The Angry Young Man

Van der Fah Fah and I headed down to the Mission District on Thursday to check out the opening of a new show at Mission 17 called "The Land Of A Million Cereals", only it ended up we had the wrong day. So, we went to Little Star Pizza and ordered a deep dish with chicken, artichoke hearts, and Gorgonzola, and drank a bottle of Cabernet Franc. The wine was heavy on tannins but didn't completely strip the palate. I was concerned it would be too much for the pizza, but turned out to be a good match. That, or we were too tipsy to notice. Either way, Van der Fah Fah gets a gold star for picking the wine.

During dinner, Breetard called and invited us to slide on by her pad for even more wine. On the way over we stumbled upon another gallery opening and this one had performance art! Check it out. It's like some little man in a jockstrap was rolled in flour so he could flit about the space pretending to be an autumn leaf or something. We quickly walked way far away from him and checked out the art on the walls.

The main room was full of canvases with stuff nailed all over them; sheaths of fabric stamped with rows of South Asian Buddha images, slips of canvas with pencil marks, and other crap. What is up with this vogue for nailing random crap to canvases? It's like the last couple years, I keep seeing these collages all over the place. Some are folksy; polaroids in handmade picture boxes decorated with seashells and bottlecaps. Others attempt to be more sophisticated; sheets of torn acetate draped across chicken wire soaked in white paint. It's like an attempt to substitute texture for style. Looking at this work provokes the kind of thoughts you have that like randomly pass through your mind and then you forget what it was you were thinking about, which is totally OK, because like if it were all that important you'd prolly remember.

In the back of the room there was this dark little cubby hole like space where a scrawny hipster couple were sitting on a park bench, legs entwined, busily giggling and slobbering all over one another. Another hipster chick sat indifferently at a picnic table nearby, eating a limp salad out of a waxed white paper box. The walls were hung with a series of paintings, studies of various individuals and groups of humans. The style was blatantly post-impressionist with a dark, earth toned palate and cloisonnist edge; sort of like Gauguin and Van Gogh hanging out in Guernica. I thought they were great. They reminded me of stuff you'd find in dentist's office lobbies circa 1973 or those paintings that hang in cut rate galleries all over Paris that are produced en masse by Korean immigrant ladies locked up in warehouses. I suspect they were some kind of assignment the artist got stuck with down at Academy of Art Collitch and decided to add for Philistines like me to enjoy because secretly, she knows they're better than the other crap hanging up but is too afraid to assert as much because if pseudo-Bohemian art school hipsters can be counted on for anything it's their enormous talent for enforcing rigid, uniform conformity among their willowy ranks and when you're like surrounded by nothing but these assholes and paying through your nose for the second most worthless education in SF (the first being a degree from the California Culinary Academy of Kitchen), what else can you do but like totally cave?

Anyway, I decided I had to discuss the paintings with the artist directly and asked the hipsters sitting in the cubby hole room where he or she might be. Incredulous at my obvious lack of hipster being, they pointed her out to me as some lady using a paint brush to drip watery green paint out of an old mason jar on the naked guy. I approached her, told her I wanted to learn more about the faux-Gauguins, but realizing the time, had to dash. She told me her name and the URL for her website, but I forget what it was. Oh well.

Once back on the way to Breetard's place, it occurred to me that the vague sensation I've been having lately that my life has somehow suddenly been locked up inside a ridiculous Tama Janowitz novel is not a coincidence. We really are reliving the 80's. Well, at least the better part of the 80's aesthetic. You'll know we're all in serious trouble when some clever moron starts unleashing Nagel homages all over the place.

Speaking of the 80's, Van der Fah Fah asked me to escort him to Rickshaw Stop on Saturday to check out The Lovemakers. He saw them open for Cake at the Warfield on New Year's Eve and thought they were great. I had never heard of them, but I'm always up for checking out a band.

Rickshaw Stop reminds me of the all-purpose clubs in Hollywood my friends and I used to sneak off to in high school. That, and Ohm in Portland. I suspected this wasn't so much a show as a brief appearance by a band. That was fine, as it gave Van der Fah Fah and I plenty of time to drink vodkas and make vicious fun of the svelte Rickshaw Stop patrons.

The first folks to hit the dance floor were a trio of cater waitrons with mullets of irony who proceeded, much to my horror, to start breakdancing all over the place. Gross! They were soon followed by assorted other early 21st Century cliches. There were hipsters in stove pipe jeans, Chuck Taylors, necks wrapped in keffiyeh. There were American Apparel whores in hot pants and leg warmers, hair ratted out like fright wigs. There was a limp ankled fruit bat in Lacoste, collar upturned, swinging his hips while gingerly sipping his cocktail through a straw. All dancing, as Van der Fah Fah pointed out, to the exact same techno music they've been playing for the last 25 years. It was truly a joy to behold.

The Lovemakers came on around midnight. What can I tell you? They produce electropop that vaguely reminds me of Missing Persons or maybe even Berlin - very 80's. They're also one of those remarkable bands that are much better live than recorded. I perused some of their tracks prior to seeing them onstage and was like whatever. On stage, however, they're great fun. Check them out -

Anyway, they dutifully performed their set, which as I said, was fun. The crowd was wildly enthusiastic, and though I was tremendously irritated by the hacksaw faced, Eurotrash broad standing in front of me who kept hitting me with her stupid looking Louis Vuitton bag and nearly put out my eye with one of her talons as she thrashed about in the most undisciplined manner, I still enjoyed myself. I do have to ask, however, who brings a purse to watch a band? Also, long nails with like "jewels" and stuff glued to them? What the hell? Skag. I immediately scanned the crowd for signs of Luft Waffa, realizing this was her kind of crowd.

The band finished their brief set, performed one encore, and then left the stage so everyone could go back to dancing. Like I said, this wasn't so much a show as an appearance by a band. Van der Fah Fah observed that I totally didn't move through their entire set, which I thought was hilarious. I moved quite a lot more than I normally do. I mean, I nodded my head a lot. What? You want I should have an epileptic seizure like the idiot standing in front of me? What can I say? I guess I'm mired in the 90's.

After, we went up to the balcony so we could finish our drinks and reenact scenes from "The Last Days of Disco," before heading home to watch the latest installment of "The New Adventures of Battlestar Galactica." Christ almighty.