Leave the Light On

Friday night was the 6-year Anniversary show of Porchlight, a local storytelling series created by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick. Every month, they choose a different theme, such as "Sleeping With the Enemy: the Sex Show" and "All I Got Was this Stupid T-Shirt: the Souveneir Show", and then local people submit their stories and are given 10 minutes to tell them. It makes for a wonderfully real, always entertaining, unique evening. There are no better stories than those that come from real life, and it's a reminder of how gut-wrenching and hilarious life can be.

I was introduced to Porchlight by my friend and culture-maven Beth. It was the night of our 2nd Yelp Book Club (quickly defunct), and since hardly anyone was going to show and the remainder of us disliked the book, she suggested that we go to Porchlight at the Swedish American Hall, a really cool historical building in the Castro. The theme that night was "Busted" and before we knew it, we were rolling in the aisles. I couldn't remember the last time I laughed that hard. My friend Suzanne even joined in by submitting her name for an impromptu 2-minute story on stage.


Just like in life, some stories are better than others, and some storytellers are better than others. My favorite ones are the ones that minimally rehearsed, but well constructed, with the speaker so full of passion about the subject that they crack themselves up. And there are so many interesting people that get up there - one night, a guy whose parents own the Wax Museum in Fisherman's Wharf got up to tell his story, using the head of Frankenstein as his "prop", which he later passed around the audience. He told about how his dad used to administer an unusual punishment to his children - if they were bad, he would drop them off in front of the museum late at night and they would have to walk through the Chamber of Horrors by themselves. It worked, like a kids version of "Scared Straight". Why not let the Mummy and Jack the Ripper do your job? Other parents should be so lucky.

The theme this past Friday night was "The Seven Deadly Sins", and since it was an anniversary show, it was comprised of some favorite speakers from past shows. The theme was broad enough to give each speaker enough leeway to be themselves, but as you may imagine, sex and drugs and humiliation (and sometimes all three) were common threads. They also had performances by some local bands, one of which was the Ian Fays, who I enjoyed very much.


During their introduction, Beth and Arlene talked about the fact that they have been approached by tv programmers, and have been asked to do Podcasts of their shows, but that they don't believe in recording them for two reasons: 1/ they don't want to affect the speakers' performances, knowing that they are being filmed or recorded and 2/ they really want to keep it local, a singular experience to the night, venue and city and time. I thought that was so great - and it's not as if these two women do not understand commercial success - Beth has published several books and Arlene works in real estate - but they do understand what it means to stay true to the nature of their creation. And there you have Reason #2789 that I love living in San Francisco.


I was lucky enough to run into my friend Beth and her fiance at Porchlight (and by "ran into", I mean that I heard her calling my name from across the room), and I sat with them in the balcony, which offered a comfortable and unobstructed view. With my $5 cup of plastic wine in hand, and hearing the laughter of friends beside me, it was one of those nights that makes you appreciate how the details of life are all so brilliant and colorful, and how, by sharing our experiences, we become part of a community in a very age-old, yet timely way.

It's a Crime

This week finds me surrounded by crime, criminals and ghosts - appropriately casting a sinister and spooky feel over the month of October.

With Charles's brother Danny and his wife Donna in town, a trip to Alcatraz was in order. We have lived here for 10 years and I had never made the trip out there, so I was as excited as they were to visit the famous island penitentiary.

It's quite something to be able to walk the halls which housed such infamous names such as Al Capone, The Birdman, and Machine-Gun Kelley. The island itself is peaceful and rather idyllic, with the sound of the waves and birds carried over the winds of the bay. The cell house looks like something out of a movie, 3 stories of cells in rows named after city streets - Michigan Avenue, Broadway. The cells are tiny and dingy, with each possession carefully arranged in the small space.


It was easy to imagine being confined there, with a view of San Francisco just out of reach, stripped of everything but the bare essentials. Some privileges (mail, books, time in the yard) could be earned through good behavior - but mostly prisoners had to sit by themselves and think. Many plotted escapes, and some may have gotten away. It is not really the conditions that would be the punishment, it is the removal of control in a man's life. Being owned by the state, not being able to make choices. The danger of being around the other inmates must have been very hard - nowhere to hide, and no one to call on for protection. I am reading a book by a former inmate, who I met at the end of the tour, and he said the biggest danger was being sodomized by other prisoners. That alone is far more scary than metal bars, any day - in fact, it may make me want to hide behind them.

Later in the week, I was able to get a half-price ticket to A.C.T.'s "Sweeney Todd" at the Geary Theater.


"Sweeney Todd" has been my favorite musical for many years, ever since I first saw it in London in the 1980's. That was the Angela Landsbury era, so productions were staged elaborately to be on par with the big shows of the time such as Les Miz and Miss Saigon. But it was not the sets or costumes that hooked me - it was the story. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - a tortured soul carrying out his own version of justice in a putrid, festering, desperate London - and his lover Mrs. Lovett, a calculating, opportunistic, and tenacious woman. Pure evil? Well, it would seem so, yet we have some sympathy for these characters. It is with both apprehension and glee that you watch Sweeney Todd slice throat after throat of his victims, crooning to his "friend", a gleaming blade.

I saw the show again in New York in the '90's and was reminded of how much I loved it. The music, by Stephen Sondheim, is original, catchy and clever - a relief from the tediousness of the Andrew Lloyd Weber McMusicals (don't get me started on "Phantom of the Opera"...ugh).

This new version, fresh from Broadway, was my favorite yet. The director John Doyle created a brilliant twist - instead of a full orchestra, he had the actors playing all of the instruments. It created a more intimate staging, and quite an intense exercise for all of the players. The set was minimal as well, with the creative use of props and furniture to help the audience visualize the scenes. And the characters were a beautiful showcase of oddities - from their sunken cheeks and hollow eyes straight out of a Charles Addams cartoon, to their quirky gestures and movements. This was evident especially in the characters of Joanna and Anthony, previously conceived as the expected beautiful young lovers, now realized as broken characters in their own right. It's easy to see why Tim Burton was drawn to this story, and it will be interesting to see how the movie turns out this winter.

So, I can't help but wonder what separates the rest of us from criminals, if anything? All of us started out life in the same way...some with more, some with less. Is it a lack of morals? A addiction to taking something from others? Psychosis? Ignorance? An overabundance of anger, with a lack of respect for human life? Or just a turn down the wrong path?

Could it be that our fascination with these people merely an exploration of the darkness that lives in our own hearts?