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TACOMAWEEKLY.com
FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2016
SECTION B, PAGE 1
REVEREND BILLY TO SPREAD HIS 'ANTI-CONSUMERIST' GOSPEL IN TACOMA
PHOTO BY FRED ASKEW
PREACHER MAN. Reverend Billy Talen will read from his new book, "The Earth Wants You," at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 3, at Kings Books, 218 St. Helens Ave. By Ernest A. Jasmin ejasmin@tacomaweekly.com
B
ill Talen is headed to the dry cleaners somewhere in San Francisco. “It’s part of my life trying to get these polyester suits as blinding as possible,” the 65-year-old activist, radio host and satirical preacher explains to a reporter he’s been talking to on the phone. Talen soon arrives at the counter, and he sounds quite pleased with the results. “It’s glowing like a holy thing,” he declares, inspecting his faux-evangelist get up. “They hit it with the bleach pretty hard, I’d say. It looks radioactive.” Sunglasses are optional when the Reverend Billy comes to town next week to share the gospel of his Church of Stop Shopping. He’s sure to be wearing his most radiant threads on Tuesday when he appears at King’s Books to read from his new book, “The Earth Wants You” ($13.95, City Lights Books). The reading will start at 7 p.m., and admission is free The book and a gospel album of the same name were released on April 22, Earth Day, with environmental themes permeating each. “Wild animals, they disappear; wild animals, extinction’s near” the Stop Shopping Choir sings, accompanying Talen’s manic proselytizing on a track called “The Human Blues.” But Talen also ties several other causes to his church’s underlying doctrine of “anti-consumerism”: The Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality; the corrupting influence of “the one percent,” a notion popularized by the Occupy Wall Street movement. Talen describes his character as a parody of “the worst America has to offer, the war-mongering, sexist, apocalyptic preacher.” He started developing it in the late ‘90s in New York, where he lived. Egging him on at the time was his mentor, Sidney Lanier who had served as vicar of St. Clement’s Episcopal Church in Hell’s Kitchen. “He taught me that Americans make their meaning from simple, moral cliffhanger stories – like Bible stories,” Talen recalls. “We’re not French philosophers; 50 percent of Hollywood movies are still based on the Prodigal Son. It was his notion that we need a new kind of American preacher who is
post-religious.” Another inspiration was former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. His efforts to clean up Times Square disturbed Talen who cherished the neighborhood for its assortment of eccentric characters and seedy storefronts. “I’d been living in the area, and I had been watching consumerism move in and turn Times Square into an outdoor mall,” he says. “It was the Coney Island of Midtown, and I loved it for that reason. I was there in the late ‘90s, right at the cusp of Giuliani’s demonizing the sex workers, and everybody was accused of all kinds of things. Some of it was true, but it wasn’t as dangerous as reported. It was actually fascinating. “Anti-consumerism was really born in defending ma and pa shops, defending the messy human life of a neighborhood. That was where it began, and after a while, I started getting good at it. When I got my ‘whoop,’ then people started clapping around me, and the Stop Shopping Choir was born. I realized I didn’t have to do this alone.” Talen would describe his theology this way in the beginning: “Mickey Mouse was my devil, and consumerism was the Devil’s evil culture.” But while the Midtown Manhattan Disney Store was an early target of Reverend Billy’s gonzo activism, his list of corporate offenders grew to include the likes of Starbucks, Walmart and Monsanto. The Church of Stop Shopping’s typical strategy is to show up, often adorned in costumes - endangered golden toads when the group invaded J.P. Morgan Chase – and to engage in some sort of quirky but disruptive action. They sing parody hymns. They exorcise ATM machines. Recently, they filmed their attempt to levitate San Francisco’s de Young Fine Arts Museum. (Many of the group’s antics and music videos can be viewed online at www.youtube.com/reverendbillytalen.) “We’re in a part of the corporation that the public is welcomed into under certain conditions,” Talen says. “But we stay longer than we’re invited, and then we sing songs and hand out information. ‘This bank is financing climate change.’” It goes without saying that not everyone is happy to see the Reverend Billy and his flock. Talen estimates he has been arrested 70 times. Along the way, he’s inspired a wide array of responses from the shoppers he’s trying to reach.
“If you go into a Walmart and stand in the back aisle and sing a song, some people will really dislike you,” Talen says. “Others will clap along and giggle, and others will just be paralyzed. Some people will run out with their kids and be scared. People go in all kinds of different directions. “The paralyzing power of consumerism is always masquerading as normal. It’s a very powerful, hypnotic environment. If you break it, people bounce off in many different directions, but the point is to break it. You can’t really account for what happens. You hope that nobody gets hurt. You try and take care of the people around you as best you can, but ultimately the system itself is violent, and that violence must be stopped.” Talen’s nemesis du jour is Monsanto, manufacturers of the herbicide glyphosate, which is sold commercially as Roundup. Last year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that the product is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Monsanto, however, disputes that conclusion. “IARC overlooked decades of thorough and science-based analysis by regulatory agencies around the world and selectively interpreted data to arrive at its classification of glyphosate,” reads a statement from the company’s web site. “We’re trying to get the spraying out of parks,” Talen says. “We have 30 Freedom of Information Act requests on the desks of various parks departments demanding that they tell us where and when they’ve sprayed glyphosates. … I can’t recall if Tacoma has told us yet.” Metro Parks addresses glyphosate and other herbicides in an Environmental Sustainability Plan it published in December. “MPT uses various methods to control pests such as invasive weeds and insects,” it reads. “Staff discussed issues related to pests and ways to reduce pesticide use, especially the weed killer glyphosate, sold commercially as Roundup." “The summit emphasized weed control through creation of a healthy, dense landscape and using mulch to limit weed germination.” Metro Parks spokesman Hunter George said that Sawyer, Old Town and McCarver parks have been pesticide-free for the past year, and the goal is to manage five more parks without using pesticides by the end of 2018. “We're committed to doing that because it's the right thing to do,” he said.
THE THINGS WE LIKE ONE BUMBERSHOOT LINE-UP Organizers of Seattle’s Bumbershoot festival released their lineup this week featuring the likes of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Death Cab for Cutie, Billy Idol, Tyler the Creator (shown), Run the Jewels, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Reggie Watts, Tame Impala and dozens more. The festival will take place from Sept. 2 to 4 at Seattle Center. Tickets will go on sale at 10 a.m. on Friday, April 29, with three-day passes starting at $180. Learn more and find the entire lineup online at www.bumbershoot.org.
TWO BIKE SWAP The 8th annual Tacoma Bike Swap will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 30, on the campus of the University of Puget Sound. There will be a free bike corral for anyone who wants to sell one or two bikes,
experts from local bike shops to offer advice and do minor repairs, and you can grab a copy of the new Pierce County Bike Map. Learn more and find a comprehensive list of events for Bike Month, which is May, at www.bike253.com.
THREE GRAND (NOT OLD) PARTY Local filmmakers will be working around the clock this weekend to finish their entries for the Grand Cinema’s 253 Short Film Party (formerly the 72 Hour Film Festival) which will be held at 6 p.m. on Friday, May 6, at Urban
Grace Church downtown. Contestants have until Sunday to finish their short films, which are limited to 253 seconds in length. All will be shown at next week’s party and the first place winner gets $500. Tickets are $10 in advance, $8 for Grand Cinema members. Learn more at www.grandcinema.com.
FIVE NEW LIPP LP
FOUR VETERANS FAIR Last year, more than 1,400 veterans and family members attended the Veterans Resource Fair at the Tacoma Dome, which will return from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 30. The free event will connect veterans with people who can answer their questions about VA benefits, legal services, education benefits, disability claims and more. Learn more by calling (206) 802-5578 or by visiting www. theveteransresourcefair.us.
Tacoma electronic musician Eliot Lipp has announced plans to release his ninth studio album, “Come to Life,” in May. Lipp described his new album this way: “Somewhere between the instrumental hip-hop on my first records and my more recent dance floor inspired beats, I found that a certain funk in all of that remains consistent. This new album is about an awakening, so I felt it was important to dig back into my musical past for inspiration. I came back with some well rounded electronic grooves.” Learn more and pre-order the record at www.eliotlipp.com.