Tom Dubois, 250 Hamilton, Thursday, March 12, 8:56 a.m.
Tom Dubois, fledgling Palo Alto City Council member, attended the Historic Resources Board meeting Thursday. He is the liaison from the Council to the Board. “Liaison” being fancy French word for “designated driver” of policy.
HRB, Bunnenberg, Brower, Makinen, Kohler, diCicco, Bernstein and Wimmer, will meet with Council per se in a joint meeting (which ironically means that people stay sober) in May. Staff members Matt Weintraub (a new guy) and Amy French (who attended Cubberley and Gunn High schools, and sang back-up with the Tubes, but not at The Varsity) drilled the amateurs. Or prepped them.
Weintraub said there are about 600 historic buildings in Palo Alto, mostly in Professorville. He said that staff wants to get a grant to hire a true professional to lend professionalism to the proceedings of this body. The whole thing strikes me as a bit L7.
edit to add: I lauded Tom in public Monday for his role in shedding light to the dubious Stevenson finance scheme. Here’s a better shot of him:
I noticed in the rag that Hanna Cohan had passed away, March 9, at age 97. Oddly, I was just thinking about her, this morning, between when Terry got up to go to the hospital and when I got up, because she mentioned news of a colleague passing away, the photographer Lenny Limjoco (some time ago, but she just got word for some reason from Minerva). I was also thinking about the mailing list I am on for having attended one session of talmud study at Beth Am, that a Mrs. B’s gravestone is being unveiled.
Apparently I am one of about 300 people who Hanna Cohan prepared and Sidney Akselrad Bar Mitzvah’d. Maybe B’nai Mitzvah’d although in my day it was mostly the fellas.
Rusty Cohan her son was famous for blowing the Shofar.
Shema Yisrael adonai elohaino adonai ehad, although I do respect the no establishment clause.
(I am also noting that there is a paid obit for Leon Wentz, a famous builder, next to the notice of Hanna. I believe Wentz built the fortress at Lytton and Bryant recently, as well as, it says Ritz Carlton in HMB where John and Linda Elman had a 50th anniversary I took my mom to
I may end up reading this verbatim at Historic Resources Board
I gotta make a crack about Beth Am w. Beth Bunnenberg, unless that would make me Waco).
edit to add: Here is a photo of Mishelle by Lenny Limjoco from “Larawan” book:
by Lenny Limjoco, circa 1980
and1: the builder Leon Wentz wrote a book about his golf travels:
I’m still trying — tri-ing — to figure out if if was me, my brother Rick or George Carlin himself who went from “jumbo shrimp” to “shrimpy jumbos” which means I will force myself to sit thru a re-listening probable first time in 31 years the 1974 “Toledo Window Box” recording, made nearby at Oakland’s Paramount to get it straight. Meanwhile, there is a elephant from 1860 and later circus named “Jumbo” and more recently three “Jumbo Elliot” athletes, a pitcher from the Goudey Gum era, a track coach an HOFer from Villanova and a tackle for NFL Giants and Jets via Michigan wolverines. (More ontological arguments for a creator).
I was fact-checkng something about how Pi Day, which I hope to celebrate for the very first time, or berry first time, this weekend, and a half-remembered line from Buck Henry’s “The Graduate” and Mike Nichols’ and found myself in a time-warp to a brave new world of Waiting Is Not The Hardest Part my fellow WordPress blogger, and added, to her 80 previous comments, from My Birthday Two Years Ago, about her not thinking The Graduate should be filed “comedy”, that she is missing a great effect. Which is a line. When Ben or Dustin loves Elaine but is trying to be mean to her and drags her to a strip show and humiliates her and the performer is spinning her pasties I guess in opposite directions, one clockwise and one counter-clockwise; it’s not funny because she is humiliated, the irony in the classical sense, we know what the two characters stuck in the script don’t know, that he loves her so he’s being mean, and that’s why it’s funny, right? That, and him approaching the hotel clerk and fake-yawning and saying he found his tooth brush, and will turn in now. Like today, I had a large stack of books at Palo Alto College Terrace library and I asked the clerk or librarian or staff member, who is also Pinay, by the way, if you are spilling over from below, about Pi Day w. Pinay, if at that branch they sell friends of the library canvas tote bags, I would buy another, rather than balancing my books and giving self carpal tunnel, and she offers me a plastic not quite reusable grocery or I would say garbage bag, and I say not thanks, and what I’m getting to, back to “The Graduate” is indeed in my trunk I do have another bag, canvas, from Stanford Hospital and I’m all set and I wanted to run back in there and say “all set”.
I will try to read more of this blog more currently and get her drift. Save me a piece, sweetie. And in real life I don’t call people “sweety” although someone just hit me with that the other day, must be from New Orleans.
Also, Mazel tov it sounds like she wrote this when pregnant. I added that part later.
Back when Wee Cee was just a glimmer in her daddy’s eye, I had the idea to start a blog about all the things I, as an adult, did not understand or was incapable of doing. That blog never occurred and taking a page from the Irony Handbook, I started a pregnancy blog instead. Oh wait, you didn’t know that the best possible thing to do when you don’t understand how to balance a checkbook is to make people?
Luckily, C has almost made it through her first year alive so I guess I’m doing something right. And just as luckily, I recently found out that this blog exists and whatever I could have written on the topic of being an amateur adult would not have even held a candle to Greg’s blog. The universe balances itself out yet again.
Pi Day, since about 2001 in celebration of the famous and important math ratio and irrational called Pi for the Greek letter, and generally thought of as a wee bit more than three, 3.14 or more precisely 3.1415 is Saturday to today’s Wednesday the 11.
And I was amazed to realize, even 14 years later to the party, that indeed if you look at the “3” it looks like a backwards “E”, the “1” looks like a backwards “I” and the “4” looks like a “P”, ontological proof like an “eye” in nature, Shirley.
But even so, as Terry my Terry was dozing off as we were watching, as you can tell below, John Lennon and Yoko Ono on Dick Cavett circa 1970, I got a text from Eric Cohen, son of Paul J. Cohen the late math great, that Stanford and Washington are jumping ball in Pac-12 hoops championships. And I did get a bit bored by the Cavett re-runs — we had screened Groucho singing “Lydia” during dinner, and I punched in, after “PiDay” on my handheld — while this bad boy the lap-topper was dealing with John and them — the similar worn, not “piday” but “pinay” and then counted, in 2s and 3s the first 142
not kidding
Sam Pinto, pinay
images therein, before Terry woke up and excused herself for sleep time and I quickly backpedaled to Lisa Simpson and Homer Simpson with their respective thought bubbles, but I will try hard to get to probably Peninsula Creamery for a slice Saturday. Isn’t there also some hipsterism in Buck Henry’s “The Graduate” about the fraternity guys teasing Dustin Hoffman Benjamin Braddock (?) about saving him a “piece”, I guess of wedding cake.
This is a famous rock group called The Ramones (I never heard) in front of a club CBGB in New York I went to once.
Help me write a parody of “Life During Wartime” by Talking Heads about the gentrification of Stevenson House in Palo Alto, founded by the Unitarians in 1968 but taken over by billionaire real estate investors in 2015..
CBGB was an historic rock club on Bowery in New York, and originally stood for “country, blue grass, blues” but is known for new wave and punk shows, between 1973 and 2006.
CDBG stands for, I’m guessing Community Development Block Grants, whatever that means, and was name checked in a memo from Assistant City Attorney Cara E. Silver on Monday, March 9, 2015.
HUD is not a movie starring Paul Newman but Housing and Urban Development. The Talking Heads lyrics is “This ain’t no Mudd Club, or CBGBs…”
I went to CBGB exactly once, and saw a Japanese, female-fronted punk band, circa 2001, called Ghost Chiaki. I definitely saw “Stop Making Sense” as a first-run movie, at Hopkins Center The Hop Dartmouth in 1985 when it was new. I saw Patti Smith at the Warfield in 2007.
Just as CBGB is now either a Patagonia at 315 Bowery, a website, a pretty bad recent movie with Alan Rickman as Hilary Krystal, Stevenson House for 120 or so middle class to poor seniors is probably in jeopardy of gentrification due to the complicated financial schemes perpetrated by their board and advisors, even though the conversion is slightly vetted Monday, being pulled from consent by Dubois, Wolbach and Burt. Scharff and Berman were noticeably silent — I wonder if Scharff and Berman were approached by the money people and said “please stay silent here.”
The entire nature of LIHTC is worth exploring. The funny NIMBYism about it is that in some places, like Dallas, Texas people worry about LIHTC projects because it means poor people moving in. Here, we, or I, but I know I’m not alone, worry that LIHTC means billionaire sharks moving in, as a Trojan Horse, excuse the mixed metaphor. (I also quoted George Carlin that the for profit limited partnership managing the for profit limited liability corporation managing the non profit senior residences is like “jumbo shrimp” — are they very large shrimp or shrimpy jumbos?)^
I got some cat food some peanut butter, to last a couple of days.
Besides the fun of using pop references to get a tack on policy, it is true that there is a war in America between the uber-rich and the rest of us. (And there is war in at least two countries, and we spend Trillions on it, and 7,000 Americans dead, if I am not being redundant).
I’ve changed my hairstyle so many times now I’m not sure what I look like.
(I also quoted “Puzzling Evidence” about recent policy doings, some months back).
Om fug.
edit to add: I could pierce this with links, like a punk’s ear.
^ my bad: this chart shows, there are four for-profit entities managing the non profit senior center, not merely two.
edit to add: I posted this via my handheld during the show and updated to say the song is called “I’m Gonna Strangle You, Shorty” and here is seen a few years back at Saxon Club in Austin. I spoke to Joe Ely briefly after the show and had him sign my program. I said I had brought his fellow Flatlander Jimmie Dale Gilmore to Palo Alto in about 2000; I said “have you talked to him lately?” and he said “A couple weeks ago” and I said I brought him to Palo Alto about 13 years ago. Joe Ely said he has played Palo Alto but not for a whiles. I said I’d like to remedy that. I may have mispronounced “remedy” to sound like Jon Dee Graham. Or “Jon Dee” rather.
I gave Ruthie a yellow rose, from Darling Flower Shop, 2004 University Avenue, around the corner, Jay and Barbara Touriel props. I gave Paul Thorne a comic book, from Shattuck Street. Longer story. Daredevil. It’s actually for Charles Driebe.
Their honcore doing a Woody Guthrie thing was like a religions experience not sure why. But if I get in trouble at my interview for Palo Alto Human Relations Commission, I’m going to pull these lyrics out of my pocket and recite them like a prayer:
It takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet,
It takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet,
It takes a ten-dollar shoe to fit my feet, Lord, Lord,
An’ I ain’t a-gonna be treated this way.
Your a-two-dollar shoe hurts my feet,
Your two-dollar shoe hurts my feet,
Yes, your two-dollar shoe hurts my feet, Lord, Lord,
An’ I ain’t a-gonna be treated this way.
Daredevil I already said that.
and1: I thought that Mike Kappus the semi-retired super-agent and taste-maker extraoridnaire (Rosebud) introduced me to “Victor Ortiz” a tall handsome man with grey hair, but that’s actually the name of a boxer (and Paul Thorn supposedly once fought Roberto Duran, that’s how we roll here in Plasty).
Sam Whiting of the Chron had a story about a mural in the lobby of a start-up and said that they don’t mind walk-ups, at 555 College, near Cali Ave (or across from the hole in the ground we call JJ & F’s, for you experts).
I met Al Siverstein director of marketing, but no relation to Rich Silverstein my old boss at GBS (“Got Milk?”). He kindly posed for me. They say blogs work better if you are super-specific, like I could quickly get a million readers and enough ad revenue to actually stay here, my home, if I did nothing but review and publicize and subtly pump start-ups as judged by their lobby art and murals (And I did meet David Choe one night at Facebook, above Jing Jings for you experts, and lend him $20, ok I bought a calendar).
I should probably redact this and not digress to too many things like Woody Guthrie lyric I’m going where the water tastes like wine, or comparing somehow Jerry Garcia or really Mountain Girl and the nice lady being arguably not treated too nicely at a big VC firm. But that Paul Thorn song intro speculating about how monogamy actually works and
that takes the cake or the Tokyo style hot dog, I am jonesing for just this minute. Dig?
Eliot Smukler’s wife made this. Or makes jake on this.
(a previous version of this was called “Michael Lewis Flashboys w. David Gurle Symphony but that sucked. An amazing version of this got lost by weak PA library wireless snafu)
This is a music blog mere than tech but since here I am walking distance from literally billions of dollars of hedge funds and ventures, here on Uni Ave, 400 block of Ramona, where Jerry Garcia in a pleistcene era gave banjo lessons, -, so I had to notice Sam Whiting writing not about retail but not-public art at a start-up called Symphony at 555 College, which sounds like either a former laundromat or Klutz Press — and a few blocks from here, a lie or two from there, there is a 7-11 that wanted to expand into a defunct or failing laundramat and instead a group of female entrepreneurs, presumably not funded by Ellen Pao, move in instead.
The mural thingy is by Ok Go? Can that be right? Jump to:
shit, I mean snap, I have Sunday March 8, two days ago, Datebook in the Chron, E1/E2/E7/E8 but no E3.
I have to move my car so I am tempted to roll by 555 College to see if indeed, as Whiting claims, “is open to drop ins”. Unless they see this first.
to complete the circle, Michael Lewis book about high frequency and high speed trading, Symphony is doing for financial services what Hook Up does for booty call?
its in a mortuary not a laundromat, thank god! But my yoga space on Cowper is now Wealthfront, with am impressive installation of shiny penny, and wife of founder Elliot Schmukler Jacquetta Lannan is meanwhile putting a pretty penny into her hot dog stand, on Cali Ave. So presumably the Symphony crew can eat Jacquetta’s weiners. I recommend the tokyo:
edit to add: clearly even a luddite like me if he links to the story can jump to E3 simple enough electronic-like; the artist is Brent Hermann, 27 , although this appears to be his first credit. i will probably redact to eliminate reference to adult sexual acts and a current case involving possible sexual harassment at Kleiner Perkins. I will double-check “schmukler” My research for this story did involve eating “Tokyo”.
and1: since the company is Symphony and the artist Hermann, I have to add that I was digging if not dogging “Psycho” and “The Birds” at Stanford Theatre both featuring music of Bernard Herrmann(sic).
plays simultaneous-like with
edit to add: this is a hot mess. But I did get to meet, as promised in the Chron, the Symphony Company director of marketing Al Siverstein (no relation of Rich) briefly and shot a few from the lobby of the start-up which targets the finance realm b-to-b as far as I need to know. They were real nice, and gave me a free soda. I suggested “Tim’s Vermeer” and WealthFront, for different reasons.
And why wouldn’t I wish them well?
edit to add a mere four months later: The Wall Street Journal reports that thanks to the propitious plug from Plastic Alto, Al Silverstein and his art loving and music loving buds over there at the former Tinney mortuary (nice touch!) are indeed now billionaire singular.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 