On the Set - The Holiday Special

JTTV Season 4, Episode 5 - Sundial Explained

Word among the smart set is that 2010 and the teens will be the era of Amish chic. While Lady Gaga seems to represent the last desperate act of the excess and consumption driven 1990s and aughts, Amish fashion shows that restraint and the less is more aesthetic bring great hope for the decade ahead.

The real estate crash and financial market breakdowns have brought great trauma for those of the Humvee/McMansion/120 inch plasma HD TV set, but little has changed for the Amish the past two years. And they are as stylish as ever in their basic black with white trim.

Those who read Parade magazine -- that harbinger of cutting edge style and cultural tipping points -- are already well aware of the sensational Heat Surge heaters with hand glued Amish mantles that perfectly merge old world craftsmanship and made-in-China/assembled-Mexico technology.

Now the de Young Museum is featuring "Amish Abstractions". While the Amish are known for abstaining for mind-altering substances, one look at these psychedelic quilts will leave you asking "What you been smokin', bro'?"

While Junk Thief TV host Alton V. Yowells, VII, is recovering from his own encounter with mind altering substances in our last episode, Bryce Digdug has stepped in to host our latest episode and introduce the hottest trend-setting accessory that will let the world know you are gladly leaving the aughts behind and on the cutting edge of the teens. Order yours today. Only two orders per household.

Much in Life is Defined by Burl Ives

After Friday's groovy shoot out at Hearse Castle in the rain, I returned Saturday with "Friendatella" who loves dark and dreary things but hates cold weather. Appropriately or not, it was a blazing blue skied day all over the city yesterday with possibly the most glorious view I've ever seen in the distance of Mount Diablo on the eastern horizon.

This afternoon, I reunited with Bryce Digdug to go see Fantastic Mr. Fox, perhaps the only "mainstream" holiday movie I have the slightest interest in seeing. (They had a preview for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland that was originally slated for a Christmas release and is now pushed back to March with the hope that people will be too pre-occupied with Mardi Gras hangovers to bother with it. Even Meryl Streep managed to not ruin the movie.

As with any Wes Anderson movie, the music selection was half the fun of the film. Even in disappointments like The Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Express, there were great soundtracks. Could you really have stop-motion without Burl Ives? Fox has three Ives tunes -- "Fooba Wooba John", "The Grey Eyed Goose" and "Buck Eye Jim". Now before you start dismissing Ives as all sentimental Jolly Holly Christmas schmaltz, remember that he played Big Daddy and posed for the above Karl Van Vechten portrait, so he clearly was more than that happy snowman in his orbit.

After the film, Bryce and I had lunch at Sunflower were I was ogled and groped by our server and then down the street to the ever reliable Community Thrift Store. Never mind that Tower Records and Virgin Megastore are gone, Community Thrift never fails to deliver unexpected gems. They can also be political and downright subversive. I found a copy of "Anita Bryant Sings Her Favorite Hymns" wedge in between a sloth of albums by Judy Garland and Michael Feinstein. Right there in their racks was Burl Ives: The Best of Burls for Boys and Girls. No "Fooba Wooba John" but it has "Aunt Rhody", "The Fox" (why wasnt' that one in the movie?) "Shoo Fly", "Polly Wolly Doodle" and "Woolie Boogie Bee".

Was there ever a more evocative name than Burl Ives? Can't you just think of a burl sculpture of a bear covered in ivy? I don't like bears of the human kind (they make go "Ooof" not "Woof"), but I do like Burl. Just the thought of him makes me think of cinnamon in the oven and frost on the windows. Oh, and another song on that album is "What Kind of an Animal Are You?" I heard that was his opening line when he ran into Sebastian Cabot unexpectedly in an undisclosed watering hole south of 14th Street in 1957. But that's another story.

On the Set

Bryce Digdug dropped by today, and he made a return appearance for an upcoming Junk Thief TV episode (the one after the next one). After a breezy studio shoot, we headed out to Ingleside for a location shoot. We planned to solve one mystery (which we accomplished) but had a surprise extra dividend of discovering Hearse Castle above. It was a perfect mix of the Addams Family and Edgar Winter.

I'd love to tell you more about the feature mystery, but if I did I'd have to kill you. Just stay tuned for episode five coming soon.

Why Are All the Best Jazz Singers from Norway?

Sweden gave us ABBA. Bleh. Meh. So what? Who cares? But Norway gave us some of the best jazz singers in the world. I keep discovering more of them each day.

Last night I had dinner with one of Norway's leading jazz vocalists, Busby "Bryce" Digdug. We planned to meet at the Big Sunflower at 16th and Valencia, not to be confused with the Little Sunflower at 16th and Valencia. The fact that the same restaurant has a branch just around the corner is proof that the Vietnamese are the best dadaists.

Busby and I had meant to meet at the Little Sunflower, but there was a jumper who forced the city to shut down the block for seven hours while onlookers (according to another friend) were shouting JUMP, JUMP!!! Maybe they just wanted to be the first to get into the Big Sunflower. Ironically down the street NBC's Trauma (not to be confused with Trauma Flintstone) was filming outside of Range. There were several ironies going on here. The jumper was in a residential hotel above the high end Peruvian restaurant where attorneys and tech millionaires can enjoy the better cuisine of a nation where the majority of people live on a dollar a day or less. Unfortunately the Big Sunflower crowd had filled Little Sunflower to the point it felt like some dadaist stunt trying to prove how many b.o.-infested skateboard hipsters you can stuff into a pho shop.

So we went across the street to Ti Couz where we discussed a possible appearance by Busby on a future episode of Junk Thief TV with this year's host, Alton Yowells VII. Sorry that I didn't properly introduce Alton in the Season 4 premier, though several people have asked "Who was that deranged creature with the blond afro?" Or "Who is she?" Well, Alton is a he and he is the creative director and chief astrologist here at Junk Thief Entertainment. He'll be appearing before the camera more this year as I step back and take more of a management role at Junk Thief Entertainment as we branch out to Timore Leste and Catalonia.

Well, maybe we can coax Busby to sing a few jazz tunes when he returns to our show. He does a dynamite version of "Get Out of Town". I think there is something about Norwegians like Busby that is a natural to jazz. For years I've loved Norwegian pop star Wyncke Myhre (who had to go to Germany to make it big) and the late jazz stylist Monica Zetterlund. Monica did some great work with Bill Evans, but I love her stuff done in Norwegian the best.

Latley I've been really big on Radka Toneff who covers Bulgarian folk songs, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Kurt Weill and Jimmy Webb. I'm thinking I might have Busby sing some of the more complex Jimmy Webb tunes from Secret Garden when he drops by.

Searching for the Holy Grail of Mediocre Spaghetti

To celebrate his return to the blogasphere, yesterday afternoon Bryce Digdug and I had a very early supper at Emmy's Spaghetti Shack in the more inner part of the Outer Mission. At first I thought Bryce might be wanting to go so early for the Blue Hair, er, Blue Plate Specials. Though, since it's located in the south end of the Big Lots Plaza, perhaps they're blue light specials. Regardless, I soon realized Bryce had likely wanted to arrive early to avoid being caught by the paparazzi.

Neither of us had spaghetti and opted for their halibut special which was very tasty. Yelp reviewers had heralded Emily's as "the best place in San Francisco to wait over an hour to be served mediocre spaghetti." So I was a little irked that my meal was very good and came in about 20 minutes.

My theory is that the best way to tell the difference between a provincial city and a world class city is that the former tend to call their restaurants warehouses and the latter prefer to name them shacks. Big Lots, however, is the great equalizer since all people need a place to buy cereal packaged during the Reagan administration and 24 packs of Jolt cola.

Bryce, who gets around the Mission on a John Deere, didn't seem to be at all concerned that he's paying over $6 a gallon for the diesel that keeps him mobile. Perhaps that interactive map in today's New York Times confirms why. Northern Californians have the nation's highest gas prices, but we extend the smallest percentage of our income on fuel. I guess that explains why I've never received that $600 "incentive" check. The White House must have looked at that map and assume I drive a Humvee when I really walk.

The sartorial mood at Emily's is on the casual side, and I noticed Bryce catching quite few glances with his top hat, monocle and ascot. We're a bit more casual over here in la Dreta de Mision, and even I was wearing more informal running shoes.

That didn't diminish our conversation about the avant-garde films currently being screened at SFMOMA. Many of the film makers hail from UC Irvine which is noted for being the Godard-mill of the western hemisphere.

Apparently none of the films feature typeface erotica, but you can find that over on Bryce's new blog.

Bracing ourselves for the gale force winds, we headed up Valencia and passed Omer who was hawking his new duets CD recorded with Frank Chu, Out of This World.

Heading home, I passed the new gym on 24th Street where I saw several men lifting weights. I may need to report this place to the cops since I think that's where people have been training for those strong armed robberies that have been hitting the city lately.

When I came back home, I watched part of Jean Isidore Isou’s Traité de Bave et d’Éternité, a hard-core lettrist film. It contains one scene with an tilde and a semi-colon that I can’t discuss in detail on such a family oriented blog.

This One's for Bryce

May has not been a good month for quality media in the Bay Area. First there was the retirement of Dennis Richmond, and now even worse news. Bryce Digdug is retiring from blogging. While I've not had a chance to talk to him about it personally, I suspect this may be more on the order of when Cher and Streisand retired from touring, and people misconstrued that it was a complete retirement from showbiz. Or it could be a Prince-like move, and we'll soon see a site called "The blogger formerly known as Bryce Digdug".

Whatever it is, we'll miss his blog presence, but he's assured me that he might occasionally guest blog here when I'm in Ouagadougou or Bilbao. As a tribute, I thought I'd post one of Bryce's favorite songs, "Tapedeck" from Ronee Blakley's Welcome album. Not only did she introduce this classic in Altman's Nashville but she went on to costar with Susan Blakely (yes Blakely and Blakley on the same bill) in the legendary tele-movie The Oklahoma City Dolls, one of the best films ever made about a women's sports team in the Midwest.

Ironically, when I moved to San Francisco, in a desperate measure to conserve space, I let go of my senses and gave away my copy of Welcome to the Community Thrift Store on Valencia Street, only to buy it back a few months later. What goes around, comes around.

So, if you see a distinguished gentleman driving a tractor (in his case a 1978 John Deere TZ328) wearing a top hat and with Verdi and the Cowsills blaring from his tapedeck, chances are good that it's Bryce. Say hello, or check out his past appearances here as a guest star on Junk Thief TV.