to a Hollywood writers group. We gave our little four-guys-and-a-gal group a, well…interesting moniker:

Gay Nazis For Christ.

Okay, so you’re asking yourself, what on earth possessed five otherwise bright, relatively well adjusted and demonstrably ambitious scribblers to choose arguably the most supremely reprehensible, tasteless, repulsive, horrific, not to mention un-PC and just plain dino-con baiting name as Gay Nazis For Christ?

Well, because…

• A) Not one of us was gay
• B) Nazis and fascism were antithetical to every belief we held
• C) No one in the group was a practicing Christian (though I vaguely recall our gal talking-up Wicca)

and finally and most importantly because…

• D) Fellow member and good bud Mike P. had once been a member of an intramural team called Gay Nazis For Christ (likely swiped from a Robert Heinlein remark), and Mike thought the name was funny.

So did I.

National events this last week in September, however, ripped the hee from my haw regarding Gay Nazis For Christ.

Now it’s Horrors are Us. Washington reality bludgeons harmless fantasy. Satire surrenders to hordes of horny elephants with their trunks caught in undone fudge. And, alas, there’s no Lenny Bruce to play this Holy Land Scandal Park we call D.C. for chuckles, or to wave our tattered Old Glory while manning the bullhorn on our Freedom March to Auschwitz.

But I’m a reasonable guy. So I ask myself: what’s the big deal? Should I or any other Democracy & Freedom Loving American give one loud damn if swarms of rabidly randy self-hating fire-and-rim-job Republican legislators and White House aides play patty-cake with like-gender comrades in the privacy and comfort of their very own closets?

Of course not.

But homosexuality is not the issue. I’ll rephrase this just to be perfectly clear–go ahead and flush ol’ Newt down the crapper with the rest of his Repug spin-schiesters, because homosexuality is absolutely NOT the issue here.

Look, I swallow my share of fertilizer just like everyone else when I have to, but I must say that wave upon wave of bald-faced lies and propoganda copiously covered in pious, arrogant and threatening hypocrisy really does taste like shit in a storm.

To wit:

1) “It’s vile. It’s more sad than anything else to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction.” —-deputy House Majority Whip, Co-Chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus, admitted child exploiter and probable sex addict, Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida), giving Bill Clinton hell for his affair with another consenting adult.

But the issue here isn’t sex and it isn’t homosexuality. The issue here is pederasty, gross abuse of power and just plain icky sleaze. Furthermore, the issue includes wide-ranging Republican Congressional Leadership inaction, complicity and cover-up. We’re talking serious ethical, if not legal doo-doo for the Grand Old Party.

2) (the Public Expression of Religion Act) “would be a win for those of us that understand our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.”—-Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pennsylvania), commenting on the bill which passed the House 242-173 last Tuesday.

PERA strips our Constitutional right to monetary remedies in lawsuits dealing with judged unconstitutional activities regarding church morphing into state. I particularly like Pitt-man’s “not freedom from religion” bon-bon.

Now on to one of my many favorite oldie but goodies:

3) “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.—–George W. Bus…….,

–Oooops! SO sorry, my mistake–these words were actually uttered by Nazi Propaganda Minister Jolly-Joe Goebbels.

The entirely dissimilar completely different nothing whatsover to do with the above quote I was actually trying to recollect is:

3b) “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”—-George W. Bush

But the best part of all, sports fans, was this weeks’ tour de force get-out-of-jail giveaway and Executive power grab. What a game closer, whew! Hearing that muffled roar rise up from our Congress of Cowardly Lions lying prostrate before the Crown sent chills straight up my spine. Witness our two ignoble Hovels of Congress taking eight centuries of sacred and established jurisprudence and simply eviscerating it. That’s right boys and girls, the Writ of Habeus Corpus, our most fundamental protection from tyranny and injustice, has just been, legally, transformed into the Disappear, Torture & Bury the Corpses Compasionate Conservative Decider Act of 2006.

Looking on the brighter side of the news this last week–well, we weren’t nuked yet by either Iran or Iceland, reality shows still dominate primetime, and I understand that Lickbuttistan is still entirely supportive of our imperial regime.

All hail.

SF Bay Area’s Twisted Timeline: Those Fab 1500’s

• 1500’s–Nudist Natives live la-la-la-like in Bay Area Nirvana
• 1542—-Aspiring Conquistador Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo blows by Bay
• 1579—-Pirate (not yet Sir) Francis Drake plugs holes in his Hind at Point Reyes
• 1595—-His ship sinks, spices up Drake’s Bay, then Sebastian Cermeno paddles back to Acapulco
• 1597—-Non-plussed Natives yawn, resume civilized customs, until return of stinky death-cult barbarians–two centuries later

Bay Time Detective

“Think Sam Spade’s San Francisco. A time-traveling sex diva partners with Dr. Hunter S. Thompson in Phyllis Diller’s adaptation of The X Files…or something like that.”

Bay Time Detective is a comic-noir fantasy that comes “unglued in time”. It’s set throughout the San Francisco Bay Area of today, yesterday and tomorrow. Master illusionist Mike Stahlbrodt created twisted pitch-perfect graphics. Bay Time Detective is a skewed satiric melange of politics, social issues and strange happenstance. It’s character as well as event based, with actual living, and once living San Francisco Bay Area persons appearing each week. Choice literary and cinematic characters also come to life.

Bay Time Detective can only be read at this time by Googling, Yahooing (or the like) it by name. It’ll come up looking like this: Bay Time Detective–San Fransisco stories. Click and read.

p.s.–check out Mike Stahlbrodt’s awesome (really!!!) websight http://www.starbro.com/

Chez Guillotine–SF’s Revolution in Fine Dining

Chez Guillotine is a culinary phenomenon. It’s been the Rage of the Bay from the moment it opened its doors three short weeks ago. Think Louis XIV dining with Victor Hugo amidst a butchershop production of Cirque de Soleil. That’s Chez Guillotine. This 18th Century retro establishment has already garnered rave reviews in publications ranging from the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and Gourmet Magazine, to more esoteric pubs like Vegetarian Times and Porky’s Gazette. CG’s menu is diverse, curiously arcane and ridiculously expensive. Judging from the lines outside, when you’re hot, you charge.

Reservations are de riguer. Even so, we asceded to implied blackmail by the maitre de. Mikki discreetly slipped him a twenty. We were finally shown to our table, an hour later than promised. They say you get what you pay for. That night at Chez Guillotine we most certainly did.

Curiously, there are two menus. One is vegetarian. It offers up such toothsome fare as Bolivian spaghetti thistle in camphor stock, and Fuerte avocado roast on lightly poached tundra grass.

My daughter, Mikki, ordered the multi-grain mock-sashimi appetizer, a nori seaweed salad with caper nut-cream dressing, radish potage, and, for her entee she chose grilled chanterelles mutard in an Everclear reduction with scallions over jasmine rice.

Our waiter seemed pleased with her choices, but acted funny when Pete and I asked to see the meat offerings. He snuffed and quickly walked away, returning with two greasy blood-stained menus from which rose such a vile malodor that it almost made me wretch. I handed mine right back.

“I’ll have what she’s having.”

But my dad, Pete, wasn’t the least bit put off. He doesn’t read French so he simply pointed to one from each section. As the waiter made off I asked Mikki what the deal was.

“Chez Guillotine was founded by a community off rabid animal rights activists. I was told they were having trouble with a project funding drive. One night at an on-line newsletter party someone jokingly suggested they open a restaurant serving the finest food, with a twist. You’ll see.”

I excused myself and headed to the men’s room. Strange noises bled through the walls–squeals, grunts and hrrrumphs. By the time I returned to our table Pete was guzzling his first Bloody Bull.

“Not bad, ‘ said Pete, launching into another swig, ‘but it’s the goddamndest tasting…”

“It’s made from fermented ox blood.” Mikki explained.

“Not bad,’ Pete countered, studying the goblet, ‘not half bad!” He drained it, motioning the waiter for another. For someone raised on blood sausage, steak tartar and hoospeneena, Pete is one hard vegetarian sell.

Appetizers were soon placed before Mikki and me. While our service was prompt and efficient Pete inquired where his food might be. He was informed that vegetarians always eat first at Chez Guillotine, so as to pique the carnivore palate. Pete just shrugged and ordered another drink.

“Make it a double.”

I felt a tad uneasy when, once we’d finished our grazing, plates removed, the waiter ceremoniously fitted Pete with a butcher’s apron.

“Oh boy-oh-boy-oh-boy–chow time!”

If my observations are correct no one in the entire hall was presently dining on meat. Once Pete was draped in his apron a murmur arose, and all heads turned, every eye fixed upon our table. Sure enough, I experienced all-too familiar pangs of embarrassment. Since childhood I’d be scanning for rocks to hide under whenever in the public company of my father, Pete. And I knew that Pete was eating the attention up.

When his appetizer finally arrived it proved to be a spectacular presentation on a silver service. Two slimy reddish-grey egg-shaped things, both road-mapped with blood vessels, lay on a bed of artistically arrayed vegetation. Pete rubbed his hands together, wiping saliva from his mouth. The chef speared one of the objects with satanic glee, placing it on his cutting board, then sharpened his knife before cutting paper-thin slices of meat.

“What the hell are they?” I whispered to Mikki.

“Pickled goat testicles.”

Everyone in the room seemed to share the same sardonic grin. I suppose they figured they knew what would happen once Pete bit in. The chef deftly arranged testicle slices along with pumpernickel toast wedges and preserved lemon-stuffed Algerian olives. All fell anxiously silent. Pete contemplated this offering. He piled a dozen slices on the rye, chewed thoughtfully, all the while contorting his face as though he were set to puke–and finally chased it all quickly down with yet another Bloody Bull. Suddenly, he threw his arms out. Laughter erupted from the attendant diners.

“A veritable gourmet’s delight!“, Pete enthused. “My compliments to the chef!”

However, his chef seemed anything but pleased.

“The stuff’s vile,” Mikki whispered. “How can he say that?”

“Just wait’, I replied, ‘just you wait.”

Judging from the many drained faces we were witness to the Bosch-incarnate scene here at Chez Guillotine. Our chef stood entranced, his mouth a fissure.

“Tell ya what, my good man,” said Pete, having already polished off both balls, pitching a final olive in the air, fielding it in his maw, “hows ’bout we dispense wid the other stuff an’ get right down to business? Bring on the main course!”

The gauntlet laid down, ante raised, gloves off–war had been engaged. And Pete hadn’t a clue.

As the chef retreated kitchenward, muttering and shaking his head, Pete turned, surveying the stunned dining mob, then turned back brightly to Mikki and me, whispering conspiratorially, “Good grub, and lots of promising sales victims!”

When the kitchen door once again swung open there emerged bus persons heaving before and straining shoulders behind a creaking medieval cart, within which bounced a madcap litter of squealing piglets. Their proud mama was sprawled upon a mountain of hay, sucked silly by her pink offspring. The chef, now recomposed, in addressing Pete, gestured to the pen.

“Please choose, sir.”

I guess this was meant to be a takeoff on the lobsters in the tank motif, though rather too crude and obvious. Anyway, it didn’t phase Pete.

“Well, the big one is a little too much after that wonderful appetizer, but lemme t’ink here fer a minute.” Pete scratched up some contemplative dandruff. The chef irritably brushed his white jacket. “Tell ya what.” Pete reached into the pen, grabbed a chubby suck-faced porker, and, holding it up for close inspection, proclaimed, “He’s a real cutie. I’ll eat him.”

The philosophy behind Chez Guillotine assumes that we Americans have so distanced ourselves from the brutal gore of meat processing, what, with cellophane, styrofoam and all, that once face-to-face with the ghastly process we will immediately convert to pure, clean vegetarianism.

It’s a marvelous theory.

The cart creaked back to the kitchen. Pete held the piglet on his lap, stroking and cooing it. Perhaps figuring he’d done his part Pete offered up the little fella, expecting the chef be off to roast it. But the chef just stood there before us, arms crossed, smiling maniacally. It finally dawned on me.

Chez Guillotine.

Sure enough–out rolls the red carpet, followed by the genuine article, though perhaps a smidgen downsized from the original.

A hooded executioner walked solemnly to the rear. I knew this little game would go no further. Pete would relent, if only because, in his own pig-headed obstinance, he had to identify with this helpless little creature.

I was wrong. Pete reveled in the spotlight, loved the grandeur and lusted every attention.

Besides, he was still awfully hungry.

“Perhaps,’ the chef addressed Pete, ‘you’d care to do the honors.”

“What?” Pete shot back. I don’ come to no classy joint and pay these kinda prices ta serve myself. Besides, ol’ Blackhood here looks like he enjoys his work, so who am I ta spoil his fun?”

Never. Never could anyone have imagined this. Even the most ravenous flesh eaters were certain to break before it came to this.

Staff pleaded silently with one another for ideas, support and guidance. But the spectacle had taken on its own life, and Destiny would have her way, regardless. This highest tone five star eatery, conceived as an arrogant and manipulative joke, these horrified patrons, participants all in this ritual of blood sacrifice–and no one could stop Fate’s hand, nor cleanse their own guilt in calling it forth.

Plainly, piglet was to be made into pork before our very eyes.

Mikki drew a napkin to her mouth and, sobbing, ran for the door. That did it. Patrons stampeded the front door. Pete jumped up from his seat. “Who opened the pigeon coop?” he sputtered, dejectedly. “Oh well…, fuggit. Like I always say, son, if at first you don’t succeed–give it a rest.”

I sat in my chair as if nailed to it, wanting out in the worst way, but I couldn’t budge. The executioner reached for our cute little defenseless porcine. He placed its squealing, squirming head betwixt wooden locks beneath an immaculately shining blade.

My feet involuntarily lunged into the parquet, knocking me backwards unto the floor. I scrambled up and raced after Mikki to the door.

***********

We spoke not a word, uttered not one syllable between us. Mikki and I were waiting impatiently out in the car, fidgeting and wringing our hands, waiting for Pete to leave the restaurant.

An hour later and Pete saunters out, pith helmet cocked rogueishly to one side, he grinning wide, winking and patting his fat tummy through his safari jacket.

“Goddamned butcher, he gets down on all fours, pleadin’ wid me ta save the life of his ‘poor innocent pig’. I said ta hell wid that, here I’m starvin’ an’ that pig’s what I ordered. I couldn’t figure it out. Then it dawned on me.’ Pete pointed to his ear. ‘These guys are a bunch of religious nuts. That’s why they wanted me ta off the pig.

‘So I tell ‘em, okay, fine, I’ll do it. I’ll do the honors. An’ I proceed ta ask ‘em how the damn thing works. So then they start breakin’ down, cryin’ and pleadin’, throwin’ their hands up in the air and everything. They’re offerin’ me all kinds of stuff–dinner on the house, free drinks–anything, if I just spare the life of my succulent roast. O’ course, I know they was just readin’ from their bible, so I says, lookit, fine, ya don’ wanna gimme pork, I’m a reasonable guy. Hows ’bout a nice thick juicy steak?’

‘Man, were they relieved. They bought three gross of business cards, a box of flyswatters and two dozen packs of my Pete Bingo personally photographed playin’ cards. Free chow, good sales–and the steak wasn’t bad.

‘They said they had to run to the store to get it.

‘Mahdoewn, what a bunch of goofballs!”

***********

——-excerpted from the novel Pete & Dick Go Off

copyright p. joseph potocki

Poz, the Woz & Me—-Part 1

Okay–so you’re asking yourself, “just how do Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, the late-great Saint Grimes Poznikov (aka the Automatic Human Jukebox), and this p. joseph potocki character fit together?” Not only that, you’re no doubt anxious to get the lowdown on just what transpired between us.

I tell you, sometimes it’s like a dream, even to me. My gosh, has it really been twenty-plus years already? Let’s travel back in time…

There I was, shuckin’ & jivin’, movin’ & groovin’ for up to one-hundred hours each week–a self deluded too-hip-gotta-go Hollywood music video guy. I produced. I directed. I wrote stuff. I edited, schlepped, managed productions, took out the trash and made coffee for my crews. I was a small time tinsel town producer on the cutting edge of The Next Big Thing. MTV had just signed on the air. We amped it up to the max, certain “The Revolution” had finally begun.

That revolution would be spectacularly brief and feeble.

Conceptual music videos blew through the 1980’s like sucker-punch quasars. Remember teased-hair and poseur-punk? Jump cuts? New Wave “fashion bands” slugged it out with spandexed heavy metal. Lead singers were generally castratos.

Wow, were those great times, or what? And the best part of it all? We’ll never ever ever have to relive a moment of it.

Except here, of course.

These were salad days for me and my ilk. Our music vids would act as hip missiles, vaporizing studio fortress doors, leading us into mythic lands of feature film production. Once major studio execs caught our stunning cinevid magic, why, they couldn’t help but gift us with their enormous resources. We young turks would take the dream industry by storm. Hell, who could argue we hadn’t already elevated smoke machines, slo-mo and lingerie to unparalled artistic heights? Yes, we would produce a staggering array of soon-to-be lauded box office blockbusters. I, like my equally delusional colleagues, knew this all to be true.

My personal breakthrough rested on the potential success of a television pilot lamely named The Rock Report. It was conceptually sorta kinda a little wee-bit ripoff-like Saturday Night Live meets Rolling Stone Magazine.

But entirely unique.

The Rock Report was not my title of choice. I had a business partner. He was an ex-William Morris talent agent. He had absolutely no background in either film or video production, but fancied himself the “Artiste”. More than one production crew threatened mutiny if I didn’t remove him from the set, pronto. The name Rock Report was his idea. My partner feared I’d wield inordinate power if I personally wrote the show. And I didn’t write that mess. I did outflank him, however, by creating most of the bits. I am especially proud of one bit called Steaming Kielbasa. So, being on a starvation production budget, we naturally hired team after team of pathetic “comedy” writers, none of whom seemed to know the meaning of laugh, chuckle or guffaw.

The Rock Report actually grew from the rotting placenta of an earlier project, it like a boomerang Philosopher’s Stone, having turned video fools-gold into lead. We cannibalized what we could from this abomination and changed the name for the worse. After liquidating our first show host (his disembodied voice still heard in an interview with David Lee Roth), we went out hunting for new material.

That summer Steve Wozniak, “the Woz”, decided to throw a party for a few close friends. About a quarter million close friends showed up. If you are old enough to remember “progressive rock” and cell phones the size of microwave ovens, you’ll recall that the Woz had teamed up with buddy bazillionaire Steve Jobs to found Apple Computers. In fact, this “US Festival”, would not merely showcase great live music, but would demonstrate how Apple Computer had, like MTV, revolutionized all human endeavors.

Or, something like that.

A carnival midway was parked off to the side of the concert area. Here were your typical carny rides, like the ferris wheel. But there was one attraction like none other in the history of festival attractions. San Francisco’s own St. Grimes Poznikov was the music-maker within the Automatic Human Jukebox.

It was one pistol-hot weekend. My crew and I videoed the likes of the Grateful Dead, David Bowie, the Clash, Fleetwood Mac, Van Halen and Oingo Boingo in that hellish dustbowl. All great acts, to be sure. Yet none approached the sublime genius of St. Grimes Poznikov, the renowned and immortal Automatic Human Jukebox.

That sets our stage for the madness that would follow.

Happy Jack & The Praying Band

Happy Jack Harrington held court, together with paramour Big Louise, at their own Opera Comique. Whatever its pros and cons Opera Comique was not what you or I would call an opera house. On the other hand, say you’d just adjourned from gold fields out yonder, why here you’d find stout drink, games of chance, semi-pro entertainment most unrefined and indelicate, and your choice of tender embrace from a bevy of lovelies. Happy Jack indulged himself in it all.

Picture his towering plug hat placed atop a milk chocolate cascade of perfectly-coiffed curls. Jack’s beloved mustache accompanied the cascade down his face. It was said to be smooth-as-silk. Sometimes, he’d tie the mustache ends together beneath his chin for show. But let’s not forget the ruffled shirt, diamond stickpin, long-tailed jacket and vest, and his paint-tight trousers tucked into shiny knee-length black boots. Hell, he may have sported a codpiece for all we know. Anyway, that was Happy Jack Harrington. Happy Jack, the Barbary Coast’s own Bacchus, P.T. Barnum, Beau Brummels and Johnny Wadd all rolled into one.

Happy Jack loved everyone, and everyone loved Happy Jack.

But everything came to a grinding halt early one morning when Happy Jack, coming off a brutal drunk–puking, hallucinating and thus particularly vulnerable, fell under the spell of the Praying Band. You see, back in those old Barbary Coast days, San Francisco was widely acknowledged as “the wickedest place on earth”. Most every San Franciscan pitched in to preserve this hometown accolade. But out there, in the horrible light of day, lurked proponents of sobriety, honest work and similar balderdash. Not only that, these “temperance society” ladies used their Bible like an accomplished shanghaier’s lead pipe.

A helpless, hopeless and contrite Happy Jack Harrington thus followed the well-scrubbed Sunday school marms into their religious lair. One can only guess what mischief had caused Jack to forsake his most valued possessions, including Big Louise, but that previous night must have been a doozy.

Jack took to his new avocation like a mad butcher to a side of beef. And yet, his spirit must have impressed the God-gals, for not only did Jack attend services and read his Bible daily, he actually became manager of the Praying Band’s own restaurant. Perhaps he ran a game of chance after hours to retain his sanity, but we’ll never know. At any rate all this do-good-ed-ness was bound to take its toll.

It was a windy fog-swept night, about a month after his trek into food service. That night Happy Jack faced his inner demons and experienced a true and overwhelming spiritual awakening. All at once he came to realize the folly of his life. Revelation shook him from his cobwebbed stupor and threw him from his bed. From that moment hence he too, like his Praying Band mentors, was to be on a mission from God.

Consequently, Jack did what any honest, self respecting Ranger of the Barbary Coast would do in his situation. Happy Jack marked a pack of playing cards and headed down the hill back into that amusement park of the lost and the vile, San Francisco’s own Barbary Coast.

It felt good.

That night Happy Jack Harrington won back enough money to buy a new dive. Alas, the Opera Comique had since been sold from underneath him. As for Big Louise, she’d run off with a wealthy miner. Jack immediately set to re-establishing his reputation. Meanwhile, habitues of the Coast remarked as to the many fancy posters fastened to walls throughout their environs. These announced an impending lecture offered free of charge by Mr. Happy Jack, himself.

On the day of the lecture, with a large rented hall filled with half a dozen newsmen and no one else, Happy Jack was saved from embarrassment when a vociferous drunk stumbled into the proceedings quite by accident. This character boosted spirits, and made for an entirely adequate cheering section for our Mr. Harrington.

But it is the nature and the content of this lecture which will be held immortal. After first ticking off a litany of mistakes he had repeatedly made throughout his life Jack launched into his brief affair with the Praying Band. He explained how he had turned his back upon those things he most cherished in life, and how he missed Big Louise, too. In a prophet’s roar he counted down those many things he had lost in his life. He knew he alone was to blame. Finally he vowed to everyone and everything that he was a wholly changed man and a newly saved soul. He now knew what he had never known before–that sobriety was the root of all evil. Happy Jack swore to his God and to everyone present that he would never again take another sober breath, as long as he was allowed to live.

As far as we know, he never did.

Five Years: ABC & 9/11

em-eye-see

The toxic storm hammered us as scheduled. Path To 911, a category five media deluge, gathered propaganda as our week progressed, delivering its pious sludgy punch over Sunday and Monday’s airwaves. I nearly drowned in faux-official lie after hurricane lie, each one wrapped and drenched in stars and stripes like dime-store treason. I bore witness to mock-patriots bent on blind revenge in the worst ignorant ways. A drunken cocaine-cowboy even tried to swipe my life raft, claiming it was “just a goddamned piece of paper”.

In the eye of this storm citizens wandered about like zombies, few realizing who or what we were up against. Or why. Or precisely where on earth we were dying and murdering multitudes of others.

kay-eee-why

Finally there was silence. Everything looked the same. Mixed metaphors. Square pegs in round holes. Democracy, meaning dictatorship. Usama Bin Laden=Butcher Of Baghdad. FOX=News.

em-oh-yew-ess-eee

A million tongues of fiery light poured from heavens above. Suddenly the Chosen in our masses knew. Their solemn dirge rang true from every gutter, meaningless or misunderstood…

MICKEY MOUSE

—DONALD RUM

MICKEY MOUSE

–DEAD EYE DICK

Frankly, I’m losing faith in this nations’ ability to pull its collective consciousness from its consumer navel. America doesn’t savvy reality. What we demand is quick-fix entertainment. Slogans. Banners. Promises. Sound bites. Scores.

FOREVER LET US HOLD OUR BANNER HIGH, High, high…

It may be trite to state the obvious–that as a culture we lack historical perspective, but it is true. I’m convinced the average American would be hard pressed to distinguish passages in our Constitution from selections of Mein Kampf. With something on the order of 45% still convinced that Saddam was mixed up in 9/11 it is no stretch to say we are a shallow, vapid, ill-informed and dangerously willful people. Unfortunately, those having elevated themselves into our halls of power are even far more so. And they are delusional.

Now it’s time to say goodbye

to our foreign fam-i-ly

Delusional? Yes, this cabal of oligarch privilege has become so adept at pathological lying, are so successful at propagandizing the American public, have rammed through so many crypto-fascist policies in the name of truth, freedom and security that they believe whatever falsehoods they utter are justified. They are above and beyond all laws. No matter that they smear, torture, imprison and murder–for they are just and they, alone, are good. They dismiss long accepted moral, ethical and legal standards as irrelevant, out-dated and quaint. Pay no mind to their heinous crimes, for they commit only that which is ordained by The Almighty.

them-we-see
kill-them-why

Why?

BECAUSE WE’RE TOLD TO!

Moreover, these “leaders” reject accountability, save for that rarity which demonstrably succeeds. They are, by the very nature of their being, beyond doubting and beyond reproach. They are authoritarian to the Nth degree.

A stench pervades this nation far worse than policies of death and destruction executed in our name. This is our stench–the stench of our democratic republic decaying into a fascist state. It is the stench of willful ignorance and hidden power levers. Ours is the rank stench of ever growing wealth beyond imagination, of abject poverty, and most importantly of profoundly self-centered apathy and mean greed. Our stench rises from the depths of fetid acquisitional lust. Mad “christians” join forces with efete silver spooners in sadistic wet dreams wherein all others are evil and enemies of their redefined State. Their parents, twisted by sociopathic logic, are the architects and philosophers of pillage and plunder, those who truly believe they live to rule this world.

Let’s take a long hard look in the mirror. Who, my fellow Americans, are we, what do we stand for–and what have we become? When we brag about our nation, do those virtues stand up to the light of day? Do we say what we mean, and do what we say? Do those screeds enshrined within our democratic tradition, our heritage of laws and freedoms–do they mean one damn thing anymore? Or are we so stupefyingly fearful of some Bogeyman daily special that we’ll mindlessly shed hard-fought freedoms and cower before power? And for what? For the safety and security of treadmill mice in a laboratory cage? Have we the least shred of self dignity left within us? Do we question authority? Do we celebrate our freedoms by working to benefit humanity? Do we apply our talents with future generations in mind? Do we inspire our fellow citizens to selflessly give of themselves by our own example, and do we honor and value the unequalled democratic freedoms laid at our feet by our revolutionary forebears?

Or would we rather just grab a brew, replay Path To 911, and order pizza out?

them-are-you-and-me

Universal Health Care/California bill SB 840

Every western industrial nation has it. It’s a perk to U.S. auto makers operating in Canada. Even “third world” Cuba has it. Moreover, after decades of economic sanctions Cuba still has a lower infant mortality rate than we do.

What do we have?

Here mushrooming health care costs pitch our middle class into oblivion’s dumpster. U.S. Senate majority leader Dr. Bill Frist legislates his medical benefits from our taxes while depositing our private insurance payouts into his own bank account. Meanwhile, employers cut benefits. Insurance costs rise from merely unaffordable into galactic unknowns. Fair paying job packages are replaced with minimum wage no bennie dead-enders. Mega-thugs like Wal Mart spend what could go into “associate” premiums on propaganda campaigns instead.

What are you and I left with?

Debt, more debt, insurmountable life-long debt, bankruptcy, divorce, homelessness and, ahem—suicide?

“You know, George–you’re worth more dead than you are alive!” —rich villian Henry Potter to underinsured hardworking hero George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life

Ah, the American Dream gone boing-boing!

So along comes SB840, a comprehensive health care bill covering all Californians. It includes medical, dental, vision, hospitalization and prescriptions. Word’s out it even covers mental health, chiropractic and acupuncture. It’s passed both California State houses and sits on Herr Steroidnegger’s desk. Too good to be true?

Listen to the opposition:

“Government-run health care simply does not work.”—California State Assemblyman Greg “Me the PAC People” Aghazarian, R-Stockton

Holy Moley, it doesn’t work? Okay, Gregster–name a single western industrialized government-run health care system which isn’t working. Name one that doesn’t function more efficiently and cheaper than ours. Name a system covering a smaller percentage of its citizenry than the privatized mega-brand nightmare we call health care here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Go ahead, speed-dial your corporate health care campaign backers, Greg. They’ll pull your strings and mouth your response–talking points straight from their tired old tome of quarter-truths and bald faced lies. See, it’s easy. Then just collect your due and move on hat-in-hand to your next puppetmaster.

The fact is that myriad incompatible, overlapping and often purposely confusing health care offerings do not a good public health care system make. We’re no longer fooled by self-proclaimed corporate munificence. The fact is that profit takes precedence over care in their world. People with pre-existing or likely to develop conditions are roasted on the spit or entirely denied coverage. Twenty percent of Americans have no coverage whatsoever. I could go on, but you get the point.

The heart of the matter is philisophical. Just what was government created to do? I’m sure you, Mr. Aghazarian, and your fellow Repugs won’t lie down and allow our higher productivity-lower wage taxes be spent on that essential thing most desired by that same tax paying working populace, now would you? No, that would be an affront to the “free market”! Hell, it borders on COMMUNISM! Why, after listening to all this socialist bunk you’d think that the role of government had something to do with safeguarding and protecting the welfare of us all–for the common good! However, every rational person (investment-class Republican) knows the common good has a deleterious effect not only on the corporate bottom line, but on stock dividends therein, right?

“I don’t believe government should be getting in there and should start running a health care system that is kind of done and worked on by government.”–Gov. Arnold the Articulate

You get ‘em, Arnie. We’ve only 7 million uninsured folks and maybe twice that many who are under-insured here in California. On the other hand, insurers are doing a wiz-bang job. I’m told that philanthropic compassion bleeds from their hearts like January’s molasses. They’re certainly not in it for the money. Oh, no! Nor are pharmaceutical manufacturers. This is why our health care system is the wonder, the marvel and the envy of the entire modern world. That’s why we as a nation pay just 5% more of our GNP for health-care than, say, those universally covered socialist tea-sots across the big pond in Great Britain. Moreover, while each and every Brit sports medical coverage, the numbers really favor us. For example, we pay far more money per capita than those has-been imperialists, and yet 46.6 million of us haven’t a shred of medical coverage (up by 6.1 million since King Boy George swiped his first prezduncy).

By George, that shows ‘em! We’re doing a heck of a job, don’t ya think, Brownie?

So, listen very carefully to the ensuing debate. And don’t let Phil Angelides off the hook, either. While he claims SB840 is D.O.A., with Schwartz-man’s near-certain veto, and while Phil himself has as much chance of capturing the governorship as we have of delivering world peace & prosperity on the end of a nuke, we can’t give the mealy-mouthed Angelides plug-the-dike solution a pass. Fer chrissakes, Phil, step up to the plate and show some freakin’ backbone and leadership.

Let critics cry over and again that SB840 is an election season ploy. So what,…and–who cares? Health-care should have been resolved to the benefit of this state, this country, and WE, THE TAXPAYING CITIZENS eons ago. Yes, this is national policy screaming out to be enacted, but let it begin here. Yes, California will face incoming fire from Bushcorp & Co. Yes, there’ll be backstabbing friendly fire. And yes, a new bureaucracy will be created. So what! We’ve suffered lifetimes of greed-driven ever more restrictive and expensive private health care piracy. We’re dying, health care professionals are squeezed, demeaned and overworked, and hospitals are closing and/or cutting services. Meanwhile, elsewhere on planet Earth innumerable single payer systems purr like this cat on my lap. They’re smoothly functioning, cost effective and successful. They are the bureaucracy-run universal health care systems that service our many competitors worldwide.

And, they wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s kinda ironic, isn’t it. Here we’re the win-at-all-costs nation, and yet WE are loser doormat chumps when it comes to health care. Health, that very thing upon which winning hinges. We Americans live in fantasyville. Not surprisingly, many of us don’t even know it. Call it Gullibles’ Travails. How’s dead last and free-falling sit with all you “America is best at everything” types?

It’s time we grit our teeth and tell the greedball insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies to pack their bags, and to loudly and impolitely demand our politicians at both state and federal level just do it–enact universal single payer health care–and that they do it RIGHT NOW!

P.I. Pete Posits #1

The Mystery Of Trumpet Royales

So I come home after a grueling wine tour in paradise and what greets me? Well, there on my front porch sits this mystery bag chock-full of curious looking fungi. Turns out they’re Trumpet Royale mushrooms, but I don’t know that yet. I pick up the bag and slap on my reading peepers. According to print on the bag they’re grown and packed by Gourmet Mushrooms, Inc. of Sebastapol, CA, they’re USDA certified organic and further certified by something lettered QAI. I go to the Gourmet Mushroom web site–www.mycopia.com and compare my gift fungi with pictures of their offerings. That’s how I know mine are Trumpet Royales. It takes a little investigation, though. See, the Sebastapol ’shroomsters offer a whole lot of different mushroom varieties, both cultivated and wild, and both for culinary and medicinal use. Under Trumpet Royale I learn they are in the Trumpet mushroom family. Okay, but what do they taste like? Well, they claim they’re really versatile, they hold up well and that unlike many of their yummy relatives their stems are as toothsome as their caps. Furthermore, I read somewhere that you cut these stems into medallions the size of say, sea scallops, and with the proper preperation their flavor and consistency is remarkably scallop-like. And boy do I love scallops.

Upon further investigation I discover that these guys–the two principals are guys, after all–that these guys are as interesting as their offerings. Check out the bios on their website.

So here I’ve got this chance to make a dish or two with an unfamiliar ingredient. I go on the web and then pour through my cookbooks searching for recipes. But I don’t find anything to flip the ol’ Pavlovian switch. I spend yesterday over in the Napa City Library rumaging through regional histories, maps & memoirs before conjuring up my own recipes for this new challenge. It was fun. I hadn’t the foggiest notion how any of these fantasy concoctions would come out in reality, but so what? Anyway, it turns out I came up with eighteen recipes. That’s right, they may be gawdawful, but don’t fault me for lack of obsession.

My plan was to wake up real early this morning and test out a dozen different recipes. Yup, the homespun hybridization of America’s Test Kitchen and Iron Chef. I’ll call it Iron Test Kitchen. So Marilyn goes to work and I race into the kitchen, after stalling for three or four hours, first. Of course two, not twelve dishes get fixed, one mildly successful and the other showing some real potential, but still kinda rough around the edges. Here’s photos of the two dishes and what’s in them. When I get the recipe(s) fully tweaked I’ll post the exact ingredient amounts.

I’ve still got a couple pounds of these beauties left, so I may try a recipe or two out tomorrow, if I can get up in time.

Valley Of The Moon

Romance in the name and romance in the bottle. Wine County’s Valley Of The Moon stretches north from the town of Sonoma up maybe twenty miles to Santa Rosa. In this short stretch the valley reveals its treasures–natural hot springs, abundant wildlife, historic homes and hamlets, state and regional parks, excellent restaurants & local artisan boutiques, “ancient vine” zinyards, ultra-premium wineries and some of the most drop-dead scenery in our scenery rich SF Bay Area. Sonoma Valley, or Valley Of The Moon is cradled between two coastal ranges, the Mayacamas to the east and the Sonoma Mountains to the west.

The origin of its name is muddled in time and translation, but the story I like best is that General Mariano Vallejo, who was actually a colonel, was told by an old Miwok Indian Chief that Sonoma Valley meant Valley Of The Moon in Miwok. These Coast Miwoks lived in tribelets of a couple dozen per. Their seasonal villages were scattered about southern Sonoma County. Each autumn they’d gather the villages together at a choice oak grove to celebrate the bounty of the year’s harvest. Acorns from these trees, after all, provided the staple of their diet, a much varied diet that included furry & feathered game, plants, nuts, berries and a range of fresh and dried seafood. The women ground the acorns with mortar and pestle. They leached the acorn flour and used it for their daily mush or chapati-like bread.

So here’s all these Miwok tribelets getting together to party in the woods. There’d be tall tales, song and dance, athletic games, gambling, feasting–and it’s a good bet that all this hub-bub gave the kids ample opportunity to sneak off and explore the nature of maturation.

Now for the juicy part of the story. Vallejo claimed the Miwoks believed that in this valley, and in this valley alone, the moon would rise seven times in a single evening. That’s right–seven times! Should it be true this story strongly suggests intense prehistoric interest in and inordinate consumption of substances considerably stronger than that derived from the vine. On the other hand Mariano Vallejo was a notorious truth stretcher, so who knows.

What we do know is that three other native tribes lived in the general vacinity and that two of these tribes–the Pomo and the Wappo, each translated the word Sonoma somewhat, well, differently. To one it meant town, to the other big nose & allergies. So, Sonoma may actually have more to do with runny glops of sneazy snot than with some dead hunk of real estate rotating around the earth. Since Sonoma County routinely registers locust-plague pollen counts and you’ve got a translation that would make any Chamber of Commerce spokesperson turn as ashen as the man on the…, well, you get my point. Any wonder the rather more poetic Valley Of The Moon moniker has stuck?

Broadway at Columbus

Upon first arriving in San Francisco and I mulled over my accommodation options. Sure, my apartment had to be clean, spacious and comfortable. Furthermore, my lucky-to-be-chosen neighborhood had to be teeming with other accomplished writers and home to a wide range of aspiring artists, be they painters, filmmakers, actors, sculptors, musicians, poets or barristas. Given this was Pompei On The Bay it had to have an ethnic connection, a history of romance, great restaurants, and a hill. Sure, I was fussy, but I hadn’t trekked all this way to hang my hat in suburbia. No, I demanded a neighborhood you could hear, smell, taste and feel, a place with renowned haunts, great bookstores and espresso getaways. Naturally, I chose North Beach.

But not just anywhere in North Beach. I’d repose within a stone’s throw of City Lights, that fabled and most celebrated bookstore in the land. I’d be just up the street from the architectural landmark housing Francis Ford Coppola’s production team, and around the corner from the very coffeehouse in which he penned much of The Godfather. I’d share the block with the future president of Afganistan’s own blood brother’s restaurant, numerous strip joints, and I’d be mere steps from Vesusio’s, where an entire generation of Beat poets and writers had been 86ed after long, windy nights of grossly overserved swill. I was going to live in storied North Beach, gain instant success, and chomp all the bennies that come along with the ride.

I spent that entire first morning, or rather the last few minutes of it before noon, hunting down the perfect domicile. I didn’t require concierge or valet service, but I’d settle for nothing less than that befitting someone of my enormous artistic potential.

What I found was the Marconi Hotel. This guy I met at the Green Tortoise Hostel said it’s where Ginsberg wrote Howl. He also claimed that “way up there”, and he pointed to a hotel window, Lenny Bruce had launched his swan dive into the alley. My newfound busom bud was a delusional sociopath, but no matter. The Marconi fit the bill.

The room wasn’t large nor particularly luxurious, nor was it without vermin, but they didn’t charged extra for the rats. It featured a rust stained sink with a few decades of slime growing on its pipes. History. The bed was small, the mattress thin, rancid and lumpy, but the window opened up to the alley. Poor Lenny. My closet seemed custom made to fit my entire backpack in it. There was a working bathroom down the hall, but you usually had to stand in line and hold your breath. Oh, and they were pulling the plaster from the walls. Something about mold and water rot. No refrigerator, but I figured this being the most European of all American cities I’d just shop daily for what I needed. I hadn’t counted on record September heat, nor on cockroaches and ants, but in theory it was a pretty good plan.

They say you are the company you keep. I hope that’s not true. My companions those first few months included a brother and sister junkie team, a crazed street yawler, and an enormous homeless women who hadn’t been the same since the Summer Of Love and badly needed a change of socks. I rolled and smoked untold boxes of Top tobacco, and carried with me cheap hootch at all times, often glugged from brown bags while plunked down on the sidewalk against the wall next to this or that strip joint. I even chased the dragon one night and learned to bum change. And you wanna talk romance? Now, if I can only figure out how to get this to Ferlingetti…

BROADWAY AT COLUMBUS

Poets shuffle
aching
like rats in neon strychnine
barking boys team
with mock-wanton beauties
lost children sit and shake their cups
at tourists
dying for a jug
and manicured pros strut their stuff
realtors, barroom accountants
and baseline hookers
all sweating out the fix
paper in those pleasure pockets
monks and nuns hump in hiding
glim jittering winds
dancing paper and plastic
and styrofoam refuse
dancing to destiny
dancing to live, to pay the rent
dancing, diving ecstastically
through the pavement
car alarms and blasting horns
the man chases monkey off his back
down this piss soaked sacred alley
Joe too is high behind the counter
counting change
keeping an eye out
for quick slip monkeys
linguini everywhere
tentacles of olive oiled scorn
ignoring the monkey
demanding more, more, more
Raven plucks and serenades
Coyote tricks himself
while wine swells up from the gutter
bottles smashed
to murder this night

So I sing, I dance, I muck around
in your hotted slurry
junkie bud still
knocking on my door
burnt grease, garlic its elixer
crawling down the stairs
quizzling signs
ripped nylon and skidmarked drawers
one clue, lost
ageless and demeaning
one clue
perfumed and wet
shorn of long term commitment
wanting, kneeling
the touch of ten thousand romeos
lesbos blushing
all carried on high to the pyre
this is our last markdown
all sales are final
recovery
the final frontier
meanwhile, dim peepers cooking
gas
in those collapsing avenues
like piss shot down an earthquake sink
bone froze shaking
then
all’s warm and rewarding
a nod to the streets
this night’s still yang
the yang and the clueless

p. joseph potocki

Splash, Slurp & Bang

GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE ANTI-SUICIDE MARCH of 1977

He was knee high to a cockroach and already preachin’ back home in rural Ohio. As a young man our prodigy preacher sold monkeys. That’s right–he was a monkey man. And oh-boy, did he love Elvis! Just ask any plastic surgeon. While destined to be lauded a civil rights activist, his pappy trod a different path. Pa was a proud member of the KKK.

Did Pa know his son had become a powerful pinko San Francisco civic leader, oft in the news for this or that good deed doing? Junior’s liberal political allies adored him, and showered him with praise and accolades. After all, they could bank on him for votes.

In 1977 he shepherded some 600 of his flock onto the Golden Gate Bridge. Each protester brandished a black armband, upon which the name of a suicide victim was written. With well over 1,000 having already taken the plunge, each protester had lots of suicides to choose from. The idea behind the march was to cow bridge authorities into constructing a suicide barrier to, well, save lives. This was, indisputably, one noble and righteous cause.

Imagine our surprise when, 18 short months after said march, news-flashed that our compassionate preacher had ordered the assassination of our very own U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan (as well as his entourage), and then presided over dispensing cyanide-laced Kool Aid to 800 loving, trusting followers–deep in the jungles of Guyana. Some claim the whole mess stunk to high heaven of the CIA. Perhaps our good buddy Dr. Stanley Gottleib (of MK-ULTRA fame) was involved? Whether he sucked the gun of his own volition, or someone whacked him, the Rev. Jim Jones lay dead in a pool of his own blood.

Preramble to our Evolution

San Francisco, Golden Gate to dreams undreampt…

…and through this Golden Gate every weirdness ebbs and flows.

 

 

We, the people of these United States hold this truth to be self evident: that our America is the Dreamer’s Dream Incarnate.

Though weak and nearly friendless amidst a creaky Old World of monarchies, autocracies and subjugated masses, America, it is said, lit the first beacon of liberty and freedom since the brilliancy of Athenian democracy was extinguished. Those 13 original states, constitutionally joined as one—that mythic United States of America, is said to have been a rarified union, where justice was blind and balanced, and talent fairly rewarded no matter one’s humble origins.

Here, personal initiative and willpower, when pushed nose-to-grindstone, provided each citizen tools to master his own destiny. In exchange for allegiance to our infant republic we granted ourselves the limited freedoms put forth in our Constitution; a representative voice in governing, peace when not at war, and implied financial stability to the thrifty and prudent. These privileges were accorded every land owning citizen, assuming that citizen was both male and Caucasian. And thus our grand bump-and-stumble experiment began.

Those statesmen who were convinced our budding republic’s survival demanded its grand expansion soon triumphed. The Manifest Destiny of our young nation would stretch it from one ocean to the next. Few suspected the seeds we planted would grow into a global empire.

Having arched across the vast continental rainbow, our nation’s territorial quest temporarily dead-ended upon the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Out here western pioneers no longer identified as mere citizens devoted to some pie-in-the-sky national commonwealth for all, turning instead to obsessing their very own Midas-like fortunes.

Most claim the madness erupted in 1848 with the discovery of our fabled Eldorado. Depthless pots of gold lay, they said, free for the pickin’s out West in Californy—out there, out at the end of the emigrant rainbow. Here lay humanity’s eternally quested cornucopia, from which sprang, in time, not only the shiny and metallic, but likewise mineral, liquid, and vegetable gold; human, industrial, high tech and just plain ol’ garden variety dirt patch gold. With native peoples dispatched and/or disposed of, the pillage and plunder continued unchallenged, and the eager creation of the Great Western American Myth would challenge even those of ancient Greece and Rome.

A self-anointed aristocracy had already emerged back East. These robber barons laid the hereditary foundation for latter day corporate imperialism. Still, even their enormous depredations paled in myth and legend compared to those of the glittering, kaleidoscopic Wild, Wild West.

Out here on the razor edge of the rainbow anything goes hedonism; every filthy, amoral, treacherous, two-faced, lyin’, cheatin’, connivin’, thievin’, violent and just plain no-good dastardly behavior was finely honed to a near art form. Siren songs blared out hot and loud from every Barbary Coast dive, creep joint, deadfall, cow-yard and crib; from each and every winedump, gambling and dance hall, shanghai and opium den in the city of terminal romance, roulette luck and twenty-four hour depravity—the one and unmatched City of San Francisco.

But we can’t stop with the City. So on we push, on into this entire present day post modern pre-apocalyptic San Francisco Bay Area. Here, nature’s sublime perfection is re-imagined into Pixars and Lucasfilms, into oil refineries, cargo ports, nuclear arms and biotech labs, into obscenely expensive “affordable” housing and gated golf course communities; re-imagined into freeways and collapsing bridges, into internet communes and staid financial houses built on mud; re-imagined into Masserati dealerships, underground sewers and cable systems, faux Victorian mixed-use malls, into Apples and Oracles and Suns—and into thousands of acres of world class vineyards providing ego-nectar for the endless bacchanalia our pantheon of provincial gods host to fete their own growing fortunes and the fortunes of their kind.

Tallied together and we SF Bay Area folk constitute the haves, the have mores, the hope-to-haves and the desperately impoverished. But in contrast to good ol’ fashion salt of the earth rebel & Yankee cornpone sodbusters, we out here in weirdo-land proudly power those fraternal twin engines named Genius and Madness, in total and in tandem. Of course, many of us landed here from elsewhere, so we’re lickety-split to re-imagine our boring and checkered pasts, puzzling each new moment as it arises, and flinging ourselves dead-on into myriad optimisms and the fantastic possibilities of tomorrow.

San Francisco’s storied fog-enshrouded nooks and film noir crannies interweave into the larger tapestry of our Beemer & Brie Left Coast environs. Six successive flags covered the patriotic butts of those many who “developed” and decimated this Eden. Audacious schemes and Utopian dreams heaped high hill upon golden hill their inventions, art and broken corpses. Out from these shifting sand-hills emerged our nation’s first instant metropolis. Starry-eyed Argonauts, atom bombers, cannibal emigrants, Beats, Raiders, Hounds, Silicon Valley vandals, Bohemians, Hippies, shrewd madames, Queers, Panthers, Diggers, Dot Com-bustants, Vigilantes, labor unionists, Paint Eaters and greasy Barbary Coast Rangers mixed with countless ethnic, religious, artistic and political groups pouring through our Golden Gate: dream-laden malcontents, misfits and human refuse, from each and every corner on earth. Each soul came to create and/or to take every good thing here, or else to pawn off failures to the next poor mark in line. “Sodom!” charged the critics. “Gomorrah!” added choruses of pious distant cowards.

Yes, the San Francisco Bay Area is just another seismically doomed chunk of this tiny, fragile planet—though we who actually live here ponder inevitable annihilation less than, say, whether to go with the round loaf sour or the baguette. Our San Francisco Bay Area is that perfect unholy place of things best and worst, ever strange, shocking, shifting, timeless and new.

Listen now—the ancient redwoods whisper. Listen closely for ghetto yearnings in a thousand foreign tongues. Brace for paradise in hell, where Nobel laureates ponder abstractions aloud while shuffling among our homeless. Here, in this microcosmic chip on planet earth millions live, die and suffer the exquisite, excruciating pain of euphoric mundanity. None live more than a cosmic wink in time, but for now, the saga still continues….