Piercing the Dark Clouds Over San Francisco's Young Professional Culture Groups

I have supported San Francisco's leading arts and cultural institutions for as long as I have resided in The City.  The institutions themselves are fine, despite the problems their labor unions cause out of spite for the audience.  I used to think the young professional support groups associated with the arts were just as fine.  I no longer believe that to be the case.  My membership in those support groups no longer makes sense.

That's me, posing at the War Memorial Opera House in a publicity shoot for the San Francisco Ballet's planned giving program.  The arts matter to me and I once believed The City's young professionals I met at cocktail receptions felt the same way.  Some do, but most do not.

My decade of networking with like-minded people over cocktails bore a lot of fruit.  I connected with dozens of intelligent, ambitious people who are mature enough to handle professional responsibility.  I also encountered hundreds of forgettable people who were not worth my time.  I periodically dropped such people from my circle of contacts.  Let's review a recent sample of these losers, complete with pseudonyms . . .

"The Continental" . . . a Silicon Valley engineer who routinely spends more than he makes, and only avoids bankruptcy because his recent employers got acquired and gave generous severances to terminated employees like him . . .

"The Singing Jerk" . . . a very irritating man-child with no verifiable employment history, who inexplicably breaks into Rolling Stones lyrics in the middle of a conversation . . .

"The Fashionistas" . . . some gaggle of aspiring supermodels throwing all of their disposable income away on wardrobe and makeup, living for the chance to be featured in 7x7 Magazine or the Nob Hill Gazette . . .

"The Gold-Digging Barflies" . . . aging single women who would rather prospect for sugar daddies than hold down paying jobs . . .

The barflies have become particularly annoying because some of them became fixated on dating me, literally pushing away other high-quality women I would rather pursue.  I reached my breaking point with these idiots when I recently became aware of some totally unacceptable behavior.  It is the kind of conduct more typically associated with a certain alternative festival in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada than with a coterie of young professionals.  I don't have time to dig around separating factual narratives from spiteful rumors, because the rumors of this behavior are enough to put me off.  Where there's smoke, there's usually fire, and I don't need to know whether someone is actually burning.  I never witnessed this conduct, nor can I produce evidence that it occurs, but people I trust now corroborate its persistence.  The possibility of a pervasive problem is too alarming to ignore.  I am now compelled to take decisive action.

I declined to renew my memberships in several of these young professional groups.  One remaining membership expires in 2015 and I shall allow it to run out naturally.  I have also dropped a large number of people from my contact list, more than I have ever dropped in one sitting.  Three figures worth of useless humans are totally gone from my life this December.  These people had very little in common with me anyway and I won't miss them.  I still attend performing arts events, including galas, where these losers congregate.  I will not let them cross my path to blight my life.  The San Francisco War Memorial and Performing Arts Center was named for veterans.  I go there to represent my absent companions, and for my own well-being.

The effort I make in meeting people just to weed them out is now a burden on my schedule.  I have discovered that I am more efficient at meeting worthwhile people at strictly business-oriented events.  There's a common saying that a person is the average of their five closest contacts.  If I picked five people at random from those cultural clubs, I'd have a handful of arrested development jerks whose adolescent flights of fancy belong with Peter Pan.  If I picked five random entrepreneurs or freelancers from my business event calendar, most of them would belong in a boardroom.

Yuppie social groups were useful to me a decade ago when I had few friends in San Francisco.  Diminishing returns set in after age 40.  These social groups are to real philanthropy what a cargo cult is to a real economy.  Going through the motions of success makes little sense if participants can't back up their incantations with competence.  I would rather apply my competence elsewhere than go through motions with permanent aspirants.

I have overstayed the time I needed to spend in several young professional groups.  I will say goodbye to some people at a few remaining social events and ignore a large number of people who do not deserve my goodbyes.  I have been free of debt, addictions, and irresponsibility for my entire life.  Most of the people I used to know in the San Francisco yuppie crowd do not share those preferences.  It is time for me to go.  

Public Archives Can Build a Music Brand

Library science isn't just for geeky old spinsters anymore.  Information archiving and retrieval can be part of a brand building effort for digital properties.  Take the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as an example. Click on its Library Archives page to see the local music history they've unearthed.  Photos crammed into boxes from older students' attics are now online.  The SFCM's oral history project dovetails with other regional projects like UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library ROHO and the UC Regents' California Digital Library (specifically their Online Archive of California searchable database).

Uploading old folks' reminiscences is more than a way to keep their memories alive.  Mentioning the leading lights of modern music that have added star power to SFCM can help build that institution's brand when tied to an SEO campaign.  Impresarios like Kurt Adler, Frederica von Stade, and Midori Goto have made their joyful noises in SFCM's halls over the years.  Any performance materials they generated can be digitized.  Uploading their multimedia stuff to SFCM's website makes the whole site more attractive to Google's search engine.  Music enthusiasts worldwide will then have an easier time discovering SFCM's rich history.  The brand's value will rise and the school's graduates will be more marketable in music careers.

I wrote SFCM into my will because training young people in music is important to our society.  I don't want young musicians to go down the path of the San Francisco Symphony's stupid loser union musicians who deserved to be fired.  The Conservatory is exposing its students to entrepreneurial lessons that will enable them to produce and perform music in the free market.  Independence from collective bargaining may be one of the greatest gifts a musical education can give.  Archives of star performances can give an educational brand some superstar power in the marketplace.  

Too Many Fatso Opera Stars Ruin Performances

I'm an opera fan.  I've attended performances of the San Francisco Opera since 2005.  It's fun to see the spectacle on stage and hear powerful voices.  It is not fun to see fat slobs pretending to be opera stars.  This is a problem that cries out for remedy.

Fatsos in the opera pose a number of obvious problems.  Their extra girth burdens the stage.  You know how old and creaky some of the stages are at opera houses?  Well, some are even older than that.  A fat opera singer puts undue stress on the floorboards.  If they fall through the floor someone has to patch the hole and unionized crews charge extortionate rates for work these days.  Does your local metropolitan opera company want that kind of walking liability on their stage?  I don't think so.

Fat opera singers make productions more expensive.  Just imagine the extra material that goes into making their costumes.  That's twice the fabric right there compared to the cost of clothing for someone with a svelte figure.  I'll betcha catering is more expensive when tubbies are backstage.

Fatties are more of a financial risk because of their poor health.  Luciano Pavarotti died of pancreatic cancer and obesity is one of the disease's risk factors.  The guy probably could have extended his life expectancy if he had dieted.  Any opera company that expected to put him under contract toward the end of his life was out of luck.  Contrast his story with Deborah Voigt.  The London opera company that fired her from a production she was too chubby to perform still had to pay out her contract.  She lost over 100 pounds to become more marketable and it paid off.  She even looks healthier now than in her early days, as seen in her own parody video of her weight loss.  The lesson is clear.  Singers who keep up their health and appearance extend the length of their careers and enhance their earnings.  Opera companies and recording labels are wise to bet on slim singers.

The single most important reason for getting rid of obese opera singers is to have believable performers in a role.  There is zero scientific evidence for the long-held conventional wisdom in opera that heavier singers have better voices.  There is plenty of evidence that physically attractive people are more desirable employees.  Nothing is more laughable than a fat man portraying a Casanova-like adventurer or a fat woman portraying a Salome-like seductress.  Give me a break already.  Drama requires suspension of disbelief  but there's no way an overweight performer is believable in a romantic role.  Overweight people are simply less marketable.

Bring on the hot chicks like Anna Netrebko and Angela Gheorghiu who like to show off their goodies on stage.  Those gals deserve to be in the limelight because audiences want to see attractive performers.  Modern opera goers increasingly favor performers who can execute a full range of drama in addition to vocal projection and intonation.  We are all sick and tired of seeing walking lard buckets perform works of art.  

Impressions From The Asian Art Museum's Annual Report

I attended the Asian Art Museum's Foundation and Commission annual meeting last night to hear about their operations.  The top brass presented the museum's annual report, which oddly enough I cannot find online even though it is a public document describing a civic entity's operations.  I did find their audited financial statements and donor report on the museum's governance page although the reports for 2013 aren't up yet.

I noticed two financial matters from last night's meeting.  The first is that the museum's endowment has assigned over a quarter of its asset allocation, in both its restricted and unrestricted funds, to hedge fund investments.  That is worrisome.  Hedge funds tend to underperform their benchmark indexes over time and the fees investors pay for them are exhorbitant.  My second concern is that the museum intends to reduce its unrestricted fund to zero as the debt incurred to pay off the museum's relocation from Golden Gate Park  is paid off through 2040.  They intend to commit the entire endowment to restricted use after that date.  My understanding of the word "restricted" is that donor funds in that category can only be used for specific exhibits or programs.  I know that some donors like to set restrictions when they grant gifts because they like certain programs.  If it were up to me, some balance of any non-profit endowment would remain unrestricted to give the institution flexibility in addressing future needs.  It's not up to me after all, until someday when I'm wealthy enough to donate at a level that will obtain a seat on San Francisco's Asian Art Commission.

I did a double-take when the annual report described the KPIs the museum uses to measure success.  My bias as a private sector finance guy is to default to metrics like ticket sales, gift shop revenue, and donations as the primary measures of success.  The museum weights its non-financial KPIs like event attendance and website visits as equivalent to its financial metrics.  Their mission is to bring art to the public, not just make money.  I respect a non-profit that can increase its attendance and program offerings while breaking even if its endowment's ROI is at least beating inflation.

The Asian Art Museum is one of The City's jewels.  I wrote it into my will years ago and that's why some of the big-shots running the place like having me around.  

Gawd-Awful Opera Performance of "The Gospel of Mary Magdalene"

I've been mostly pleased with the reign of David Gockley at San Francisco Opera.  Most of the performances of established works have been top-notch on his watch.  The newly commissioned English-language works have been a bit off key.  The latest misfire in American opera is "The Gospel of Mary Magdalene," a world premiere playing this summer.  I sat through this one last night.  I felt like I needed a resurrection afterwards.

The only decent performer was the female lead, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke.  She hit all the right notes and physically exhibits the smokin' hot sensuality of a libertine temptress.  I was really hoping she would take it all off like Barbara Hershey did when she played Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation of Christ, but alas it was not meant to be.  The other lead performers were forgettable and could barely sing over the orchestra.  I was in a box seat and I could hardly hear Nathan Gunn as Yeshua until he somehow cranked up the volume in Act II.  I enjoyed hearing him in "The Barber of Seville" in 2006.

There were some incongruities in "Magdalene" that I could not explain.  The two policemen used the word "correlation" a couple of times.  I don't think the concept of a statistical correlation existed in ancient times.  Historical works by Karl Pearson (Biometrika: "Notes on the History of Correlation") and Douglas Curran-Everett in Advances in Physiology Education trace its modern lineage as a mathematical concept.  Another line in the libretto referred to the granting of "God's grace."  The concept of grace has a long history in Catholicism but its usage in ancient times was different from what a modern audience would understand from a Sunday sermon.  The libretto for "Magdalene" cited plenty of Old Testament references but I didn't see a supertitle reference for the "grace" line.

This opera can get away with odd word choices like those because it's conceived as a modern reimagining of history.  The tourists (excuse me, "seekers") in modern slob dress wandering around the excavation site on stage represent contemporary audiences inserting themselves into an old story and drawing out new, subjective meanings.  That works if the thrust of the story upon which artists hang those interpretations is believable.  This particular telling of "Magdalene" did not deliver a believable story.

The story was hard to follow because the librettist, composer, and other designers threw in plenty of incongruous distractions where there should have been dramatic build-up.  The pacing in Act I was incredibly slow.  The relationship between the Magdalene and Miriam was never fully developed, but the story arc just clumsily assumed they would get along.  The musical score was jarring in some places, with odd percussionist touches adding ham-fisted attempts at foreboding.  The music during what should have been the most romantic interludes between Mary Magdalene and Yeshua was either poorly-timed or non-existent.  This was definitely not Romeo and Juliet, a far superior representation of doomed lovers.  I did appreciate the effort to reimagine the female Gospel characters by putting classic lines into their mouths, like the abbreviated "let this cup pass from me" soliloquy.

I can recall other modern works that successfully inserted modern sensibilities into ancient texts.  I was so bored and frustrated with "Magdalene" that I started to imagine elements from those other works in this dreary opera just to liven things up a bit.  I wanted to see the alien spaceship from Monty Python's Life of Brian land in the excavation.  I hoped for a denouement where Mary Magdalene and Yeshua get married and run off to Gaul to found the Merovingian bloodline as described in Baigent, Leigh, and Lincoln's Holy Blood, Holy Grail.  It could even have used some campy fight scenes from cult classic Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter to liven up the boring dialogue.  The Magdalene's visit to the Nazarene's tomb featured a ghostly Yeshua rising from mist in the style of Bela Lugosi, making me wonder whether the librettist got his inspiration from underground literature like The Last Days of Christ the Vampire.  Yeshua didn't suck any blood, which didn't matter because the whole show sucked anyway.

I'll wait for the next operatic performance of "Salome" to see a good modern take on ancient times.  John the Baptist made an appearance in "Magdalene" but he's all over "Salome" in many ways.  "Salome" also tends to feature its female lead showing her all-natural goodies the way nature intended.  Aspiring librettists, take note.

The Haiku of Finance for 05/17/13

Silly steel beam art
Giant litter on the field
Take this junk away

SFMOMA Deposits Mark di Suvero’s Rusty Junk All Over Crissy Field

SFMOMA has gone and done it again.  They have installed artwork that boggles the mind.  Mark di Suvero is an artist who sticks big steel beams into the ground.  Sometimes he welds or rivets them together.  He even hangs giant steel balls on them that twist in the wind.  SFMOMA is paying for an exhibition of this art that runs until May 2014.  I had to see this for myself today, before crowds of know-nothing gawkers start playing "emperor's new clothes" just to look sophisticated.

I took the photo above while walking across Crissy Field from the southeast.  This scene looks like a bad industrial accident from a distance at a low angle.  It also looks like a junkyard from a high angle (when I drove in down Lincoln Blvd.).  A junkyard would be an improvement because junk can be crushed, recycled, and repurposed into useful objects.  This art installation allows for no such options; it is therefore less valuable than a junkyard.  Art should allow us to use our imaginations.  Here I go.  This array of random steel reminds me of the Czech hedgehogs the German army deployed on the beaches of Normandy to thwart an Allied landing.  These things are too big to stop tanks, so they must be intended to stop an invasion of Megatron and his Decepticons if the evil Transformers ever invade San Francisco.  I saw plenty of bulldozers and long-haul trucks around the Presidio today, so I will assume those are really Autobots clandestinely prepared to defend us.  The Presidio has long been a bulwark of the nation's defense system, after all.  "Autobots, roll out!"  My Ford Mustang would make a really cool Autobot.  I can imagine it vaporizing pointless art with some well-placed plasma beam shots, or something.

I took a second photo when I got close to this big red jumble of oversized pick-up sticks.  Remember that kid's game?  It was fun to play but this giant grown-up version is no fun at all.  I decided to liven things up by conducting a live-action interpretation of what this object reminded me of the most - a middle finger salute.  The artist has stated that his first memory of arriving in America was passing under the Golden Gate Bridge, and that his steel beams' color schemes pay homage to the bridge.  That's really funny.  The Golden Gate Bridge is a design classic and these beams are just beams.  The bridge serves a useful purpose and these beams serve to irritate.  The bridge is Art Deco.  These beams might as well be Art Yucko.  I truly believe that artists lacking in imagination deliberately create works that mock classical design and make fools out of patrons.  Speaking of the Golden Gate Bridge, the walking trail around the bridge toll center has a sample girder that was crushed to test engineering tolerances.  Maybe that bent steel could be part of this art installation.  Think about it:  One single steel column that performed a useful role alongside numerous steel beams that are totally useless.

I took this final photo of a big brown thing that reminded me of space junk displayed in the background scenes of the Star Wars films.  Maybe the Jawas decided this was too big to cut up and put into their Sandcrawler, so they left it here to scare Tusken Raiders away from their scavenging grounds.  I'm displaying the thumbs-down gesture as disapproval of the Jawas' poor business sense.  They could have scrapped this thing and sold it for at least a buck fifty.

This exhibit runs for a year.  A whole stinking, miserable year during which visitors to The City will scoff at our civic taste and locals will have their vision assaulted by eyesores.  I shake my head whenever our distinguished city leaders make our town the object of national ridicule.  It's even worse when "artists" exploit our lack of common sense to laugh all the way to the bank.  I received an invitation to the kick-off party that SFMOMA will hold for big shots tomorrow, May 18, at Crissy Field.  I have chosen not to attend.  I cannot stomach the sight of these monstrosities.  Instead I'll attend the Maker Faire this weekend, where real artisans make things worth seeing.

The Haiku of Finance for 04/03/13

Artistic career
Sell dumb stuff to rich patrons
Rake in the big cash

SFMOMA Wastes Time With Christian Marclay's "The Clock"

SFMOMA is one hip, trendy, happening place.  It shows off the latest fads among the professional curatorial circuit.  The latest thing to hit the walls at SFMOMA is a 24-hour video installation from Christian Marclay titled "The Clock."  This is twenty-four solid hours of nothing but brief scenes from film and TV that cue off displays of timepieces.  I attended a sneak preview for donors tonight.  I started off with free food and drink, and it was all downhill from there.

There is no narrative structure whatsoever to this piece.  A scene with an actor doing something at 6:30AM would cut to a scene of another actor doing something at 6:30PM, for no reason.  A scene with a digital clock would cut to a scene with a wind-up wristwatch, for no reason.  Cary Grant and Henry Fonda are spliced with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, for no reason.  They were forced to act side-by-side completely divorced from the creative context intended by their original writers, directors, and cinematographers.  This happened not because "The Clock" makes aesthetic sense, but because someone could get away with it.  This film exists because an artist and his editing crew thought it would be a neat idea to sift through thousands of hours of classic movies just to find scenes of people looking at clocks and watches.  It really is that simple.

I arrived at about 6:20PM and left before 7:00PM.  That was more than long enough for me to figure out that there was no point to watching any scenes at all.  I regretted staying that long; ten minutes would have been enough but even I have to fight my genetic limitations.  Our species evolved to respond predictably to audio-visual cues that are now well-defined by media practitioners.  Even Yours Truly is not completely immune but I get more resistant with practice.  The well-heeled art patrons who had preceded me into the darkened performance space were sitting in their comfy chairs enraptured with the mosaic of nonsense on the screen.  They are clearly not as highly evolved as I am, despite their extensive experience with private tutors, prep academies, and Ivy League diplomas.  The average YouTube mash-up makes more sense than "The Clock."  It enthralls people who can't overcome whatever dependency on intermittent reinforcement gets them through the day.  There's even a crowdsource effort afoot to reference every clip in the work.  Our society has invented a whole new level of stupidity if watching twenty-four hours of chronological movements spawns a mass effort to catalog the interstices.

Christian Marclay is a genius but not for "The Clock" or any other particular work of art.  He is a genius because he has figured out that the secret to success as an artist is to conceive of works that are so obscure that they defy evaluation.  This ensures they get foundation grant money and museum sponsorship.  Museums are paying about half a million dollars each for single copies of this testament to mass hypnosis.  I think this thing would be wildly profitable if it played online on its own website with advertising banners embedded on the page.  The emperor often has no clothes in modern art but refusing to notice is a lucrative career for many poseurs.

I sat through just over half an hour of this video installation tonight.  It was a waste of my time.  Some artists have too much time on their hands.  I checked my watch several times and eventually figured it was time to go.  I really needed a time-out.  I don't have time for this stuff.  Will I return to SFMOMA some other time?  Only time will tell.  Go see some real art if you want to have a good time.

Rant About SFMOMA's Worthless Mark Bradford And Rineke Dijkstra Exhibits

I support the arts.  Let's be sure we're all clear about that.  I especially like the arts in San Francisco.  I like the arts in this town so much that I want them to be as high in quality as they can be.  That's why I'm calling out SFMOMA's new exhibit of works from Mark Bradford and Rineke Dijkstra as being unworthy of serious consideration as art. I got a chance to preview these exhibits because I bequeathed a legacy gift to SFMOMA in my will.  I don't regret my gift, but I hope the museum spends its portion of my estate wisely after I've departed.  Stuff like this is not an encouraging sign.

I saw the Bradford exhibit first.  The guy taped over a basketball and called it art, some kind of tribute to an NBA player.  How juvenile.  He also papered over a room with black paper and masking tape.  That is something anyone can do with zero artistic training.  His most complicated works were collages of found paper printouts from advertisements that he mixed with tape, tinfoil, and other street junk before scrawling and scratching on them in various ways.  The whole thing was embarrassing to see.  It was even more embarrassing to see so many urbane sophisticates standing around admiring this garbage.

I sauntered over to the Dijkstra side of the fourth floor after becoming thoroughly bored with the Bradford exhibit.  I didn't get any more excited.  Her photographs had zero emotion, personality, or action.  I'm guessing that she directed each of her portrait subjects to look as bored and uninspired as possible.  The only photo full of life was from her bullfighter series, with one guy smirking at the camera after a successful fight.  He was the only subject I connected with, because I actually wondered why he was so full of life among all of the Dijkstra photographs.  The curators praised Ms. Dijkstra's video works as some kind of inspiration.  I just think they were pedestrian.  The teenage video subjects could have shot the videos themselves and no one would have known the difference.

I haven't been this turned off by an SFMOMA exhibit since I saw a Richard Tuttle exhibit in 2005.  That was the dumbest display of non-art I've ever had the misfortune to witness.  I didn't think SFMOMA could ever top that but these current exhibits come pretty close.  It's depressing to see an entire industry of art critics, curators, and buyers degenerate into praising nonsense for the sake of exploration.  Conceptual art has its place but seeing the same concept repeated in a single exhibition - bored photo subjects, junk wallpaper - demands some minimal effort at differentiation.  I'm all about innovation, but when experiments fail then the gatekeepers of our most prominent art institutions should discriminate in favor of quality.  Someone has to say the emperor has no clothes.