An imagined Trump wreaks havoc
A major premiere at this year’s Other Minds Festival 24, emails festival director Charles Amirkhanian ,is “The Pressure,” which he describes as a “horroratorio by one of the best young composers in California, Brian Baumbusch.” The work, to be performed on June 15 at the Blue Shield of California Theater at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is described as “a morality tale in words and music.”
The composer, who is the beneficiary of a $50,000 grant by the Gerbode Foundation to the festival to support the work, has said he hoped “to address the Trump phenomenon, but in an oblique manner,” Amirkhanian says. Its story, told with projected images said to be “reminiscent of 1920s German expressionist silent horror films and Indonesian shadow puppetry,” is about a hustler who comes to a troubled town and promises a cure for what ails it.
Last week, the composer emailed Amirkhanian that at talking pointsmemo.com, he had come across a story about a 1958 episode of the TV show “Trackdown,” with a story about “a snake oil salesman who uses naive people for his own ends and their detriment. And the salesman is Walter Trump.” The site described the plot: “a confidence man named Trump attempts to sell a western town a ‘wall’ — in the form of supposedly mystical parasols — to protect them from the fake threat of a meteor shower.”
Adding another page to the album of California Hall reminiscences is Laura Gomez, who says that in the early ’60s, she used to go bowling there. “The Hall didn’t have automatic pinsetters, there was an actual person swinging on some kind of trapeze gizmo from alley to alley to set the pins. We were poor kids from the Mission, and bowling at the Hall was much cheaper than at Mission Bowl.”
Sharp-eyed Joel Kuechle observes that William Barr and Elton John look alike, “but one isn’t straight and the other isn’t a straight shooter. Our Constitution has become as fragile as a ‘Candle in the Wind.’ ”
Lee Gregory, executive vice president of McCall’s Catering, has been named to the San Francisco Business Times’ yearly list of influential women. In conjunction with that honor, the Business Times asked her a series of questions for a mini-profile. In response to being asked her biggest professional accomplishment, Gregory recalled “providing lunch to the San Francisco Giants the day of the 2010 parade. The morning of the World Series Parade, I received a call at 6 a.m., requesting catering for the team in City Hall, prior to them taking the stage. We didn’t have a staff hired, menu planned or food ordered, but needed to be ready to serve 250 guests.” Oh, Giants fans, do you remember those good old days?
News release that captures one’s attention: Saturday, June 1, is International Whores’ Day, “when the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention comes to San Francisco, sex workers will be on hand to greet the attendees, including the 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates.”
A-plus for creating a document of interest; with all due respect, however, a lesser grade must be given for the group’s acronym: ESPLERP (the Erotic Service Provider Legal Education and Research Project). Sorry, ESPLERP can’t hold a candle to the group some remember: COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics).
“Seeing all these anti-California and San Francisco opinion pieces in national media,” observes Janice Hough, “brings to mind Yogi Berra: ‘Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.’ ”
Coming across “Sometimes, publicity impersonates a painting,” words apparently etched into a Grove Street sidewalk when the cement was wet, I turned to social media to ask if anyone knew what it meant. (Was it carved by Cézanne, in a fit of pique over all the attention that Van Gogh had gotten when he lopped off his ear?)
Eileen Alexander agreed that it was puzzling, but if “read backwards, it may be downright philosophical,” she emailed. Backwards is “Painting a impersonates publicity sometimes.” This may just be about Jeff Koons, who has said, “I believe in advertisement and media completely. My art and my personal life are based in it.”
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “I, like, for sure, have been doing so good, I need more money.” Millennial guy, overheard in downtown San Francisco by Sherri Stewart