SHOPocalypse!!

http://festival.sundance.org/2006/watch/film.aspx?which=433 Honorable Mention at Sundance
Went to see the Reverend Billy last night in Petaluma. At the start of the day I was going to go to the antiwar march in the City, but then when I saw that the Reverend Billy was coming to Petaluma, fuckin' Petaluma, the "Egg and Butter" capitol of California, the town where Pete used to live, I dropped everything and went.
Rev Billy is a performance artist from NYC. "The Collar is Fake, but the Calling is Real" and he's a hoot. Bleach blonde hair (with the roots showing) in a sprayed and gelled pompadour, a cheesy polyester leisure suit, and a great gospel choir behind him. He preaches the evil of consumerism, the decay of our neighborhoods when Wal Mart and Starbucks move in and drive out the local businessman, and the "big-box"- ization of our culture where the Commons, the Town Square, the lifeblood of the relationships in a community are destroyed, commercialized, and coralled into shopping malls with muzak and endless advertisement bombarding our unconcious.
It was a beautiful evening, with a warm breeze and the sun coming through the trees in the way that reminded me of days in Grayslake IL, driving around on hot summer nights in convertibles, drinking beer with people who knew exactly who we were.
Coming off nicotine , with a not-yet-full payload of Welbutrin onboard, I felt weepy, nostalgic and wistful, but mostly labile; with the tears coming from a chemical soup within my brain uncontrolled and uncontrollable. I move to the back of the crowd, afraid I was going to be viewed as a complete headcase if I was at all visible to anyone but a few.
Walnut Park, the equivalent of the commons in Petaluma, with a lovely gazebo and playground equipment.
The crowd was small, I'm sure much smaller than the one who will pay to see him tonite at the Victoria Theatre in SF, where he is better known. But the atmosphere is electric, with a great band and the gospel choir from the "Church of Stop Shopping", whom I asked Billy if I could audition for before the performance when he was milling about and shaking hands (they're only in NYC, having "failed" to put together a West Coast contingent, responds Billy).
He exorcises the "Devil" of credit cards, asking the crowd to give them up to him, becoming spastic and "posessed" when he touches one. "CHANGE alleujiah!!" he says when one has bent his or her card in half.
He actually disappoints because he seems to not be "on" in the way one would expect after having seen him on DemocracyNow! with Amy Goodman on Freespeech TV. His performance is off.
But he gets an uproarious laugh when he talks about how "Tommy Jefferson" and "Jimmy Madison" had no idea that the Constitution would one day be seen as giving us ONLY the right to consume; to buy, all other rights subsumed into Corporate right to profit.
He speaks of the "Beatitudes", Free Speech, Free Assembly, the Bill of Rights. The Choir sings in a way that would put Billy Graham's to shame.
He leaves with his choir and musicians in a huge school bus, dented in the front, painted with "The Church of Stop Shopping", a pile of shredded plastic in his wake.
The nostalgia of a warm spring evening with a balmy breeze, the sun coming through the trees in a way that reminds me of my youth?
Advertisers hire Stanford and Harvard Psychology grads to design ads that appeal to this; the quest to always get back to that dreamy summernight in the back seat with Joey Schmidt or Ray Ritter, a simpler time, one only now attainable if we buy what they are selling.
Changealleujiah.
www.revbilly.com
"You're Not Lost If You Don't Care Where You Are"