Photos: Coffee Common x NYC at A Startup Store: Coffee Common brings together world-class baristas and roasters with shared values, to create unique experiences that introduce people to the nuanced joys of exceptional coffee. We believe that great coffee is, at its best, a collaboration of an empowered coffee farmer, an artisan coffee roaster, a dedicated barista, and an enlightened consumer. (via LaughingSquid)

And we love LaughingSquid, but wonder why when they are nominally based in San Francisco, so many of their cool posts, and all their cool coffee posts, seem NYcentric…

Become a Giver for World Book Night 2012 | DIESEL, A Bookstore.

World Book Night 2012!  The idea is that on one night, throughout America, 1 million books will be given away by hand by tens of thousands of people.  Authors and publishers have enthusiastically agreed to print over 30 thousand copies of 30 different titles, to be delivered to pick-up locations throughout the country — mostly independent bookstores and libraries.  Individual readers will sign up to be Givers who agree to hand deliver 20 copies of a title of their choice to strangers in locations outside of their homes, their bookstores, and their libraries.  It may be a park, a prison, a school, a hospital, an intersection, an airplane, a bus.

The first World Book Night was held in the UK last year, and the idea obviously really caught on:  this year it is being held in the UK, Ireland and the United States.  The goal is to have 50,000 people hand out 20 copies of a book – for a total of one million books given away in the one evening.

The process is simple: you sign up with your personal details, and pick the three books you would most like to hand out from the list of available titles, then say a bit about who you want to give them to and why you want to give out those books.  The teams behind World Book Night will select (somehow) from among the applicants, hopefully so as to maximize the spread of books.  Books will be delivered to local bookstores for pick-up by the selected applicants.

I picked as my three choices (in order) The Book Thief, The Hunger Games and Housekeeping with the goal of distributing these to street kids and young people in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood.  The Book Thief was just too obvious a title for a free book program to pass up – but fortunately it’s also a great read.

Go, sign up, pick your own top titles to give to strangers.  It could be the beginning of all sorts of things – a friendship, someone’s love of literature, a social movement…

“My Other Ride Is a Light Cycle” – Threadless.com – Best t-shirts in the world.

World, Juliet. Juliet, World.  Enjoy.

She’s Australian. Of course.

For more on the scene here back in the day, check out San Francisco Punk Scene or Punk Turns 30.

The official homepage for the latest happenings with Hannah Hart.

Come and take a load off! Have a drink, have a think, buy a shirt, couldn’t hurt.

Big fans of poetry here. Be prepared for intermittent limericks.

Find out about floor pizza, and how all food containing cheese is really just an excuse to eat cheese – and watch Hannah cut out the middleperson – in her latest video.

Congrats to Mark Kermode – one of my favorite film reviewers – whose weekly review program on BBC Radio 5 Live, “Kermode And Mayo’s Film Reviews” is the number 3 most downloaded weekly podcast, worldwide, on the BBC.  Since the BBC began podcasts in 2007, the program has been downloaded more than 24 million times. (via BBC – Media Centre – BBC Radio celebrates billionth download.)

You can get more of Mark Kermode’s film reviews at Kermode Uncut – Mark Kermode’s film blog.

I also highly recommend his autobiography. It’s got some of his typically pithy and degenerate insights into the movies, but it could also serve as a guide book for anyone wanting to become a film reviewer. Though the internet has certainly changed the specifics drastically, it’s still relevant, and very, very funny:  It’s Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive.

And, oh yes, hello to Jason Isaacs.

A couple of favorites roll around again—which maybe shows that TCM’s programmers share my tastes, or perhaps just that their vaults are not as deep as they sometimes seem. On Thursday, 8 Sep at 3:30am TCM is showing the great Ealing Studios classic The Ladykillers (1955) starring Alec Guinness—and once again they’ve mislabeled this great black comedy as a “crime” picture. Then The Mouse That Roared (1959), with Peter Sellers and Jean Seberg, screens at 7am.

On Friday (at 5am), you can catch one of the great Spenser Tracy / Katharine Hepburn romantic comedies, Pat And Mike (1952). Hepburn is a multitalented athlete from an upper class background and Tracy is the fight promoter who takes her on as a client. At 10am, there’s a little known and seldom seen film from the great director, Nicholas Ray: Party Girl (1958), starring Cyd Charisse. At noon is a movie I’ve never heard of but am quite interested in: The Angel Wore Red (1960), directed by Nunnally Johnson and starring Dirk Bogarde and Ava Gardner as a priest and prostitute who fall in love during the Spanish Civil War. The synopsis makes it sound like sentimental rubbish, but I have a long-standing interest in the Spanish Civil War…

Michael Curtiz directed some terrific movies—including Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) with Errol Flynn, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Mildred Pierce (1945), and most famously Casablanca (1942). He was nominated for the Best Director Oscar five times, twice in one year (1938), and won for Casablanca. But he made a lot of movies—173 of them in a career that started in Hungary in 1915 and ended with his last movie in 1961, only one year before his death—and some of them were bound to be less than terrific. The ones showing Friday evening are in this latter category. Yankee Doodle Dandy proved that Curtiz could do decent work in a musical, but I’ll See You in My Dreams (1951) and The Jazz Singer (1953) are at best mediocre, demonstrations that musicals require more than interesting female leads—Doris Day in the former and Peggy Lee in the latter—and competent direction to succeed. Fortunately, TCM has some other Curtiz films playing this week.

Saturday morning (Sep 10) starts with a decent, albeit minor example of Curtiz’s work: the “Philo Vance” murder mystery The Kennel Murder Case (1933), starring Mary Astor and William Powell. Interesting trivia: both these actors have a connection to one of San Francisco’s adopted sons, Dashiell Hammett. Mary Astor is best know for her work as the wide-eyed and seemingly sympathetic, but endlessly duplicitous Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941), based on the novel of the same name by Hammett. Similarly, William Powell is best remembered as Nick Charles in the “Thin Man” series, also based on a Hammett novel. The “Philo Vance” mysteries were immensely popular in their day, with 12 novels, 15 movies (from 1929-47), and a radio serial. These days, though, they’re largely forgotten, while other mystery series from that era are still known and watched. Powell appeared as Vance in four of the films, but it’s his work in the six “Thin Man” movies (from 1934-47) that is remembered these days. Basil Rathbone played Vance in the fourth film in the series, but it is his other series from that period, the “Sherlock Holmes” movies he did with Nigel Bruce, that is still watched today.

TCM is showing more “Philo Vance” movies on subsequent Saturday mornings, so you’ll get a chance to find out what made them popular at the time. But if Curtiz’s “Philo Vance” mystery is basically of interest to film scholars or as a curiousity, the rest of Saturday offers at least two unqualified treasures: The Caine Mutiny (1954), directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Humphrey Bogart and Van Johnson, and The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner (1962), the classic “angry young man” film directed by Tony Richardson.

For the 9/11 anniversary, TCM pulls out all the stops. Sunday (Sep 11) is classics from start to finish—including Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in The Pride Of The Yankees (1942) at 4:45am; one of the first and greatest American musicals, 42nd Street (1933) at 7am; Woody Allen’s masterpiece Annie Hall (1977) at 1:15pm; perhaps the finest and most important of all “integrated musicals” at 3pm, On the Town (1949); Curtiz’s masterpiece Casablanca (1942) at 5pm; and one of Howard Hawks’ best, and one of the best Westerns, Red River (1948), with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, at 11pm. It’s an amazing day of film, selected in part by TCM’s guest programmers, two responders to the Twin Towers attacks.

For more…

• Ealing Studios – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Michael Curtiz – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Michael Curtiz-IMDb.com.
• Philo Vance – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• The Thin Man (film) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Sherlock Holmes (1939 film series) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Introduction to 10th Anniversary of 9/11-TCM.

It probably says something profound about changes in our society that where once there was the Chia Pet, we now have Chia Omega-3 Softgels—an excellent source of ALA Omega-3, with all sorts of wonderful health benefits.

For more: Chia products and other products by Joseph Enterprises.

Housesitting gives you a chance to occupy, for a few days or a week or two, another life, not just another house.

I’ve been housesitting for a friend this week in Petaluma, a smallish town about an hour’s drive from San Francisco. Coming from a flat on a busy street in the Haight Ashbury, the quiet is astonishing. No drunks staggering home from the bars, talking as if deaf, often primarily to themselves. No loud discussions or arguments from the street kids and homeless who kip outside the church across the street. No downstairs neighbor blaring his TV at midnight. No car crashes, accidents, sirens. No traffic.

And birds. I inherited an interest in bird-watching from my father, but it is not an easy hobby to follow for someone who prefers busy urban streets to fields and streams. San Francisco is probably one of the better cities in the world for bird-watching—I regularly see hummingbirds and hawks in my neighborhood park—but it can’t compare to Petaluma. This morning at breakfast, I saw out the french doors three turkey vultures circling over the block, hummingbirds in the backyard shrubs, a western scrub jay on the fence, a towhee and a couple of finches, and a red-tailed hawk swooped past at one point.  All in less than the time it took me to drink my coffee.

But the most interesting part for me, the most different, is the morning commute. Like the house, I have taken it over from my friend, copying her morning routine and commute, at least until I reach the City. After that, I have to go to my own job. (Pity—her’s is better paid.) I rise before 6am—obscenely early for me—and instead of showering and heading out to a café, I head downstairs, in pajamas which I have to put on for the purpose; her house has few blinds and the neighbors can see in. My flat in the city is high up and only standing right against the windows would I have to worry about my naked form causing distress and panic among the populace at large.

Boil water, grind beans, make the coffee. I suppose my mornings are a bit different from those of the woman for whom I am housesitting. She drinks tea, not coffee. And probably has little time for bird-watching in the morning as she has kids to care for and cajole through breakfast and off to school. But we leave the house at about the same time, walk through the same quiet small town streets in the historic part of Petaluma, full of beautiful old homes, large stately VIctorians that once belonged to the first families of the area, when it was the centre of a highly profitable agriculture district—eggs and dairy especially—and not also, and increasingly, a commuter suburb of the big city.

Then the wait for the bus: Golden Gate Transit bus 74, departing the depot at 4th and C Streets at 7:10am. There’s an informal line—not all that informal, people adhere to their places strictly and don’t cut in even to join a friend ahead of them, but its raggedness and the way it forms in a parking lot away from the stop and next to the portable coffee stand seems to be intended to suggest  its unofficial status, that it is an agreed upon convenience, nothing more.

Few people talk, which seems a bit striking to me. One thing I’ve noticed in my time in Petaluma is that in general it lives up to the small town reputation for friendliness. People walk slower downtown and there is more casual interaction on the streets and in the shops and cafes than one tends to see in San Francisco. But in the morning commute line, people are mostly isolated in their own spaces, often immersed in an IThing or mobile phone, but there are more actual newspapers in evidence than on public transit in the City these days. Probably it is that the bulk of these commuters are older professionals and managers. Some people are reading books—this morning there were two books I had read myself, one of the Brunetti mysteries by Donna Leon and the third volume in the George R. R. Martin fantasy series which has been much talked of recently. It was nice to see one man doing a New York Times crossword puzzle, something that was a daily part of my routine for many years. The electronic cocoon of iThings is familiar from the City; the papers and silence are very different.

The bus comes and people file on, quickly, with little fuss and much experience. A number of them greet the driver, albeit in hushed tones. The quiet and privacy of the morning, of being half-asleep and still moving out of dream and home and into reality and work, persists. The bus is silent and moves smoothly through the foggy morning, carrying that sleepy, dreamy quality with it.

It’s an amazing bus ride for anyone used to Muni. The bus is a long-distance type, like one you’d ride on Greyhound across country, with racks above and individual lights and air like on an airplane.  Tall, cushioned seats. The quiet of the line persists, even deepens. No one talks; there’s no muffled thumping of music from headphones.  Even papers are rustled as quietly as possible.  The miles fly by—after leaving Petaluma, the first stop is at the Golden Gate Bridge toll plaza, a distance of around 40 miles, and we make it in less than an hour.  I’ve had longer trips across the City.

The bus slowly empties as we make the few stops in San Francisco. A couple of people get out at the toll plaza, apparently to transfer to some other bus.  A few get out in the Fisherman’s Wharf area, many more on the stops as we pass through downtown. At 8:30am, we pull up at 8th and Folsom, south of Market—the end of the line.  There’s not that many people left by then. Most people say something to the driver as they get off, another rarity, just “good-bye” or “thanks” for the most part.

I have more commute ahead of me, but it’s a bit nostalgic for me, being in the South of Market area this early. Back in the first dot.com boom, I worked a couple of jobs down here. The area’s changed a lot since then, some for the better, some worse. I stroll the streets, enjoying these last few minutes of this different life, this borrowed life. Wondering what to do with my real life.

Netflix stocks took a big hit from two significant changes to the company’s service today. First, their controversial new pricing structure went into effect. Customers who want both DVDs through the mail and unlimited streaming will see a 60 percent price increase. Perhaps worse was the other news of the day: premium cable channel Starz announced that it will not renew its distribution deal with Netflix, which will expire in February 2012. The cable channel supplies Neflix with both Sony and Walt Disney films so the blow is significant, though Netflix says that Starz only accounts for about 8% of its subscribers’ viewing.

The news about Starz pulling out of its deal with Netflix comes as uncertainty continues to swirl around the other online streaming film and television service, Hulu.  Hulu is a joint venture of NBC Universal, Fox Entertainment, and ABC, which is part of Disney. But early this year both Fox and Disney discussed pulling their content from Hulu and the company is up for sale.  Most recently, Fox started holding back new episodes of its TV shows from Hulu—resulting in a surge of pirate downloads of those shows, but also making Hulu look even shakier.

It’s clear that even as more and more companies move “into the cloud”—with Amazon, Google and Apple all launching cloud music services, and even the Federal government committing to working in the cloud—the film and TV industry is becoming increasingly wary of streaming video services like Hulu and Netflix, seeing potential revenue streaming away under new models of viewership in which they have less control.

No doubt they are investigating new models that will give them a greater share of the revenues, just as magazines and newspapers (such as the Financial Times) are doing in relation to Apple’s iTunes pricing schemes. That may mean going it alone. In the short term, though, what it will probably mean for viewers is being stuck with the old models, and in particular with cable television.

For more…

• Netflix Price Increases Take Effect Thursday – The Hollywood Reporter.
• Starz to End Streaming Deal With Netflix – NYTimes.com.
• Hulu, Billed as Tomorrow’s TV, Looks Boxed In Today – NYTimes.com.

On this day in 1902, the first science fiction film was released: Le Voyage dans la lune (“A Trip to the Moon”), directed by Georges Méliès and based on Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon with material from The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells

For more…

• A Trip to the Moon – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• Le voyage dans la lune : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive.
• Le Voyage dans la Lune – Wikisource.
• Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip To The Moon) (1902) – AMC filmsite.
• A Trip to the Moon (1902)-IMDb.com.