Last night I had the pleasure of being in the general vicinity of Valencia's crazy guitar player.  You know who I'm talking about; he looks like Animal from the Muppets, stands in the doorway of the Social Security building at 22nd and Valencia, and yells about the sin of homosexuality while playing the guitar.  Anyway, I was sitting outside of Latin American Club discussing the difficulty of quitting drinking for 10 months.  Suddenly, he pops out of the neighboring laundromat screaming into the air, “I KNOW YOU ALL WANT TO KNOW WHAT A DIRTY HOBO IS DOING IN A LAUNDROMAT!  I'M JUST GETTING CLEAN.  I SMELL LIKE TIDE NOW!”

After listening to him ramble on for a few minutes, he made is way up to Valencia and we resumed our conversation.  “It's pretty easy to not drink, but most holidays are difficult.  Birthdays, Bay to Breakers, Boxing Day… everybody just assumes everyone is getting drunk.  The Fourth of July is the worst…”

Now the hobo Muppet had to have been a solid 20 feet away at this point, but he abruptly turned around, approached the table across the way from us, and started yelling hysterically: “THIS ISN'T THE FOURTH OF JULY, IT'S THANKSGIVING!”

Ears like a bat.

Up until today, I cannot say I ever really though anything of windows full of collectibles.  For example, I've always figured that maintaining “The Owl Window” on 18th and Dolores was merely a hobby of a creative individual.  However, SF Secrets takes us inside the apartment of George Heymont, also know as Mr. Owl Man of Dolores Park.  What's inside?  Walls of owls (of course), lots of photos of cocks, a poster from the “First Annual Hooker's Convention,” and some crazy stories surround sex, drugs, the eyes of owls, and people running naked across Dolores Street in fear.  While the tale doesn't end there, I don't want to spoil too much of the fun for you.

So, what's the person behind Valencia & 18th's “Troll Window” like?  Does their story involve prostitution, fetish porn, and maybe an unusual obsession with nocturnal creatures?  Also, is there some supernatural force on 18th that drives people to make art windows?

We all have so much to learn.

(SF Secrets)

Earlier this month, Google announced a new advanced search tool that  helps filter websites by the complexity of their content called “Reading Level.” Clearly we don't know what algorithm Google uses to rate the blogs (perhaps we can blame the commenters for the crappy results?), but who doesn't love comparing a few San Francisco blogs?

Apparently the subtle complexities of PBR, Four Loko, bicycles, and the richly in-depth analysis of burritos were lost upon Google because according to its new ”Reading Level,” the Mission is home to the dumbest bloggers in San Francisco. 

Although some of our life choices may prove otherwise, it seems that #TEAM_UppyAlmy isn't the dumbest blog in San Francisco. Congratulations Mission Mission.

2% more literate? Must've been all of that wikileaks coverage that really put us over the top.

Looks like Mission Loc@l is the smartest blog representing the Mission. Must be the writer's nicely uniformed profile pictures. With no writers drunk or wearing a Pooh Bear costume in their photos, these people obviously take blogging very seriously.

And how did the other neighborhood blogs reading levels fare?

Looks like the Tenderloin, mostly known for its homeless, drug addicts, prossies, schizos, oh yeah, and UC Hastings Law School students is smarter than 2/3's of the Mission blogs.

The Lower Haight's HoodscopeSF, slightly dumber than the TL, slighty smarter than the 2/3's of the Mish.

Haighteration leads the pack for the gutter punks, retired hippies, and USF students that characterize the Haight.

The Marina fares well with 7x7. But really, how complex are their posts? About as complex as this.

Finally, San Francisco, your smartest blogging neighborhood according to Google's ”Reading Level” is Noe Valley. Congrats Noe Valley SF for being pretty average, but a whole lot better than the rest of us.

On December 1 (World AIDS day of all days), this 1987 film piece, A Fire in My Belly by the artist David Wojnarowicz (who died of AIDS) was removed from the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery exhibition entitled Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. The publicly funded Smithsonian Institution was politically bullied by Catholic League president William Donahue, who called the film “hate speech” when he misinterpreted a shot of ants crawling on a crucified Christ as anti-Catholic. On December 3rd, on behalf of the estate of David Wojnarowicz, P.P.O.W. Gallery released an official statement addressing this controversy in order to illuminate the artists original intentions. The statement reads:

In a 1989 interview Wojnarowicz spoke about the role of animals as symbolic imagery in his work, stating “Animals allow us to view certain things that we wouldn't allow ourselves to see in regard to human activity. In the Mexican photographs with the coins and the clock and the gun and the Christ figure and all that, I used the ants as a metaphor for society because the social structure of the ant world is parallel to ours.”

Further, adding more hate than Serg's war against burritos are top GOP House members John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Eric Cantor (R-VA), who threatened the Smithsonian Institution's finances by cowardly flexing their political muscles if the Institution did not remove the film from the exhibition. Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said, “Smithsonian officials should either acknowledge the mistake and correct it, or be prepared to face tough scrutiny beginning in January when the new majority in the House moves [in].”. Cantor, the #2 Republican in the House and the #1 little bitch labeled the exhibit “an obvious attempt to offend Christians during the Christmas season.” Unbeknownst to Cantor, he is actually offending every single gay and straight allied person in America by furthering the hatred and misinterpretation of Wojnarowicz's work.

Seems like a lot of bah humbugs going on from the right-wing these days, and the political censorship of the freedom of speech/expression must be stopped. Starting this Friday night, two arts organizations in San Francisco will join the alliance of museums and arts centers around the country for a national protest over the removal of Wojnarowicz's A Fire in My Belly. SF Camerawork and the Queer Cultural Center will present a 7 p.m. screening of the film, followed by a presentation by art historian, writer, and activist Robert Atkins. Atkins will then provide historical background concerning political censorship and lead a panel discussion that will include queer activists, scholars, and artists. The discussion will culminate with Jonathan D. Katz, curator of Hide/Seek, joining the discussion from New York via Skype. The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will also screen this film Friday night continuously from 11pm until 2am in YBCA's Screening Room.

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled,1988-89, drawing/ gelatin silver print and acrylic on paper

But what is the SFMOMA doing to acknowledge their support of Wojnarowic's work as the only museum in San Francisco to own a work by the artist in their permanent collection? On Tuesday I was at the SFMOMA when I came across an exhibition entitled, The More Things Change, which opened just 10 days before Hide/Seek. The exhibition's mission statement reads, “revealing the museum's collection as a seismograph of shifts in contemporary culture, this continually evolving exhibition considers how the past persists in the present and how art engages with the world at large.” The work seen above is the Wojnarowicz from SFMOMA'S collection. Untitled is a piece that depicts a film still of a Mexican man missing the bottom half of his legs and the image on the right of the piece is a small drawing that Wojnarowicz did of legs to give to the man. Most of the footage in A Fire in My Belly was shot in Mexico on a trip Wojnarowicz took there, and it has been confirmed by the people of P.P.O.W. Gallery who represent the estate of Wojnarowicz that the still in Untitled was most likely from that time in Mexico.  I realize that the goal of The More Things Change is to use works made in the last decade, however, what better way to acknowledge the fact that their collection really does persist in the present and engages with the world at large than by adding Untitled to that continually evovling exhibiton? What about placing that piece in the show accompanied by A Fire in My Belly to contextualize the works importance with a statement by the curators explaining why Wojnarowicz is relevant to the present as his work is once again in the spotlight of a major national debate?

I'm extremely happy to see so much support from the San Francisco community against the censorship of artistic expression in the United States, but SFMOMA can do better. If you cannot make either of the screenings this weekend, you can watch the vimeo of A Fire in My Belly at the top of this post.

• UPDATE: SFMOMA is set to provide the public with a free screening of A Fire in My Belly on Tuesday, January 4th at 5:30pm with a discussion to be held directly after. 

To learn more about this work, the artist, and the controversy surrounding the film and exhibition please check out the links provided below:

• P.P.O.W. Gallery
• Silence Still Equals Death
• Modern Art Notes
• C-Monster