Passions ignite at The Crucible foundry in Oakland, CA.

Down by the West Oakland Bart station, often late into the night, one may observe mysterious flickering lights accompanied by loud explosions. If it ain’t gunshots, you can be sure some welder, sculptor or pyrotechnics whiz at the Crucible foundry is burning the midnight oil.

Founded by Michael Sturtz in 1999, this nonprofit educational hub of fine and industrial arts has attracted a highly motivated group of artists, artisans and students from all over the country. “From cast iron to neon, and from large-scale public art to the most precise kinetic sculpture, The Crucible is fast becoming the best-equipped public industry & arts education facility on the West Coast.”

Ballet star Tina Bohnstedt cruises in a vintage Pontiac (Firebird, natch).
Photo by Gary Wilson

Last year, audiences were astounded by the collective’s incendiary production of Romeo and Juliet. Their second annual “benefit fire ballet”, a decidedly ballsy interpretation Stravinsky’s Firebird, opens tonight:

[A] unique fusion of classical ballet, aerialists, acrobats, fire performers, break dancers…paired with fire and industrial arts. It’s definitely ballet with an industrial edge provided by Crucible artisans, a cameo appearance by a Pontiac Firebird, and a ballerina’s graceful pas-de-deux with a motorcycle stunt rider.

The production’s running every night through the 12th, with additional shows on the 16th, 17th and 19th. Proceeds from ticket sales will go directly towards supporting the Crucible school. All shows are expected to sell out, so if you’re thinking of going (and I know folks as far away as San Diego and Portland are making the trip) get your tickets in advance.

• official Crucible website
• Oakland Tribune article about Michael Sturtz & co
• “All Fired Up” Crucible feature in SFGate

Hot on the heels of its coverage of Anonymous and its commentary on Suicide Girls, Fox News goes where only mainstream news outlets the Boston Globe and Newsweek have gone before – coverage what they call the “SteamPunk Underground.” This morning, Fox made associations between steampunk and Columbine, describing the burgeoning movement as a “trenchcoat mafia for adults.” Concerns were raised by a team of “analysts” about the disturbing elements of steampunk fashion (rayguns, gas masks) and Steampunk Magazine’s unpatriotic attack on the TSA. Watch the clip below:

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The scene is Asheville, a small city in North Carolina with a much higher than average activist population, on a gusty day in late March. A line of about 60 people winds their way up through the center of downtown. In time to the pitter-patter of drumsticks on empty caulking buckets, they call and respond.

“What do we want?”/ “Peace!”/ “When do we want it?” Pause. “Now!” Off-kilter choruses of “there ain’t no power like the power of the people cause the power of the people don’t stop!” break out as the march continues. A single police car ambles by.

It was, on that afternoon, five years since the beginning of the Iraq war –- and protest was the order of the day, coast to coast. A thousand mustered in Washington, D.C. Some attempted to rope off the IRS building with crime scene tape, others harangued contractors from corporations such as Halliburton and Lockheed Martin. Los Angeles had 10,000, San Francisco 7,500 (including bike brigades). There were, as in previous years, the predictable smattering of arrests.

At night, on cue, there were vigils.

Clearer this year than ever is the fact that these protests are not a political movement. Instead the protesters have become another in a sea of alternative cultures. The signs, art and displays now less for the purpose of enacting actual change than engaging in an affirming ritual, hanging out with friends and self-expression. Despite the massive rise in the number of Americans against the war, protest attendance has actually declined.

Three days later, long after the protesters faded, American casualties in Iraq reached 4,000. The Iraqi dead are, literally, countless. As you read this, the blood continues to flow.

Coilhouse, is, of course, a love letter to alternative culture (says so right there in the mission statement). In many cases, all that’s expected from such a culture is affirming ritual, hanging out with friends and self-expression — serving to make the world more weird and wonderful than it was before. There can, of course, be political and social aims as well, but rarely are they the primary focus.

However, the devolution of the protest from political method to cultural theater is different. This is something intended for a particular purpose — to push society towards a goal — and touted as working towards that end by the organizers, groups and individuals who engage in it. In fact, the goals have been abandoned: these days, people go to protests like they do concerts.

Esteemed reader Tanya Vrodova says, “I love cabbage. I will do anything to spread the word about how awesome cabbage is.” To that end, she just introduced me to Chinese multidisciplinary artist Han Bing and his mischievous Walking the Cabbage (2000-2007) series.

Walking the Cabbage in the Subway Beijing, 2004 © Han Bing

Born in 1974 in an poverty-stricken village, Han Bing spent his childhood helping his parents farm the land and was the only student in his class afforded the chance to attend university. There he studied oil painting before moving on to less conventional mediums. His post-university work has focused on creating spontaneous, open-ended discourse that includes members of society who are often excluded or dismissed. He, like many other young Chinese artist, seems compelled to confront the dubious side effects of his nation’s obsession with urbanizing and modernizing at whatever cost.

From Bing’s website:

Walking the Cabbage (2000-2007) series of social intervention performance, video and photography works, Han Bing walks a Chinese cabbage on a leash in public places, inverting an ordinary practice to provoke debate and critical thinking. Walking the Cabbage is a playful twist on a serious subject—the way our everyday practices serve to constitute “normalcy” and our identities are often constituted by the act of claiming objects as our possessions. A quintessentially Chinese symbol of sustenance and comfort for poor Chinese turned upside down, Han Bing’s cabbage on a leash offers a visual interrogation of contemporary social values.

The Cabbage Walking Tribe in Harajuku I, Tokyo, Japan 2006 © Han Bing

Gamers everywhere are mourning the loss of Gary Gygax, godfather of RPGs. After recovering from the initial shock, my thoughts turned immediately to an old friend, author Wayne Chambliss, who knew the man personally. I’d like to thank Wayne from the bottom of my polyhedral heart for taking the time to share some of his memories of Gygax here on Coilhouse. ~Mer

E. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died on Tuesday. He was 69.

I can’t say I was surprised to hear the news. Last July, Gary told me he was already a year over his “expiration date”—the six months doctors gave him upon diagnosing his abdominal aneurysm. So, I wasn’t surprised. But I am hurting.

I don’t know why I miss him so much. I didn’t know him well. I spent maybe sixteen hours with him altogether. Sixteen hours on the porch of his house in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Two long, summer days. Even so, Gary was an easy guy to like. He looked like a cross between Gandalf and Stan Lee, with a Lucky Strikes voice and a big laugh. He was a marvelous storyteller, an autodidact with wide interests, and, of course, the developer of an incalculably influential game system millions of people have been playing all over the world since 1974—including myself and at least 33% of this blog’s masthead.

The original Dungeon Master.

There are plenty of obituaries online right now that cover the basic facts of his life. The one in the New York Times seems representative: it contains no misspellings, but also very little of the man I knew, however slightly.

My friend Paul La Farge does a much better job. In a 2006 issue of The Believer (“Destroy All Monsters”), he tells the story of our first trip to Lake Geneva in a way that gets Gary Gygax right. For anyone even vaguely interested in Gary’s biography, Dungeons & Dragons or TSR, I strongly recommend Paul’s article. In my opinion, it is the last word on the subject. Moreover, its postscript is a more fitting eulogy for Gary than anything I could write myself—or have read anywhere else about him.

Maybe it’s simple. Maybe losing Gary is simply part of losing something even larger I will not, cannot, get back.

Angel City is a strange place, a concrete sprawl with hidden oases of wonderful things not found anywhere else. These things are what makes this city worth inhabiting and tonight my favorite of all closes its doors forever.

Nova Express, presumably named after a William S. Burroughs book and decorated accordingly, opened its doors in the early 90s, the same year, in fact, that I landed in this country. It knew all the ways to my heart – excellent food, spectacular space-decor, low lights and late hours. I’ve now been going to Nova ever since my pre-teens, celebrating, mourning and meeting for, yes, fifteen years. In fact, the very first official Coilhouse staff meeting was held there, over some cosmic pizza and alarmingly powerful martinis.

I’ll miss the vintage anime projections, the hundreds of old plastic robots, the all-seeing Cthulhu in the corner, my favorite amoeba-shaped table in the window with its lava lamp askew, every last bit of the place, damn it. Cary Long is the owner and artist behind the awesome SciFi decor, to whom I tip my hat and say “Well done”. This was the first place I would name when asked about the best spots to visit in LA, the only place of its kind and it will be missed more than Cary may ever know. Please don’t go, Nova.

• Nova Express official website
• More photos I took tonight at the closing
• A friend’s thoughts on the situation and fate of unique venues

Famed German/American composer Kurt Weill was born this day in 1900. He’s best remembered for Threepenny Opera and other collaborations with playwright Bertolt Brecht.

A clip from the excellent September Songs tribute, shot in the early 90s:

September Songs includes some great interpretations from Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, William S. Burroughs and others, but this scene in particular slays me. Charlie Haden’s bass is just dripping with feel. The couple depicting Weill and his wife Lotte Lenya are dancing to a sublime old recording of “Speak Low” sung by Weill himself.

C.F. Wick, Berlin, Theater des Westens, 1987

Weimar culture flat out refuses to die. There’s still a freshness and an urgency to the stuff that keeps generation after generation coming back. So many of us cut our teeth on either Liza and Joel or Alan in Cabaret and that damned Doors’ cover of “Alabama Song.” Without Brecht and Weill, there could be no Rocky Horror Picture Show. I must’ve played “Pirate Jenny” with the band Barbez a thousand times, and even after all these years, the sight of my friend Amanda battering her Kurzweil keyboard (altered to read KURTWEILL) still makes me grin from ear to ear. We have yet to tire of the cabaret. Why should we, with its immortal pledge to sexual freedom, inclusion, and playful rebellion? I think so long as there are perverts and revolutionaries in the world with a taste for whiskey and melodrama, Weill’s music, and its filthy little children, will have relevance.

• Kurt Weill Foundation for Music
• Kurt Weill Onstage: From Berlin to Broadway
• abbreviated Kurt Weill discography
• Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin

Adam Shepard, this one’s for you:

(Song dedication inspired by Siege, thanks.)

Shepard is the author of Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream, a book that’s getting an awful lot of buzz right now. From an article at the CSM:

Alone on a dark gritty street, Adam Shepard searched for a homeless shelter. He had a gym bag, $25, and little else. A former college athlete with a bachelor’s degree, Mr. Shepard had left a comfortable life with supportive parents in Raleigh, N.C. Now he was an outsider on the wrong side of the tracks in Charles­ton, S.C. But Shepard’s descent into poverty in the summer of 2006 was no accident. Shortly after graduating from Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., he intentionally left his parents’ home to test the vivacity of the American Dream. His goal: to have a furnished apartment, a car, and $2,500 in savings within a year.

To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education. During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.

Adam Shepard asks, who is John Galt? No, really… who is he? Why are you laughing? (photo by Nicole Hill)

I’ll preface my opinions by stating that I believe wholeheartedly in the power of self-perpetuating positivity, of elbow grease over idle hope. Self-pity is certainly one of the more corrosive emotions in the human canon, and I have to think that even in the most dire circumstances, one can improve a bad situation by somehow preserving their sense of self-worth. (Easier said than done, of course.) That being stated, Scratch Beginnings is a self-aggrandizing, dishonest account that does not deserve the hype.

A fresh-faced, educated young man in excellent mental and physical health who keeps an emergency credit card tucked into his back pocket isn’t starting from scratch. He’s starting from privilege. Shepard has had a lifetime of parental “you can be anything you want to be, sweetie” hand-holding to bolster him. It shows in every page of his solipsistic account.

Occasionally, while exploring the wild untrammeled frontiers of the world wide interwub, you’ll stumble across something so revelatory, so mind-bogglingly exquisite, it knocks you back several feet, clutching your head and speaking in tongues. Today I had just such an experience. Like Nietzsche who gazed too long into the abyss or Icarus who flew too close to the sun, I shall never be the same, for I have seen the cruel, implacable face of G*d:

Three examples of finely crafted deer butt alien head taxidermy, a.k.a. “assquatch art.”

Via Redneck Craft Tips by Don Burleson (the web page that cracked my poor brain open like a pistachio nut):

For centuries, families have enjoyed the camaraderie and joy of making alien heads from deer butts. Join the fun! Once you know the secrets, it’s easy to transform an ordinary deer butt into a work of redneck fine art. Let’s take a closer look at this ancient and noble craft…

All you need to create your own deer art is a styrofoam mannequin head, a fresh deer butt, a sharp knife and some glue and you are ready to get started making your own deer masterpiece.

This is indeed a disturbing universe.

Many people say that the real red neck art is the shaping of the deer anus to look like a mouth. This is the true test of the artists loving hand.

The anus can be made very simple, or you can stretch the anus for realistic effects such as smiles and frowns. In general, the leading deer butt artists concentrate on the details of the mouth.

Thank you, Mr Burleson, for exposing an ignorant city mouse like me to this rustic art form. Not since 1996 –when I fished a homemade hunting video called Mostly Squirrels out of the bargain bin at Poughkeepsie Video Barn– have I known such divine ecstasy.

“The only real depression is a depression of individual ingenuity.” -George Daynor

The exploits of George Daynor read like the synopsis of a Coen Brothers flick. As the story goes, Daynor was a former gold prospector who’d lost his fortune in the Wall Street crash of 1929. Hitchhiking through Alaska, he was visited by an angel who told him to make his way to New Jersey without further delay. Divine providence had dictated that Daynor was to wait out the Great Depression there, building a castle with his bare hands.

Daynor had only four dollars in his pocket when he arrived in Vineland, NJ. He used the money to buy three swampy acres of land that had once been a car junkyard. For years he slept in an abandoned car on the mosquito-infested property, living off a steady diet of frogs, fish and squirrels while he built his elaborate eighteen-spired, pastel-hued Palace of Depression out of auto parts and mud. His primary objective? To encourage his downtrodden countrymen to hold onto their hope and stay resourceful, no matter what. Daynor opened his homemade castle to the public on Christmas Day, 1932, free of charge (he started charging an entrance fee after someone made fun of his beard), and proved an enthusiastic, albeit eccentric tour guide.

“The Palace Depression stands as a proof that education by thought can lift all the depressed peoples out of any depression, calamity or catastrophe; if mankind would use it. The proof stands before you my friends. Seeing is believing.”

Daynor held back his wild red hair with bobby pins, wore lipstick and rouge, and enjoyed dressing alternately as a prospector or a Victorian dandy. Legend has it he kept his common-law wife, Florence Daynor, locked up in one of the Palace’s subterranean chambers during visiting hours. He offered his “living brain” to the Smithsonian for experiments (they declined). His Palace of Depression, a.k.a The Strangest House In the World, quickly became a popular tourist destination for folks on their way to Atlantic City.