Rosemary Picado's Open Salon Blog

Who knew Predator could inspire brilliant tunes? ArnoCorps

Tue, 1 Mar 2011 09:03:32 -0500

In her article last week, Salon’s Drew Grant asked the question “Who knew “Predator” could inspire brilliant tunes?”

But back to that in a minute.

In my opinion, Grant really isn’t asking the right question. I’ll explain.

While she points to the Kaplan brothers’ “Predator: the Musical” and the “Predator Rap” by the Anomolies, both excellent examples of fan tunes, by only asking about “Predator” she’s missing the real internet meme that’s been going on for many years now. “Predator: the Musical” is only the latest in a long line of Schwarzenegger-themed operatic concoctions by the Kaplans, which is probably strange enough. But stranger still, they aren’t the only artists to follow it. Not by a long shot.

ArnoCorps is a San Francisco Bay Area band, now in its 10th year of action hero audio assault, that features incredibly hard hitting songs with titles such as “Predator”, “Terminator”, “Commando” and more. You get the jist.

But if you ask Holzfeuer, lead singer and founding member of the rock and roll rescue team, their work is not merely derivative of recent films by a certain actor turned Governator turned actor again, like other artists who merely follow the Schwarzenegger musical meme. ArnoCorps opus hearkens back to the original tales of Austrian heroic mythology and folklore. Check their website for the band’s background (the Arnosynopsis) and member bios for the full story. It’s worth the click.

When I contacted Holzfeuer and asked his opinion about the recent Salon article (and the comments it garnered from ArnoCorps fans about their exclusion from the piece), he gave me an earful of his characteristic violent vocalizations.

RP: What are your feelings on the Salon article "Who knew "Predator" could inspire brilliant tunes?" and ArnoCorps being left out?

Holzfeuer: Hey, come on! We've just celebrated our 10-Year Anniversary with a sold out performance at the legendary Slim's in San Frantastic last month and let me tell you, I was thinking after all we've accomplished in the past decade with the critical acclaims, international tours, awards, names taken, walnuts cracked, all these things, maybe our work is finished, right? Maybe time to retire from action adventure rock and roll, go back home to Austria, teach yodeling, maybe open a ballsy gym or heroic strudel bakery, who knows, right? But then articles like this Salon atrocity come out and I can't believe my eyeholes, the things I am reading! Still people are uneducated about the origins of the heroic folklore and mythology of the alpine regions that have been bastardized and exploited by Hollywood moguls and power-hungry actors! This is another wake up call, reminding us that ArnoCorps' work has only just begun, right there. Can you believe that? Unbelievable!

RP: Do you have any comments on the other works/artists cited?

Holzfeuer: It's all bullshit, all of it! Both of those silly little songs right there are inspired by cinema, which is all backwards. They are putting all the focus in the wrong places, like working on your biceps all day without working the deltoids or triceps or glutes! Come on! Same goes with having all these people who idolize the actor in there, Arnold Schwarzenoodle, believing he's actually as ballsy as the character he portrays in the movies, going so far as to elect him to be the leader of California! Unbelievable! ArnoCorps doesn't believe in idolizing others or putting people on the pedestals. We are about looking within yourself, encouraging our listeners to find the hero or shero within themselves to reach their greatest potentials to be international studs and studettes, to not take shit from anyone, to smoke their stogies wherever they want! What's the result? Our music is inspirational and timeless. Our songs restore integrity to the original heroic tales passed down around campfires for generations! ArnoCorps is not for novelties, where you laugh at little rhyming songs with your laughters and then move on with your miserable day, like with those shallow YouTube video songs. Forget about it! I'm thankful ArnoCorps was not included in that article. It would be like putting great Austrian musicians like Mozart or Schönberg on a mix tape with the Britney Spears or Justin Biebers!

RP: Ancient Austrian lore is no stranger to the opera, and Broadway is reaching out for more current topics and artists, such as Green Day's "American Idiot" and Spiderman, with mixed results. What about ArnoCorps? Might we see "ArnoCorps" the musical on Broadway one day?

Holzfeuer: Hey, let me tell you right now. ArnoCorps is always open to opportunities to inspire and motivate, right there. Our stories of epic heroism in our music combined with our own trials and tribulations as a band working against oppositions and people who misconstrue and all this, come on! It would be the greatest musical of all time! We'd make those Green Day guys look choir boys! We're open to reading treatments, but all you low forehead writers out there, you better come up with a better title than "Austrian Idiot."

Fan produced video of the ArnoCorps song "Predator" set to clips from Schwarzenegger's Hollywood bastardization of the ancient Austrian tales. Yes, ArnoCorps are big enough that fans produce videos of their songs.

To hear more ArnoCorps audio assaults, click here.

Rosemary Picado is a technical writer and freelance journalist.

My Qantas Engine Explosion Adventure - from 2007

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:08:12 -0400

My friend Erica and I get our Aussie Adventure underway, we thought.

When I saw the news this morning about the Qantas flight out of SFO losing an engine, it was dejavu all over again.

In the wee hours of the morning on Monday, August 30th, Qantas flight 74, a 747 with 212 passengers on board, was taking off from SFO for Sydney Australia when an engine blew. As reported, the pilot went through the procedure: circled, dumped fuel to get to the proper landing weight, and thankfully returned to the airport without incident.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, experts are calling the event "extremely rare."

Not in my experience.

The same thing happend to me in May of 2007, on a flight out of LAX. In fact, I went back to my old MySpace blog (which I haven't looked at in months) and found my entry there from that day.

First of all, let me say everyone's safe and sound, but we had a bit of an adventure last night on Qantas flight 26 out of LAX. About 5 minutes after takeoff, we lost engine 1. It didn't sound like much at the time, just a bang. I thought the landing gear had come up a bit hard. But one passenger I talked to saw it blow with flames shooting out the back. They told us later that a turbine blew.

My seatmate, a very cute 20 year old cowboy from Washington state, said after the bang, "I think we hit a deer."

"This is Qantas," I corrected. "We hit a kangaroo."

The captain came on the PA straight away and told us what was going on, said there was nothing to worry about. This is a big plane with 4 engines. They had to go through the procedure to dump fuel so we could go in and land. That took about 40 minutes of us circling round and around. Then they warned us that when we came in, we'd see fire trucks and emergency crews with the lights on. Standard procedure.

They warned us that the landing might be hard, but it was smooth as silk. Actually, it was better than my landing coming from SJ earlier that day. Everyone clapped. No one was really scared, and I think it was due to the fact that they kept us informed about what was going on.

After we landed after midnight, they kept us on board for about an hour, but they fed us while they worked to get us all hotel rooms. We stayed the night at the Hilton and we'll be on another flight tonight to try it again. So a bit of a false start to the Aussie adventure, but at least we can laugh about it!

Erica's watch reads 1:16 am, the time we got back into the LAX terminal to get in line for our hotel voucher.

First, let me repeat the old chestnut, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. Another important fact to repeat here: Qantas Airlines has never crashed. I have no complaints, only concerns that the Qantas fleet may be getting old, overstressed, and perhaps should be upgraded.

But after our false start, I had a fabulous experience with Qantas. We bought the Aussie Airpass, and visited Melbourne, Cairnes, Brisbane, and Sydney on our three week trip. We had absolutely no other incidents or even delays. I wouldn't hesitate to travel with them again.

The passengers of Qantas flight 74 were definitely inconvenienced last night, but they're safe - and they get an extra day in San Francisco. In 2007, Erica and I took advantage of our extra day in Los Angeles to see the sights and do touristy stuff we normally would never do: go to the Walk of Fame, Muscle Beach, and the Farmers Market. It was a great start to our Aussie Adventure, and made a great story.

Especially today.

News of a Friend’s Death via Facebook

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:08:07 -0400

My last visit with Leslie, in Burbank, August 2009.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. I was at work. After a long meeting with my team, I returned to my desk in our open fishbowl office and stole a moment to check my Facebook page, as I do a couple times a day. Some would say it’s due to that “fear of missing out” but I just call it a break. We’re still allowed to take those, you know.

Nestled down the page in a list of Facebook messages full of friend’s newly uploaded pictures and status messages, acquaintances’ game gift requests, and links to news stories, I saw a headline that made me catch my breath:

On Monday, August 9, 2010, Leslie Shevick Raymond passed away due to complications from pneumonia.

What?

I read it again. Then again.

The words didn’t make sense. I was puzzling out strange hieroglyphs, until suddenly the letters rearranged themselves so that I rationally understood what I didn’t want to know. A flash of heat went through my body and I started to sweat. Then, there in front of everyone in my office, the tears came. Big ugly sobs. I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t.

Leslie, my best friend from college, was gone.

But we just emailed last week! She was getting better!

Before anyone noticed, or before they stopped being polite in pretending not to notice, I snatched a handful of tissues from the box and rushed for the door. Down the elevator and outside on Pacific Street, my mind started rationalizing the fact that I just learned that a close friend had died -- on Facebook.

“What a shitty way to learn someone’s died!” I sobbed.

But then again, I reasoned, how else would I have known so quickly? Maybe it wasn’t such a bad way. I just wish I hadn’t been at work. Unfortunately, we can’t choose how these moments go, the ones that affect our lives so deeply.

I tried to scrub the ruined mascara from my face and went back upstairs. I packed my laptop, and explained to one compassionate co-worker on the way out what had happened. I’d be no good to anyone for the rest of the afternoon. And I needed a drink.

Leslie and I met at the flower shop where we worked in college. SJSU wasn’t like an archetypal college experience, not for us anyway. In the middle of Silicon Valley, it was a school for people who also had jobs. I was putting myself through school, and even with her parents help, Leslie was working hard too. With her flaming red hair, brilliant smile and kooky sense of humor, we bonded instantly. We were both Libras, our birthdays only days apart, even though she was a year younger. We both loved REM. We both loved TV and movies and we were both writers. She was juggling ever changing majors, Journalism and English, though she hoped to go into television production. I was the steadfast and boring English major with a punk rock haircut and Goth eyeliner. But we had our eyes on the prize -- getting out of school in one piece and making something of our lives.

Along the way, we had so many great times being part of the dysfunctional family that was that flower shop. Working long hours, especially around Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day; delivering bouquets to offices and hospitals and funeral homes in the rain or in the summer heat; talking to people in the shop and on the phone, some who wanted things just perfect, some who wanted their roses painted black. We arranged flowers and deliveries to celebrate new babies, birthdays, elaborate weddings and funerals. And always now, now, today! It was exhausting and exhilarating. We loved it, both deadline junkies and at home with chaos.

In our time off, we studied together, shopped, ate lots of ice cream, and just hung out. My most vivid memory of Leslie is riding in her car with REM blasting, singing along at the top of our lungs. That’s a true friend.

As we got closer to graduation, I needed to move out on my own. I found a job closer to my new apartment, one that paid better too, so I left the flower shop. Leslie and I still hung out, but soon she was off to Hollywood to start her career, while I stayed in the Silicon Valley at my first tech job. We lost contact, but Leslie would always be a partner in crime, someone I admired and loved. Her mind was like a laser beam and her heart was like a big feather pillow. I never knew someone who was at once so strong and so compassionate.

Over the years, especially as the internet exploded, we kept in touch with each other’s accomplishments and emailed occasionally, but never visited. Ten years went by, and then Facebook became a fixure of all of our lives. Leslie and I found each other, and even though it was only pixels that connected us, we felt like part of each other’s lives again, getting those daily status messages, seeing each other’s photos and sharing links to things that we both liked. I had married young and divorced, but found a new boyfriend. She had waited and found the perfect guy. They had two kids together.

I called Facebook my time machine - a device that allowed me to keep in touch with friends from every epoch of my life, from grade school to the present. It was great for poeple with busy lives.

We finally visited down in LA, meeting for drinks and dinner. Leslie got to meet my boyfriend, but I didn’t get to meet her family. She was on her way home from work, and he was watching the kids so she could have a night out. I wished I’d had more time on that trip to hang out. It had been years since we’d seen each other, but it felt like no time had gone by at all. The connection to a true friend is timeless.

A year later, she was gone.

I’m so glad I got to see Leslie that one last time. I can’t imagine how devastated I would have been if I hadn’t bothered to make the effort. It gives me chills thinking about it.

Always the media critic, I can just hear Leslie’s best radio announcer voice asking, “So Rosemary, what do you think of Facebook as an obituatry delivery device?”

I need to give Facebook a mixed review, Leslie. You definitely get the news in a timely manner, which is vital when you need to make travel plans, but in an environment that is mostly populated with silly videos and jokes, it’s an inelegant device at best for such shocking and life changing news.

But when would I have found out otherwise? I may have been in Leslie’s contact list on her phone. I don’t know. She was in mine. Would her devastated husband have the time to go through the list? Facebook seems like it’s easier on the family in delivering the news, and in such a time, anything that makes it easier on those who survive us is really the way to go.

My boyfriend feels differently. When he got home from work that Tuesday night, I didn’t even have time to bring the question up. He told me where his rolodex was, so that if anything were to happen to him, I’d know who to call. It’s a chilling thought, but one we all need to think about and plan for. Just to make it easier on those we leave behind.

I flew down to Burbank on Friday. Leslie’s memorial was Saturday. I met her husband for the first time in the reception line. I recognized her children from the innumerable pictures Leslie had posted. I was almost thankful that they were so young. They seemed excited to see everyone, unable to understand the magnitude of the occasion.

The family printed out many of the messages left on her Facebook profile, and posted them on a pretty pink poster board montage of text and pictures. The list of messages was long, the sentiments shocked and heartfelt. It was proof that my friend was loved beyond the many people who were able to come to the service. It made me feel better about the Facebook connection.

We can’t choose the way we learn about a friend’s death. We never could. As social media becomes more entangled in our daily lives, more and more of us will be having this same experience. I think the important thing is that we get the news in a timely fashion, so we can do what we need to do to honor our lost loved ones and help those they leave behind.

But I think it might be a while before this knot in my stomach goes away when I check my Facebook page at work.

Films of the Decade: Gladiator

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:12:01 -0500

With grandiose CGI sets and glorious acting, Ridley Scott's epic reawakened the sword-and-sandal genre

By Rosemary Picado

Please see my article in Film Salon here:

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/29/picado/index.html

Rosemary Picado is a technical writer and freelance journalist in Daly City, Calif. She blogs on Open Salon.

Silicon Valley Farming in the Great Recession

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:09:46 -0400

I grew up on a farm. Well, that's not technically true. I grew up in a suburb in Sunnyvale, CA, but it felt like a farm. Our humble tract home right off of Wolfe Road and El Camino had a big backyard, nearly a third of an acre, and my grandparents made good use of the land. My sister and I spent a bucolic childhood in that backyard, pulling weeds and squishing bugs for fun and profit. As a Silicon Valley professional, I haven’t lived the farm life for a long time now, but I wouldn’t trade those long summer days melting into luxuriant twilight out on the barn-shaped patio for all the whiskey in Ireland.

I was actually a little jealous when I went back to visit the neighborhood recently. Part of the Peterson Jr. High school field has been turned into a cooperative farm. That’s right, I have farm envy. And it’s gotten worse since I heard Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City – The Education of an Urban Farmer talk about her book on NPR. I shocked myself when I pressed Buy on the one-click order page, but I haven’t regretted it for a moment.

In Farm City, Carpenter describes the trials and tribulations of her Oakland urban farm, named after the near war zone neighborhood, Ghost Town Farm. Squatting on an abandoned lot next to her apartment, Novella with her boyfriend and neighbors turned the weedy, trash-strewn lot into a verdant patch of green in the middle of a concrete jungle. Complete with rabbits, chickens, and turkeys raised for meat as well as eggs, many of her third-world neighbors felt right at home, while others were prompted to ask, “Is this Oakland or Oklahoma?”

From Carpenter’s example, I’ve been inspired - and in this Great Recession, my dwindling unemployment reserves are inspiring me as well. An apartment dweller for years, I recently moved to Daly City with my boyfriend, and our small rental house has a large backyard. I actually spent a sleepless night last week envisioning just how to justify raised vegetable beds in order to catch the most sun for a good yield. With the Daly City fog and sandy soil, we can definitely grow artichokes, and according to Sunset Magazine’s list of climate zones, we can grow just about anything else too.

Our Sunnyvale vegetable garden among the fruit trees, circa 1978.

When you think about it, it’s really a shame that the Silicon Valley sprang up where it did, in some of the most fertile farmland in the world. Before IBM and Intel manufactured computer chips that poisoned the ground, Sunnyvale’s top industry was orchards: cherries, peaches, citrus – you name it. Just throw down seeds and they sprung up in a verdant crop ready for picking and canning at the nearby Libby’s plant. (The Libby's fruit cocktail can water tower still dominates downtown Sunnyvale, saved from demolition as a historic landmark.) A local girl all my life, I’ve profited from the tech boom, but I also pine for my days as a suburban farm girl.

Unlike Carpenter, I wasn’t the child of 60’s hippies getting back to the earth, I was the grandchild of a woman who’d lived through the Great Depression, a woman who knew how to live off the land in good times and bad. In Sunnyvale we harvested crops from 13 mature fruit trees: three different breeds of cherries, apples, apricots, permissions, plums, cherry-plums, two orange trees, peaches, lemons, and almonds. When summer came around, my grandparents put in rows of strawberries, tomatoes, zucchini and corn. We ate warm blackberries off the back fence nearly year round. And this was all in addition to the roses and flower gardens. My sister and I learned to count change as we manned the makeshift farmers market in our driveway.

My grandmother Kay, a force of nature.

Did I mention that my grandmother, Kay from the coal town of Connellsville, PA, was confined to a wheelchair? She’d been crippled by rheumatoid arthritis since she was a kid, but it barely slowed her down. She hated doctors and didn’t trust them. With fingers gnarled like the roots of her rose bushes, and knees like tree stumps, Kay took Anacin four times a day and still rose from her wheelchair with a shovel to kill a garden snake that dared to threaten my sister. My grandpa Sonny, a union grocery man all his life, mostly followed her directions, and was usually found up a ladder in a tree harvesting fruit or mowing his prized lawns. Together, my grandparents were a force of nature that tamed the wilds of our suburb, nourished our bodies and minds from the land, and taught us all about food and life.

My grandpa Sonny up a tree harvesting plums.

As the Great Recession moves into its second year this harvest season, I’ve been thinking about my grandparents more than usual, both gone now, and planning to start a backyard vegetable garden of my own. Farm City has been an inspiring read - and a glimmer of hope in these darkening days.

As a professional, I’ve been through layoffs consistently through my career. It’s the way the Silicon Valley does business. Hire in good times, lay off in bad – usually right before the holidays. I’ve developed a resistance to the ebb and flow of business, and a pattern of saving to insulate me from the ups and downs, just like Kay and Sonny taught me. (Grandma always had a roll of bills hidden in a coffee can in the freezer. Her babies weren’t ever going hungry like she did as a child.) But as everyone already knows, this economy is no seasonal downturn. We’re in it for a long haul.

During the Great Depression, collective farms sprung up in cities all over the country, providing food and hope to people in need. We’d be smart to remember these days that there’s more than one way to make a living, with our hands in the soil as well as with our heads in a cubicle.

According to Carpenter, the first step to starting a vegetable garden in the city is to test the soil for lead or other heavy metals and dangerous contaminants. Kay and Sonny never had to worry about this step, but its one I’ll be taking soon. The next step is to create a compost heap. Using table scraps, coffee grounds, and garden clippings, by next spring, we should have a healthy supply of compost to fertilize the raised vegetable beds I plan to build. Downloading worms into a suburban farm is a good thing. I can’t wait to get my hands dirty, and I know my grandparents will be smiling down on me.

I can nearly smell the clover that invaded Sonny’s front lawn, and remember sitting in the middle of the patch near Kay’s rose garden, playing with honeybees that never stung.

Amy Benfer also talks about urban farming and Novella Carpenter's Farm City in her Salon article,"How does your city garden grow?"

Rosemary Picado is a technical writer and freelance journalist. She lives in Daly City with her boyfriend and four cats.