Venture capitalist Jeff Crowe Norwest, at 525 University in Palo Alto, addresses 600 Dartmouth affiliated entrepreneurs (of a variety of tax brackets and phases of business development) at new UCSF Mission Bay conference Center on Owens
b/w
McNAMEE BUY-ON AT BUSINESS CONFERENCE
Roger McNamee, investor and musician, chills before big, nearby Metallica show, by entertaining 600 dudes and dudettes in business casual; he is wearing jeans. (Moon Alice appears frequently in Bat Area and on the golden roads of unlimited devotion)
Free show by Moonalice this Sunday Sept 8 at 2 pm Union Square SF.
Joc hit two homers yesterday, and this one the night before, and barely missed, on his double, four consecutive blasts –before ilterally hitting the wall.
Joc Pederson of Palo Alto, Albuquerque, Israel national team and The Dodgers had a thirty thirty night in that he hit his career-high 30th home run of the season but then crashed into a wall in the fifth inning, making a catch but forcing removal for apparent injury. (“30” or “-30-” is old school journalism symbol for “stop” — i.e. you put it at the bottom of the story so that the editor knows you are done and does not miss a continuation of your story).
-30-
I spent about 20 minutes listening to four or five cds, from my collection, between 1999 and 2006 or so — and this is 2019, almost 2020.
With 20-20 hindsight and more discipline I would know this stuff better already.
For Sex Mob, featuring Steven Bernstein slide trumpet,small combo, with Tony Scherr bass and reeds by BK, I went for a Nirvana cover, then into Ripple and out. Oddly, my 6-cd changer, which is still pretty new to me — I was sitting in my car, with my dog, outside a cafe, before a meeting — fooled me into listening to parts of 6 Sun Ra tracks — was the Sex Mob live at Tonic?
Then in to Tom Waits — there’s a deep track with just Tom on piano and vocals and a bass line by Marcus Shelby. But the first track was about Chicago by home town. And the liner notes told me that Keith Richards of all people on a track, plus Charlie Musselwhite. There is a trumpet with Chris Grady on a couple tracks, if that relates back to Don Cherry, Steven Bernstein and Dave Douglas.
Man Man I thought that Honus Honus Ryan Kattner played some horn, but I could be confused. I saw them at Kybher Pass club in Philly in 2005 and thought of it as “psycho taiko”. But more obviously the voice is sometimes like Waits, although there is usually harmony or blended voices, or often. Also, I think I read that Honus Honus also was in an indie film, that might have played in Marin, Mill Valley Film festival. Whereas Tom Waits I first saw in Jim Jarmusch Down by Law. Lke, at The Castro in 1990, when I lived in Sf and worked at Green Apple. To the extent that Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones played on the Tom Waits session, I think they might have had expectations for it. Not sure what Tom Waits business model is or was. Terry TMW and I drove thru Olema and Sea Ranch and someone in the know suggested how we could spot Wait’s studio thereabouts but we did not- please believe me — stalk him or stake him out. Also, I looked for Ralph Carney’s name on the cd but don’t remember seeing it. I wonder who replaced him. I think I saw a cite of a reeds player but I didn’t remember knowing the name. Chris Grady plays with Beth Custer and maybe I have met him at her house. From Sacramento, I think.
For Man Man I played the first track in part and then something about “Einstein On The Beach’ in name only I think which was, like my attention span or intention span, 60 seconds.
It seems that Tom Waits is also on the Dave Dougas cd “Witness” on the track Mahfouz I think an Egyptian writer, but the track was like 13 minutes so I didn’t listen long enough to notice it, beyond what is written in the notes.
I thought I had grabbed a Don Cherry live cd or compilation but there was no disc in the case — but I put a special bonus DVD maybe about the label not the act which would not play in the 6-cd player. I was hoping to go for one minute of “complete communion” which for me would be Incomplete Communion. Oddly, or not, there was a Sun Ra live cd in the changer and I kept advancing the Sex Mob cd (Ripple, About a Girl, Elvis medley) until I realized that this was not Sex Mob, but revealed to be Sun Ra.
This has happened to me a couple times, that I was confused about what was left in the changer or which track I was listening to, which disc. Most notably, I heard Mark Kozelek’s voice on a Donny McCaslin CD, a track called “the Promoter” and was very confused — I had seen both acts recently and was multi-discing Mark/Sun Kil and even red House. And Sun Kil Moon at Kuumbwa played “a song I wrote with Donny McCaslin” whereas Donny and Jason and Tim and the singer guitar guy played almost everything but “The Promoter” in their set under Bing.
interluded: Amazon says there are 101 Tom Waits albums available and that 65 peoples have reviewed this one “Bad As Me” which is also now remastered:
and I am saying hereabouts that in the background as I peck is a doc on pbs or something I saved a few months ago that looks good with Mick Jagger talking about James Brown…
I also sometimes call this blog “Quotidian in Quadlibet” which means fairly ordinary (I almost wrote “orderly”) things but four at a time so weirdly juxtaposed or faded or creeped together. See also: the one about the topiary gardener, the lion tamer, the MIT robotics guy and the mole rat king.
I probably should not say this but Dave Douglas told me once that they offered him the chance to guest on a Dave Matthews album, when both were on Bertelsman, but he wasn’t feeling it. Whereas Karl Denson of Greyboy Allstars and The Cubberley Sessions seemed to take to being a Rolling Stones sideman (along and slightly higher or a different key than) Tim Ries. When Witness came out I had this weird idea of doing it free outdoors at El Camino Park — where the Dead did a be-in — and sponsored by both The Hoover Institute and Peninsula Peace and Justice. I even sought out their management — Dave’s — in Alphabet City, at Sooya, although she was Michaela from Germany.
Drifting along and aloft: that was Paul George of Peninsual Peace and Justice in the recent PBS documentary about Woodstock. I should ask him about it. I also need to folo with former radical Lenny Siegel of Mountain View about putting a marker where Santana met Gregg Rolie. Jerry Hill is on that meeting to. I have a photo of them that day or morning in a coffee house on Middlefield.
Meanwhile, back to not Tom Waits-Sex Mob-Dave Douglas-Man Man but John Santos-Molly Tuttle-Sun Kil Moon-Scott Amendola-Trevor Dunn-Philip Greenlief-Tom Harrell– let me know if there is a secret thread connecting any two or three or four of those. I noted that Molly is using two electric guitars and a drum kit in her bluegrass band, whatever that means. Also, two of the biggest acts in the biz, both selling hundreds of thousands of units this very week, Tool and Taylor Swift I am noting: Taylor used a stunt rider from this area on a video about the future and Tool with hand drums likely tablas to me is an omen for my John Santos show.
Hey, man, nice shot. A perfect circuit. James Brown cape stolen from Georgeous George.
and1and20:
Honus Honus
So this is Honus Honusof Man Man wearing a Bog Marley shirt with a title Bob Dylan lasdrop
(This deletes the name of the co-combatant, which Dave says is St.Elizabeth of Oakland. Nate Branch later played for Nebraska and the Harlem Globetrotters and was recently known to play organ at a local church.
From Jim Gallegher, 2008:
Crane, now retired and living in Auburn, installed Milky as a starting guard on his 1961-1962 Ravenswood varsity, one of the best high school teams in Peninsula history. He played in perhaps the greatest high school game ever played here.
The date was March 17, 1962. It was the championship game of the Peninsula Basketball Tournament at Stanford University. Ravenswood featured Johnson, Nate Branch, Milt Dickerson, Clifton Grandy and Art Crum.
The opponent was St. Elizabeth of Oakland, with center Kevin Hardy, 6 feet 5 inches tall and 270 pounds, and a sharpshooting forward named Pat Furlong.
There was no shot clock; both teams took turns holding the ball. The game was tied at 58 after four overtimes. Crane called for a play to Johnson at the head of the key with five seconds left. Branch, in the corner, couldn’t find Milky and launched a jump shot as time ran out.
The ball hit nothing but net. Ravenswood 60, St. Elizabeth 58. The packed stands of rickety Stanford Pavilion erupted.
Branch, best known among the Ravenswood alums, went on to the University of Nebraska, where he was All-Big Eight and enjoyed a decade with the Harlem Globetrotters. Milky and several of his teammates matriculated at CSM, where they were welcomed by Coach Avina.
“We had Milky, Dickerson, Crum and George Raybon from Ravenswood,” Avina recalled. “CSM’s new hilltop campus had just opened. It was a challenge for those guys to get here. They were known to jump a freight at the county line and ride up to San Mateo.”
The Ravenswood contingent made an immediate impact.
The Bulldogs captured the 1964 Modesto Tournament, a premiere early-season event matching 16 of the best community college teams throughout the West.
“It was a great thrill,” Avina recalled. “Milky was fantastic. He and Raybon were named to the all-tournament team.”
Johnson left school after the basketball season but returned for another year at San Mateo that earned him a bid from coach Rene Herrerias at UC Berkeley for the 1966-1967 campaign.
Milky’s contributions were modest.
A 10-point effort against UCLA — the national champions — was the high-water mark.
An early marriage and an infant with health problems compelled Milky to abandon Berkeley and enter the workforce. Beset with a chronic heart ailment, he died shortly before Christmas in 1991.
His older brother, Timroff, who also played basketball at Ravenswood, succumbed to diabetes in 1994.
Ravenswood High basketball may be a fading memory to its coterie of aging alumni, but to Milky’s teammate Branch, a 1991 county Hall of Fame inductee, the Johnson aura burns brightly.
“He was born to play the game,” Branch recalled recently. “He never practiced “… just played one pickup game after another. The smoothest I’ve ever seen.
“Small as he was, he would dunk during warm-ups, and the crowd would go crazy. But off the court, he’d go his own way. Later on, he had a family to take care of.”
Milky’s daughter, Sonja, of Fremont, and his mother, Dewell Johnson of Menlo Park, expect to attend the Hall of Fame ceremony.
By the way, I texted Hans Delannoy, Cubberley 1969 and my Gunn coach 1981 and he replied without much thought “Elizabeth with Kevin Hardy”.
Basketball legend and former Harlem Globetrotter, Nate Branch spoke to MC Sports youth about his time playing ball. The presentation took place at the East Palo Alto YMCA on December 14, 2017.
Branch, a star player at Ravenswood High School in East Palo Alto, went on to play for Nebraska University and launched to celebrity status with the Globetrotters. At the event, the kids watched clips featuring the Globetrotters, on the late 70’s early 80’s, high school basketball, TV drama series, “The White Shadow.”
Being a professional athlete brings many opportunities, some good some bad, shares Branch. He traveled the world, met three presidents and had a TV career with the Globetrotters. But being an athlete took a toll on his body. In his talk, Branch imparts to the kids that he is thankful for his education which enabled him to support himself after retiring from basketball.
A key takeaway from Branch’s presentation is the importance of working hard toward your goals, and education is a part of that process. You can improve your life and be successful even if you come from a lower income community like East Palo Alto.
Nate Branch possibly made the most incredible shot in basketball history — a jumper from the corner at the end of the fifth overtime of a tournament championship game. Although it happened at the high school level, on the Stanford University campus in 1962, Branch’s perfect swish had a historical imprint in other ways. The game was between an all-black team and an all-white team located in California cities that were designated as murder capitals in America. The Seismic Sixties, the most transformative decade of the century, was just underway as Branch gave Ravenswood High of East Palo Alto, the black public school team with a White Shadow coach, a hard-fought, exhausting victory over St. Elizabeth High, a parochial school from Oakland. In 2018, author Dave Newhouse met with players and coaches from both teams to relive that game — the longest high school tournament championship basketball game up to that point — and the ramifications that followed. Both schools would shut down in name, the tournament would be discontinued, the gymnasium no longer is used for basketball, and the three newspapers that covered the tournament are no longer in operation. Thus players and coaches from that game, plus additional alumni who were interviewed, view that memorable evening from a lifetime’s perspective. East Palo Alto, in 1992, led the country in murders per capital. Oakland continually ranked in the top ten until both cities underwent gentrifications that reduced crime immeasurably. Both current mayors of the two municipalities were interviewed about the cultural change. Though a number of combined players have passed on, a long-overdue reunion of the players from that classic game took place fifty-five years afterward in 2017 at a church where Branch, the game’s hero, plays the organ and sings on Sunday mornings inside the East Palo Alto church where his father was the pastor. The Seismic Sixties are relived as well as the five-overtime game has moved on from a fierce rivalry to a friendly relationship.
This was Dave’s 15th book; there is also something about St. Mary’s Football at the Cotton Bowl.
Marcell Harris Mom was very proud of her boy decked out in red and gold and decking people, last fall. He is close to earning this season the start at strong safety.
Salma Hayek, the actress, posted to social media, a bathing suit photo regarding her 53rd birthday
Not to be confused with ‘Selma’ a movie produced by Oprah Winfrey — cameo — a recent movie about Civil Rights activism in 1965 Alabama. Salma for her part starred in a movie about Frida.
b/w Zelmo Beaty basketball star who attended Praire View A & M a historically black university in Texas:
Dartmouth tennis recruits from Los Angeles, New Jersey, Palo Alto and Bronxville
Gunn graduate and Dartmouth recruit Emily Zhou (Gunn 2019, Darmouth 2023) is the best ladies tennis prospect in two decades, since Rebecca Dirksen — two time CCS Champion for Gunn and Wearer of The Green All Time Great at Dartmouth (class of 2000) — three time all Ivy.
Good luck, Emily!
(She was the #75 player in the country, but competed mostly on the national tournament scene than for her school, where she won a physics prize. I met her, and her parents, at an alumni picnic)
Gunn is a historically strong program having produced
Five girls CCS singles championships, A total of 7 crowns.
And a total of 26 team, doubles or singles champions or finalists.
Central Coast Section champions in girls’ tennis, since 1975:
1975 Barrie Bulmore finalist (3)
1977 Barrie Bulmore, champion
1977 Hilary Whiting and Stacey Savides, doubles champions
1978 Barrie Bulmore, champion(2)
1978 Gunn team champions
1980 Stephanie Savides and Kelly Rapp, doubles finalist
1980 Gunn team finalist
1982 Gunn team champions (2)
1983 Gunn team finalists (4)
1986 Serena Wu, champion
1986 Gunn team finalist (5)
1987 Caroline Stassen and Denise Aptekar, doubles champions
1987 Gunn team champions (3)
1988 Tammy Robertson, champion
1989 Tammy Robertson, finalist (2)
1990 Gunn team finalist (7)
1991 Beth Brady and Lindy Irvine,doubles champions
1991 Gunn team champions *(division II )
1992 Vedica Jain, champion
1992 Gitanjali Jain, finalist
1992 Rebecca Dirksen, Barbara Chung, doubles champions
1992 Gunn team champions* (Division II)
1993 Rebecca Dirksen(2) and Kathry Sciffes, doubles finalist
1993 Gunn team finalist * (Division II)
1994 Rebecca Dirksen champion
1995 Rebecca Dirksen, champion (2)
Gunn Cal star Barrie Bulmore (now Barrie Bulmore Ornstil):
Rebecca Dirksen of Palo Alto, Hanover and Chapel Hill
Like me, Stephanie Savides attended Fremont Hills, Terman and Gunn; unlike me, she was an All America and National Champion for Stanford
Vedica Jain, according to the search engines, is a CEO and Partner in New York area, for a search firm servicing financial sector:
Gita Jain, something to do with blood, sweat, tears, and money
maybe John Santos — not John Stamos — Anna Conrad was confused –can quickly learn this for our show Friday, September 13, 2019 at Mitchell Park Community Center, unless I am confusing tablas with congas. I could ask him…
in happier times, Ahn celebrates her win at the Open
Based on Yesterday’s Research and Revelation: Or, Kirstie Ahn Should Take a Gap Year
It’s no good when the evening of your greatest victory ever the news is about how your father thinks you should quit and become a corporate clone, or a mother. And it’s not obvious from her Tweets what she intends to do about it; she’s conflicted. I would say: take a gap year, no matter how it turns out today (or yesterday?) at the US Open, 3rd round.
pre-ramble: Ahn qualified for the 2008 U.S. Open when she was 16. She wanted to turn professional and take the first-round prize money she earned — $18,500 that would have meant forfeiting college eligibility.
“As a 16-year-old, you’re like: ‘Oh my God, so much money. Let me take it!’” Ahn recalled. “My dad, deadpan face, was like, ‘You could win the U.S. Open this year, and you’re still not taking the money — you’re going to college.’
“I was like, ‘But if I won the U.S. Open, I could take the money and pay for college!’ He was like: ‘No, I don’t care. You’re not getting into Stanford without being on the tennis team.’ ”
Don Ahn would not budge. [Note: and Don Budge would not “ahn”]
“Just playing tennis without education is nothing,” he said. “You have to be an educated person to live a life in society.”
Kristie ended up at Stanford, becoming captain of the powerhouse women’s team there.
When she graduated, she made a deal with her father to pursue professional tennis. He agreed to provide financial support for three years.
Being a Stanford grad doesn’t necessarily help; I recall meeting Stanford’s Sara Choy when she was at Terman, because she lived on my floor, 3 doors down, and Oak Creek ran her picture in its newsletter (We actually met in the laundry; her bag was bigger than she was). In an interview in a Stanford press lab, she said she played tennis so fervidly because her goal was to get in to Stanford. But she didn’t indicate why that was important to her. What about Stanford? What about the rest of her life and the brave new world beyong Palo Alto, Stanford, Perry Lane, Menlo Park, Oak Creek, the 650, the midPeninsula, the no-mans-land between baseline and net?
Any the Mom didn’t seem much help, besides being of the flaming stripe tiger varietal. I said “Good luck to your daughter? I played tennis for Terman, too” and she scanned me, more like The Terminator than a human, and walked away wordless. Ok, it was St. Francis versus Sacred Heart and, that she blew off Gunn — home of Emily Zhou, Barrie Bulmore, Cammie Mitchell, Stephanie Savides, Stacy Savides, Vedica Jain, Rebecca Dirksen and Ken Arnold, plus ironically, her SHP coach Jeff Arons — maybe she was actually picking up my vibe, my chip.
So what I noticed about Ahn, and I will link to the story and update at below if there is another result good or bad, is that according to her Stanford Sports bio, she went to Professional Childrens School in Manhattan, the oxymoron Oxford. The school, we soon glean, was founded 100 years prior for child actors on Broadway, and only recently started positioning itself as a school — better than home-schooling — for underage pro caliber athletes — although in this case it is a misnomer because Ahn, who was #2 mostly at Stanford — retained her eligibility.
Ahn has actually earned $500K on the pro circuit — which I admit is more than I have earned certainly since 2015 and maybe all time. But the story is that her parents said they would support her for only 3 years, and now, though apparently self-supporting, she has moved back in with the folks.
She could be partner someday, Dad says. Maybe she could be Kirsten Ahn someday.
Other famous Professional Childrens School products include Sarah Michelle Geller aka Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Ricki Lake aka Tracy Turnball who starred with Vinyl in John Water’s original Hairspray; I did not recognize any of the other athletes AND they fail to list Ahn.
Some viz:
Ricki Lake as Tracy Turnbull in Hairspray during her student days at Professional Childrens School, the alma mater and surrogate mother of tennis flash Kristie Ahn
I remember being shocked, surely shocked, at this photo of Professional Childrens School student Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Tennis anyone?
I watched 3 min of this with sound office, looking for body language facial cues, and she seems normal enough, but there is something about young athletes, especially training under their parents’ watchful eye, from a young age, that I think thwarts excellence as it precipitates excellence in a narrow field. And I am flashing to the movie about the chess prodigy — Looking for Bobby Fisher – where the mom goes “My child is better at chess at age 10 than you will ever be at anything” which cuts both way. I agree: this is man-splaining.
outro: Big Sam Funky Nation big booty big bone:
edit to add, the next day:
Duffy was denied entrance to the Fair, hence we had no ‘bone.
We visited the Bay Model instead — snuck him in, I guess. But the good news, further, if you read Plastic Alto for its coverage of Earthwise Productions, the agent for Big Sam returned by call and we are discussing some of his other clients for The Mitch. We also, at a local diner or cafe met a guy who said he had a jazz label called Clarity. Always good to pick up tidbits about the biz. But for the grace of god.
and1: digressing even futher from either comment on athletics or comment on media to my primary directive which is either music, my music aka Earthwise or my self (Shields, 2010), I met Anna Conrad –tho at the time she had a more Jewish name — Anna Bernstein Conrad or something, tho she is German — becuause I did some show or was setting up a show or just re-visting Jonah Montranga (Far, oneline drawing) and he mentioned that he was on his way to play hotel cafe — maybe I saw him at Hotel Utah — with Anna as a package but they were told that they would split their show with John Mayer, who was doing a secret show, that would be annnounced shortly before his hit via Twitter, back when no one knew what Twitter was. (And for the record, I still am a refuse-nik, for most social media, beyond WordPress)
but Anna, who also reocords or posts under Anna River, has a cover, besides her little cocktease novelty thing — Bradley Cooper, John Stamos, Jason Sudeikis, all with hoes on their dicks — does a cover of Alvvays “Dream Tonite” which sent me to the original which has 1.5M views. I saw the entire set of Alvvays last night at Frost which I enjoyed. I’ll steel a line from the super-brain known as Kato-Rodriguez/ YoshiMiguel: they sound like Six Pence None the Richer meet Something More Indie. I sent the agent, who i Don’t know otherthan he works with Tom Windish — the best ears in the game — after half a song saying I liked but by the end it storted to bore me. Or bore on me.
I left The National after about 10 songs. I live 2 miles from Frost and am in the music biz so I go to every Frost show. So far I would say Lionel Richie was the best (JRAD, the National).
Ahighlight for me is that a lady my generation liked by Yo La Tengo shirt,and shot my photograph –and I remembered to suck in my tummy — and then I tried to trade it to her for her The National T but then we settled on me selling it to her for a bargain price — not to dis YLT, far from it. She was a rabid fan so ithought the shrit belonged to her. I picked it up at The Fillmore a couple years ago – being certainly the only fan to catch the Giants -Mets night game and then zipping over to catch the last 3 songs. Yo La Tengo being named for the Mets in their early pathetic days when Chico Escuela collides with Frank Howard or Frank Thomas (not the Big Hurt guy, a white guy) and then claimed it was because the shortstop called him off in Spanish).
Besides my own onsales, I have: Jenny Lewis, Jay Som, maybe Cake Ben Folds in LA, Mixtaape or something. Willie Nelson if he gets better.
My shows: John Santos, Sun Kil Moon, Molly Tuttle, Scott Amendola Trevor Dunn Philip Greenlief, Tom Harrell. Plus a couple offers and holds. Who knows.
I saw a guy with an APE hat and wondered if he was their protesting the rigged bidding that Greg Perloff described to a reporter n The Metro.
and and: As i write this on a Labor Day late morning, I am screening Boogie Nights lazily in the background but I stopped the film when Snif N the Tears “Drivers Seat” came. It reminded me that in Richardson Hall at Dartmouth College, someone on the floor below would play this song constantly very loud, and it annoyed the rest of us, directly above. Also, my friend A_ said that at Stanford a few years before, all the kids would simultaneously play “My Sharona” at midnight in his dorm. These were turntables.
There was a guy named David Dawley who I quoted in the Dartmouth as saying that his dog Sniff could pick stocks in a bull market as well as President of the College David T. McLaughlin. And did I mention that I met a tennis recruit from Gunn named Emily Zhou but pronounced “Cho” and her parents. She is #75 recruit in the country but did not play for Gunn. I said I was briefly an assistant coach at Gunn for the same guy.
Paul Roberts not Todd Parker
I’m watching a German and an Argentinian on tv right now but will try to catch a bit of Ahn’s match as well: Good luck!
Maybe what ties this together is me, Mark Leland, Nick Sturiale and Andy Zenoff as delinquent juniors drinking suicides and cranking Van Halan and Montrose and using our tennis racquets as air-guitars.
The history of air guitar indeed might include tennis racquet as a preliminary phase:
Proust, 1891:
maybe John Santos — not John Stamos — Anna Conrad was confused –can quickly learn this for our show Friday, September 13, 2019 at Mitchell Park Community Center, unless I am confusing tablas with congas. I could ask him…
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 