Will Nazis picket or damage Stanford Theatre because of Zion Myers?

Posted on February 29, 2024 by markweiss86
This is a screen shot of opening credits of “The Gay Divorce” which plays tonight thru Sunday at Stanford Theatre. When I attended “The Wizard of Oz” in December, I and hundreds bought our tickets under a sign that falsely accused Israel of war crimes, and is antisemitic. I accosted Patti the facility manager about leaving those signs intact and she claimed she was stumped on how to remove them, while getting her show going, her house opened, hew kernels popped. I said to cover them up, the offensive posters, and she did. Later a counter-person said she thought the signs were “cool”. I now think of that person as guilty of harassment. If she is there tonight I will tell her so. In Berkeley last week, pro-Hamas hooligans broke down a closed door and shattered the window of a theatre, where an Israeli was speaking. The speaker and the event staff had to be evacuated by the police. If you have opinions on how US should spend its foreign policy budget or chose its / our allies, that is great. The First Amendment of our constitution gives you the right to express yourself. And to vote. But that is distinct from shouting down speakers, harassing people who disagree with you, or targeting people because of how they look or what you know or think you know of their family heritage and religion. Ninety percent of what American protesters shout about Israel is false. Their intent is to suborn violence against American Jews, not to help women and children 7,000 miles from here. Unless you are a former military commander, you don’t know jack shit about how to fight terrorists. You are a Nazi without thinking you are, if you are yelling “cease-fire”. Putin and Iran are high living themselves for their ability to manipulate you. Zion Myers I am guessing is Jewish. The record shows he was born in SF and died at age 49. He is cousins with Mark Samdich – he may be my cousin, too. The musical The Gay Divorce was based on the unproduced play An Adorable Adventure by J. Hartley Manners. The working title of the film was The Gay Divorce. According to a Jul 1934 NYT article, RKO changed the title to avoid censorship problems with the PCA. Modern sources contend, however, that the title change was instigated not by the Hays Office, but by RKO itself, which offered fifty dollars to any employee who could come up with a better title. In his autobiography, Fred Astaire claims that director Mark Sandrich told him that the title The Gay Divorcee was selected because the studio “thought it was a more attractive-sounding title, centered around a girl.” Modern sources claim that studio executives changed the word “divorce” to “divorcee” because, while they believed that a divorcee could be gay, a divorce could not. The original stage title was restored for British release prints. Astaire, Erik Rhodes and Eric Blore appeared in the Broadway production and recreated their roles for the film. Only one song from the stage musical, “Night and Day,” was used in the film. According to a Mar 1934 HR news item, RKO executive producer Pandro Berman approached Fox’s Roy Del Ruth to direct, but refused to pay Ruth’s $40,000 a picture salary. A HR news item announced that Sandrich filmed shots for the English countryside scenes in Clear Lake, CA, and RKO production files indicate that additional exteriors were shot in Santa Monica and Santa Barbara, CA. According to a HR news item, Brandon Hurst was cast in the film, but his participation in the final film has not been confirmed. According to files contained in the MPAA/PCA files at the AMPAS Library, in a 22 Jun 1934 letter, James Wingate, Director of the Studio Relations Office of the MPAA/PCA, warned Berman that “considering the delicate nature of the subject upon which this script is based…great care should be taken in the scenes dealing with Mimi’s lingerie, and… no intimate article should be used.” Wingate added that the word co-respondent should be replaced with “something less pointed,” and insisted that none of the actors appear in pajamas in the film. In a 2 Jul 1934 letter, Wingate noted that the song title “Let’s K-nock K-nees” had been rejected by his office and suggested that the phrase also be delected from the lyrics. (It wasn’t). In a studio memorandum, music soundman Murray Spivack advised the producers that “due to censorship, it was necessary to change [the] lyrics to ‘Let’s K-nock K-nees,'” but added that because songwriters Mack Gordon and Harry Revel were busy working on a production at Paramount, another writer would have to be hired to do the rewrites. The identity of the songwriter has not been determined, but according to a 4 Aug 1934 letter from MPAA/PCA director Joseph I. Breen, the second chorus of “Let’s K-nock K-nees” was altered and approved “from the standpoint of the Production Code and censorship.” Breen cautioned in a 31 Jul 1934 letter that “the scenes having to do with Mimi’s skirt being caught in the locked trunk should all be handled with great care to avoid any objectionable exposure of her person.” Con Conrad and Herb Magidson won the first Academy Award for Best Song for their composition “The Continental.” (The song “The Carioca,” which was the big Astaire-Rogers number of RKO’s 1933 musical Flying Down to Rio, was also included in the balloting.) The film was nominated as Best Picture but lost to Columbia’s It Happened One Night. Other Academy Award nominations included Best Art Direction (Van Nest Polglase and Carroll Clark), Best Score (Max Steiner) and Best Sound Recording (Carl Dreher, head of RKO’s sound department). Modern sources add the following information about the production: After the success of Flying Down to Rio, the first RKO film to team Rogers and Astaire, the studio planned a follow-up film, in which Rogers and Astaire would be the stars, called Radio City Revels. When RKO’s acting production head, Pandro Berman, suggested that The Gay Divorce, then a hit play on Broadway, be used as a follow-up to Radio City Revels, Lou Brock, who had produced Flying Down to Rio and was slated to produce the follow-up pictures, ridiculed the idea. Although Brock disliked the play and its libretto, which he thought was antequated, Berman went ahead and purchased the screen rights for $20,000 after seeing the play in London. Plans for Radio City Revels were eventually dropped, and Brock went on to produce another film, Down to Their Last Yacht, which had been considered briefly as a replacement for Radio City Revels. (In 1938, RKO made a film called Radio City Revels, but that film had no connection to the Astaire-Rogers project.) After Berman chose to produce The Gay Divorce himself, he asked Cole Porter to write new songs for the film but was turned down. Berman hired Mark Sandrich and then assigned Zion Myers, Sandrich’s cousin, to supervise the production. Before Flying Down to Rio had established itself as a hit, RKO considered hiring Claire Luce, Astaire’s stage co-star, to appear as “Mimi” in the film. When Astaire balked at the idea of casting Rogers, who he felt would not be right playing the refined English woman of the stage show, Berman supposedly offered him ten percent of the film’s profits as incentive to concede. The studio originally wanted Helen Broderick to play “Hortense,” but the actress was unavailable for the part. According to Astaire’s autobiography, the cast “rehearsed for about six weeks on the dance routines, those tricky ones like ‘Night and Day’ and the table dance I brought from the stage show.” (Astaire at one point wanted to drop the “Night and Day” number from the film because he felt the song had been overexposed.) Choreographer Hermes Pan acted as a liaison between Astaire, who was adapting his stage choreography, and credited choreographer Dave Gould. While Pan planned the majority of the group choreography for the film, Gould worked on the cinematic aspects of the dancing, planning camera angles and creating the look of the choreography. As part of the film’s promotion, RKO organized “Continental” demonstrations and parties and encouraged dancing instructors and ballrooms to teach and highlight the dance. Although the film was a success, “The Continental” failed to catch on as a popular dance. However, Polglase and Clark’s set design in the “Continental” sequence reportedly caused an increase in the sales of venetian blinds. Modern sources credit Ben Holmes as dialogue director, Hal Borne as Astaire’s rehearsal pianist, Mel Berns as makeup artist and Elizabeth McGaffey as researcher. In addition, modern sources credit actors George Davis and Alphonse Martel as French waiters. For more information about the Astaire-Rogers RKO films, see entry for Top Hat
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Gunn suicide A_

Posted on February 28, 2024 by markweiss86

The local paper, inside the cover, has news of a suicide of a Gunn student. They gave her name. I will call her A_.

I doubt I knew her. I’ve met a lot of Gunn families in recent months.

The valedictorian of my class, John Neumann, suicided in 1984. He was in New York. He jumped from a tall building, part of the justice department. Some said there was a message there. The site of his death, and his final judgment. The Times Tribune wrote three or four stories about John. Ruthann Richter wrote most of them. I was a source, or I encouraged her to write about him. I’m sure friends of the deceased think that the story is more complex and nuanced than what makes the papers, in the case of John, in 1984, and of A_ in 2024.

The first story about John was spot news that said a 20 year old man from Palo Alto had died in New York City. We heard about it because a reporter from a daily in New York called us. I say “we” because I had just complete a 10 week stint at the Peninsula Times Tribune. I knew most of the editors and reporters. Also, I knew Ruthann personally because of her friendship with Karen Kaplan, Mort Kaplan’s daughter. I also, if you excuse the sidebar, remember playing tennis with Mort Kaplan in Hawaii, and he reported that he had a side ache or back ache, which impacted his play; it was later revealed to be cancer and he died from it.

I called Ruthann and said that John was a friend of mine, a basketball teammate and was number 1 in our class. I may have added that he was known as the “4 Point Oh Burnout” because he had perfect scores despite smoking a lot of pot. I used to get high with John and: Tim Hart

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Nazis, antisemites and Arabs roast Biden in Michigan

Posted on February 28, 2024 by markweiss86

According to a news blast from NPR, more that 100,000 Michigan Demo voters marked their primary ballot “uncommitted” as a sign of support for the terrorist group Hamas who murdered 1,000 women and children in Israel on October 7, 2024 — sometimes stylized as 7/O — and they also cut off their tits, played hockey-sack with such.

This is what I call a “soft pogrom”. How much longer until there are similar attacks against Jews in America?

“Cease-fire” is dog whistle for condone the terrorists and kill more Jews (here).

I’ve experienced more antisemitism in the last 12 weeks than in the previous 12 years combined. Plus the gaslighting of little weird ambiguous things that happen. Yesterday at Books Inc the Black or mixed young female clerk was wearing the pro-Hamas scarf — like above in the picture – -so I would not make my $20 transaction for The New York Times, San Jose Mercury and SF Chronicle – plus The New Yorker which had an article on Thelma Golden of Studio Museum of Harlem – I digress but: I tried to host a Dartmouth press meeting reunion at Studio Museum of Harlem but we went to Becco’s instead; I met Thelma in Philly at Fabric Museum, she was barefootin’.

An older and white clerk perhaps noticed my misgiving and offered to help me at another register. Then at the San Ramon game a retired teacher started talking to us about his faith and made a point to single me out as a Jew but said he didn’t mean anything derogatory about it other than singling me out as a Jew. Because of my big nose and Curley hair of course. I forgot to wear my hat — although actually I was on bike before my ride came – so it was not ambiguous whether I had horns.

Stanford Theater reopens with a Fred Astaire series. I wonder if the clerk there who said she thought Hamas was “cool” will be there. Also, I wonder if there is a bureaucratic response to the fact that Stanford Theatre let the antisemitic posters around Christmas stay intact (and not covered) for three hours as 500 people filed in to see “Wizard of Oz”. Also, another digression I would hereby like to offer a big FUCK YOU to the law firm Gibson Dunn and its general partner Michael Celio who, when I inquired about whether or not the firm or its landlord had reported the vandalism and possible hate crime to police, rather than simply asking my question instead pivoted to a cover up and ad hominem by accusing me of harassing their female door-person (who apparently — or their are two of them.– wear head raps and are possibly Muslim — one of them did cooperate with me the Tuesday or Wednesday during the holidays and said she had cleaned up the wheat-paste broadside. She was fairly cooperative at first — I would say “warm” — in that she played with my dog, who is a great ambassador. I called the police when I saw this coming and so did Gibson Dunn. The police said that although I had legitimate business — and in fact, had a meeting with Chief Andrew Binder on the topic — they advised me to stay away from 310 University – which is at Bryant, and I live on Bryant. (Gibson Dunn I just realized, fact-checking my story from weeks ago, is announcing a Saudi Arabia office with severn attorneys – so their stance is clear –Arabs equal big money, fuck the Jews. In the middle east or if push comes to shove — or as Justice Holmes once wrote “You ability to swing a scimitar ends an inch from my dead bubba’s boobies”– here.

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San Ramon nips Vanden in NorCals

Posted on February 27, 2024 by markweiss86
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All-in for Lizzie No ‘Halfsies’ at Palo Alto Art Center by Earthwise, 2/14/24

Posted on February 27, 2024 by markweiss86
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Yuma v. Yulia

Posted on February 23, 2024 by markweiss86
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In search of Keith Mackey

Posted on February 20, 2024 by markweiss86

Fumi Okiji sang at Earthwise at Palo Alto Art Center last week, Valentines Day, with her husband Ben Davis (cello) plus Ben Goldberg (clarinet) and young blood Jordan Glenn on the traps. Fumi mentioned her actual name but I could not capture it. Four or five syllables. She said the “fumi” part is the least interesting.

I could not find it –my car is a mess –it’s a moving library — at the time but have it this a and m amen. Jazz as Critique: Adorno and Black Expression Revisited.(Stanford, CA 2018) Hint: she doesn’t like Adorno. So it’s okay that I could not remember who he was.

But I noticed — if you can follow my logic – that she referenced Nathaniel Mackey the former KZSC jazz dj and poet. Who I found out later was also partner to bell hooks. I called him one night in the booth to ask him something about Don Cherry (at Dartmouth). And then I wrote him more recently to ask whether he was possibly related to Keith Mackey who was our MVP on the 1979-1980 Gunn High School of Palo Alto, CA — near Stanford — frosh-soph basketball team. My recollection is that he was league MVP and the best player in the school. He challenged Vaughn Manns to a one-on-one the day he arrived back in Palo Alto. I would have to ask around but it’s possible that Keith Mackey only went to PAUSD schools for his 8th and 10th grade years — my 7th and 9th grade years. But since Nathaniel Mackey and bell hooks were roughly contemporaneous with that time I wonder if there is a connection.

Mackey stole the ball twice in the last 10 seconds to help Gunn frosh soph beat Cubberley the night the school board voted to close Cubberley. I always remember that we scored 6 points in the final 9 seconds. And then we jumped up and down in a group hug on the court. Then Cubberley beat Gunn in a nearly as close finish. Rob Peterson got one of those buckets to pull out the win. A sloppy put back from the elbow. So really it must have been close to 4 with nine seconds, then two steals. Unless it was close to 2 with 0:09, Robbie’s bucket to tie, Mackey somehow stealing an inbound and laying it back up at the buzzer FTW. But that is still six points in 9 seconds. The mnemonic device is the 6 and 9, like Jimi Hendrix.

Besides Splay Anthem, Fumi cites Blue Fasa, 2015; “Canto moro”, 2005; Discrepant Engagement, 1993; Djbot Baghostus’s Run, 1993; Epic World interview, 2014; From A Broken Bottle..., 2010; Nod House, 2011; Paracritical Hinge, 2005; “Song of the Andoumboulou”, 1998; Whatsaid Serif, 1998. Splay is from 2006 — I think I might have bought it fairly new, like front list. Now I wouldn’t claim to understand these works, just now they are out there, revere for the mystery.

Mackey seemed like a troubled guy, or kid – we were not close. In the absence, he becomes almost mythical. Then Lockhart came to Gunn and was both real and mythical. Lockhart and Mackey would have played each other at least four times in 8th grade, Terman versus Wilbur; John Ehrlich but not Kent squared off as sophomores — Kent was varsity. John and Keith nearly came to blows in the game, the one earlier in the season. I remember Keith was also scolded for making an obscene gesture at one of the female track coaches, possibly Bonnie Little. Or was she Kay Little? Maybe it was Stephanie Adcock.

So it is notable that all I know about Keith was his athletic prowess, his defiance and his sexualized behavior. I hope he lived long enough to gain attention or admiration for many other types of behavior and characteristics. Or is it weird that I presume he is dead?

It’s possible that Nathaniel Mackey never got my message, or that he got and and didn’t need to answer. But its also possible that Keith is his kin, is dead, and he is still processing a response.

bw

Gunn Pantheon of Hoops Greats to add Ethan Kitch

Ethan Kitch played his final game, against Leigh of San Jose in the first round of the CCS and lost in a close one. Who will recall that he hit a three just as coach Brandynn Williams called a time out. The shot was disallowed or was just for fun or practice. Ethan supposedly is admitted to Stanford and might walk on.

I congratulated his father, the Coach Kitch. I forget his name but he is founder of some type of youth basketball league and program. Father also went to Stanford, they say. I thought the dad was a super-intense guy. He rebutted my statement from the Milpitas game that getting a shot at the rim at the buzzer was a pretty good game. “No”, he said. This time he said “hold on a second” as he was finishing his text, then shook my hand. I asked about his Martin hat – -the guitar manufacturer. I said I ran a music series and handed him my card.

Ethan is an all time great at Gunn. He’s likely first team all SCVAL. Or De Anza as they say, not El Camino. Kopa told me earlier that he was a candidate for league MVP – -even from 7th place perhaps. He beat Paly twice which is noteworthy. I interviewed him about six months ago — before I became a coach of frosh-soph — about the Paly game, which was won by Rogan Gibbons in 2022. Maybe I will post that clip.

Here’s a blurb from an earlier post about Gunn all time greats:

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Lucian Grange told The New Yorker that Universal has an AI nicotine to be added to tracks that works our frontal lobes to reduce pain and stress

Posted on February 19, 2024 by markweiss86
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Happy birthday, Ke’Bryan Hayes of Pittsburgh, gold glove winner, son of a former Giant — in four years you’ll be half my age

Posted on February 19, 2024 by markweiss86

born January 28, 1997

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Pippin vs Big Pimpin’

Posted on February 19, 2024 by markweiss86

The man next to me at Peet’s at Town And Country near Stanford or Paly is wearing a Pippin hat and claimed that a song from the show was his wedding song, Henry. That’s impressive. I bored him with my solipsistic takes on “Hadestown” and “Passing Strange” — the yard about there would be no Hadestown or Passing Strange without Earthwise, aight? Big pimpin’ you (which AI wants to change to big pippin or good piping. Unnh! As not Jay Z but Biggie might say. Were he not dead.

Not sure I can even hum the hook to Big Pimpin’. And yes I did not no “Hypnotize” until Miles Morales.

Poppa been smooth since days of Underwood. Weird pivot to: my dog is Duffy. Someone mentioned that Duffy is a character and plot point of a radio serial from the 1940s. Archies Tavern, no Duffy’s not here. I’ve collected at least 10 Duffy origin stories but I am going with “Professor Dudley” + “Stanford biology” for the win, Alex.

Henry does not remember the title of the song they played at his wedding, save for it not being “Morning Glow” or “Magic To Do” but it is about an orgy but in the nice sense of the word or worm.

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