blog
Prop 8 Protest
5.26.2009 — On Grove and Van Ness today, traffic was blocked by protestors opposed to the California Supreme Court’s decision this morning to uphold Prop 8. Police were managing a traffic reroute and arresting the protestors quietly, one at a time. It was a peaceful event, no apparent anger between the protestors and the cops, who both […]
The Light is Dying
11.25.2008 — You pursue an ideal and hold on to something which approximates it. Then you lose that thing and pursue an imitation of the thing that approximated the original ideal. Then you lose that, and pursue a poor copy of the imitation of an approximation of an ideal. To dramatize this, the film uses the device of a cinematic "synecdoche": a part substitutes for the whole, a stage serves to represent a city, and the imitation of life becomes life. Life imitates art which imitates life.
The College Bubble
10.25.2008 — In her book Generation Debt, Anya Kamenetz portrays a generation desperate to keep up, to achieve, and to be financially independent, taking massive debt for granted as part of life, hooked on cheap luxuries and trapped by ever-more expensive necessities—primarily education.
Who Killed Brian Marquez?
10.6.2008 — Walking down Mission Street in the Excelsior on my way home, I found a billboard carrying something other than the usual corporate brands and lifestyle messages. The youth and the youth as an infant. A reward offer splashed in red. The simple question couldn’t be more chilling – who killed Brian Marquez? I found other […]
A Tour Underground
8.23.2007 — As published 8/3/06 in the Sacramento News & Review. The Balkans are a place that defies description, a complex patchwork of ethnic and religious identities with an intricate and violent history. Shon Meckfessel, a young writer born and raised in Sacramento, grew to love Eastern Europe during his travels there. Enough, in fact, to create […]
Secrets and Shame
3.28.2007 — The raw humanity of its narrator, Doug Abbott, is the only thing that keeps I Cried, You Didn’t Listen from being a mere laundry list of horrors in this scathing exposé of the California Youth Authority.