Jacques Tati. Playtime. 70 mil. Downtown San Jose. I'm there.

-- E. R. O'Neill

Running in San Francisco. (This is about mile 12 & I'm high on endorphins.)

-- E. R. O'Neill

Long run by the ocean today.

Sample organizational chart.

-- E. R. O'Neill

One very sad yuppie hipster commuting today. (Seen at an SF train station.)

Medicine for Melancholy Leave Some Stones Unturned.

Medicine for Melancholy is a no-budget indie film from 2008.  Its two bike-riding, semi-employed protagonists could be a send-up of San Francisco (the film's setting)--were they not black and intended to be part of a serious commentary on race in the city.  Can a black man and a black woman make it in this very white, very gentrified city?  Need they, in fact, be a couple--for some reasons of racial unity or pride?  Or is that idea indeed retrograde?  

To the credit of writer-director Barry Jenkins, that commentary doesn't descend into a civic lesson.  

If anything, it stays at the level of a kind of irritation:  one character wants to worry about it, the other doesn't.  When the two visit an African-American history museum, I feared a long discussion of slavery reparatiosn that never came.  Though this is interesting enough, and it's quite central to the movie, it's not the best part of the film.  (Also, there's a sci-fi quality of black characters in San Francisco who don't know that there's a tunnel to the East Bay.)

The best part of Medicine for Melancholy is superficial--quite literally.  It's been said before that movies at some level are the skins of things.  The camera peels the surface off of faces and places; the microphone captures echoes bouncing off of things.  Movies show us the way people smile and move and laugh and talk, the way places look when we move through them, all the glittering, glinting, glowing, glowering surfaces and shadows of things.

Medicine for Melancholy does this superbly.  Whatever their lack of rich complexity as actors, Wyatt Cenac and and Tracey Heggins are superb surfaces--and more.  Their cheekbones and smiles are seductive, and their clothes hug their bodies nicely.  They are charming, too:  their ability to seduce, to toss barbs, to withdraw, to pout--these are all quite pleasant.

At this level, the film is a superbly-realized TV commercial or sitcom.  People sit and move and banter.  Fine.  

Acoustically, the movie is no slouch either:  it sports a kick-ass soundtrack.  In fact, perhaps the best sequence in the film is when the two protagonists party at what is supposed to be an indie music club but sounds a bit more like a throwback to '70's Britrock.  Whatever energy the film lacks as a languorous visual essay, it makes up for when the music starts.  

But frankly, I wished these people were a little cleverer, a little more passionate, a little more interesting.  They argue a bit, but they never tear it up.  They're too aimless really to mess their own pretty surfaces.  I kept wishing Joseph Mankiewicz had written these two people and made them wickedly funny more often--Cenac gets in his own riffs--and more passionate, too.

When it comes to being a movie (not a commercial or a sitcom), Medicine for Melancholy is somewhat lacking.  Yes, it's a day-in-the-life.  Yes, it's a tour-of-the-city.  Yes, I have a love-hate relationship with San Francisco, its buildings and hills, its past and its money.  

But a movie needs more.  It needs some significant change from the beginning to the end.  It needs a deeper undertow--something risked, something lacking, something found, a soul-touching experience.  

Ultimately, I left the theater little changed--whereas with a more powerful adventure, something sticks in your craw and won't let you go.

Like a one-night-stand, Medicine for Melancholy lets go a little too easily.  To its credit, perhaps that is the point.

--E. R. O'Neill

An Open Letter to Yahoo/Flickr.

Dear Yahoo,

Recently, you changed the status of my flickr account to "restricted"--so that users would have to sign in and verify that they were adults before seeing my photographs.

I have over three thousand images on my flickr account.  Most of them are public--visible to everyone, not just friends.

Out of some 3,600 images, when you flagged my account as problematic, there was a SINGLE nude image depicting a penis.

That was it.  

For that, my account was flagged "restricted."  

That single photograph was journalistic:  it was from a gay street fair.

This strikes me as (a) overkill on your part and (b) homophobia.

Ironically, since then I have added images from another 

San Francisco public event:  a foot race in which many runners race naked.

These photos have now been carefully tagged.  Now photos of naked people with exposed genitals are set to "restricted" and are tagged with the words "nude" and "naked."

There were still only 56 such images--out of over three thousand images.

There is another dozen set of images of topless women or naked people with genitals NOT exposed.  These I have sent to "moderate"--the equivalent of PG-13, I suppose--and I tagged them with the word "racy."

Your email to me claimed that I had images that were "nude/sexualized" (in one email) and "sexualized/nude" (in another).  (I wonder if there's a difference.)

I hope you are able to explain to me what "sexualized" means.

If my ability to use your paid service to public my artistic expression can be terminated based on your definition of the word "sexualized," it would be kind of important for you to define it clearly.

I would be very disappointed to learn that Yahoo is a commercial venue open to the public but which treats gay customers differently.

Sincerely,

Edward R. O'Neill

P.S.

Late Saturday night, Flickr replied:  

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 10:26 PM, Flickr Support  wrote:

Hello,

Content like the following examples from your photostreamare still marked as "safe".

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardoneill/2356201835/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardoneill/2356212905/

These are but two examples.
You need to moderate your entire photostream accordingly.

-Terrence

So here are the images they objected to.

"Hot cross buns."  Get it?

I didn't paint and pose the guys.  I just photographed them.

Buttocks.  That's what they think is upsetting.  Buttocks.

Or is it the paint?

The crosses?

And here's another one.

Okay, he's

 dressed as Jesus.

Is that the bad part?

He's dressed.

Scantily, yes, but clad.

So we can see pubic hair?  Is that the problem?

These folks at Flickr have no ground rules!  None.  

Flickr offers "community guidelines."

But as specific as they get is this:

Don’t forget the children.
Take the opportunity to filter your content responsibly. If you would hesitate to show your photos or videos to a child, your mum, or Uncle Bob, that means it needs to be filtered. So, ask yourself that question as you upload your content and moderate accordingly. If you don’t, it’s likely that one of two things will happen. Your account will be reviewed then either moderated or terminated by Flickr staff.

I'll ask my "mum"--what are we, British?--if she minds buttocks or pubic hair.

So here's what I wrote back to flickr:

So any human buttock is restricted?

The second image shows no penis.  It is a man wearing a loin cloth.

Is any suggestion of pubic hair "restricted"?

I would be happy to moderate according to your rules.

Please let me know what they are.

--E. R. O'Neill

Your local video store has gone all Web 2.0.

-- E. R. O'Neill

"Play It As It Lays" at the Castro Theater.

-- E. R. O'Neill