OR, WHO SHAVES PATTY BARBER?

Mary Elizabeth Bowden of the group Seraph Brass performs tomorrow Thursday at the Palo Alto JCC produced by Earthwise

I apologize at the drop for the provocative headline which is arguably racist and sexist and way too much info if you read everything too literally. I have a brother who does very well as an engineer in Silicon Valley but to my mind, and mounting frustration and some lament is losing the ability to read for nuance or tone. The English language evolves over time — I literally took a class on this at Dartmouth in 1985 — and words flip flop over time. Hot means cool. Bad means good. People literally and figuratively poop their pants with tropes that aren’t dope or are dopey in the sense of being stupid. There’s a record store, excuse the digression, in Walla Walla named Hop Poop – not sure whey. Are they stoopid or brewing pruno? 

I am referencing a war movie in which someone in the occupied territory resorts to the oldest profession and the filmmakers make fun or her moxie and her lack of ability with our diction. You should see me try to speak Vietnamese or any pitch based language. 

I think “me so horny” as a literary trope was repurposed as a hook in a hip hop hit a few years later. See David Shields “Reality Hunter” which is also calling to mind “Deer Hunter” which was repurposed as beer hunter when I was young dumb and full of pun. 

I am producing a classical concert tomorrow at the JCC — my second show in that room. My parents Paul and Barbara Weiss were funders and founders of that facility — their names live on thought they have left the building. It occurs to me that rather than the 50 other things I will do today I should go by the development office and see if they will give me contact info for children of my parents’ friends to invite them to the show: Steinbergs, Sails, Kochs et al.

Michelle Shabtai my producing partner — a macher at the JCC — told me not to use the terms “horny shiksas” to promote Seraph Brass; Me so horny is that much verse. Makes me want to eat sausage. Next time I produce a show with five female classically trained musicians from Indiana university I will serve wurst. I refrained from saying “we put ‘ass’ back into ‘class’”. Or let us lift your scherzo.

According to this list of upcoming shows, I have at least sex shows that feature horns, if you think of reeds and horns as equally horny. And sex of ten have members of the fairer sex. So come join us to see the climax of Earthwise 2023 our 69th season. Twenty-ninth, rather. 

Seraph Brass, Thursday, September 28, 7 pm, The JCC; as I started to say, this is a joint production of the JCC and Earthwise. In brief, I put up the money, they provided the room and marketing and picked the talent. I did produce a Charlie Musselwhite blues show December, 2019 but as a rental. (Although come to think of it, I probably paid less to rent the room than I am paying to subsidize Seraph Brass – -not to digress too far on this point but shout out to the others on that blues bill, the soul singer Valerie Trout with Howard Wiley and others — speaking of horny — and the nerd rapper MC Lars who is meanwhile a father and writing clean songs about “wet ass poopy”.

Interlude: in 1973 or so, I lived in Saratoga, CA near San Jose about 20 miles from here and attended shul at Temple Emanuel where my brother the tragic literalist was bar mitzvah’d. A boy in our carpool went on to become the screenwriter and comedian Ed Solomon — in those days he was going as Rock Sanderson, trying to fit in, or in reference to the Philip Roth character The Swede. Ed is the writer of “Bill and  Ted’s Excellent Adventure” among other things. He so funny. But at age 12 or so — and this was well before “me too” and probably before James Teddy Franco was even a twinkle or a tinkle in the dick of Mr Franco may he rest in peace or Betty Franco was possibly still a virgin excuse the digression — Ed Solomon would put up little handwritten billboards pressed to the window of his mother’s woody. Station wagon. To hilarious effect. For example:

HONK IF YOU’RE HORNY

Flamin’ Groovies, Sonny and The Rhinestone Sunsets, Beat Hotel Rm 32 69th Anniversary of ‘Howl” at Six Gallery featuring Larry & Nils, Saturday, October 7, 2 pm, Lytton Plaza, FREE; Flamin’ Groovies I don’t know much about; I’m told there is one original member, and that CVS Chris Von Sneidern is the core of the Youngbloods carrying on; Greil Marcus wrote that “Shake Some Action” is one of the 10 most important songs in the history of rockandroll — but I admit that I had never heard of it. Weird reason to book a show. Sonny Smith is a conceptual artist who makes music; they ruled at the Mitch this spring so I brought them back to reach a slightly larger audience, but we are falling a bit short of our other goal of having them perform just as the sun goes under the horizon. Larry Ochs has played a handful of shows for Earthwise — he is easily my wife’s least favorite player. He is the saxophone equivalent of the line in MacBeth “murder most foul”.  Nils Freykdahl meanwhile did voice work recently at SFJazz Joe Henderson room with Beth Custer group, so I invited him to be the first invited and featured reader besides your truly win my ongoing Ginsberg tribute. Duly noted, especially while cleaning up the splooge of the opening graph that David Boyce of Broun Fellinis a Cornell grad and father said his participation in Beat Hotel Room 32 at CockSwell plaza was tempered by the fact that he disapproves strongly with Ginsberg’s purported stance so to speak on man-boy-love. I am with you in rockland, so to speak, David Boyce about not being in favor of pedophilia. Yet short of posting a sign at Lytton Plaza in 10 days or for the next days stating my objection to pedophilia. NOTE THERE WERE NO LITTLE BOYS BUGGERED IN THE PREPARATION OR EXECUTION OF THIS LITERARY AND ARTISTIC PRODUCTION, NOR DID WE EVEN THINK ABOUT LITTLE BOYS BEING BUGGERED.

Which reminds me: and I am not sure how any of the 40 or so ideas aforementioned will help sell tickets to Earthwise shows on 9/28, 10/7, 10/8, 10/10, 10/11, 10/15, 10/20, 10/21, 11/3 or 11/17, but if you were watching the Palo Alto Parks and Recreation Commission meeting last night on tv — you were certainly not there, I was there — unless you are the one lady in the green golf shirt — you will have heard – -and its archived, its a public record –  I gave an update on the Lytton Plaza fountain: Ed Shikada, our city manager, reports in private conversation – -albeit searchable — and in fact the Post did write a story about something Ed and I discussed via email although due to their embargo of “mark weiss’ and “earthwise” they did not credit me as the source —  that the fountain is ahead of scheduled and that Vance Brown and company, Loren Brown, a foreman named fortuitously for us Judeo-Christians “Jesus” and them did a bang-up job pouring the very high grade $400,000 cement which is now merely curing meaning getting very very dry — and not it would seem horny like the actor or character in the film so many years ago and far far away. So I am almost being promised that the ugly fencing will be removed or at least minimized by Saturday, Oct. 7, especially since I was promised about $90 of value with my permit, granted months earlier, and before We The People thru our leadership — Tanaka, Stone, Lythcott Haims, Kou or Kuo, Burt and espicially in this case Veenker who my computer wants to smartly call “Veneer” even on consent. Which makes me want to vote that all the girls between 13 and 17 that I kissed or fondled between 1977 and 1982 with what passed for permission in those days I am adding to the consent calendar with one big “YESSSS!”. (Please note that on September 14, 2017 at San Francisco City Hall in a civil ceremony in front of 40 witnesses the author of this post Mark Weiss married Terry Acebo Davis a former member of Palo Alto leadership such that six years later, six years and 13 days even or oddly, everything I say is made that much more harmless what the germans called verharmlessing (as did the italics) by the fact I am a family man and not like Ginsberg briefly or in his shorts or in someone else’s shorts briefly and in spurts a family man — this being written by a middle aged guy in a cafe with a 14 pound Javanese in his lap. (Note to self: when did I start to imagine I would someday utter the words, to a dog: who pooped for daddy?)

Apropos of nothing the clerk at Bell’s Books I think his name is Chris or Kevin — of I know his name is Chris or Kevin — just have about a 50 percent confidence that his name is Kevin — and not Chris — says he wants me in my 31 minute and 19 second production of Beat Hotel Rm 32 Reads ‘Howl’ with Larry Ochs of ROVA and Nils Freykdahl of Idiot Flesh insert a few words of Howl fansite fantasy fare – and I will do so, provided it is not obscene prima facie on its face or on Kevin’s face as it were, mask or no mask — and only partly because it is like Hamlet adding a few lines to the play within the play. 

Dan Bern, Jerry Hannan, MTCBD Strings, Sunday, October 8, 7 pm. The Mitch; running out of clock here. Almost wrote “cokc” not clock. Jerry wrote Society like in the Sean Penn movie and sang by Eddie Vedder who snagged it. Dan wrote music for the fake Johnny Cask movie. Johnny Cask sounds like a band mate of the late great and martyred or murdered Buck Naked (of Bare Bottom Boys flame or fame). Dan made a painting — among his other plaudits — of Diana Golden my Dartmouth school mate who died as one of the most famous athletes in history. I hope to get to not Andytown of MP but Palo Alto Cafe on Middlefield and briefly hang if not well hung his painting of Diane and I will shoot it – -with bits of light not genetic crispy cask nine hot goo and sent it electronically if not 3d fax or what not to Steve her former husband and himself — when he was not playing with himself — a reliever for the Big Green. Big green what you might ask? 

Rachel Baiman, Roberta Lea, Tuesday, October 10, 5:30 pm Johnson Park, FREE; Rachel did a free pop up with her hubby the Kiwi or Aussie not oolong ago. That’s the tea. At Lytton but now she is moving up to Johnson – hee, hee he said Johnson. And Roberta hopefully will appear, unless she or her agent Virginia — ! – – read this too closely. I will treat them both professionally although I was just chatting with a former De La Salle athlete named Kendall Davis I think — no relation to Terry Acebo Davis although she was born in Oakland and had a cousin Kevin Acebo who went to Bishop — oh wow I totally forgot I had a scone sitting here for more than an hour Apple like the computer Ginger like the hot chick on Gilligan’s Island. Although in “ginger or Marianne” I think of myself as a Marianne — about creeping professionalism in amateur sports. Pro is sometimes a con. 

Kind of reminds although the clock is in the red that my brother wrote me a memo re our mother’s trust and had a little footer about “occupation” from Sir Walter Raleigh or something and I tried to claim that in that context “occupation” meant prostitution and he didn’t realize that ironically although he was attacking me for the modesty of my small business – he thinks its a joke — he was actually saying something terribly dirty and funny. I even wrote to James Shapiro of Columbia to help me find a source and he wrote back to say he couldn’t help me but I might be right. 

Adam Klipple project featuring sidemen of a more famous singer who plays festivals. Adam is a dartmouth guy like myself but much younger and never met Shapiro who was only there for one year, teaching Marlowe not Shakespeare. But he might have studied with Kasten and Saccio I should quiz him about Shakespeare. Adam will play either the Kawai or the (something European sounding — both are better by far than the Chinese made Baldwin at the Mitch). And two or more of his bandmates are from Australia which had us briefly discussing all wearing green for the Dandenong Rangers of near Melbourne where the late Kent Lockhart soared. 

Mads Tolling Group, Caitlin Gjerdrum, Sunday, October 15, 2 pm. Mitch Bowl, FREE. I said this properly “mas” like Robert Duran or more to the point Irish Pat Lawler — no mas — and then spelled it M, A, D, S it’s a public record. 

Chris Jonas Group, Friday, October 20, 8 pm, Palo Alto Art Center; I forget who this guy is or what they play other than he runs an art center in Santa Fe and was briefly a preparatory at palo Alto art center. I am weird. Queer even. 

Todd Sickafoose Octet featuring Jenny Scheinman, Carmen Staaf, Allison Miller, Rob Reich, Kirk Knufke, Ben Goldberg cd release, Saturday, October 21, 8 pm, Palo Alto Art Center; cool flyer by someone I need to put up.

Jovia Armstrong 11/3 — from Detroit and Chicago, got a PhD from UC Irvine and now teaches at Virginia. I am flying four musicians from Chicago, Detroit and VA for this event. 

Anat Cohen 11/17.  Anat is the world’s top jazz clarinet and not just the best Israeli woman at such. And she is married to the top Brazilian guitarist named Mark or Marcello who is also married to the top clarinetist named Anat who reminds me perhaps gratuitously of the famous philosophical or mathematical question that it has taken me 2,436 words to reach: who shaves Patty Barber?

Bill and Ted or here Ted and Bill who were created by my childhood friend and coreligionist Ed Solomon say “FIST UP, PALO ALTO” for music; although that reminds me of my equally funny Gunn classmate the late Marsh McCall who went add or try to slip it in there: fist up what exactly?

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