April 9, 2003

TRAFFIC STOPPED AT 16th and Valencia Streets one morning last week because the intersection was full of niños por paz, children just past toddlerhood holding up peace signs and pictures of injured, sickly Iraqi kids. Being on a near-constant downer these days, I kept imagining these babies a decade hence, listening to the siren calls of recruiting officers when army ghouls start haunting their classrooms. I hope they remember stopping traffic when they're 17.

Some might argue that the adults for peace guiding their charges across the street weren't wise to allow four-year-olds to cork traffic after the fashion of Critical Mass road hellions, but I wouldn't. Back in the halcyon infancy of the war on terror, I worried about the misreading of protest gestures – peace rallies that looked like concerts in the park, anything the folks in the interior would find easy to interpret as West Coast degeneracy or folly. Later on I worried about smashed Gap windows without accompanying intertitles of explanation. I still worry about yoga outside Bechtel, which to me looks like Little Red Riding Hood blithely skipping through the forest toward Mordor. But the fait accompli of the invasion has taken its toll on the antiwar project to own the streets, and I'm now up for any dissent with a little backbone. That necessarily includes yoga, I know. But also tricolor puke outside the Federal Building and, I hope, boy bands.

I sometimes spend my marching time wondering what might actually have an impact. Other people do too, I'm sure, and maybe that's what Jason Blue, a member of S.F. drag king troupe Transformers, was up to during the Out Against the War march through the Castro two days after we invaded Iraq. Later that night he sent me a copy of a letter he was mailing.

"Dear Past or Present Boy Band Member," it read, "the massive anti-war demonstrations that have sprung up all over the world in the past few days have been amazing, inspiring, empowering, and beautiful – except for the embarrassing and shameful absence of boy bands. Boy Bands Against the War is the solution to that problem: a coalition of past and present members of boy bands, united in our commitment to global peace and global justice."

BBAW envisions a collaboration (hopefully reuniting Robbie Williams with Take That), in the vein of "We Are the World" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?," on a recording of "the antiwar anthem 'Bye Bye Bye.' " "No one understands heartbreak like a boy bander," the letter continues. "We know: it's time to break up with George Bush." Blue says boy bands have already signed on but isn't ready to disclose names.

I stare up at my poster of Justin Timberlake, and I fear for the fate of the project. The drag kings may be willing, but the rest of the country is certifiably insane, and we know this because of Natalie Maines. The Dixie Chick held out for a few days of CD stompings and radio silence before calling take-backs on her treasonous, anti-free world statement against our president. But I find it more impressive how gelatinous most wealthy, famous people become when confronted with the possibility of P.R. damage (see also: a Hollywood devoid of gay people). You'd almost think they had no politics. Or backbone.

I understand from personal experience that not all of the protesters can protest all of the time, nor can they do so in lockstep. I still don't own any Ani (or Dixie Chicks), and all I've been listening to for the past two weeks is four gorgeous, melancholy songs by some guy in Seattle named Mike Dumovich. Recorded on a CD called Relief and Split and enclosed in folded, duct-taped construction paper, these songs are more about weather, work, love, and dead insects than about smashing the state, as far as I can tell, but I still play them hourly.

However, when BBAW releases its single, all of that will change. And given the climate, I was touched to learn that Coed Magnetic, at 26 Mix, this month offers not just "nasti nu wave," "hott hip-hop," "trashi rock," and a table for Tom Ammiano's mayoral campaign but also free admission to attendees equipped with their antiwar-protest citation. Some might argue this event privileges breaking the law over, say, band aid, but I have a feeling that fledgling traffic-stoppers BBAW won't mind.

Contact BBAW at boybandsagainstwar@riseup.net. Coed Magnetic is Thurs/10 (and second Thursdays), 9 p.m.-2 a.m., 26 Mix, 3024 Mission, S.F. $3, free before 10 p.m. (and to cited antiwar protesters). (415) 826-7378. To contact Mike Dumovich, e-mail nadircamper@hotmail.com.