Many years ago, at the dawn of my cafe-artist life, where I ceased actually making music and began talking about it and art while exploring new dimensions of inebriation, my cafe-artist crew and I were sitting around a going through pitcher after pitcher of beer (we had yet to discover the efficiency of brandy, gin, and whiskey) and there was a table full of art-school-fruityloops at the next table, discussing something about ... i'm not sure, but I would surmise modern dance ...

"The toe is trivial!" blurted out a another certified cafe-artist in a shrill, nasally whine that cut through the din ...

I ridiculed then the remark, the sentiment, and even the anonymous ass-clown who said it, and I do so again as I type these words almost 35 years later.

Berkeley is possibly the Cafe-Artist capital of the world. I say possibly only because I've not spent any time in New York, London, Paris, or any other boho-certified metropolis long enough to determine. San Francisco has a new breed of cafe-artist: the Burners (a derivation of Burning Man), but that is an essay for another day.

As a result of my experiences in the cafe-artist world for many years, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie Art School Confidential.

An an occasional true artist, as well. Rare. Very rare.

One of my favorite art students of years past is Penelope Houston who went to the SF Art Institute in the late 1970's. Disgusted with the preponderance of dogshit all over the campus, she and some friends made a poster showing a dog hanging by its neck with a legend "KILL ALL DOGS" in huge block letters and posted them all over the campus, causing a huge furor among the dog lovers. She dropped out of school shortly thereafter and formed the infamous punk band The Avengers, who later opened for the Sex Pistols. I'll write about that show some other day.

"Art School Confidential" is true to my observations and delivers its jokes gently and lovingly ... it's not a mean movie. There is a stupid stupid subplot about murders on campus which becomes central to the movie at the end ...

My rating system for movies is in this reverse order:

1. walk out before movie is over,
2. sit all the way through but pissed,
3. a decent waste of time,
4. would watch again if a cute girl wanted to see it,
5. would watch again in the theatre,
6. will buy when dvd comes out.

Art School Confidential falls into the "would go again with a cute girl" category. Definitely worth watching once.

I took one quarter of college at UC Berkeley, the summer of 1968. One art class, two music, and one anthropology course ... the foundation of a mastery of business administration ...

This was a hard time in which to study. My two best friends had taken off for Europe. I was stuck in school. I'd go to a movie in the evening at a theater near campus, a calm summer Berkeley night, and when we'd walk out, a riot would be in progress and the cops would be firing tear gas canisters at us and we'd have to run for it.

My family lived next door to a Berkeley judge and I was friends with his sons. One of them and I took some Blue Wedge acid - incredibly potent (I was on a massive hit the first time I heard "I Am The Walrus" a few months later - not sure I've ever recovered from that) - one night and went up in the hills.

It was getting dark and we could hear the sirens and see the riot bonfires far below. Darkness covered the whole bay area ... for some reason, Dave and I looked up directly over our heads and there was a perfectly circular hole in the dark cloud cover, through which we could see perfect blue sky. We both groaned - this was a little too close to the coming of Sauron and the Great Darkness in the Lord of the Rings, for sure - and spiralled into a rather bad trip. I finally went over and sat with a eucalyptus tree for a while who helped me out of it.

So yes, hard to focus on school work.

I met a guy a few years back - electronic genius who built amazing analogue synthesizers - he explained that our combined mental energy (Dave & I) from the acid was what blew the hole in the cloud cover ... knowing what I know now, i'm not totally skeptical about that assertion. We live in a mysterious world.

Anyway, back to the Knox art-school experience. I took a Basic Composition course in the art building. It was mostly Berkeley art types, obviously. One guy I knew from Berkeley High. A number of cute women. The "professor" was an aging boho self-styled Casanova whom I took an immediate dislike to. I knew we would be competing for the attention from the females and it was his class ... and I was only 17, so I didn't have enough game to win ... and I knew it ... but I'd show up at the class occasionally.

One afternoon, we were having a critique of charcoal drawings. Everyone in the class had a picture tacked on the wall. Mine was an R.Crumb-style surrealistic montage of cartoon nonsense. The Prof talked about this and that piece ... one of them he actually talked about what was happening off the edge of the paper ... sounded like a bunch of bullshit to me then, and now, for that matter.

Then he paused by my picture, stared at is a moment, and turned to stare at me levelly and said,"What are you trying to do, Bronson?" Again, not enough game to counter.

I turned in a piss-poor portfolio at the end of the quarter. The Prof had a party for the class at his house - i'm sure he saw it as the last chance to get into some coed action ... Since I didn't like him, I didn't go.

Later, I ran into my friend from Berkeley High who went to the party. He reported a conversation he had with the Prof about yours truly.

Apparently the Prof said,"Yeah, I figured Bronson had developed doing nothing to such a high degree that he had created a new art form. And for creating a new art form, I figured I should give him a passing grade."

So ... my report card for the quarter: Music Composition, F, Music History, F, Anthropology, F, Art Composition, C-.

I have thought ever since that the Prof was a great guy and I hope he got lucky at his party.

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