Fuck the Astros and their oil company uniform ad

Posted on October 18, 2023 by markweiss86
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Tale of two Cubberleys

Posted on October 17, 2023 by markweiss86

The Palo Alto Weekly ran a picture of two geezers with medicine balls in an otherwise empty Cubberley hallway, to signify or suborn apathy about that important public asset. I think they’re thinking by publishing these weak messages that if people underestimate and under-value the asset, we the people will let the developers snooker us for the umpteenth time. The developers will buy it cheap, make billions and then give a kickback to the corrupt Weekly. The Weekly that is pro-development.  And undermines our ability to self-govern. And has flunkies in leadership like Pat Burt, Ed Lauing and Greer Stone (who we were stupid enough to vote for but they really work for the powers that be, point towards power like a magnet pointing towards the North Pole – the North Pole that Ginsberg calls Moloch Moloch Moloch! – excuse the mixed metaphor).

It seems leadership, and the pro development press, want to suppress the fact that there have been many vital activities and ad hoc good use at the former high school, which shuttered in 1979, my freshman year at Gunn. I produced more than 150 events at 4000 Middlefield between 1994 and 2001, in the theatre, the multipurpose room or the amphitheater. Here is AFI from summer, 1996. We sold 4o4 tickets at six dollars per head. The theatre seats 325 but we had standing room in the throw for another 80 or so. The picture is a little blurry, but that is singer/leader/composer Davey Havok flying through the air, not sitting on the drum kit riser. 

Many of the bands I used to book at the Cubberley now play The Guild— The Guild is a $35 million privately funded asset in nearby Menlo Park. Blink-182 played the school auditorium and went on to sell 20 million records; they had 150 fans that Sunday in 1997 and earned me back $900. It was Earth Day. Six dollars a head,  two for one if you rode your bike.

I think Palo Alto leadership or really We The People should assign -that’s the legal word for give away—all 30 acres to the Cubberley Alumni Association and let them figure it out. For example, to Ed Fox and Paul Trainer of class of ‘71 who had a reunion with about 100 of their classmates at Mitchell  Park Sunday; a few then came to our Mads Tolling jazz show in the bowl.

If I was a VC I could raise $50 million for just about anything, just among Cubberley people –and I didn’t even go there. But I played basketball for Hans Delannoy, who has invited me to Zotts with the Mulcahys and Earl Hansen, and also coached Tim Ruff— Brett Baird pointed out that a man I never heard — a former Cougar QB –built the Colorado State football stadium. There is a man name Twohy who scored only one basket for Cubberley and draws cartoons for The New Yorker. I would trust him with the 30 acres more than Kou, Stone, Burt et al. Dividing the pie is literally dividing the house. PAUSD and We the People are the same. To pit us against each other benefits the developers. This is a good place to repeat my line that superintendent Don Austin seems like a guy who played Division III football without a helmet and has no clue.

There were four hundred former Cubberley students at Gunn with me, many of whom wrote in the yearbook: Once a Cougar, Always a Cougar. Cross that credo with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”and maybe you’ll see what I’m getting at. These people can bring it!

It was a mistake to shutter Cubberley. We wounded these people. They have a chip on their collective shoulders. So they therefore have the incentive and the capacity to make themselves whole again. To make us whole again. 

To repeat: give all 30 acres to Fox, Trainer, Delannoy, Mulcahy, Mulcahy, Ruff, Graham, Baird, Baird, Twohy, the Oswalds, Earl Hansen, Tim Ruff. 

and1: Kent Lockhart (1963-2023) went to Cubberley; run a picture of him as a symbol of the campus, not the medicine ball guys. Come on!

Edit to add: turn out, or seems, that one of my so-called “geezers” is a retired partner at Fenwick & West and married to a current Menlo Park council member; not as obvious but as a taxpayer I’m ok assigning Cubberley to The Estate of William Fenwick — I’m of the belief that executor is my Dartmouth classmate Tony Fenwick, the former Menlo star, and it still stings that he baited me into throwing an ill-considered long inbounds pass, which he intercepted after first leaving his man open, in a scrimmage at Stanford camp….

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Black Virgins are Not For Hipsters by Earthwise

Posted on October 16, 2023 by markweiss86

I’m risking $3,600 in seed money for a work derivative of Echo Brown’s one woman show, “Black Virgins Are Not For Hipsters” which debuted at The Marsh in San Francisco eight years ago.

It would be a postmodern work — Pomo for Echo — or an echo of her actual work. Brown died this fall at age 39; her obituary was in The New York Times.

I gave $500 to The Marsh in her memory. Stephanie Weisman wrote me back and suggested that I was a good friend of the author. In reality, I never met her. She left me tickets to the show but I never used them. I gave a small amount to her GoFundMe but didn’t imagine that she would succumb. 

These words give life to thee, as Shakespeare said.

My project, for starters, would involve finding 10 contributors or respondents would would give us 10 hours of their time. That’s 100 hours, at $36 per hour (in comparison, I pay ushers and loaders at my events $20 per hour, paid $75 to composers and performers for a bubble Bandcamp project during COVID, and my scale for headliners is $400 per service).

The last 10 people I’ve worked with or met who are Black or female and or under 39 I will target for these micro-grants. 

On November 3, meanwhile — or its possible this essay Monday at 9 am until 9:30 when I am meeting my trainer James Ward a former marine embassy guard is as far as this gets — I am hosting Dr. JoVia Armstrong cd release party for her Eunoia Society (think paranoia but good); she has a PhD in music from UC Irvine where she worked with Dr. Bridget Crooks who created The Black Index, a visual arts project that was at Palo Alto Art Center and two other museums or galleries, plus there’s a book or catalog. JoVia did the soundtrack that accompanied the show, although in Palo Alto it was low in the mix. JoVia teaches at University of Virginia —where her colleagues include Nicole Mitchell the musicians and bandleader (and leader of AACM of Chicago) and PhD candidate Corey Harris a Bates grad and country blues artist who already won a MacArthur Genius grant for his research and practice studying and embodying the course of music from West Africa to Jamaica to New Olreans to Mississippi and Chicago. I am hoping to add a subplot to JoVia’s show to be to advance this Echo Brown echo initiative.

Aleta Hayes senior lecturer in dance but also sings or sang with William Parker may appear November 3 with an accompanist on piano is slated to be the opening act and I will try to draw on her as a resource for this show.

The show would combine music, acting and spoken word. It would include passages written for the show, passages from the obituary, potentially tributes to Echo and the show written for our work and improv.

It might start with me pointing my smart phone at people and having them repeat the words: Black Virgins are Not for hipsters. 

Robert Hurwitt, the theater critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, called Ms. Brown “an instantly attractive and engaging performer” who “has us eating out of her hand well before she gets everyone up and dancing to illustrate (with a little help from Beyoncé) why Black women shouldn’t dance with white men until at least after marriage.”

And the writer Alice Walker said on her blog in 2016, “What I can say is that not since early Whoopi Goldberg and early and late Anna Deavere Smith have I been so moved by a performer’s narrative.”

When “Black Virgins” was mentioned in a profile of Ms. Brown in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine in 2017, Jessica Anderson, an editor at Christy Ottaviano Books, an imprint of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, took notice.

“I reached out blindly to see if she would turn her attention to writing for a young adult audience,” Ms. Anderson said in a phone interview. “She wasn’t familiar with young adult or children’s literature. I sent her some books, and she had an immediate sense of what her storytelling should be.”

Wow. (Excuse the digression: when my mother Barbara Hayms Weiss and I saw Carey Perloff’s Israeli show “Higher” we were seated near Tracy Chapman and Alice Walker; I met Tracy in line for cookies during intermission and spoke to her about “Passing Strange” by my former clients Mark Stew Stewart and Heidi Rodewald, and also recall that we split Alice and Tracy shuffling out of the theatre such that Alice seemed perturbed waiting for her friend — or she was reconciling her distrust of Israel with the concepts churned by Perloff’s work — there are nuances to all these words, gestures and actions — weird prologue I admit. Surpassing strange, sister) (Richard Sandomir, NYT)

 

edit two adds: one, I am donating $3,600 to Dartmouth in her memory, had a conversation with Amber Wylie about this; too, I almost forgot that Roberta Lea dedicated “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers to Echo Brown at Johnson Park Tuesday Oct 10, 2023 so I will offer one of those grants to Roberta to continue on that tack. 

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Stanford students bullied and harassed by Arabs, liberals and those sympathetic to or thrilled by the murder of hundreds of music-lovers in Israel last week

Posted on October 14, 2023 by markweiss86

“He put together a really epic performance,” Stanford coach Troy Taylor said of Elic as in “epic” Ayomanor.

Prime time gives press late night after big Stanford comeback and Buff collapse

The Post — Braden Cartwright — says a Stanford instructor named Ameer Hasan Loggins is the one I read about previously, who singled out Jews in his class and tried to create animosity, in his support of the murderers from Gaza who killed 200 or more music lovers at a festival called Nova in southern Israel.

I heard about this first from the thread by A3M, activists from the 1970s who opposed Stanford’s involvement in Vietnam conflict, led by Lenny Siegel – their group includes pro-Palestinian commenters. Also, there is an op-ed in the Times on this subject. The Arab lobby at US universities is powerful.

I started to write earlier this season about the new shopping center, a city block of Menlo Park, groundleased from Stanford to a Sovereign Wealth Fund – and the fact I was 86’d from a music event there. Three times. I only half-joked that I risked being cut up in little pieces.

I had a special but brief security meeting before my concert Tuesday at Johnson Park with Rachel Baiman and Roberta Lea. I checked in with the artists, the City, my small staff (at $20 per hour) and the sound vendor, The basic plan was to point out our proximity to City Hall, Police, Fire Station and the creek. (In the event of a shooter event, or shooters on motorbike, like in Israel — not likely but worth thinking about for a minute rather than be caught completely 100 percent unawares. My Sunday 10/8 with Dan Bern, Mads Tolling, Charity and Jerry Hannan it hadn’t crossed by mind – -I was not aware of the music festival attack, beyond the overall unrest.

I texted Mads yesterday that I might mention something about this on Sunday, 2 pm at Mitch Bowl. I referenced an Arab medic killed at the festival. Awad — I had a Dartmouth classmate named Jane Awad.

2) Moimoi On the Loose

Tevita Moimoi had has best day for Dartmouth in a loss to Yale, 31-24. He had 81 yards on 9 carries including a 40 yard romp early that nearly went all the way. I met Vita about 40 feet from where I sit right now, at Coupa. I had met his sister Mele here months prior, wearing a D hat. Moimoi led Sacred Heart in rushing during his time.

3) I texted John Paye about the fact that Steve Young bought 8 copies of The New York Times last week – it talked about the two of them coaching girls football at Menlo. Young leads a $8.6B AUM fund and has a daughter who high jumps 5 feet already. His son Braeden who was classmates with my friend Michael Rothstein at Escondido is now a graduate of Manhattan School of Music. I’ve met or stood near Steve Young three times. I mis-took him for Kenny Switzer the former Gunn baseball star, waiting in line for sandwiches at Mollie Stone. I hope to interview Paye for this blog. Paye was the best athlete of my generation — better than Jim Harbaugh and a nicer guy. I wrote about the possibility of Paye not Marc Berman in state government. Now I think Paye should lead Stanford.

4) Elic like Eric with an L not R, or epic. Two-hundred-ninety-three yards against Colorado, best receiving day in Stanford history, and their biggest comeback ever. Deion Sanders looked stupid trying to wrap his brain around what just happened. “My son should have held the ball not thrown an interception. We should have tackled Elic not let him romp 97 yards. Seventeen penalties is too many”.

36 panels on Keck star catcher

5) I sort of produced a show with a group of teens from Lynbrook, Saratoga High and Bellarmine, and their moms. They have a 501c.3 called Let Nature Sing but it was very perfunctory. They set up by 4;30 and broke down by 5 pm but given the fact that I had to cover an event at Bells and then prep my dinner, I wish they had gone over a minute or two. I missed the entire set. All I heard in terms of music was the piano player verifying that the power was on, a few notes or sounds. I got a posed photo — one of the moms said to pull the instruments from the cases for effect — thanks for that. I stopped for about 3 minutes talking to a man in a Keck shirt – -I want to count the number of mirrors or panels – -and he said he liked the group but paradoxically that report probably kept me from hearing even a bit of the last song. Augie the artist from Providence for Code Art give it a soft “yes” — they could have played until they were asked to stop, or until their promoter or sponsor got back. I sent a note to one of the three moms I dealt with to say that the kids would be better off waiting until age 16 and self-organizing. do they like music or they are merely trying to please their parents? (Maybe I am wrong and it’s a secret revolt from the housewives posing as tiger moms, hoping to meet middle aged concert promoters? Or it’s not too late to suggest such – -which is weird but less so than LNS which is like the Raymond Chandler line about advertising and how many lies can you squeeze into so few words….) But good luck . Better luck tomorrow.

They were supposed to learn five Beatles songs. Rather than Disney.

6) Todd Sickafoose is in WSJ preview of his album BEARPROOF which plays live here at Palo Alto Art Center next weekend. It’s actually a dual review of he and Allison Miller — she plays with Todd here – and played duo here with Carmen Staaf in August, the night of the Willie Nelson show at Frost. I made a comp that says ALLIE FOR PRESIDENT. The Sick played a key role in “Hadestown” — longer story.

7) JoVia Armstrong is coming November 3. It looks like the two previously announced (?) openers are gone and I am hoping to lure Aleta Hayes duo – -voice and piano for 3 or 4 songs. I told Aleta about Cricket Tiger who is the daughter of Diego Romero. His other child Santiago Romero — Cricket’s half-brother — went to Dartmouth and is now selling his art in earnest to collectors and collections.

8) Coupa is playing Make me an Angel by Prine. John Prine lives on via my Apple iPhone Shazam music recognition feature. Like a poster of an old rodeo Kind of sorta.

9) I saw Mads Tolling at SF Opera of Steve Jobs. I hated it – I am a luddite. I think the 9 Billon in stock he left Laurene Powell Jobs is enough of a legacy. Laurene whose office is above Keen’s boots, on my block. Actually the building, at Bryant and Uni was The Nevada Building and my wife Terry Acebo Davis had a studio there as did poet laureate Al Young (Michael Young’s dad).

10) Big ups to Margo Davis for her display of author photos in the windows at Bell’s Books. I lured a guy named Richard Jenkins not the actor to go shoot the soiree there. Richard is from Fairfield near Travis AFB, which somehow had me sussing Dartmouth alum Ted Bamberger z’l which had me writing Bar Scott. Bar’s father knew Ted at Dartmouth, whereas her cousin Teddy Conway was my roommate. Photos of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Maxine Hong Kingston, Saul Bellow, Carl Djerassi — all of whom spoke at Stanford. I told Margo of my ex, D_, who said she almost cried one night at a benefit for Philadelphia Opera, Margaret Garner, and how Toni Morrison was so not friendly. And D- is a trauma surgeon, used to plucking bullets from the chests of gang-bangers.

Ok, I’ve insulted enough of you hockey pucks, shabbat shalom, bitches. Shabby slalom — not to be confused with my Dartmouth school mate Tiger Shaw.

Shout out to former hockey goalie Katie Brown who is second in command behind her father Mike Brown and I hope to do a brief meet up on 10/29 at The Stick or The Thing. The big corporate box int he middle of a bunch of corporate boxes. I sometimes take the light rail past 10 stops I’ve never heard of — and I’ve lived here since 1968.

coda— Strawberry Fields by the Beatles — I call it noise concrete but search injun says no go. Wiki says “reverse recorded instrumentation, Mellotron flute sounds, an Indian swarmandal, and a fade-out-fade-in coda. So we have a coda in a coda, within you without you, And shout out to T_ who bakes savory snacks a fusion of Europe continental tastes and memories of her family history in India’s 79th largest municipality.

Also: a neighbor is from Catalan and tried to explain Bourbon — which had me pouring such last night for my guests even if I confuse 1704 and 1917 or whatever. I know the Pale was from 1791 to 1917 simple enough.

But Michael Lewis is wrong to use “going infinite” about Sam Bankman-Fried. Especially since the Bankmans and Frieds live across from the former home of Fields Medal Winner Paul J. Cohen z’l who refined our modern notion of infinity. Although the Cantor that Syntax wrote about was not the math guy. who invented birth control? Carl Derjerassi (October 29, 1923-January 30, 2015). Syntex not syntax you AI idiots. How about sin tax?

There is also a solar eclipse today that goes about another hour.

edit to ad: Elic Ayomanor is from Medicine Hat Alberta Canada but prepped at Deerfield in Massachusetts. Reminds me of the great Dartmouth receiver also from Deerfield Jack Daly, right? Oy, I left a vm for mama of the new star — suggesting that Elic can help SY manage some oft those $6.8M AuM. Amen. Ashe. Salam aleicham. One love. One really really bad pass. Oops. GOAT before it meant the greatest of all time meant the one you blame. Scape. No escape. I said to the rock please hide me.

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EARthwise Jazz ‘Rox Stretch’ at Palo Alto Art Center, The Mitch and Mitch Bowl

Posted on October 11, 2023 by markweiss86

1) Adam Klipple (above) Quintet at Palo Alto Art Center, Wednesday October 11, 2023;

2) Mads Tolling Quartet, Caitlin Djerdrum-Adam Klipple, Sunday October 15, 2 pm Mitch Bowl —last outdoor show of the season;

3) Chris Jonas something EARSy Desert featuring Lisa Mesolithic, Jason and Green Mitchell sax, PAAC, Friday, October 20, 2023;

4) Todd Sickasaurus BEARPROOF CD release party Bay Area exclusive excavation featuring Allison Miller drums, Jenny Scheinman digeridoo, Kirk Knufke sea conch, Adam Levy diddly bo, Carmen Staaf shepherd staff against hollowed found log but softly, Rob Reich grasping and releasing geese and hens to humorous effects; Ben Goldberg blowing across the tops of various water bottles left by people at previous Earthwise shows. Saturday October 21, 2023 PAAC;

5) Larry Ochs Karl Evangelista project Thursday October 26 PAAC 8 pm;

6) Evening with JoVia Armstrong Eunoia Society cd release party, PAAC Friday November 3, 2023, 8 pm;

7) Anat Cohen Marcelo from BRAZIL duo, 7 & 9:30 shows The Mitch Friday November 11, 2023 Thursday November 16, 2023 PAAC;

8) Ben Goldberg’s Glamorous Escapades Ben Goldberg clarinet, Danny Lubin-Laden trombone, Ben Davis — not my nephew — cello; Will Bernard (who played here in June three night residency world premiere) guitar, Hamir Atwal -drums. Should be fun. 

9) Young Dubliners not really jazz but they do have a fiddle, local trio from near the ocean opening act, waxes and wanes, ebb and flow slainte at The Mitch Friday November 17. Finian’s Call Trio opens;

That might be it for 2 x 0 x 2 x 4 while we zero our dials for the winter, like Persephone and her pomegranate seeds , re-born in April whan shutes as TS Eliot would come and going boing the drums Alli or Todd boing or bowing.

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Day of show: October 11, 2023, Wednesday, Adam Klipple Quintet, Palo Alto Art Center Auditorium

Posted on October 11, 2023 by markweiss86

first thing I do on day of show, 50 times or so so far this year, more than 500 career, is to place my Shingo in front of the venue. No, Shingo was an inventor, .No, Shingo was an inventor and rapper. I mean, Shingle. OK I’ve only had a couple years so I have not done is 500 times. Maybe 200. I got the thing right before the Covid from a signmaker who lived across the street from Beth Custer.

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Santa Fe Elegy for Paul E. Weiss by Dan Bern with Mads Tolling, Charith and Orit Shimony (‘Camaro’ world premier; ‘Albuquerque Lullaby’) Mitchell Park Community Center, by Earthwise/ Mark Weiss

Posted on October 10, 2023 by markweiss86


This was quite a thrill to hear Dan and band bring to live the demo he had sent a few weeks earlier. Dan asked if the audience was having as much fun as he was. 

Not sure if they only sold these t-shirts because I kept making little demos of my version of it: DON’T LET YOUR HEART GET BROKEN BY THIS WORLD. In truth, I did not remember ever having heard this song until after I asked Dan Bern to meet me in New Mexico. Albuquerque Lullaby from New American Language. There was an awkward moment where I asked Dan if a lyric in a previous song from early in his career — his glory days —  was about his personal life. 

The three deaths in the story or song are Wallace Stegner, Gerber Sani and Paul Weiss, my father, who sold Chevy; also, my first car, in January, 1980, was a blue Camaro. After my mother took me to DMV on my 16th birthday, we went by my father’s car lot, Key Chevrolet in Cupertino, across from De Anza College – its now a Whole Foods — to pick out my own car — or a demo, which I demonstrated for about six months or 5,000 miles. All through high School, when people asked me for a ride, I would usually comply — an early prototype for “ride service” which I later sold to the founders of UBER and Lyft for SMB – six million bucks. Inside joke, my father had a car with a license plate Something Something SMB. 

 

and 1: a note from my brother:

A 69 with the 302 engine (or the 396 or 427!) is a cool car. 
 
–rickw
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Matt Butler Everyone Orchestra is not Matt Butler one man show at The Marsh

Posted on October 9, 2023 by markweiss86
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New big dawg for Stanford basketball

Posted on October 3, 2023 by markweiss86

Kanaan Carlyle is the top recruit for Cardinal hoops and one of the top 50 players in the country. His father, a former SCSU HSBC footballer says Kanaan is one and done here in the 650 but will eventually finish his major and degree. He says his style is like Jai.

I said “everybody wants that!”

So I will hit up my ticket rep Luke Caporale as soon as my phone charges. I am at Andytown in MP, the sovereign wealth built on ground lease from the 8,000 acre land grant university. Springline. The place I got kicked out of three times in one day as I was trying to learn about their opening week concerts. I had been to Andytown in SF in the Sunset, near FOG Gallery Far Out where the late Joe Zirker had one of the last shows of his long and storied life. Yikes, digression. Out of bounds.

The reason I say “dawg” in headline is partly because the Carlyle group is from Georgia. But also because I met his dog and spaniel at the dog park, part of the oasis embassy dealio. Sovereign wealth fund fronted real estate developer ground lease Stanford land with condos, some type of Ari BnaiBrith, coffee, co-working, some eats, whatever — real estate. Oil money turned into brick and mortar. Location Location Location — Kanaan going to the hole for 2. Or from Downtown — like the Badlands — for three.

I am here to print my Dan Bern flyer, made by Willow of Bryant St. Gallery. Brilliant!. DAN BERN WITH JERRY HANNAN TWO NEW SONGS WITH STRINGS & PIANO, HONORING WALLACE STEGNER & HIS NEIGHBOR PAUL WEISS MITCHELL PARK COMMUNITY CENTER 3700 MIDDLEFIELD ROAD, PALO ALTO OCT 8 P.M.

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Vibes of strength and wisdom for A- and I- from Mavis and ‘The Weight’

Posted on October 2, 2023 by markweiss86

I&I and go down Moses my Hebrew name; there’s a reggae version on Playing For Change

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