Yahoo! News - Newsom Wins San Francisco Mayoral Race


So Newsom won, and it's might be Willie Brown all over again. That's not good for this city. But to me, the huge shining hope in this is that 50% of registered voters turned out, and they also got a "record number" of absentee ballots. I think that's pretty amazing. Also amazing is that the vote was nearly 50/50, when Democrats are 54% of the registered voters, and Greens are only 3%... I gather faith from all this that there is potential in the future to re-engage people in politics, and in believing that they can make a change in their environments.

I wonder what the future holds, with Newsom as mayor, but Gonzalez as president of the board of supervisors, a board which has opposed Newsom many times in the past.

I'm loving the runoff for the SF mayor. Today, walking through my neighborhood, there was so much activity trying to get people out to vote, and many signs of support for the Green Party candidate, Matt Gonzalez. There was even a homeless man standing next to his cart with a Gonzalez sign hung around his neck. Somehow, all of this seems to make me feel like we're experimenting with true democracy, where the people care what happens and everyone feels that their vote actually matters.

Such a breath of fresh air after all the despondent thoughts about the political machine ever since our President was (not) elected 3 years ago.

grrr... having a hard time right now. fell yesterday, re-injuring the same ankle I've been trying to heal for over a year. Then got back to my house and discovered that someone had broken into my car and stolen the stereo. Damn.

A stressful and not-so-fun time gets worse.

Troy suggested that I buy a lottery ticket since all my luck seemed to be working in the opposite... and since I'd never won lottery before, then perhaps this time I would. That kind of twisted logic appealed to me so I bought a ticket.

Ooooh... very excited about the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival. It's organized by a guy who was in a class with me at Film Arts Foundation last year, and will include a documentary by another guy who was in that same class. Very cool stuff.

Now I'm thinking I'm a little out of my mind. I'm seriously investigating what it will take to make my doc. Yes, I've produced 2 before, one which I co-directed and was in 3 languages. But they were both supported in that I did them as part of my job, and got help finding the money. I didn't actually have to put too many parts of my life on hold in order to get them done. And (more critically) I didn't have to max out any credit cards.

On the other hand, as an artist, I'm very drawn to the idea that I'm looking to make a doc that doesn't have to fit someone else's political agenda and is not designed as a teaching tool with a particular message. That sounds much more like what I'd like to do.

So I'm taking a producing class with a very experienced and fairly bitter indy producer. I went in knowing that I was never going to make any money with documentaries, and I was fully prepared to try to get it done in and around doing other work. Through this class I'm getting a more full picture of the level of debt I'm likely to get into. Will it scare me off? Probably not. But I just have to be prepared.