Plagues and Pleasures

[Tin Man's rambling and griping entry speaks for me. I haven't felt like blogging for days and days. Even that last entry about Satan's Sunflower Seeds was a desperate attempt to lighten up after the rather heavy stuff I've been addressing here lately. I read all these other folks who write about fun activities, come up with clever parodies or write in funny voices and I just shrug. I ain't got that swing.]

[Maybe if the rainy season would end. Last night I hung at my sister and brother-in-law's (my niece is still the cutest and most advanced baby ever, in case you thought she might be slipping in the ranks), and I griped about the rain. It was pointed out to me that it hasn't been that bad this winter, and that there have been a lot of sunny, even warm, days. Yeah, yeah; you go out and wait for the J-Church for twenty minutes in the cold and wet after dinner. Bitch bitch bitch.]

[It's not that I didn't have fun during the rest of the weekend, either. Chris found two great, obscure movies for us to see Friday and Saturday. Friday was C.S.A. at the Little Roxie, an annex to the Mission District's great independent moviehouse. C.S.A. was a mockumentary made to look like one of those Ken Burns PBS specials. The subject: the South won the Civil War, and the BBC surveys world history since that fateful event.]

[It's a well-worn concept for those of us who browse the science fiction section, but this shone some new light. The use of barely tweaked actual historic photos and film footage was disturbing, but worse were the commercials the filmmaker threw in to make it seem like "real" TV. Every offensive black stereotype you could imagine was used to sell everything from insurance ("Protect Your Property") to cigarettes...and they even showed a segment of the "Slave Shopping Network." Funny/uncomfortable in the Dave Chappelle vein, especially when we're reminded at the end that Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima are still really with us.]

[Saturday was Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea at the Red Vic. I've had an eye on the Salton Sea since I've been looking at maps of California (that is, always) and this doc, narrated by John Waters, revealed the area to be even stranger than I ever imagined. Like anyone who's thought read a newspaper article or two about it, I've always assumed the sea's a toxic soup. Turns out it's less polluted than Lake Tahoe; it's just very, very salty. Its toxic reputation killed the resort towns that were planned along its edge starting after World War II, and the few thousand folks who still live there provide the kind of human scenery that must've drawn Waters to the project.]

[Now Chris wants to check out property there. The siren of California real estate, no matter where or how dodgy, still sings. Me, I do want to visit the Sea, but I don't know if I could live there. This state is so full of strange things. We do "boring," too (the San Ramon Valley springs to mind), but it takes purposeful effort; the default setting here is just a little...off.]

[I wouldn't have it any other way. Look, some swing! Now I'm in a sufficiently bright mood to fight the torrential downpour currently lashing San Francisco and make my way home...]

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