Humans are making use of other mammals
Kingdom of the beasts: Eric Carlson and his wife went to SFMOMA to see “Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed,” an exhibition that focuses on the despairing side of the Norwegian artist’s work. One young woman in the timed admission group had brought along her emotional support dog. “She’s going to need a much bigger dog,” said Carlson after seeing the show.
The new toaster came with directions written in four languages. Linda Weiner was most fascinated by the instruction in English (sort of ), “Before first use, be sure to wipe your taster with a damp sloth.” “Damn it all,” she said, “all I had was a wet weasel.”
Calm.com, a website that encourages meditation and serenity, has announced “Baa-Baa Land,” an eighthour film the company describes as “a contemplative epic, entirely starring ... sheep.” Its news release touts it as possibly “the dullest movie ever made.” This movie, to premiere in London and on www.calm.com this fall, features images of Welsh Halfbred sheep, shot in an English meadow that has “a density of three ewes per acre,” say the filmmakers. The movie has “a cast of hundreds,” says the movie’s trailer, “all of them sheep . ... Sit back, wind down, drift off ... to sheep.”
Over in the East Bay, there’s an adventurer in need. Allen Matthews noticed the Nextdoor listing from Piedmont: “I would like to borrow a small dry bag until Aug. 3. I’ll use it on a project studying orcas in Iceland. Thanks!” Well, who wouldn’t want to help with this? But what’s a dry bag? Does it protect the naturalist’s food supply or his/ her underwear?
Jamie and Philip Bowles invited friends to their home on Wednesday to hear a portion of “The Obligation,” a one-man play to open on Oct. 12 at the Potrero Stage. Actor Roger Grunwald, who stars and wrote the work, performed. The story is expanded from one he tells in “The Mitzvah Project,” a presentation he’s been doing around the country for years.
Grunwald, who was raised in San Francisco, is of German Jewish descent, and his late mother, an Auschwitz survivor, visited classrooms talking with young people about her story. Before she died, said Grunwald, she told him she wanted him to continue this work.
“The Obligation” tells a Holocaust story from three points of view, including a fictional Eastern European Jew, and a young Nazi soldier who is half-Jewish. Grunwald switches characters by the buttoning of a jacket, the change of an accent. Having studied German at LickWilmerding High School and then at UC Berkeley, and having spent a year in Munich, the actor not only speaks fluent German, but also has served as a voice coach teaching other actors German accents.
Ironically, in prelude to this project, which has profound meaning for him, his German skills landed him a lot of work over the years portraying war criminals. In Court TV’s “The Nuremberg Trial,” his was the voice of Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess and Admiral Karl Dönitz. He played a variety of German offices in the Discovery channel’s “Normandy: The Great Crusade.” He was Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Goering in HBO’s “Hitler’s Master Race,” and his was the voice of Erwin Rommel in HBO’s “Rommel: The Strange Death of the Desert Fox.”
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “My ex-friend was run over by a golf cart.” High school student to high school student on Stanford University campus, overheard by Carlos Valladares
The words that Kathleen Campbell noticed on a house on Shotwell Street, just below the Bernal Heights summit: “If you’re waiting for a sign, this is it.”
Anne Evers Hitz’s new book in the Arcadia Images of America series is “San Francisco’s Ferry Building,” to be published Aug. 7. Among its many photographs is a 1927 image of Mayor James “Sunny Jim” Rolph shaking hands with a conductor on the new Embarcadero bus line. Rolph was mayor from 1912 to 1931, and according to Hitz, “would pick up pedestrians while on his way to work at City Hall and drive them to their destinations.” Beats a Clipper card.
SoMa Pilipinas was designated recently as a California state cultural district, and in keeping with that, money is being raised to create “Undiscovered SF,” a free once-a-month night market at the Old Mint. The incubator Kultivate Labs is overseeing an Indiegogo campaign. The money raised will be for equipment needed for the market, which will include vendors of food and other goods, as well as live performance.