Arts & Events

MONDAY, JUNE 9 -more-

Marshal McLuhan in his seminal book, Understanding Media (1967), differentiated between “hot” and “cool” media, the former requiring the viewer’s emotional involvement, while the latter is more abstract and detached. -more-

I think the Berkeley World Music Festival has come of age,” said Gianna Ranuzzi, founder of the fifth annual free festivities along Telegraph Avenue, indoors and out, as well as at People’s Park. This Saturday’s day-long, overlapping series of performances of music, song and dance will both build on the previous festivals and reveal new ideas, new collaborations which promise to enrich future events. -more-

It starts with a cold and cold-hearted opening scene. On a fog-shrouded road amid a desolate, Godot-like landscape, a cyclist appears in the foreground and heads toward the horizon where the road bends and vanishes. We hear a car swerve and a quick cut presents us with a close-up of the bicycle, twisted and broken with one wheel spinning. A couple steps from the car and the man kneels over the unseen cyclist as his lover stands at a remove, urging him to get back in the car. He does and the car pulls away. -more-

At a reunion, after years, between father and grown daughter on his 80th birthday in the family cabin on a Maine lake: “Look at our little fat girl!” exclaims Dad, and his daughter bristles. He later tells her divorced dentist beau, “Ethel is her Mommy. I’m not her Daddy. I’m ... Norman.” -more-

Back in the late ’60s, a rather buff hardhat was introduced on a variety show on TV to sing a song. Expecting an amateur rendition, the audience ended up gaping at a cocky, tossed off “I Gotta Be Me,” rapidly escalating into a full-scale production number of a striptease, hardhat coming off to reveal a cascade of hair, jumpsuit coyly shed to expose the thorax of a workout instructor ... -more-

There’s an old aphorism that says that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. Bad phrasing, I’d say. What this old saw attempts to convey is that you are more likely to get what you want when you go ahead and do something and face have to ask for forgiveness than if you were to ask for permission in advance, facing the possibility that your desire may be withheld. -more-

In my 20-odd years of studying and writing about bungalows, there are a few questions that have not been answered to my satisfaction. One of those questions is “What’s up with the big honkin’ pillars?” When the bungalow was exported from Britain to America to become an architectural symbol of the American Arts and Crafts Movement (and how that came to be is another question, which will not be answered here), gigantic pillars didn’t seem to be part of the deal. -more-

MONDAY, JUNE 9 -more-