Columns

Trader Joe's

The staff at the TJs outlet in downtown Berkeley got October off to a rousing start with "Spirit Week!!!"—a weeklong costume competition during which the TJ's staff showed up for work outfitted to meet seven different dress-up themes. Monday was "Crazy Socks Day," followed by Hawaiian Shirts Day, Pajamas Day, Pirates Day, Fun Pants Day, Sports Gear Day and, finally Superheroes Day. 

One of the regular staffers assured me that Spirit Week was a rehearsal for Halloween. Will the TJs staff transform into a skeleton crew of vampires, witches, ghosts, gremlins, and pumpkins? The word from the darkest recesses of the grocery aisle echoes a haunting refrain… "Wait and see." 

Main Berk Lib-Lab 

If you visit Berkeley's fine array of public libraries, you may have noticed how the librarians have devised a unique system to label books that have been placed on shelves awaiting public pick-up. Each of these books displays a large paper label with the readers' name prominently displayed—and magically encoded for privacy's sake. 

Here's how the code works: The pick-up labels truncate the customer's first and last name to single syllables and then reverse their order of appearance. The result looks like a casting call for a Star Wars movie. 

Among a recent collection of Library Labels (Lib-Labs, pronounced: "lieb-laibs") were the following: Hala Tho, Grow Ric, Green Ma, Gonz Gab, Gosi Kar, Gran Ari, Oros Joa, and NIxo Hol. 

Imagine the possibilities. If George Washington had made a request to pick up a book, his library label would have read: "Wash Geo" (which sound like an order to clean up a dirty planet). Ivanka Trump would be "Trump Ivan." Jared Kushner would be "Kush Jar." Steve Bannon would be "Ban Steve." Dianne Feinstein would be "Fein Di." Kamala Harris might be "Harri Kama." Michael Moore would be "Moor Mic." Noam Chomsky would be "Chom Noam." Barack Obama would be "Obam Bar." 

Karmic Strips 

Darrin Bell, the cartoonist behind the Chronicle's daily Candorville strip, recently took a gamble — and lost, sort of. 

Some background: Bell's strip features a journalist named Lemont Brown who happens to be unapologetically devoted to Culture Clash and Star Trek. Lemont frequently appears wearing shirts emblazoned with the Star Trek logo. 

So, the news that William "Captain Kirk" Shatner was about to be boosted into space aboard a Jeff-Bezos-Dildo-Rocket proved irresistible. Most comics are created weeks before they actually appear, but this week's Candorville took a risk and opened with Lemont proclaiming (on Monday) that "Captain Kirk blasted into orbit!" The strip was almost correct—except for the fact that it was printed the day before the actual launch. Fortunately, like a good reporter, Lamont included a number of corrections: "Not outer space. More like the edge of space. And not in orbit. More like poking up there for a few minutes and falling back down. And not a 'starship' but a Blue Origin rocket with an oddly familiar shape.' 

Ted Forth Faces an Existential Crisis 

Comic strip characters share a uniquely contained environment—they exist inside a series of square boxes (usually confined inside three "panels"). While the theatre stage has a "fourth wall," the two-dimensional comic world is trapped inside four walls. Occasionally, a cartoonist will challenge this constricted construction. Mark Tatulli's Lio is widely known for "breaking the frame." 

In the October 10, Sunday episode of the cartoon, Sally Forth, Sally and her husband Ted are seen at the breakfast table when, suddenly, Ted notices a "hard vertical line" on his left and Sally spies a similar line "on this side." Ted, starting to feel trapped, sputters: "We haven't just always been here, have we?" To test that observation, Sally stands up to walk out of the frame, leaving Ted to wail: "Augh!!! Sally! The whole front of your body! It's gone!" Still trapped in his frame, Ted is suddenly distracted by the word balloon drawn over his head and his panic turns to idle curiousity as he asks himself: "I wonder what kind of font that is." 

Further existential panic is averted in the final frame, which shows the Forths in bed, with Ted announcing: "Sally! Wake up! I just had the strangest dream." 

FSM's Wacky HUAC Roots Ruled a HUACy Error 

In a recent Daily Cal essay, Stanley Stott-Hall made the following claim: "Free Speech Movement Cafe’s namesake was, in part, triggered by a House Un-American Activities Committee subpoena issued for a UC Berkeley student." 

Not true, according to the Berkeley vets who oversee the Free Speech Movement Archives. 

As NYU Prof. Robby Cohen (author of The Free Speech Movement: Reflections on Berkeley in the 1960s) notes: "Yes, a Cal student was subpoenaed by HUAC in 1960, Douglas Wachter, a soph, who was a red diaper baby and CORE activist. Another Cal student, Meisenbach, was falsely accused of assaulting a cop at the SF City Hall protest…. Or course all this was 4 years before the FSM." 

FSM-A president Jack Radey adds the following:
"Simple and direct—the anti-HUAC demonstrations were an early sign of people, many from Cal, ready to defy authority. A UC student was indeed subpoenaed, but it had no direct effect on the foundation of the Free Speech Movement, which was in response to the UC Administration's efforts to ban political speech on campus…. 

"The Free Speech Movement's origins have been attributed by different ill-informed people as having been inspired by the International Communist Conspiracy (US President Clark Kerr), by incorrect techniques of toilet training during the 1950s (B. Bettleheim), as a product of youthful rebellion unrelated to any issues (various Sociology profs), to drugs (present but a very minor part of the culture THAT year) (Berkeley Gazette), to a lack of Jesus (some official spokesperson of His), to the Vietnam War (barely begun) (by many recent writers), to the Black Panther Party (not yet organized) (ditto) and to rock and roll (some dumbass preacher)" 

[Full disclosure: I [Gar] am a member of the FSM-A board.] 

[Editor's Note: I did take part in the anti-HUAC demonstrations in 1960, but I was not in California for the Free Speech Movement. Inexplicably, I'm nonetheless on the FSM-A list which I take as a compliment.] 

Another President Takes a Tumble 

Much was made about Joe Biden's double-stumble on the way up an airliner staircase. Recently, while digging through my collection of Berkeley Barbs, I came across the following report from November 1975: 

"While visiting Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts last week, President [Gerald] Ford executed another dazzling faux pas. According to reports on the Associated Press wire the following day, the President was 'tapped or hit' by a 'small American flag carried by a young boy.' Both Ford's aids and Secret Service personnel denied Ford had been struck. But is that the whole story? 

"The first reports, which came out over network radio the previous day, shortly after the incident occurred, painted a wildly different story. 

"'The President took another spill today,' was how the item started. It explained that a young boy struck the President with an American flag. Ford, seized with the jitters, flinched. As he backed away, he fell… over a woman in a whieelchair! 'The President was unhurt,' the broadcast continued, 'but he was heard to moan aloud.' Whether from pain or embarrassment wasn't made clear. 

"As the President was helped to his feet, a Secret Service man capped the incident by snatching the little boy's American flag and hurling it away. He was quoted as saying: 'Get that damned thing out of here!'" 

[Full disclosure: I wrote that item when I was a staff reporter for the Barb.] 

Steve Bannon, Loose Cannon 

Steve Bannon is a loose cannon but he certainly knows how to launch a volley. In addition to being a key Donald Trump strategist, Bannon has produced, written and directed 19 movies (many of them "conservative documentaries" attacking targets like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton). Here's a link to an overview of Bannon's work. 

One of his narrative films, "The Chaos Experiment" (from 2009), was a horror story about a mad scientist (Val Kilmer). And why is he mad? Because he believes global warming is real. When he is dismissed by critics, he gets even madder and resorts to punishing six of his most prominent detractors — by slowly cooking them inside a room-sized oven. Here's a trailer for the film. (Note: It's dubbed in German, which makes it even creepier): 

 

MECA's Holiday Invitation to Celebrate Palestine 

Mark your calendars: The 18^th annual Palestinian Holiday Crafts Bazaar is set to open on Sunday, October 24, from noon to five. The free event will feature "a unique array of gorgeous gifts from Palestine" with sales benefiting the children of Palestine. 

The event is being hosted by the Middle Ease Children's Alliance (MECA) at its 1101 Eight Street location in West Berkeley (near Gilman and San Pablo: entrance on Ninth Street). 

The crafts festival will be held outdoors (except in the case of a drought-ending rainstorm) and masks will be required. Holiday shopping items (direct from Palestine) include: pottery, olive word products, shawls, scarves, children's toys, clothing, jewelry, kitchenware, cookbooks and, of course, lots of award-winning olive oil. For more information, contact http://www.mecaforpeace.org. 

Trump Loyalists Seek Salvation with Sermons from Jesus of Kosovo 

The following video from Thom Hartmann may explain why White-Christian-Forever-Trumpers remain so devoted to the Holy Writ of Qanon. Documents obtained by MIT's Technology Review reveal that Trump's dotty devotees are getting their sacred marching orders from a bunch of Facebook troll farms located in Kosovo and Macedonia! 

Yup. According to leaked Facebook documents, 19 of the 20 top online White evangelical pander-pulpits visited by US e-worshipers are home-based in … Eastern Europe. These bogus accounts are reaching 75 million Americans a month—thanks to Facebook's holy algoritmns—and are parading under faux-holy names like "Jesus Is My Lord," "Be Happy Enjoy Life," "Smile and Shine," "Light of the World," and "Why Not Us?" 

 

Thanks for that video go to Laurence of Berkeley, who forwarded the Hartmann link and writes: "I've often thought that 'real' Christians should picket the fundy churches with 'radical' signs that say, 'Feed the hungry, Welcome the stranger, and Love your neighbor.' All, of course, from the Gospels." 

Mork Calling Orson: Robin's Been Reborn 

If you haven't seen it yet, here's the audition clip that's mesmerized millions of Robin Williams fans and appears to promise a movie miracle—the return of Robin Williams (in the personification of Jamie Costa) to the Big Screen.