Doja chatter

Posted on September 16, 2020 by markweiss86

Doja Cat making of video

She should remake every Amy Irving, Barbara Streisand and Bette Midler movie, plus another version of “High Fidelity”.

 

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Eisenberg tops my rankings of City Council candidates after online forum

Posted on September 16, 2020 by markweiss86

My ranked choice of Palo Alto’s ten candidates (although we can choose four):

 

  1. Rebecca Eisenberg

 

Powerful presence as novice reform candidate.  Stanford grad with Harvard law degree; would raise the game of the other six electeds. She plausibly claims skill in negotiating outcomes in a contest where others settle for merely listening. With her industry background, for example, taking PayPal public, she has the chance to be like Gary Fazzino and Sid Espinosa in terms of bringing Valley know-how to local issues.

 

2. Greer Stone

 

Mentored by former mayor Karen Holman, teacher in the district that groomed him, nipped in his previous bid, but this time Greer could win. Also an attorney, he brings a social conscience to leadership. 

 

3. Raven Malone

 

My respect for Black Lives Matter elevates this person onto my list of ballot picks, but with reservations. Starting with the cognitive dissonance between her career in defense contracts and her stance on social justice.

 

4. Lydia Kou (I)

 

Lydia is flawed as a leader and cannot brush off the cynical view that she’s a realtor working on name recognition for personal gain. She was elected as part of a flawed sea change but ultimately failed “new residentialist movement”. She was elected on a platform actually co-authored by Tim Gray and I (in my case, with advice from Tom Jordan) two cycles previous. 

 

5. Steven Lee

 

Steven Lee is seriously flawed but a more defensible choice than half the field. I asked him to distance himself from anti-Semitism characteristic of “the Left” (and locally Rebecca Parker Mankey, who berated a Jewish Trump supporter), but got lip service or no reply. No one to my knowledge has advanced directly from HRC to Council (though Claude Ezran has contributed significantly to our community during and post-term).

 

6. Ed Lauing

 

Ed could potentially represent his neighbors as a leader and elected but my measured pessimism based on 12 years of engagement — I ran for Council in 2009, 2012 and 2014 —with policy here says he serves power more than people and capitulated rather than stood for anything or anyone. My pet peeve is his support for landlords who lobbied staff to limit constitutional rights and freedom of speech at Lytton Plaza, when the matter was deliberated by his parks commission. (I asked him recently to revisit those issues and principles).

 

7. Cari Templeton

 


Seems oddly cold and disconnected from her opportunity; as a commissioner, she is blameworthy for the circumstances she claims to confront. There’s plenty of tapes to judge her by, but I still suspect she was seated to displace more activistic candidates, like Rebecca. She worked for Google, but not as a founder. (As in, she’s no Stacy Savides, Jon Rosenberg, Alan Eagle or Woj-Brin — and I’ve met them! My Gunn mafia…)

 

8. Pat Burt

 

Burt is personally responsible for the decrepit state of our affairs, and our inability to self-govern, and the real estate rout. He personifies the corruption described in the Grand Jury Report. I liked his praise for the Obama book, although I have not read it. He’s frail looking but it’s hard to believe he’s grown out of his bullying former self. Move on, buh-bye!

 

 

9. Greg Tanaka

 


Somewhat personal response but Tanaka is a delusional liar when he claims that his office hours prove he listens to his constituents. One, he proved he did not listen to me by cutting me off mid sentence. Tanaka is an an amoral compass that points towards power, and kowtows. He mumbles. He dissembles.  He practically slithers. He’s a fraud professionally and publicly. He’s a threat to self governance and community. His re-election would be an indictment of our system. He’s not the whole swamp,  just a tank of it. 

 

10. Ajit Varma

 

 

Considering how much I deplore Tanaka and Burt, this guy had to work hard to earn my cellar. His favorite book is by a loud mouth new rich capitalist monster; he basically thinks Democracy exists to fuel Big Business. This man epitomizes the dark side of the proliferation of the semiconductor industry.

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Kudos Keith or Keef Knight

Posted on September 15, 2020 by markweiss86
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Gino Cimoli VS Cookie Lavagetto VS Con Dempsey VS Mark Koenig VS Tony ‘Push Them Up’ Lazzeri (For Dave Newhouse)

Posted on September 15, 2020 by markweiss86

ed

Gino cimoli I met him once in a café in San Francisco and North Beach disrupting his card game with his cronies he signed my 1961 tops pirate card. 

Tony lazzeri another Bay area guy who starred in the majors his nickname was push them up maybe because he got a lot of RBIs and not because he dressed in women’s clothing; 

December birthdays : I believe that Cookie Gino and Tony all had December birthdays .

Con Dempsey I guess I played against his son Dave or at least a suited in basketball Nolan Dempsey his grandson is in the Giants  org. 

Mark Koenig Dave Newhouse spoke of visiting him up in the wine country towards the end of his life and the connection between Babe Ruth’s famous called shot and Mark;

Lyman bostock this does not fit here but my baseball encyclopedia has his rookie season no indication of the pending doom; 

Hal Chase; another guy from the Bay Area from Los Gatos; 

Lawrence Ritter; The glory of their times. 

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The Simpsons -Tm in the window of 222 University Ave VS Adidas samba on man’s feet in front of same, at 8:47 a.m. on a Tuesday; or ‘Simpson’s vs Samba’

Posted on September 15, 2020 by markweiss86
Edit to add: later that day: I settled for a Krusty the clown hamburger cap
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Stanford to offer RrR degree

Posted on September 11, 2020 by markweiss86







Laughing all the way to the bank.
bw

Colin Quinn livestream for $5 moderates by two very funny GSB professors, or your money back.
the last bit is just a joke. LOL.
maybe the headline should be “Stanford to offer LOL Degree”.

I stole this line from Ian Brennan whose email was “rrrn” which I thought meant funny RN.
it’s onomatopoeia. Har har. R r.
close enough for plasty.
also : Maurice Sendak said he thought Italians were happy jews.

Can I give you or Naomi five dollars directly and then describe my experience on my own blog plastic alto rather than giving Stanford lively arts $5 for a Colin Quinn livestream?

Mark Weiss 

Plastic alto blog

Lives in Palo Alto

Not an affiliate 

Tho my wife works at the hospital 

LOL someone said to say that to indicate attempt at humor 

and1: I joked recently that I could claim to be a Stanford alumnus because I have a certificate signed by Dick Dibiaso that says I completed his camp.  I said this apropos of two candidates for city Council exaggerate their Stanford credentials.  

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Still grooving on, intrigued by Nicole Mitchell Lisa A. Harris ‘EarthSeed’ oratorio and tribute to Octavia Butler

Posted on September 10, 2020 by markweiss86


It’s a complex work, but it’s chipping away at me.
I’ve bought two Octavia Butler books, and noted that both Veronica DeJesus, the visual artist, and Rebecca Eisenberg, the activist, feel her.
I was streaming it from a link provided by her publicist but now it is also on Apple. I pay $10 a month for all I can eat, unless they have sent a bill for $3,000 to my wrong address. 


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Mom listen

Posted on September 10, 2020 by markweiss86

I am reading a letter Wallace Stegner 30 years ago wrote his mother after she had been gone 30 years, on the brink of his 80th. At the suggestion of Wayne Horovitz who also has an evening-length through-composed oratorio about Joe Hill based on “the preacher and the slave”.

I admit I futzed around on the Internet thinking about fantasy football and Kailua, Hawaii before actually settling down to page twenty-two. And this, which I guess is like a procrastination from actually doing the heavy lifting – – reading .

But I am reminded —and did I already say I lost my mom exactly 3 years, or three years and three weeks ago? —Of visiting my father’s business, an auto lot in Cupertino, Calif., now about a mile from the Apple spaceship and it is a grocery? Well, big box fancy grocery.  And I got separated and went to the receptionist and asked where everybody was and she held the intercom to my face and I yelled

MOM WHERE ARE YOU?!

All the salesman leaned into the show room and craned their respective necks and bemused faces in my direction. Sure enough my mom reappeared.

Mom, where are you?

 

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Rounders

Posted on September 4, 2020 by markweiss86

Molly

Alyssa

This post is about an author I read about in the Times, Alyssa Cole and it made me think of Molly Tuttle, Palo Alto’s rising star musician in Nashville, although obviously the connection I am making is pretty silly. (They both have bald heads).  I had never heard of Cole, whereas I’m obviously obsessed by Tuttle – -she has a new cd out, so that’s part of the effect.

Molly has amazing videos recently connecting her songs to social justice platforms and initiatives. 

In the context of this being a music blog, my headline refers to the influential folk label founded in Cambridge, Mass. not far from where Molly later went to music school, by Ken Irwin and three friends. I forget exactly what the term refers to: someone who keeps rolling along, trying to make the world a better place? 

I met Ken Irwin when he scouted my then client, the author who writes songs Dao Strom, at SXSW in 2009; that was the year that Rounder actually won Best Album at the Grammys’, for Robert Plant. 

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I am posting about but not writing about new Charlie Kaufman thing, I think

Posted on September 4, 2020 by markweiss86

Bw

I bought a New York Times T-shirt but not the one pictured in the New York Times newspaper by cell phone from a lady in Philadelphia

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