Page 58 of the April issue features a full-page ad for the Westwood exhibit, which opened June 10 at the de Young, an institution infamously presided over by the appallingly wealthy, long-time San Francisco socialite, Dede Wilsey. You might know Dede. She wasn’t depicted so pleasantly in Sean Wilsey’s 2005 memoir, Oh the Glory of it All, to put it nicely (more on that in a moment). If you haven’t read the book, Sean wanted to bang her and kill her simultaneously, but most everyone familiar with her would skip the former.

Page 64 of the April issue also features a brief preview of the new Susan Dynner documentary, Punk’s Not Dead. And why would San Francisco’s richest care about the fate of punk? We’ll get to that in a moment also.

Here’s the initial problem: It's not clear why any producer would have considered Punk’s Not Dead to be a good idea. Doing a general documentary about punk at this point is kinda like doing a documentary about the United States.

Lunatic Filmmaker With Dead-End Idea for Documentary: “So I want to do a documentary about the United States.”

Rational Producer: “Huh? Wha?”

LFWDEID: “I would like to do a documentary about the United States. And I would like you to pay for it.”

RP: “Uh, okay. America is pretty big. A lot’s been said about it. It actually contains 50 states and 200 years of history. Lots of different people live here. In some places, it’s cold. In some places, it’s warm. It’s inspired people. It’s discouraged people. But everyone in our little corner of the world is a part of it in some large or small way, because it’s expansive. What’s the angle?”

LFWDEID: “Well, you know, we’ll interview people like George Bush. The CEO of Disney. Mark McGwire. And maybe the governor of Montana. We’ll ask ‘em about America.”

A lot of films centered around punk have been produced in the last 30 years. The Decline of Western Civilization, SLC Punk, Boston Beatdown, films about riot grrrl, Repo Man, We Jam Econo, Sid and Nancy, Instrument, films on dozens of individual bands, even a film last year that focused narrowly on early ‘80s hardcore. Christ, where do we begin and end?

Dynner “focuses” on the Ramones, the Clash, UK Subs, the Exploited and others. There are interviews with Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and Tim Armstrong of Rancid! They’ve never been asked about punk rock in an interview! You’ll see their answer for the first time in Punk’s Not Dead! Even the complete and total creatures of MTV, Good Charlotte, get some face time, a band so relevant that chunky mall kids from Nebraska snark at the mention of their name. (Again, do we really have to say any of this?)

But for Dynner, Good Charlotte’s Benji is the voice of a generation. Sum 41, too. Those dudes are still around? Didn’t they do Leno and immediately commit cult suicide afterward? Even cool hunters must be laughing at this shit.

Armstrong doesn’t want to define punk, as we know from what Rancid's said many times in the past. He just doesn’t want to police anyone’s definitions of punk, according to 7x7’s provocative preview (curiously titled "The dead head").

Debates over the definition of punk rock have raged for decades now, of course. Who the hell am I to say? But punk at least has basic contours that distinguish it from other musical genres and subcultures. It has to. That’s what gives it meaning. Kinda like how Scandanavian metal is not Christ-fueled house music. They’re two distinct bodies and we mark those differences linguistically. It’s part of the essence of who we are.

For instance, punk rock tends to eschew crass consumerism. Gently placing the cocks of corporate wolverines in one’s mouth, you know, is kinda frowned upon by people who grew up listening to punk. Rabid imperialism and native-crushing U.S. western expansion aren’t exactly activities punks engage in daily, either. (Michael de Young founded both the museum in Golden Gate Park and the San Francisco Chronicle, the latter of which he used during the late 19th Century to attack pretty much anyone who didn’t bend to America’s inevitable global domination.) But perhaps Tim Armstrong knows something I don’t.

It’s amazing we’re even having these conversations after 30 years in a city that helped form punk’s bedrock in the first place. None of this made sense. Until I realized who produced the film. None other than Todd Traina, the appalingly wealthy son of the appalingly wealthy Dede Wilsey (and stepson himself of the appalingly wealthy trash novelist Danielle Steel). Todd wasn’t depicted all that well in Sean Wilsey’s book, either, coming off more or less like the polo-playing bad guy in a John Cusack film. You’re likelier to see Todd in the Chron’s Swells column these days than you are at a piss-soaked, all ages venue in the Mission. (Scrutinize the Swells link. The exponential ironies here are profound.)

The equally wealthy Sean Wilsey also thought he was punk for a while, according to his memoir, shredding around his Pac Heights neighborhood on a skateboard and stealing some poor bastard’s scooter before ending up in juvie. His book’s about how his appallingly wealthy father, Al Wilsey, who married the appallingly wealthy Dede, decided he liked her sons, the Traina boys, better than Sean, and thus wouldn’t look at Playboys and squeegee shower doors with Sean anymore.

It’s also about how Sean landed in a string of expensive boarding schools, and how his real mom is also appallingly wealthy but severely neurotic, and how all of this combined made Sean cry, but that’s okay, because it turns out Sean likes crying a lot and his book became a bestseller and he got a posh job at the New Yorker and made friends with Dave Eggers. Poor Sean.

But I digress. Punk, I mean to say, is not the first word that comes to mind when imagining Mrs. Wilsey or her sons. Or Sean Wilsey, for that matter. Together, these people are about as much of a threat to the establishment as Toby Keith.

“Selfish old bat” gets closer to defining Dede, rather than “punk,” and “conceived with a weak sperm,” perhaps, for the Traina boys. (God-damn, we're still putting this shit nicely.)

If you've been following the debate, Dede has almost single-handedly kept Healthy Saturdays from becoming a reality in Golden Gate Park. Because Dede wants her appallingly wealthy museum patrons to have auto access to Golden Gate, she’s managed to stamp out efforts to ban cars from the park on Saturdays, so walkers, bicyclists, roller skaters, kids and old folks alike could enjoy the park without worrying about getting smeared by some rich bat’s import coup.

And 7x7 magazine represents everything that San Franciscans like Dede Wilsey could ever hope to be.

Worst of all, the Punk’s Not Dead preview was written by Elaine Santore, the same woman who just last week as a contributor to the blog SFist quite hilariously called one of the Traina girls a bitch and trashed her for, well, donning an outrageously expensive trash bag.

For the record, Santore just recently left the Guardian as an intern and took up shop at 7x7. I didn’t even realize she’d written it until long after I’d first suppressed the stomach acid that lept into my throat. I actually miss Santore’s razor-sharp wit and still dutifully read her regular SFist feature, Caption Action. (Elaine, please don’t take it personally. I adore you!)

In fact, by simply summarizing Punk's Not Dead, Elaine has indirectly warned us all in advance to skip it during SFIFF, if the title wasn’t warning enough. And it’s a new job for her. God knows none of us work in absolute heaven.

From the look of it, ultimately, Punk’s Not Dead as an actual film concept today would make even the executives at Hot Topic blush. Thank you, 7x7 magazine, for publicly suggesting that San Francisco doesn’t deserve its cosmopolitan trophies. Todd Traina might actually have more fun reading the letters archive at Heartattack than producing a useless movie if defining punk is his forté. He’ll realize quickly just how many years behind he is in understanding the American underground and perhaps spare us all the wasted publicity in the future.

Maybe I should at least see Punk's Not Dead first before behaving like such a smartass. Really, I'd rather take a walk in the park and listen to my headphones.

*Quick update. SFist Elaine actually interned for 7x7 and freelanced a little for them afterward. Sorry Elaine! She's now working for Koko Represents.