With a thriving gig economy, a seemingly endless stream of tech start-ups flooding the market and millennials taking over the workplace, for many, work looks very different than it did just 10 years ago.
Eric and Deborah Read, who moved to Fairfax in 2006, have decades of creative ad agency work between them. Eric owned the Sausalito-based Brand Engine and managed 40 employees for almost 15 years, and Deb has worked with multiple consumer brands in large agencies. Last January, the husband-and-wife team opened their own shop in their house, converting their master bedroom into a light-filled, spacious, modern workspace that they refer to as their “home studio.”
MarketBrand is the name of the couple’s business, and they focus almost exclusively on food and beverage products. They have helped local businesses including Iron Springs Pub & Brewery, Mighty Leaf Tea, Clover and Organicgirl with their brand strategies and positioning. Along the way the two have discovered a particular affinity for working with smaller brands.
“With a couple of decades of experience in this business, it’s nice to start working with start-ups and entrepreneurs,” says Eric, who can’t say enough about both his clients and community in Fairfax. “We go out of our way to hire local designers and freelancers from the agency world—many are based here in Fairfax and San Anselmo.”
Deb appreciates the proximity to their children’s schools, activities and more. “I feel like this iteration is really where it’s at—it fits our lifestyle,” she says. The duo also notes that their clients enjoy meeting with them in their quiet, comfortable space that’s conducive to the kind of creative and collaborative work they do.
“We have really gone back to our roots,” Eric says.
Here’s a fact that some Good Earth Natural Foods-goers might find surprising: Right in Fairfax resides a shoe designer who has worked at big-deal brands like Esprit, Sam Edelman and more. That might become less of a secret soon, however; Naomi Reed, who has lived in the town for more than three years, is launching her own brand, Bird of Flight, and aiming high. Speaking of Good Earth, Reed recently saw a customer strutting across the store in high heels. “I thought, who is this and what is she doing here?” Reed says with a laugh. “That’s not what the local aesthetic is about.” Her own brand will be much more in line with the local vibe.
Reed, a graduate of Parsons design school and a New York native, has been a shoe designer for more than 30 years, most recently working for Latigo Shoes, and has seen her designs on the shelves of Sundance, Anthropology and beyond.
“I spent my whole life working for other people, primarily men, and I decided, now or never,” she says of the shift. Reed decided to launch a shoe brand that will combine comfort and stylish looks; Bird of Flight’s first collection, to arrive to selected stores later this year, is all about soft moccasins, comfy yet chic flats and slip-and-go clogs.
“I hate the looks of comfort shoes,” Reed says. So she designed hers with an ageless, universal appeal. Made of leather exclusively, the shoes are manufactured in Brazil. “Customers are tired of the same shoes, made in China,” she explains. And yet, she adds, “My goal is to keep the price-point affordable, as not all people want to spend $300 or $400 on a pair of shoes. It also meant a lot to work with people that have a history of shoemaking.”
Previous to Fairfax, Reed lived in San Anselmo, after trying for a while to split her time between New York and Vermont with her family. “It sounds good on paper, but it was too crazy,” she says. Here, she designs with the artistic, effortless client in mind, both locally and globally.
“Whenever I’m in Paris there’s something about the style that rings true to me; nothing is fussy, tricked-out, over-designed, and there’s a natural feel and elegance.”
Describing her own shoes as “earthy without being too crafty, a little boho, a little casual, inspired by vintage,” Reed chose an untraditional route to promote them. Instead of selling directly to consumers online, as many emerging brands do, she capitalizes on her existing relationships with retailers in a variety of places, and feels out the field.
“I know they’re important despite the fact it’s not the trend,” she says. Fairfax, however, is a huge influence on the operation. “In Fairfax, there’s a Berkeley-ish boho thing going on, people are cultured and aware, so I’m affected by that.”
Another inspiration is the local lifestyle. “Going to yoga, going to the playground, running errands … everything is seamless and the wardrobe follows you from day to night. My shoes tie into that, being so soft.”
While Reed’s favorite pair are leopard clogs, she hardly has time for the leisurely activities that they’re meant to accommodate. Being her own boss, she says, comes with a hefty price tag. “There’s so much else to do!” Reed exclaims, “I just keep joking saying that my assistant didn’t show up to work today, just because I don’t have one. I literally work 24/7, while designing for someone else you’re just focused on the process. But it’s exciting!”
Bird of Flight; birdofflightshoes.com.
There’s been talk around Marin County that all sorts of cool things are happening in San Anselmo. Usually this means an arrival of a buzz-worthy restaurant (like Madcap) and a beautiful, photogenic boutique. The latter would be Muse, the 1-year-old abode of decor and accessories, which joined Neve and Hawk on the town’s style frontier last February. Owner Sophia Wood subscribes to the role; she’s lived in the area for two years and always, across jobs, has enjoyed minimal and modern design.
The Muse tagline is ‘Be inspired to create a beautiful life.’
“The boutique is a good mix of Scandinavian and modern influences and a West Coast aesthetic,” she says. Among other brands, Muse carries a variety of local standouts, from Corda by Kelli Ronci, to intricate modern macramé accessories based in Marin, to West Perro, Oakland’s standout jewelry and home accessories brand, to Nipomo blankets and Happy French Gang textiles, both out of San Francisco. In the past, she also carried Sefte, a brand dedicated to luxurious blankets and bedding by two sisters based in San Anselmo and New York City.
“A few things led to this current career,” Wood says. “I have a background in painting, photography and design, and I have worked at the curatorial department of the Folk Art Museum in NYC, where I saw a lot of self-taught artists. I thought of opening a gallery first, but I got inspired by looking at other boutiques and thought it’d be so much more dynamic and fun.”
San Anselmo didn’t have a lot to offer in the cute boutique niche, so Wood decided to fill the void. Aside from growing the business at Muse, the boutique’s opening led to a number of interior-design opportunities, with customers tapping Wood for her style and commissioning her to decorate their homes. She’s also working on developing fabric samples to offer custom designs for pillows. “I’d like to offer more unique designs,” she says.
How does Wood feel about San Anselmo’s shifting style scene? “Indeed, some new businesses have opened here recently, but I don’t want to take all the credit,” she says. “It’s a transitional period, as some of the traditional businesses are closing. I feel sad for them, but times are changing, and boutiques are succeeding.”
To extend the boutique beyond the brick-and-mortar, Wood is maintaining an attractive Instagram account, as minimal and inviting as the store itself. “I like minimalism because it’s calming, and it ties into my love of yoga, and on the boutique level, I want to create an experience that’s simple, without too many distractions.” Yoga has been a career choice in the past for Wood, but “it felt like I [was] performing,” she says with a laugh. “I’m much better behind the scenes, I guess.”
Spring is an exciting time for any boutique, and Wood is looking forward to it. “This season, I am obsessed with mustard yellow, washed-out pastels, deep velvets, caramel leather,” she says. “I am adding a line of ultra-delicate fine jewelry, round pillows, round bags and Corriente cowhide rugs, and looking forward to getting our custom pillow program started with a selection of curated fabric samples that speak to our aesthetic.”
Stay tuned.
Muse, 566 San Anselmo Ave., San Anselmo; musecalifornia.com.
Jared Huffman wants to know if I’ve seen the latest from Jerry Seinfeld as he eases into the passenger seat and invokes the popular web series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”
“You’re supposed to pick me up in some sort of interesting vintage sports car,” he says.
“Yes, I have seen it and I’m calling this story ‘Covfefe in the Car with my Congressman,” I tell Huffman, a riff off the Donald Trump neologism that emerged from the president’s Tweeting fingers last year.
The congressman lets out a short laugh and I ease my less-than-interesting Honda CRV out of a parking lot at Casa Grande High School campus, where the North Coast pol had just addressed a jam-packed auditorium filled with Petaluma upperclassmen. The subject was seriously unfunny: Gun control in the wake of the Parkland, Florida school shooting last month, which left 17 dead and sparked anew the national convulsion over gun violence in schools and what to do about it.
After the shooting, local students and educators in Sonoma and Marin counties reached out to the popular two-term congressman and he obliged them with a visit. He’s supporting a renewed ban on assault weapons, enhanced background checks, raising the age of purchase to 21, and banning large-capacity magazines.
Earlier in the day, Huffman had spoken to an attentive group of students at Lagunitas Middle School, telling them he was in the San Geronimo Valley in West Marin after House Speaker Paul Ryan had sent congress home. Ryan couldn’t deal with the heat being generated by Parkland survivors. Following the Parkland shooting, teenagers had come to the capital and crashed Congressional offices to demand action on gun control.
Now we’re now headed back to Huffman’s district office in San Rafael and the afternoon 101 is smooth sailing as Huffman reflects on the gun-control moment, the wild Trump ride so far and the dysfunctional congress he’s been a part of since first elected in 2012.
The Time is Ripe
Just last week Huffman had signed on to articles of impeachment against the president, which zeroed in on collusion, corruption and Trump’s general disdain for those parts of the constitution that don’t protect gun rights. Huffman’s support for impeachment comes with an acknowledgement that even if the merits for impeachment are unimpeachable, the politics are a different story.
“I’ve been in favor of impeachment almost since the beginning of his presidency,” Huffman says. “I’ve been waiting for the most serious and viable articulation for the grounds for impeachment. It is sort of a ‘ripeness’ issue and honestly, the politics still aren’t right. I feel that I have to constantly manage expectations on this issue. It would be pretty reckless for me to lead people to think that we’re on the verge of actually impeaching Donald Trump, because we are not.”
For the time being at least, impeachment is a partisan pursuit. Guns are a different story altogether. There’s a chance (a very slight chance) that Trump could have a “Nixon in China” effect on the gun-control debate, given his simultaneous fealty to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the fact that he threw the organization under the bus in the presence of a visibly stunned Senator Dianne Feinstein.
“Trump has the unlikely credentials to actually move the politics on this issue,” says Huffman as we drive. “If he had the skills and the focus to do it—unlike you, who just took the wrong exit—but the problem with Trump is his ADD and the fact that if we get excited about what he says one day, he is likely to say the opposite the next day and you can’t count on him for anything.”
The kids, on the other hand—are they going to save the world where the adults have failed? Huffman’s talks to the teenagers last week were of a piece with a growing consensus around Parkland and its aftermath, which he reiterated to the middle-schoolers.
“We may just have the opportunity to push through some changes that wasn’t possible a couple of weeks ago,” he told the teens in Lagunitas that morning. “The difference is not what happened, but how young students responded.”
Huffman invoked gun-control efforts by Newtown families in Connecticut, and by former congresswoman Gabby Gifford as he called them “great champions on this issue, but there is something about how your generation is carrying itself.”
The Parkland shooting is one of a few existential questions swirling around student life early in the divisive days of the 21st century. Gun violence in schools presents an obvious and direct existential threat to them; global climate change is a less direct and visceral, but equally scary proposition for young people. Then there’s the old standby of global thermonuclear war, on top of an administration that’s creating quite a bit of chaos for LGBT and immigrant youth these days with its various crackdowns amid the generalized sense of a national crack-up.
“You’ve got to start with the acknowledgement that these kids are right, and when you look at these issues, our generation and the preceding generation has screwed a few things up.”
We talk a bit about the youth movement of the 1960s within the context of mocking comments being directed at the Parkland survivors. The venomous “crisis actor” nonsense around Parkland survivors David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez also reminds that the 1960s students who fought for civil rights and against the Vietnam War were unpopular among much of the country. Huffman says that for every member of a youth movement, there’s a “grumpy old man in a lawn chair” who doesn’t want to hear it.
During his school appearances, the congressman kept his critiques of Trump within the boundaries of the gun-control debate and the reality-show president’s response to it. In his talk to the middle-schoolers, he didn’t mince on his view of arming teachers, calling it both a dumb idea and a stupid one.
Youth Movement
In Petaluma, Huffman asked for a show of hands among the assembled students to see if anyone supported arming teachers, and the response was overwhelmingly in the negative—three or four hands raised in support, while more than 100 arms shot up in opposition to the proposal. Teeing-off on another Trump comment, one student asked him why all school shootings happened in places marked as “Gun Free” zones, and Huffman gently rebuked the premise of the question, given that there was an armed guard at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who didn’t do anything.
The students’ questions spoke to their own media savvy and connection with other issues of the day. Syncing with the demanding and unapologetic tenor of our times, one Lagunitas student asked if Huffman had taken money from the NRA. No, he said. “Generally I want you to get A’s,” he said to the kids gathered in the gym that morning. “But I’m proud of my ‘F’ rating with the NRA.”
Later in the car Huffman says the youth activism now afoot is telling for what it disproves: That kids today aren’t invested in changing the world they’re about to inherit.
“To their credit there is something about these kids right now that is making them inject their voice, and that hasn’t always been the case. I’ve been visiting schools for a long time and there is a level of engagement that is sort of stirring right now that’s great to see, and it’s also a real relief, because I worried that when Donald Trump was elected that young people would say, ‘This is the new normal, maybe politics is just a reality show and a food fight and we don’t need to take them seriously,’ and that hasn’t been the response, at least what I’ve seen.”
The Trump overhang is everywhere, he says, and it’s a further toxification of a politics that was already pretty mean before the country elected Trump. The adults are in the room acting like children and crying about “they are coming for your guns,” while the children are getting shot or watching their friends and teachers get shot. Nowadays Republicans are either kissing up to Trump because of the dirty-30 percent Trump base that must be tended to, while others are saying they’ve had enough and are retiring from Congress altogether. Who is winning that fight over GOP hearts and minds?
“I think more and more are falling into the latter group,” he says. “It’s unfortunate that they have to do that as they announce their retirement, and it sort of speaks to the fact that when it comes to being in Republican politics today and actually holding office, Trumpism is the dominant force.”
Toxic Climate
The toxicity brought on by Trump has trickled down into town halls and committee meetings, says Huffman, who is the second-ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, a dream assignment for him. He recounts a recent dust-up he had with Texas conservative Congressman Louie Gohmert over environmental issues connected with Trump’s proposed wall.
Congressman Huffman talked to local teens last week.
In issues of national security, the Department of Homeland Security has lots of leeway when it comes to adhering to environmental law. For that reason, the border wall would have a zone around it where environmental law didn’t apply—but Gohmert wants to extend that zone to 100 miles out from the border. Huffman wasn’t having it and told the committee that the GOP was angling for a cruel twofer: “You get to bash Mexicans and scapegoat the environmental laws at the same time,” he recalls saying, at which point he started to argue with Gohmert. The constant stream of extremism has taken a toll.
“I don’t deal with it as well as I should,” he says. “I have found myself getting increasingly flippant and feisty and even taking the bait and getting into some rather unpleasant conversations with my colleagues lately that probably aren’t wildly productive. But it frustrates me … My patience is wearing thin with some of that and I think the country’s patience is wearing thin. It’s just not sincere, some of this posturing and extremism, and to continue to try and be deferential and genteel about it, just doesn’t feel right in this moment.”
Huffman name-checks some prominent media figures of the right who have seen the light—Michael Gerson, Bill Kristol, former congressman Dave Jolly. “I served with [Jolly] for a term, he’s a pretty conservative guy and he’s just going off on these guys,” Huffman says. “That tells me that something is going on here. Our job is to help the Republicans help save their party by just beating the shit out of them this fall. And a lot of Republicans are calling for that.”
Back in the San Rafael district office, Huffman has the iconic Truman sign on his desk: “The Buck Stops Here.” Huffman is 54 and has two teenage children—and like his childhood political hero Harry Truman, hails originally from Independence, Missouri.
Given the hyper-partisanship of our times, I ask Huffman if there’s anyone in congress who he would identify as the conservative version of himself—anyone who he admires on the right. He immediately identifies Nebraska Rep. Jeff Fortenberry.
“He is a quality human being,” Huffman says. “I would be proud to take Jeff Fortenberry around with me in the district to meet my neighbors and friends; they would love him, and he would love them. I’m just as comfortable as can be around Jeff, we get along great, and he is a pretty conservative Catholic Republican. We talk a lot about religion too, which is always interesting because he is an intellectually curious devout Catholic and I’m a humanist who doesn’t believe in God.”
For his part, Fortenberry feels the same about Huffman and says he’s honored not only by his peer’s shout-out, but that a reporter at a left-leaning newspaper would call about it, given “the basic breakup of the media into segments that appeal to [a] base.”
“I have great respect for Jared,” he adds, describing Huffman as a very good friend who is both “intellectually honest and effective … He has a noted character trait of being very respectful in dialogue, and I really admire that.”
Toning it Down
I ask Huffman if there are any constituencies he wants to crack in a third term. “There are a number of constituencies where I want to build better relationships, and probably would be farther along today than I am but for Donald Trump and the difficult politics that we’re in right now,” he says.
He singles out Republican-leaning organizations such as the Rotary Club and the Farm Bureau as places where he’d like to build bridges but can’t, “because we’re all kind of on edge, and if we might once have had some differences of opinion and perspective, but we wanted to work together, that’s harder to do now. The flip side of that is that politically, my base, and a whole bunch of people that used to be apolitical and moderate, are animated and would show up at a town hall and do a lot of the things I’m asking them to do.”
Given the tense, Trumpian climate, Huffman says he goes out of his way to not tick off any absent Republican parent. “Even now I try, when I’m talking to school groups, to have some balance, to show some respect and to validate others’ perspectives because I know that they’ve got parents and they’ve got their own sensibilities, and I want it to be a civic exercise when I do this. Every now and then you’ll get a disgruntled parent.”
Or a disgruntled Republican who is also looking to build bridges. Huffman recalls a recent town hall in Windsor where he was approached by a woman who gave him her card and said, “‘If you ever want to talk to a Republican call me, but I feel like you were very disrespectful of the Republicans in the room tonight.’ And I told her right there, I said, ‘I think you’re right, actually.’”
The final existential issue of the day is Trumpism and whether the -ism will outlast the man—and Huffman thinks it will but with a catch: Future Trumpists won’t be saddled with the incoherence and the cult of personality that the party leader brings to the spectacle now unraveling. The ‘paranoid style’ in American politics is as old as dirt and Huffman says he “doesn’t know what Trumpism will mean 10 or 15 years from now, long after Trump is gone, but it might actually be more coherent than it is with this kind of crazy man driving it.”
All the more reason for the kids to seize these various existential crises from the clenched fists of angry, armed white men. Covfefe!
This week in the Pacific Sun, our cover story, ‘Gav for Guv?’, is a Q & A with Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who makes his case to be governor of California. On top of that, we’ve got a piece on Kona’s burnt coffee, an interview with author/actor Greg Sestero, who wrote the book that the film ‘The Disaster Artist’ is based on, and a story on Micah Nelson, Willie Nelson’s musical son, who will be playing this weekend in Bolinas. All that and more on stands and online today!
ARIES (March 21-April 19): On September 1, 1666, a London baker named Thomas Farriner didn’t take proper precautions to douse the fire in his oven before he went to sleep. Consequences were serious. The conflagration that ignited in his little shop burned down large parts of the city. Three hundred and 20 years later, a group of bakers gathered at the original site to offer a ritual atonement. “It’s never too late to apologize,” said one official, acknowledging the tardiness of the gesture. In that spirit, Aries, I invite you to finally dissolve a clump of guilt that you’ve been carrying, express gratitude that you should have delivered long ago, resolve a messy ending that still bothers you, transform your relationship with an old wound … or all of the above.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The Committee to Fanatically Promote Taurus’ Success is pleased to see that you’re not waiting politely for your next turn. You have come to the brilliant realization that what used to be your fair share is no longer sufficient. You intuitively sense that you have a cosmic mandate to skip a few steps—to ask for more, better and faster results. As a reward for this outbreak of shrewd and well-deserved self-love, and in recognition of the blessings that are currently showering down on your astrological House of Noble Greed, you are hereby granted three weeks’ worth of extra service, free bonuses, special treatment and abundant slack.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): No one can be somewhat pregnant. You either are or you’re not. But from a metaphorical perspective, your current state is a close approximation to that impossible condition. Are you or are you not going to commit yourself to birthing a new creation? Decide soon, please. Opt for one or the other resolution; don’t remain in the gray area. And there’s more to consider. You are indulging in excessive in-betweenness in other areas of your life, as well. You’re almost brave and sort of free and semi-faithful. My advice about these halfway states is the same: Either go all the way or else stop pretending that you might.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): The Appalachian Trail is a 2,200-mile path that runs through the eastern United States. Hikers can wind their way through forests and wilderness areas from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia. Along the way they may encounter black bears, bobcats, porcupines and wild boars. These natural wonders may seem to be at a remote distance from civilization, but they are in fact conveniently accessible from America’s biggest metropolis. For $8.75, you can take a train from Grand Central Station in New York City to an entry point of the Appalachian Trail. This scenario is an apt metaphor for you right now, Cancerian. With relative ease, you can escape from your routines and habits. I hope you take advantage!
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Is 2018 turning out to be as I expected it would be for you? Have you become more accepting of yourself and further at peace with your mysterious destiny? Are you benefiting from greater stability and security? Do you feel more at home in the world and better nurtured by your close allies? If for some reason these developments are not yet in bloom, withdraw from every lesser concern and turn your focus to them. Make sure you make full use of the gifts that life is conspiring to provide for you.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “You can’t find intimacy—you can’t find home—when you’re always hiding behind masks,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Díaz. “Intimacy requires a certain level of vulnerability. It requires a certain level of you exposing your fragmented, contradictory self to someone else. You run the risk of having your core self rejected and hurt and misunderstood.” I can’t imagine any better advice to offer you as you navigate your way through the next seven weeks, Virgo. You will have a wildly fertile opportunity to find and create more intimacy. But in order to take full advantage, you’ll have to be brave, candid and unshielded.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In the coming weeks, you could reach several odd personal bests. For instance, your ability to distinguish between flowery bullshit and inventive truth-telling will be at a peak. Your “imperfections” will be more interesting and forgivable than usual, and might even work to your advantage, as well. I suspect that you’ll also have an adorable inclination to accomplish the half-right thing when it’s impossible to do the perfectly right thing. Finally, all the astrological omens suggest that you will have a tricky power to capitalize on lucky lapses.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): French philosopher Blaise Pascal said, “If you do not love too much, you do not love enough.” American author Henry David Thoreau declared, “There is no remedy for love but to love more.” I would hesitate to offer these two formulations in the horoscope of any other sign but yours, Scorpio. And I would even hesitate to offer them to you at any other time besides right now. But I feel that you currently have the strength of character and fertile willpower necessary to make righteous use of such stringently medicinal magic. So please proceed with my agenda for you, which is to become the Smartest, Feistiest, Most Resourceful Lover Who Has Ever Lived.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): The state of Kansas has more than 6,000 ghost towns—places where people once lived, but then abandoned. Daniel C. Fitzgerald has written six books documenting these places. He’s an expert on researching what remains of the past and drawing conclusions based on the old evidence. In accordance with current astrological omens, I suggest that you consider doing comparable research into your own lost and half-forgotten history. You can generate vigorous psychic energy by communing with origins and memories. Remembering who you used to be will clarify your future.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): It’s not quite a revolution that’s in the works. But it is a sprightly evolution. Accelerating developments may test your ability to adjust gracefully. Quickly shifting story lines will ask you to be resilient and flexible. But the unruly flow won’t throw you into a stressful tizzy as long as you treat it as an interesting challenge instead of an inconvenient imposition. My advice is not to stiffen your mood or narrow your range of expression, but rather to be like an actor in an improvisation class. Fluidity is your word of power.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): It’s the Productive Paradox Phase of your cycle. You can generate good luck and unexpected help by romancing the contradictions. For example: 1. You’ll enhance your freedom by risking deeper commitment. 2. You’ll gain greater control over wild influences by loosening your grip and providing more spaciousness. 3. If you are willing to appear naive, empty or foolish, you’ll set the stage for getting smarter. 4. A blessing you didn’t realize you needed will come your way after you relinquish a burdensome “asset.” 5. Greater power will flow your way if you expand your capacity for receptivity.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): As you make appointments in the coming months, you could reuse calendars from 2007 and 2001. During those years, all the dates fell on the same days of the week as they do in 2018. On the other hand, Pisces, please don’t try to learn the same lessons you learned in 2007 and 2001. Don’t get snagged in identical traps, sucked into similar riddles or obsessed with comparable illusions. On the other other hand, it might help for you to recall the detours you had to take back then, since you may thereby figure out how to avoid having to repeat boring old experiences that you don’t need to repeat.
Homework: What good old thing could you give up in order to attract a great new thing into your life? Testify at Freewillastrology.com.
Q: I’m a married gay woman. Whenever I ask my wife to discuss some problem in our relationship, she’ll say, “Can we talk about this tomorrow” (or “later”)? Of course, there’s never a “tomorrow.” I end up feeling resentful, and this makes even a minor issue turn into a big deal. Help.—Postponed
A: Putting things off is a relief in the moment but usually costs you big-time in the long run—like when you procrastinate in going to the dermatologist until the mole on your neck has a girlfriend and a dog.
Procrastination—the “See ya later, alligator!” approach to problem-solving—is defined by psychologists as voluntarily delaying some action that we need to take, despite our knowing that doing this will probably make the ultimate outcome much worse. Procrastinating seems seriously dumb, right? But consider the sort of tasks we put off. Chances are, nobody needs to nag you 45 times to eat cake or have what you’re pretty sure will be mind-blowing sex.
Research by social scientists Fuschia Sirois and Timothy Pychyl suggests that procrastination is a form of mood management—a knee-jerk emotional reaction to emotional stress that involves putting “short-term mood repair over long-term goal pursuit.”
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains that our brain has two systems—an instinctive, fast-responding emotional system that jumps right in, and a slower rational system that we have to force to do its job. That’s because reasoning—applying judgment to some dreaded problem—takes what Kahneman calls “mental work.” We have to make ourselves focus on the problem and then put cognitive energy into figuring things out.
Because personality traits tend to be consistent over time and across situations, chances are, your wife has a habit of ducking all sorts of emotionally uncomfortable stuff. Understanding this—as well as why we procrastinate—can help you see her ducking as a human flaw rather than a sign that a particular human doesn’t love her wife.
To keep resentment from poisoning your relationship, when she says, “Tomorrow … ” say, “Awesome, babe. What time works for you?” Maybe even have a regular weekly wine ’n’ chat. Ideally, the conversations should mostly be lovey-dovey, not the sort she prefers to have on the third Tuesday in never: “OK, I could have my toenails pulled out with rusty pliers or have this conversation.”
Q: I’m a 33-year-old guy on the dating scene, looking for a relationship. I’m pretty picky, so most of my dating isn’t going past the three-week mark. My problem is that it seems mean to call a woman and tell her why I’m not interested, but it also seems mean to just ghost—disappear on her without telling her why. What’s a good and kind way to end things?—Nice Dude
A: It’s disappointing when a prospective relationship isn’t working, but it’s much worse when it just disappears. Can you imagine coming home one day and your stove is just … gone?
“Ghosting” somebody you’ve been dating—vanishing forever, sans explanation—cues what psychologists call the “Zeigarnik effect,” which describes the mind’s habit of annoying us (over and over and over) to get “closure” when we have unfinished business.
Some people “ghost” because they have all the conscience of a deer tick; others believe (or tell themselves) that it’s kinder than laying out exactly why they’re done. But consider that when moving on, you only need to communicate one essential thing: There will be no more of you in their future.
Should a woman press you for further info, stick to vague explanations—“Spark just wasn’t there”—instead of going into detail about, say, how her breath reminds you of a decomposing gerbil. Also to be avoided are explanations that give a woman hope that your vamoosage is temporary—for example, telling her that you have to end it with her because you still aren’t over your ex. That can lead to a closure of sorts—of the zipper on the tent she’s pitched on the grassy area in the middle of your cul-de-sac. (Stalker? Um, she prefers “watchful urban camper.”)
Hero: We hate drones. They’re loud and invasive machines. Drones regularly follow people while they walk down the street or buzz them in a peaceful park. There’s even a report in Sausalito that a manned drone went through the doorway of a private home and continued down the hallway. That incident, along with others reported to the Sausalito Police Department, prompted the Sausalito City Council to craft a new law that flies in the face of drone owners. With a 5-to-zip vote, the astute council agreed to restrict drones from following folks, flying within 25 feet of houses or humans and violating someone’s privacy. No drone-flying while drunk either. Rogue drones could be confiscated and operators fined when the law receives a final vote (on Tuesday, February 27, after we went to press).
Zero: We like rats. They’re smart and affectionate pets. However, let’s be clear that there’s a difference between pet rats and wild vermin running rampant in a restaurant. Rodents have taken up residence in the Marin Civic Center Café, located in our resplendent Civic Center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We’re gagging as we write that rat poop and fur have been found repeatedly and whole rats have been seen skittering around the kitchen. In mid-February, the cafeteria was closed by the county, which ironically, is responsible for the rodent invasion, since they own the building. Food service provider Epicurean Group also failed, as it’s required to keep the kitchen clean. A note on the concessionaire’s website says, “… we deliver an incomparable dining experience!” Unfortunately, we agree.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the raving-mad Ophelia says, “Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be”—what we may become, that is. That fearful potential for metamorphosis is the center of Annihilation, writer/director Alex Garland’s follow-up to the brilliant Ex Machina. It’s based on Jeff VanderMeer’s trilogy of novels. While it’s better to crunch three volumes into one movie than to divide a book into three movies, a la The Hobbit, some material gets brushed upon—particularly elements about the marriage of the grieving heroine, a cellular biology professor named Lena (Natalie Portman). We first see Lena in quarantine: The only survivor of a doomed squad of all-female first-responders.
A dreadful anomaly has occurred in a remote coastal wetland. It’s nicknamed “The Shimmer,” a filmy permeable dome, swimming with iridescent colors like a splash of gasoline on wet pavement. Those who go inside never return. The head of the project studying it is a numb psychiatrist (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who has a theory of what’s occurring—either something kills the intruders within, or something drives them mad so that they kill each other. And the strange area is starting to spread, and grow.
Alex Garland, who can be one of the smartest directors making speculative fiction films today, fills his screen with terrible beauty. On the walls of abandoned dwellings, multi-colored lichens spread as thick as the impasto on a painting by the artist Jess. Bosch-like chimera spring upon and devour members of the team, and the mystery’s definition takes place on a Dali beach of baleful skies and crystal trees.
Annihilation seems to be about cancer as a science-fiction metaphor. Patients are told to visualize the disease as part of the process of “kicking cancer’s ass,” as they say. And what ass would that be? The terrifying part of the disease’s rampage is that it’s nothing personal.
Singer/songwriter Micah Nelson has been playing music since he was handed a harmonica at age 3 and placed onstage with his father, Willie Nelson. While he taught himself drums and several other instruments by jamming with brother Lukas Nelson, he was much more focused on visual art the first half of his life, and he speaks about his music in an artistic parlance.
“I’ve been writing songs for awhile, and mostly they have been recording experiments, sonic experiments,” Nelson says. “And that’s great. I’m in love with sound as a colorful art medium, as something to paint with.”
While music was never pushed on him, Nelson gravitated towards it and got serious when he joined psychedelic rock band Insects vs Robots in 2008. Soon after, he adopted the moniker Particle Kid for his experimental and often abstract tracks. Last year, the Los Angeles-based Nelson took his solo endeavor to the next level and released Particle Kid’s self-titled debut full-length record and a second full-length LP, Everything Is Bullshit, less than six months apart.
“I came to the realization of the complexity that can come from just a voice and guitar or piano,” says Nelson. “I challenged myself to start writing songs that I felt confident to perform in that stripped-down way, even without any kind of production.”
Once Nelson gained his songwriting confidence, he says the creative floodgates opened. “I stopped overthinking things,” he says. “If a song came, I just let it come in whatever form it was and tried to capture it on the spot.”
With plans to record a new album in March and an upcoming split LP with songwriter Sunny War coming out in April, Particle Kid plays as a trio with Insects vs Robots bandmates Jeff Smith and Tony Peluso on Saturday, March 3 in Bolinas.
“Fans of The Room are not like the fans of any other cult film,” says author/actor Greg Sestero, speaking on the phone from Paris, France. Earlier that evening, Sestero had attended a sold-out screening of The Disaster Artist, the Oscar-nominated film based on his book of the same name. The bestselling memoir describes the making of 2003’s The Room, dubbed by many the worst film of all time. Sestero, who grew up in Walnut Creek and Danville, played a key role in the film; his relationship with its writer/director and star, Tommy Wiseau, is at the heart of the book, and the James Franco-directed film based on it. The screening that night in France, Sestero says, was full of fans of The Room.
“Room fans,” he notes, “are very interactive and very clever, like Rocky Horror fans, but sometimes even more inventive.” Like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Room gained cult status, in part, through midnight screenings where audiences interact by shouting out lines, singing songs and hurling plastic spoons at the screen.
Spoons are kind of a thing in The Room. That and unison shouts of phrases like, “Because you’re a woman!” and, whenever a new character appears, “Who the fuck are you?”
“All of that is great,” Sestero says. “Fans who are passionate about a film share a common trait, a total willingness to be obsessive about some weird thing they love. And obsession is a good thing. I’m very thankful to obsessive people, because they made the unlikely success of The Room possible.”
“Speaking of success,” I mention, “I’ve heard that when you decided to write a book about your experiences on the set of The Room, you first studied a bunch of non-fiction books that went on to be made into Oscar-nominated films themselves.”
“That’s true,” he affirms, listing Ed Wood: Nightmare of Ecstasy, which became Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, and Between a Rock and a Hard Place, which became 127 Hours, plus The Pianist, The Social Network and others.
“I was imagining it as a film, as I was writing it,” he admits. “That was my goal. To write a first-rate book about the worst movie ever.”
I ask what he learned from reading those other books that he used in writing The Disaster Artist.
“For one thing, I learned that it’s more important to get wrapped up in really great characters than to get wrapped up in a lot of little historical details,” he answers. “What’s great about Ed Wood is that Ed Wood is just an interesting character. The book was more about his personal struggles, his cross-dressing and his desperate optimism than it was about the little technical details of his filmmaking.”
“So you decided to make it a relationship story, focusing on your off-the-wall friendship with Tommy Wiseau?” I ask.
“Exactly,” Sestero says. “Whatever else people say about him, Tommy is a great character. The Disaster Artist is not really about The Room. That just happened to be the vehicle for a story about a guy who believed in his dream more than anyone else around him.”
Given that the actual experience of making The Room was so frustrating and depressing, due largely to Wiseau’s outrageous on-set behavior and borderline abusive directorial style, Sestero also says that writing the book was something of a healing experience. “What a great challenge, right? To finally have some creative control over this story, and to turn it into a redeeming experience.”
“Have you considered writing a self-help book based on your relationship with Tommy?” I ask. “You should seriously consider that. You could name it something like ‘Tips on Surviving a ‘Disaster’ Friendship’ or something. I bet you’d actually have a lot to say about remaining friends with difficult people.”
“Maybe,” Sestero replies. “The biggest thing, I think, is just staying positive. It’s always trying to see the good side of a difficult person. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it if you can just let yourself be amused rather than irritated.”
That, Sestero has found, goes for difficult situations in general.
“Making that film,” he says, “I was put in so many situations where a lot of people would have quit. I just tried to view it all in terms of what was going for me instead of what was going against me. Looking back, it was all definitely worth it.”
With a thriving gig economy, a seemingly endless stream of tech start-ups flooding the market and millennials taking over the workplace, for many, work looks very different than it did just 10 years ago.
Eric and Deborah Read, who moved to Fairfax in 2006, have decades of creative ad agency work between them. Eric owned the Sausalito-based Brand Engine and...
Here’s a fact that some Good Earth Natural Foods-goers might find surprising: Right in Fairfax resides a shoe designer who has worked at big-deal brands like Esprit, Sam Edelman and more. That might become less of a secret soon, however; Naomi Reed, who has lived in the town for more than three years, is launching her own brand, Bird...
Jared Huffman wants to know if I’ve seen the latest from Jerry Seinfeld as he eases into the passenger seat and invokes the popular web series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”
“You’re supposed to pick me up in some sort of interesting vintage sports car,” he says.
“Yes, I have seen it and I’m calling this story ‘Covfefe in the...
This week in the Pacific Sun, our cover story, 'Gav for Guv?', is a Q & A with Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who makes his case to be governor of California. On top of that, we've got a piece on Kona's burnt coffee, an interview with author/actor Greg Sestero, who wrote the book that the film 'The Disaster Artist' is based...
ARIES (March 21-April 19): On September 1, 1666, a London baker named Thomas Farriner didn’t take proper precautions to douse the fire in his oven before he went to sleep. Consequences were serious. The conflagration that ignited in his little shop burned down large parts of the city. Three hundred and 20 years later, a group of bakers gathered...
Q: I’m a married gay woman. Whenever I ask my wife to discuss some problem in our relationship, she’ll say, “Can we talk about this tomorrow” (or “later”)? Of course, there’s never a “tomorrow.” I end up feeling resentful, and this makes even a minor issue turn into a big deal. Help.—Postponed
A: Putting things off is a relief in...
Hero: We hate drones. They’re loud and invasive machines. Drones regularly follow people while they walk down the street or buzz them in a peaceful park. There’s even a report in Sausalito that a manned drone went through the doorway of a private home and continued down the hallway. That incident, along with others reported to the Sausalito Police...
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the raving-mad Ophelia says, “Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be”—what we may become, that is. That fearful potential for metamorphosis is the center of Annihilation, writer/director Alex Garland’s follow-up to the brilliant Ex Machina. It’s based on Jeff VanderMeer’s trilogy of novels. While it’s better to crunch three volumes...
Singer/songwriter Micah Nelson has been playing music since he was handed a harmonica at age 3 and placed onstage with his father, Willie Nelson. While he taught himself drums and several other instruments by jamming with brother Lukas Nelson, he was much more focused on visual art the first half of his life, and he speaks about his music...
“Fans of The Room are not like the fans of any other cult film,” says author/actor Greg Sestero, speaking on the phone from Paris, France. Earlier that evening, Sestero had attended a sold-out screening of The Disaster Artist, the Oscar-nominated film based on his book of the same name. The bestselling memoir describes the making of 2003’s The Room,...
