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Monday, August 10, 2009

V. Vale's RE/Search Newsletter August two-thousand-oh-nine

Subject: V. Vale's RE/Search newsletter August oh-nine

WELCOME TO V. VALE's RE/SEARCH NEWSLETTER #84, August 2009
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RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com

**IF YOU LIVE IN San Francisco BAY AREA, PLEASE **REPLY** TO THIS NEWSLETTER IF YOU WISH TO RECEIVE LAST-MINUTE LOCAL NEWS OF RE/SEARCH-recommended EVENTS! In subject line please write "local subscribe"

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
___________________________________________
1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR
2. Counter Culture Hour featuring Dirk Dirksen, the "Pope of Punk" -- now on-line!
3. FORTHCOMING EVENTS - Specious Species III release party, this Wednesday and more!
4. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent..
5. SALON DU TROLL IN THE VORTEX ROOM - review by Steven Gray
6. Stephane von Stephane review of film "MOON" (beware of spoilers)
7. Matt Gonzalez's new blog-site "as it ought to be..." http://asitoughttobe.wordpress.com/
8. Recommended Links- from Phil Glatz, Johnny Strike and others - thanks!
9. QUOTES - Famous Last Words
10. Feedback from Readers
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please add info@researchpubs.com to your ADDRESS BOOK. If you change your email, send it plus your "old" email address to delete. Lastly, forward our newsletter to your friends! If you are on aol, please make sure you can receive our newsletter - we get the most returns from addresses at AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo!

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   1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR:

"Utopia is a country upon which we are always arriving" -- who said that quote? -- and last night's show with the MUTANTS (S.F. 70s Punk Band) and a No Name Punk Supergroup (Michael Belfer, Sleepers guitarist; Craig Gray, Negative Trend guitarist; Meri St. Mary (Housecoat Project singer/songwriter), Elliott Shannonhouse (Danelectro short-scale bass) and drummer Tony Sales Jr (son of Hunt Sales, one of the Sales Brothers who backed Iggy Pop, and son of Soupy Sales, childhood icon for many) underscored the difficulties of living in a capitalist for-profit society.

The small bar room and low ceiling of "The Boat Club" which hosted this FREE event greatly enhanced the sounds of the electronically-amplified instruments, creating microtones, phantom cyclic melodies and harmonies, and other sonic waveforms which added up to a rich, almost orchestral palette of sounds enveloping our bodies, those complex processors of sensations and experiences which are organized by our brains. In many social events, fewer people seem preferable to more people, just as quality can seem preferable to quantity -- yet we live in an age governed by the Reign of Quantity, as Rene Guenon put it. And we live in an age where the twin "evils" of "The Profit Motive" and "Celebrity" rule most of our social interactions. Not to sound too obvious, but in a society where everything is done for the profit motive, human beings become treated as "things" (Cf. "the trophy wife") and people's actions become driven by the motive to make others "Look At Me."

It's always pleasurable to hear a band that is just starting out -- in its beginning stages of synergetic music creation -- and the No Name Punk Supergroup was amazingly "good," especially considering how few rehearsals (one?) had taken place. For the first time, guitarist Michael Belfer sang duets with Meri St. Mary (remember Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton; Otis Redding and Carla Thomas?). Well, we would like to hear more of this dynamic -- an instant classic Country and Western song was our favorite vocal song of the evening. Now lately it has become rare to hear "jam sessions" and we were treated to several which were actually "good" -- an obviously improvised, successfully-building-upon-anticipation jam session can practically take an audience into a collective trance state. The rhythm section of Elliott Shannonhouse on super-complicated bass lines, working in synch with the crisp, minimalist yet urgently driving drumming by Tony Sales Jr, provided a foundation for the guitarists to coax beautiful soundscapes out of their guitars.

The Mutants set (sans girl-singers) was perhaps the best purely **musical** performance we have ever heard of their classic songs. Search youtube to see if Tom Curtis posted any video footage! (Mutants at the boat club)...

   2. Counter Culture Hour - One more in our re-run series: V. Vale talks with Dirk Dirksen about his career before and during the Fab Mab days in the 1970s in San Francisco. Dirk has recently passed but, through the tireless efforts of his friends spearheaded by Kathy Peck, has had the alley next to the Mabuhay Gardens named after him: Dirk Dirksen Alley (formerly Rowland Alley), complete with dedication plaque.
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Kathy Peck writes:
Hello!
Well, It was closing in on a 3 year endeavor but, worth it.
Now Dirk is a living part of North Beach, San Francisco, Punk Rock History and a California legend with his own street and plaque ensconced in pavement at 443 Broadway and Dirk Dirksen Place. So many of you to thank...Thank you so very much friends, Dirk's family, punk rockers and the SF City officials for your contribution and support in making this a reality.

Special Thanks to Tom Ammiano and colleagues for helping us pass the legislation for the street renaming in Dirk's honor and Joel Selvin for his punkish verse dedication that Dirk would have loved.

love Kathy

******
The Counter Culture Hour is NOW simulcast ON-LINE as well as on cable access San Francisco Channel 29 -- 6:30pm Pacific Time, Sat August 9, 2009 on-line (www.accessf.org then go to link for "Access 1 Live Stream" in left colulmn-- give it a minute to load or try this link:
http://www.accessf.org/stream.php?stream=1).
USA west coast: 6:30 PM Saturday, August 8th
USA east coast: 9:30 PM Saturday, August 8th
London: 2:30 AM Sunday, August 9th
Tokyo: 10:30 AM Sunday, August 9th
You get the picture...

     Would you like to have a Counter Culture Hour showing in your town? Please write and ask us how you can do this.

.   3. FORTHCOMING EVENTS

() Sat Sept 12, 2009, 2-5pm opening for Charles Gatewood Photo Show at TAT Gallery, 49 Geary #211, S.F. 94108.
Charles Gatewood: Celebrity! Rarely seen photographs from the 1960s and 1970s of Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Carlos Santana, Abbie Hoffman, Boz Scaggs, Al Green, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and others. Presented in conjunction with the release of Charles Gatewood's new limited edition, signed artist's book on Bob Dylan, A Complete Unknown that will be available for purchase at the Gallery. Meet and talk with the artist!

() Sun Aug 16 CRIME (in one of their rare reunion concerts) plays! A special performance by legendary San Francisco Punk Pioneers CRIME. RE/Search will have a table there - come talk with us!
+Wild Thing+Contaminators+Primitivas+
Lou Lou & the Guitarfish
$7 All Ages
Sunday, August 16 8pm
Sub-Mission, 2183 Mission, between 17th & 18th

"San Francisco's Doomed Fest" August 12-16 benefitting the San Francisco All Ages Show Space Project and MaximumRocknRoll. more shows, more bands, more venues at
myspace.com/sanfranciscosdoomed - presented by Thrillhouse Records & MRR

() The Specious Species III release party - 7 PM this coming Wednesday at Dalva (3121 16th Street next to the Roxie Cinema). Featuring Alvin Orloff, Jon Longhi and John Shirley. DJ's Toph One and Balderdash spin sounds. Free. RE/Search will have a small table, too!
Come on down! — Joe (editor)

() Benefit / Fundraiser Show for the San Francisco Tenant’s Union
SATURDAY, AUGUST 8TH This Saturday! (i.e. today) Presented by Alcoholocaust
NOTE THAT THIS IS AN AFTERNOON SHOW - DOORS OPEN AT 3 PM, show at 4 PM, over by 8 PM
-LA PLEBE
-THE BAR FEEDERS
-HIGHTOWER
-THE F*^KING BUCKAROOS
$8.00 - $20.00 Sliding Scale Benefit Show / 21+
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() Thursday, August 20th, The Eagle Tavern on 12th St. at Harrison, San Francisco
Negative Trend with Oxbow. We're looking into having a RE/Search table at this event.

() Sunday, August 16th, LOS ANGELES at the Grammy Museum. DEVO's Gerald V. Casale will introduce a screening of Bruce Conner's "Mongoloid" featuring the DEVO song by the same title.

() If you happen to be in the Grass Valley area, Mary St. Meri reports that Jello Biafra's new band will be playing the Center For the Arts (main theater) there a week from Sunday. Tickets $18. That would be August 15th in Nevada City. Mary lives in that area, and has a radio show as well as playing live in town at least occasionally. If you live there, check out Meri's solo act at The Basement there this Sunday.

() Everyone who is interested must already know that Burning Man is coming up this month! If you want a taste of what it will be like, or want to wax nostalgic on past years, buy the RE/Search book, Burning Man Live. Get it for a friend you're hoping to convince to go! Get it for someone who is too far away to go! Buy it this month and get a free packet of Playa Sand along with your book. Support RE/Search!
http://www.researchpubs.com/Blog/?page_id=13&category=4&product_id=74
Write "eNews Sand offer" in the "how you heard of us" entry line

() RU Sirius on VH-1 about Timothy Leary. RU writes us:

I'm on VH1 Timothy Leary show Thursday August 13. It's part of a weeklong special feature called Lords of the Revolution, and Leary is sandwiched between The Black Panthers (on August 12) and Andy Warhol (on August 14), which sounds a bit like the story of his life!

The show was put together by Martin Torgoff, who put together the "Drug Years" series for VH1 and wrote the book, "Can't Find My Way Home." He does good work, so it should be good. Paul Krassner is also on the show.

Info is here: http://www.vh1.com/shows/lords_of_the_revolution/series.jhtml

btw, dont ask me what time it's playing. You will have to interpret VH1ese yourself or find it however you find your local tv listings, but I think it repeats a few times... probably forever if I know VH1

Read Timothy Leary's writing in our new publication, Leary On Drugs, with introduction by RU Sirius - find it here:
http://www.researchpubs.com/Blog/?page_id=13&category=4&product_id=75

() September 15th opening for Ruby Ray photo exhibit at the San Francisco Main Library. Details to follow.

   4. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent

() Bunuel, Bunuel, and Bunuel - and each one more than one time! More on Luis Bunuel and his fantastic anti-clerical, erotic films next month.

() Dogma 95 "The Celebration" - definitely worth seeing. Dealing with some difficult issues in a "fun" way (?)

() "Pearls Over Shanghai" has been the most successful Hypnodrome/Thrillpeddlers production to date. It is perhaps the best show we have ever seen! We highly recommend you support local San Francisco theater and go experience this fantastically costumed epic musical. Chock full of classic sing-along "future anthems."
Tickets go fast in this small theater, which has extended the run of "Pearls" up to their yearly Shocktoberfest in the Halloween season. Shows Thursday through Sundays. Tickets at Brown Paper Tickets.
www.thrillpeddlers.com

   5. SALON DU TROLL IN THE VORTEX ROOM - review by Steven Gray

Thursday night in the Vortex Room (July 30): none of my friends showed up, but so what, the point of a salon is that you talk to anyone and everyone. I met a woman who knew the girlfriend of the late Sky Saxon (singer for the Seeds), this being an event in honor of him. I’ve been here before (a vortex made of déjà vu) and have known Dog for years (the mastermind behind Salon du Troll), and as Dog is my witness I enjoy his sense of dead-end kitsch and weird expressionism in a time-warp He is the kind of guy who has a pile of magazines and they’re all vintage, like a beatnik anthropologist who studies magazine ads from the 1950’s because the 50’s were another country with bizarre artifacts and mating rites.

So I’m having a glass of wine and staring at a shag rug on the wall. It had the face of Charlie Manson on it, just the thing for the bathroom floor. There were some strange paintings I hadn’t seen before, but I forget where they came from. Then a few musicians took the stage, with a large screen behind them adding a visual dimension to their sound-effects. Michael Belfer (of the Sleepers, Tuxedomoon, etc.) and Craig Gray (Negative Trend, The Toiling Midgets, etc.) did a slow instrumental. The Toiling Midgets recently opened for Flipper and Savage Republic at Café du Nord. Craig had an ‘80’s remake of a 1962 Les Paul I used to play one (borrowed) and understand why he says he’ll never get rid of it. We were talking after the show, this being a club where time warps are part of the atmosphere if not the décor. I remember seeing Negative Trend in the late 1970’s, and went to a party at an apartment south of Market where one or two of the band members lived. There were bond@ge magazines on the coffee table and a punk girl who had gotten herself handcuffed so she could approach a couple of cops and get herself violated in the back seat of a patrol car.
Meri St. Mary (of the Housecoat Project) joined them for a few numbers, singing like a woman who knows a lot of musicians. The Housecoat Project played for the first time in 20 years at the Eagle recently, and she asked me to open for them with a couple of poems. The band was already set up and for the second poem they kicked in behind me, making for a nice momentum. She has a radio show at www.kvmr.org every other Wednesday from midnight to 4 a.m. where she flaunts her historical knowledge of punk The other night she began the show with cuts from Negative Trend (“Meat House”) and the Sleepers.

There followed an intermission which was nearly an hour long. People were drinking and talking, or smoking outside on the sidewalk, so maybe they didn’t notice. I don’t think it was because they wanted to sell more drinks – Dog was recharging the batteries for the video. Finally it started, a documentary of his visit to the home of Mark McCloud, who has lived in the Mission for many years. Sky Saxon would stay with him from time to time and he had every album Sky ever made. He was explaining each one, with the camera zooming in for a close-up on the album. The camera work was kind of nervous, in a shaky hand, with the focus going in and out. It was cinema verite on the verge of vertigo Speaking of disorientation, McCloud has the world’s largest collection of blotter acid on the walls of his home. He has been busted for it by the feds, but he is still with us.

Forgot to mention, Dog recited a short poem which redefines the meaning of strange: “The chocolate river falls from the edge of my mind. A fly trap’s shadow covers the castle. The flower-car works, instead of a hearse.”

    6. Stephane von Stephane "MOON" review (spoiler alert)

Film directed by and original story by Duncan Jones, David Bowie's son. Starring Sam Rockwell and the voice of Kevin Spacey as Gertie the robot on spacestation moon.

In the not too distant future earthlings are mining the moon for helium as a power source because we've used up all other energy resources. On the moon base there is apparently only one guy and a robot maintaining all equipment. When we first see Sam, he has long hair and a beard and is perhaps near the end of his 3 year contract with Sarang, the corporation who runs the mining project. He's going stir crazy and talking to himself, anxious to get back to his wife, and now 3 year old child. He's going crazy enough to possibly be hallucinating. We can't tell, he can't tell and the robot isn't offering many clues. He really only has the robot to talk to and who wouldn't go crazy with just the voice of Kevin Spacey for communication? K.S. is pretty perfect as the 'Hal'-like machine who runs the machine.

There isn't much story here, but a mood-piece questioning the very nature of what it is to be human, what it is to spend one's life working for a mega-corporation who have no concerns about it's workers beyond their usefulness as cogs in the machine, and what it is to die. (You can draw your own comparison to corporate slavery and death here.) The sets are mostly stark white and look like every other filmic space ship/station we've seen. Lovely touches to make the 'clean' environment looked lived-in, such as the coffee cup sitting on one corner of Gertie's main 'body', and the yellow post-it note on Gertie's backside with the inevitable 'kick me' written on it in sharpie. Sam's bedroom has photos and posters everywhere. He's personalized his living space, just like regular old earth corporate employees personalize their 'cubey's. We see him exercise, eat Gertie's bland plastic-pac cooking, view t.v. messages from home, etc. the usual space movie fare. Then, it gets interesting; he hallucinates a strange woman sitting in his living space whom Gertie insists isn't there. Later, he goes out in a mini-rover to check on a giant lunar module which has crashed into an outpost tower. He sees this strange woman again beckoning before he crashes the rover and seemingly dies. Is she the angel of death (or a viral implant meant to signal the end of Sam's career)? Is Sam even really dead? We next see Sam in the sick bay with Gertie watching over him. He awakens and we don't know how long he's been out and the damn robot won't say exactly either. He is understandably confused. To make matters worse, there's a new him or hallucination of himself, lurking around.

I love films that blend reality with fantasy or hallucination and metaphor, like Fight Club, Vanilla Sky, Memento, The Game, half of everything Alfred Hitchcock or Stanley Kubrick ever did, the list goes on and Moon can be added. The original Sam who has begun physically deteriorating begins interacting with the new Sam who is in prime health. At some point original Sam begins to figure out that he's possibly a clone and becomes obsessed with finding the secret 'cloning room'. But the new Sam insists that HE is the real Sam and original Sam is the clone. We get a light moment when the two act like children "YOU'RE the Clone!", "NO! YOU'RE the Clone!" We've learned that Sam has anger issues and the two Sam's beat the cr*p out of each other. Another light moment, and maybe the best scene in the film is when one Sam wants to play music really loud and dance, and the other Sam turns it off, then it's back on, and back off, made all the more hilarious as the song is 'Walking on Sunshine' by Katrina and the Waves, an inane 80's catchy pop tune. I don't want to give away the entire film. There is more mystery surrounding a jammed communication tower, and why the Sam's don't have contact with earth except minimal messages from the wife. Sam has sent hundreds of messages 'home' which haven't been answered. He again leaves the station against Gertie's strong advice otherwise, to investigate the communication towers and begins to accept the fact that he may indeed be a clone in a 'controlled' environment.

This film has a few flaws and Sam is not the only one confused, the audience is too, but overall it is worth the price of admission. ~ Stephane von Stephane

   7. Matt Gonzalez has a new blog!
Matt wowed the country several years ago when he gave Gavin Newsom a run for his money in the San Francisco mayoral race. On a grassroots campaign budget, he got enough votes to cause a run off election -- which was also close enough to cause heavy sweating by the well-funded Newsom's campaign. Matt is solidly of the people and for the people.

Check out the blog! Contribute! http://asitoughttobe.wordpress.com/

Matt asks:
hello friends,
I'm hopeful that you'll write something for "as it ought to be".......
matt

   8. RECOMMENDED LINKS

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/arts/design/23basil.html

DIY Burroughs:
http://languageisavirus.com/cutupmachine.html

This is quite funny what this guy did after his guitar neck was broken by UAL. The video has quite good production value for being done for £90.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1201671/Singers-catchy-complaint-damage-guitar-causes-United-Airlines-share-value-plummet-10.html

http://radio.nymoon.com/liveonballard/

   9. QUOTES - Famous Last Words

HA, HA! I'M OUTTA' HERE: Famous people have a knack for being witty when they're about to die. In his upcoming book, "Morbid Curiosity," out in October from Perigee, Alan Petrucelli recounts some of their famous last words. Liberace: "It's beautiful in heaven, Mother. Yes, of course I'll play the piano for you." Elvis Presley: "I'm going into the bathroom to read." James Brown: "I'm going away tonight." Eugene O'Neill: "I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and G*ddam# it! Died in a hotel room." Tallulah Bankhead: "Codeine, bourbon." P.T. Barnum: "How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?" Oscar Wilde: "Either that wallpaper goes or I do." Dylan Thomas: "I've had eight straight whiskeys, I think that's the record." Joan Crawford: "Damn it! Don't you dare ask God to help me!" Gary Gilmore: "Let's do it!"

forwarded to us ...

() "Every dream forgotten is a (potentially precious) experience obliterated." -- V.V.

   10. FEEDBACK FROM READERS: in answer to "how did you know or find out about RE/Search?"

... through Facebook. I bought two of your books in college in 1995. I'm so glad to see you're still around!

... saw Breaking Bad - started seach om meth - came into a string of interesting stuff about the dreammachine and are planning building one!

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AUGUST 2009 RE/Search eNewsletter written by V. Vale & other contributors. Newsletter and website powered by http://www.laughingsquid.com.
DISCLAIMER : If you're receiving V. VALE's newsletter, it's because you **or someone you know** has sent your address to us, or signed our mailing list at an event!
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RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
http://www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

V. Vale RE/SEARCH Recommends Local (Bay Area) Events July 15 thru Sun July 19

Sent Wed July 15, 2009
Dear LOCAL subscribers -
RE/Search recommends the following Bay Area events, and will personally have a table with RE/Search magazines for sale at some of them - come by and talk with us!

() FRI JULY 17, 2009 9pm CAFE DU NORD: FLIPPER, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, TOILING MIDGETS. What an "all star" lineup! This is probably THE place to be tonight (although, sadly, the Zeros are ALSO playing at the Elbo Room tonight -- not fair; we want to be at BOTH events). FLIPPER will feature their new bassist; SAVAGE REPUBLIC's reunion appearances are very rare; TOILING MIDGETS are masters of instrumental emotional moodscapes. Cafe du Nord is at Market / Noe Sts, San Francisco. RE/Search will have a table; hope to see you there.

() FRI JULY 17 9pm ELBO ROOM: ZEROS. 'Nuff said, as per preceding paragraph. We saw them TWICE at Gilman St a few weeks ago -- perfect shows...

() FRI JULY 17 8pm Our friend, SRL hellraiser, world traveler, machine-inventor extraordinaire (google "Neverwas Haul") and master accordion restorer KIMRIC SMYTHE is hosting an exclusive benefit dinner of epic Steampunk style. The Neverwas Haul is having a event on the 17th. Formal dinner with tea and entertainment +plus steam equipment demonstrations. All the details at
http://www.neverwashaul.com
- this is an extremely rare opportunity to meet, talk and dine with Kimric Smythe and his very imaginative, inventive friends, plus support a good cause!

() SAT JULY 18, 2009 9pm SUPPERCLUB, 857 Harrison (bet 4th-5th Sts, S.F.), THE MARQUIS FETISH BALL. Promoted as San Francisco's high style event for 2009. Doors at 9, all-night dance space and VIP salon. Bondage performance by MIDORI, AERIAL performanc by Evacide, live model shooting with Charles Gatewood, LIve Drawing by fetish artist Suzanne Forbes. MC'd by NYC's famous latex diva The Baroness. Outrageous Fashion Show featuring Latex, Corsets, Leather and beyond by BlackLickorish Latex, Antiseptic Fashions, Tactical Corsets, House of Bias. Best-Dressed Contest -- winners will participate in a live model shoot for Marquis America and Marquis Fetish Blog. Midnight Raffle with spectacular prizes from Stormy Leather, Madame S, and Stockroom Toys. This is a very insider event for certain individuals of specialized tastes... website: http://www.marquisamerica.com

() SUN JULY 19, 2009 4pm. LUCKY 13. A Sunday Afternoon Show featuring NEGATIVE TREND! RE/Search will be there with a table. Negative Trend's classic songs have never sounded better, and so much energy emanates from the stage, it's impossible not to be swept away, singing along with the band. Meet your friends there for a leisurely fun Sunday afternoon get-together -- Sunday afternoon shows are all too rare...

() WED-SAT JULY 15-18, 8pm-11:59pm, The Crucible's Annual FIRE ARTS FESTIVAL featuring our pal KAL SPELLETICH collaborating with a host of other Bay Area Machine Artists. http://thecrucible.org/events/fire-arts-festival/157 NEW LOCATION THIS YEAR! http://kaltek.wordpress.com/
http://kaltek.org/

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Monday, July 13, 2009

V. VALE's RE/SEARCH NEWSLETTER, July '09

WELCOME TO V. VALE's RE/SEARCH NEWSLETTER #83, July 2009
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com

**IF YOU LIVE IN San Francisco BAY AREA, PLEASE **REPLY** TO THIS NEWSLETTER IF YOU WISH TO RECEIVE LAST-MINUTE LOCAL NEWS OF RE/SEARCH-recommended EVENTS! In subject line please write "local subscribe"

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
___________________________________________
1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR
2. Counter Culture Hour featuring Li Alin -- on-line!
3. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent..
4. FORTHCOMING EVENTS - TOMORROW, JULY 11 - www.thebigartexperience.com - a "MUST ATTEND" EVENT!
5. Stephane von Stephane on
6.Moritz Cordes' review of Modwheelmood at Elbo Room; J.G. Thirwell's new FOETUS CD/DVD
7. Recommended Links- send some!
8. Quotes
9. Feedback from Readers
10. Recent books Published by RE/SEARCH
--------------
please add info@researchpubs.com to your ADDRESS BOOK. If you change your email, send it plus your "old" email address to delete. Lastly, forward our newsletter to your friends! If you are on aol, please make sure you can receive our newsletter - we get the most returns from addresses at AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
   1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR:
We offered to run this ad for a friend:
"Artist and long-time friend of RE/Search seeks live and/or workspace San Francisco/Oakland area. Can be raw space, minimum 100 sq ft, up to 400 (or more!) with secure mailing address. Hopefully under $400." Please contact us - info@researchpubs.com - if you know of a large room / place / office, et al. We guarantee you will have heard of our friend in need.

Well, the Depression is definitely here and will NOT be gone "in a couple years" contrary to corporate propagandists otherwise known as "journalists." We at RE/SEARCH haven't gotten a mail order in 10 days -- the longest time without a mail order, ever. Very interesting! Well, in times of need, friends will become more important than ever. Make sure you know who your "true" friends are -- that's the best "survival" advice we can give right now... (And, learn an essential skill, like "welding"...)

   2. Counter Culture Hour - V. Vale talks with Li Alin about her music and career in Canada, Berlin, and San Francisco. NOW ON-LINE as well as on cable access San Francisco Channel 29 -- 6:30pm Pacific Time, Sat July 11, 2009 on-line (www.accessf.org then go to link for "Access 1 Live Stream" in left colulmn-- give it a minute to load or try this link:
http://www.accessf.org/stream.php?stream=1). Li Alin's piquant, emotive videos and her very imaginative horizontally-flowing website are available for your enjoyment online - just google her name.

     Would you like to have a Counter Culture Hour showing in your town? Please write and ask us how you can do this.


   3. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent

() TETRO - epic masterpiece by FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA (see V. Vale's blog at www.researchpubs.com)

() DORKBOT 10th Anniversary Party hosted by JON SARRIUGARTE/KRYSTEN MATE and KAREN MARCELO - incredible warehouse space, great event, "the best" people...

() MERI ST. MARY's HOUSECOAT PROJECT reunion (after 20 years) at EAGLE, S.F. (see V. Vale's blog at www.researchpubs.com). A better time could not have been had! Great songs, intelligent lyrics, surprising and intriguing arrangements thanks to the presence of the sardonic saxophonist Bob Bartosik. Really liked the sympatico guitar work of Jay Crawford, and Michael Sims (drums) and Whitey Cox (bass) provided a first-class rhythm section. Don't miss the Housecoat Project's next show...Plus, their original classic LP will soon be released on Steve Tupper's SUBTERRANEAN RECORDS label - watch for it...

() Our exceptionally literate ex- intern Leslie Hodgkins (sadly, he moved to NYC) sent us a VIDEO he made recently titled "TILLY TOURNESOL: The Star In My Head." "My sole star is dead -- and my constellated lute Bears the black sun of the melancolia." - Gerard de Nerval. If you would like a copy of this rare production, email us and we'll forward your request to Leslie.

() ED HARDY had a book signing last night at SF MOMA for ED HARDY: ART FOR LIFE - beautiful hardback published by teNeues of Germany (google to find it). A few copies are for sale at SFMOMA bookstore. Saw filmmaker EMIKO MORI and she gave us a flyer for her forthcoming documentary: "ED HARDY: TATTOO THE WORLD." www.edhardytattootheworld.com - 'nuf said.

() Our friend Loren Rhoads' new book, MORBID CURIOSITY CURES THE BLUES, offers a wide spectrum of first-hand accounts with the "paranorma,l" as recounted by women and men talking about walks they've taken on the wild side. There are disturbing facts here and there, such as the report that the Torture Museum is no longer findable in Amsterdam. Sadly, the Torture Museum at S.F.'s Fisherman's Wharf seems to have also disappeared -- anyone know when it vanished? And, I would never want the experience of "waking up during surgery" -- which is a book title by one Jeanette Liska. Dozens more imagination-provoking ideas and experiences await the reader in this unsettling volume...

() SCOTT RYSER, UNITS founder, sent us his new anthology CD which proves his performance/art/industrial/Dada "band" was decades ahead of their time. If you would like a copy, write us at info@researchpubs.com and we will forward your request to Scott.

() brand new book by Stephen Leyba Johnson, who moved from the Bay Area to Portland -- google to find it! (in our office clean-up we misplaced it, but we'll review it as soon as we RE/find it...)

   4. FORTHCOMING EVENTS

() WHAT WE'D LIKE TO ATTEND (TOMORROW!!): Sat JULY 11, 4pm-late

big ART Studios Presents: SAND by the TON. American Steel, 1960 Mandela Parkway, Oakland, CA (from S.F. take 1st right exit on Maritime, follow straight to Mandela Parkway, it's between 17th-18th Sts) $25 - $125. info@thebigartexperience.com 0 PLEASE NOTE: $20 pre-sale tickets are sold out. $25 will call tickets are still available.
www.thebigartexperience.com
     200 tons of sand (REALLY!), 5 swimming pools, 8 stages, 250,000 square feet, Oakland's newest indoor beach!!! - Presented by: DAN DAS MANN & KAREN CUSOLITO (BIG ART STUDIOS at AMERICAN STEEL), CIRCUS METROPOLUS, DUSTFISH, SPACE COWBOYS, SYMBIOSIS, FALSE PROFIT, NEURO WEAPON, GRAVITY POINT, OPULENT TEMPLE
     Featuring:
MAJOR MONUMENTAL SCULPTURE and INSTALLATION by: DAN DAS MANN & KAREN CUSOLITO, THE FL-MING LOTUS GIRLS, CYCLECIDE HEAVY PEDAL BIKE RODEO, MICHAEL CHRISTIAN, OMEGA RECOIL, FALSE PROFIT LABS, ORION FREDERICKS, MICHAEL STURTZ, MARK McGOTHIGAN, KINETIC STEAM WORKS, JUSTIN GRAY, EVAN TRACY and....
     LIVE MUSIC and PERFORMANCE presented by DUSTFISH & CIRCUS METROPOLUS featuring: THE MUTAYTOR, MERMEN, EXTRA ACTION MARCHING BAND, GOOFERMAN, VAU DE VIRE, THE ERIC McFADDEN TRIO, POLKACIDE, BEATS ANTIQUE, 999 EYES, MARK GROWDEN, DROP MOTION, SOLAR FLARE, DEPARTMENT OF SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION, BOILER BAR SEASIDE SANITARIUM AND MEDICINE SHOW, THE BURLEY SISTERS by SuDoNu and more!
     4 live music stages, 4 electronic music stages, full boardwalk carnival midway with rides, 200 tons of sand with 5 swimming pools (swimwear encouraged), a quarter million square feet of space under one roof, thousands of your best friends, more lights blinkin' than ever blinked... bookoo (6) bars including JON SARRIUGARTE/KYRSTEN MATE'S BOILER BAR & Depression-Era Entertainment TROUPE....you thought you knew the drill till you came here. 21+ (sorry)
    VIP Ticketholders have access to a private lounge that includes: Complimentary catered food; Complimentary top shelf bar; Private areas for you and your friends; Access to a 50 foot steamboat floating off the cranes; VIP DJ; Entrance to a selection of monumental sculptures that are only accessible through the VIP area.
     Proceeds of the VIP tickets help significantly support the Savant Foundation, which in turn helps artists in your community stretch their dollar farther through combined resources. You can learn more about the foundation here: http://www.thebigartexperience.com/vip.html.

4PM-LATE free BBQ 4-7pm Close to BART~LATE NIGHT BUS SHUTTLE TO SF!~ample secure parking

() **FREE** THEATER IN BAY AREA PARKS - BY JOHN C. SULAK

In July, August and September there are many different plays being performed in Bay Area Parks. The ones that I’m listing here are free - all you have to do is show up. You can bring a blanket or chairs to sit on if you want, or just sit on the grass (which is what I do.) You can also bring whatever you want to eat and drink and have a picnic while you’re there. And most of these performances are easy to get to by public transportation. Check the website links for specific parks and dates.

Woman’s Will is doing Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” in many locations, so no matter where you live they might be near you on some weekend. Woman’s Will is an all female company, so it will be interesting to see what they do with this play that is famous for the way its female characters behave. (Despite the reputation "Shrew..." has these days, it's actually a pretty good play.)
http://www.womanswill.org/

The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival is going to be in Pleasanton, Cupertino and San Francisco’s Presido doing Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors.” It’s one of the Bard’s early plays and it's funny and entertaining – a good one to see on a summer afternoon.
http://www.sfshakes.org/

The San Francisco Mime Troupe is a local legend. They’ve been doing free theater for decades. I haven’t seen this year's show, which premiered on the 4th of July, but they wrote it themselves, it’s called “Too Big to Fail,” and whatever they do is always worth checking out. And, just for the record, there are no mimes performing with the Mime Troupe!
http://www.sfmt.org/index.php

Berkeley's Shotgun Players have been doing some excellent stuff at their Ashby Stage, and this August they'll be in John Hinkel Park with an adaptation of George Orwell's "Animal Farm."
http://www.shotgunplayers.org/

I write a theatre blog, and I’ll be posting reviews of these and other shows that I’ll be going to, so you can check this out for updates if you want:
http://voxtheatricum.wordpress.com/
__________________________________
The Beat Museum will be hosting a Memorial for Harold Norse on Sunday, July 12th, 2pm, 540 Broadway at Romolo Alley (near Columbus).

() Fri JULY 17, 9pm: ZEROS at ELBO ROOM, S.F.! Go early; small venue. (See V. Vale's blog on the ZEROS at www.researchpubs.com) For a sad conflict, see next:
() Fri JULY 17, 9pm:FLIPPER, TOILING MIDGETS, SAVAGE REPUBLIC at Cafe du Nord, S.F. How could this happen? Well, flip a coin and go to either show - you're guaranteed fun...

() Sun JULY 19, 4pm, NEGATIVE TREND @ LUCKY 13, 2140 Market St. RE/Search will be there with RE/Search books for sale - visit us! The new lead singer Toby Dickand bassist Tom Mallon are fully satisfying...Drummer Tony Sales' son (also named Tony Sales) is a powerhouse of rhythmic drive...

() Mon-thru-Sun July 7-26, 2009, SAN DIEGO. RECOMBINANT MEDIA LABS (RML) IN CONJUNCTION with UCSD presents the return of the CINEBOX, A mobile immersionary apparatus in panoramic cinema & periphonic sound. Conrad Preby's Music Center near Russell Laneon the UCSD campus, 9500 Gilman Drive in Room 122 (Experimental Theatre), La Jolla, CA 92037-1300 near San Diego. Viewings by appointment day or night ... (anytime). For further information or special arrangements call 650 255 8947 or email naut@recombinantmedialabs.org
    "The CineBox Project is a suspended 10 Screen panoramic display featuring the works of Biosphere & Egbert Mittelstaedt, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Scott Pagano & Jochem Paap, Semi Conductor, Scott Arford, Masako Tanaka & Markus Popp and Asphodel's "Multiple Otomo Project" featuring Otomo Yoshihide, plus others to be announced. For those who heard of or missed the RML venues in San Francisco this is the first opportunity to see the launch of the travel version. RML is a research and development network for the Experiential Engineering of Surround Cinema & the Immersive Arts.

() Fri-Sat, 8pm NOW through Aug 16, 2009. THE HYPNODROME is hosting possibly their biggest hit play ever, "PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI," written by Cockettes legend Richard "Scrumbly" Koldewyn and Link Martin and directed by Russell Blackwood. Great songs, great production, and phenomenal costumes and sets. Hypnodrome, 575 10th St (near Brannan), 415.377.4202. Supremely recommended! Also of interest is their "Creepshow Camp" for kids 9-15 years old - couldn't be more intriguing to kids - go to thrillpeddlers.com for more info. There are (2) more Creepshow Camps this summer...

   5. Stephane von Stephane Reviews: Acid Mother's Temple, Mutants, Ozric Tentacles, Seabiscuit

Well, it's that time again. Write about something new and exciting for RE/Searchers near and far to seek out. However, the more things   change, the more they stay the same. And that's not always a bad thing. Today I extol the virtues of the same-old/same-old.
    1} Acid Mother's Temple at the Bottom of the Hill, April 4th. http:/www.acidmothers.com/ I am ever so happy that they remain such a   'cult' band that I can stroll up and buy a ticket right before the   show (and not at some outrageous price either, thank you Bottom of the Hill folks.) I could actually afford to buy a cd. and a t-shirt at the show. I just picked a cd at random, and it turned out the   set list was most of the music on the cd. I picked 'Giant Psychedelia', figuring it might be the mellow stuff that I tend to prefer, and it is. I recommend it to anyone else who likes to chill out and feel high without drugs (or with drugs-your choice-just sayin' it works for me w/o). Live improvised set recorded in 2007 at Tokuzo (Nagoya). This time at B.o.t.H. the guitar player did NOT smash his instrument at the   end of the show, just induced feedback then hung it from the rafters. I was in a reverie for at least a week after this show.
   2) The Mutants at the de Young Museum 'Warhol Live' show closing party, May 15. First off, the Warhol show was great. I had seen various pieces various places, including a huge show in London some
time ago, but this was put together in such a way as to give you an almost intimate 'experience'. (If it were truly intimate, Andy would not have approved). It started with the giant iconic B&W photo of Warhol's sun-glassed pockmarked face seen through a tambourine. (Very Beatles, 'Hard-Days Night'-esque) There was a Silver Painted Room a la 'The Factory' with seating, showing B&W film footage of Edie, little Joe and the usual suspects. The actual trunk that the whiz-kids were filmed sitting on was outside the museum's Silver Room, so that was fun. There was a Velvet Underground stoner room where you could lay around on pillows and watch film of Nico and the boys while V.U. music played. There were early LP cover designs by A.W. that I had never seen. And towards the end of the show, the highly under-rated diamond-dust colour-field paintings, oddly contemplative, which are my current favorites.
     3) Ozric Tentacles at The Independent, May 27th. http://www.backstreet-merch.com/bands/ oz/ WOW!!! Two and a half PLUS hours of the O.T.s shredding prog- rock psychedelia. Math maims, my friend, math maims. (in a good way!) For a while I was standing next to a row of Koothrappali's (reference 'Big Bang Theory' character, CBS comedy worth watching) until I could no longer bear hearing their brains memorize the synthesizer sequencers. A David Foster Wallace moment to be sure. I had to move. I then stood behind a dancing shaved-head guy who was possibly high and seemed to be the only person besides me in that exact groove, so I danced with him. He was oblivious to me (as I was behind him) which was great. There was also a gorgeous Rennaissance girl who smelled like musk, though it turned out to be amber which her chemical reaction turned to musk we decided, then her boyfriend whisked her away before we could go into any more details on the chemical reactions of --oh, fill in the blanks yerselves-- and nevermind.   Suffice to say, Fabulous show all the way 'round. Light show groovy   too.
     4) 'Seabiscuit', by Spacetime Continuum. This cd is   from 1994 and sounds like Right NOW. How I missed it all these   years...anyway, mastered by Jonah Sharp and Naut Human at The Compound, S.F. June of 15 years ago! http://www.reflectiverecords.com/store.html Download now. So, you
see, SamO/SamO, as J.M.Basquiat used to say. But, sometimes the same is not such a bad thing. ~Stephane von Stephane

.
    6. Moritz Cordes review of Modwheelmood at Elbo Room: "On the 10th of June, 2009 Modwheelmood played an hour long selection from their repertoire. As a three man group they presented their rather rocky interpretations to an enthusiastic albeit small crowd. It was a nice night to listen to atmospheric, partially moody, easily accessible electro tunes and to hang out and chat with the band before and after the show. Modwheelmood are Pelle Hillstrom (Forever Like Red) on guitar and Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails) on bass & vox. For the current tour they were reinforced by Jesper Kristensen on drums. Link: www.modwheelmood.com "

"The Limb of a Foetus: In May J.G. Thirwell (aka Foetus aka Steroid Maximus aka Clint Ruin...) released his new CD/DVD package 'Limb'. So what's so exciting about this release? Well, this is great minimalistic music. For one part there are some interesting experimental tracks on the CD just in case you feel like putting your conception of what is acceptable as music to the test (once again). (And when you're done with that, you can start listening again and you will find so many processes taking place at once.) For the other part there are some ambient, rhythmic tracks which sometimes induce a slightly threatening feeling in you, without being overtly hostile. But the nice thing with those tracks is the way how they are made out of obviously simple structures to create a very complex (but never cacophonic) whole. The film on the DVD is another gem. This documentary about JGT features interviewees like Lydia Lunch, Richard Kern, Blixa Bargeld, Matt Johnson and others.
     This set might seem a bit expensive with 25 bucks, but if you're in it for numbers you should also consider this: The set comes with a CD and a DVD. The CD contains roughly 72 minutes of music (incl. one 20 minute MP3 track). The DVD contains the aforementioned entertaining full length feature plus several live videos from JGT's various projects. Finally the whole thing is accompanied by a 48 page booklet with minimalistic visual art and individual liner notes for each track. Some of the tracks on the CD haven't been released before.
     If you wanna have a try: http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/31897 (This is a three hour show at WFMU with JGT as guest. They talk a bit and spin some tracks from 'Limb' and other stuff. Skip the first hour if you want to get right to the section with JGT.) More info and ordering: http://www.foetus.org/ (shop section) "

   7. RECOMMENDED LINKS -send some!

   8. QUOTES of the month:

() "Automatism is of decisive importance in surrealism and may perhaps be said even to constitute its very touchstone." - Andre Breton, WHAT IS SURREALISM?

() "From the single fact that she saw her wooden cross transform itself into a crucifix of precious stones, and accepted this vision as both IMAGINATIVE AND SENSORY, Teresa of Avila could be credited with having ordained this line on which mediums and poets are situated. Unfortunately, she is still no more than a saint." - ibid

() "In Paris there are two caves, one of robbers and the other of murderers. The robbers' cave is the stock exchange, the murderers' cave is the courts of justice." - Petrus Borel

() "My standards for judging any "cultural production": 1) Is it deeply 'beautiful'? 2) Is it deeply meaningful? 3) Is it deeply subversive of the status quo? 4) Is it deeply inspiring?" -V. Vale

   9. FEEDBACK FROM READERS:

From:    "Patricia Allmer" ..
ATROCITY EXHIBITIONS: RE/Reading RE/Search
2010 Association of Art Historians Conference Session – Call for Papers
(Glasgow, 15-17 April 2010)

     The avant-garde journal RE/Search, edited by V. Vale and published in San Francisco since 1980, has consistently explored the limits of cultural practices in relation to theories and traditions of artistic expression. Developing out of dada and surrealism and based on the surrealist call toexplore the "irrational shadow of official culture", RE/Search addresses contested and subversive aesthetic practices and cultural interventions. Its range of thematic and theoretical concerns (from Angry Women to Industrial Culture) defines the parameters of contemporary conceptions of the acceptable, the permissible and the desirable; its constant willingness to challenge conventions has made it a major feature of the theoretical landscape of contemporary art practice. RE/Search has furthermore been instrumental in promoting and analysing work by major contemporary artists and writers, including William Burroughs, Genesis P. Orridge, Gee Vaucher, Annie Sprinkle, Russ Meyer, Valie Export, and J. G.Ballard.
     This session will mark the 30th anniversary of RE/Search and invites papers addressing and re-reading pertinent concerns and aspects of / related to the journal. These may include, but are not restricted to:
- artistic and cultural precursors and inheritors of RE/Search
- RE/Search in contexts: San Francisco, contemporary and avant-garde art movements, alternative cultures
- how RE/Search facilitates or emphasises particular practices, theories and modes of analysis, interaction and engagement
- the contributions of key figures to the RE/Search project
- special issues of RE/ Search and their influence on contemporary artistic and cultural practices
- RE/Search and interdisciplinary, inter-media and inter-art practices
- contributions on individual RE/Search articles and themes, from youth cultures to body art, industrial cultures to cut-ups, incredibly strange music to incredibly strange films and beyond.
Please submit 250 word proposals to the session convenors, Patricia Allmer and John Sears, at P.Allmer@mmu.ac.uk and J.Sears@mmu.ac.uk before 09 November 2009.
Dr Patricia Allmer
MIRIAD, Manchester Metropolitan University
Righton Building, Cavendish Street
Manchester M15 6BG, U.K.   or
Dr John Sears
Dept of Interdisciplinary Studies, MMU Cheshire
Crewe Green Road
Crewe, Cheshire CW1 5DU, U.K.
AAH Conference website: http://aah.org.uk/future-conferences/index.php
http://www.artdes.mmu.ac.uk/profile/pallmer

() The latest RE/Search books - PRONNOVATION, LEARY ON DRUGS, BURNING MAN LIVE - are available at www.researchpubs.com - or you can visit our office and buy one or all in person - 415.362.1465 or email info@researchpubs.com

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
JULY 2009 RE/Search eNewsletter written by V. Vale & other contributors. Newsletter and website powered by http://www.laughingsquid.com.
DISCLAIMER : If you're receiving V. VALE's newsletter, it's because you **or someone you know** has sent your address to us, or signed our mailing list at an event!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
http://www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com
--

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Thursday, March 05, 2009

V. Vale RE/Search March 2009 Newsletter

V. Vale's RE/Search newsletter March 2009

++ "WE LOVE YOUR SUPPORT - NEWEST RELEASES: DRUGS! SEX! TECHNOLOGY! - NOT IN MOST STORES - ORDER DIRECT & RECEIVE FREE GIFT(S) ++WILL AUTOGRAPH UPON REQUEST

WELCOME TO V. VALE's RE/SEARCH NEWSLETTER #80, March 2009
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com

**IF YOU LIVE IN San Francisco BAY AREA, PLEASE **REPLY** TO THIS NEWSLETTER IF YOU WISH TO RECEIVE LAST-MINUTE LOCAL NEWS OF RE/SEARCH-recommended EVENTS! In subject line please write "local subscribe"

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
___________________________________________
1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR Re: Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair, Annie's Social Club, etc
2. Counter Culture Hour featuring Eric Debris from Metal Urbain, 1977 French Punk Band.
3. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent..
4. FORTHCOMING EVENTS
5. Stephane von Stephane on traffic tickets, "Enemy of the State," "Dark Angel"
6. Ian Webster on Shows at Annie's Social Club, The Uptown
7. Recommended Links
8. Quotes
9. Feedback from Readers
--------------
please add info@researchpubs.com to your ADDRESS BOOK. If you change your email, send it plus your "old" email address to delete. Lastly, forward our newsletter to your friends! If you are on aol, please make sure you can receive our newsletter - we get the most returns from addresses at AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+AT LAST: our BURNING MAN LIVE book is allegedly being shipped THIS WEEK -- we'll believe it when we see the shipment at our warehouse ! Our thanks to all who pre-ordered -- we'll ship 'em out ASAP!
+IN STOCK/Now Shipping: PRONNOVATION: P0RNOGRAPHY & TECHNOLOGY, some color photos ("A must!" - Charles Gatewood) $25 plus $5 ship (only 1000 printed! - blame it on "the times"...) Printed in Austria.
+ IN STOCK: LEARY ON DRUGS - recent RE/Search book $20 plus $5 shipping - www.researchpubs.com (only 1500 printed)
+BRAND NEW, JUST IN: Noir Satanist JIMMY VARGAS's new CD: BLACK HALO 5 & 6, 2005-2008 $16 plus $5 shipping (15 copies)
+WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS T-shirt in SIZE LARGE almost sold out! If you've ever wanted it, order it now; who knows if it will ever be reprinted, in this economy!
+ RE/Search LOGO T-shirt $25. S,M,L,XL. Red logo on 100% cotton Black T-Shirt. Only 100 made.
+ INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC VOL ONE - has "the best" LUX INTERIOR/IVY interview! Last copies $25 plus $5 shipping.
+INDUSTRIAL CULTURE HANDBOOK HARDBACK deluxe paper $40 plus $5 shipping ($60 on amazon)
+PRANKS 2 deluxe paper $25 plus $4 ship - AUTOGRAPHED BY YES MEN! (ask for it) - newsletter special
+PRANKS deluxe hardback printed on glossy paper $40 plus $5 shipping (not available elsewhere)
+SEARCH & DESTROY- 8 original issues (1977-79) only $40 plus $10 shipping (includes one 1987 reprint). Experience Punk Rock as it was happening...
+ IN STOCK: BURNING MAN LIVE! FINALLY, DUE BACK FROM THE PRINTER AND SHIPPING OUT TO YOU THIS WEEK (or, ASAP).

   1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR: We hope to see you at the (FREE) Anarchist Book Fair Sat-Sun March 14-15 11-6pm at County Fair Building, Lincoln/9th Ave. This is one of the great social gatherings of the year, with visitors from all over the world, and RE/SEARCH will be selling books at discounted prices, along with Charles Gatewood, City Lights, Manic D, and Ken Knabb of Situationist International renown. For schedule and other information see http://sfbookfair.wordpress.com/

If you live in the Bay Area and have never been to the Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel (California/Powell St, SF) we urge you to go there during Happy Hour (food used to be free, but now they charge) and experience the every-20-minute rainstorm, the Tikis, and the general ambience -- walk around and appreciate all the details! We hear that the Tonga Room may soon be closed, so please sign this petition to Save the Tonga Room http://www.thepetitionsite.com/tell-a-friend/3372869

We are, like everyone else, soliciting feedback as to the "true" state of the economy now. Walking around North Beach and San Francisco, we see all these expensive restaurants filled with -- tourists? -- and life seems to be proceeding as "normal." Yet we feel like we're living in the days just before the Fall of Rome, or before the Black Plague hit, or before the Great Depression launched its Slow Motion Apocalypse [thanks, Joe Donohoe]. Should we be hoarding water purifiers, rice and beans, and flashlight batteries? We notice that cornflakes are very hard to get at Trader Joe's -- next time they come in (if they ever do), we'll buy ten boxes. We feel the end of all the cheap Chinese-made staples we rely on is nigh; when China finally wakes up and stops sending us "merch" on credit, everyone will wake up and realize that nothing is manufactured in America anymore, and further, nobody remembers how to manufacture anything. The de-industrialization of America by global corporations (saying Eff You to labor unions) has left us citizens staring around dazedly in a false economy, then going back to our web surfing. The whole country is like a hospice full of mental patients who no longer know how to do anything that requires skill (besides consume) in the real world. The future heroes will be machinists, plumbers, welders, electricians, sewer workers, mechanics, and construction workers. Please send us your thoughts, especially if you live in some place other than San Francisco!

Just got the mail (Wed, March 4) and discovered a new favorite, all-color, beautifully designed art book: ROBERT DELFORD BROWN: MEAT, MAPS AND MILITANT METAPHYSICS. Now, we at RE/Search have long considered Robert Delford Brown to have been, like Duchamp, one of the most varied and comprehensive "predictors" of what future culture would look like, and we featured him in our first PRANKS! book (still available from us). Briefly, he crossed more barriers between art and non-art than almost any other artist, and his output still remains challenging, outrageous, and thought-provoking -- not to mention, inspirational. We can't recommend this book highly enough (the production by Mark Bloch is "perfect"), and, probably like our RE/Search books, you will need to order it direct -- in this case, from Cameron Art Museum, 3201 South 17th St, Wilmington, NC 28412. (Disclosure: this book contains an interview with WALTER HOPPS by V. VALE, on the creative output of Robert Delford Brown.)

We're looking forward to the THROBBING GRISTLE concert in San Francisco April 23 -- seems impossible it could really happen -- and hope that most of our readers will support this ultra rare occurrence, like seeing Hailey's Comet. RE/Search put Throbbing Gristle's Genesis P-Orridge in Search & Destroy #6, RE/Search #1, RE/Search #4/5: William S. Burroughs, Throbbing Gristle and Brion Gysin; the INDUSTRIAL CULTURE HANDBOOK, MODERN PRIMITIVES and MODERN PAGANS.We guarantee you that the evening will be "interesting." For us the reunion concert will function like a kind of historical / biographical marker... stages along life's way.

   2. Counter Culture Hour - V. Vale talks with Eric Debris of METAL URBAIN about the early French Punk Scene, etc. NOW ON-LINE AND on cable access San Francisco 6:30pm Pacific Time, Sat March 14, 2009 on-line (www.accessf.org - channel 1) as well as cable Channel 29, San Francisco.
     Would you like to have a Counter Culture Hour showing in your town? Please write and ask us how you can do this!
      Now, if you live near Albany, New York, you can check the March schedule for VALENTINE'S Club. Evan Keller will screen our Counter Culture Hour interview featuring JIHAD JERRY (Gerald V. Casale, DEVO). Write us for more details - info@researchpubs.com

   3. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent

() Another ineffably poignant, memorable evening at our favorite club in San Francisco, Annie's Social Club, Folsom/5th St: Sat, Feb 28, with Naked Lady Wrestlers (featuring Max Volume), No Alternative (Max Volume on bass), and Negative Trend (with guest vocalist Zach Williams (son of Ricky Williams, Sleepers vocalist) doing a Sleepers song -- "he sounded like a teenage Ricky Williams." For some reason, seeing Ricky Williams' son singing (at age 21) was particularly moving...

Best of all was the opportunity to talk with five musicians from the 1977 San Francisco "Punk Movement" and revel in their rebelliousness (still sustained), mordant wit, acute memories, and especially to discover how their musicianship has grown quite naturally (despite Punk's critique of musical virtuosity for its own sake) -- well, after all, evolution is an inevitable consequence of sustained exploratory improvisation, play, practice, and sheer creative inventiveness.

Refreshingly, there were no monster-size egos present. Johnny Genocide coaxed haunting, beautiful, echoing, feedback guitar sounds out of his amp, in his version of Link Wray's "Rumble." Michael Belfer (Sleepers/Tuxedo Moon guitarist) told a hilarious story of being present when Mark Pauline detonated a birthday cake for Steven Brown of Tuxedo Moon, spraying and temporarily deafening sisters Janie and Jerry when they jumped INTO the cake as some kind of "Punk Theatre." Max Volume played amazingly rapid-fire bass as well as he plays guitar, and talked about what he brought to the Bay Area Punk Scene. Bruce Loose of Flipper, as sardonic as ever, discussed philosophy and crime, and how some of the best stories that happened in the 70s Punk Era could not be told, as certain individuals are still alive. Flipper has began rehearsing with a girl bassist. Craig Gray, Negative Trend guitarist, clearly remembered a conversation I had had with him back in 1977 on "how to write songs," and delivered a particularly scathing critique of Facebook, MySpace, and the Internet in general -- very funny. (Guess you had to have been there...) Chris Olson, original OFFS drummer, gave me his CRUELSWEET FOLIO #3 CD (www.cruelsweet.com). If only all of us could be in the same room more often, rather than once every thirty years...

() Last month we attended the celebration for Rene Daalder's film on Timothy Leary at 111 Minna St and met a woman who gave us some advice: "Whenever anyone asks you to do anything, tell them NO. No matter what it is. Just say NO. NO. You have to practice saying this. NO. That gives you time to walk away and deliberate about the request. Otherwise, you simply don't have enough time, solitude and calmness to THINK..."

   4. OTHER FORTHCOMING EVENTS:

CALENDAR FOR MARCH NEWSLETTER

FREE, Thursday, March 5, 8 pm. Gomorrah, movie about La Camorra crime tribe in Naples, Italy, now more powerful than Sicily's Cosa Nostra. The book (which the movie was based on) was so popular in Italy that the author, Roberto Saviano, remains under permanent police protection. New Nothing, 16 Sherman, SF.

FREE, Thursday, March 5, 7pm. John Law signing his new book, The Space Between, a collection of 3 stories inspired by Law's obsession with bridges. City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, SF. "I'm also presenting a slide show with stories of various Bridge adventures over the years. After the signing/reading/slide show at City Lights, we may have yet another 'adventure'..." - J. Law. RE/SEARCH WILL ATTEND!!

FREE: Thur March 5, 6pm, SF Public Library, Main Branch, "Evolution of San Francisco" lectures by Rand Richards, Chris Carlsson, Peter Booth Wiley. Followed by book signing and sale.

FREE, Friday, March 6, 6 pm. Visit Andy Warhol's 1960's New York @ Amoeba's 3rd Annul Art Show. Dress in '60's clothes. The event will be a recreation of Warhol's Factory. If you bring a Campbell's soup can for donation, you'll be entered in a contest to win prizes. Featuring Velvet Underground cover bands. 1343 Powell Street (@ Doyle St.), Emeryville, CA.

Friday March 6, 7 pm. Poetry & Pizza. Monthly event featuring local poets and free pizza. The event is usually held at Escape From New York Pizza in the Financial District but it's in Potrero Hill this month. San Francisco Center for the Book. 300 De Haro. St (@ 16th St.), San Francisco. $5,

Saturday March 7, 8 pm. Monochrom Presents: Soviet Unterzoegersdorf release party. “The computer game is a tribute to the proud yet imperiled republic of Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (pronounced «oon-taa-tsee-gars-doorf»), the last existing appendage republic of the USSR.” Special Non Player Guest Characters: // Jello Biafra, Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, Emmanuel /Goldstein, Mitch Altman, Bre Pettis, David 'DaddyD' Dempsey, Kyle Machulis, MC Frontalot, Eddie Codel, Irina Slutsky, Christian 'plomlompom' Heller, Jason Scott Sadofsky, Hans Bernhard, Robert Stachel (maschek) -- and many more. Ticket Info: $5 entry, display passport for free Vodka shot. Chez Poulet, 3359 Cesar Chavez Street, San Francisco. RE/SEARCH WILL BE PRESENT - monochrom's new PRONNOVATION book will be available for autographing!!

FREE, Sat March 7, 7pm-midnight. Serpent Mother Art Opening On Treasure Island.
"Join us for a special art exhibition of the Serpent Mother. There has never been a sculpture like the Serpent Mother. The warmth of her embrace and her coiling design create an atmospheric space in which over a thousand people can stand. Her 168' long stainless steel spine coils around the massive space, while her 20' long neck and head tower over her audience.

"The audience takes control, however, by directing her movement, raising her hydraulically- actuated neck and opening her fanged mouth. Full audience participation makes each installation a singular experience - come make it happen. We hope you will join us for this fun and free gallery reception. Links: http://flaminglotus.com 200 California Ave., Treasure Island, San Francisco, CA, 94130 See http://www.flaminglotus.com for directions."

Sat March 7, 8pm, World Premiere of The Paul Dresher Ensemble Production of Schick Machine Collaboratively created by: Paul Dresher - Composer, Instrument Inventor and Builder, Steven Schick - Performer/Percussionist, Rinde Eckert - Director/Writer, Matt Heckert - Mechanical Sound Artist, & Others. The mysteriously-packed subterranean workshop of the (possibly mad, possibly genius) inventor, sound collector and audio philosopher Lazlo Klangfarben. His invention: the Schick Machine - an uber-algorhytm, a logic instrument made from a giant motorized hurdy gurdy that produces heavenly sounds, a deconstructed pipe organ played with electrical mallets, and indescribable metal machines that seem to be alive. You ask: "What IS this stuff? DINKELSPIEL AUDITORIUM, 471 Lagunita Dr, Stanford University PALO ALTO. FOR TICKETS PHONE: 650-725-ARTS (2787) Or on-line at http://livelyarts.stanford.edu

Sunday, March 8. Indie Mart. Local designers, vintage, music, good times. The Independent, 628 Divisadero St. (@ Hayes St.), San Francisco, $2 suggested donation.

Sunday, March 8. 7:30-10:45 pm. Lupino Noir. At 7:30pm: The Bigamist (1953). At 9:45. Outrage (1950). Ida Lupino, who has been called “the poor man's Bettie Davis,” left Warner Bros and started her own production company with her husband, making low-budget films, including the two noir films shown at Lupino Noir. PFA Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley. $7.

FREE. Thur, March 12, 5-8pm Opening, The Art Gallery, 1650 Holloway Ave, SF 94132. 415.338-2580. Mgr Daniel Paez. www.sfsustudentcenter.com/artgallery - DON ED HARDY ("From his passion for tattoo...filled with layeres of visual references and an ecstatic spirit, his mixed-media objects are very personal.") Also artwork by Beiing artists Huang Yan and Liu Xiaodong, and Korean-American artist Debbie Han. Curator: Daphne Fang.

FREE, Friday, March 13, 7 pm. Independent Erotic Film Festival 2009 Party. DJ, Panel Discussion, free cocktails, presented by Good Vibrations. Center for Sex and Culture, 1519 Mission Street (@ 11th St.), San Francisco.

FREE, Sat March 14, 11 am-6 pm and Sunday, March 15, 11 am-5 pm. 14th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair. Presented by Bound Together Anarchist Book Collective. Speakers include Diana de Prima, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, among others. RE/Search will be there with Charles Gatewood. We'll have a few promotional copies of various RE/SEARCH books at half price! This is possibly the best free event of the year! SF County Fair Building, 9th and Lincoln in Golden Gate Park. Delicious Vegan food, too.

Pay-What-You-Can, Thursday, March 19, 8 pm. The Symmetry Project performance. “A journey through perception, two naked bodies interact through a highly structured improvisational score. Revealing the body's awkwardness, it's monstrosity, its potential failure & finiteness, they create space for the unknown, the ecstatic, & the infinite.” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street, San Francisco.

$$$: March 27-29: writing weekend workshop with Beat Legend/EtAl DIANE DI PRIMA FOR WOMEN ONLY in a beautiful heated cabin near Sebastopol. TUITION $350 (includes accommodations) $100 deposit required in advance. INFO: GERI DIGIORNO (707) 763-4271

FREE, Noon. April 1 (April Fool's Day!) 2009. The 31st Annual St. Stupid's Parade. Embarcadero Plaza. Market/Embarcadero streets. Bring pennies, socks, dead lottery tickets, signs, tar, feathers, and a stupider-than-thou attitude. We think that the parade will end at North Beach Playground. Columbus/Greenwich. That nite there will be a bash with numerous bands at the Elbo Room, 647 Valencia St. Details at www.saintstupid.com - thanx, Bishop Joey.

FREE, April 9, 6 pm. Underground music legend Dex Romweber live. Made famous by “psycho-surf-rockabilly -garage-punk” combo Flat Duo Jets. Was in 1987 cult classic film Athens, GA Inside Out with B-52s and REM and now has a new album out, which includes guest appearences by Neko Case, Cat Power, Exene Cervenka, and Rick Miller of Southern Culture on the Skids. Amoeba Music, 2455 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley.

FREE, Sunday, April 12. 2 pm. Dance Salon: Performance and Talk with Emerging Choreographers, featuring Bare Bones Butoh revisiting childhood experiences with Southern Baptist tent revivals in rural Oklahoma; Boathouse & Co. Productions merging a classic story with present-day themes; Jennifer Gwirtz exploration of birth & the mother/child relationship; & work from Kendra Kimbrough Dance Ensemble. CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission Street, San Francisco.

Thurs, April 23. Throbbing Gristle. TG will play a 75 minute set. Only 200 tickets left! Grand Regency Ballrooom, 1290 Sutter Street & Van Ness, San Francisco. $30. Don't miss this once-in-a-lifetiime event. www.throbbing-gristle.com (Throbbing Gristle were featured in our RE/Search #4/5 and our Industrial Culture Handbook)

April 24, 2009: Lawrence Ferlinghetti's 90th Birthday! Send him a card c/o City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF CA 94133.

   5. Stephane von Stephane Memo from Meta-center; state of things, recently; as bizarre as always. Channeling Lenny Bruce; What the fcuk, how did Cheney and cronnies get away with bleeding the country dry and padding their pals' wallets with military Iraq destruction/ reconstruction contracts? How the fcuk do we let that happen? The 9/11 excuse to take away our civil liberties is p-ssing me the hell off lately.
    I got a traffic ticket in Oaktown; cruised partially through a right turn on red, stopped, but not long enough or in the right place according to the surveillance tapes of myself which I had the pleasure to view a month later at the police station. It was late at night, no traffic, extremely dark corner off a freeway exit in a sketchy area of town. I just wanted to get the hell around the corner and to Jack London Square to spend money at the movies in Oaktown. After this I no longer want to visit Oaktown for any reason at all. $381 for a kind-of, but-not-really, Moving Violation? That's a load of cr*p! It
was so damn dark until suddenly 3000 flashes of light! I was so stunned and blinded I could have run over anyone or anything in my path. Absurd and dangerous! So, I get pretty pictures of me in the mail and the surveillance tape makes it look like it's mid-day sunshine, you can see every detail, when in fact, one could barely see the crosswalk at the stoplight!!!
    I think people would actually feel safe to stop there in the appropriate place and for the appropriate amount of time if there were a few light standards there and a person could actually see a few feet ahead of their vehicles. But, NO, the city likes the income from these surveillance tickets too much. I feel like going into the courthouse with 50 cameras attached to my body and taking flash photos of the judge. "How do YOU like it, huh?" Stunned??? Blinded??? Of course I wouldn't make it past the metal detector in a camera 'art' statement outfit. I'd be in contempt of court if I tried to take a photo, no doubt.
    I just watched 'Enemy of the State' (director Tony Scott) on the TV yesterday. Great film. Came out in 1998 and is about sneaky government plots and spy satellites. Predates but is prophetic of a post 9-11 world. Rent it. This reminded me of one of my favorite TV shows, 'Dark Angel' (by James Cameron). Came out in 2000, was canceled the next season (after 9-11). Rent it. It is about a slightly future world where communications systems are blown out of whack and the U.S. has become 3rd-world-ish. A group of genetically engineered (very pretty) assassins are being trained in a top secret government facility. Some have escaped and are trying to lead 'normal' lives. This show also pre-dates but prophesizes a post 9-11 world, and was replaced by FOX with the show '24'; a perfect propaganda piece to make us learn to love the rogue Counter-Terrorist agent who breaks all the rules (and infringes upon people's civil liberties). What perfect timing that was, now that I think of it. Big Brother IS watching us.
    War is Peace. Love is Hate. Etc. Etc. Turn your neighbor in before they turn you in. It's here. It's fear, get used to it. Maybe things will change with Barry O. Bam-Bam in office. One thing is certain: Hillary looks hot in her Secretary of State travelin' togs. ~ Stephane von Stephane

   6. Ian Webster on Shows at Annie's Social Club, The Uptown:

    Dec 27, 2008, Annie's Social Club. The Jack Saints (myspace.com/jacksaints) opened with a fast and furious Punk set, followed by a minimalist, PETA, fluffy furry duo called Lost Puppy. Horror-X then brought their slightly over-modulated brand of Punkabilly to the stage (moustache and fedora). The headliners, Unko Atoma, straddled the precarious line between Pop and Punk, ranging from unison/harmonic vocals on some numbers to a cover of "The KKK Took My Baby Away."
    Jan 4, 2009, Annie's Social Club. Clodhopper is one of the angriest bar bands I've heard in recent times. Next were the TOILING MIDGETS, whose heavily chorused minor chords occasionally rose to intense peaks. Saw Meri St-Mary, Ronnie Guitar, Paul Draper (ex-Sleepers) and the late Ricky Williams' son ZACH, amongst others.
    Jan 31, 2009, The Uptown, Oakland. The Pleasure Kills (thepleasurekills.com) opened the evening with edgy Pop-Punk. Lydiot's excellent voice and Jeffrey Ject's showmanship on the keyboard were especially entertaining. Next The Disciples (myspace.com/disciples) presented a more raw emotionality, with savage, nihilistic rage. Finally, Punk Rock veterans THE AVENGERS played a set of their anthemic classics. In the audience were Alan Korn (ex-Catheads), Meri St-Mary (Housecoat Project, Sex Is A Witch), Carol Detweiler (Pink Section), Dominique leslie (Animal Things), Jimmy Crucifix, Carol Lennon and Nicki Sick (Verbal Abuse), among others.
    Feb 13, Rock-it-Room. on a tip from Mia (Frightwig)'s daughter, I went to see Maniac Martys (myspace/maniacmartyrs) perform at a Battle of the Bands contest -- and they were the most original band of the evening. The theremin/synthesizer played by Gremeleon (aka Greg Burger) complemented Mia d'Bruzi's psychedelic guitar. Britannic Zane (vocals, programming), Doctor Sparrow (drums) and Rachel Thoele (bass, ex-Sex Is a Witch and Mudwimmmin) provided a rhythmic base for the vocals of Deadsey McAllister, Dick Fitzwell, and Bonnie Bess (the Opera wench). - Ian Webster

   7. RECOMMENDED LINKS - thanks to our friends Phil G, Ferrara, James McN-, Derek B. & Others who send us links.

() from Jon Sarriugarte: http://pro.sony-asia.com/product/spec/brochure/hxr_mc1n.pdf

() from Johnny Strike: http://www.savetonga.com/

() from gary c: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sbfNIemF0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o9aHVzD-ng
..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOCDiKiO8Vo
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Metzger

() from Bruno R: http://www.laquadrature.net/fr/taxonomy/term/3
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~field/holzer/living.txt

() from Phil G: ..

() from Alan K: "1976 Santa Cruz Poetry Festival I mentioned that featured Burroughs, etc.   It's at ""http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.collectingbukowski.com%2Fmisc%2Fsc_festival.html

() from Margaret T: http://flavorpill.com/sanfrancisco/events/2009/2/14/curt-mcdowell - Curt McDowell: an uneven dozen broken hearts. Feb 15 – Mar 29, 2009, Sundays (noon–5pm) [ 2nd floor projects ]

() from Ken Knabb: "Kenneth Rexroth's review of Harold Gilliam's "San Francisco Bay" http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/gilliam.htm
The site also presents a rich selection of Rexroth's San Francisco newspaper
and magazine columns -- http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sf . Sometimes
chatty, sometimes scathing, but always provocative, Rexroth examined every
facet of San Francisco's cultural and political life as it was happening during the pivotal period from 1960 to 1975.

() from Robert Turman: new radio show started this week Wednesdays at midnight EST http://wobc.org

() from Karen M: smoking baby: http://www.examiner.com/x-300-Fatherhood-Examiner~y2009m2d19-Shocking-Video-of-Two-Year-Old-Smoking-Cigarette

() http://afeitealperro.blogspot.com/2009/02/sudor-hardcore-es-punk-radical.html
http://afeitealperro.blogspot.com/2009/02/c-utter-urban-hermits.html

() from James McN: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of
http://www.notbored.org/townsend.html (Pete Townsend)

() from Lena S: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of   "Toxicology Lyricists" and "Dro-oling Hillbillies" are my particular favorites from the Official Proceedings.

() from Winston S: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU

() from Michel Pennec: : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVVooFdl02s , a video I shot at last year's Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival.

() from Terese L: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.timothylearyarchives.org%2F"

() from Robert H: http://www.thepunksite.com/articles.php?page=anthony/index "Nice survey. Anything comparable in S.F. or LA?"

   8. QUOTES:

() "If you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning." - Andy Warhol

() "If you look at a thing long enough, no matter how beautiful it is, it becomes ugly." - Anonymous

() "Rogue state" is a term for a state that threatens world peace. Usually a rogue state meets specific criteria: it is ruled by an authoritarian regime that severely restricts human rights, sponsors terrorism, and seeks or utilizes weapons of mass destruction...and [deploys] the suspension of law in a state of emergency—branded "the war on terror." - received email, no URL

() "The challenge is to not become cynical; for the artist, cynicism is death." - Robert Fripp, recent diary entry

() "The stock market and the International Banking System are all a kind of Ponzi scheme..."

() "We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them... Objects survive us and go on living. It's stupid to believe we own them... and for them to be so important." - Donna Leon, "Quietly in Their Sleep," p.74 (US paperback)

() "The important trail to follow was the one left by money." [Where did Bernard Madoff's $50 Billion end up?] "The place where it began was usually a given: the person from whom the money was taken, either by force or by craft. The other end, where the trail finished, was the difficult one to find, just as it as the more vital one, for it was there that would be found the person who had practiced the craft or the force. CUI BONO?" [Who gains?] ... "find the end of the trail." ibid, p.30

() "If you put people on a diet, they start thinking about food. Or if you make someone stop smoking, all they think about is cigarettes..." ibid, pp.184-185

() "The Voyage of the Beagle ... It's an important book, probably one of the most important books of the modern world. That and The Origin of Species." ... It would be a lovely book to read on vacation, I think. All those beaches. All those lovely animals." ibid, pp.105-106

() "In the future Internet landscape, free writers and musicians will replace paid writers and musicians. Quantity will replace Quality." - Andre Peret

   9. FEEDBACK FROM READERS:

() "I used to work with Timothy Leary in the 80's and early 90's and I was googling something and stumbled on the RE/Search site. Of course, I’ve known your publications for many years but didn't know you had released LEARY ON DRUGS! [So I ordered it.] I miss Timothy terribly...I would love to hear Tim’s wisdom and wit at a time like now. Hope you are well. Best - Andrew in Europe"

() "Dear V. - Thank you for your William S. Burroughs birthday party Feb 5 at Beat Museum, it was nice and quiet evening with good energy, thank you for Charles Gatewood and thank you for photos and stories...
    "I know you did not have time to read some material by W.S.B. you prepared (you had those piles of papers; I wondered what healthy virus was there). Here is the question: maybe you could put some of those materials on the web?!! I would be delighted to read it. Thank you for your spirit and things you've done and still doing.
    "I am a little guy from Poland who lives in Oakland and learns English (and American culture) from guys like you and my favorite American writer: William B. Burroughs. - dziekuje (thank you... in Polish)"

() from Kimric Smythe: " I am ashamed that I was not aware of this till now.
"Bob May, 69, died in Lancaster, CA on January 18th from congestive heart failure. The actor performed on many TV shows but is best known for performing The Robot on Lost in Space. Though May didn’t perform the voice (Dick Tufeld did that), he took the role very seriously and made a point of learning all of the other actors’ lines so that he’d be ready to respond. May and his wife lost their home in November when wildfires destroyed an upscale mobile home park in the San Fernando Valley."

() "The Genius Of The Crowd - Charles Bukowski

"there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

"and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

"those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

"beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

"but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to ki-ll you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

"like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

"their finest art" - sent by Graham Rae

() "SNOW PIECE by YOKO ONO:
"Think that snow is falling.
Think that snow is falling everywhere all the time.
When you talk with a person, think
that snow is falling between you and
on the person.
Stop conversing when you think the
person is covered by snow.
-- Yoko Ono, summer 1963"

() from Graham Rae: "Ben & Jerry created a "Yes Pecan!" ice cream flavor for Obama. They then asked people to come up with a name for a George W. Bush ice cream flavor. Here are some of their favorite responses...
    •    Grape Depression
    •    Abu Grape
    •    Cluster Fudge
    •    Nut'n Accomplished
    •    Iraqi Road
    •    Chock 'n Awe
    •    Wire Tapioca
    •    Impeach Cobbler
    •    Guantanamallow
    •    imPeachmint
    •    Good Riddance You Lousy M-therfucker Swirl
    •    Heck of a Job Brownie
    •    Neocon Politan
    •    RockyRoad to Fascism
    •    The Reese's-cession
    •    Cookie D'oh!
        Nougalar Proliferation
    •    Chunky Monkey in Chief
    •    George Bush Doesn't Care About Dark Chocolate
    •    WMDelicious
    •    Chocolate Chimp
    •    Caramel Preemptive Stripe"

() from Graham Rae again: "CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYBODY WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's 1940's, 50's, 60's and early 70's !

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.
They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Bubble Gum and some firecrackers to blow up frogs with.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old buggies and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.
We did not have Play stations, Nintendo Wii, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY, no video/dvd films, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.
Only girls had pierced ears!
We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...
We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL !
I can see you all nodding your heads and saying, "Yes, that's right!"
And YOU are one of them!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
MARCH 2009 RE/Search eNewsletter written by V. Vale, Ilana Fried & other contributors. Newsletter and website powered by http://www.laughingsquid.com.
DISCLAIMER : If you're receiving V. VALE's newsletter, it's because you **or someone you know** has sent your address to us, or signed our mailing list at an event!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
http://www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com
--

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Thursday, February 12, 2009

V. Vale RE/Search Newsletter Feb 2009

V. Vale RE/Search Newsletter Feb 2009

++ "NEWEST RELEASES: LEARY ON DRUGS, and PRONOVATION - NOT IN MOST STORES - ORDER DIRECT & RECEIVE FREE GIFT(S) ++

WELCOME TO V. VALE's RE/SEARCH NEWSLETTER #80, February 2009
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com

**IF YOU LIVE IN San Francisco BAY AREA, PLEASE **REPLY** TO THIS NEWSLETTER IF YOU WISH TO RECEIVE LAST-MINUTE LOCAL NEWS OF RE/SEARCH-recommended EVENTS! In subject line please write "local subscribe"

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
___________________________________________
1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR Re: HYPNODROME BENEFIT Feb 12,13,14 - V. Vale does Live interviews; Hypnodrome offers fabulous plays, skits, and surprises. Jill Tracy, Winston Smith, Jello Biafra and Steve MacKay (Stooges) are featured live, onstage interview subjects.
2. Counter Culture Hour with guest: V. VALE talks about "Art," Sat Feb 14, 2009, 6:30PM (www.accessf.org - channel 1) - download it!
3. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent..
4. FORTHCOMING EVENTS
5. Stephane von Stephane on the film "MILK"
6. John Sulak on The Edwardian Ball, S.F.
7. Recommended Links
8. Quotes
9. Feedback from Readers
--------------
please add info@researchpubs.com to your ADDRESS BOOK. If you change your email, send it plus your "old" email address to delete. Lastly, forward our newsletter to your friends! If you are on aol, please make sure you can receive our newsletter - we get the most returns from addresses at AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+BRAND NEW, JUST IN: Noir Satanist JIMMY VARGAS's new CD: BLACK HALO 5 & 6, 2005-2008 $16 plus $5 shipping (15 copies)
+ RE/Search LOGO T-shirt $25. S,M,L,XL. Red logo on 100% cotton Black T-Shirt. Only 100 made.
+ INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC VOL ONE - has "the best" LUX INTERIOR/IVY interview! Last copies $25 plus $5 shipping.
+ IN STOCK: LEARY ON DRUGS- newest book $20 plus $5 shipping - www.researchpubs.com
+INDUSTRIAL CULTURE HANDBOOK HARDBACK deluxe paper $40 plus $5 shipping
+PRANKS 2 deluxe paper $25 plus $4 ship - AUTOGRAPHED BY YES MEN! (ask for it) - newsletter special
+SEARCH & DESTROY- 8 original issues (1977-79) only $40 plus $10 shipping (includes one 1987 reprint)
+IN STOCK/Now Shipping: PRONOVATION: P0RNOGRAPHY & TECHNOLOGY, some color photos ("A must!" - Charles Gatewood) $25 plus $5 ship (ed.1000)
+BURNING MAN LIVE book is stuck at the printer, sadly requiring some complicated future negotiations before it's "liberated." But many thanks to all who pre-ordered and don't despair, you will get your book!

   1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR.

    Someone asked us what our newsletter was "for"! Yes, it is to communicate RE/Search ideas and philosophy, but also to promote selected events, media, websites, and a countercultural attitude in general. We hope readers will investigate our books, especially the ones they haven't seen, but perhaps the day of "book-lovers" is long gone. As a salutation, we hereby express gratitude to all who have supported us over the past 32 years, and who recognize that we are not like 99% of other publishers ... (or people, for that matter).

   Your editor, V. Vale, will be doing live onstage interviews to support the Hypnodrome's 3-night benefit Thur-Fri-Sat Feb 12,13,14. Thur: live interview with JILL TRACY. Fri: live interview with WINSTON SMITH. Fri: live interview with JELLO BIAFRA, plus special guest STEVE MACKAY talking about RON ASHETON, STOOGES guitarist, R.I.P. Hypnodrome will showcase special skits, plays, and routines just for this celebration. V. Vale will also play piano from 7-7:30pm each night. Also, the events will be videotaped for The CounterCulture Hour -- you may be on TV! The Hypnodrome only holds 49 seats, so each event is extra special. Remember, this is a BENEFIT for our favorite San Francisco Theater Group. If you've never experienced Grand Guignol live theater (replete with blood, gore, black humor, and eroticism), you will definitely find out why this is like RE/Search Onstage! For tickets go to: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/55084
Hypnodrome, 575 10th St/Brannan St, S.F. tel 415.377.4202. In our opinion, all nights will be highly rewarding to the cognoscenti.

   2. Counter Culture Hour - V. Vale talks about "Art" with SFAI student Lola Bee. NOW ON-LINE AND on cable access San Francisco 6:30pm Pacific Time, Sat Feb 14, 2009 on-line (www.accessf.org - channel 1) as well as cable Channel 29, San Francisco.
     Would you like to have a Counter Culture Hour showing in your town? Please write and ask us how you can do this!

   3. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent

() Emmanuel Todd's "AFTER THE EMPIRE" is required reading for wannabe-futurologists.

() Penelope Rosemont's DREAMS AND EVERYDAY LIFE. In a word, wonderful. (As if a "Surrealist" could HAVE an "everyday" life...) I love this book; it offers a strange comfort, a la "friends are a parallel existence." Our thanks to Tamara Smith for our copy .

() 9th Annual San Francisco Film Noir Festival at the Castro Theater, Jan 24: We had an unparalleled evening featuring Arlene Dahl in person, star of "Wicked As They Come." Our hats off to Eddie Muller and associates. Couldn't have been better. Loved the newsboys outside hawking papers!

() Track 16 Gallery Exhibition by the Institute for Figuring (I.F.F.) in Santa Monica, CA. We urge you to experience the I.F.F. show of crocheted coral environments (through Feb 28) -- everybody likes this installation, and you will, too. We were "wowed" by the precise eloquence of one of the twin sisters responsible, Margaret Wertheim, who happened to be there on Saturday Jan 31. After this visit, we met Dave Fifer who is launchingVacation Vinyl Record Store, half a block from WACKO in L.A. More news on this later!

() Celebration of Timothy Leary film by Rene Daalder at 111 Minna St, 2-8-09. A rare reunion of 60s psychedelia pioneers.

() William S. Burroughs 95th Birthday at Beat Museum, Feb 5, featuring yours truly and Charles Gatewood, with personal stories about WSB, illlustrated by seldom-seen slides.

() Winston Smith Opening at 50 Bannam Alley, Jan 27. Great gallerists; saw work we'd never seen before.

() Feb 9: Meri St-Mary played us her new EP called "I'm Back." It will be distributed by Subterranean Records.

() Jan 20, Obama Inaugration Day: Mal Sharpe and his band played the Savoy Tivoli. Euphoric.

() Jan 14, saw amazing photographs from Tasmania (now we want to go there), curated by Mikkel Aaland, at S.F. Art Institute.

() Received 2 VOLCANO SUNS CDs (nice artwork) from www.mergerecords.com - we will play them, because we like the descriptive text.

() Started reading "A Field Guide to Hyperbolic Space" by Margaret Wertheim, available from www.theiff.org - we like new ideas!

   4. OTHER FORTHCOMING EVENTS:

() Again: Th-Fri-Sat Feb 12,13,14: HYPNODROME benefit featuring Grand Guignol entertainments. Each night features a different live interview by V. Vale: Jill Tracy (Thur), Winston Smith (Fri), and Jello Biafra with Steve MacKay from the Stooges paying a tribute to Ron Asheton, R.I.P. (Sat). Tickets at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/55084 Remember, only 49 seats per night! Very intimate.

() FREE: Matt Gonzalez Art Show in Berkeley: Westside Cafe, Parker/9th St, up now through March 27. Mon-Fri 7am-3pm; Sat Sun 8am-2pm.

() FREE: Wed, Feb 11, 7:30pm, Counterpulse, 1310 Mission/9th St. Rick Prelinger presents Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, Year 3, plus some new material. This will be a 90-minute screening of archival film clips showing vanished SF neighborhoods and public life of the past. Come early (by 6:45 or so) to get a seat. http://www.counterpulse.org/fall-winter-talks.shtml

() FREE: Sat Feb 14 2PM, Amoeba, 1855 Haight St S.F.: MASTER MUSICIANS OF JAJOUKA! -- inspiration for Brion Gysin, etc. (Feb 11-12, they're at Yoshi's for $$).

() $$ Feb 13-16, Ancient Ways 15th Annual PantheaCon at the Double Tree Hotel in San Jose. http://pantheacon.com/09/index.php

() FREE: Feb 15, 11pm, 50 Bannam Alley, Closing Reception for Noah Ptolemy. Five Points Arthouse.

() FREE: Feb 17, 7pm, UC Berkeley Art Museum, 2621 Durant, Berkeley CA. Bring and donate your Analog TV! Funeral for Analog TV, withspeech by Paul Saffo, video projection of Bruce Sterling delivering Eulogy. http://bcnm.berkeley.edu/tvfuneral

() FREE: Feb 19, 7pm Thursday, Feb 19, BABYLON FALLING, 1017 Bush/Jones, SF 94109, tel 345-1017. Hours: Tu-Sat 12-9pm. - An Exhibit of Radical Underground Newspapers from the Sixties & Seventies in the U.S. Radical underground newspapers exhibit. Billy X Jennings, who has graciously opened up his archive for Babylon Falling, will be leading a brief discussion on the history of the radical underground press in America. Emory Douglas, the former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, will also give a short talk on the role that art played in these papers. Check their website for EVENT TIME: http://www.babylonfalling.com/Events.html

() FREE: Thur Feb 26, 7:30pm: RE/Search screens The CounterCulture Hour featuring JIHAD JERRY. New Nothing, 26 Sherman St, S.F.

() FREE: Sat Feb 28, 7:30pm, Makeout Room: John Shirley, Johnny Strike, Charles Gatewood read excerpts from their books!

() FREE: March 5, 7pm, City Lights Bookstore: John Law book signing for "The Space Between," a collection of hair-raising stories in the H.P. Lovecraft tradition, published by Julia Solis.

() FREE: March 5, 6pm, SFPublic Library, Main Branch, "Evolution of San Francisco" lectures by Rand Richards, Chris Carlsson, Peter Booth Wiley. Followed by book signing and sale.

() FREE: March 14,15: Anarchist Book Fair, 9th Ave/Lincoln Way, S.F. RE/Search will be there with Charles Gatewood. Possibly the best!

() $$$: March 27-29: writing weekend workshop with Beat Legend/EtAl DIANE DI PRIMA FOR WOMEN ONLY in a beautiful heated cabin near Sebastopol. TUITION $350 (includes accommodations) $100 deposit required in advance. INFO: GERI DIGIORNO (707) 763-4271

() "Throbbing Gristle (all 4 original members)will perform April 23 at the Regency Center Ballroom, Sutter/Van Ness, in San Francisco.Tickets go on sale at www.ticketmaster.com on Sunday February 15 at 10:00 am.Price is $28.50 before service charge. My bet is tickets WILL sell out for this one..." (Ferrara Pan)

   5. Stephane von Stephane reviews "MILK."
   Film review: MILK. San Francisco, 1970s. Sean Penn: "My name is Harvey Milk, and I'm here to recruit you!!" Wild cheering from the large crowds of gay folks. This was one of the scenes the commercials for the film MILK used. I cringed when I saw it because of the ridiculous claims by the religious right that part of the so-called 'Gay Agenda' is to recruit youngsters to the 'gay lifestyle'. That word 'recruit' is controversial because of this. The other advertisement used a more intimate scene of Milk talking about how you have to give people 'hope'. I wondered: why not use this scene solely in the ads, as it tied in nicely with the identical and popular mesmerizing message of Barack Obama. Of course the type of recruitment Milk was talking about was to political activism, not 'gay lifestyle'. Hard to believe that political activism was a "new" idea at that time. We are now so used to the Act Up folks chants of "We're here, we're queer, get used to it" from the late 80's, early 90's. But back then, activism was the last thing on most gay people's minds. I probably don't need to mention what the first thing on our minds was...this was before AIDS put a damper on the freedom of unbridled physical ..oh, the good old days!)
   In retrospect it seems that Harvey Milk almost singlehandedly invented the Castro as a gay mecca and epicenter of a political movement. He had transplanted himself from the East coast, after being closeted and stifled for most of his life, for the promise of openness and acceptance in San Francisco. But, after being discriminated against by other business owners when be opened his camera shop on Castro Street, he realized that San Francisco as a whole was not so accepting. He organized the neighbors to boycott non-gay-friendly businesses. That seemed to work, and soon those businesses thought the gay dollar was just as 'legally tender' as the straight dollar. Then he moved on to a boycott of Coors beer in the gay bars and gained the trust of the Teamsters Union. Then he decided to run for supervisor and really get things done. He failed every year until redistricting specified that candidates must live in the district they represented. And his district was mostly gay-friendly. He also hired a lesbian campaign manager.
   Then, he got elected.
   I lived in Harvey's district back then, in '77, '78. I remember seeing him around the neighborhood. I remember my rolls of vacation film developed at his shop, and coming back with photos of naked men in provocative poses accidentally stuck in the envelopes. There is a scene in the film where a bunch of Harvey's friends are sitting around the shop casually browsing through (probably) customers' photos of naked guys. I had to laugh then as I recalled for the first time in years, those extra special vacation photos.
I voted for him as supervisor for my district. And when you vote, you get invited to be on jury duty. I was in City Hall, with a bunch of other potential jurors, waiting to be assigned to a court case the day that Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone were murdered by the conservative Irish Catholic ex-supervisor Dan White. I am pretty sure it was Dan White who bumped into me in the hallway as I exited the restroom, having just 'powdered' my nose, bored from waiting around all morning to get put on a jury. Back in the holding room, shortly after my trip to the loo, the doors were being locked, and we were told to watch the TV screen in the corner of the room. Dianne Feinstein's face came on the screen and she was explaining that the mayor and supervisor Milk had been shot and killed. People were shocked and everyone kind of gasped and murmured.
   I was reading a book (which I can't locate now) and I remember writing on the inside back cover the details of the day while we were held captive in the jury holding room. I guess they were sorting out the situation before they could let us go. After about an hour, they unlocked the doors. I walked down the steps of city hall into a mass of press people and was approached to be interviewed, but I cut out of there fast. I had to get to the U.C. Berkeley Campus Sproul Plaza to see the Talking Heads do a free show. The song 'Psycho Killer' seemed very appropriate. I wanted bass player Tina Weymouth's autograph, and I had used my jury duty stub as a bookmark. I got that out and had her sign it (I still have it.) She examined it carefully to see just what she was signing. I told the band that I had just come from S.F. where the murders had occurred. They were stunned too. It just seemed unreal.
   At that time I was as young as the character in the film played by Emile Hirsch (the fine actor in the Sean Penn-directed film 'Into the Wild') and I was about as resistant to the idea of anything political as he was. In fact, when I called my girlfriend to tell her I was spending the night in Berkeley, she encouraged me to come to the candlelight march that was about to start. I didn't. I also did not participate in the riots the night Dan White got such a light sentence for the murders, due to his supposed sugar-overloaded unbalanced mind. It was called the 'Twinkie' defense, for his junk-food diet. What a joke. What a slap in the face of the people Harvey Milk represented. I am very much an activist now after a lifetime of seeing how gay people are STILL being treated as second-class citizens. The fact that Proposition 8 was passed, a voter-sanctioned discrimination of gay people in the year 2008, is astonishing. This film MILK may not deserve Best Picture (though I cannot think of a better film from this year), but it serves as an important lesson in the power of grass-roots politics, pre-Obama viral videos and YouTube.
   Sean Penn does deserve Best Actor for his role as Harvey Milk. I hope he gets it. It might give us gays some hope. ~ Stephane von Stephane

   6. John Sulak on the Edwardian Ball. The Edwardian Ball Weekend, Jan. 23, 24 and 25, at the Regency Center Ballroom, San Francisco.
   The Edwardian Ball, which happens every year in San Francisco, is something that might be of interest not just to locals but to national and international RE/Search readers. It started nine years ago as a one-night performance in a small, dark Folsom Street bar, and has grown into a major social and theatrical event. The first one featured the band Rosin Coven playing, while actors and dancers performed a story from one of writer/artist Edward Gorey’s books. Every year since then the performances of the stories have gotten bigger and more elaborate, and so have the audiences. Somewhere along the way the "historical re-creation crowd" discovered the Balls and started showing up in real Edwardian clothing. Now almost everyone who attends dresses up in some way or another.
   And it is surprisingly wonderful to be in a large crowd of people dressed in period costumes. Especially when they’re not all from the same period - some were from fantasies and alternative histories, some were characters from books (including Gorey’s and the science-fiction steampunk universe) and some seemed to having wandered in from Burning Man. The audience was as much a part of the show as what was happening on stage – kind of like it used to be in the early days of punk. The overall affect was of being in some other world. They were even serving absinthe! I don’t drink alcohol, but it was fun to watch the whole ritual that makes the absinthe turn green. And I got to meet the Green Faerie – she was mingling in the crowd and fit right in. It was that kind of weekend.
   The Ball has been expanded to three nights, but the main event is Saturday, when Rosin Coven still plays and the Vau De Vire Society performs. This year there were three Gorey stories acted out. The first one featured the character of Edward Gorey himself, meeting (and killing) his imaginary ballet dancer muses. The second, “The Disrespectful Summons,” which had previously been staged at the 5th Edwardian Ball, was given a new interpretation by some guest artists. The third story, “The Tuning Fork,” took everything to a new level. This was the first year the Ball took place in an actual ballroom with a big stage. The Vau de Vire society are, among other things, talented circus acrobats, and they finally had room to show off what they can really do. They took Gorey’s 168-word story and brought it to life. I classify the experience as “theater,” but that’s kind of like calling the May 29, 1913 premiere of “Le Sacre du Printemps” at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées “a night at the ballet”; there was much more going on. The combination of acting, dance, music, costumes, computer technology, and the particular time and place, was radical, beautiful and unforgettable.
   The Edwardian Ball was started, I'm guessing, as someone’s idea of a good excuse to throw a party. It still is that, but it has evolved into something much bigger and with that there are growing pains. On the last night, Sunday, the Weekend died a slow and painful death. The activities moved upstairs to a smaller ballroom in the same building. There wasn’t much room to move around, so everyone (and they were still all dressed up) ended up sitting on the floor in the dark to watch a weird bunch of nightclub acts. And yikes, some of the performers were just awful, and there was no way to escape!
   And there wasn’t much ballroom dancing at the Edwardian Ball. That’s what a Ball is for, isn’t it? The producers of the Weekend, who are also performers there, did make the effort to encourage it. And there were a whole gang of people from the Victorian ballroom dancing scene ready to go. But it didn’t really happen. I think it was because there was just too much other entertainment going on, and too many people in a state of sensory overload. It was a weekend of extremes, and even if it didn’t all work, it was still pretty amazing. At the end of Sunday’s show I was worn out, but already looking forward to the 10th Edwardian Ball next year.
   Till then, here are some other Balls that happen year round, with real 19th century ballroom dancing (and dance lessons!):
http://peers.org/
http://Gaskellball.com/
Youtube is already filthy with videos from the Edwardian Ball, but I’d recommend this one before any of the others. It’s an animated version of the original story of “The Tuning Fork” that’s short and sweet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t5a829z-4w
And here’s the official site, with lots of info and links: http://www.edwardianball.com/ [end]

   7. RECOMMENDED LINKS - thanks to our friends Phil G, Ferrara, James McN-, Derek B. & Others who send us links.

() http://www.endgame.org.uk/2009/02/10/well-never-be-happy-consumers-again-no-stimulus-package-can-bring-that-back/

() From Mark Bode: www.myspace.com/zarabode

() From Jean Jacques Perrey and Dana Countryman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4FEet-mRXc
   - beware, high res: http://www.funkylittlespacegirl.com

() Remember these days?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ

() http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/01/18/the-beauty-of-urban-decay/

() robot videos: ..

() From Mako Sano: Burroughs/Sontag: www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/sontag1.html
   - Bohemian S.F.: www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/
   - Historic S.F.: www.noehill.com/sf/landmarks/default.aspx.
   - www.sffollies.com/follieshitlist.html
   - http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-pul1.htm

() Don't be fooled: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/02/bad-bank-assets-proposal-worse-than-you.html

() from Michel Pennec, Lausanne, Switz (home of ART BRUT MUSEUM!):
   - http://www.moju-video.com
   - http://www.youtube.com/mojuvideo
   - http://tochnit-aleph.com/dp/discog/deadpeni-2.html
   - http://www.blossomingnoise.com/?q=node/468

() from Binky: Just put your mouse on a city anywhere in the world and the day's
newspaper headlines pop up... Double click and it shows the whole front page. About 580 newspapers from over 80 countries. Copy and paste to your browser: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/
also check out the "free magenta" web site: http://www.freemagenta.nl/

() from Karen Marcelo: "Can't help thinking this is why cockroaches will survive humans someday": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT4XO3Hjp7M
   - http://flickr.com/photos/k0re/125406120/in/set-72157594143816699/
   - http://pro.sony-asia.com/product/spec/brochure/hxr_mc1n.pdf

() from Chris Farris: 3-D movie trailers etc online:
- http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/06/review.coraline/index.html
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMlx33ov82c
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM0SWbO_VxE
-    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpoyd8VJC4o
   - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrBoni3LGo8
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7MUrcCivZI
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTTJi4GlzFk
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMlx33ov82c

() From Graham Rae: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMlx33ov82c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFuv7B-4lY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnP_m7-WnP8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7SuJAgH7gI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx_naataHQc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o46a_2hlN6Q&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCtauj1d748&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLUCFXcK0Oc

() From Chicken John: Stop Gentrification of Valencia St:
http://stopamericanapparel.wordpress.com/
http://therumpus.net/2009/01/kron-covers-the-stop-american-apparel-campaign/

() From Amybean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTxW3GWZ5hI

() From Mary G: Did you attend the Deaf Club? If so, see this link: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=58990393573

() From John Trubee: http://www.piratecatradio.com/podcast.php

() From James M: "Watchphone": http://www.google.com/search?q=W08+watchphone&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

() From Steven G: "Darwin Awards: proof of devolution." http://www.darwinawards.com

() From Bruno R: http://flickr.com/photos/k0re/125406120/in/set-72157594143816699/
http://www.hoaxbuster.com/hoaxliste/hoax.php?idArticle=55579
http://niakissa.fr/eric/2008/12/08/pour-une-fois-deux-trucs-intelligents-a-faire-suivre-hoax/
désolé

() from Count Dante: blogs on the death of Bob Wilkins and Ray Dennis Steckler:
http://beerbloodandcornmeal.com/blog/index.php?blog=2&title=title_3&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1http://beerbloodandcornmeal.com/blog/index.php?blog=2&title=montalban_is_gone_and_some_words_about_t&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

() from Improv Everywhere: No Pants Videos: http://improveverywhere.com/2009/01/14/no-pants-2k9/

() Ominous Detroit video: http://vimeo.com/2371774
() Peak Oil website: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/breakingnews.html
() From Phil G: Whole Earth! http://www.wholeearth.com/issue-electronic-edition.php?iss=2056

   8. QUOTES:

() "You really get to know someone when you work with them." - William S. Burroughs

() "You have to be charismatic to be truly evil." - Ilana Fried

() "Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." - Hector Berlioz

() "If pleasure is the devil, then I live in hell." - Charles Gatewood

() "Nobody makes a greater mistake, wrote Edmund Burke, than s(he) who did nothing because s(he) could only do a little." - sent by Robert Delford Brown

() "People have to be told what it is they're seeing." - unknown

() "In this country you're guilty until proven wealthy." - Bill Maher

() "There will never be a nuclear war; there's too much real estate involved." - Frank Zappa

() "ALWAYS and NEVER are two words you should always remember never to use." Wendell Johnson

() "All of them had been illiterate for generations, and the only words they could read were the brand names..." - J.G. Ballard, "Hello America," p.64

() "So this is New York - or was. Greatest city of the twentieth century; here you heard the heart-beat of international finance, industry and entertainment. Now it's as remote from the real world as Pompeii or Persepolis." - J.G. Ballard, ibid, p. 28

() "Blog, blog, blog ... and then you die." - V. Vale

   9. FEEDBACK FROM READERS:

() From ROBERT DELFORD BROWN, featured in our PRANKS book: "HELLO V. VALE,
WE ARE SEEING THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TRADEMARKS AND COPYRIGHTS. THE CHANGES THAT ARE TAKING PLACE TODAY ARE UNDER NO ONES CONTROL. THEY ARE TRANSFORMATIONAL.
POLITICIANS AND BUSINESS MEN HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THE CHANGES THAT ARE TAKING PLACE. THE ARE GOING TO CONTINUE TO TAKE PLACE INEXORABLY.
A NEW CIVILIZATION IS BEING BORN. RAPE AND PLUNDER AND DIVIDE AND CONQUER HAVE RUN THEIR COURSE. ALTRUISM WILL TAKE THEIR PLACE.
THE FUTURE IS SMALL AND FRIENDLY. THE PRESENT IS GROTESQUE. IT IS TERRIFYING. IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY."

"WOW WOW WOW WOW!
I AM LOOKING FORWARD THE SACRED SOUND PARADE BY THE FUNKUPAGAN KAKAPHONIC KAZOO ORCHESTRA.
WOW WOW WOW WOW!
WE ARE WHERE IT'S AT SAINT 43!
6 BILLION ARTISTS/SCIENTISTS ARE SEEN IN TODAY'S SCHEME OF THINGS AS NOTHING MORE THAN 6 BILLION SUCKERS WAITING TO BE FLEECED.
IT IS AN UGLY WORLD, BECAUSE IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE UGLY.
THERE IS NO ROOM FOR ALTRUISM. NO ROOM FOR COMPASSION. NO ROOM FOR MORALITY. PEOPLE ARE SICK AND TIRE-D OF NIHILISM AND HYPOCRISY.
BUT THE NEW WORLD IS BEING BORN AT THIS MOMENT." [end]

() From Greg Leyh: "Numbers don't lie.
Amount of CO2 produced per year by the average human being, in kilograms: 250
Amount of CO2 produced by firing a 9mm round with a 5 grain powder charge, in grams: 0.18
Amount of CO2 produced by the complete decay of the average human body, in kilograms: 59"

() FROM MAL SHARPE (featured in our PRANKS books): "Blood Clots/Stroke - They Now Have a Fourth Indicator, the Tongue!"

[ STROKE: Remember the 1st Three Letters....S.T.R. ]

My nurse friend sent this and encouraged me to post it and spread the word. I agree. If everyone can remember something this simple, we could save some folks. Please read:

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:

During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) . She said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. [However...] she had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps she would be with us today. Some don't die; they end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNIZING A STROKE

Remember the '3' steps, STR . Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

S *Ask the individual to SMILE.

T *Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (i.e., "It is sunny out toda.y")

R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call emergency number immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

New Sign of a Stroke -------- Stick out Your Ton-gue

NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out his ton-gue.. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other,that is also an indication of a stroke.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved. [end]

() Leave an 80th Birthday (Jan 20, 2009) Greeting for Jean Jacques Perrey:
http://www.danacountryman.com/jjp1/guestbook/guest.html

() "Search & Destroy: Rebel Youth Culture," No.10, 1978. The JGB interview appears on pages 20 to 21. Vale at Re/Search still has that issue of Search & Destroy for sale ($7)...[In it, Ballard extolls the movie "Vanishing Point."]

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FEB 2009 RE/Search eNewsletter written by V. Vale & contributors. Newsletter and website powered by http://www.laughingsquid.com.
DISCLAIMER : If you're receiving V. VALE's newsletter, it's because you **or someone you know** has sent your address to us, or signed our mailing list at an event!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
http://www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com
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Friday, January 30, 2009

THUR FEB 5, 2009, 7PM @ BEAT MUSEUM, 540 Broadway, SF: W.S. BURROUGHS 95th Birthday Party!

Fri Jan 30, 2009 PRESS RELEASE - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THUR FEB 5, 2009, 7PM @ BEAT MUSEUM, 540 Broadway, San Francisco:

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS 95th BIRTHDAY PARTY!

w/Charles Gatewood ("Beat Photographer") & V. Vale (RE/Search Publications founder) in person

        Join us on Feb 5th as the Beat Museum hosts Charles Gatewood and V. Vale (RE/ Search Publications founder) in a gala tribute to Beat legend William S. Burroughs. Acclaimed photographer Charles Gatewood will show classic Burroughs photos he took for Rolling Stone (1972) and Crawdaddy (1975). Charles will also read selections of Burroughs text from his 1975 photo book "Sidetripping," and share William Burroughs stories from his forthcoming memoir, "Dirty Old Man." Audience Q&A. Event will be videotaped for a future "Counter Culture Hour" episode -- you can be on TV!
        V. Vale will share photos and anecdotes from time spent with William S. Burroughs. His rare "Search & Destroy#10" (1978) featuring W.S. Burroughs on the cover will be available for $5!
    Rare William Burroughs books, prints, and collectibles will be available starting at $5 and up, & can be autographed by Gatewood/Vale. Happy Birthday, Bill!

Beat Museum, 540 Broadway/Columbus, San Francisco CA 94133, 1-800-537-6822

Charles Gatewood Contact info: charles@charlesgatewood.com / website: http://www.charlesgatewood.com
newsgroup/mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flashvideo - Flash Productions, Box 410052, San Francisco, CA 94141, (415) 267-7651
V. Vale/RE/Search Contact info: info@researchpubs.com / website: http://www.researchpubs.com/Blog/?page_id=13&category=22 - RE/Search Publications, 20 Romolo Place #B, San Francisco, CA 94133, (415) 362-1465

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Friday, January 09, 2009

V. Vale’s RE/Search newsletter January oh-nine

V. Vale's RE/Search newsletter January oh-nine

++ "PLEASE SUPPORT US / ORDER RE/SEARCH BOOKS and T-SHIRTS! / BUY GIFTS!!" ++

WELCOME TO V. VALE's [Abbreviated] RE/SEARCH NEWSLETTER 79, January 2009
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com

**IF YOU LIVE IN San Francisco BAY AREA, PLEASE **REPLY** TO THIS NEWSLETTER IF YOU WISH TO RECEIVE LAST-MINUTE LOCAL NEWS OF RE/SEARCH-recommended EVENTS! In subject line please write "local subscribe"

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
___________________________________________
1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR - Dirk Dirksen book in-the-making, Ray Dennis Steckler, Bob Wilkins, and Ron Asheton R.I.P., and how about a James Howard Kunstleresque-future survivalism project?
2. Counter Culture Hour with guest: Jihad Jerry, Sat January 10, 2009 (www.accessf.org - channel 1)
3. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent..
4. FORTHCOMING EVENTS
5. Ian Webster on Meri St. Mary, White Trash Debutantes, Toiling Midgets
6. Steven Gray on Blixa Bargeld, Penelope Houston, Meri St. Mary
7. Recommended Links
8. Quotes
9. Feedback from Readers
--------------
please add info@researchpubs.com to your ADDRESS BOOK. If you change your email, send it plus your "old" email address to delete. Lastly, forward our newsletter to your friends! If you are on aol, please make sure you can receive our newsletter - we get the most returns from addresses at AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ RE/Search LOGO T-shirt $25. S,M,L,XL. NEWSLETTER SPECIAL Free shipping - just ask for it.
+PRANKS HARDBACK deluxe paper - only 500 made - NEWSLETTER SPECIAL ONLY $30 plus $5 ship
+R/S 4/5 (Burroughs, Throbbing Gristle, Brion Gysin) HARDBACK deluxe paper only 500 made $40 plus $5 ship
+INDUSTRIAL CULTURE HANDBOOK HARDBACK deluxe paper NEWSLETTER SPECIAL ONLY $30 plus $5
+PRANKS 2 deluxe paper $25 plus $4 ship - AUTOGRAPHED BY YES MEN
+RE/SEARCH button, 1-1/2" SQUARE $1 PLUS $1 shipping
+SEARCH & DESTROY BUTTON, 1-1/2" ROUND, $1 plus $1 shipping
+SEARCH & DESTROY 1 (1st issue) $7 plus $5 shipping
+SEARCH & DESTROY- 8 original issues (1977-79) only $32 plus $5 shipping (includes one 1987 reprint)
+PUNK 77 expanded 3rd edition $20 plus $5 shipping
+LOUDER FASTER SHORTER 1978 Punk Video - only 500 made- DVD $20 plus $5 shipping
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NEW:
+NOW SHIPPING: LEARY ON DRUGS $19.95 plus $5 domestic shipping ($15 overseas). Includes NEW material from the Archives. Newsletter Special $15 plus $5 shipping (plus 8.5% Calif Sales Tax, if applicable)
Years after his death, Leary's writings are still insightful and refreshing -- he writes on freedom and liberty in the guise of writing on drugs (ed.2000)
+BURNING MAN LIVE! - almost! Coming this month! $24.99 - preorder only $20 plus $5 domestic shipping ($15 overseas). Finally At Printer - Will Ship in January
This is a 13-year collection of "P*ss Clear" zine, which was actually produced, printed and distributed right there on the playa during Burning Man! The sarcastic wit of the editor guides you through the sand-filled cacophony of hyperstimulation. Fun, sexy, druggy, and "real."
+IN STOCK/NOW SHIPPING: PRONOVATION: P0RNOGRAPHY & TECHNOLOGY, some color photos ("A must!" - Charles Gatewood) $25 plus $5 ship (ed.1000)

1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR.

Your editor has been "hit" by a 5-week (!!) cold, so this newsletter will also be succinct - another 4-hour (rather than the usual 10-12-hour) project. That said, I'm afraid I'll have to start with some obituary material, of some noteworthy passings.

On Jan 7 2009, RAY DENNIS STECKLER, great filmmaker and creator of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1963), Thrill Killers and many more low-budget DIY "classics," died. We fondly remember visiting Ray at the Claremont Hotel in the Berkeley Hills on his last drive in his minivan to the Bay Area, and hanging out with his wife and children.

Jan 7 2009, Creature Features host Bob Wilkins died! Longterm Bay Area residents will fondly remember his late night TV show featuring memorable "B" movies. Google his name to find out more. Memorial service in Oakland scheduled. - news sent by Thrillville's Will the Thrill Viharo, and John Stanley who inherited Bob Wilkins' Creature Features as host. FYI, John has published some excellent film books.

R.I.P. RON ASHETON, Stooges guitarist, died January 6, 2009. www.iggypop.com What a shock!

NOW, YOU can participate: Do you remember Dirk Dirksen, impresario behind the Mabuhay Gardens, the club which almost single-handedly incubated the early San Francisco punk movement? He died just a couple of years ago. JAMES STARK is working on a book about Dirk, and requests your anecdotes/photos/stories/etc. Contact him: james@jamesstark.com. (Note that James Stark's book PUNK 77 is still available from us - www.researchpubs.com )

Still Alive and Kicking: Don't know about you, but, having been under the spell of James Howard Kunstler and other Peak Oil prophets, we are hunkering down in anticipation of the greatest economic catastrophe ever seen in our lifetime. Would anyone be interested in a RE/SEARCH SURVIVAL GUIDE? That's what we truly want to work on! Send us feedback, just to prove you actually READ this newsletter! Send us your favorite "future survivalism" links!

2. Counter Culture Hour - with guest: Jihad Jerry NOW ON-LINE AND on cable access San Francisco 6:30 PM, Sat January 10, 2009 on-line (www.accessf.org - channel 1) as well as cable Channel 29, San Francisco.
You don't have to be a DEVO fan to appreciate the acerbic wit and dark philosophical vision of DEVO founder Gerald V. Casale. Recommended for all who prize black humor.

A San Francisco event/showing of this episode for January is in the planning stages, so sign up for our "local subscribe" list for the details. Would you like to have a Counter Culture Hour showing in your town? Please write and ask us how you can do this!

3. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent

() ANP Quarterly, Vol 2 2, featured a huge interview with V. Vale. (Vol 2 No 2). http://www.rvcaanpq.com/?p=495 -- we're still basking in its afterglow. We even got an order for an 8-issue set of Search & Destroy...

() Gus Van Sant's MILK. Beautiful black-and-white opening documentary footage. Great opera scene with fantastic music. History we missed, for the most part, even though we lived in San Francisco -- unless you lived in the Castro district, you probably didn't know about the last-minute parades, rallies, et al. Our ex-intern Zach was glimpsed in two scenes, too. A lot of San Francisco actors got work as extras -- the film was good for the local economy, and in turn it is garnering a lot of local support. Photographer Dan Nicoletta is portrayed; he gave us photographs for our MODERN PRIMITIVES classic twenty years ago.

() Last Saturday was our "movie marathon" day. Besides seeing the aforementioned MILK, at home we also watched INFERNO, CARNIVAL OF SOULS, and TERROR AT THE OPERA. Dario Argento is one of our favorite living film directors, and the music in his INFERNO and TERROR AT THE OPERA is first-rate, worth focusing on (since we've already seen the films at least 3 times each). The music was also amazing in CARNIVAL OF SOULS, which had the largest, most complex pipe organ we've ever seen...

() "Ken Hollings' WELCOME TO MARS: Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947-1959. "Draws upon newspaper accounts, advertising campaigns, declassified government archives, old movies and newsreels... Hollings depicts an unsettled time in which the layout of Suburbia reflected atomic bombing strategies, bankers, and movie stars experimented with hallucinogens, brainwashing was just another form of interior decoration, and strange lights in the sky were taken very seriously indeed." A U.K. book From Strange Attractor Press.

() Paul Fussell: Bad, or, The Dumbing of America." Not as essential as CLASS, but still, easily read during an airplane ride.

() All five Eve Diamond mysteries, set in Los Angeles, and written by Denise Hamilton, editor of the L.A. Noir anthology. Focus: crimes in L.A.'s subcultures: Asian, Hispanic, Russian...

() Galatea's Pants, Vol. 22, $5 postpaid from Lauren Eggert-Crowe, 1540 Merrill St, Santa Cruz CA 95062. This "zine" is mostly pure gold - that is, if your gold standard is "rebellion." "Some talking points on the financial crisis" by Kate Griffiths and Isaac Silver is, well, uncompromising. Excellent reading for those few who hate any kind of compromise. Even essays I didn't think interested me, did. It has been a great experience watching this zine evolve and grow over the past decade.

4. OTHER FORTHCOMING EVENTS:

() FRI Jan 9, 8pm-12am, BIG DADDY BENEFIT hosted by KAL SPELLETICH at his fabulous studio. 1043 Marin. At 3rd and Cesar Chavez head toward bay, turn right onto Illinois St, go one block & you're there. Interactive machines and robots from Kal Spelletich and the Seemen, pedal-powered amusement devices from Pauldaplumber, pedal-powered rides from Cyclecide, RAT-TAT-TOE (tic tac toe w/ rats), with performances by The Amazing Jarico Reesce, and SPY & MOSES! There will also be refreshments and tamales as well as some secret surprises!

() Fri Jan 23 at Elbo Roo m, Valencia/17th St. INDYFEST Benefit/Launch Party. Bands include Shotgun Wedding Quintet, Ex-Boyfriends, Pollo del Mar. $10

() SAVAGE REPUBLIC will be touring Europe this spring - check myspace.com/savagerepublic and mobilization.com. A new F-Space CD "Bleeding Rays of Dawn" is available from mobilization.com - sonic samples available at myspace.com/fspace

()Sat Jan 10, 8pm, OMNICIRCUS hosts Moth Nor Rust concert. 550 Natoma (6-7th St), 415-701-0686. $10

() Eddie Muller's NOIR CITY film festival at the Castro Theatre. Highly recommended by Jello Biafra!

() Jan 31, Uptown in Oakland: the Avengers play a rare concert. Nota Bene!

5. Stephane von Stephane is on RE/Treat, so this month, guest writer Ian Webster writes on Lani Lithman, White Trash Debutan tes, Meri St. Mary , etc.
"Saturday, Nov 29, 2008, the glamorous Lani Lithman (the late Snakefinger's daughter) opened the show at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, with her band, Girls With Guns (myspace.com/girlswithgunsrock). Lani's material is both interesting and well-executed. She shouted out a birthday greeting to her mother who was in the audience. Next, Punk Rock veterans The Lewd performed a solid set, including my personal favorite, "mobile Home." They were followed by the White Trash Debutantes, featuring Ginger Coyote, editor of Punk Globe, who appeared as a dirty blond -- a Very dirty blonde. Kathy Peck of The Contractions joined the band onstage for a rousing rendition of "Let's Do the Time Warp." It seems that whenever the Debs perform, they bring a party atmosphere to the room. Finally the band Dr Know provided fuel for the mosh pit.
"Meri St. Mary performed at Salon de Etoile -- she was about to cloister herself in a recording studio, and this was a last chance to see her perform for a while. Her new line-up featured Ronnie Guitar (myspace.com/RonnieSargentKustomGuitars) and Dominique Leslie (formerly Vince of Animal Things). Meri's act might best be described as Folk-Punk. Her lyrics run the gamut from introspective to exuberant. I look forward to hearing the results of her current recording efforts, plus any recordings made with the Housecoat Project that may be released on Subterranean Records in the future. As always, Meri's songs are both intriguing and intriguingly presented.
"Folllowing Meri's act, some videos by Charles Brown (ex-Voice Farm) showcased an array of curious characters portrayed by Mr. Brown. I spoke with Michael Belfer (Sleepers/Tuxedo Moon guitarist) and he said he was working with Craig Gray (ex-Toiling Midgets, Negative Trend) and this new band under the name of Toiling Midgets played last Sunday at Annie's Social Club, one of our favorite San Francisco meeting places... More later!" - Ian

6. Steven Gray on Blixa Bargeld's latest live show at Project Artaud (Nov. 21, 2008): THE EXECUTION OF PRECIOUS MEMORIES
"We were in the front row at the Project Artaud Theater, with Blixa on stage. He was speaking into a microphone, reading from an assortment of memories (whole or one-line fragments) which random people had filled out on a questionnaire and mailed back to him. He then cherry-picked the results and fit them into an ongoing format of choreography and musical composition (the Kunst-Stoff dance company and Nanos Operetta). He has taken this show on the road, from Berlin to Buenos Aires and New Delhi, with the recited memory content differing from town to town. He also sings a little.
"A woman emerges from the shadows and moves around a huge dark stage, while memories are recited amid idiosyncratic sound-effects from an ensemble with violin, cello, accordion, drums, and what appeared to be the use of a bow on the edge of some vibes. The side-lit bodies moving about onstage in unusual/abstract patterns seemed to be in a different dimension from the spoken word performance. Blixa was surprisingly subdued, and I missed a few words and phrases along the way. Two other voices (including Carla Kilhstedt) contributed now and then.
"It was odd to see this at Project Artaud. I used to live there many years ago (in a studio on a corridor called Alchemical Rhetoric) and there were ghosts lurking behind the walls. I also have memories of Einsturzenden Neubautenin the late '80s, a show in an SF club in 1993 (now the Glass Kat), and talking with the band after a show at the Fillmore in 2004. During the '93 show Blixa was trying to get the sound man to crank up his microphone, with mounting fury and frustration. This time he wanted more amplification as well, but only had to raise his hand.
"As for the memories being recited – they ranged from the vague and impressionistic (a lot of "nature" references) to the more explicit (sex and politics). Someone managed to include both Bush and donkey d-icks in the same line. Thanks for the memories." - Steven

MERI ST. MARY AT THE VORTEX ROOM (Nov 6, 2008) - by Steven Gray

I met Meri St. Mary on a radio show and she invited me to see her perform at the Vortex Room, which resembles an undercover speakeasy in the 1920's, except that time has stopped around 1965. Proprietor Dog Swan describes his lair thusly: "Full house party with classic car in front. The Bifurcated Library (TV, electronics, radio, film, photography, architecture and independent design, prison, medical, Russian, comix, beat-jazz-folk, art). The Latent Lounge with a view of the tiny creatures in the Vortex Room below, live performance, video, film and the Art Passe Gallery."

I walked into the Vortex Room which has a huge vortex spinning slowly on a screen, part of the hypnotic process which detaches you from the present as you're lounging with the retro-sexuals who are sipping their martinis and watching Penelope Houston video highlights from her career beginning with the Avengers. Penelope is an old friend of Dog's and a veteran of his TV show, "The Doghouse." Afterward, Meri St. Mary (once married to Flipper vocalist Bruce Loose) took the stage and revved things up with an acoustic set (accompanied by Dominique, the former Vince from Animal Things, on the keyboards). She strums a guitar with fierce determination and sings like a born songwriter. Twenty years ago she was in a band and made a record called WIDE EYE DOO DAT. Her life and her career derailed at some point, but now she is back, playing live and making recordings. What she does sounds better than a lot of other stuff out there, past and present. Courtney Love better retire, if she hasn't already. " [end]

7. RECOMMENDED LINKS - thanks to our friends Phil G, Ferrara, James McN-, Derek B. & Others who send us links.

() La 1ère WEBTV 100% consacré aux Musiques Electroniques ! www.22tv.fr

() from Stephane von Stephane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upT0JlmDQo0

() from Sharon Leong: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blgabe.htm
also, the latest issue of CARBON 14 features an interview on Sharon: http://www.c14.com/c1431.html

() from Hokan: http://www.aksalser.com/game.htm
http://www.raincitystory.com/flash/screenclean.swf

() from Extreme Elvis aka Matt Cornell: http://www.vimeo.com/2621788

() from Fly; her band Zero Content is on the soundtrack: http://www.vimeo.com/2621788

() from Tim Chapman: http://www.flickr.com/photos/2ubh/3110091225/

() from MAL SHARPE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zq7gCJZoA
http://www.maximumfun.org/blog/labels/Coyle%20and%20Sharpe.html

() from Ferrara BP: http://download.yousendit.com/Q01FWGJPd0ExUUJMWEE9PQ

() from Mexico: www.congeladadeuva.com

() from Ron Chornow: http://www.sockandawe.com/

() from Laughing Squid RE the RE/Search "Leary On Drugs" book: http://laughingsquid.com/leary-on-drugs-the-writings-and-lectures-of-timothy-leary/

() from Bruno R: http://lsont2.canalblog.com/
http://delicious.com/lsont2
http://lsont2sortie.free.fr
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=nvlSAJ6Yc8g

() From Mako Sano: www.100abdominalexercises.com/
www.imdb.com/title/tt0125140/
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love,_American_Style

() from Phil G: "r.mutt lives" - http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/the-world-of-art-museum-toilets-revealed

() www.markryden.com

() from Robert Turman (ex-NON): "...did a show the other night in Cleveland, here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=931GatlUjow&feature=channel

() from Rick McGrath: "I predict we will be swept away by a time of hyper-inflation, as the world's economies react to the trillions of freshly-printed dollars and devalue them accordingly - put all ya got into collectables now, kids... we'll be pushing wheelbarrels of dough to buy books in the future."

() from Mike Bonsasll, the COMPLETE (so far) JG BALLARD CONCORDANCE: http://mbonsall.homeserver.com/concordance/

() from Matt Gonzalez: "Ralph Nader's remarks at Peter Camejo's memorial:" http://vimeo.com/2333631

8. QUOTES:

() "Once you realize we are all mad, life starts to make sense." - New Year's card sent by artist Gee Vaucher, CRASS founder.

() "In times of war, first shoes, then food." - El Greco

() "Money is just the poor man's credit card." - Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media

() "The LACK of money is the root of all evil." - Mark Twain

() "The key to failure is trying to please everybody." - Bill Cosby

() "America has always grown by playing out its soils, wasting its oil, and by looking abroad for the people it needed to do its work." - Emmanuel Todd, "After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order," 2002, p.177

() "The European Union does a better job than America at following the biblical commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill.' Capital pun-ishment has been abolished, and the homicide rate is very low, only slightly more than 1 per 100,000 inhabitants. Executions in America are a routine affair and the homicide rate... remains between 6 and 7 per 100,000 inhabitants." - ibid, p.176

() "[America's] dependence on foreign sources of investment capital is greater than ever. America's real war is about economics not terorism. The country is battling to maintain its status as the world's financial center by making a symbolic show o its military might in the heart of Eurasia, thereby hoping to forget and have others ignore America's industrial weakness, its financial needs, and its predatory character...The war aggravated the global economic crisis that has been mismanaged by the world's central power. The American economy itself is increasingly perceived as an unfathomable mystery. One no longer has any clear idea which U.S. companies are totally genuine. One no longer knows how this economy works...Financial institutions in Europe and Asia with heavy investments in the United States will lose a lot of money -- the fall of the stock market being only the first stage in the disappearance of foreign holdings in the United States." - pp xviii-xix, op cit, written in 2002 [!]

9. FEEDBACK FROM READERS:

() STACY'S BOOKSTORE is closing March 2009, unless San Francisco rallies to save it (a la Kepler's Bookstore in Palo Alto). RE/Search got medical textbooks and a human skull from the basement back in the '80s. News sent by Johnny Strike, CRIME founder.

() "I'm enjoying the PrOnnovation book! (available from www.researchpubs.com) ...Here's the link to my fancy virtual tour of pencils, haunted parlours, and opium dens: http://jainabee.com "

() from Johnny Strike: "As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county's Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people... students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that "mimic" those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later. Students are even obtaining vehicles from their friends that are similar or identical to the make and model of the car owned by the targeted victim..."

() from John Blades (bladesj@gmail.com): "Early SPK with an enlightening interview with founding member Graeme Revell. Also Nurse With Wound programming. www.anonradio.net

() "dude - 3 new books at once? way to go!!!!! - david"

() "Hi, Mr. Vale:

"Thirty years ago I shot a film about a punk rock concert held in Toronto called THE LAST POGO. This October I released it on DVD. I got a nice bunch of words in The Big Takeover (which had a nice Part 2 of an Interview with V. Vale). I'd love to send you a comp copy and I would love you to take a look at it; I think you might like it. Of course a review wouldn't hurt, but honestly -- I'd just like you to take 25 minutes out of your life and get a taste of what was happening in Toronto back in the day... At my site http://www.thelastpogo.net you'll find that lately most of the posts are all about me shilling the product. The site is mostly a chronicle of the making of my current project, THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN in which, using my original film as a reference and spine, I'm trying to explore why the punk scene started in Toronto -- and what's happened to everyone since, a retarded hybrid of Michael Apted's Seven Up series and I don't know what. Whatever. Thanks for all the fun over the years.Cheers, Colin Brunton ." Colin, we liked your film and feel anybody interested in 70s Punk Rock needs to order it from your website! - V. Vale

() From James McN: "I saw this great punk duo on Thursday at The Parkside. They gave me a t-shirt and their CD. Here is some of the music from the CD. I particularly like 'the welcome' and 'change it now!' songs, but all of them are quite original and reminiscent of John Doe and Exene Cervenca and the original feeling of X with a dark side." http://www.juanitaandtherabbit.com/music.html

() from Jenny Lens, 70s Punk Photographer in L.A.:
http://jennylens.com/ramones-ebooksample/ramones1976v1-jennylens-ebooksample.pdf
also, Ramones eBook highlighted on boingboing.net!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
JAN 2009 RE/Search eNewsletter written by V. Vale & contributors. Newsletter and website powered by http://www.laughingsquid.com.
DISCLAIMER : If you're receiving V. VALE's newsletter, it's because you **or someone you know** has sent your address to us, or signed our mailing list at an event!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com
--

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Friday, December 19, 2008

V. VALE RE/SEARCH DEC 08 NEWSLETTER

V. Vale's RE/Search newsletter December oh-eight

++ "PLEASE SUPPORT US / BUY XMAS GIFTS / ORDER THE ABOVE NEW RE/SEARCH BOOKS!" ++

WELCOME TO V. VALE's [Abbreviated] RE/SEARCH NEWSLETTER #78, December 2008
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com

**IF YOU LIVE IN San Francisco BAY AREA, PLEASE **REPLY** TO THIS NEWSLETTER IF YOU WISH TO RECEIVE LAST-MINUTE LOCAL NEWS OF RE/SEARCH-recommended EVENTS! In subject line please write "local subscribe"

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
___________________________________________
1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR
2. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent..
3. FORTHCOMING EVENTS
4. Stephane von Stephane- on the latest James Bond movie.
5. Recommended Links
6. Quotes
7. Feedback from Readers
--------------
please add info@researchpubs.com to your ADDRESS BOOK. If you change your email, send it plus your "old" email address to delete. Lastly, forward our newsletter to your friends! If you are on aol, please make sure you can receive our newsletter - we get the most returns from addresses at AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
XMAS SPECIAL: BUY 3 RE/SEARCH BOOKS, GET A 4th one FREE (lowest price) - (**GIFT FOR SOMEONE?**)
We will send any orders made in the next week out same day if before 2PM, or next day if after 2 PM. Priority mail is available for
an extra $2 per order.
+++++++++++++++++++RECENT ARRIVALS!+++++++++++++++++++++

+ RE/Search LOGO T-shirt $25. S,M,L,XL. NEWSLETTER SPECIAL Free shipping - just ask for it.
+PRANKS HARDBACK deluxe paper - only 500 made - NEWSLETTER SPECIAL ONLY $30 plus $5 ship
+R/S #4/5 (Burroughs, Throbbing Gristle, Brion Gysin) HARDBACK deluxe paper only 500 made $40 plus $5 ship
+INDUSTRIAL CULTURE HANDBOOK HARDBACK deluxe paper NEWSLETTER SPECIAL ONLY $30 plus $5
+PRANKS 2 deluxe paper $25 plus $4 ship - AUTOGRAPHED BY YES MEN
+RE/SEARCH button, 1-1/2" SQUARE $1 PLUS $1 shipping
+SEARCH & DESTROY BUTTON, 1-1/2" ROUND, $1 plus $1 shipping
+SEARCH & DESTROY #1 (1st issue) $7 plus $5 shipping
+SEARCH & DESTROY- 8 original issues (1977-79) only $30 plus $5 shipping (includes one 1987 reprint)
+PUNK 77 expanded 3rd edition $20 plus $5 shipping
+LOUDER FASTER SHORTER 1978 Punk Video - only 500 made- DVD $20 plus $5 shipping
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NEW:
+NOW SHIPPING: LEARY ON DRUGS $19.95 plus $5 domestic shipping ($15 overseas). Includes NEW material from the Archives.
     Years after his death, Leary's writings are still insightful and refreshing -- he writes on freedom and liberty in the guise of writing on drugs (ed.2000)
+BURNING MAN LIVE! $24.99 - preorder only $18 plus $5 domestic shipping ($15 overseas). Finally At Printer - Will Ship in January
     This is a 13-year collection of "P*ss Clear" zine, which was actually produced, printed and distributed right there on the playa during Burning Man! The sarcastic wit of the editor guides you through the sand-filled cacophony of hyperstimulation. Fun, sexy, druggy, and "real."
+NOW SHIPPING: PRONOVATION: P0RNOGRAPHY & TECHNOLOGY, some color photos ("A must!" - Charles Gatewood) $25 plus $5 ship (ed.1000)

1. MESSAGE FROM YOUR EDITOR.

Your editor has been "hit" by a 3-week cold, so this newsletter will be succinct.

2. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
() We at RE/SEARCH are grateful for the publicity / interview / article in the below recent print publications:

() SFBAY GUARDIAN "Lifetime Achievement Award" given to V. Vale in November. Interview/article by KIMBERLY CHUN.    http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=7452&catid=85

() ANP Quarterly: Large photo spread/interview with V. Vale by AARON ROSE.   http://www.rvcaanpq.com/?p=495

() BIG TAKEOVER Magazine: Part 2 of interview with V. Vale by JACK RABID. http://www.bigtakeover.com/issue
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

() Sausalito photographer Christopher Felver not only gave us a Timothy Leary photo for the cover of our new book, LEARY ON DRUGS, but also gave us a signed hardback of his 9x12" Last Gasp-published monograph titled BEAT. We didn't know that he has made documentary films on CECIL TAYLOR (one of our favorite jazz pianists, a kind of Surrealist, up there with Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell and Tadd Dameron), JOHN CAGE (met him once at La Mamelle), and LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI. Opening the book, you first see a marked-up facsimile of a letter from JACK KEROUAC -- fascinating for all the "edits" hand-scrawled all over the page(s). Didn't know that Kerouac signed his letters "JEAN-LOUIS" -- well, that's how this particular letter ends. Next is a hand-written facsimile page from the Pentel pen of LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI: "The Beats dropped into the still pond of mid-1950s poetry, and sent shock-waves in all directions, engulfing other poets and artists on the same wave-length all over the country and, eventually, all over the world. Today, the "Beat message" is still spreading its Word of dissident non-violent crazy wisdom and beatittude, in a world that needs it more than ever." LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka) describes Chris Felver as "a dangerous photographer ... a skilled photo-terrorist...His mission is to register the inner sanctum of the clandestine, the rarely-visited domiciles of the sensationally glimpsed...we want to understand ourselves or other selves and looking at them helps us do that." Order BEAT from lastgasp.com

() Hypnodrome/Thrill Peddlers is offering a "Shakespeare: Mad Love" course for 9-15year-olds beginning Sat Jan 10,2009, 1030am-330pm - every Sat for 6 weeks. Call 415-377-4202 or go to thrillpeddlers.com for more info. Hypnodrome had a great holiday BBQ Sun Dec 14, where Jello Biafra and Anne-Marie Anderson reminded me it was THEY who turned us on to the Hypnodrome, by putting us on the guest list when Biafra played a prison warden in a play way back in Fall 2007.

() SRL 30th ANNIVERSARY PARTY Fri Dec 12, 2008 b/w Mark Pauline 55th Birthday Party (well, Mark's b'day is12/14/08). We gave Mark a copy of J.G. Ballard's novel KINGDOM COME (available from abebooks.com) for his birthday.The big surprise of the evening was seeing TODD BLAIR walk up the stairs (no cane, no wheelchair) with companion ALEX. What a shock. He talked with and greeted virtually everybody present. KAREN MARCELO had talked with Todd earlier, and she brought Zante Indian pizza which he had requested -- addictingly delicious. IAN projected dazzingly beautiful high-def footage from the SRL show in San Jose. Apparently most of the move from the San Bruno St HQs to the new shop in Petaluma has been accomplished. Too many people to talk to, including Eddie Codel (back from Arse Electronika in Vienna), Chuck Sperry and Ron Donovan from Firehouse posters, and David Pescovitz of boing-boing. It was raining and the Killers were playing across the street at the Warfield. A small barrel of TCHO dark chocolate provided by Amy Critchett fueled the evening's conversations, along with Chai tea service provided by Kimric Smythe. An all-too-rare SRL party...

() from KAREN MARCELO RE SRL 30th: "excellent reunion! good to see everyone! here are some images from that night http://srl.org/shows/events/srl30mp55/ - also check the todd blog, there are new pix of todd from the party and from todd & alex! stay tuned for alex's new blog post too and on the blog there's some updated admin info on contact/support info: http://toddblair.wordpress.com/how-to-help/ - happy birthday mark! happy 30th SRL! -karen"

() JOHN LAW new book of "BRIDGE STORIES" published by Julia Solis's (both featured in our PRANKS 2 book) press: http://www.furnacepress.com/publications/spacebetw.htm

() KEN HOLLINGS new book "WELCOME TO MARS" ("Fantasies of Science in the American Century 1947-1959"): http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/shop_WTM.html

3. OTHER FORTHCOMING EVENTS:

() SAT DEC 20, 7-10PM, "N-UDE AID, the GIGANTIC EROTIC ART MAKING AND GIVE AWAY EVENT is this Saturday, at the glamourous SOMARTS Gallery, 934 Brannan/9th St. 30 artists make erotic art inspired by 30 n-ude and fe-tish clad models of all kinds. You get a ticket at the door to exchange for a piece of art you can watch being made (you can perhaps even commission something from your favorite artist there) and then take it home with you. http://www.nudeaid.org All for a great cause; benefiting the fabulous Center for Sex and Culture," from Carol Queen and Robert.

() Watch for "What Would Jesus Buy" on your local cable station. This hilarious anti-consumer feature film is from Reverend Bill & The Church of Stop Shopping. Rev. Billy says -- "The Christmas Revolution is coming to cable! Families all over the world have watched WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY? on DVD and discovered how they can BUY LESS and GIVE MORE this Christmas, now you can also see it on over 100 "On-Demand" cable providers including: Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Cablevision, Verizon, AT&T, RCN, Insight, Mediacom, and Bresnan!

"Curl up by the fire and watch WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY?, the holiday classic in our times of financial Shopocalypse!"

4. Stephane von Stephane on the latest James Bond movie [warning: spoilers].

The New Bond: Change we can believe in.
     In the two Daniel Craig Bond films 'Casino Royale' and 'Quantum of Solace', a different style of Bond is born. Daniel Craig is a great new-millennium Bond.
     This is a younger, tougher Bond at the beginning of his career as an secret agent. In this sequential duo of films he completes his 2 kills to get his double O license, goes rogue and blows up an embassy, is forced to get a tracking implant, falls in love, suspects his lover betrays him, finds that instead she has perhaps given her own life for his, with broken heart begins a mission of revenge against those responsible for her death, stops financiers of international terrorism and anti-environmentalism, kills out of blind rage, not duty, has his double O license revoked and ultimately decides against killing the object of his vengeance. The action takes place on many continents as per usual, and all the while he mans every known vehicle imaginable, motorcycle, car, bus, boat and airplane. Maybe in the next one he'll hi-jack a train.
     The screenwriters for 'Royale' and 'Solace' Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis were also the writers of the last two Pierce Brosnan films, which I remember thinking were cool because there were women on motorcycles and women kicking some a-ss. It seems that the general direction of those films was moving out of the original, more typical sexist Bond shenanigans and into a more realistic dynamic where the sexes are somewhat equal, or at least women are not solely objectified as in the earlier films, particularly the Roger Moore 70's series.
     The old standard love-'em-and-leave-'em, there's always time to stop and screw a Honey Ryder, no matter what's happening is gone, thankfully. In fact in 'Royale', Bond actually falls in love. She is a treasury agent, in charge of his finances while he's gambling at a casino to try to win against an evil financier who owes a huge debt to some terrorists. As their cover they are a couple, and they size each other up immediately, hazarding guesses about one another's backgrounds, neither one actually admitting anything, the metaphoric 'bluff' and 'tell' in a card game is played out between them. They initially p-iss each other off, but that thin line between love and hate gives over to the love side as they are thrust into intense life and death situations together. His martini is spiked with poison during the high stakes card game and he stumbles out to the car where there is naturally a defibrillator (okay, much of the typical completely improbable Bond stuff is still there!) He starts to flat-line and she arrives just in time to save his life. I imagine that if he hadn't already fallen for her by then, when he comes to and sees her hovering over him; that probably clinches it. He is so into her that he wants to quit the secret service and travel the world with her. And that is their plan. But of course it can't last (her name is Vesper after all, what does one expect?) She dashes off to the bank to get money for the trip and while she is gone his boss 'M' (the fabulous Judi Dench) calls and wonders why his winnings from the card game haven't been transferred to the appropriate account. They find that someone who has the password is in Venice transferring the money to a different account. Could it be that Vesper is betraying him? It could be. She knows the password. He locates her walking off with a suitcase and follows her to a meeting with shady bad guys in an ancient building by the canals.
     This is yet another wholly improbable scene where an the entire building by the canal in Venice crumbles and is immersed in water, crowds of people watch as this happens, boats are floating by, yet no one is around when he has dragged her from underwater to the vestiges of the rooftop to give her CPR. Even though he thinks she has betrayed him, he tries to save her from drowning. She locks herself into a wrought iron elevator cage as the building submerges. It's as though she wants to die. Meantime, the suitcase of money has been skirted away by a baddie. 'M' offers the suggestion that Vesper must have made a deal with these baddies to save Bond's life in exchange for the money, thus her timely arrival at the car/defibrillator scene just in time to save him. Knowing he would check her phone after her death, Vesper had sent him a message with the name and number of a Mr. White, the baddie, whom he tracks down at the very end of the film, shoots in the leg, tosses into the boot of the car and is on his way to bring in for questioning when the next film picks up with the car chase. The shady terrorist group is still after the suitcase of money.
     And so 'Quantum of Solace' starts with the car chase and quickly gets into the interrogation of Mr. White in another ancient Italian building whist outside, a medieval style horse race is going on. Festivities abound outside as torture ensues inside. Later in the film there is a lovely juxtaposition of an ultra modernized Puccini opera in Vienna with stylized violence on stage and Bond committing real violence outside. This scene has the members of the terror organization finding earbud/receivers in their Swag bags before the opera starts, and conducting a 'meeting' that way in plain public view. Bond has found one of the Swag earbud/receivers and listens to the proceedings, commenting to the group that they should find a better place to meet. He then photographs them with his cell phone as they get up to flee the scene! The Opera set features a prominent giant eyeball, a comment on surveillance society?
     The main baddie in 'Quantum' is Mr. Greene of Green Planet, posing as an environmentalist, but he is actually just the opposite. I won't give away the details, as there is a bit of an unexpected twist. He's organizing a coup in Bolivia so that a certain general can stay in power in exchange for a large piece of desert land. Mr. Greene's girlfriend is only with him in order to get to that general because he had killed her family when she was little, raping her mother and sister beforehand to punish her father who was in charge of the junta. She's out for vengeance, just as Bond is, and they meet as he kills and then poses as someone she assumes is on her side but whom Greene had hired to kill her. (Confusing enough yet?) Bond and she form a unit based on the fact that they are both tortured and damaged, broken to the extent that nothing matters but avenging the deaths of their loved-ones. In any prior Bond film they would have been bonking each other regardless of where their hearts were, but not this film. It is refreshing and modern that way.
     This Bond is too tormented and heartbroken to be typical. He is on a mission, and doesn't care whom he torches to get his revenge, prompting 'M' to ask him to please try to refrain from killing every lead in the case before they have a chance to interogate them. He's sleep deprived and disheveled and though 'M' tells him in a motherly way that he looks awful, angst becomes him. He looks gorgeous, and is dressed impecibley in every scene, whether bloodied from a fight or in a tux stolen from the wardrobe department at that opera in Vienna. He looks like he's right out of 'La Dolce Vita', especially when he's zipping about on a co-opted motor scooter in tight white jeans and a black polo shirt. I highly approve of the new Bond.
He does sleep with one young cutie-pie British agent, Strawberry Fields. She's been sent to bring him back to the home office once it has been deemed he is out of control, killing unnecessarily, and even accidently killing one of his own. He needs her on his side, so he charms her into bed. This is the only time in the film that the typical Bond theme music is heard. I missed not hearing the theme music throughout, but did not miss the typical Bond behavior.
     Also atypical; the usual 'bullet-hole' pre-credit opening shot is at the end in 'Quantum'. The opening credits in both films are beautifully trippy to the point of near psychedelia. The 'Quantum' theme by Jack White and Alicia Keyes is stellar.
     Other notable cool stuff: 'Royale' has a scene in an exhibit hall where there is an 'art' installation of skeletons with their organs attached and exposed, sitting at tables playing cards. Is it part of "'The Human Body', the universe within", the actual exhibit, or is it a facsimile? I can't tell.
     In 'Royale' near the beginning, there is a scene featuring Sebastien Foucan, the co-founder of Par Cour, which is a 'free running' activity started in the streets of France and has become a trend. It is simply running through the streets as fast as possible, jumping over and under and bouncing off of all obstacles, climbing walls, jumping from rooftop to rooftop to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible...just for fun. The philosophical point being to live as if one were in a constant state of emergency. Bond pretty much always is, so it is fitting. 'Quantum' also has this style of 'free running' in a chase scene near the beginning of the film on adobe tile roofs in Italy. The screenwriters had seen a documentary called 'Jump London' about this and decided to include it in the films.
     And finally; Bond does not use the line "Bond, James Bond", nor does he order a martini "Shaken, not stirred". In fact when asked at one point if he prefers shaken or stirred he says; "Do I look like I give a damn?". Also, there is a scene where someone asks him what he is drinking and he says; "I dunno, what am I drinking?", the bartender lists the ingredients to the perfect martini in a way that deconstructs the entire Bond martini mythos. The New Bond--- change we can believe in! ~ Stephane von Stephane

5. RECOMMENDED LINKS - thanks to our friends Phil G, Ferrara, James McN-, Derek B. & Others who send us links.

() http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10120215-76.html -   "One bad electrical connection caused $21 million of damage. Still, this is a relatively benign failure scenario, compared to the 'Lawnmower from Hell' scenario that could simultaneously rip open the entire 26km beam line once there's two full energy beams in storage orbits. At full energy, each proton beam will have the kinetic energy of an aircraft carrier at 15 knots.   Greg L

() From Phil G: "r.mutt lives" - http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/the-world-of-art-museum-toilets-revealed

() From Graham Rae: "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hzQsvxtLTM&feature=related

() ANPQuarterly Vol 2 / No 2 - Brendan Fowler catches up on 30+ years of Mark Flood, while Aaron Rose gets as much V. Vale. Naomi Harris shows us a lot of America and the swingers she met in the process... http://www.rvcaanpq.com/?p=495

() www.iketaylor.com - Ike Taylor, photographer, visited us and not only bought several copies of ME AND BIG JOE by Michael Bloomfield (probably our favorite guitarist, R.I.P.) with Scott Summerville, but then returned and gave us some of the favorite music we've never heard (until now). THANKS, IKE!

6. QUOTES:

() "Friendship takes you out of the spectacle." - Guy de Bord

() "If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope." - Albert Einstein

() "If we spoke different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world." - Wittgenstein

() "He who goes unarmed in pardise had better be sure he knows where he is." - James Thurber

() "Your argument is sound ... nothing BUT sound!" - Ben Franklin

() Something unknown is doing we don't know what." - Sir Arthur Eddington

() "The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer; he sells the consumer to the product." - William S. Burroughs

() "Technology enables us to control everything except technology." - M. Bagdon

() "The brain is a caegory buster." - Elizabeth Phelps

() "Life cycle: birth / school / work / death."

() "You can't fix 'stupid'..."

() "Everyone has their reasons..."

() "Memory recall is contextual and bound up with emotions --- thus, it is imperfect and fallible, as is the scientific understanding of how it all works." (from MYTH OF ALZHEIMERS book)

() "It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so." -- Josh Billings, American humorist, 1818-85

7. FEEDBACK FROM READERS:

() from MAKO SANO: "new book: Paul Bowles on Music Includes the last interview with Paul Bowles" - try abebooks.com

() "[After reading the V. Vale interview, part 2, in the latest BIG TAKEOVER Magazine] - "Wonderful! Thanks again. I feel as though my learning process has been shut down for quite some time, and after reading your interview I am excited to be opening it back up. Thanks again, Fran C."

() From Charles Oliphant: "The Worst Ten Songs I've Ever Heard are:
       1) Come On Eileen (Dexy's Midnight Runners)
    2) The Night Chicago Died (Paper Lace)
    3) La Vida Loca (Ricky Martin)
    4) The Night That The Lights Went Out In Georgia (Vicki Lawrence)
    5) Dream On (Aerosmith) the ending squeals of that song are unforgiveable!
    6) Undercover Angel (Alan O'Day) I actually heard that on the radio the other day. AAAAaaaaaarrrrghh!!!!
    7) I am Woman (Helen Reddy)
    8) Fernando's Hideaway (By anyone)
    9) All I Wanna Do Is Be With You (Hootie & The Blowfish)
    10) Patience (Guns & Roses)

() From Kenny Goldsmith, founder of one of our favorite websites, ubu.com :
"Why does everything 'edgy' have to be ugly? It doesn't help ANYTHING to have edgy content be ugly. And YOU (RE/Search) figured this out before anyone else did. I was really inspired by your work, starting in the early '80s, when I did my WFMU radio show. Your design looked beautiful, elegant -- you put risky material in a beautiful context. [On ubu.com] we emulated so much of what you did, striving to have as much open, uncluttered, unadvertised space as possible. Minimalism!" -- from a phone conversation 8/5/08.

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DEC 2008 RE/Search eNewsletter written by V. Vale & contributors. Newsletter and website powered by http://www.laughingsquid.com.
DISCLAIMER : If you're receiving V. VALE's newsletter, it's because you **or someone you know** has sent your address to us, or signed our mailing list at an event!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo #B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com
--

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Thursday, November 06, 2008

V. Vale RE/Search Nov 2008 Newsletter: Mal Sharpe, J.G. Ballard

WELCOME TO V. VALE's RE/SEARCH NEWSLETTER 77, November 2008
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
www.researchpubs.com | http://www.myspace.com/researchpubs | info@researchpubs.com

**IF YOU LIVE IN San Francisco BAY AREA, PLEASE **REPLY** TO THIS NEWSLETTER IF YOU WISH TO RECEIVE LAST-MINUTE LOCAL NEWS OF RE/SEARCH-recommended EVENTS! In subject line please write "local subscribe"

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
___________________________________________
1. Sat Nov 8, 6:30pm: RE/Search Counter Culture Hour (with host V. Vale) featuring GEORGE KUCAR. S.F. Cable Channel 29, live streaming video at http://www.accessf.org - "ACCESS SF 1" button
2.. MAL SHARPE on OBAMA PRESIDENCY
3. V. VALE RE/Search founder gets SFBG GOLDIES Lifetime Achievement AWARD
4. V. VALE in BARCELONA / LONDON for JG BALLARD CONFERENCE/MUSEUM SHOW Oct 25-26
5. OTHER FORTHCOMING EVENTS
5A. Stephane von Stephane - next time!
6. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening to/What We've Been Sent..
7. RECOMMENDED LINKS - thanks to our friends Phil G, Ferrara, James McN-, Derek B. & Others
8. Quotes
9. Feedback from Readers
--------------
please add info@researchpubs.com to your ADDRESS BOOK. If you change your email, send it plus your "old" email address to delete. Lastly, forward our newsletter to your friends! If you are on aol, please make sure you can receive our newsletter - we get the most returns from addresses at AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PRE-ORDER OUR NEXT 2 RE/SEARCH BOOKS AND RECEIVE A DISCOUNT - 1st Copies hot off the press will be sent to you ASAP:
() BURNING MAN LIVE! $24.99 - preorder only $18 plus $5 domestic shipping ($15 overseas)
This is a 13-year collection of "P*ss Clear" zine, which was actually produced, printed and distributed right there on the playa during Burning Man! The sarcastic wit the editor/producer guides you through the sand-filled cacophony of over-stimulation. Fun, sexy, and "real."
() LEARY ON DRUGS $19.99 - preorder only $15 plus $5 domestic shipping ($15 overseas)
Years after his death, Leary's writings are still insightful and refreshing. Leary writes on freedom and liberty in the guise of writing on drugs.
SUPPORT US & BUY A RE/SEARCH **GIFT FOR SOMEONE!
+++++++++++++++++++RECENT ARRIVALS!+++++++++++++++++++++
+RE/SEARCH button, 1-1/2" SQUARE $1 PLUS $1 shipping
+SEARCH & DESTROY BUTTON, 1-1/2" ROUND, $1 plus $1 shipping
+PRONOVATION: P0RNOGRAPHY & TECHNOLOGY book, some color photos $25 plus $4 ship (signed!)
+ RE/Search LOGO T-shirt - Two styles: Red Logo $25, and Red/White Logo $25. S,M,L,XL. Free shipping - ask for it.
+PRANKS HARDBACK deluxe paper only 500 made $40 plus $4 ship (V. Vale will sign)
+INDUSTRIAL CULTURE HANDBOOK HARDBACK deluxe paper $35 plus $ 4 (V. Vale will sign)
+PRANKS 2 deluxe paper $25 plus $4 ship - AUTOGRAPHED BY YES MEN (upon request)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

1. Sat Nov 8, 6:30PM Cable Channel 29: RE/Search Counter Culture Hour (with host V. Vale) featuring filmmaker GEORGE KUCHAR (over 600 films made). S.F. Cable Channel 29, 2nd Saturday of month. George Kuchar also deserve a lifetime achievement award. Please write us if you're interested in collecting CCH episodes on DVD - $10 per episode or subscribe and get 7 for $60. (Note: very small production run, just for you)
The show is broadcast on-line as well as on public access television in San Francisco. 6:30-7:30 PM Channel 29 AND http://www.accessf.org - "ACCESS SF 1" button
This show will also be shown live and free at New Nothing Cinema in San Francisco - tent. date Dec 15, 730PM, 16 Sherman St (off Folsom bet 7th-6th St). Free treats. Hard-to-find R/S books available.

2. Mal Sharpe and J.G. Ballard on OBAMA PRESIDENCY. Mal Sharpe, master prankster featured in our PRANKS book (google Coyle and Sharpe) called us this morning to offer congratulations on the Goldies Lifetime Achievement Award, and we took notes on his post-election outlook, redacted (inaccurately) below.

"Congratulations on your Goldie Lifetime Achievement Award -- it's not every day that you wake up and read Good News: that TWO men get celebrated who deserve it -- you and Ferlinghetti. And the Obama victory - most of the world is glad to get rid of the whole George Bush vibe. A bunch of crooks finally get their comeuppance. That footage on TV last night of all those crowds in New York City in the streets -- all that youthful optimism. McCain was really stupid -- a h0rny old man -- to have picked Sarah Palin. What a stupid lowlife. If you watched the body language of Cindy McCain, not once did she even look at Sarah Palin or acknowledge her. In four years from now, if Palin runs for office, she'll have put on ten pounds and won't be quite the sexy babe...
"With Obama elected, it would be nice if some kind of across-the-board intelligence will come back. Katie Couric observed that politicians used to be able to speak in complete sentences with correct grammar. Maybe most of America doesn't care whether speakers are coherent, or whether "thinking logically" matters.
[RE the Great Prank on Sarah Palin -- BTW, the below URL includes the TRANSCRIPT -- very important as it "decodes" certain names not recognized by Palin, etc - such as, there is a Hustler fake pr0n documentary called "Nailin' Palin" featuring a Palin lookalike! This is one of the great pranks of the decade, and its perpetrators ought to become household names: 'A Canadian comedy duo called The Masked Avengers from CKOI 96.9 FM in Montreal, Quebec pranked Sarah Palin, convincing her (and her team) they were receiving a call from French President Nicolas Sarkozy. In the interview, which lasts about six minutes, Palin and the pranksters discuss politics, pundits, and the dangers of hunting with current vice-president Dick Cheney. Their website must be getting slammed because it isn't loading for some. Here is the YouTube (h/t NegSpin), & be sure to see the TRANSCRIPT:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/1/151958/557/831/649050
"Mal commented, "I think she handled it pretty well. She was just kind of nice to them. She didn't come off as badly as people thought." Mal then thought that the two "pranksters" Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross got what they deserved when they got fired recently for the obscene phone calls they made to 78-year-old Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs. Brand had left a message on his answering machine claiming he had had sex with his granddaughter, Georgina. Sachs, according to The Mail, "was left deeply upset by the crude calls -- which were also broadcast to about two million listeners to Brand's Radio 2 show." Mal said, "Jim Coyle would never have done that." There's a real difference in the level of pranks in our PRANKS book and this kind of malicious, unfunny, unpoetic call. [Recommended: Coyle & Sharpe boxed set]

This morning we received an email from J.G. Ballard's companion, Claire Walsh: "Dear Vale, Many thanks. And congratulations America! We're all just delighted – all over the world. We stayed up to see the results."

3. V. VALE, RE/Search founder gets SFBG GOLDIES Lifetime Achievement AWARD. Kimberly Chun, SFBG scribe (and quite an original prose stylist herself) interviewed V. Vale and boiled down 2 hours of verbiage into a concise feature, reprinted below. It's also at:
http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=7452&catid=85&volume_id=398&issue_id=404&volume_num=43&issue_num=06 - we've reprinted it here because, out of paranoia, we've seen many features "disappear" from websites, and we don't want this feature to vanish into the ether. Thanks, SGBG & Kimberly!

"Call him the monkish punk elder of counterculture in the Bay and fringes wherever they may fray. Behind a monochromatic, black-clad, black-banged façade and unassuming demeanor, V. Vale is a man of so many interests and accomplishments that it's hard to know where to start. How about with Vale as Punk Showman?

"In 1984 I'm sure I put on one of the greatest shows ever to celebrate our J.G. Ballard book," the 50-plus publisher says. He's tucked beside a thermos of tea in his book- and collection-crammed office-apartment in a North Beach edifice that, legend has it, Janis Joplin, Odetta, and Paul Robeson once dwelled in. Survival Research Labs and an S-M group were on the Fort Mason bill, and in honor of the occasion Vale visited the junkyard and had them deliver two cars that he selected. "I'm sure people had died in them — there was so much blood in the interior — and they were all crushed down. There's no way you could survive that!"

Naturally, Vale and SRL [Survival Research Laboratories] rigged up the two bloody junkers to simulate a sex act — doggy-style — while yet another car with square wheels and a huge battering ram attacked the humping death-mobiles. The, ahem, climax: a performance by Public Image Ltd.

If that's not punk — in the classic, highly original, high-low San Francisco style, full of hard-scrabble high spectacle and an edge you can lacerate yourself on — who knows what the f0ck is?

It's just one of many tales — about shooting pistols with "Uncle Bill" Burroughs or watching exotica innovator Martin Denny field a $25,000 royalty check — that emerge during an interview with this lifelong interviewer. His own narrative is just as riveting: he grew up, as part of a minuscule Japanese American minority, in a small town in Riverside County, raised on welfare by a mother who suffered from mental illness. The young Vale read voraciously, from the kitchen table to the bed, which led to his acceptance at Harvard, though an antipathy toward ivy made him choose to attend UC Berkeley instead. In the '70s, he worked at City Lights, and in 1977, while ripping off the covers of unbought magazines and returning them, he formed the idea to start his own zine about the punk scene combusting right around the corner at Mabuhay Gardens. Search and Destroy was born, with $100 seed money from Allen Ginsberg and matching funds from his boss Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Now lauded as an invaluable document of early punk and a graphic design rule-breaker ("We'd do a layout meeting: 'Here's the text. Here are the pictures. Your job is to make this interview as rad as you can'"), Search and Destroy also became a way for Vale to make critical connections between the work and thoughts generated by punk groups and those formulated by artists in other media, as interviews with Vale's mentors Ballard and Burroughs made their way into the zine.

When the Mabuhay scene turned toward servicing a younger, violent hardcore audience, the zine-maker's interests shifted as well. Tapped to start a stateside headquarters for Rough Trade in 1980, he convinced founder Geoff Travis to fund a new tabloid, RE/Search, during an all-nighter. Three issues later, Vale moved on to launch a typesetting business, RE/Search Typography, which he ran in North Beach until he sold it in 1991 when he saw that the home computer had finally arrived.

In the meantime, the RE/Search series had become the equivalent of an ever-unfolding countercultural bible: essential reading not only for punks — all the books, Vale swears, are informed by that revolution — but artists, musicians, cultural fire-starters, and trouble-makers of every nonconformist stripe. In turn, Vale built a bridge with his paperbacks between the cultural movers around him and the world of books that has succored him. "I learned long ago that reading is not a passive process," says Vale. "I like to mark up my books. My books are heavily interacted with. I look at books not as books, but as conversations."

The RE/Search volumes Vale is most proud of, on Burroughs and Ballard, resuscitated the former author's career and threw a proper coming-out party in America for the latter. Vale went so far as to help organize Burroughs' tour with Laurie Anderson. Meanwhile, RE/Search's sibling compendiums, Incredibly Strange Movies (1986) and Incredibly Strange Music (1993, Vol. 2 1995), were pivotal in placing filmmakers like Russ Meyer and Herschell Gordon Lewis and music-makers such as Yma Sumac and Ken Nordine in a new canon for culturally conversant hipsters, leading to crucial reissues and reappraisals of their work.

And then there's RE/Search's biggest hit. "The most influential of all the books is Modern Primitives [1989], which sparked the whole mainstream mass interest in piercing and tattoos and body modification," says Jello Biafra, who first met Vale in 1978 when Biafra was simply an admirer of Search and Destroy and the vocalist for a then-new band called the Dead Kennedys. "There was very little of that going on compared to what happened after that book came out. Of course, now even secretaries and bank clerks and Bush administration bureaucrats have tattoos, and who knows how many pierced penises are on the Republican National Committee!"

With a new publication, pr0nnovation? P0rnography and Technological Innovation, just out, and books on Timothy Leary, Burning Man's P0ss Clear newspaper, and steampunk on the horizon, Vale doesn't have time to be bitter that so many have grabbed ideas from his tomes and run with them. "I would say I've had a disproportionate amount of influence," he says. "People tell me, 'Your Pranks [1987] book inspired Jackass, Punk'd, and god knows how many other TV shows.' You just keep thinking of your next project and never look back." www.researchpubs.com [end]

4. V. VALE in BARCELONA / LONDON for JG BALLARD CONFERENCE/MUSEUM SHOW Oct 25-26

Because we're barely over jet lag, we offer links to some photos taken at the CCCB Kosmopolis 08 museum show in Barcelona, which was so futuristic and high-tech, it deserves a detailed write-up. A bit strange that SPAIN is the first country to offer such a complex, detailed tribute to J.G. Ballard, the man who has predicted the future more accurately than -- who else is there? The folks who collaborated to bring about a Mercedes-class event and installation deserve utmost thanks. We asked J.G. Ballard why he didn't move to Barcelona -- he had been considering it -- and it was partly the language barrier and other details.

() from Jordi Costa, JG Ballard Museum Show Curator: http://la-biblioteca-de-vorbarr.blogspot.com/2008/10/kosmopolis-08.html

() http://www.flickr.com/photos/31517319@N08/page5/ -- vale portrait
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31517319@N08/page6/ -- vale in photos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31517319@N08/page2/ -- lydia lunch photos

() from Mike Bonsall: "Have got round to putting my pictures of the exhibition etc on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike_b/sets/72157608562049916/

() From Rick McGrath to Tim Chapman: "One thing that's changed is the arrangement of the 'Project for a new novel' - http://flickr.com/photos/2ubh/2981467778/
http://flickr.com/photos/rick_mcgrath/2714502866/

" One thing that struck me when reviewing the photos is the attention to detail - things like the place names inscribed on the watch faces in the 'Day of Forever' installation, which I didn't notice at the time - http://flickr.com/photos/2ubh/2980609581/

What follows are written reports:

() Tim Chapman reports: "Message from J.G. Ballard to Barcelona: "Hello Barcelona. I hope everyone there is enjoying the show, if I'm allowed to call it that. Vale is taking charge of everything, and I leave him to represent me." Short but sweet. He sounded in fairly good voice, at least.
"I'll do a transcription of the Sellars/Sterling/Vale panel sometime this week, if time permits. In the honorable tradition of 'Answers to a Questionnaire', there'll have to be gaps where the questions would be, at least until Jordi can provide a potted translation of his Spanish [or was it Catalan?] inquisition."
"...the exhibition was excellent - extremely well and very creatively designed, with something new for even the hardcore Ballardians. I don't recall seeing the paintings from the other Lunghua inmate before, so they were particularly interesting as I'd been in the neighbourhood the previous week - the place really did look like a holiday camp. Big congratulations to Jordi and the team."

() from Mike Bonsall: "Jordi: "I'm finally at home in Madrid, after 5 intense days at Kosmopolis. Have a well-deserved rest Jordi, as far as possible, after your exertions. I am back at home also and have had time to take it all in. I must say a heartfelt thank-you to you and your collaborators for the exhibition and events. The whole thing was put together with such knowledge, care and imagination. You have earned a permanent place in the 'Ballard Museum'! It would be wonderful if you could tour the exhibition; more people need to see it. All the best - Mike B."

() from Jordi Costa, curator of the J.G. Ballard Museum Show at CCCB:
" I'm finally at home in Madrid, after 5 intense days at Kosmopolis. Yes, I've talked with Mrs. Claire Walsh and Mrs. Bea Ballard and provided for each of them a guided tour through the exhibition. They are two extraordinary kind, generous and gentle persons and visited us on behalf of Mr. Ballard who, as you know, cannot travel due to health problems. I didn't want to seem intrusive and I didn't ask much about that, but they told that he is as well as a person in his state could be right now: it's a kind of understated information that tells me that they prefer to be discreet about the subject and I respected that.

"They gave me the impression that J.G. Ballard was not only the visionary writer that we read, love and admire, but an extraordinary person (longtime partner for Claire, Bea's loving father) as well: a one-of-a-kind human being...

"Now we're trying to tour the exhibition outside Spain, but it's not an easy deal. Through the British Council we're now negotiating some different possibilities, but there's an important problem: The exhibition is a little bit expensive to move. Then, it's possible that Barcelona has offer the only chance to see it. Best regards,Jordi"

"From Mike Bonsall: "Another glorious day in Barcelona. During the day I did the obligatory Gaudi hunt. Had a distinctly Ballardian moment at La Sagrada Familia, thinking that when the magnificent cranes are finally removed, people will become disenchanted and no longer visit. The main event, with Simon, Jordi, Vale and Bruce Sterling was very impressive, more details to follow. Again I lacked a translation earpiece but Jordi promised later he would translate our recording of the session. The whole thing was also being videoed by the Kosmopolis people.

The big surprise was that Claire Ward and Bea Ballard were in the audience! They didn't speak and we didn't feel able to approach them, but it was great to know they were all interested (Fay Ballard is also due to visit). We had a drink with Jordi afterwards and congratulated him on a great success -- he looked tired. Then on to tapas and, finally, an absinthe bar -- can't remember much after that! All in all a magical experience. 24 C here, now back to flooded England."

() from Kosmopolis 08 Organizers: "Kosmopolis 08 has succeeded in consolidating the literary meeting that puts the printed word, the oral word and the electronic word on the center stage in dynamic relation with the arts and sciences.... [Here's] our website (http://www.cccb.org/kosmopolis/en/index.php), images of the Fest (http://www.flickr.com/photos/31517319@N08/) and the diary of K08 in our videoblog (http://www.cccb.org/kosmopolis/blog/).Juan Insua, Bàrbara Roig, Teresa Rosell - Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB), Montalegre, 5 (08001) Barcelona, Spain - Phone: +34 93 306 4100 - Fax: +34 93 306 4101 - www.cccb.org

5. OTHER FORTHCOMING EVENTS:

() Legendary Pink Dots Fri-Sat Nov 14-15 at Du Nord, S.F. Prepare to attend! New album out, too: Plutonium Blonde, which we are preparing to review. Miss this show at your peril!

() Dirk Dirksen Alley hearing: Thur Nov 13, 11AM, SF City Hall Room 263 (Van Ness/Hayes), Rules Committee Hearing. plaque installation. If you want to help by making a tax-deductible donation towards the installation, go to: www.hearnet.com/auction - Thanks, Kathy Peck

() Wed Nov 19-Sun Nov 23 7pm Blixa Bargeld's Execution of Precious Memories featuring Nanos Operetta and Yannis Adoniou's Kunst-Stoff at the Project Artaud Theater, S.F.

() SAT Nov 29, 9pm, Ginger Coyote's White Trash Debutantes w/Lani Lithman's Girls with Guns (Snakefinger's daughter), Bottom of Hill, S.F.

() SUN Nov 16, 2pm-2am, at Echo (1822 Sunset) & The Echoplex (1154 Glendale) in Echo Park.: THE 1st ANNUAL PART TIME PUNKS FESTIVAL! A CERTAIN RATIO, PYLON, MEDIUM MEDIUM, LOVE IS ALL, VIVIAN GIRLS, THE NIGHTINGALES, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, NERVOUS GENDER, ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI, THE URINALS, THE WILD STARES, MAGIC BULLETS, GRIMBLE GRUMBLE, THE MUSLIMS, WARPAINT, SOFTBOILED EGGIES, NODZZZ. . . plus . . . Guest DJs DAVID J (Bauhaus/Love & Rockets) & DAVE NEWTON (Mighty Lemon Drops) & CHUCK WARNER (Messthetics/Hyped 2 Death) & DAN SELZER (Acute Records). ALL AGES! Tickets on sale now at www.ticketweb.com. (And the first 100 tix are only $14! So buy now!)
PLUS… the first-ever band-sanctioned public screening by Throbbing Gristle (videos, live performance & never-before-seen material) AND screenings of rare & unseen Post-Punk videos, films & live performances by Joy Division, New Order, Section 25, Cabaret Voltaire, Fad Gadget, Suburban Lawns, The Films Of Bruce Licher & Savage Republic AND the DVD-release-premiere of Decoder (featuring Genesis P-Orridge, William S. Burroughs, Christiane F and members of Psychic TV, Soft Cell, Talk Talk and Einsturzende Neubauten). www.mobilization.com, www.parttimepunks.com

5A. Stephane von Stephane's column. - next time! (This newsletter was done in one afternoon - blame jet lag)

6. What We've Attended/What We've Been Reading/Seeing/Listening To/What We've Been Sent:

() From RICHARD MODIANO: "Below is a collaborative review of Lola Montes by Gail and myself for the RE/Search newsletter. We're signing it as by "Tharpa." I don't know if it's opened in San Francisco, but the movie is playing in New York City until the end of this month. It already finished its one week run in LA, and there's sure to be a DVD release for Christmas.

"What Lola Wants, Lola Gets

"I just saw the restoration of Max Ophuls' 1955 Lola Montes, it was fantastic, I loved it, sort of Fellini BEFORE Fellini! I don't think I ever saw the original - it was not well received in 1955 and was truncated by its original producers - they even hacked up the original negative.

"Ophüls' Lola, his first movie in color and widescreen was the biggest-budgeted French film to date, but after the producers re-edited the movie, it was a flop. They eventually went bankrupt, and Pierre Braunberger acquired the rights and commissioned a restoration from the elements available in 1969. Because of the improvement in restoration technology and the discovery of several missing elements - including the innovative original stereo sound mix - Braunberger's daughter Laurence and the Cinémathèque Française, with the support of the Thomson Foundation, the Franco-American Cultural Fund, and Ophüls' son Marcel, embarked on a state-of-the-art restoration.Scratches, tears and missing frames were fixed and the full stereophonic magnetic track restored, with the vibrant colors as conceived by production designer Jean d'Eaubonne and cinematographer Christian Matras replacing incomplete and faded prints.

"The at-long-last "definitive restoration" of Lola Montes was a sensation at this year's Cannes Film Festival. ( "In my unhumble opinion, the greatest film of all time," Andrew Sarris.) Don't miss it. The restored version was so captivating I don't see how they could have adulterated the film. The only set back was Lola as a child, the actress looked like a middle age child.

"In a surreal garish-carnival setting, the suckers line up, and line up at a dollar a kiss with the celebrated courtesan and Countess of Landsfeld, Lola (French sex symbol Martine Carol). Ringmaster Peter Ustinov starts his spiel and the flashbacks begin. Ustinov almost steals the movie, and he spoke his own dialog in French! (But the biographies do not include Lola in a circus, so this was Ophuls' idea.) Amidst a fantasy circus of dreams of faceless color-coded midget bellboys and rising and falling chandeliers and royal crowns, the story shifts between the symbolic tawdriness of the circus and the romanticism of the flashbacks. Each flashback has its own color scheme. For Lola's youth, black-blue-gray; for her affair with 19th century "rock star" Franz Liszt, red and gold; and for her affair with the King of Bavaria, white, blue, silver and gold. Lola Montes touches on deep emotions, an architecture of the heart. But it wasn't depressing, it was cathartic escapism!" [end]

7. RECOMMENDED LINKS - thanks to our friend Phil G, Ferrara, James McN-, & Others who sent us the below:

() RE/Search's Marian Wallace's promotional page for "After Crass" on the RainDanceTV website: http://www.raindance.tv/watch/film/after-crass

() YMA SUMAC Obituary: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/11/03/entertainment/e021514S47.DTL

() from Phil G: "Contraption: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=942_1192754913
() Palin pranked: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/1/151958/557/831/649050

() Alan Drake intv http://www.sustainabletucson.org/

() from Alan Brooks, article on Allen Ginsberg: http://acid-trip.org/secure/ginz.htm

() Rob Gretton (Joy Division manager, et al) notebook published: http://www.1topclassmanager.co.uk

() From Chris T: "Norway was incredible. I had a blast there. The film I produced, "Guest of Cindy Sherman" [w/Paul H-O] did really well! While I was there, I met the greatest new punk rock band from China.They were amazing! This is the sort of thing that Jello Biafra would like.At any rate, here's a video I took of them in Bergen Norway. No one in America is hip to them, but they are so good. They went on a train tour of China, traveling 12-14 hours between gigs, doing their sound checks, eating, doing the gig and then hopping back on the train to the next stop on the tour. Now that's punk!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZeDWxJd7lc

() from Bruno R:"sexy people": http://renz-o.blogspot.com/

8. QUOTES:

() from Umberto Rossi: "This is the title of Chapter 14 [J.G. Ballard's COCAINE NIGHTS], where Charles finds his rented Renault burnt (well, I'd call that an ethical action... I can't see no reason why such disagreeable cars should exist). However, here is a brilliant idea by [J.G. Ballard:]

"One of the modern world's pagan rites was taking place, the torching of the automobile..." (p159)

"Well said. Here in Rome it's getting a bit too frequent (a bit too frequent for someone like me who must park his car in the streets): last time they almost burned down a block of flats by setting on fire the cars in the underlying parking.

"Every summer there are burnt cars in the streets. It is not like the burnings in Paris. It doesn't take place only in certain parts of the city. It may happen everywhere. I am not talking of hundeds of cars, but it's quite frequent. It also happened where I live, a neigborhood where you mostly have old people, young university students from other parts of Italy, and people who work at the Sapienza University like my wife, teachers or technicians or clerks. Surely a very different place from the banlieus of Paris. Yet--some cars were burnt. It happens at night, and it seems that the culprits are bored young men--well, looks like an effect of the boredom of transgression, but Ballard's remark casts some light on its roots, doesn't it?"

() "There's no authority but yourself" -- CRASS

() [On living in expensive San Francisco] "You shouldn't live in a place because it's cheap; you should live there because you WANT to." -- Charles Gatewood

() "If you want to be truly subversive, do something for free." -- Kurt Vonnegut [?]

() "Your language IS your soul." -- V. Vale

() "The point is not to make political films but to make films politically." -- Jean-Luc Godard

9. FEEDBACK FROM READERS:

() "I saw you at the PAHfest "creativity" discussion and was very interested in all that you had to say (even through all the interruption). I've also listened to your version of "Mongoloid" with Gerald Casale about a hundred times. The piano work is wonderful. - Anthony Marchitiello on facebook" - THANKS ANTHONY, couldn't figure out how to reply! - v

() "Saw you with Jello Biafra at Gilman Street and hope you will do more public interview events like that one." -- Berkeley resident

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
() A set of 8 SEARCH & DESTROY tabloids from 1977-79 are STILL AVAILABLE for only $40 from www.researchpubs.com - info@researchpubs.com, or 415-362-1465. Complete set of 11 issues (a few left) are $100 plus shipping. (C'mon; they've been archived for 30 years; imagine those storage charges alone!)
NOV 2008 RE/Search eNewsletter written by V. Vale & contributors. Newsletter and website powered by http://www.laughingsquid.com.
DISCLAIMER : If you're receiving V. VALE's newsletter, it's because you **or someone you know** has sent your address to us, or signed our mailing list at an event! To unsubscribe, reply to this newsletter with "unsubscribe" in subject line
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RE/SEARCH | 20 Romolo B | San Francisco CA 94133 | 415.362.1465
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