HappyFeet Travels

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill today (by a vote of 286 to 130) calling for a constitutional amendment banning the desecration of the American flag. The Republican-controlled Senate will vote on this bill next, making the measure a sure shot for becoming part of our Constitution. After four previous attempts since 1989 failed to reach the two-thirds majority in that wing, Neoconservative proponents of this amendment are peeing their pants in potential joy of protecting this “great American” symbol.

The amendment begs the question as to what exactly will be protected. Below are a few personal examples of where this amendment will be useless:

Five years ago at Burning Man, a random burner handed me a “Personal Flag Burning Kit.” It was a tiny USA flag on a tooth pick, taped to a cheap lighter. The flag was positioned over the flame, and the potential to spontaneously express myself was to large to hold back. I instantly burned the tiny flag and enjoyed every second.

About three years ago, I spent the Fourth of July at California’s only clothing-optional state park. Appropriately named the Red, White, and Blue beach, I enjoyed nude vollyball, sunbathing, and just plain hanging out (pardon the pun). On the Fourth, there was a camp bar-b-q, so I showed up clothed and had a burger and beer with all the folks there. There were all classes of Americans at this meal, singing bad karakoke, and enjoying themselves.

A woman walked up to the picnic area, wearing nothing except the American flag that was painted on her body. In glorious Fourth of July fashion, this woman had a painted-on one piece bathing suit of Old Glory. Yep, the stripes went all the way down to her nicely shaved crotch.

Being a patriotic American, ahem, these two examples of “waving the flag” are completely protected under the Constitution’s freedoms of expression. We know that Bush and Co. could care less about that amazing amendment, and are way more focused on curtailing all the flag slumming that goes on in the USA. I guess they need to pass something through Congress since they’re stuck on all fronts with judicial appointments, UN delegate appointments, Social Security reform, and… Iraq.

The flag of the United States is just a piece of cloth to me. When I hear people say that a soldier died for “flag and country,” I bite my lower lip and think of all those “losers” in this world who see that flag soaked in the blood of dead civilians. Peoples around the world, possessing something that the US government and corporations want badly (oil comes to mind, as does land) don’t see our flag as this glorious thing.

Here’s another flag story: In the 1800s, as the US headed west and killed the natives into submission, a tribal cheif made a pact with the “white grandfather” in Washington, DC. He agreed that his tribe would submit to peace with the blue-uniformed hordes that killed his people. He signed an agreement with the President himself, stating that he was pro-USA, and accepted all their demands. The US relocated his tribe, and they lived there for a while.

While the chief was in DC to sign the agreement, he was given a US flag as a sign of trust and friendship. For months, the chief proudly flew this gift outside his own teepee, and there was peace among his people. But the thirst and greed for the land that they had legally been moved to was too much for the US settlers and their sympathetic goverment.

So the US Army swooped in and began to massacre this chief’s peoples. They killed men, women, children; old and young. As his people died around him, the chief took down the US flag that the President had given him, and waved it as a sign of being a true American.

And he died with that flag in his hand. Just sewn pieces of white, blue, and red cloth; covered in blood of a man who thought it was a symbol of peace with the white man.

So if that amendment passes, I’ll be the first to buy a flag to proudly burn in public. The less logos and symbols in this world, the better. Besides, this white American owes that long-dead Indian chief.

A local playwright, and coworker at Teatro Zinzanni, just found out that his landlord is offering his roommate, the lease holder, $10,000 to vacate their rent-controlled Noe Valley apartment (rent at 1992 level).

Recent graffiti on a live/work loft going up on Harrison St.: “This is what corporate gentrification looks like.”

Save the Last SF Quonset Hut

For those of you who don’t already know, the owners of my space have filed an application for demolition & building of condos. This is the quonset hut at 20th & Shotwell in the Mission. It’s the building that looks like an airplane hanger with a red symbol on the front (representing longevity), formerly a yoga studio, affectionately known as The Tin Can and The Silver Twinkie. In brief, the building was constructed in 1946 for military family housing after the war. Over the years it’s been artist live/work, and is now one of few true artist live/work spaces in the city. It is also the last functional quonset hut in the city.

Here’s a pic to check (almost all the way on the bottom, 3350-3352 20th street). Here is another one (towards the bottom Best Relic of Prefabricated Housing Gone By).

MEDA, Mission Economic Development Association has filed a Discretionary Review to the demolition application. I met with MEDA this morning and it seems we have a good case to save the building and maintain it as artist live/work. In my few short months here, many people have told me stories of their experiences in this space, whether it be a yoga class or a party 20 years ago.

THIS is what I’m asking for right now:

MEDA needs your stories, your experiences, your feelings about the space. Time is important in this endeavor. Meetings will be occurring within the next month, with the review hearing tentatively scheduled for the first week of July. Please send this email to as many people & organizations as you can as soon as possible. And please try to send in the stories as soon as possible. They can be sent as in line text or word attachment to Nick Pagoulatos (MEDA) at npagoulatos@medasf.org

THANK YOU!!!!!

next step: if you have any assistance to give in fundraising, donations, outreach, subletting with good credit (so I can afford to stay in the space to fight this), or even interest in establishing a community land trust in order to secure the use of the space for the future… please feel free to contact me at m@mirandacaroligne.com

thank you so much for your time and energy!
:)miranda

“I think Fremont has a great concept there,” I said. “Denouncing an organization that doesn’t exist-one Fremont made up and says is taking over America. Obviously no one can destroy it. No one’s safe from it. No one knows where it’ll turn up next…. It’ll get Fremont into the White House.”
-Philip K. Dick Radio Free Albemuth

“Not only were the media bombarding us all the time with the talk about the terrorist threat; this threat was also obviously libidinally invested – just recall the series of movies from Escape From New York to Independence Day. The unthinkable which happened was thus the object of fantasy: in a way, America got what it fantasized about, and this was the greatest surprise.” -Slavoj Zizek Welcome to the Desert of the Real!

Network (1976) by Paddy Chayefsky.

BOSCH
A series about a bunch of bank-robbing guerillas?

SCHLESINGER
What’re we going to call it –the Mao Tse Tung Hour?

DIANA
Why not? They’ve got Strike Force, Task Force, SWAT — why not Che Guevara and his own little mod squad? Listen, I sent you all a concept analysis report yesterday. Did any of you read it? (apparently not) Well, in a nutshell, it said the American people are turning sullen. They’ve been clobbered on all sides by Vietnam, Watergate, the inflation, the depression. They’ve turned off, shot up, and they’ve fucked themselves limp. And nothing helps. Evil still triumphs over all, Christ is a dope-dealing pimp, even sin turned out to be impotent. The whole world seems to be going nuts and flipping off into space like an abandoned balloon. So — this concept analysis report concludes — the American people want somebody to articulate their rage for them. I’ve been telling you people since I took this job six months ago that I want angry shows. I don’t want conventional programming on this network. I want counter-culture. I want anti-establishment.

Wag the Dog (1997) by Hilary Henkin and David Mamet.

BREAN
Lookit, don’t worry about it. It’s not a New Concept.
Wake me when we touch down, will…

AMES
We can’t afford a war.

BREAN
We aren’t going to have a war. We’re going to have the “appearance” of a war.

AMES
I’m not sure we can afford to have the “appearance” of a war.

BREAN
What’s it gonna cost?

AMES
But, but, but, “they” would find out.

BREAN
Who would find out?

AMES
…the…

BREAN
The American “people”?

AMES
Yes

BREAN
Who’s gonna tell’em. What did they find out about the Gulf War? One shot: one bomb, falling though the roof, building coulda been made of Legos.

AMES
…you want us to go to War…

BREAN
…that’s the general idea.

AMES
Why?

BREAN
Why not, what’ve they ever done for us…? Also: they sound… Ah, you see, this is why we have to mobilize the B-2 Bomber…Well, I’m gonna hold on, but you went to win this election, you better change the subject. You wanna change this subject, you better have a War. What do you need? It’s gotta be quick, it’s gotta be dramatic, you got to have an enemy. Okay? What do you need in an enemy? Somebody you fear. Who do you fear? Som’b’y you don’t know.

Mid-May, someone told me about an underground viewing of Adam Curtis’s The Power of Nightmares at The Kitchen on Protrero. I couldn’t make it, but ended up with a flyer from that show. Ellison Horne’s em was on that flyer, along with alot of information about the BBC documentary and how to spread the word about the Neocon myths. It seemded like Horne worked as a one-man PR firm, so I instantly thought that CELLspace might be a larger, more public place to show the doc.

For those of you who don’t know, The Power of Nightmares is a three-part program that compares and contrasts the right-wing, fundamentalist philosophies of Sayed Kotb and Leo Strauss. It played the SF Film Festival early last month, and Curtis has won awards for this work. The San Francisco Bay Guardian covers the style and content of the doc pretty well. Al Jazzera comments on the doc, bringing up a few issues that Anglo media hasn’t mentioned.

With the hype from Curtis’s awards, and the fact that the doc sanely explains why the War on Terror is a complete fabrication (based upon Strauss’s belief that the people need a mythic enemy to fight to keep society wholesome), I decided to track down Horne and see where he was playing the DVD next. A quick em to him got a quick response, so I headed to the Meridian Gallery near Union Square and caught two of the three parts.

Horne, simply dressed and soft spoken, stood in front of the tiny gallery’s big screen and explained why he felt that the US public needed to see this UK doc. While Part Two played for the third hour (Horne felt that Parts One and Three work well together, so saved Part Two for last), I ended up speaking with him further. Horne, founder of Celebrating Solutions, got his DVD from Curtis himself, and both share the desire to pull the curtain back and reveal the fragile reality that the Neocons have created for the world. While appearing extremely busy in his many projects, Horne wanted to play the doc to larger audiences. He was working on a show at the Roxie, which opens June 10. I connected him with Patricia, the CELL caretaker who is programming the Sunday Movie Nights.

Horne’s desire to get this info out there inspired me, but I also hoped that The Power of Nightmares would get out of the leftist gutter and hit the conservative parts of the USA. Horne, who has film and TV connections (he helped run AcessSF), felt that he could get the show aired on other city PBS channels. I left him convinced that he indeed could get this doc on the air for that important meme tipping point (Right now, the UK memo showing that the whole war was fabricated may prove to be the meme that brings down this comedy).

As always, I put my conservative South Carolina family up to the test for whether they could sit through three hours of deep information, alternative history lessons, and bits of humor and irony thrown in. I took copious notes during for the two hours I watched, and realized that they would probably make it through an hour of this at the most. US Americans do not get into history unless it’s full of Ken Burns voice overs and antique photos. I sometimes found myself lost in a philosophy lecture, but Curtis kept coming back to the point that the War on Terror is a myth. Post-neocon philosopher Strauss’ influence on my parent’s world gave me chills. Not because of the danger of the myth getting worse, but because my family in SC have no idea that they’re believing the hype that the TV shits out to them. Would they believe this British journalist’s take on reality, or throw it out with all the other “liberal media” items that Rush always condemns? I’d love to find out.

For now, I’m a connector and mouth for Horne’s new alliance. I hope that this doc does get out of the liberal enclaves of the US and into the homes of folks who voted for Bush but don’t like the idea of still being in Iraq. I hope that the history and philosophies discussed in the doc also crack open that already weak shell that half of this country is surrounded by. So, to keep the buzz going about The Power of Nightmares, I suggest that you hit it up at the Roxie if you haven’t seen it already.

S.F. Indiefest presents ‘The Power of Nightmares,’ opening Fri/10, Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th St., S.F. $4-$8. (415) 863-1087.