Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

BLUF: if i was going to answer such a question I would say I am reading the autobiography of the recently deceased football hero Gale Sayers for whom the NFL humanitarian of the year award is named for “I Am Third” the title of which refers to his philosphical belief system and hierarchy and I quote, “The Lord is First. My friends and family and constituents are Second. I am Third”. I am listening to a new jazz based oratorio by Nicole Mitchell and Lisa M. Harris of Houston based on the writings of Octavia Butler about a future society that is balanced and humane and elevates women and people of color, “EarthSeed” and I am watching two movies by Robert Wise “w” “i” “s” “e” no relation different spelling “The Set Up” and “Somebody Up there Likes Me” from the 1950s and I taped them both from our cable system and The Movie Channel TMC in that they are both about boxing, one stars my fellow Dartmouth grad a former collegiate boxing champion Robert Ryan about a fighter asked to throw his match – -maybe the basis for the Bruce Willis plot point in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” and the other starring Paul Newman in a break out role based on the life of Rocky Graziano but what I’m tracking is race in that I noticed that the Set Up is based on a poem by Joseph Moncure March I think is his name but the character in the original is a black guy named Pansy Jones and I always thought it would be interesting to stage a new production restoring that fact, but I buy way more books than I ever finish, and I have tons and tons of music and cds that I am trying to screen — that’s my business, my work, I’m a concert promoter – and I’m always taping then erasing a lot of stuff on tv, more than on Youtube, but I watch some of that. Plus I write my own blog, Plastic Alto, which has about 2,400 posts.

In Tanaka’s Satanic Service, Strikes Two

Yesterday I posted to my blog about Palo Alto council member and incumbent candidate Greg Tanaka and how weird it was that he described himself in relation to Satanic murderer Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker.

And I connected that to his discussion of CAHOOT, a mental health police intervention program, the name I claimed could possibly be a second dog whistle to potential devil-worshipping followers of the politician. I said that my Webster’s dictionary mentioned that the word was often used in conjunction with “the devil” as in “Greg Tanaka is in cahoots with the Devil”. 

But in my new Webster’s, the Eleventh edition relative to the Ninth, it actually changes the definition of “cahoots” slightly and omits the part about “with the devil”. 

Meanwhile it turns out the Molly Tuttle, a Nashville based singer-songwriter from Palo Alto not only sings a Rolling Stones song “She’s Like a Rainbow” that indirectly has a reference to Satanism – its from a 1976 album called “In Her Satanic Service” but she also has a second song on her new cd “Olympia” – by Tim Armstrong of Rancid – that includes the lyric “I was feeling much like the devil”.

But I would never say that Molly Tuttle is Satanic, I would just say its a coincidence or she is being ironic or stepping out a bit, since she is, as I said, saintly. I like Molly Tuttle, she is fantastic.

I don’t like Greg Tanaka. He’s horrible.

TONITE THURSDAY AT 7 PM CITIZENS WILL GET THE CHANCE TO HEAR MY LEAST FAVORITE GREG TANAKA AND MY FAVORITE REBECCA EISENBERG AND EIGHT OTHERS DISCUSS AND DEBATE, BUT UNTIL THEN I WANT TO SAY I AM ALARMED TO HAVE A LEADER WHO APPARENTLY DOES NOT READ, LISTEN TO MUSIC OR GO TO OR SCREEN CINEMA.

More specifically: in 10 or so years in Palo Alto leadership, as commissioner or council member, Greg Tanaka has never said anything that I agree with. He’s never said anything I find intelligent or insightful or important. I’ve just heard him mumble a bunch of tiresome nonsense about it costs too much.

Also, Greg Tanaka is constantly attacking public art and the very popular Percent for Art program and I love public art, love the Percent for Art program, work in the arts, campaigned for public office and commissions on art platforms or planks, and am married to the former chair of the arts commission Terry Acebo Davis, who is Catholic, while I’m Jewish. 

Plus, Greg Tanka not only did not listen to me when I visited him in his office, but he cut me off and left the room exactly as I was sharing a very intimate personal detail to him, and why I dropped out of the 2018 campaign. And then he edited his tape of the meeting to cover up that fact — while I kept my tape of that meeting.

I suspect Greg Tanaka of being some sort of a sociopath or having a neurological basis for his weirdness. He is not fit to serve. I hope voters reject him, bigly.

And when I say “On Tanaka’s Satanic Service Strikes Two” I mean strikes two as in “of the clock” and I am referencing Christopher Marlowe’s “Faustus” and not baseball “strike two” meaning me missing something. I mean maybe Tanaka made a deal with the Devil, Beelzebud — his angel, from Milton’s “Paradise Lost’ or Satan. 

I did listen to the second half of Greg’s talk with Rev Bruce Reyes Chow and had nothing further to report on this matter.

ok well wait a minute; at 33:33 which is half of 66:66 the devil’s number, Tanaka says that apropos of police reform he wants to first check the data and look at “apples to apples” – is that a dog whistle to maybe a set of Satanists who have read “Paradise Lost” and know that he is talking about the apple with which Satan tempts Eve? The snake me beguiled and I did eat. I’m jest saying. 

well: 

Tanaka says that Palo Alto housing prices peaked in 2018 and are in decline.

And that the house next door to him was on the market for $3m but sold for $2m which he called a “thirty-three percent haircut” – -he used that term at least twice, “haircut”. But my question would be: what was the seller’s basis? Or how much per square foot? Or, how long on the market. And I don’t believe this person was actually next door to Greg. 

He also said something about buying two small pizzas – and he gestures to indicate they were the size of his head, but they cost $90.00. I had to reply the tape because it sounded like “nine dollars”. 

Then he said, most weirdiest, that commercial utility rates are too high and a bigger problem that the residential rates. And that if people move to Austin Texas housing is one-sixth of here. His actual words” you can get three times the house for half the prize”. Now I almost moved to South Austin in 2009 after spending a month there around the time of SXSW and I used to say I could cut my overhead in half but if You look it up I bet you will find that we are more like 60 percent higher and not six times. (edit to add: Tanaka is correct and I am wrong that the median home price in Austin in 2019 was $395,000 and her it was $2.7m so indeed prices here are 6.66 times higher)

“Byzantine entitlement process, so it’s really hard to get approval, right?” “we charge relatively hight impact fees” 

Palo Alto Housng Corporation changed their name he said because they have built everywhere but Palo Alto.? I’m guessing, they merged and moved? Or because of all the scandals and bad publicity of bad deals like Maybell?

I took a big pay cut? “Haircut” is also the name of a story by Ring Lardner, and a collection of that title, which is about a bunch of guys who hang out at the barber shop and talk smack, circa 1920 and how that goes too far, but none of them were elected public figures such that the smack talker — me- is protected by the first amendment. 

surcharge on pizza? he’s against it, because it’s already $90?

Inflation has been 3 percent but we’ve had double digit rate increases in utilities last few years??

He claims that Palo Altan’s pay $50 for black trash bins but Mountain View only pays $35.

He kinda goes on and on about sob stories about his child’s friend parent who complained of losing his job and the utility rate increase, yet why does he collect contributions from the uber-wealthy special interests like Chop Keenan and other developers? And he claims poor sad sack won’t be able to donate to “PIE” this year – although he cannot recall the acronym — let me try it Parent Endowment or Education? i forget to, don’t have kids. But he’s sort of messing the point that previously taxes and property taxes paid for schools — pre-Prop 13 – -and as part of the tax-dodging libertarian type that’s part of the equation, that we don’t ask as much in taxes but ask for donations to foundations, a type of privatization. 

When Greg Tanaka says “i feel for them” I don’t think he knows what that means but I think he knows or thinks that if he pretends to care or feel he can trick people into giving him money or voting for him. 

Never mentioned whether he was for or against a business tax – -he’s against it. But rails against a straw man of something no ones heard of, the $10 surcharge on the $90 pizza. 

He’s reading “All American Boys” by Jason Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely 2015. He sort of botches the story line by omitting that most of the plot is about the fact that the cop beats up the young black suspect who he accuses of shoplifting. At least at a glance, although I admit he is closer to an accurate description than what I first thought he said and started to pounce upon. 

And he watches not “the Matrix” tho he’s seen it but like in the Matrix, he watches a lot of youtube how to fix it content to help him fix his bike, which he been riding for more than 30 years. And the book was suggested by his student intern. it’s about an assault wherein a black person and a “white caucasian person” saw it differently – I was anticipating  his use of the term “rashomon effect” to no avail. And he listens to podcasts, about startups which are better than IBM or HPs. He says he’s also “AA” meaning anti-acronym. LOL. Oy. 

 

Take us home, brother Marlowe – shout out to my professor James Shapiro: 

FAUSTUS. Ah, Faustus,

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,

And then thou must be damn’d perpetually!

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,

That time may cease, and midnight never come;

Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make

Perpetual day; or let this hour be but

A year, a month, a week, a natural day,

That Faustus may repent and save his soul!

O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!

 

bw 

this is pretty experimental and obscure but I took photos of 10 human faces from artwork in my home office / spare bedroom and bathroom and was going to assign them arbitrarily as avatars of the 10 council candidates, alphabetically versus the order I shot them and see if it causes any weird shift phases of my views on them. I will correct any specific gender or race microagression. 

Ajit 

Ajit is a business man asscociated with high tech and the image I used is of Clint Eastwood in a parade and Carmel so just spit-balling here I guess I would predict that Palo Alto or America under someone like Ajit there would be private cops with AK-47s shooting at the feet of pedestrians in front of every office building on Uni Ave, which we would then jokingly call Uzi Ave. 

Cari

This is a slightly out of focus detail of a painting by outsider Jimmy Lee Sudduth and it times comments have described this as a cheer-leader and Cari is a cheer leader of sorts for the developers and like Armit for a type of corporate hegemony but what comes to mind just like here I can only imagine vacuous and insipid utterances about Brothers Grimm if she was asked to write a thesis on Brother Jim she would say that it reminds her of Palo Alto because the buildings — you cannot see here — are more that 50 feet. (I can Swede in the building — but I have to add that my fav candidate also favors raising the height limit downtown.)

Ed

Ed as a candidate seems to have a fairly blank face and fake smile when he is on the dias like the facial expression in this sticker which depicts a Warriors logo in reference to Dia De Las Muertos. 

Greer 

This is a cartoonified and pixelated version of the fictional boxer Rocky Balboa played by Sly Stallone and as I referenced above Rocky was based partly on Rocky Graziano; Greer is pound for pound…

Greg

This is a masque made by Santiago Romero the nephew of Mateo Romero and son of Diego Romero, a Dartmouth grad and he told us that his former step-mom Roxanne helped him design it — whereas Greg Tanaka seems to lie all the time, so it highligths the long nose here.

Lydia

(somehow got deleted but I think it was a female figure or face by Leonard Baskin, who is Jewish, whereas one of the knocks on Lydia early on was that some people in Barron Park said that her support of the Christmas pageant at Buena Vista showed a misunderstanding of the no establishment clause. But she did come to my mom’s memorial at Beth Am so thank you).

 

Pat

This is a Tibetan face from the Beastie Boys concert at Golden Gate Park in the early 1990s and I can only say that it reminds me of the time in 2014 when Pat and I were both candidates in office of the Daily News waiting for the intereview to start and he said he had just been to the Bridge Concert at Shoreline and he said his favorite act was Jack White. But he did not know who White Stripes were. 

Raven

It is not strictly true that matching randomly ten details of artwork on my or Terry’s walls with ten alphabetized candidates by first name happens to yield Raven Malone a Black woman as represented by a painting my Ian Johnson of Ornette Coleman, but close enough for Plastic Alto. Ornette is a hugely influential living legend in jazz who created his own sub-language and style – and influenced the naming of this blog for his acrylic saxophone — whereas Raven is trying to exert an influence in this her adopted home town by participating in protest (BLM) and now running for office. 

Rebecca

This is a painting or mixed media work by Mateo Romero of Santa Fe area and depicts a Santa Clara pueblo woman with a black pot on her head. It means that Rebecca, a Stanford grad with a Harvard law degree has a lot of her mind.