Last month I posted about the Asian Art Museum’s first-Thursday event series, called Matcha, after the delicious powdered green tea. It was fun; I attended a lecture about how green tea will cure all your ills (and it’s hard to disagree), listened to awesome music, watched people stick their tongues out, and tried out cupping — which didn’t really “adjust my chi,” although it did leave me with an impressive circular bruise that lasted a week.

Be that as it may, it was fun and interesting enough that I’m going to risk minor injury once more, and go to today’s event, Sound of the Sages. I don’t exactly know how I could be injured listening to the guqin performance at 7 PM, or trying out brush painting, but I seem to have an instinct for it.

To quote the event page:

Renowned guqin performer and scholar Wang Fei guides us on a special musical journey, introducing Chinese culture and bringing to life the sound of the sages. Performing guqin masterpieces from different dynasties, she will also share the legends and folktales behind the music and intimate her own commentary and insights to bring these ancient works to present day.

Elsewhere in the museum, try your hand at brush painting, chat with a docent about the museum’s special exhibition Power & Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty, explore the scholarly arts of China in the galleries, or simply enjoy a drink with friends.

Wang Fei’s performance is co-presented with the North American Guqin Association and is made possible by LIVING CULTURES GRANTS from The Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA).

I can attest that the Ming Dynasty exhibit was also awesome, and I’m looking forward to wandering through some of the galleries I missed the first time.

As always, admission to the entire museum, including all the above events, is $5 after 5 PM. The event runs from 5-9 PM; the guqin performance is at 7. The Asian Art Museum is on Larkin, next door to one of my favorite buildings in town, Main Library.

[Uncredited snapshot of a previous year’s installation, via The Pink Triangle website.]

This story on SFist is where I first heard about the impending installation, this coming Saturday morning, of a giant pink triangle on the eastern slope of Twin Peaks. The installation, an annual event since 1995, is nominally intended to commemorate gay victims of the holocaust, since the pink triangle was the symbol homosexuals were made to wear within the Nazi concentration camps. However, this commemoration has an obvious ongoing significance. As the organizers point out:

Even though the hatred that existed in Germany 70 years ago that led to the creation of the pink triangle no longer exists there, such hatred certainly exists in other places - such as Iran. According to Iranian human rights campaigners, over 4000 lesbians and gay men have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979. “Consensual gay sex in any form is punishable by death in the Islamic Republic of Iran”.

The featured speaker is Arsham Parsi, who has been called the first Iranian gay activist. Mayor Gavin Newsom is also slated to speak at the 10:00 AM commemoration ceremony. Bevan Dufty and — I have to say it — a bevy of other politicians will probably speak as well.

The organizers still need volunteers; go here to sign up for setup (which will begin at 7:00 AM) and/or breakdown of the installation (which will be on Sunday evening). Even if you can’t help set up, definitely come out to the commemoration, if you can, to show your solidarity with the LGTB community.

With all the video games, cell phones, vending machines and ATM’s in our midst, many people would argue humans have lost touch with their wild side forever.

I’ve spent most of my life in metropolitan areas. Though I’ve spent some time on horseback, I’ve spent 95% of my time riding urban public transportation systems instead. I buy my food in boxes, in bags, and heat it at home. Hell, for lunch, I even graze at a salad bar.

A train takes me to my job, which is as far from harvesting my own food and repairing my homestead as a job could possibly be. I work with digital media. CDs and DVDs and the computers that record them are my daily companions. I have an iPod, a few computers, a cell phone, a personal organizer and automated payments. I’m the perfect example of the city-dwelling, half-woman, half-machine that has every day of the week organized to an annoying level.

You could say I’m far from my roots as a savanna-loving homo sapien… you could say that of my co-workers too. So it was pretty interesting to see something quite to the contrary in the middle of my day-to-day technology bustle. I heard quite a ruckus on the bottom floor of our brand-new, giant-sized office. I gazed down from my loft to see a fork-lift pushing a giant machine into the corner of the production area.

Diagonally across from the machinery was the entire assembly crew, staring in wonder. I went downstairs to check it out. A brand new machine that resembles a yellow submarine attached to complete photo-developing station was being hoisted into our midst. It’s a massive tangle of steel and gears, still shining from the factory and looming large over every other machine in our company. I hear tell this was the major reason for moving to our new office. The gaggle of human assemblers were still staring at the great beast.

That’s when I realized what seemed so odd about the bunch…

they were afraid.
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In case you couldn’t get to the Late Show screening of Big Man Japan last Friday (see my earlier post about it here), I just noticed that you can catch it today at the Clay Theater at 4:15 PM, and tomorrow at 5:15 at the Kabuki.

It’s one of the most hilarious movies I’ve seen in a long time: it simultaneously sends up giant-monster movies like Godzilla, superhero stories, profile documentaries, athletic endorsements, anime series, and even the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. “Future cult classic” is actually a spot-on description. It’s well worth seeing.

Here’s the festival page about it. Tickets for today’s show are available at the Clay; a limited number of rush tickets will be available just before tomorrow’s show, at the Kabuki. Get in line early for the best chance at getting in.

Anyone who lives in the city knows it can be difficult to find a pet-friendly apartment. My landlord ok’d my dog, since he is “smaller than a cat”. Personally, as a lover of animals, I think landlords should be more lenient. However, a neighbor of mine is probably a good example of “pushing it to the limits”.

It’s hard to take a picture in the sunlight, but on a nice day with the shades are open, you can see a few of my neighbor’s feathered friends. (A few of the flock pictured below) I’ve counted up to about 21 medium-sized, tropical birds with free reign of the front room.

I can’t see too far into the apartment because it’s on the second floor; but in my mind, the rest of the room is decorated with hanging vines and leaves. Maybe a jungle sound effects CD is playing in the background? The windows are definitely decorated… with something else.

Speaking of birds… more pics after the jump

This time last year, all eyes were on Barry Bonds as the Giants tried for months to get him to sign a one-year contract that wouldn’t make them look like they were bending over backwards… or maybe just bending over. In this, they failed.

This year, Barry is gone from the team and under indictment, and the winter has seen few deals. They re-signed reliever Brad Hennesey ten days ago. And today they officially lost Pedro Feliz, who signed a two-year contract with the Philadelphia Phillies. Feliz, never a fan favorite, spent his entire eight-year career with the Giants, providing a solid but rarely brilliant third base defense, and power from time to time.
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The Potrero View, one of the city’s best neighborhood newspapers, reported in their January issue that the new Whole Foods store at 17th and Rhode Island is hurting neighborhood businesses. According to the story, restaurants, gorceries and delis saw declines when the giant supermarket opened in September. It goes on to say that some are seeing sales recover “now that ‘new and different’ is over.”

The Potero WF is part of a mixed housing and retail development that takes up an entire city block. It includes 100 spaces of free parking, a valuable commodity in the neighborhood, and offers the usual WF mix of groceries, deli foods and lifestyle crap like clothing, yoga mats and CDs. (I’ve seen this mix criticized, but in fact, Rainbow Co-op does the same, and in fact seems to have even more non-food items.)
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Announced this week by Mayor Newsom, the city of San Francisco will begin selling Carbon Offsets to local businesses. Read the full press release here: Mayor Newsom Unveils First-Ever City Carbon Offsets to Fight Global Warming.

“Globally, the market for carbon offsets is growing rapidly, estimated to top $10 billion by 2010, and there is absolutely no regulation,” said Jared Blumenfeld, director of San Francisco’s Environment Department. “However, by developing our own program and funding local projects, we have the ability to assure that the offsets actually happen, benefit the local community, and help achieve our aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goals.”

Unfortunately programs like this are largely seen as postponing the real expense and effort of transition into a more environmentally sensible practice.
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On Friday, beginning at 8 pm, Artists Television Access, the 25+ year old art space on 21st and Valencia, will hold a year-end fundraiser Electric Revival Party:

In the main gallery:
- DayV Jones, videollusionist extraordinaire, dazzles the house with images from his moving picture trove
- DJX-1138, the Bay Area’s only all-analog sci-fi DJ, electrifies the atmosphere with his collection of far out tunes
- Lee Montgomery, founder of Neighborhood Public Radio, conjures old spectres in a new video installation, from the project “Broadcast Version”

Downstairs in the inner sanctum:
- Craig Baldwin, legendary mad cinema scientist, shares celluloid gems from the Other Cinema archive in his subterranean laboratory
- Low Speed Duplicating, free-spirited Japanese sound duo, beckon spirits from the earth with savage and sublime psychedelic noise

As it’s a fundraiser, they’re charging admission, but they’re also advertising that it’s catered.

After some speculation over the summer that the Yankees’ marquee player, outfielder-third baseman Alex Rodriguez, might be willing to take his free-agent butt to San Francisco for the right amount of cash, Giants fans were further excited last week when the team leaded the news it wasn’t very interested in re-signing Pedro Feliz, who has anchored the hot corner for the Giants for his entire eight-year career. If they didn’t want Feliz, was that a sign they might pick up A-Rod instead?

Not a chance. Sports sections today were filled with the news that Rodriguez was back talking to the Yankees, who had earlier given up on re-signing him. The power-hitting infielder is due to break Barry Bonds’ home run record (whether or not Bonds extends it by a few next year) in six or seven years, and the Yankees want him to do it in New York. After all — much like the Giants when they first signed Bonds — the Yankees will have a new ballpark to fill in a few years too.
 
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