Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

There’s something in today’s Palo Alto Post about a comedian being pulled off the stage at Columbia University of New York for saying no one looks in the mirror, who is black, and says ‘I’d like to be gay too because my life is not hard enough” and they pulled him from the stage with a big hook :bw

i wonder if students at Columbia AAA would book for their next conference a mechanical white guy, telling jokes about vegetables?

(I happened to be in the grocery store, Mollie Stone’s, earlier that day and pushed “play” on the animatronics — a local landmark; it obviously has nothing to do with political correctness or comedy or academia or Asian American Alliances — cheap shot, I admit)

and1: my Dartmouth classmate Maya Wiley, who went to Columbia Law, and is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, but not likely in attendence at the conference and show I am discussing here, told Brian Williams on CSNBC that Donald Trump is losing sleep and dreaming of stripes. I think she was in my Spanish 4 class freshman fall.

Nimesh Patel. The tea on:

edit to add, on the 12th: this was also an op-ed in The Times. Actually, I also watched a tape of the confrontation between the three student organizers — the shot-callers — and the comedian, who I felt handled them quite deftly and delicately; each one teach one, or three. Maybe he was just a stalking horse to get people to peep out their cute photos of their fashion shows and hip-hopping? (note: a previous version of this had a montage of Columbia students doing a fashion show, as part of the same Asian students conference that produced the comedy kerfuffle) Like a high tech cotillion. I’m jest sayin’.

andandand but not “Anand”: whenever I meet a cool Columbia person, I tell him or her I’ve added them to my pantheon of Lions: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Matt Gonzalez, June Omura (the dancer), Witkowski, Rossides, William Bill “Coach” Campbell, Eden Arielle Gordon ’19 (the playwright — wrote about Barnard students/ Beat writer Joyce Johnson and Elise Cowen,”The Other Side” – could be on Broadway someday! — dare I say putting the “broad” in Broadway?). Also shout out to my Gunn schoolmates James Van Campen and Johnna Tamases, there and back again, he. On this thread I also spoke to two friends from high school whose dads were each Columbia professors and former Stanford professors as well: Mia Levin the daughter of education guru Henry Levin (I traded emails with him as well); Rebecca Mischel (both of whose parents were psychologists and although divorced died on consecutive days, this year, sadly). Mia Levin dropped out of Gunn High to join Frightwig and was the inspiration for Earthwise Productions as a showcase for unsung musical heroes and heroines, and later got her b.a. and I think a master’s, aka Mia Levin D’Bruzzi Simmons. (Of A.D.S.R).

Mia Levin aka Mia D’Bruzzi, at the Warfield — not a Beat but the most “on the road” member of my 7th grade class, boy or girl. She was on the cover of Puncture.

Also: my headline here — obscure –is a reference to an 1980s rock song by Ten Thousand Maniacs, who I saw live at Greek and whose lead singer Natalie Merchant later went solo and hired my later friend and colleague Allison Miller on drums. (“Hey Jack Kerouac”) — by the time this thread is over, hopefully I will work out mnemonic devices for always spelling properly “Kerouac” and “Allen Ginsberg”. Also: I’m going to publish here my Beat bibliography, and maybe my general Poetry bibliography. When Allen Ginsberg visited my professor Al LaValley once in SF he looked at his book case and said “You need more poetry”.