Leaving San Francisco, Keeping the Poems

China Beach

I knew it was going to happen eventually: getting priced out of San Francisco. For the past few years, the SF housing crisis and its astronomical rents have been international news, and I don't live in a rent-controlled unit. Friends and co-workers, especially those starting families, have left the city in droves to find slightly more affordable housing. Others have been subject to suspect "owner move-in" evictions. In 2015, quintessential San Franciscan cartoonist Paul Madonna was evicted from his Mission apartment and studio. When my roommate and I got notice that our rent (which has gone up annually for years) would be increasing by $600 a month, it was time to leave.

I'm not a lifelong SF resident. I moved to the city in January 2009 with my copy of Broke-Ass Stuart's Guide to Living Cheaply in San Francisco (I can't imagine what the most current edition recommends). However, I am a native of the San Francisco Bay Area, and I wonder if eventually I won't be able to afford to live within a three-hour radius of San Jose, the city where I was born.

I spent a lot of time on the 38 Geary

In the meantime, however, I've signed the lease for a tiny but lovely Oakland studio (where I'll be able to have a cat!), and look forward to exploring a new city. And I'm not completely leaving San Francisco - like scores of other East Bay residents, I'll be crossing the bay every weekday morning to the Financial District, where I work as an administrative assistant. But I will miss the Richmond District, the "uncool" but formerly affordable neighborhood I've inhabited in three different apartments since first arriving in the city.

This weekend I hauled two large bags of books to sell to Green Apple Books, the Inner Richmond landmark and my favorite bookstore in the world. Afterwards, I stopped by 6th Ave. Aquarium, the crowded, sketchy store where a shark for sale inspired my poem "Wobbygong Shark $299.99." While saying a mental goodbye to the area, I thought of how San Francisco, and especially the Richmond District, has shaped my writing. Perhaps because of "write what you know" and the city's own varieties of beauty and ugliness, San Francisco is the setting for two of my (unpublished) novels and various poems.

Sharks and stingrays for sale at 6th Ave. Aquarium

When I first moved to the city, the places I explored on the weekends were mostly tourist hotspots. One favorite place to go was North Beach. There, I would eat cannoli at Stella's and browse at City Lights Books. A disturbing incident there became my poem "City Lights, Dirty Window." Looking back, I think of how differently I would have handled the situation as an early-thirty-something instead of an early-twenty-something (of course, the creep probably knew better than to target someone who would break his nose). I can now see the statues mentioned from my office building, where they stand as a reminder that art and darkness exist side-by-side in this city.

Corona Heights Park

Long before I moved to the city, the Richmond District was important to me. It was a family tradition to meet my late maternal grandparents for lunch at Louis', the little clifftop diner overlooking Seal Rocks and the ruins of Sutro Baths. My mom shares memories of outings to the long-gone Playland-at-the-Beach, where now stands the Safeway I go to for seaside grocery shopping.

One thing I love about the Richmond District is this proximity to the ocean. I live close to China and Baker Beaches, but sometimes I also visit Ocean Beach, which is the western border of the Richmond and Sunset Districts (and San Francisco itself).  In February, I joined thousands at Ocean Beach for a protest of the Trump administration. I tried to capture the feeling of this popular - but still wild and dangerous - beach in my poem "Ocean Beach, Late November."

Ocean Beach (in July)

The Richmond District is also known for its fog. While a bane to some, the fog, known as Karl to many, is generally beloved. I love and will miss the way light halos through it. The often repeated experience of going to a movie at the 100+ years old 4 Star Theatre and then walking home through the fog led me to write "The 4 Star Theatre." When the poem was published, I was touched to get an email from someone who had used to live in the neighborhood and had recognized the little theater.

With the fog comes the foghorn. The plaintive, demanding sound can be difficult for new residents to sleep with, but you soon get used to it. My most distinct memory of the foghorn comes from September 2009. A few weeks earlier I had undergone a thyroidectomy at UCSF due to papillary thyroid carcinoma (a type of thyroid cancer). I was back at my then-apartment at Clement and 16th Avenue, and was looking in the mirror, getting ready to peel off the final bandage from my neck. The foghorn made for a spooky soundtrack as I slowly revealed my scar.

The 4 Star Theatre

I'll miss my neighborhood. I'll miss the fog, the foghorn, the cold beaches, the views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Sutro Tower. I'll miss walking to the Legion of Honor, one of my favorite museums. I'll miss my apartment's bay windows. I'll wonder about the future of the city, which at the moment only seems interested in welcoming those making six figures. But I'll always have my San Francisco writings, and for that, I am thankful.

Sutro Tower

All photos mine.

Manuscripts Don't Burn: Books for This

Ellen Manning's poster for The Master and Margarita

This is by no means what I consider a comprehensive list. I have no doubt there are a multitude of works from a multitude of people and places covering these issues, from tomes written by those who have lived in any of the world's dictatorships to the popular genre of dystopian science fiction novels. But these are the ones I know and suggest.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Perhaps ironically, the book that's buoyed me the most since November is a Russian novel. 1930s Stalinist Moscow is already such a surreal place that demonic visitation is hardly the weirdest aspect. There are mysterious disappearances, labyrinthine but unassailable rules about everything, and overbearing but unspeakable truths, so what's a talking cat or a dance for hell's denizens? Muscovite Margarita has lost her lover, a writer who was whisked away by the authorities due to the subject of his novel. Will a mysterious stranger and his mischievous coterie be able to help her get him back?

Bulgakov wrote The Master and Margarita knowing that it could never be published in his lifetime. He even burned an early draft, wary and despairing, but later soldiered on with his secret writing. The book's very existence is a testament to the survival of art in impossible situations and support for one of its claims: manuscripts don't burn.

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño

By Night in Chile is a feverish novella told in (mostly) one paragraph: the deathbed ramblings of fictional Father Urrutia, a priest and intellectual who was recruited to teach the "enemy tactics" of the left to the top brass of the new (and covertly USA-assisted) Pinochet regime. The defensive, opaque narrator is unsympathetic, but one wonders what he or she would have done differently, and what difference it would have made. While maddening in parts (it includes a Bolaño trademark: a lengthy, esoteric list - in this case a survey of churches using trained falcons to protect historic buildings from pigeon poop), the work reaches a heart-pounding climax when what lies beneath a literati dinner party is revealed.

By Night in Chile is a stark reminder that dictatorships come and go, but for their survivors, actions taken or not taken can last a lifetime in one's conscience.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

I admit I haven't been able to re-read this one recently; much like George Orwell's 1984, it's too close to home now. However, I plan to steel myself and dive in, since it has an eerily well timed miniseries coming in the spring. The Handmaid's Tale, a novel of women's oppression under a far-right group that has seized power in America, is an important reminder of how quickly the unthinkable can turn into something you're being told to get used to.

The Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola

During this election season, I've been thinking of the French disaster (or La Debacle, as Zola put it) that was the Franco-Prussian War, where seemingly every bad decision that could be made was made. Zola's series of novels covering the years leading up to this war and the fall of the Second Empire - a time Zola lived through - has some intriguing parallels to today's society, especially the extreme social stratification. As a conduit of mid-to-late-19th Century French history, with its many protests and rebellions, the novels are also a reminder that progress is a struggle, and it's not always clear where or when a decisive victory will arrive.

In L'assommoir, blacksmith Goujet decides not to join in the protests of Napoleon III's 1851 coup d'etat, feeling burned out and discouraged by the protests of 1848. However, he does hesitate and wonders if, "one day the people might regret having stood by with folded arms." 

Suite Française by Irène Némirovksy

Successful writer Irène Némirovksy was living in France with her husband and children when Germany invaded. She immediately began work on a planned series of novels which were to chronicle the invasion, the resistance, and then whatever the outcome of the war would be. After finishing drafts of the first two novellas, however, Némirovksy, who was Jewish by birth (she and her husband were converts to Catholicism), was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she died. Her husband's arrest and death at Auschwitz soon followed, but the nanny managed to get the children to safety. Némirovksy's eldest daughter, Denise Epstein, found the drafts and an outline for a third book many decades later, when she was going through her mother's papers before donating them.

The surviving writings were published as Suite Française, a captivating and near-contemporaneous account of the chaos of the initial siege of Paris and then the strange new reality of life under German rule. Knowing Némirovksy's fate, the glimmers of hope are all the more bittersweet. 

Courbet's Le Pont Ambroix

And to finish, here is the poem "Good Bones" by Maggie Smith. "Good Bones," both comforting and clear-eyed, went viral in the wake of the Orlando massacre - a rare feat for a poem. A broadside is available here.


Images:
"Manuscripts Don't Burn" poster by Ellen Manning: Master & Margarita website
Le Point Ambroix: wikimedia

Haunted by Childhoods: Three Ghost Stories

Thandie Newton and Kimberly Elise in the 1998 Beloved adaptation

I started this blog post in August 2014. It's been in the drafts section of my blogger account since then - out of sight, but never quite out of mind. It began as a simple Halloween-themed rambling for my little-read blog: a selection of literary ghost stories. But as I wrote about each piece, I realized something connected them all, and not just that they were all ghost stories about children. I needed to stop and think about what it was I was trying to say.

Then I procrastinated for two years and just finally finished this post!

Anyways, when I re-read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein earlier this year, I was struck by Victor Frankenstein's anti-climatic, almost comical reaction to the "birth" of his creation. He sees that his creation is alive, panics, and...leaves the room. To sleep. He literally just shuts down, leaves the room, and goes to bed. When his creation seeks him out in his bedroom, he goes outside and sleeps in the courtyard. Then he stays away from his apartment for the day, hoping the thing will leave.

Oh. Never mind, don't want you after all.
BTW, check out my dick windows.

Victor's utter fecklessness in the face of crisis amused me, but also hit at one of my deepest fears. I don't have kids, and don't know if I will ever have one or even want one. But sometimes I picture motherhood, and I am terrified I would react just like Victor. What if I went through labor, held my new baby in my arms, and felt...nothing? Or felt revulsion? What if the crying, screaming, pooping thing got to be too much for me and I just closed the door walked away (just like with this blog post!)?

Victor's panic and denial are understandable (I mean, the reality that one has bestowed life upon a giant mutant corpse hits pretty hard), and he feels extremely justified in his actions, but his "child," just as understandably, doesn't feel the same way. The creation is never able to get over the pain of that early abandonment.

And there's the crux of the conflict between parent and offspring. The adult, with their adult mind, adult body, and adult words, exercises a lot of control over the life of the child. Their choices - whether made out of desperation, love, selfishness, or necessity - shape the child's very existence. Because children are, by nature, helpless, things are done to them; they have little to no agency.

It's unavoidable for parents and other adults to take actions that impact a child's life. And it's tempting to hush up, smooth over, or outright deny unpleasant things that happened (as Carol Ann Duffy captures in her poem "We Remember Your Childhood Well"). But the adult can't control how the child feels about those actions and what the child will eventually do with those feelings. The creation abandoned in Germany returns as a monster in Switzerland. Ben Solo becomes Kylo Ren. Christina Crawford pens a memoir. Kelly Clarkson sings a beautiful patricide of a song.

I think this uncertainty and tension shows up in our ghost stories. Children are easy to subdue, lie to, or abandon, but they remember.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

In 2006 the New York Times independently asked 100 writers, editors, and critics to name the best American piece of fiction of the past quarter century, and Beloved was the top selection. It's not hard to understand why once you've read Morrison's masterpiece, which explores the shame that haunts a nation and the skeletons hidden in individuals' closets. Inspired by the true story of an enslaved woman who escaped the South and later killed her daughter rather than return the girl to slavery, Beloved deals with what lead to that choice and its repercussions.

It's impossible not to sympathize with Sethe. As a slave, Sethe is raped and tortured, and later separated from her husband. Despite all this, she still manages the Herculean effort to get her four children to freedom in the North. When men arrive to bring Sethe and her children back to slavery, back to the place where she and her loved ones were brutalized, she does the most merciful thing she can think of: she attempts to kill her children before they can be captured.

Sethe with her returned daughter in the 1998 adaptation

She only succeeds in killing one: a toddler girl posthumously called Beloved. The slavers abandon their pursuit, and a local lawyer takes pity on Sethe and gets her released from prison. But her life, of course, can never be the same. Her two oldest children now fear her, and soon flee from home. The house seems haunted.

And then years after the awful event, the ghost of the child returns with the body of the young woman she would be but the psyche of the toddler she was. Her feelings about Sethe are complex. She's desperate for love and affection from her mother, but she's also furious about her murder, and embarks on a series of escalating acts of revenge. There's no reasoning with her why what Sethe did what she did and that the real enemy is slavery itself - her mother killed her, and she's hurt and angry.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

This novella by Henry James is a classic. A group of vacationers are staying at a remote country estate, and tell ghost stories to each other. One captures the audience's attention more than the others.

The story starts with a governess assigned a strange job: look after two children in an isolated mansion, and no matter what, do not contact the children's uncle, who is their legal guardian. At first everything seems fine (as it always does). The little girl, Flora, is sweet, and her brother, Miles, who is away at school, is assured to be the same. Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, is kindly. The grounds are beautiful.

But then comes the news that Miles has been expelled from school for being "an injury" to the others. Mrs. Grose seems horrified and defensive, but not necessarily surprised. When the governess starts to see what she believes to be ghosts, she becomes convinced that they are the children's previous caretakers, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. Mrs. Grose reveals the two had unsavory dealings with Miles and Flora. While what exactly happened isn't spelled out, sexual abuse is heavily implied ("Quint was much too free." "Too free with my boy?" "Too free with everyone!" / "He did what he wished." "With her?" "With them all.").

From The Innocents, a 1961 adaptation

None of the adults at the house spoke out during Quint and Jessel's tenure, and no one dared tell the uncle about it. The new governess now knows there were and are problems, but whether she's equipped to deal with those problems is another matter. As the children act out in increasingly alarming ways, she becomes convinced that the ghosts of Quint and Jessel are trying to possess them, and she focuses her energies on protecting the children from these evil spirits. Whether or not the ghosts are real, it's clear the children have been failed by the adults in their lives.

"The Bees" by Dan Chaon

In the Dan Chaon short story "The Bees," Gene has an ideal life. He lives with his wife, Karen, and their young son, Frankie, in the Cleveland suburbs. However, their household is suddenly plagued by a strange phenomenon: Frankie repeatedly screams in the middle of the night, waking his parents but not himself, and without an accompanying nightmare. Their pediatrician can find nothing wrong. The screaming episodes leave Gene feeling increasingly on edge, and he starts experiencing a buzzing sensation, like the sound of bees. He wonders if his secret past is playing a part in the disturbances.

Many years previously, an alcoholic Gene married his pregnant girlfriend, Mandy, when they were nineteen. He made a few attempts at being a father to their son, DJ, but could be cruel and short-tempered. He mostly saw DJ as an adversary, and abused both him and Mandy. After giving five-year-old DJ a black eye, he took off and moved far away - drunkenly crashing his car in process.

Gene eventually sobered up, but by then was unable to track down Mandy and DJ to apologize and provide financial support. So he moved on, and until the screaming incidents with Frankie, he has mostly managed to put his firstborn son out of his mind. As the screams and sound of bees continue, Gene begins to be haunted by visions of DJ dying in a fire. Is his eldest really dead...and even if he is, would that stop his desire for revenge?

"The Bees" was first published in McSweeney's #10, which was then republished as McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. You can read the beginning here.

Illustration for "The Bees" by Howard Chaykin

Image Info:

Beloved header image: Movie Stills DB

Frankenstein illustration with dick windows: Theodore Von Holt engraving for 1831 edition

Sethe and Beloved: Cineplex (Full disclosure: I have never been able to bring myself to watch the film due to certain scenes, but Matty Steinfeld has a passionate and informative defense of the film here)

Miles being creepy: The Ghost Central

Howard Chaykin illustration: from McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

Swiss Army Man: It's Always Ourselves We Find in the Sea

My saddle's waiting, come and jump on it

Swiss Army Man, the feature film debut of Daniels (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, directors of music videos like Turn Down For What), sounds like a movie created on a dare: a man on a deserted island is saved by riding a fart-powered corpse. In that regard, it feels like it could have similar origins to Kevin Smith's Tusk, which came from a joke about a man demanding his roommate dress up and act as a walrus.

Tusk stayed in the throwback-horror genre, and while interesting in its own way, was not terribly deep or successful. Swiss Army Man could have played it safe (as safe as a farting corpse movie could be) by either staying in the gross-out comedy genre or going for a clinically detached symbolist interpretation. Instead, Daniels refuse to shy from either puerile humor or art, and they make something funny and beautiful in the process.

Response has certainly been mixed (walk-outs at Sundance were reported). I particularly enjoyed Onur Tukel's comic-format review (spoilers!). I didn't come to quite the same conclusions as he did, but it's a thoughtful, thought-provoking piece. Interestingly, despite his deep reading and admiration of the film, Tukel decides he didn't like it. I felt the same way about Yorgos Lanthimos's The Lobster - appreciation of its daring and art, but little actual affection. On the contrary, like the conqueror worm, Swiss Army Man has chewed and nuzzled its way into my heart.

Cannes aftermath

Daniels open the film with a shot of the ocean. Soon we see floating pieces of trash bearing desperate messages: someone has had a boating accident. On a very small, uninhabitable island we find Paul Dano's disheveled, sunburnt Hank preparing to hang himself from the mouth of a cave. He hums a song to steady himself, but is distracted by the sudden appearance a body (Daniel Radcliffe) washed up on shore.

Startled, Hank falls from the cooler/gallows he's standing on, but manages to break the noose in his determination to reach the man, whom he hopes is still alive. He's not. A rumbling gives Hank hope, but it turns out to just be gas the bloated body is expelling. "That's funny," Hank sighs before taking the dead man's belt to use as a replacement noose. But before Hank can hang himself (again), the body, continuing to fart wildly, shows off a neat trick: it can propel itself in the water. Hank runs down the beach and - using the broken noose as a lasso - triumphantly rides the corpse out to sea.

Hank wakes up on a Pacific Northwest shore and goes off in search of civilization, carrying the body on his back (Dano apparently did actually carry Radcliffe through much of the film) and sometimes talking to it. To his alarm, it starts talking back. Hank names his new friend Manny and tells him about life, sex, pop culture, his deceased mother, his distant father, and his crush (using hikers' garbage to make educational props) as they look for home. Along the way, it becomes clear how lonely and unsure of himself Hank has been. And Manny's abilities continue to develop and surprise (for example, his penis works as a compass). Will the duo be ready to rejoin civilization by the time they make it back, and will they want to?

A bed of clover...and poop

Dano's and Radcliffe's performances are masterful, funny, and affecting, and Daniels capture the Pacific Northwest's coastline and redwoods in all their glory. Andy Hull and Robert McDowell's powerful, infectious score is a critical part of the movie. If the Oscars refuse to consider Dano's work in the farting corpse movie, they should at least acknowledge that score.

The Atlantic's David Sims is being fair when he writes in his otherwise glowing review that, "The downside of [the story] is that this is an indie film recycling an age-old indie trope - that of the introverted, lonely white dude, unlucky in love and pining for a silent woman who isn’t afforded similar agency by the plot." As Mary Elizabeth Winstead was pursued by an awkward Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim, here she's pursued by an awkward Paul Dano. In that, it does feel annoyingly familiar and twee. I mean, look at these fucking hipsters who directed it.

That said, I saw a lot of myself in Dano's Hank. Like, a lot. Like...maybe despite being completely romance-adverse, I've seen someone on the bus and imagined our courtship, proposal, and wedding even though that might not be what I actually want out of life. I've never dressed up as a bus crush and made out with a corpse, though. I swear.

I swear

My Interpretation (Spoilers!)

I read the movie as a twist on the "life before your eyes" concept. I think Hank's opening suicide attempt was successful. When he first finds Manny, he tells the body that he had hoped when he died he would see the life he wished he had - full of music, friends, parties, and a lover. With Manny filling multiple roles, Hank gets to see all of that.

The final part of the movie, when Hank and Manny stumble into the backyard of a freaked-out Sarah (Hank's bus and instagram crush) and are soon besieged by law enforcement, the media, and Hank's father, confused me on the first viewing. Having thought about the film and seen it a second time, I think this part is Hank finally accepting himself and his reality.

He's been fantasizing about getting a second chance to talk to Sarah on the bus and having that interaction blossom into romance. But he finally realizes that even if he did get a second chance with Sarah...she's perfectly happy with her husband and child and would understandably be majorly creeped out by some stranger obsessing over her instagram photos. He realizes he wasn't really in love with Sarah, but that he wanted her happy life. He realizes that and accepts it, just as he realizes that even though he'll never have the connection he wants with his father, his father still loves him. Hank's acceptance of himself (symbolized by him admitting, with relief and delight, to farting in front of the crowd) gives him a final moment of peace as he dies.

Maybe that's what the Daniels meant, or maybe not, but that's what I saw in the movie. To close on the closing lines from e.e. cummings' "maggie and milly and molly and may,"

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea




Image sources: 
Paul Dano riding Daniel Radcliffe like a water pony
A day at the beach
Sleepy Daniel Radcliffe
On the bus

Favorites of 2015

Clockwise from top right: Mad Max: Fury Road, South Park, Pericles,
Mr. Burns, Gotham, and Bluebeard's Castle

Not a comprehensive best-of list; just my personal favorites from all sorts of media in 2015.

Books

The sun comes out after a good book.

Billie by Anna Gavalda: It rained all the first day of a family vacation, but I didn't mind, because I'd brought this book. This little gem of a novel (translated from the French) chronicles the relationship between two childhood friends determined to break away from their white-trashy town and make it in Paris. The two stick together through classroom awkwardness, homophobic violence, and a potentially fatal hiking accident - the immediate aftermath of which finds Billie telling their story to a star. Gavalda's skill shines in her use of Billie, an inarticulate girl who's bold but lacking in confidence, as narrator. Like Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami last year, this was just the right book at the right time for me.

Horse Medicine by Doug Anderson: I'm a sucker for dead horse poems. Although that's what first drew me to this book, the collection encompasses Anderson's reflections on not just horses, but religion, war, and aging. My favorite lines come from "What the Angel Said": "Who are you to think/ you will not have to/ live history/ out all the way/ to the consequences/ and beyond?"

Paper-Doll Fetus by Cynthia Marie Hoffman: In this poetry collection, a rock falls in love with a goat placenta, and it makes sense. With fearlessness and compassion, Hoffman dives into the female reproductive system, exploring miscarriages, stillbirths, phantom pregnancies, and the traumas and joys of childbirth. There are poems told not only from the point of view of the aforementioned rock and the titular doomed fetus, but from a strap used to inhumanely restrain laboring women and a lamb who dies shortly after being born. Periods still suck, but I appreciate them a little bit more having read this book.

The Good, the Bad, and the Furry by Tom Cox: Yes, Cox writes cat books about a famous twitter handle, @MYSADCAT, but his books transcend cat books and twitter books. They're thoughtful and funny reflections of the English countryside, parents, nature, music, and yes, cats.

Favorite Old Books I Read or Re-read

King John's Prince Arthur and Hubert in Laslett John Pott's engraving.

Dangerous Liaisons/Les liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos: I finally read this French epistolary novel, and despite this being a cliche...yes, something written in 1782 can still be scandalous in 2015. Bored aristocrats the Marquise de Merteuil (a wealthy widow) and her best friend and former lover the Vicomte de Valmont (a bachelor and libertine) manipulate others sexually for fun and revenge. But what starts as a quotidian (for them) ruining of others' lives slowly turns into a battle of wills. Of particular interest are Merteuil's ruminations on the strict gender roles of the time and how she's gotten around them.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: I do a lot of my reading on the bus, and re-reading for the first time since high school this epic about an extended family who needs to get the mix of incest just right in order to heal always made me sad to reach my stop. It's too bad E. Brontë gets accused of romanticizing bad male behavior, because that's not really what's happening. Heathcliff and Cathy are weirdos who need to do their Heathcliff and Cathy thing, not a template for all heterosexual relationships. After reading, I watched three different adaptations (what Wuthering Heights really needs is a mini series that shows all generations at the correct ages) and listened to Kate Bush's song about the novel about a million times.

 King John by Shakespeare: I read this lesser known drama as just another stop on my way to reading all of Shakespeare's plays, for better or worse...but I really liked it and don't see why it isn't performed more. It's basically a less powerful Richard III, but I can see how it would be entertaining on stage. It has a central character audiences are somewhat familiar with (John is the mama's boy lion in Disney's animated Robin Hood), a great comic relief character in Richard the Lionheart's bastard son, a crazy mom meltdown, and a kid talking his way out of a hot poker to the eyes. How is this not a hit?

Movies

Patricia Velasquez leads Liz in September's cast.

Mad Max: Fury Road: This thrilling action movie had style, substance, and heart.

Liz in September: This beautiful tearjerker from Venezuela is the country's first lesbian romance movie.

Tom at the Farm: This tense, arty Quebecois rural noir finally got a limited run in the US.

Cartel Land: The drug cartels of Mexico have been a subject of fascination and horror for years. While 2015 saw fictional characters in Sicario tackle the US's involvement in the violence, Matthew Heineman went on the ground in this documentary about local efforts to quell the reign of terror. The film is an absolute gut-punch, although not in the way you'd necessarily expect: one grassroots group of courageous locals starts out as the lovable underdogs peacefully standing up to the cartels; later, Heineman pans his camera around the now-powerful group's new headquarters as individuals they've detained wait to be tortured. It's a crushing statement on moral corruption and the complexity of fighting evil.

One disputed artistic decision Heineman made was to include scenes of a self-appointed anti-cartel group in the US - basically gun aficionados in camo parading consequence-free around the border. Some critics felt like Heineman was giving this group legitimacy and supporting their cause, but I read the inclusion as ironic. The American group's belief that they're brave soldiers fighting a battle is shown to be a delusion of grandeur when juxtaposed with the citizens of Mexico who are actually dealing with the deadly reality of the cartels.

Theater

Nadine Sierra and Brian Mulligan in Lucia di Lammermoor.

Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play - A.C.T.: Anne Washburn's Simpsons-inspired meditation on storytelling and human resolve is one of the most polarizing plays I've seen. Full write-up here.

Swimmer - San Francisco Ballet: Yuri Possokhov, SF Ballet's choreographer in residence, based this ballet on a John Cheever short story. The loose plot is that a philandering businessman swims through neighbors' pools, glimpsing others' lives. But when he returns to his own suburban home, he finds his nuclear family is gone. The piece is a celebration and examination of the American mid-century modern aesthetic, and is visually stunning. However, while the video projections sometimes added a lot, they weren't always necessary (example: in the final scene, it was clear from the dancer's pantomime that he was flailing in the water; the added video footage of a man flailing in water was superfluous).

Pericles - Oregon Shakespeare Festival: I'm so glad I got a second chance to see the play that made Pericles good!

Lucia di Lammermoor - San Francisco Opera: I was lucky to share in a friend's complimentary tickets to this opera with rising star Nadine Sierra (excellent as Musetta in last year's La Boheme at SF Opera). The set for Enrico's office was breathtaking and properly imposing, and the famous "mad scene" was especially visceral.

Other theater favorites this year: Dan Clegg unexpectly stole the show as Edmund in California Shakespeare Theatre's King Lear; Berkeley Rep scored one of the top Eponines, Samantha Barks, for Amelie; and I finally got to see The Book of Mormon!

TV

Mikhail Petrenko and Nadja Michael in Bluebeard's Castle

Great Performances at the Met: Bluebeard's Castle: I caught the second part of this PBS double feature by chance. I turned on the TV, intending to veg out to the hot twins show on HGTV or something else other than a two-person Hungarian opera, but the channel was set to PBS, and the very first frame arrested me. By the end of the day, I had watched several other versions of the opera on YouTube* and added the music to my iPod.

At its most literal, Bluebeard's Castle (by Béla Bartók and Béla Balázs) is about a woman gradually realizing, and finally admitting out loud, that her new husband is a serial killer. But it's also about what we keep hidden within ourselves and the competing desires to deny or investigate in the face of unpleasantness. Mikhail Petrenko's and Nadja Michael's performances; the Met's minimalist yet dramatic staging in black, gray, white, blue, and red; and the skillful cinematography of this stage performance make for an hour that is almost unbearably tense, but too captivating to turn from. 

*Sadly, it looks like there's no DVD of the Met's production available yet. Other productions available on YouTube include Michael Powell's 1963 movie; this modern, noirish version; and the UC Davis Symphony Orchestra's performance (in English).

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy Schmidt joined the heroines of Mad Max: Fury Road and Room by also escaping her Bluebeard in 2015. While Fury Road told the tale as an action movie and Room used stark realism, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt did a risky take - humor - and succeeded.

Better Call Saul: The prequel is off to a good start with this concise first season. While it shares characters and the gorgeous New Mexico setting with Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul is developing its own brand of dark humor and character drama, and has its own breakout stars in Rhea Seehorn and Michael Mando. A highlight of the season was finally learning what happened with ex-cop Mike in Philadelphia in an episode that ended with a bravura monologue by Jonathan Banks. I'm hoping a future season will reveal the similarly hinted at dark past in Chile of Giancarlo Esposito's Gus.

South Park: South Park continues its high note as it nears drinking age. The satire in season nineteen was topical and withering without over-the-top seething. Targets included both politically correct ideology and reactionary conservatism, online advertising, gentrification (most notably in a stomach-churningly accurate condo commerical), and America's gun lust. And there was a nice break from the heaviness of real-world problems in a meta episode acknowledging one of the curiosities of the fandom: certain fans' obsession with the imagined romance between minor characters Tweek and Craig. The hilarious episode included musical montages set to fanart submitted by viewers.

Gotham: The pre-Batman Batman show hit its stride in the second season, leading with stellar performances by Cameron Monaghan (I will be so mad if Jerome's not in Indian Hill!), James Frain, Erin Richards, and the rest of  the regular cast. The intertwining of Gotham society's underbelly became more insidious than ever: Jim Gordon's relationship with Penguin's criminal enterprise became even deeper steeped in blood, Ed (the future Riddler) and Penguin became murder-buddies and roommates, and Wayne Enterprises was revealed to be working with Arkham Asylum on a series of inhumane medical experiments.

Besides the Jerome thing, my main complaints are the premature end of Sarah Essen and the unremarked upon absence of Renee Montoya. I hope Montoya's back in the second half of season two, which will feature the great BD Wong as Hugo Strange.

Art

A Robert Dighton work from Luminous Worlds

Janet Delaney: South of Market at the de Young: SOMA is probably the best example of San Francisco's gentrification and housing bubble, so 2015 was the perfect year to look at Delaney's photos of the neighborhood as it was in the 70s and 80s.

Luminous Worlds: British Works on Paper at the Legion of Honor: Tucked away in one of the farthest corners of my favorite museum, this exhibition of physically delicate works by Turner, Beardsley, Blake, and more was truly luminous.

Time|less: Kappy Wells, The San Francisco Gallery: Working with sheetrock and charcoal, Wells captured the magnificence of the glaciers we are losing to global warming. 

My Favs of 2014

I also really like the polka dot duvet cover I got on sale.

This is by no means a definitive "best of 2014" list. I have not read, watched, or looked at enough things to make such a list. Just a few of my favorite things I read, watched, and looked at in 2014.

Books

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami - My absolute top favorite piece of media in any medium this year. After the unwieldy 1Q84, some worried Murakami had lost his touch. But this year we got a translation of his latest novel, which is also one of his best. A shy young man's life is upended when his close-knit group of friends mysteriously abandon him. Many lonely years later, he finds the courage to confront them about what happened. The novel also handles a tough topic (that coincidentally became an explosive topic in 2014) with compassion and intelligence.

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide - Man doesn't consider himself a "cat person." Then he meets a cat. I also read Tom Cox's Under the Paw, a book about a man who considers himself a cat person and obtains lots of cats. (Ironically, the above Murakami was uncharacteristically catless.)

A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver - This collection is likely the swan song of this great poet. A Thousand Mornings is no American Primitive, and I admit I thought her poems about her late dog Percy were overwrought (until my own elderly cat passed away). But it did include one of my new favorite lines ever, in "Out of the Stump Rot, Something": "If you like a prettiness,/ don't come here./ Look at pictures instead,/ or wait for the daffodils."

Other favorites that are not from 2014 but that I read for the first time in 2014:

The Savage Detectives and Amulet by Roberto Bolaño - I went on a Roberto Bolaño binge this year. Like Balzac, Bolaño works with a large cast of characters who span the globe but are mostly rooted in Mexico City. Of these, my favorite is Auxilio Lacouture, a middle-aged drifter and literary devotee from Uruguay who calls herself the "mother of Mexican poetry." In one chapter of Savage Detectives, she tells her story of staying in a bathroom during the army's 1968 takeover of the University of Mexico. In the novella Amulet, we get a fuller picture of her hardscrabble, poetry-filled life.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - I don't usually read thrillers, but when I saw the incredible trailer, I knew I needed to read the book ASAP or I would look up spoilers. Even if you know some of the twists, it's still a tense "in one sitting" read. (Warning: there will be some spoilers in my ramblings on the movie version below.)

Short Stories

"Someone in the Room Will" by Falcon Miller in The Rag - Even when I'm fortunate enough to get a contributor's copy of a literary magazine, I'm still convinced my piece was the worst piece. My favorite piece, however, in my contributor's copy of The Rag #6, was Falcon Miller's clear-eyed but empathetic portrait of a woman who is just not going to make it in society.

"River So Close" by Melinda Moustakis in Granta - Another story told about people at the fringes, "River so Close" in Granta #128 tells the story of a younger, sharper woman who is a seasonal worker at an Alaskan cannery where danger takes many forms.

Art

For the Sake of Being(s), Katy Horan and Katherine Rutter at Gallery LeQuiVive in Oakland - I'm a longtime fan of Horan, but this joint show focusing on nature and dark femininity was my first introduction to Rutter's work.

Modern Nature: Georgia O'Keeffe and Lake George, O'Keeffe retrospective at the de Young in San Francisco - The giant flowers were there, but this exhibit showed off the artist's range of subjects, from abstract, modern cityscapes to landscapes far removed from her well known desert scenes.

Movies 

It was a great year for Marvel actors doing arty genre pieces.

Snowpiercer - A cruelly topical, claustrophobic, existential nightmare in which director Joon-ho Bong somehow seamlessly includes slapstick humor and kick-ass action. After the human-caused apocalypse, Earth's only survivors live on a socially stratified train doomed to circle the globe continuously (Marvel Person Count: 1, Captain America. Tilda Swinton: Yes. John Hurt: Yes.)

Under the Skin - This "alien has moral crisis on Earth" movie directed by Jonathan Glazer is...not for everyone. I had to reflect on it for a while before I even knew if it was for me. It's a contemplative film with beautiful visuals and little dialogue. Several people in the viewing I attended walked out, most memorably some guy who apparently decided he just could not watch Scarlett Johansson slowly, slowly, slowly, ever so slowly eat cake. That was where this unknown man drew the line. (Marvel Person Count: 1, Black Widow. Tilda Swinton: No. John Hurt: No.)

Only Lovers Left Alive - The main characters are vampires in this Jim Jarmusch film, but this is less of a "vampire movie" than it is a funny, moving family drama that takes place in deserted Detroit, USA and vibrant Tangier, Morocco. A sunny, earthy woman and her younger musician husband deal with his depression and her reckless little sister. (Marvel Person Count: 1, Loki. Tilda Swinton: Yes. John Hurt: Yes.)

Gone Girl - I read the book so I wouldn't look up spoilers for the movie, and then I had to wait for what felt like forever for the movie! I enjoyed this David Fincher adaptation - I'm sure it helped that Flynn did the screenplay. Some see Amy Elliot Dunne as the ultimate "men's rights activist" strawwoman, but I think she's her own great villain, and Rosamund Pike was excellent in this role (favorite moments: competitive miniature golf, post-murder hair-flip, and that grin at Ben Affleck from the examination room). Although true to the source material, the movie managed to add to a lot of dark humor. Missi Pyle as fake Nancy Grace was a great bonus. (Marvel Person Count: -0.5, with 0.5 for Daredevil and -1 for Batman. Tilda Swinton: No. John Hurt: No.)

Captain America: The Winter Soldier & Guardians of the Galaxy - with a topical political thriller and zany-cute space comedy, Marvel proved it can keep their millions of superhero movies fresh. (Marvel Person Count: check with payroll. Tilda Swinton: No. John Hurt: No.)

TV

Gotham - This prequel series is cheesy and trying to cram in too many famous characters, but I love it. Robin Lord Taylor is an absolute breakout as Oswald Cobblepot (better known as the Penguin) steadily working his way up the ranks of the Gotham underworld. Jada Pinkett Smith, as new character Fish Mooney, is over-the-top and entertaining as a villain who mixes deadliness with the camp of the 1960s series.

South Park - Who knew 18 was a lucky season? The show, which began as a crudely animated short in 1992, found new life in 2014 by drawing inspiration from Silicon Valley, gluten, and pop-star/middle-aged geologist Lorde.

Comics

And...the Rainbow Brite theme song's in my head.

Loki: Agent of Asgard - The Asgardians had quite a 2014, which should provide the foundation for a great 2015. Except for Thor, who lost the power to wield Mjolnir and was replaced by a new Thor (popular new name for old Thor as suggested by Katie Schenkel: Snortblat). Loki: AOA started in February, and then led to a mini-series, Thor & Loki: the Tenth Realm, where the brothers met their long-lost older sister, Angela, who then got her own book, Angela: Asgard's Assassin. And a new Thor has begun telling the story of the still-unknown woman who has taken Snortblat Thor Odinson's place as Thunder God.

Loki: AOA has been my favorite, though. Continuing the extreme identity crisis and self-hatred that Kieron Gillen launched for him at the end of Journey Into Mystery, AOA finds Loki living in New York, singing in the shower, playing video games, grilling salmon, and making yet another take-no-shit platonic female friend. But of course, drama finds him. With clever writing by Al Ewing and art by Lee Garbett, highlights have included a guest appearance by Doctor Doom and goddaughter Valeria, the most determined band of juggling-themed supervillains ever, and an obnoxiously heroic Loki who can turn into Thor AND a unicorn.

Dry Decadence: Breaking Bad and Art

Frida Kahlo, Without Hope, 1945

I started watching Breaking Bad recently. I don't watch many TV series. Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones...I know of them and what generally has happened through word of mouth (that Red Wedding was brutal, right?), but have never actually watched them. Breaking Bad was one of those for me. But then I saw the "I am the one who knocks!" monologue on YouTube. Now it's taking all my self control to not completely drive my friends and family insane with talking about my new obsession, which is pretty much why I started this blog in the first place.

I love just about everything about the series, but one aspect I really appreciate is the visual. Its frames are art, and the show and art have intersected quite a bit. Art - from stock hospital wall watercolors to Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" - has been important in the series. (Update 8/7: Kara Bolonik's "Leaves of Glass" further explores the Walter White/Walt Whitman connection, and a recent Breaking Bad teaser is Bryan Cranston reading Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias.") Gallery 1988 did a Breaking Bad themed show, more of the work from which can be seen here. And FaceoftheEarth on Etsy made the news with her Breaking Bad terrarium.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

While watching the show's breathtaking shots of the New Mexico skyline and its smaller, tenser, human scenes, different art pieces came to mind, and I decided to start putting them together. For example, the above Frida Kahlo painting, with its desert, Dia de los Muertos imagery, physical suffering, and inner sickness, seems to me a perfect fit for Breaking Bad.

Place

I admire how at one with its setting the show is. While many shows' sense of place is tenuous (Monk's supposed San Francisco, with its front yards and ample street parking, could have been any suburb), Breaking Bad could not happen anyplace else - no more than Twin Peaks could have happened in Orange County or Arrested Development could have happened in the Pacific Northwest. Breaking Bad is firmly in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a sweltering city surrounded by endless desert. The ruggedness of the desert that stretches across the state and into northern Mexico is beautiful, but dangerous. Its vastness allows for cooking meth and testing nuclear weapons far from prying eyes.

This landscape famously captivated and inspired longtime New Mexico resident Georgia O'Keeffe - she of the "vagina paintings" Jane showed Jesse at Santa Fe's Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (maybe Jesse would've preferred this one). Her paintings of New Mexican landscapes and animal skulls bring to mind the beauty, heat-induced confusion, and sense of foreboding of the desert.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Ram's Head with White Hollyhock and Little Hills, 1935

The desert also inspired O'Keeffe contemporary Ansel Adams, whose famous photographs capture the dramatic place where people are dwarfed by land and land is dwarfed by sky.

Ansel Adams, Clouds, New Mexico, 1933

But nature, while powerful, is not untouched in New Mexico. The suburbs and desolate fringes of Albuquerque bring to my mind the sparse paintings of Chris Ballantyne. The dull houses, parking lots, and swimming pools in his work feel intrusive, but precarious. It's easy to imagine the land casually swallowing them up.

Chris Ballantyne, Plateau, 2009

Breaking Bad's interior spaces have their drama too. For me, the show's quiet scenes echo those moody tableaux of Edward Hopper. Skyler, often left to her thoughts and loneliness, especially comes to mind. Her working late to avoid Walt reminded me of Hopper's Office at Night.

Edward Hopper, Office at Night, 1940

Drugs

And you can't have Breaking Bad without drugs! Specifically: blue sky, the blue-tinted ultra-pure meth that is Walter and Jesse's specialty. But there are plenty of other drugs to be had - and not just heroin, cigarettes, and alcohol, but money and power.

This scene takes place in the outskirts of Paris in the late 1800s, not Albuquerque in the early 2000s, and the drug of choice is absinthe, not meth or heroin, but there are definite similarities between it and scenes of addiction in Breaking Bad. The two addicts haven't reached the zombie-like state of the denizens of the rancid flophouse from which Walt rescued Jesse, but they're certainly not doing well. Self-exiled to the sparse city borderlands, only the absinthe matters now.

Jean-Francois Raffaelli, The Absinthe Drinkers, 1881

This painting by Camille Rose Garcia from her Ambien Somnambulants series, with its horror, childishness, and offbeat beauty, reminds me Jane and Jesse's drug-induced downfall. Add a little meth and heroin, and their superhero-creating playfulness turns to petulant beaker-throwing, pissy blackmail attempts, and feverish plans to paint castles in New Zealand. You are not bien, here, Jesse. You are not bien at all.

Camille Rose Garcia, Animals Talk at Midnight, 2008

People

With superb writing and superb acting, Breaking Bad's cast of characters is one of TV's finest. Before watching the show, I knew Bryan Cranston had won a lot of Emmys. After watching the pilot, I was like, "damn, give him all the Emmys." Now that I'm almost caught up, I want to pelt the entire cast with Emmys (and, in fact, Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Jonathan Banks, and Anna Gunn were just nominated today).This is by no means a complete list, as it would otherwise become way too long and nebulous (though I totally want to show Marie this dress), but just whatever art most came to mind with a character. I'd love to know what art has a Breaking Bad character connection for others.

One character might even be getting his own spinoff: lawyer Saul Goodman, whose slime is only matched by his unflappability. The sleazy lawyer character is hardly new (even a cat can do it), but Bob Odenkirk nails it. His Goodman is the Thenardier of this story - incredibly entertaining despite the fact/due to the fact that you'd hate him in real life.  Sure, this painting is of a politician, not a lawyer, but the man's overeager facial expression and calculated lean-in and hand gestures - as well as the two constituents' varying levels of skepticism - remind me of Goodman. If the new show doesn't work out for him, he should consider starting up Goodman, Loblaw & Flynn LLP.

George Caleb Bingham, Country Politician, 1849

The figures in this piece by David Choe might sport boobs, but it feels very Jesse-ish to me. Looking at it, you can imagine the sort of life - sometimes boring, sometimes desperate, sometimes happy - he might have had with pals Badger, Combo, and Skinny Pete had Mr. White never come back into his life.

David Choe, 99 Cent Store

And while we're gender-bending, how about Tuco's vicious, stylish, quietly determined assassin cousins? They'd be worthy opponents for Hellen Jo's trademark badass ladies. (Sorry, bros, but I'm putting my money on Jo's girls. I bet they never even had a "tepidly shoving at your uncle while he drowns your sibling" phase before ascending to ruthlessness.)

Hellen Jo, Shit Twins, 2013

It's hard not to see Walter Jr. in this painting by Manet. He's often at the breakfast table, caught between his two parents: an earnest but strained mother and a manipulative father. Here, the mother looks at the son with concern. The somewhat shady-looking father looks away. The son turns from both of them for the moment.

Edouard Manet, Luncheon in the Studio, 1868

Of course, the driving force of Breaking Bad is its protagonist, Walter White. Greed, fueled by long-standing jealousies and the frustration of powerlessness, has twisted him. This odd painting by James Whistler depicts a wealthy client who stiffed him, and it reminds me of the growing ugliness in Walt - all the sadder when you remember the video he made for his family in the pilot episode.

James Whistler, The Gold Scab: Eruption in Frilthy Lucre, 1879

But while that revenge painting highlights the pathetic side of greed, it can be terrifying as well. Bit by bit, we've seen Walt's transformation from a man who would sacrifice anything for his family to a man who might sacrifice his family. His obsession with his vicious, powerful Heisenberg persona has taken him a long way away from Mr. White, caring father and teacher. He's going down, but will he take his family with him? Will he even care if he does?

Eugene Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus, 1827

Sandwich

There are a lot of sandwiches in Breaking Bad, and they're quietly emotional affairs. Walt thoughtfully cuts the crusts of a sandwich he has made for Krazy-8, the drug dealer he has imprisoned in the basement and whom he must kill. Walt seethes while making himself a sandwich in his apartment's kitchen during his and Skylar's separation. Later, Walt cheerfully makes a sandwich and puts it in a brown paper bag labeled "Walt" to take with him to work at his shiny new meth lab. When Walt returns (forcefully) to his family, he treats Walter Jr. to a delicious-looking grilled cheese sandwich. We see Jesse, too, make a sandwich for the neglected toddler who has interrupted Jesse's attempted intimidation of the boy's drug-stealing parents. Making a sandwich in the Breaking Bad universe can be a symbol of survival or a sign - even if faint - of the continued existence of parental love in a vicious world.

This Thiebaud painting seems like the perfect way to end this post. A humble peanut butter sandwich on American white bread. Unfinished, or perhaps just open-faced, against a stark white background.

Wayne Thiebaud, Peanut Butter Sandwich, 2009

Images:
Kahlo: WikiPaintings
Terrarium: Etsy
O'Keeffe: Wikipedia, Brooklyn Museum
Adams: SFMOMA
Ballantyne: ArtSlant, Hosfelt Gallery
Hopper: iBiblio, Walker Art Center
Raffaelli: Legion of Honor
Garcia: Camille Rose Garcia, Adam Levine Gallery
Bingham: WikiMedia Commons, de Young
Choe: David Choe
Jo: HELLLLLEN
Manet: WikiPaintings, Neue Pinakothek
Whistler: de Young
Delacroix: Wikipedia, Louvre
Thiebaud: SFGate, Paul Thiebaud Gallery