Culture vulture

Reverse polarity
A classic example of human benevolence could be found at the Chico Women’s Club last Friday night, when a large, diverse community of friends gathered to give our support to our mutual friend Reid Seibold, who is currently undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer.

Reid is a tall, slender, kind man with a beatific smile and long dark hair. Quite likely you’ve encountered him selling his colorful tie-dyed garments at the Thursday Night Market. He is a quintessentially good guy who is a valuable thread woven into the fabric of the Chico arts and music community. We love him.

Culture Vulture has a recurring fantasy that someday the polarity of our government will reverse itself, and all the collective resources currently being expended on environmental destruction and punitive violence will be redirected to ecological enhancement and rehabilitative healing.

Until that happens I’ll do what I can to help out my friends.

My Blue Heaven
Through the generosity of Terri Burkett, the proprietary goddess of Stormy’s Off Broadway, I recently obtained a copy of a video tape of the fledging Culture Vulture’s first musical performance in Chico. I was playing drums for Broadway Vanities in (I think) about 1981 or so. The show was a cabaret/vaudeville revue that featured the talents of the late David Watson, a songwriting genius, and the late Greg Jones, a gospel and soul singing phenomena. Also in the show were the comedy team of John Bertolli and Phil Pearson, the singing of all-girl trio Clitty Glitter, and the standup comedy of Mary Carol, among many other fairly outrageous acts including the aforementioned Miss Burkett’s feverish turn as Nasty Nurse Nancy.

Our multi-gendered troupe made a snickering mockery of ‘80s “sophistication” and had a lot of sincere laughs in that far more innocent age. And now here in the digital age I can make a DVD copy of a 25-year-old video tape and enjoy it in all its poorly tracked, distorted glory whenever I feel like it. That’s progress.

To Terri, Norma, Laurel, Sheila, Michael, John, Phil, Chic, Sam, Greg, David W., David Z., Annie August, Zack and everyone else involved: Thanks for the memories.

The WTF department
In the midst of an unusually bad Monday—a day that included a bout with writer’s block and an early morning toilet overflow—my partner, the lovely I. Daphne St. Brie, phoned to let me know that when she called our insurance company to tell them to remove our recently donated old car from the policy, she was informed that our insurance rate would now be somewhat over a hundred-dollars-a-year more expensive than when the second car was still being insured.