Looking your best, because the end is nigh
“It was disconcerting this morning,” wrote Lisa Ryan, “to go for a routine physical that began with my doctor asking me if I wanted to take advantage of a ‘Holiday Botox Sale’ and ended with her asking me to fill out an Advance Directive form.”
Golden State Warriors player Klay Thompson and date, plus teammate Zaza Pachulia and his wife, Tika, attended a performance of “The Royale” at the Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley on Tuesday, Nov. 14. The play, by Marco Ramirez, is about boxing and race. Thompson’s companion said she’d suggested they see it after reading a review. (The Chronicle’s Lily Janiak gave it a rave and the run has been extended to Dec. 10.) After the show, the sports stars met with cast members and posed for pictures in the lobby.
The names on the top of the invitation to a screening, also on Tuesday, of Yance Ford’s “Strong Island” were Angela Davis and Danny Glover, both warriors in the struggle for racial equality. The documentary, made by and starring Ford, is about the 1992 killing of his brother, a black man, by a white shooter. The case is brought before a grand jury. The killer says he was frightened by the victim, and he shot him in self-defense. The grand jury declines to indict, and Ford’s family’s anguish over the loss becomes the focus of the film.
Ford blames himself for knowing that his brother’s life had involved violence and failing to do anything with that knowledge. The victim’s mother blames herself for failing to stress to the son she was raising how his race would determine his life.
“There are no answers,” said Davis in a Q&A that followed the screening. “In a sense, the whole film is about gender ... about toxic masculinity.” The Ford family “are such perfect specimens of Americans,” said Davis. “When your mother says, ‘I think I did William a disservice by telling William that it is character that makes the man ...’ ” Davis said she was “left with questions. This to me is the power of the film.”
As part of the new McEvoy Foundation for the Arts show, “la mère la mer,” the gallery is hosting a series of “Six Sensational Ocean Views” talks on Saturday, Nov. 18, from 1 to 6 p.m. The talks are free, and topics include “the evolution of swimwear in the 1960s, race on the beach” — not foot race, but issues of racial identity — “and climate change in Miami,” according to a news release. The curator is Frank Smigiel of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, whose lineup of speakers includes an art historian, an author, an artist and a poet (what one might expect), as well as a climate advocate and an astrologer. Smigiel explains that when he started thinking about the “mythology of the show,” he was reminded of the four classical elements: fire, air, earth and water. Following artists on social media, he said, he’d noticed many posts about the work of Chani Nicholas, “an activist progressivist astrologer,” he said. Her horoscopes are poetic, he said, “and they really rhyme with the work in the show.” Will Ferrell, honored onstage with a Caldwell Vineyard Maverick Tribute at the Napa Valley Film Festival, talked afterward with teenage twins — children of the festival’s volunteer director — whose house had burned down in the recent fires. Also in the green room following Ferrell’s onstage conversation with Andrew Steele was a young autistic boy whose school had burned down, and also volunteer Sean Casady, who had edited the tribute highlight reel. Casady’s first version of the reel was burned in the fire, but festival co-founder Brenda Lhormer provided him with a replacement library of Ferrell films, and he did the job all over again, from scratch.
Actor John Joss resents the slur in the General Motors TV ad campaign that begins by specifying those testifying to praise their vehicles are “real people, not actors.” “We are, too, real,” he says. “And we can also simulate real if necessary.”
Adrienne Biggs bartended at three events at the recent Dreamforce gathering, and jotted down all the acronyms she heard and didn’t understand: ERP, MBM, RSS, HPP, CPQ, CLM, SPS, RSP, SPG, SPU, NTT, TCS, EIM, HBT, BTB, BBC, BTC, IRT, SOW, MSA. Presumably, those are in English.
Marijke Gottfried forwarded an image captured by Roz Bentley ofa bumper sticker in Atlanta, advocating the election of “Any Functioning Adult, 2020.”
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “I haven’t fallen asleep in the shower in years.” Young man to pals, overheard in Berkeley by Robert Weiner