Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

prologue: or as Chekhov said: if there is a rifle in the first scene you better shoot someone by the curtain:

Sorry for your loss. Thank him for his work with our kids (I don’t have kids but I say that in an abstract sense to teachers).

I am both a concert promoter and high school basketball coach. Kansas Jayhawks you likely know are big in hoops. Here we have Becky Beacom whose grandfather was Phog Allen and the Haase’s who played for KU but now coach Stanford and have a boy at Palo Alto High (whereas I coach JV assistant coach at rival Gunn of Palo Alto – -but I did meet Mrs Haase the other night, nice lady).

And in their honor — but retroactively and as an exercise in — what’s the word for re-writing history? – -at the flea market of Alameda Sunday — near Oakland – -near Berkeley where your Buddhist thing with Cynthia Shih workshopped — I was there – and if you excuse the digression – I was also at the staged reading in SF of the Steve Jobs opera in the same month — and my father had a business one mile from Apple for 20 years — and bought for 3 zuzim a old beat up doll with a blue and white stripped K sweater and I was not sure if it was Kentucky or Kansas and then I left it in front of a 7-11 in Hayward — my car — which was my father’s car — it says PEW ZL — which is Jewish for may his memory be a blessing — his name was PEW — ok, Paul — and not to distract from Prof Harry — gave me a “CHECK ENGINE” light so I pulled off the highway for a spell. Anyhow I sacrificed the K doll to the gods of Hayward people who pick up old toys in front of convenience markets in exchange for safe passage back to Palo Alto (I also have a cousin who died at the Jayhawk hotel but I will save that or keep my own counsel…)

Mark Weiss (to Tanya who writes with Vienna Teng)

I am at Coupa per typical but dressed slightly more spiffily, which is not saying much if you know me: chinos not Vouri, fancy sneaks not functional — I am wearing a G but I won’t say why.

Gee, why not?

On the way out the door I grabbed Veronica De Jesus People Are a Light to Love: Memorial Drawings (with text by Garrett Caples, who I met apropos of Alden Van Buskirk in 2011, although most Veronica drawings have about 100 words, written in her script on the drawing, like a eulogy or obituary— she is the one whose drawings filled the window of a bookstore in the Mission — she also worked there before going to grad school — she also played in one of my concerts, a Nina Simone tribute at the BOTH – -which was also a tribute to Lisa Fay Beatty of the Mudwimin and TK — she also did a series of drawings of people who played Earthwise —about a dozen or so — and have transited — but the drawings in a self-similar fashion also transited so to speak in that they were lost in a burglary or break-in -I forget the details — but they sort of live on on the Internet here — in Plastic Alto…excuse the digression, all seventeen of them).

I opened the book at random and notice ed fixate fijate Armando Morales who she says is one of Nicaragua’s most recognized painters, he was born circa 1927 and died about 10 years ago. 

The internet says that he has one work in the MOMA in NYC which also has more than 2,000 paintings that you can see on the internet but probably not at the museum itself. When Terry and I went to NYC on our luna de Miel which was only a week only five years ago we went to the Whitney and the New Museum of Bowery or whatever but not the MOMA the Met or the Guggenheim.

Speaking of Gug, if you let me drift out of my lane again, I am wearing a G for Gunn not Gug but also a fancy type of shoes that starts with Gu but has no “N’ and only one “G”. 

I also met a man named Gregorio who is new in town — he was delivering food to someone probably not named for a Saint and I hipped him to the San Gregorio general store and a beach, in that order. He seemed pleased. 

I was also dancing to the tunes in Coupa – -I cannot explain why. I am in a good mood.

I have to leave in a few minutes to have my car fixed. I want to sell my car to a neighbor from Barcelona because he taught me how to drink Bourbon. Kind of sorta. Or as Foster Brooks I think would say “shminda shmorta”.

The auto fix on my computer as Duffy the dog wearing a French sounding sweater style =—my wife tried to hip me — is sort of offing with me not helping me but I forgot the rest of my pronto-thought. Oy. 

I had a nice time with Pablo Tut, Marian Gill, Marla Allison, Mateo Romero —- not the painter the comic book dude but not a chongo brother per se — and Santiago Romero. We saw: the thinker by Rodin, the masks by Ruth Asawa but few others. Per typical, we were more interested in each other than the masterworks. 

At the Dartmouth event — although yesterday was also a Dartmouth event due to me, Santi and Marian all having a connection — I hired two young musicians: a drummer from China and a piano player from Kazakhstan. Now I think I am going to make them play together, either at the Lizzie No show, or the Yale Docks show, both in January at the Art Center, or in April in the piano series, which is mostly solos. 

There’s a longer riff about a piano player who does not consider herself a musician but I think she is— her father is a famous player and her mother is a professor of nursing. I am trying to challenge herself to learn just enough piano to fool the Earthwise audience. Or, she can be like that guy who did four minutes of silence — to call attention to the ambient sound. He has a literary equivalent who once famous said: