I saw James Dolan speak at a music conference in Los Angeles in February. He owns the Knicks and the Rangers, and Madison Square Garden, but was talking about Sphere, a venue in Las Vegas. It’s more than a venue, its a type of venue. It uses millions of LED — light emitting diodes —and thousands of speakers and costs $2.3 billions of dollars to build. He wants to build Sphere(s) out beyond Las Vegas. If you read this, Plastic Alto, and have hundreds of millions of dollars and one hundred acres, call him.*

Meanwhile we have The Guild in Menlo Park, or maybe Guild. They have Ozomatli tonite, Susto played last night; they had Duran Duran recently and a week of Bob Weir. The general contractor told me that 25 billionaires from here put up one million dollars each, for a total fund of $35m, to build Guild. Now there’s a plaque with the names of those donors, upstairs, near the elevator. Actually, I am taking license with the word “billionaire” – -I think of a millionaire as someone with between $20m and $200m outside of their home, and that people with more than $200m assets under management are “billionaires”. People with nothing to about $20m are all in the same boat, more or less, compared to the billionaires and trillionaires; there are no people — yet – with a trillion dollars – just corporations like Apple and Nvidia and Tesla — yet “corporations are people too!” — so it’s confusing. 

I started Earthwise if you excuse the digression because I thought that being able to discern good music from noise would help people choose a leader over a despot, and choose war over peace, but now on HBO there is a story about an attractive female Fascist who uses music to manipulate the masses, in a merger of art, entertainment, capital and politics. Oops. 

I thought of all this — 316 words above — while watching 10 Stanford students play salsa for about 100 We The Peoples at Johnson Park, by earthwise, under an oak tree. Cien Mil Mangos under thousands of oak leaves. 

*I was impressed with James Dolan taking about Sphere. I started to imagine Kent Lockhart the basketball player but also an artist and art teacher being commemorated by having his art translated into or onto Sphere, having his images and shapes projected onto that curved, densely lit, saturated media skin, the way Jessica Yu turned Henry Darger’s drawings into a movie. Kent was once drafted by the Knicks the NBA team owned by Dolan, if that helps the concept move from these pages to Sphere. (And Jessica Yu and Kent were once schoolmates if not friends — she won the Academy Award for short doc — short doc means if Doc Rivers was built like Mugsy Bogues and was a film. In the way that Milt Wagner was not Richard Wagner pronounced “vog” like “dog” and “ner” like “grrr” – the sound a dog makes — and the Warriors auxiliary distaff team is named for an Old Norse concept wall cry eye — like the big eyeball on the sphere or “Naked Eye” by Luscious Jackson not Lucius Jackson, peel me?

Kent promised to send me a lizard he built out of wire and color, maybe based on something he saw on his farm outside Melbourne, the way Oliveira saw hawks over Stanford, to form Windhover. He winged it.

Sphere needs Kent more than Kent needs Sphere, if you ask me or read Plastic Alto – which was named not for the soccer field near Stanford but the little black rubber pebbles that bounced or jumped when the ball hit. 

Cien Mil Mangos on May 17, 2024 at Johnson Park: Sofia, vocals; Eva, vocals; Rabiah Kabir, flute; Ryan, trumpet; Andrew, trombone; Ky, bass; Dante, piano; Cefe, congas; Wesley, bongos, cowbell; Elena, timbales.

Cien Mil Mangos, April 18, 2024, 3rd Thursday, California Avenue:

Sofia, vocals; Rabiah Kabir, flute; Jenna, alto; Ryan, trumpet; Gil, trombone; Dante, piano; Ky, bass; Max Yoshimoto, timbales; Sebastian, congas; Austin, bongos. (Note: this is third year for Cien Mil Mangos, a student group that overlaps with but it independent of either Murray Low’s class or SALJE Stanford Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble. When someone graduates, they recruit for more members; as a nod to this dynamic, Murray on piano and Rabiah on flute opened for Will Bernard group at Earthwise at The Mitch last month).