unknown, unknown, unknown, Beth Minor, Jeff Hoel, Alison Cormack, unknown, unknown, unknown, unknown, Arthur Keller, Gennady Sheyner, Liz Kniss, Eric Filseth –speaking as a write — Adrian Fine, unknown, unknown, Greg Schmid, Lydia Kuo, Greg Tanaka, Bob Moss (not pictured) city manager Ed Shikada
I’m reporting from the lobby of 250 Hamilton on a rainy Saturday, a policy Shabbat so to speak. Reading the 189 responses on an electronic message board, in anticipation of this meeting, “City Council Retreat”, it seems that what is on the minds of a lot of citizens is Gender Equity. I also noticed a fair sampling of people concerned about Sky Posse and airplane noise.
So as a former ad guy and 25 years in the music biz, my mind naturally flashed to “Jet Boy, Jet Girl” which has a homophone in French or Belgian with the weird title “something something plane something” which translates, if you believe the internet as “it’s going well for me” or more literally “things are gliding along for me”. One of the composers and or performers is Plastic Bertrand of Belgium.
There’s more on the musicology of these songs.
Someone, in a similar vein, lauded Human Relations Commissoner Steve Lee for organizing a screening of “On The Basis of Sex” the biopic of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, SCOTUS. (He never answered my query of whether he did a buyout or got the room and screeing donated; he also listed his identification as Palo Alto Human Relations Commission but was careful to note that he was doing this as an individual). When I saw the new Spiderman Spiderverse movie, at the new Icon Theatres at San Antonio Shopping center ghost-site, I had the urge to do a buyout of the room and invite art and physiscs students from Gunn High, my alma mater. I think its cool that Spider man is a mixed race boy, whose father is black and mother is Latina. His name is Miles Morales. There’s also some high school physics or pop physics or or new physics about the parallel universe theory: in this movie there are five Spidermans from 5 different dimensions including a female, and a non-homosapien.
If I’ve learned anything in 10 years of civic engagement (not to mention 33 years in culture mongering) is, as I’m sure Peter Porker aka Spider Ham would concur, don’t bring a gavel to a mallet fight.
Yeah, the lyrics for several of the “Jet Boy, Jet Girl” songs are obscene. Ooh, ooh, ooh.
Democracy is like sausage party, peoples.
I counted 50 people here, including staff.
edit to add: I might be confusing a City Survey which is comprehensive and maybe we’ve been talking about for the last (at least) 40 minutes and the thing I sussed thru to, the 189 responses on a Town Hall ap.
10:40 am, update: Now I have the meeting agenda so I can better orientate myself and contextualize these missives. Although I was up and about walking the dog early today, and pressed our noses to the locked glass doors of City Hall around 7:30 a.m. I got here late because “9:30” rather than 9 stuck in my head, and made my handheld electronic calendar. (If you were here at 8;30 you had your pick of free bagels; I was at that very hour at Jim’s New York Deli having mine made to order.
Also, above I was confusing the actual topic, National Citizens Survey with Open City Hall 189 responses. Here is one or two of the 189 responses. (And my headline is misleading in that I claim Gender Equity and Airplane Noise are 2 of the 3 priorities; they are yet to be determined; If you are reading this in real time — God forbid — Shabbat Shalom — check back around 2 p.m. If I am here at 12:15 ie. two more hours, there is a 1/3 sandwich for me, from Edgewood Market, according to assistant city clerk David Carnahan; I also greeted Doria Summa, Mark Michael, Liz Kniss, Lydia Kuo, Mila Zelka nee Currier, Jennifer Landsman, Rebecca Sanders, Valerie Stringer, and Alison Cormack. Actually, reading the pink sheet slightly more carefully I glean that 2018 priorities were Transportation, Housing, Budget and Finance and Grade Separation — which reads more like four than 3, new math.
These posts feature my friend Star Teachout and Stacey Ashlund, who I don’t think I’ve met but she ran for school board and got 11,000 votes.
Ca Plane pour moi.
Former not-actually-the-Mayor Greg Schmid gave his trademark factual and effective speech about jobs versus housing and income inequality; perhaps I should revise this post since I believe that “income inequality” dwarfs “gender equity” in significance (oops, is “dwarfs” as a verb tense not-politically-correct?)
There’s also a fair amount of talk, especially among the 15 speakers during 10:15-12:15 block 2018 Priorities Oral Communications is climate, or what I called in 1993 being “earthwise”.
At 11:11 exactly (ok, that’s fake news, it’s still 11:09 a.m.) Bob Moss suggests getting Palo Alto to ask Stanford to expand Marguerite buses on more of our streets. (Or even large corporations, which I am less high on).
On January 12 the Empire State building was lit up green in honor of Dartmouth 250th anniversary, although a kid from my dorm asked whether it was just a photo shopped fake image
I read in today’s New York Times on Page A19 “ICE created fake school to uncover visa fraud“ That our federal government created a fake university to entrap in and then arrest and then export people from India who were here with the wrong visa and knowingly enrolled in a school with no classes just a website or photograph of these three crisis actors.
was this perpretated by the same people from Gonzaga Prep of D.C. who in 1969 turned Washington Monument purple?
Gretchen Menn is a guitar player in a Led Zep cover band, who I met once at Peet’s in Palo Alto and she went to Smith.
Greta Van Fleet is a new band of 3 brothers from Michigan who play originals but people complain they sound too much like Led Zep. (and to make matters worse, I watched two songs of theirs on SNL recently and thought the singer was a woman).
Menn is a woman but “Greta” is a man, got it. The Kizska travel by van or fleet of such, while Gretchen has a pilot’s license, check.
and55: This is my 55th post to Plastic Alto in January which is weird because yesterday I turned 55 or completed 55 years on planet Earth. Thank you my wife Terry, Terry Acebo Davis the artist and arts commissioner and blogger and curator, for giving me a “30” jersey which I guess I can end with, old journalism joke:
Stu is Ian Stewart late great “6th Stone” who also guested on Physical Graffiti “Boogie with Stu”. And his wiki sent me to Tattoo You “Black Limosine”. Will this make me like or dislike Wil Blades in San Jo? Ian Stewart, 1938-1985. They could mix the piano a little further up. (I guess the death created space for Chuck Leavell?)
honorable mention: Jon Cleary, “Burgundy Boogie”
also: Gretchen Menn, in Guitar Magazine, plays in a Led Zep cover band, Zepperella, I met once at Peet’s here.
also, or back where I started: Mitch Woods coming soon to the 650 out in Pacifica, at Nick’s.
and: but also sometimes four-handed with Billy Preston?
I saw her at Cogswell Plaza nooner brown bag dealio it must have been 2006, maybe with Akira Tana in her band and maybe Jim Harrington still of the Weekly wrote her up and now thru the magic of the internet I find that Hale Baskin of Redwood City is in Texas, Dallas and plays every Friday night thru June with The Southpaw Preachers big band at The Mitchell on Main. She is not really a cheerleader as far as I know although I did recently tell someone leaving for a business trip to Dallas to take an art tour of the stadium.
(Mitch Woods, who I’ve been stalking, is playing Nicks of Pacifica, I’ve never been. Fil Lorenz, big band leader, also is playing there, soon enough. Hale sang with Fil, or does. Hale has a video of Nina Simone song, “Feeling Good” — meanwhile I am off to see Wil Blades on organ in San Jose Cafe Stritch tonite, but also there’s a Warriors game on tv, versus the Philadelphia 76ers. Also, Andrew Gilbert has a piece in the Merc about Scott Amedola 50th birthday show Monday at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley with Jeff Parker and Nels Cline and Jenny Scheimman, plus it lists his 5 most influential cds which include Fela Kuti, Geri Allen, Coltrane with Elvin Jones, early Frisell with a drummer I never heard of and one more TK. And I’m feeling good…)
This bit, a new prologue three weeks later, is lifted from the wikipedia entry on David Shields’ “Reality Hunger” my manifesto: Shields also discusses, at length, the distinction between memoir and fiction–a distinction that, Shields argues, is mostly imaginary. Because writers of fiction implement a great deal of material directly from their lives, and because writers of memoir must rely on memories that don’t necessarily reflect the truth of what occurred, it would seem absurd to hold the two different kinds of writer to such different standards. “Anything processed by memory is fiction,” Shields writes, indicating that anything written by a writer supposedly doing memoir has necessarily already been fictionalized; thus, determining whether certain events in the book actually happened or not is not the correct way to determine the book’s value. The scandal surrounding James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” figures largely in one chapter, as Shields argues that Frey’s mistake was not lying in his so-called memoir but apologizing about it afterwards…
Mark Twain has nothing to do with basketball minus the fact that some schools banned this book for having a lead named Nigger Jim
BLUF (bottom line up front) I wrote this as a tribute to AK in my writing class, who worked for Mr. Rogers but is influenced by Thich Nhat Hanh and A Tribe Called Quest. Tribe was the subject of an article in The New York Times today. >>> to wit
(I’m thinking about fixing this so there is a big capital B here)
“Boogie-woogie” is a word in my trusted Webster’s Ninth. “Ooga-booga” is not, although “oomph” is and there is a word regarding gender or genitalia that is on the same page with a similar spelling. I had the misfortune or lack of discipline to use the word “ooga-booga” in an email to friends, a propos of an incident of racism from our undergraduate days, at Dartmouth, in the 1980s. I wish I had said “racially insensitive depiction in a drawing” rather than what I said. (And I was surprised by what I found sussing that word or phrase on the search-injuns – come to think of it, I should stop saying “search-injuns”)
The Warriors have a new player named DeMarcus Cousins who is 6 foot 11-inches and apparently is known as “Boogie”.
I’d like to explore this in more depth.
I, in a related matter, to me at least, bought a $6 copy of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain at Barnes and Noble in San Mateo. I read it for 20 minutes — about the Duke and the King and their fake-testifying scam — and then donated the book to my favorite local pop-up library shelf. Gee, I hope scammers are not raiding that shelf and selling the crop to Bell’s Books. I also recorded myself reading the opening lines of Huck Finn (by the way, my professor James Melville Cox warned us against buying an edition that used the article “the” in the header, which I broke here).
You don’t know me without you have read a book, Adventures of [Tom?] Sawyer by Mark Twain. But that ain’t no matter. He told the truth, mainly. There were some stretchers. But that is no matter. I ain’t seen nobody that lied. Except maybe Aunt Polly. Tom’s Aunt Polly and Mary and the Widow Douglass. Which is in that book. Which is mostly truth with some stretchers, as I told before. Now the way the books winds up is this: Tom and Me found the money, that the robbers hid in the cave. And it made us rich. It was an awful side of money when it was piled up. Then Judge Thatcher he made us put the money in a bank for interest. He made us put it out at interest and it fetched us a dollar each per day, all year round, more than a body would know what to do with (Editors note: not to reveal why, buy I am fixing to go to see the Warriors, tonite versus the 6ers, for the first time in four or more years, and it costs more than a dollar, I’ll say!) The widow Douglass she took me for her son and tried to Civilize me but it was tough living
in her house all the time, how dismal and regular it was. And I lit out, and got into my old rags and my sugar-hogs-head and I was free and satisfied but Tom he hunted me and said he was going to start a band of robbers and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable, so I went back. The widow she cried over me and called me “a poor lost lamb” {ed: note to self to look up that blogger guy who sometimes writes about the homeless but also about Marin Catholic Football and maybe he has posts about Jared Goff of the Rams who I am rooting for if or not if I take the train to Santa Barbara to watch at Kenny Switzer’s famous party house, lord willing and the wife don’t mind} and she called me a lot of other names too but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes {and by the way, on my birthday Monday Terry, TMW, (Terry My Wife] bought me a replica Steph Curry jersey, (which should not remind me of the bad Keanu Reeves movie I snuck out to the other day in honor of our Stanford doctor and former Gunn classmate Matt Porteus, “Replicas” which is a bad Frankenstein necrophilia movie) and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat and feel all cramped up. But then the widow rung a bell for supper and you had to go in on time and you had to come to time.
b/w (“backed with”) I bought the Times today for a picture of Jackie Robinson who is 100 today but it was actually a whole section on him. Also there is a review of a new and noteworthy book, nearly a memoir, about A Tribe Called Quest, which I take especial interest in in that there was a lady in my memoir Lynn Stegner class just last night that was writing about her time two years with Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” and she also claimed to be influenced by Thic Nhat Hahn and Fugazi and A Tribe Called Quest. I did not listen to them in real time, although I did along with Brian Moore and Gabrielle Brown and a friend with a lighter shade of blackness — and we discussed this, or almost, post-film — went to see “Do The Right Thing” in the theatre in SF, maybe slightly stoned and I think I saw “She’s Gotta Have It” with my parents at the Fine Arts on Cali Ave, which is now a Zombie Runner below and sort of a Muslim Mosque above, but maybe Sufis — but after the recent documentary came out — and Phife Dog passed away, to diabetes — and sometimes I think of him when I urinate — for a minute there I would, even at a public hearing start with “yo, microphone check one two what is this?” which went over the heads of anybody who might have heard my voice and I was, I admit, posing.
and1 back to the poorly mock-remembered and poorly transcribed 2 minutes 49 of me reading this begining into my cellphone and it is probably worth going back and set to fixin’ or trying again and really memorize it: $6,000 apiece, all gold….decent the widow was in all her ways…I was free and satisfied…and she called me a lot of other names too but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat and feel all cramped up. But then the one thing commenced again, the widow rung a bell for supper and you had to come to time [ed: that’s one of my favorite instant phrases, “come to time” like “put to interest” above] but when you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating, you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the vittles [ok, “victuals”] tho there wasn’t really anthing the matter with them, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends, it is different. things get mixed up and the juice kind of swaps and the things get better.
Amen.
andand:
After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bullrushers. And I was in a sweat to find out all about him but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable time (ed: Stop. I would like to take this moment to think about Moses Malone, one of the all time greats of basketball who played for those same 6ers of whom I am fixing to see tonite and he also briefly dated an ex of mine also in Philadelphia he stopped her or stopped her car, Mercedes, in the parking lot of Whole Foods and asked her out but she said he mumbled plus was too old for her but I fantasized actually about befriending him and coaching him on how to win her charms so to speak in exchange for if he would fly out here and give a presentation for our fundraiser fantasy pipe dream or caught in turnaround jumpshot for our teammate who had died too young. Goodbye Moses. Go down, Moses. Get down, Moses, Boogie on, Reggae brother. We all cousins, deep down, if you dig back far enough} Twain:
So that I didn’t care no more about him because I don’t take no stock in dead people.
Moses Malone (1955-2015)
andand but not Anand: this is pretty random but while trying to find the article online I had rad tactile-like, old school, about A Tribe Called Quest which was a starting point for this rant but not, like Curry a starting point guard — although one of them is wearing a Syracuse jersey in the photo — i stopped on Catherine Cohen a 27 yo funny singer and then got 2 minutes with her manager Cati Taylor in New York who was not meanwhile or erstwhile or any such whiles interested in knowing more about Columbia Barnard senior Eden Arielle Gordon who is more earnest than funny I think and or wrote a play with five original songs about female beats such as Joyce Johnson and Elise Cowan (and Diane DiPrima) but I also had the chutzpah to ring her at Brillstein on the memory of Marsh McCall speaking of dead people to take no stock in who I cannot picture doing much “boogie woogie” although he probably knew a couple Warren Zevon songs — is that an allusion or am I tripping? – and knew a bunch of the Beatles. Songs. And Shaun Cassidy (the doo ron ron dude) was his buddy, I spit you negative. Maybe Marsh and Moses are shooting hoops in heaven.
THE THING THAT WON’T DIE: I’m still sussing back for the online version of the A Tribe Called Quest review and link I bought at CVS for 12 zuzim but found, my brother Marlon, this:
Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?
Huckleberry Finn, because after all the years he is still the fictional character who charmed me the most. Sula, not because I like her — in fact, she would have been to me what she was to everyone, best friend and mortal enemy at once — but her simple statement, “Show? To who?” (in response to ex-friend Nel asking what she had to show for her life) changed everything for me. The idea that my life’s purpose was not to gain other people’s approval never occurred to me until I read that book. After reading that novel I literally rose and walked differently.
So I am tapping out and admitting that it is Long John Baldry 1971 at 1:45 of this 6 minute video who misprounces to comic effect the key word — and Webster’s word — of this headline and I hope I do not regret this link or embed:
You know, I remember a few years ago
Some funny things used to happen to me
About 1956, 57
At that time there was no blues scene
Or not really any kind of scene in London
I used to go out and play my guitar in the streets
And sing things with passing my hat down
I remember one particular night
I was playing the guitar in a little alleyway
Just off of Wardour Street in Soho
And I got busted by the police
This policeman come up and dragged me and my guitar
And my hat full of pennies off to the police station
Anyway, the next day
I had to appear in Marlboro Street Police Court
And it was quite a day
Police officer giving his evidence
I was proceeding in a southernly direction, m’lord
When I heard strange sounds
Coming from Wardour Place, m’lord
A sort of “boogie woogie” music was being played
On further investigation, I saw the defendant
Standing there with a guitar and an old hat
On the floor collecting pennies
Well, I decided that he was contravening
A breach of the peace there, as there was
A traffic jam about five miles long down Wardour Street
Wondering what all the fuss was about
So then I arrested the defendant
Ah, just one moment, officer
Well, what is this “boogie woogie” music
Here we’re talking about?
“Oh, well, m’lord”, said the officer
Getting out his notebook, obviously
Been doing up his homework
It’s a kind of jazz-rhythm-music
Peculiar to the American “Negro”
Oh, and what was the defendant doing
Playing this kind of music there in Wardour street?
Anyway I got off with a caution
A years conditional discharge
But I’ll always remember that policeman
And his “boogie woogie”
there’s also a guy named Marcus Delyric giving a piano lesson on Warren Zevon that Google mislead me to, and he also does Boogie Wit a Hoodie playing April 4 at Fillmore and 18M views of original. Number 32 in 2016 best rap songs in Rolling Stone, oh brave new world. And a weird funny not racist moving ad for SquareSpace featuring a boxer with a Brit accent and a woman posing for photos, preceding these Youtubes.
This is a nice and helpful lady at the DMV in RWC whose name is Jackie, like the baller who is 100 today:
personal to LS and AK aka MDK: I don’t do memoir, “lyric essay” is where its at.
For those of you who have made it this far… Here is an essay I wrote about the process of making “Libba.” Pictured at the bottom is a photo of Libba’s great-granddaughter Brenda Evans and me backstage in DC last Spring.
********************************************************* A New Respect for the Picture Book by Laura Veirs
I’d been reading picture books to my kids for years before writing my own. I’d always taken pleasure in them but never really considered what a deep art form the genre is. It took creating “Libba” to figure that out.
First, let’s take the words. Like in a song or poem, I wanted to get them just right. I wanted them to be musical. I wanted them to flow easily when read aloud. I didn’t want too many of them. I wanted them to be historically accurate and culturally sensitive. I wanted concrete details to hold up the story but I wanted to leave room for the illustrations to do some talking. I wanted good timing and suspense. As I got deeper into the writing process I realized that what I initially thought of as “little kid stuff” was turning out to be a major creative challenge.
I didn’t know enough about African American history or current Black experience so I read about 20 books on those topics. I listened to tons of country blues music. I talked with several people who knew Libba and they gave me excellent information about her life but I wasn’t able to locate any of Libba’s family or inner circle during my first round of interviews so I gave up. Two years later, with the deadline for publication looming, I resolved to find someone. I made an exhaustive family tree from online articles and finally (through several tries on Facebook) found someone in Libba’s family who would grant me an interview: her great-granddaughter Brenda Evans.
Brenda was raised by Libba in a house of 10 in Washington, D.C in the 50s and 60s. Libba would put Brenda and the other grandkids to sleep by playing them songs on her guitar. Brenda sang beautifully when she was 12 on Libba’s song “Shake Sugaree.” Brenda helped me considerably with getting the details and tone right for the book. Over several long phone calls we became friends. When I played a concert in Washington D.C. last Spring Brenda joined me on stage and we sang “Shake Sugaree” together. This was one of many wonderful surprises that came about from writing this book.
Next, let’s consider the pictures. When the illustrations capture the imagination and draw the reader into the world of the story they make the book. If done badly they can break the book. I had very little say over who the illustrator would be (this is typical in picture book publishing). I hadn’t heard of Tatyana Fazlalizadeh but when I saw her work online I loved it and had a feeling she would do the story justice. I couldn’t be happier with how Tatyana captured Libba’s gentle but powerful essence. Tatyana’s work is remarkable especially because this was her picture book debut.
From the first seed of an idea to publication “Libba” took seven years to come to life. (The book takes seven minutes to read.) This book was a labor of love that I’m grateful for because I read picture books with a new eye now. Some of my childhood favorites – “George and Martha”, “Little Fur Family”, “The Amazing Bone” and “Where the Wild Things Are” – strike me now as works of genius on par with any other art form.
I can’t believe you made it to the end!
As always, thank you for everything. I couldn’t keep doing this stuff without y’all.
Best,
(signed laura veirs — I will write her for permission to reprint like this. I’d like to do a concert with Laura here in Palo Alto, I met her in Austin at SXSW in 2004 or so, I wrote that previous like (she put a post it note on her cd she sent me – -she’s a big star now. Mazel tov on the Mommy thing – -I think her baby-dad is a well-regarded “producer”. I’ll say!
On Ramona: too close to the building, flicking ashes into street, makes me sneeze
b/w girl band singer in Thailand performs on tv wearing a Swastika on her T-shirt, though she later apologized personally to an Israeli diplomat named Meir Shlomo.
Season Love the hit from Rent, was on Fox network tv Sunday night, but I was watching Black Violin at
But I’ll get ahead of the curve for “Jagged Little Pull” .
Which premiered at American repertory theater in Cambridge Mass. and is headed to Broadway with a $14 million budget. Yes I deliberately miss identify the album I was thinking of pulling my Daisy about the Beats which itself could be a Broadway show some damn
Fuck is you saying
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 