Do U Ubu?

Not that I need another internet diversion, I must sing the praises of discovering Ubuweb. How can you not be enchanted by a site with the declared mission of "a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. All materials on UbuWeb are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights belong to the author(s). UbuWeb is completely free."

There are some great films posted by famed outsiders such as Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures and George Kuchar's Corruption of the Damned. Not exactly outsider, but rare is the documentary Shanghai Jim aired on BBC in 1991 in which Empire of the Sun author J.G. Ballard returns to Shanghai and revisits his childhood home at 31 Amherst Avenue. Or a nifty documentary on the Bauhaus movement.

Then there is the wonderful 365 days project that features such jewels as Edith Massey singing "Big Girls Don't Cry", "Turn On!" the fabulous LP of Miss Pat Collins, the Hip Hypnotist, German Cowboys songs and the curious warbling of Madame Saint Onge, billed as the "French Mrs. Miller."

I would venture to say 95% of what they have will never be found on Netflix.

Speaking of Weimar

This version still holds up for me as I've been transferring my beloved 1976 LP to MP3, remembering when I saw it live and had a big crush on Raul Julia that went back to his Sesame Street and Two Gentlemen of Verona days. And in his hand, Nine wasn't that bad.


And speaking of Gisela May, here she is in 1981, eight years before the Berlin Wall fell in the DDR (a.k.a. East Germany) proving that the DDR wasn't all drab Stalinesque folk songs. At least her chorus boys were wearing red.

Winter Light, Winter Dark

There is something about early February that can always be tricky, especially if you live in northern California. We don't have a real winter here, but we have the rainy season. It doesn't get cold here (some idiots here call 45 degrees "cold"). But it gets wet, and we are deprived of my favorite type of light -- winter light.

The light in winter is so precious and stingy. I despise sunny, summer days, and I usually can't stand having direct sun on my skin -- except in winter. It is so delicate and precarious, hopeful and faint.

Winter Light is the title of one my favorite Bergman movies in which villagers question their faith in the nuclear age. I've been watching a lot of Bergman this winter -- currently on Wild Strawberries. It doesn't depress me, especially in the winter. Winter Light is also the title of one of my favorite Linda Ronstadt albums. While I will concede it's not her greatest, I think it's her most under-rated work. It's all about the warmth of home on a cold night, a beacon in the snow, to my mind at least.

Besides watching the Kurt Gerron bio-doc Prisoner in Paradise (dark, sad, fatalistic) I've been listening to a lot of Brecht and Weill. I became entranced by Brecht and Weill around age four when my pre-school played an instrumental version of the tunes from Die Dreigroschenoper. These two figured heavy in my life before Peter, Paul & Mary or the Beatles and still play a larger role. Brecht and Weill are perfect tunes for mid-winter nights, like a defiant cold fist in the face of adversity.

I have been transferring some of my favorite Deutsche Grammophon LPs of Weill and Brecht, especially those with Gisela May. Ah, Gisela May! No one holds a candle to Lenya's Weill recordings except for May.

There seems to be so much sadness and uncertainty in February -- from J.D. Salinger dying to those Teabaggers meeting in Nashville, like Weimar vermin trolling through the grave of Reagan to yank shreds of his rotting brain from his crypt in Simi Valley. All that talk of reviving Jim Crow literacy requirements and denying voting privileges to all non-English speakers and "celebrating" Reagan's 99th birthday. Watch out folks, are you ready to stomach a Reagan centennial next year that will culminate in 2012 right on target with the cataclysmic Mayan calendar? There was recently a move in the Bay Area to rename Mount Diablo to Mount Reagan. Wouldn't that be redundant? If it's called Mount Diablo, isn't it already named after Reagan?

But let's not dwell too much on the dark. Only a little over 1,100 cretins attended that teabag gig. Spring is around the corner. And there is plenty more Brecht and Weill to lift one's spirit

Was It Just the Haze of the 1990s?

Things left in the mind that we remember as being shining and glorious ultimately seem to be vaguely out of reach and haunting, even if they were really grimy, unpleasant inconveniences back in the day. When I wove through the snowy streets of SOHO to the film office where I worked in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I sometimes tried to imagine which alley off Greene Street was where my great-grandfather Rosenbaum was murdered in early 1889 before a mysterious stranger took his widow and 11 children to the Oklahoma land run a few months later, giving her and the children his Anglo-Saxon name, Biggs.

But I would soon be pulled away from those musings to purchase my "light coffee" in the sacred We Are Happy to Serve You cup pushed towards me by the surly Russian deli worker who clearly took no pleasure in serving me.

I liked arriving at the film office before the others, but much to my chagrin I would find my coworker Laura who grew up in the Bronx and often shared stories of the year she spent with her Cajun husband in Baton Rogue. That year scarred her, she assured me. We could argue about many a topic, but one morning I made the mistake of telling her about having enjoyed a couple of years earlier seeing the Brazilian film Opera do Malandro, Chico Buarque's take on the Brecht-Weill classic Die Dreigrossenoper. She railed at me, as a fellow Jew and lover of Weimar culture. How could I praise this sacrilege and insult to this masterpiece that procariously managed to emerge just before the influx of the Third Reich?

Even our precious coworkers had no idea what we were arguing about and with such passion. And for years I've been trying to find a copy of the film, even on VHS, to see if my impressions now 20 years in the past were ill-advised. The clips below -- from the 1985 film and a recent staging in Rio -- suggest that I was not that off base. I have a couple of feelers out to capture this obscure epic, the most expensive Brazlian film ever made at the year of its release. If I was able to find Skidoo, surely this one will return to me as well.

The Curious Appeal of Totalitarianism

What is it about once Fascist nations that appeals to me so often? Japan, Spain, Italy, Germany. Oh, and I also love France and la belle femme Madame Sarkozy, so that may squelch my theory. But French colonialists and royalists were not exactly pussycats.

Anyways, over the past couple of days I've been embroiled in the simultaneous Criterion releases of Mishima's Patriotism and Paul Schrader's Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. The second disc of the latter has some really groovy extras. I've seen plenty of interviews in Japanese with Mr. M, but there is an intriguing BBC documentary packed with several interviews with him where he speaks where he speaks in English. Sitting in front of a small statue of Mercury, he speaks as if he's channeling Noel Coward and pronounces vulgar as VULL-garr. Why did I wait so long on these two? And why weren't they released as one set? Even more mystifying is why I waited so long to get Theo Bleckmann's Berlin. It's a really superb, dense, lengthy CD. Though released months ago, it's still not on iTunes and hard to track down in stores. I've loved little, strange Theo for quite some time. I have to admire someone whose collaborated with Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, the Estonian National Chorus and Phillip Glass among many others. This one time champion ice skater who does throat singing, robot voices for Speilberg and wacko new music/jazz, actually has a near sh0w tune voice on this album. Well, maybe a show where all the sets have Dr. Caligari angles, the lighting casts shades of green on everyone's skin, and there is an impending feeling of doom despite the cheery sound of pitch-perfect voices accompanied by cellos, a deftly precise piano and wailing faint scream in the distance. Hearing a man sing "Surabaya Johnny" seems to get at the essence of Brecht's words, perhaps words that Brecht might have felt in the person.

If you've not hear it, here is the link to the recent Terry Gross/Fresh Air interview with Theo. He's wonderfully fey and dark at the same time.

Speaking of once Fascist nations, would anyone like to go with me to Buenos Aires next July?

Heute...

...In honor of Obama's recent Berlin triumph, I am listening to my favorite lesbian singer of dirty ditties, Claire Waldoff. She has the reputation of being Dietrich's first female lover, but I doubt that (not that Dietrich had female lovers but that they came that late). She's up there with Anita Berber with her monkey and monocle as far as my favorite Weimar characters.

Along with Guy Maddin, she's making me feel quite cheery in a darkly fatalistic way. how else would one want to have it.

Up a Dime

Although there are now reports of fuel at $5.25 in the Peninsula, Carlos did raise his price by a dime since yesterday. Maybe I should fill up now since I'll be in Portola Valley Friday when it will probably be $7.85 down there. Did someone say Weimar?

Dagmar's Deutsche Miserie

The weather in San Francisco has been horrific this weekend. After an almost too cool few days early in the week, we've had nearly 80 degree temperatures the past two days, making it miserable to be outside but requiring frequent trips into the heat to water plants that aren't accustomed to such horrible temperatures.

That's forced me to be inside much of the weekend but a good chance to complete Lenya Legacy DVD. Those interested in getting a copy can let me know. It's essentially a compilation of (mainly) Brecht/Weill songs introduced by Lotte Lenya and a rare, short documentary on her life and legacy. Mina Mazzini, Hildegard Knef, Nina Simone and Gisela May are all on hand, singing in a variety of languages.

The real joy of this, however, was discovering this very rare clip of Dagmar Krause singing "Surabaya Johnny". I only wish that it were in German, but she's no less dramatic in English. It reminds me why I think no one is better qualified to carry the torch of Lenya and Weill.

Little Dagmar came close to destroying at least a couple of my past relationships as I relentlessly played and played her definitive 1986 release Supply & Demand in which she sang the well known tunes of Brecht/Weill and the much lesser known but even more fascinating songs of Brecht/Eisler, the latter composed during their exile in Hollywood. Brecht and Weill were often praised for their sweet/sour or yin/yang combination, but Brecht and Eisler were more yang/yang, both ardent Communists and a much more intense, didactic experience.

And no one is better equipped to sing tunes like "Deutsche Miserie" and "The Lilly of Hell" than little Dagmar, the pint-sized red head sometimes called "The Voice of Armageddon". Hey, I'd take her over Mariah Carey any day.

I've also been listening to a good number of Dagmar's 1970s tunes with the pop band Slapp Happy, a German group that released mainly English language tunes.

Have Yourself a Very Weimar Weinachten

Am I the only one that caught the airing of the Rise and Fall of Mahagonny last night? Having long given up on any innovation coming from PBS, I do give a tip of the fedora to them for airing it at the peak of the gooey holiday specials. It was no surprise that Audra McDonald was brilliant and brought heart to a cartoon role, but at times she reminded me of Condi Rice -- a woman who whores herself to an evil empire in order to feed herself.=. Brecht's epic theater seems increasingly shrill and arch with the passage of time, but who can fault this production for melding together references to the Third Reich and Las Vegas. Mahagonny has long been a metaphor for many American boomtowns -- LA itself, Houston, Silicon Valley -- and echoes Kafka's Amerika.

This was a perfect finale to a year that brought us superb reissues of both Berlin Alexanderplatz and Threepenny Opera. I am humming Mortitat as I write this. "Violated...in her slumbers/Mackie, how much did you charge?"

Das Leben ist wieder schön

Besides coming home to be greeted by a stunning Baske fisherman, what could be more life affirming than to return from a business trip and reach down to find this at your front door. Nothing spells the holidays to me than dark, dismal Weimar culture, and having Fassbinder's take on it, in all 14 filthy episodes of Berlin Alexanderplatz, his epic swan song. Ive even cheated a bit an sneaked a peak at the short 1931 version of the story in the supplements section. There will be true reason to give thanks this turkey day.

Fully Restored and On Its Way

Oh, it is an automated response like the one that just popped up advising me that my two-disc Criterion edition reissue of G.W. Pabst's Dreigrossenoper has shipped and will be arriving just before my birthday that makes life worth living. This gets me more excited than a furry little guy under 5'9" with lots of attitude and style. Well, maybe equally excited. Send me him and the DVD and I'd be humming The Ballad of Immoral Earnings into the wee hours of the night.
UPDATE: Ah, leben ist gut. Leben ist sehr gut.

Beautiful Budd But No Cigar

Although I bought it at least a couple of months ago, I had never gotten around to viewing my copy of the DVD release of 1962’s big screen take on Melville’s Billy Budd. Though I’ve read it, heard excerpts of the opera and attended an early screening of Beau Travail, the post-modern take on the tale, I had never seen my own copy of it.

Friend and fellow blogger/writing group member The Blue Elephant has been trying for weeks to arrange for a screening, and it all finally came together last night with a circle of his friends over a wonderful Thai meal and viewing on a home big screen bigger and with a better sound system than at most of the theaters at The Opera Plaza or the Lumiere.

The film held up to its reputation, but I’m not sure I’d call it homoerotic. Homocentric is perhaps more accurate. While I’d agree that Terrence Stamp is mesmerizing, pretty and angelic, I never found there to be much about him, in this role at least, erotic. I know that many would disagree with me on that count, and it probably speaks volumes about what appeals to me. Since childhood, I’ve always been drawn to Goofus more than Gallant, the dangerous scoundrel, not the angelic do-gooder.

Pleasant find of the weekend was a $9 Japanese labeled DVD of Steven Soderbergh’s Kafka. A decade and a half later it holds up much better than I remember it from the original release, if only for seeing the grossly under-rated Theresa Russell whom I’d completely forgotten was in it. Even if it has more in comon with The Third Man than Kafka himself or anything he wrote, it has plenty of intriguing moments. The same cannot be said for the reworking of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari which has a somewhat similar look and aims for a similar vibe by bringing spoken dialogue to the 1919 masterpiece. When a somnambulist is given spoken dialogue, it loses all the mystery.

Forced synchronicity?

Written on a wall on 21st Street between Mission and Lexington.

Is there true synchronicity out there or is it an invention of the dreaded “spiritual but not religious” crowd as much as God is the self-serving love child of the Bible thumpers and rosary gropers, all denying that we live in a stew of meaningless chaos? Or, are we all in denial of the fact that life is a cabaret or at least a banquet? Or, most frightening of all, are we all just forever making return trips to an existential Home Town Buffet, clogging our psychic arteries with one more supersized order of Zen fries covered with tao gravy?

These questions were racing through JunkThief’s battered little rodent brain as he returned from an appointment in Berkeley and his phone rang just before the West Oakland stop. Unable to talk for more than 90 seconds, he did let his ex, W________ in Park Slope, know that he was willing to see the Weill-Lenya musical Love Musik despite generally negative reviews. And the Manhattan journey that just Tuesday looked to be sparse is suddenly jam packed, mostly with work appointments, and very little open space. Does it make sense to see a second rate representation of one of the most fascinating of Weimar romances? Oh, whatever, he decided, resigned to go with what happens as the travel sped like a burrowing gopher beneath the bay.

Deciding to take the 16^th Street exit and enjoy a stroll down the Mission’s version of Lexington Avenue, Valencia, JunkThief stepped into the Community Thrift Store where, as usual, they were playing far better music than most upscale retail outlets. In this case it was Marianne Faithful’s 20^th Century Blues. He probably lingered longer than he would have otherwise if only to wait until he had the chance to hear Marianne warble “Surabya Johnny.” If they played this stuff at Saks, he'd be bankrupt.

It just wouldn’t be right not stopping in at Paxton Gate. JunkThief really didn’t need to stock up on mink penis bones, but he did nab a few crustaceans and was thrilled to find UCB professor Mel Gordon’s The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber – Weimar Berlin’s Priestess of Depravity. To his delight, there is probably more text on the cover than inside which is jam packed with amazing photos of this zany gal that makes Courtney Love look like Amy Grant. It seems inevitable that JunkThief will some day meet Gordon who is perhaps the ultimate authority on all things Weimar or at least all things naughty from that era.

Arriving back at the JunkPlex he decided to check out Eva Deadbeat’s Stuck in Vermont episode promoting the Weimar-inspired SpielPalast Cabaret since Ms. Deadbeat herself will soon be converging on Der Kleine Alexanderplatz auf der Pacifik.

Now, do all those dots connect or is it just the Junkster’s brain collecting too much useless beauty? We like to think not, but if you agree, relive his late afternoon stroll home in this slide show that is here in part 1 and part 2.

Currently in the window of Million Fishes Artists' Collection at 23rd & Bryant.

Lenya Uber Alles! Sie Macht Eine Köstliche Number Drei

It's no secret that JunkThief loves Lotte Lenya and nice looking, sharp dressed men. How those two come together is From Russia to Love From Russia with Love. Now that the Bond franchise has been resurrected for the new Millennium thanks to Kate Moss' ex, a lot of the less familiar old Bond films are being reissued. Though generally well remembered, From Russia to Love From Russia wih Love has been a little hard to find or only available in eight to ten disc sets of all the films from the 1960s and 1970s. JunkThief likes most of the Bond franchise (except Roger Moore, but Timothy Dalton was a lot cuter than many folks gave him credit for), but it's not the first boxed set on JunkThief's list.

A new, beautifully restored version is a nice treat to have here at the JunkPlex.

As Number Three, Lenya is a deliciously butch omnivore, slapping around burly half naked Russians, and letting her finger explore a Soviet lass considering going into espianoge. As a Bond film, it's entertaining, but the screen only sizzles when Mrs. Kurt Weill is on the screen. Sure, her accent is more Vienna and Berlin than Moscow, but it's sure fun to see Pirate Jenny crack that whip once more.

Oh, and just to keep our traffic up, why not flash back to last summer's Casino Royale for a shameless republishing of the beach scene that made everyone forget whatever swimsuit it was that Ursula Andress wore all those years ago. Was there a Bond girl in this version of Casino Royale? JunkThief can't remember.

Shameless Cross Promotion (And It's Not Even Blogger Sweeps Week)

Ich weiß nicht warum, aber es scheint geben etwas sehr Weimar in der Luft diese Woche.

First there was Kusala’s mention of the book Weimar on the Pacific about the German exiles of Hollywood, and now it seems Eva Deadbeat – that brainiac siren of Vermont – is channeling the spirit of Sally Bowles and, more appropriately exotic, Anita Berber. Don’t know who Anita is? Shame on you! She was sort of the Weimar Courtney Love, that is if Courtney had been a bit wilder and much more uninhibited.

Sometimes I think Eva and I are the Oprah and Dr. Phil of the blog world. (I say stuff like “What is wrong with you people?” and “I want you to get excited about your life” all the time.) We seem to have this real lovefest/cross promotion thing going on. Maybe we should start a JunkThief/Deabeat Book Club and endorse emerging outre writers together. We could establish a school in Bosnia for young junk thieves and deadbeats...

Eva posted a nifty piece about Anita Berber and Kiki that is worth visiting. I think she’ll soon be much more of an authority than I, but I’m glad to have introduced her to a couple of wacky characters that were gone before even before our mothers were in middle school. Just save that last tango for me, Eva!

Rainer Returns

When word of the current screening of Berlin Alexanderplatz would be screened this month at MOMA, I was very, very hopeful that it might finally be coming to DVD. Today's article in the Times confirms that it is coming "later this year." So time to start thinking of stuffing the little ones' Christmas stockings with 13-hours of Weimar high operatic drama. Any guesses on the number of DVDs and price? I say three at $79.99. And, yes, it will be worth every little Deutschmark.