Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Monday, July 11, 2011

Ginsburgh's "Howl" reading at the Cartoon Art Museum!

Time
Thursday, July 14 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Location
Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA

Created By

More Info
Join the Cartoon Art Museum for an unusual reading of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, hosted by Anna Conda featuring local celebrities Supervisor Eric Mar, Dana Morrigan, James Tracy, Sunny Angulo, Dean Disaster, Carol Stewart, Dam Dyke, David Elliot Lewis, Shanice Walcott, Kegel Kater, and Marc Solomon. This is not your average poetry reading though, prepare yourselves for an inspired presentation of excerpts from Allen Ginsberg’s ground-breaking poem. Local artists Justin Hall (Glamazonia, True Travel Tales) and Jon Macy (Teleny and Camille, Fearful Hunter) will attend this event courtesy of Northwest Press and Prism Comics. Plus the talents of Carl With Records singing to your hearts content his very own beat style song styling! PLUS Crafting with Some THINGS very own Haute Glue!

Tickets to the event range from $5 to $100.
$5 – General Admission
$20 – Admission plus a copy of Howl: A Graphic Novel
$35 – Admission plus an Individual level membership to the Cartoon Art Museum
$55 – Admission, Individual level membership to the Cartoon Art Museum, a copy of Howl: A Graphic Novel
$75 – Admission, Family level membership to the Cartoon Art Museum
$100 – Admission, Family level membership to the Cartoon Art Museum, Howl: A Graphic Novel signed by Eric Drooker

Tickets can be purchased online at: http://guestli.st/61995
Online ticket sales for the Cartoon Art Museum are sponsored by Guestlistapp.com <http://Guestlistapp.com/>


About the exhibition:
The Art of Howl
May 14 – September 11, 2011

San Francisco, CA: Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's film, Howl, produced by Werc Werk Works, opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Featuring James Franco as the beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the film took an experimental approach to documenting the creation and performance of Ginsberg's revolutionary poem, "Howl"– as well as the obscenity trial that followed when, after undercover policemen purchased copies of Howl and Other Poems from City Lights Bookstore, the state tried to suppress its publication. The film blends glimpses of Ginsberg's personal life, recreations of the obscenity trial, and animated sequences that accompany Franco's performance of the poem, riffing on its ideas and images.

The Art of Howl gives a revealing look behind the scenes at the creative process of turning poetry into animation. The film directors enlisted Eric Drooker to design the animation; Drooker, a graphic novelist and painter, was friends with Ginsberg and had collaborated with him on the book Illuminated Poems. John Hays, a San Francisco-based animation veteran, directed the sequences, which were animated by The Monk Studios in Thailand.

Translating Ginsberg's incendiary, oracular, stream-of-consciousness language into moving images was a unique challenge. The animation, like the poem, conjures a world of outcasts, "deviants," outlaws, poets and prophets digging for scraps of connection and enlightenment under the shadow of "Moloch" – the overpowering industrial cityscape that demands submission, conformity, and ultimately annihilation.

This multimedia exhibit includes character design drawings, animation keyframes & concept art, photos by Allen Ginsberg, storyboards, animatics, and images from Drooker's graphic novel version of the poem.

The Cartoon Art Museum is pleased to present this animated interpretation of a piece of literary history – just a couple miles from City Lights Bookstore, the launching-pad for Ginsberg's poetic career, and through their victory at the "Howl" trial, a historic ground zero for freedom of expression.

Curated by Andrew Farago, Eric Drooker and Chris Lanier

CPMC raises great concerns in the Community

Community and labor groups blast CPMC’s “offer” as a smoke and mirrors exercise. CPMC fails to address the important issues raised by the Mayor and community.

San Francisco, CA, July 6, 2011 – California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) has once again portrayed itself as the aggrieved victim of unfair demands from the Mayor and community groups over its proposed new mega-hospital at Van Ness and Geary, the latest volley in its public relations campaign and a slap in the face to the Mayor, community stakeholders, and residents of San Francisco.

CPMC’s counter-proposal to the City of San Francisco does not include a commitment to providing health care services to low-income people at a level consistent with other hospitals. It also does not offer any guarantees that jobs in proposed rebuilt facilities will remain with its current employees or even with San Franciscans.

Sutter Health, CPMC’s parent company, values the counter-proposal at $1.1 billion over 50 years, undercutting Mayor Lee’s already limited requests. What they fail to mention is that nearly 90% of what Mayor Lee has asked is to provide health care to people with Medi-Cal and charity care at a level consistent with other hospitals.

Its charity care, for example, would grow from its current 1.1% to 2.36%, the average percentage San Francisco non-profit hospitals give as charity care.

The new proposal also promises less than half of Mayor Lee’s requested commitment to build affordable housing, a land use requirement of any development being built in the Van Ness Area, and is meant to maintain the neighborhood’s residential character.

Sutter/CPMC also refuses to take a stance on jobs at the proposed Cathedral Hill hospital, and has not committed to allowing nurses, technicians, janitors, and other employees at downsized Sutter/CPMC campuses to keep their jobs when transferring to the new hospital. Keeping its experienced and hard-working nurses and other employees wouldn’t cost Sutter/CPMC a dime.

Sutter/CPMC’s vague proposal for a new “health center” in the Tenderloin is purely smoke and mirrors, given that they could easily support one of many existing Tenderloin-based clinics, already struggling to stay afloat.

CPMC's proposal contains virtually nothing more, and in many instances even less than the commitments it made through the Blue Ribbon Panel to Save St. Luke's. Push back from community groups stopped Sutter Health from closing inpatient care at St. Luke’s in 2005, the last private hospital south of Market Street to serve the City’s southeast sector. Community groups again hope their voices will be heard by stopping Sutter Health from cutting two-thirds of the beds from St. Luke’s. These drastic cuts would overburden an already strained SF General Hospital and endanger the residents of the Mission, Noe Valley, Bernal Heights, Bayview/Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley and other neighborhoods that rely on St. Luke’s.

All of this is hard to swallow, considering the tens of millions of “non-profit” tax benefits, hundreds of millions of dollars in public financing, and over a hundred million dollars in revenue profits alone for Sutter/CPMC, which control over 40% of the City’s hospital beds and plays a major role in the rising costs of healthcare coverage in San Francisco.

As a non-profit, Sutter/CPMC has a responsibility to provide generous care, good jobs, and new infrastructure for its new development. Sutter/CPMC should work with community groups to find what works best for Sutter/CPMC employees, patients, neighbors, and ALL San Franciscans.

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