Ed Solomon was in my Hebrew School car pool 45 years ago and he held signs for other cars to read, on 280 like HONK IF YOU’RE HORNY. He wrote “Bill and Ted” movies, one of which, still featuring Keanu Reeves, is reviewed passably in both the Chron and The Times today.
I’ve met Lava Thomas several times in the last couple years, out and about or at the home of our mutual friend my neighbor; I’m happy she won an award today and earlier this month San Francisco apologized for cancelling her Maya Angelou tribute.
Maybe Palo Alto can site her Maya piece, on Lytton Plaza, or Cali Ave. We cancelled two female created works, Go Mama and The Egg so this would be a good make good.
Nina Katchadourian should own an airline that always chooses the longest distance between two points but my the end of the flight as you deplane you are awarded an art degree.
I think of her as a strange visitor from another planet — like Superman but a woman and creative — so it’s hard to contemplate that we apparently overlapped one year at Gunn High in Palo Alto, Calif. in fall 1981 thru spring 1982. When you are 18 in Palo Alto the 15 yo’s are nearly invisible, however, plus I was not interested in art until I was 28. In fact, I went on exactly one date with Nicole Bruntjen whose father Sven Bruntjen is an art dealer and she said “you’re really creative, huh?” and I said “No, I’m the editor of the student newspaper. I’m concise and accurate”. We actually went to Philip and Paula Kirkeby’s for dinner, surrounded by a really cool art collection, that I had the chance to revisit 20 years later. I am now married to Terry Acebo Davis the artist who I met thru Paula, longer story.
Terry heard about Nina first, thru Karen Frankel, her fellow commissioner, and also Karen worked for Paula. The first we heard or saw of Nina was the self-portraits that look like Flemish paintings – -like Dutch masters, as I like to say — hat she made on the airlines, in the lavatorys. Nina was in the mile high club.
So I just rewatched the first 3 minutes of her epic film, of 28 minutes long time duration, from 2005, “Accent Elimination”. What I like is her deadpan interview style. She is leading her confederates and scripted the whole thing but she is acting mock-surprised.
I saw this at Cantor a couple years ago. I think I was with Steve and Eric Cohen, and Christina Karls Cohen, their mother. She is Swedish. I don’t think she knows Mrs. Katchadourian. Not to get poignant, but meanwhile we lost Eva Cohen and her father , the music prof, Albert Cohen. On the same day, about eight months ago. I dated Eva only slightly more successfully than Nicole — I don’t think I kissed either young woman, let’s be clear here. We also lost professor William Dement, who came to my Dayna Stephens concert on August 18,2019. Nick Dement told me of Eva’s passing. It’s possible that Nina Katchadourian know or knew: Nicole Bruntjen, Eva Cohen and Nick Dement. It’s also possible that Nina doesn’t think as much about high school as I do.
Not that she is not perfectly partnered and it is not none of my business, but if Nina at age 15 – -not to be confused with Tina Age 15 which is a pseudonym of Chris Johansen, the artist — was as confident and interesting at age 15 as she is at thirty-something, she might have dated John Beech. John was new at Gunn for his senior year, direct from England. He said not the Stones vesus the Who but Sioxie Sieux of Siouxie and the Banshees, was his thing. (Years later my friend D and I had lunch with John at Blue or Bleu something, and we sat next to Moe Asches’ son, Gregor Asch, aka DJ Olive — and he was gesturing in such a way that I asked him and he was talking about another former Palo Altan Matt Haimovitz the cellist — anyhow I started to say that 15 year old Nina might have dated 17 or 18 year old John Beech. But it’s also true that Peter Kirkeby said a few years ago that he wanted to fix up John Beech with a painter we collect named Vanderveen, Kimetha. Peter used a more suggestive term. Maybe loosely synonymous with “fly”.
edit to add, a half hour later — and I say “half” like “ralph” from “happy days” which takes place in Milwaukee.
it reminds me of Shakespeare. Not sure which play, and more the play than the sonnets. But at Dartmouth in the 1980s we were taught that Shakespeare is mostly about family. This is about Nina and her parents as much as about Armenians in Turkey for 2,500 years. Hopefully not “King Lear”. And not “McBeath”. It’s sort of like “rosankrantz and guildenstern are dead” by Tom Stoppard. Maybe.
I’m from Chicago for 3 or 4 yours before I moved to San Jose area and then The Peninsula so I still say “route” like “root beer” and “roof” with short and shorter ooo sound.
Also and I guess this is still more free association than any probing of what makes this art but I was just flipping thru some old baseball trading cards and I had a reprint or tribute of a Moe Berg card. He was a spy during WWII. He could pass for German tho he was a Jew. And it has stuck with me forty or so years that when I read about him in Sports Illustrated they said that during the 1940s or slightly later but less true today that Moe Berg can guess what county certainly what state any American was by their accent. Occassionally since then I distinguish a Tennessseean from a Texan but I don’t know how. It’s like wine tasting, I guess.
I did something like this just the other day with Karen Kwan who works for the Palo Alto Art center. She said she is from England but I said she didn’t speak the way Chinese who go to school in Singapore do. Like my late friend Lanny Wui, whose favorite actor was Ronnie sic Coleman. And she taught me at my urging to say “salamat datang”. She and I never really dated but we would “salamat datang”. Also Palo Alto has an incumbent candidate for City Council Lydia Kou or Kuo who is Chinese but actually lived in and maybe was born in Africa where her parents had a restaurant. I resisted asking a mother and daughter and their dog – they wanted to meet Duffy — where they were from but did ask if indeed they were mother and daughter and dogger. Also, there is a Jacqueline at Cafe Venetia and I asked her name – -she loves Duffy – but did not comment on whether “Jacqueline” is hard for Mexicans to say. She says there are two Jacquelines at Cafe Venetia. The other day, at the Black Lives Matter very temporarily installed wheat paste poster installation literally on the 200 Block of Uni, I asked if a lady and her daugther were Israeli – but she had given me her name. Edit.
I did speak to Eric Cohen today but did not mention Nina Katchadourian. He said his brother is in Graceland.
I should stop but I texted Mitch Woods on whether he calls it “Mardi Gras” or “the Mardi Gras”.
I might check the tag “ethniceities” sic but i reserve that for Judaism and I am guessing the K’s are more likely orthodox.
I’m also flashing to Sylvie Simmons interview or transcript with Linda Ronstadt in a recent MOJO Magazine in that Linda has stopped performing on the account of a degenerative neurologicial condition, as compared to another singer and rock star who had a stroke.
I think Karen Kwan said she roots for Manchester United and I digressed to the thing about the soccer world championships were Sunday and a Black Parisian playing for Bayern Munich was the hero. I said I wear a Manchester United Jersey because my father and my grandafather sold Chevrolet. And I hope all this attones for and does not make worse the fact that i sort of made fun of the famous Slovenian American who dressed in olive drab on national tv last night. She acknowledged the “ill and suffering” Covid victims — which is more than her husband did — but I pretended I heard her talking about a recipe for “eel and saffron”. My out card was a while ago but I also met Turkey’s most famous soccer player when he briefly owned a cafe in Palo Alto and also can I gratuitously name check Elif Batuman who went to Stanford for grad school, the author. And I have a Hungarian sister in law and a great nephew by marriage or two of them now –mazel tov – -who is a Hungapino. Whereas Andres Fajardo another Gunn 1982 who Nina likely never met is married to Juliet Lee and calls his kids Chilumpicans for part Chinese, part Colombian. And we are All American. Also Chris Knipp I mean to send Jon Curiel’s “Al-America”; he is expert of Arabic.
What’s new with Nina during the pandemic- – and please read this with insert your own funny accent. Snoke.
Also: I am guessing that the interview with Sam Chwat (?) took place in professor K’s office but Nina designed and installed the intricate grouping of framed documents: clippings, posters, head shots. I wonder if the stacks of books also read to express a super-message: she has something where she photographs book titles to read as a poem.
what clock is it? Much clock? Much much? so Much! VS We don’t have to Cho you no Stinking badgers. When you say “wisconsin” you’ve said it all, Adam. Edam. Damn.
i tagged this “art” “sex” and “words” when i say sex i mean gander.
My mother said that as a little girl in chicago this must be late 1930s and early 1940s you would just show up at the movies and stay until they get back to the part you already saw, “this is where I came in” so I want to say that at the combination airlines and art grad school they would give you a masters on international travel and a doctoral on domestic travel, reason being that they would, for example, go from LA to SF by way of Okinawa and that occassionally Nina herself would show up to inspect tickets like the Mormon Jet Blue guy, Dan something, Dan Kipperstop or something, and that the degrees were sort of like the nuts. And there will be a fake documentary about all this that pretends this has already happened when it is likely still the future.
Donald Trump is trying to create a race war in America, Blacks versus whites, as a way to avoid a class war, as a way to avoid taxing corporations and the ultra rich. He is doing this to impress Putin.
Someone pulled a gun on Black people in St. Louis and instead of shaming them, the Repulicans let them speak at their Convention??
I’m also thinking of my fellow Dartmouth alum, Harmeet Dhillon of San Francisco, who is a Republican party leader here in California and is Sikh, and even did a prayer in Punjabi at a big event. Seems like a kind of confused person. I remember than I worked for Rebecca Morgan running for State office here in 1988 even though I was a Democrat and I was surprised to meet a Vietnamese guy volunteering and he said that his reference point was that the Communists in VN were bad, so he is a Republican.
Also, Greg Zlotnick whose mother was treasurer of Becky’s campaigns, worked for Pete Wilson then switched to Dem. He is a water expert, now living in Sacramento area. (We talk mostly about football, our pool of guys, since 1980 or so).
I am not a Socialist but I think everyone deserves health care, education and housing. And if we taxed the wealthiest and corporations, we’d have enough for that. All of our need, none of our greed.
I am excited for Kamala meanwhile. And Joe Biden. The rest of Edsall’s lead:
The center-right political coalition in America — the Republican Party as it stands today — can be described as holding two overarching goals: First, deregulation and reductions in corporate and other tax liabilities — each clearly stated on the White House website — and second, but packing a bigger punch, the preservation of the status quo by stemming the erosion of the privileged status of white Christian America.
For those who want confirmation of Republican accomplishments along economic lines, the Brookings Institution has provided a helpful deregulatory tracker. And The Times has published a thorough examination of Trump’s achievements in cutting taxes for the rich — not only the “big, beautiful” tax bill of 2017, but also this year’s “Tax-Break Bonanza Inside the Economic Rescue Package.”
The most important issue driving Trump’s ascendance, however, has not been the economy but race.
Last week, I argued that for Democrats the importance of ethnicity and race has grown, not diminished, since the mid-1960s. The same thing is true for Republicans — and many of the least obvious, or least comprehensible, aspects of Republican political strategy have to do with the party’s desire to cloak or veil the frank racism of the contemporary Republican agenda.
Patricia McCloskey, who with her husband Mark was charged with “unlawful use of a weapon” after they wielded guns when Black Lives Matter protesters walked by their St. Louis home, played a crucial role setting the stage for the entire convention. Patricia McCloskey told viewers: “What you saw happen to us could just as easily happen to any of you who are watching from quiet neighborhoods around our country,” before adding, “Make no mistake: No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America.”
As a plastic digression, I enjoyed chatting with my fellow Dartmouthian Chris Knipp of Berkeley – although he transferred out after only one week in 1960 and went to Amherst instead, who is a linguist about the difference between turbans of various groups of Muslims and Sikhs. Harmeet had a comment on turbans that I thought was a cognitive dissonance. My take is that Sikh headwraps do not have interior plastic shells. Just hair. There is also, weirdly, a way to surve fish called Turban — stuffed fish. Plus a turbot.
Also, Geoffrey Nunberg z”l, wrote a brief about the harm caused by the nickname of the Washington football team.
Let’s hope Donald Trump does not go new uke you leer.
Harmeet I am not baiting you, I think as fellow Dartmouth people there is some commonality. I’m curious your take on the turban thing, and that it is not frivolous. I buy my New York Times (and often the Chron and the Merc) each a.m. at Mac’s Smoke Shop from a Sikh. Actually there was a guy named Hari in my dorm who is Sikh.
back on point or background:
Felony charges have been filed against a St. Louis couple who pointed guns at protesters marching past their home last month in an episode that was captured on video and drew the attention of a divided nation, including President Trump.
The couple, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, were charged on Monday by the Circuit Attorney’s Office in St. Louis with unlawful use of a weapon, for exhibiting a semiautomatic rifle “in an angry or threatening manner,” according to the complaint. The charge is a Class E felony that carries a possible penalty of up to four years in prison.
The circuit attorney in St. Louis, Kimberly M. Gardner, said the couple created a dangerous situation involving “peaceful, unarmed protesters.”
“It is illegal to wave weapons in a threatening manner at those participating in nonviolent protest,” she said in a statement.
and1: Anita Fellicelli who is Indian wrote about a Native whodunit in the Chron today. Yurok, Anitia.
edit to add, the next day, or Friday:
Tim Egan:
On one night, the convention trotted out a pair of gun-toting white suburbanites to scare people into taking up arms against protesters. One night later, a white teenager with a semiautomatic rifle was arrested on a charge of gunning down several protesters.
At the same time, California is burning and the South is underwater. If you play the sucker, you won’t notice that this confederacy of con men has been unable to gaslight the seasonal rage of climate change. Nor would you care.
Also: I still want to speak my “peace” or “piece” about the City’s grafitti abatement applied to Palo Alto Art Protest posters on University Avenue — if the closing of the street is a perk for landlords, they should try to or we should preserve the streets as a common for ideas; why the rush to eliminate the messages which were well done?
Belated thanks to Sal Pizarro of the Merc for plugging my concert series — I don’t think I noticed it until months later while doing a little subtle self-googling. THE SHOW GOES ON: It’s been 25 years since Mark Weiss started Earthwise Productions, but he’s still going strong bringing music to Palo Alto. You might remember the shows Earthwise staged at the old Cubberley High School in the 1990s (after the school closed in 1980), but Weiss kicked off a new series this summer at the Mitchell Park Community Center — aka The Mitch.
A couple of noteworthy shows on the calendar are Engage, with trumpet player Dave Douglas, on Nov. 21 and blues guitarist Elvin Bishop on Dec. 20. Earthwise is also hosting a free show with sax player Larry Ochs on Dec. 12 at the Palo Alto Art Center. Tickets are available on Eventbrite.com by searching for “Earthwise.”
Matt Nathanson, Tuck and Patti, Bertrand Russell, Cheese Board, Beth Custer, Chris Isaak,Eric Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, a South African potter,The Dead, Lucy Kaplansky, Richard Shindell, Terry Acebo Davis, Chris Strausser, Krist Novalesic’s green stained shirt, Elvis impersonator, Bleachbear eating a crocodile, Shelly Doty, Jerry Hannan, Rachel Garlin, Ed Gilbert, Bill Frisell
since the scope of truth is infinite there will always be unanswered questions…
and1: taking a hint from Terri of hudba pr in Richmond, CA there is a sax player to keep my ears open:
Saxophonist/composerJacám Manricks marks his arrival as a full-fledged auteur on the splendid Samadhi, set for a September 4 release on his own Manricks Music Records. Already an accomplished composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, and improviser, Manricks’s sixth album adds recording, engineering, producing, and mixing to his overflowing skill set. Thus it stands as a vision entirely of the leader’s own making—albeit with input from his high-caliber colleagues, pianist Joe Gilman, bassist Matt Penman, and drummer Clarence Penn.
I met Clarence last November with Dave Douglas. Manricks is from Australia but moved to Sacramento a while ago. His ethnic heritage is complex. Reminds me that I heard from my former Gunn school mate the artist Nina Kathadourian who referencing one of her documentary art films says her father is Armenian from Beirut while Mom is Swedish from Finland, which reminds me I am late for lunch leftover Chinese from Kwan and lasagne from Barrone, after I walk the dog who has an Irish name but is part Chinese and part Cuban. He has hair and not fur. When people ask his gender I say he is modern metrasexual left lifter. Would that it were so simple. Mere surmise sir. Sit. I mean.
When Brad Raymond married Soledad O’Brien his Harvard schoolmate I left a message on his answering machine wishing him “cien anos de Soledad”
I thought of that just now going through the times noticing the obituary of Mercedes Berkshire 87 the widow of Nobel laureate Gabrielle Garcia Marquez .
I helped Brad coach the soccer team one year at mid Peninsula high school I was on a soccer trip having also done the marketing for the semi pro Palo Alto Firebirds whereas I was fired from the World Cup here because I refuse to sign the security documents run by saviors Ordway fingerprinting having lived here the previous 20 years I thought Rick replant the bureau chief should just except my word that I was not a terrorist . That part of my story was printed in the mercury by a Chinese American reporter who my dad and I sat next to when I think it was Peter who brought the spoke to commonwealth club
There’s a media group called Black Palm that did a No Use For a Name Tony Sly tribute with all Slavic female leads, plus a Clint Mansell doubledate Slavic or Russian looking couples video plus California Dreaming with the late Natalie something (RIP) so I am intrigued. Plus I started a thread trying to track 500 or 501 sax players. Connell Thompson, Times Square.
The title references a joke by Sizek I heard at Stanford about a monkey in a bar who dips his balls in everybody’s highballs and then someone asks do you know why does the monkey dip his balls? and the answer is as if that is the name of the song.
bw
Israeli punk gone acoustic Yotam Ben something from USE less id.
is joey from lagwagon related to nerf herder sammy hagar van halal
This is the 27th time I’ve blogged about Molly Tuttle in a year, or more likely name-checked. Meanwhile there are people who’ve been following her for 15 years. This is a great video, of a great cover of a very good song.
I’d like to see Molly do some covers of South Bay, 650 and 408 punk and ska from the 1990s — not sure what that means but she brushed up against it with her “Olympia” Rancid covers, which name checks as a lyric bandmate Lars Frederiksen who was in a San Jose punk band before joining Tim Armstrong of Rancid. Ok, the South Bay 408 band played my venue, they have a name very much like the New England jam band formerly associated with MoonBootLover, and has an album called Jiggle the Handle. It’s a pun. (I got all that but not the word I am looking for. Not “Crack”, or “Cracker”. Argh. (edit to add: Matt Freeman and Tim Armstrong were also in Op Ivy, another punk fav of MT)
ok here’s a bridge, about Kent Lockhart, Marlinda’s son, although he liked hip hop more than folk or the Rolling Stones, and classic soul, and was actually a very good dance, like the robot, and this is referencing color or mother nature, it’s sports illustrated ranking University of Texas El Paso as seventeenth in the country pre-season and Don Haskins the Bear mentioning his “swingman” and the roses: Sophomore Center Dave Feitl will need a lot of rebounding help from Reynolds and Forward Paul Cunningham. Another factor inside is junior Swingman Kent Lockhart, an art major who grows roses in his spare time—and catches a lot of heat for it from the hard-nosed Haskins. “You’re spending too much time watering your roses,” Haskins likes to tell Lockhart when he makes a mistake during practice. But if Haskins does his usual careful cultivating, everything could come up roses for him, too. Lilacs miner.
And yes i am aware that I have captured three images from Molly’s rainbow video of black women.
I asked a woman named Amy Halpern Laff if she considered herself a person of color but she is a vegan activist in a mask
EQUALITY IS GIVING EVERYONE A PAIR OF SHOWS WHILE EQUITY IS A GIVING EVERYONE A PAIR OF SHOES THAT FIT.
BW
A couple hours later I am watching the end of Edward Scissorhands but also reading about Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, about Social Justice. Or not getting rolled by the most evil possible people.
some wacky shit out of GA
violence in, I forget, WI?
more bridge: I caught the end of Queen and Slim; also, Loving,and liked the closing song of Ben Nichols of Lucero; I’m reading Sylvie Simmons on Ronstadt in MOJO (Talking Heads); a bit of my bible, David Shields on MCs;
But I was comparing Molly Tuttle and Edward Scissorhands only that Molly’s childhood may have been difficult on account of her alopecia. And Edward does a nice job on Diane Weist’s hair.
I coulda shoulda just done “Edward Scissorhands VS kid from Kidnapped” by RLS Chapter X sword fight:
RIYL risk or RLSK
Wait just a minute: researching the missing meme above, the connection between Lars and the 3-band bill of San Jo bands I had at the Cub in 1995, I notice that Chris Shiflett, who has Molly on his podcast, and is maybe in the above referenced video, was also in No Use for A Name.
I’ve seen this: but also:
Work with me a bit I may have drifted out of bounds but I must say, so this is Joey from Lagwagon also known as Joey Cape — Italian, two syllables, or batman thing? — and now One Week Records, minimalistic DIY budget acoustic thing?, but was there also a Joey from My Records in SF and Santa Barbara but what I’m really looking into is Israeli punk folk performances and mostly punk that can be done in about 46 hours — not necessarily in one week, but yeah, sure why not, punk from the Sf Peninsula South Bay or San Jo, like the 408 and 650 — I’m reacting to something I saw of Molly from Palo Alto doing a punk sung about “Lars” from Rancid, or Olympia or I guess Roanoke — not sure how to say that either. Row, noke, like joke or Ro AH no key.
I did not know Tony Sly from Homestead High but I was thinking recently of the late Lance Hahn of HI.
I just got word and or deduced that there is a new collaborative record featuring Charlie Musselwhite and Elvin Bishop. I tried to feature this concept in my Earthwise productions concert series last year and could not get them within nine days of each other and about 2 miles apart, Alvin December 20 at Mitchell Park Charlie December 29 at the Jewish center. In 2004 Alvin Charley Henry Butler Cory Harris Debbie Coleman and I and a few others had something called front porch blues Tours that started in San Diego and finished in Maine, around Houston we went in circles literally about 50 times they had a theater in the round thing that was going to have a wreath or the next night or two; in 2004 Alvin Charlie Henry Butler Cory Harris Debbie Coleman and I and a few others had something called front porch blues tour that started in San Diego and finished in Maine, around Houston we went in circles literally about 50 times they had a theater in the round thing that was going to have a wreath or the next night or two which was tough on Henry being blind I had to lead him on and off the stage or maybe just on and somebody else let him off it was sort of a tagteam wrestling grand finale thing at times people like Robben duke Robillard came and went;
ashland Burke is a body worker and part time graphic designer who did Charlie on a hopper or is that a chopper? I remember he had a Vallejo motorcycle club hoodie back in 2004. Now it can be told somebody brought Alvin about an ounce of weed but Elvin left it back stage but then his road he called in the middle of the night asking me to give it to Charlie I am no square but that’s not how I roll. Worse than that the roadie guy wouldn’t just say what he wanted for me. He said euphemistically “salmon?” And I said “Valerie Troutt?“ Tastes good on a cracker.
Hana Morita Is a community member, artist and activist who is Heritage is Okinawa. She is part of a collective of 20 or so like minded people whose comment on Black Lives Matter were briefly displayed on the 200 block of University. Literally on the 200 block
Not sure I got to finish the story, later that day: Rebecca Eisenberg, soccer mom and laywer running for office, is meeting me at Uni ave to check out the “distressed” murals. I meant to say that the woman I mention above did a depiction of two cranes, one yellow and one black and she explains that her background is Okinawa near Japan and she believes Asian Americans have sympathy to Black Lives Matter. It literally says this. It also, at the top, near Bryant, closer to home as it were — I live on Bryant — and closer to the mural by Greg Brown of Spiro Agnew or not pushing an alien formerly a cat – -cat we all get along, peeps? — it says that the previous set of wheat paste posters — new genre wheat past — was destroyed by a young man with a gold can; there’s also a mural of a white guy and a spray can posted in this set: i think it calls him a coward. So is this second round of posters being cancelled worse than the first or are we getting numb? Did the rains come? Did a street cleaner start to clean then realize he was ruining the art or message? Heck, will it even be there when I meet Mz Beck? (who also reviewed Beck’s Odelay and nailed the title track.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 