Lorenzo Pisoni performs his one-man show about growing up as the youngest member of the Pickle Family Circus. Production photo by Chris Bennion.

Last night we saw Humor Abuse, a one-man show, at the ACT theater in the City. It was mildly interesting, quite funny in spots, but not something I can give an unqualified recommendation.

Lorenzo Pisoni, the star, author and protagonist of this 90 minute one-man one-act opus, was born into the Pickle Family Circus, and started performing when he was 2.  A lifetime of experience shows not only in his unabashed acrobatic, juggling and clowning skills, but in his incredible comfort onstage–he just belongs there, and he knows it.  The Chronicle revue says that his “Arrow-shirt man” good looks limit his ability to be funny, but that certainly didn’t seem to be a problem last night.  He’s both great looking and hilarious.

If the evening had stuck to funny as a theme, it would have been great.  Pisoni is a talented clown and could easily have kept us entertained the entire show.  Sadly, it turns out that he only uses the clownery to stitch together the story of his life, and his sad, unhappy relationship with his father, Larry Pisoni, also known as Lorenzo Pickle, the founder and beating heart of the Pickle Family Circus.

Lorenzo grew up in a house where Dad was a clown, 24 hours a day.  He was performing at 2, had a steady gig as his father’s stooge onstage from 6 to 10, and went off with the circus without his parents at age 11 for 4 years or so.  He worked with his father onstage and off, lived with him, ate with him, and still never had the relationship he wanted.

I absolutely couldn’t work up any emotion to care.  It’s not like my family was perfect, not hardly.  It’s not like other theatrical productions have been unable to make me care–I can’t watch Field of Dreams without tears when Kevin Costner’s father says “want to have a catch?”, or The Promise when Rod Steiger starts to talk to his son for the first time.  This play simply doesn’t grab my emotions at all.  It only sounded like so much new age whining to me.

Pisoni seems hardly the worse for his upbringing.  Coming off the road in his early teens, he attended an upscale private school in San Francisco, then went to Vassar.  After college he worked as a ringmaster for the Cirque du Soleil and as a serious actor in New York. Not a bad life, overall.

Humor Abuse will be a the ACT theater for another week or two.  It wasn’t awful, and the slapstick is tremendous.  I wish I could say more.

Unfortunately, we get about 3 weeks of winter here, it seems.  It isn’t even February yet, and spring is already bustin’ out all over.

To wit: I was looking out my back window this afternoon, and this is what I saw

The first robin of spring is here in my yard

The trees are still bare, but the birds are back among the buds.

I want more winter!!

But the robins are nice, too.  They migrate up to Canada for the summer and are just passing through.  We’ll see them again in September or October as they head south for the winter, short though it may be.

We went to a party at the live/work space of Zannah Noe, in an area near Potrero Hill known colloquially as Dogpatch, at roughly 20th Ave and Tennessee.  Zannah is a painter, as well as a professional cook, who splits her time between the City, Santa Fe, NM and the East Coast.  She’s also gorgeous, but that’s just a side benefit.

Zannah in the loft area, where she sleeps surrounded by art.

Looking out from the loft across the living space to the 2nd loft she just built.

The entire space isn’t very large, which is why she built the second loft space.  It works well for an oil painter, who doesn’t need a particularly large studio.

Looking down on the living area.

Lofts tend to have small efficiency kitchens. Artists tend to decorate them well.

Zannah and Gail leaning over the loft railing. Mike on the stairs.

Steep stairs save space.

The studio, and a commission she is working on.

Everyone needs a computer center.

It was pouring rain, and the dog had to go out.  Strangely, this dog doesn’t like rain, so they bundle him up in a rain coat and a sweater for his very long neck.

We were there for a party–Zannah is leaving for 2 months in Santa Fe, and then a protracted road trip on the East Coast, and wanted to say goodbye to all her friends.  People kept arriving, carrying food and kids and dogs.  A work crew was mounting a box atop Zannah’s van (a 1983 relic named “Foxy Brown”) so that more stuff could be crammed in.  Music was playing. There was no football game, because there was  no television. The hallway outside was stacked with items to be discarded unless somebody wanted them–Art in America magazines, an old computer, a DVD player.

There is a myth that artists sit around and discuss philosophy and the meaning of art and life.  Ain’t so.  Artists discuss galleries and contracts and the methods and materials of their art.   They talk about the best schools for their kids and where real estate prices are going. They don’t have to argue politics, since they are almost uniformly of the very liberal persuasion, but then this is in San Francisco so that’s no surprise.

Gail and I agree that it would be lovely to have such a place as a pied à terre, to spend weekends in the City visiting galleries and museums and theater.  It just wouldn’t be $600,000  (or more) worth of lovely.  But it sure was a great way to spend the afternoon.

So we went to the Taj Campton Place Hotel, on Sutter near Union Square across the street from the Hyatt.  It was raining and I’m lazy, so I pulled right up in front and gave the car to the valet.  More about this later.

The Campton Place is a small, luxury, boutique hotel, catering to the people who don’t like bit chains like Hyatt and Hilton.  Personal service, and lots of it, is their hallmark.

The dining room is hushed and understated, except for the large chandelier which is either a genuine Dale Chihuly or something very Chihuly-esque.

Chihuly or Chihuly-lite, it's pretty impressive in either case.

The food is, as one would expect, impressive.  I went for the classic breakfast–eggs, potatoes, sausage.  It comes with  a glass of the best fresh-squeezed OJ ever.  The basket of toast is just right.  The little plate with softened butter and three dishes of very good jams was a delight.

The four of us shared a malted walnut waffle.  I’m not usually a waffle guy, but this was exceptional.  Michael had house made hash, Gail and Harry enjoyed the salmon benedict.  The food is every bit as good as you would expect.

At the next table, under the chandelier, I saw a kid with the greatest looking pancakes I’ve ever seen:

What can I say but "WOW"

That’s the good stuff–great looking room, great food.  The bad stuff–service was absurdly slow.  We had to ask twice for coffee, three times for Gail’s champagne.  The waffle took forever to come out of the kitchen.

The prices are the usual big-city insane.  My eggs and potatoes were $23.75, but that included the OJ and the iced tea. You don’t go to this place if you just want a quick, cheap meal–that’s what Denny’s is for.  This is all about gracious dining, excellent food, and perhaps on a better day, fine service.

Now here’s the best part.  After we finished, we took a little walk to do some shopping and then returned to ransom the car.  They never really parked the car, just moved it 10 feet forward into the red zone on Stockton Street in front of the hotel–the cops are properly greased and the hotel gets to leave the car where it would cost you or me a $100 ticket.  I was fully prepared to  have to pungle up an absurd amount to cover the parking, and was utterly stunned to be charged SIX measly dollars.  You lose some, you win some.

We went to Machine, A World Premiere Fire Opera (yes, that all seems to be the name) at The Crucible in Oakland.  The Crucible is a “non-profit educational collaboration of arts, industry and community” where you can go to learn to be an artist in glass, metal, ceramics, neon, woodworking, fire performance and many other loud, violent artistic endeavors.  It’s a big warehouse kind of building on 7th St.  in Oakland, near the West Oakland BART station.

The one hour performance starts at 8:30, a fine and decent hour.  The very industrial space is transformed with  bleacher seating into a theater, but don’t count on heat.  It’s cold in there, although there is fire in many places.  Even the bar area is lit with a huge flame:

A massive blast of flame within a glass tube provides both light and heat for the bar.

The stage is spectacular, a multi-story structure bursting with activity.  There is glass blowing going on, bronze being melted, things being welded, flames shooting from a variety of fixtures both contained and uncontained.  A huge wheel on the right is being turned by a man using a crank and a huge johnson bar.  The orchestra, if you can so refer to group comprising  an accordion, cello, keyboard, xylophone and percussion man, sits on stage as well, incongrously directed by a man in leather pants, tattoos and arm bands gently weilding his baton.

The "orchestra"

Yes, it’s a real opera.  The singers are real life, honest-to-God, trained, profession opera singers.  Stars Eugene Brancoveanu and Valentin  Osinski, who have performed with opera companies all over the nation, bring their considerable skills to bear, competing madly with the special effects.

Yes, they even had surtitles--although Gail thought they were awfully difficult to read.

As spectacle, it’s great. As opera, not so much.  The libretto is not particularly clever–in a dystopian alternate universe, an evil corporation enslaves its workers.  One gets free and redeems the world.  Pretty much every sci-fi book ever written.  The music won’t have Verdi or Mozart feeling jealous, either.

Still, it sure looks good:

Eugene Brancoveanu and Valentina Osinski in Machine

Okay, see for your self, here’s a clip:

See the gas/flame explosions?  They help keep the room warm–it’s cold in that concrete and steel environment, but the flames bring the temperature up to bearable.

I doubt that anyone will be producing Machine 100 years from now, so you had best see it now.  It isn’t great opera, but it is pretty good spectacle, and opening you mind to new experience is always good.

No, it wasn’t a revival.  We saw The Artist, this year’s verrrrrry hot import from France, nominated for Best Picture at the Golden Globes.  Here’s the trailer, to get the discussion started:

The stars of the movie, Berenice Bejo and Jean Dujardin, are phenomenal actors and dancers, acting in both the broad style required by silent movies and the naturalism of modern times.

I found that I had to give this marvelous film much more attention than I usually do–lacking dialogue, I had to actively watch everything, read every face.  In movies where the dialogue moves the plot exposition, I often find I am sitting there with my eyes closed just listening to what is happening.

The plot is nothing fancy–big silent movie star sees his career fail when talkies come in, which perky ingenue becomes famous.  Her love is his redemption.  The execution, as always, is the thing, and this execution is perfect.

British actor James Cromwell is magnificent as the long suffering valet/chauffer/man Frida who stands by his employer even when he hasn’t been paid for a year.  John Goodman is alternately serious and comic as the forceful, corpulent studio boss–his face is made for silent movies.

A silent, black and white movie is a conceit, of course, and is hardly likely to start a new trend.  Nonetheless, it sure was pleasant to see a movie that depends on acting and directing to tell the story, not CGI and special effects.  Go see it.

We went to the War Remnants Museum, devoted to excoriating the US for the events of the last war.  There were helicopters and airplanes in front, that we forgot to take with us when we left, but we were in kind of a hurry back in 1975.

This is a museum full of propaganda, no doubt about it.  Vietnam won the war, and they have every intention of telling the story from their point of view.  The entire South Vietnamese government is glossed over as a “puppet regime” of the west, utterly lacking in validity.  The Vietnamese army, what we called the Viet Cong, were apparently all angels, we were  all devils.  The truth, as always, is somewhere in the middle. See this museum just to be aware of all the things you’ll never see/hear at home.

The museum is crowded, and essentially every face is white.  Not just Americans, but visitors from Europe and Latin America, crowd through to see war from another point of view.  The point of view of the winners.

This is the basic tone of the museum--not that unfamiliar to someone who lived near Berkeley in the 70's

It isn't pleasant, but it's sure popular.

There is plenty of source material to show that the war was not popular in the US, and the museum makes the  most of it.

A quote I'd never seen from Dr. King.

Even McNamara changed his view over time.

One entire all is devoted to a collection of war photography.

If “U.S. Aggressive War in Vietnam” seems harsh, remember that there are still people in the south who call the civil war the “war of northern aggression”.

A warm portrait of a mother and her baby deformed by agent orange.

The intensity ramps up.

Our government call this "enhanced interrogation" these days

Another way of describing it.

Bob Kerrey, a Medal of Honor winner, later both Governor and Senator of Nebraska, gets more than a passing mention:

A description of a raid led by Senator Bob Kerrey

The wikipedia entry regarding the episode:

In 2001, the New York Times Magazine and 60 Minutes II carried reports on an incident that occurred during Kerrey’s Vietnam War service. On February 25, 1969, he led a Swift Boat raid on the isolated peasant village of Thanh Phong, Vietnam, targeting a Viet Cong leader that intelligence suggested would be present. The village was considered part of a free-fire zone by the U.S. military.

Kerrey’s SEAL team first encountered a peasant house, or hooch, and killed the people inside with knives. While Kerrey says he did not go inside the hooch and did not participate in the killings, another member of the team, Gerhard Klann, said that the people killed there were an elderly man and woman and three children under 12, and that Kerrey helped kill the man. Despite the differing recollections about who actually stabbed these people, Kerrey accepts responsibility as the team leader for their deaths: “Standard operating procedure was to dispose of the people we made contact with,” he told the New York Times Magazine.^[6] Later, according to Kerrey, the team was shot at from the village and returned fire, only to find after the battle that all the dead were women and children, clustered together in the center of the village. “The thing that I will remember until the day I die is walking in and finding, I don’t know, 14 or so, I don’t even know what the number was, women and children who were dead,” Kerrey said in 1998. “I was expecting to find Vietcong soldiers with weapons, dead. Instead I found women and children.”^[6] Klann, and a Vietnamese woman, Pham Tri Lanh, who says she witnessed the assault, gave a different account, saying that the SEALs rounded up the inhabitants of the village and shot them.

Regardless of what actually occurred that night, Kerrey expressed anguish and guilt over the incident:

You can never, can never get away from it. It darkens your day. I thought dying for your country was the worst thing that could happen to you, and I don’t think it is. I think killing for your country can be a lot worse.^[7]

Kerrey was awarded a Bronze Star for the raid on Thanh Phong. The citation for the medal reads, “The net result of his patrol was 21 Viet Cong killed, two hooches destroyed and two enemy weapons captured.”

 

Maybe you shouldn't say this if you can't do it.

This exhibition room is very hard to look at, but you won't read much about it at home.

The entire room is full of photos of people damaged by agent orange.  People who were doused in it and their deformed children.  We don’t see many deformed people here; nobody dropped any chemicals on us.  We can fix many of these things if they happen.  Maybe prenatal testing leads to abortions of the children who would be like this.  Maybe I’m rambling.  But seeing this room is heart-rending, painful, disconcerting and causes one to seriously question our behavior before, during and after the Vietnam war.  After a long struggle, many US veterans were compensated for being harmed by Agent Orange–the Vietnamese have not been.  They seem to have noticed that disparity.

One of the victims.

Gail couldn’t take the entire room; she had to leave.  The pictures made her question the entire development of civilization, as if the killing fields of Cambodia had not shaken her faith in man sufficiently.  Not just he US. Not just Cambodia. All of mankind seems to be incapable of civility and decency.  Man’s capacity for cruelty, avarice and evil is infinite, no matter how much we try to pretend otherwise, and we need museums like this to remind us of the fact.

To say that one “enjoyed’ the War Remnants Museum would be wrong, there is nothing enjoyable in that much pain.  I’m glad we went, though.  Even for all the propaganda, I think that there is something important to be seen and understood, and there is no point or purpose in taking the Pollyanna view of “American Exceptionalism” and pretending that the US is always right.  I hope we are strong and mature enough to admit our flaws and work to improve.

We tend to think of scooters as barely better than toys, but they are the big means of transport in all of Asia–cheap, economical, practical.  You can park anywhere, zip through the hideous traffic, carry the whole family. Tiny babies are carried in mommas arms which dad drives.  A little bigger, and they sit or stand  between the folks.  3 years and up they stand on the bike in front of the driver, tiny fingers reaching over the handlebars.

I stood on the street for 30 minutes, taking pictures of the stream of sccoters, here is a gallery of them, click on an image to get a better look and scroll through them all,