If I am landing on a comet today, and that’s pulled from the headlines of The New York Times, I am doing so with eight books, a DVD three consecutive years of Who’s Who In Baseball and fourteen cilps or sheets torn from either said journal or raggedest of the local rags.
Later we Terry and I hope to hear of Robert Frank and Keith Haring.
I am also seether like Veruca Salt about Palo Alto political shenanigans going from bad to wurst.
Terry my Terry, Terry Acebo Davis the “Artist, Arts Advocate, and Healer” read me aloud this essay she posted on her own wordpress blog, Terry Acebo Davis: artisty visual musings anting anting” which is tagalog for “look it up” rote this day before election –d id I metnin I got me more than 2,00 votes! Tanks Tewwy.
edit to add it: i ended up with 2,171 votes.Never under-estimate what a small group of two thousand, enough to fill the Warfield could do to change the world!
Steve Levy and Eric Rosenblum have appealed to me ex parte that I am under-estimating Kiss Me Kate.
Duly noted.
What I actually said, in my own blog post, which started merely as a back-up to the points I raised above, which I assume would be, like half of what I post here, quickly deleted — and I am certain I am the only person who posts under his or her own name and is regularly deleted — like comparing Arrillaga to Genghis Khan — three-fourths of which is about Kim and not Kate, is that Kate Downing compared to Mark Michael is unqualified for leadership here. Fair point.
My other hypothesis is that people of her generation, under 35, as Tom Wolfe calls them “Mutant Millenials” often channel so much of their energy thru mediated and electronic devices that they lack social skills, as perceptible by other humans, apart from or offline from these machines.
I have met Kate a couple times and that was a further observation. I drank two beers in her honor on a Monday.
Even if she is a brilliant attorney and very useful for the industries that profit by the proliferation of computers and military/industrial/information/entertainment complex, that does not qualify her for leadership per se here; she is getting thru, fair opinion on ideology and her commitment to growth. She is useful, it is fair to put, to the non-governmental political machine that controls policy here.
and1:
Palo Alto Forward members are the policy equivalent to Ring Girls at a boxing match: they look good, their message is oversimplified, they take their orders from somebody else behind the scene and they are basically clueless.
Yet five of them are now part of leadership!
What about: rent control.
I see a Panda piggy bang, a Samsung flat screen tv, a lady walking her dog, The Who at Kilburn, Buckaroo banzai, the last supper envisioned or revisioned by some Africans, Blessed is The Match which I’ve never seen although I know the song, Yale Beats Harvard, The Readers Companonion to American History, a rake bowl, TheTImesOfHarveyMilk…
At midnight on the following Wednesday>Thursday, I have 2,115 votes (and counting?) and Cory Wolbach looks like he will hang on to the fifth seat, behind Karen Holman, Greg Scharff, Tom Dubois and Eric Filseth, all of whom I am willing to work with and the feeling is at least partially mutual. Meanwhile Nancy Shepherd is both council and mayor for about another month in and around the Holidays, and she and I have at least two initiatives to follow up on, thanks Mayor Nancy.
Meanwhile I was not seated to Palo Alto Architectural Review Board either. Boo hoo. Shake it off.
Karen got about 11,000 votes. Ken Dauber got 10, 400 votes for School Board. Congrats to Ken. I endorsed him, but was not invited to his victory party. I also endorsed Terry Godfrey who thankfully put up a Weiss sign (made by Terry Acebo Davis and Rob Syrett) and looks to be holding on to that second seat as they continue to count. Joe Mitchner I ran into today at Cuesta Park in Mountain View (he was wearing a Cornell shift; a son goes there – mazel) got exactly or nearly exactly the same number of votes, 10,400+ to hang on to a seat in Mountain View Los Altos High School districts. (Our parents knew each other). Gary Kremen, who lives in Palo Alto, gave me a great rundown on his famous “cat people v. or w. bird people” campaign tactics and is holding on or usurping or displacing Brian Schmidt for Water Board by about 1 point. I would like to have the honor of helping him get on board so to speak with Greg Zlotnick, who has been working on water issues since a senior thesis on such at Wesleyan in 1986 — we will have to flip thru the bound volume of Gunn Oracle 1981-1982 to figure out which of his student press bylines might have foreshadowed this. Meanwhile Jim Yardley taking the Santa Clara County VTA from Escondido Village or El Camino near there to Gunn definitely foreshadows his Pulitzer on China.
I’ve been quoting, not limited to these 23 posts, in various weird emails and list-serves, The Dartmouth Review or its motto — Nemo Me Impune Lacitit, Nobody Harms Me with Impunity — and John Paul Jones and Sam Adams and yes Taylor Swift to describe where y’at.
Haters gonna hate hate hate hate but I’m gonna shake it off.
Oohhhooohoooo!
There is nothing more here to forward our country so at 1:30 on a Sunday morning Charlie Rose Gael Garcia Bernal Moazi Bahari and I are going to call it a night. To sleep, perchance to dream.
Then they came for me. Mr. Sandman.
edit to add, minutes later:
Mozier Bahari I mean. His book references the following Martin Niemoller quote, from WWII era Germany:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Sacred Heart tennis ace and Palo Alto resident Sara Choy a moment after dispatching her Saint Francis adversary in CCS action, Cuesta Park
The news said there was a ladies tennis, Sacred Heart and St. Francis. The little girl in our building — she was once in our newsletter — was playing top singles for SHP. In fact, she at 15 is considered the Section’s ace. (I, for comparison, went as high as #13 at Gunn, which is #4 JV singles, for 3 matches not 4, in spring 1982, which is a whiles ago, believe me).
I got to Cuesta by about 2:30 for the 2 p.m. match. Sara was up 5-0. I didn’t catch the name of the Lancer. Freckles, reddish hair?
John Swetka was there. Alex’s son. Runs the tennis store, the family business with Kenny Arnold, from my old neighborhood, west of 280 and was my coach or Gunn’s assistant the day I beat Doug Knapp in a ladder challenge. Doug was living at Oak Creek incidentally, and hung with Rick Fisher and his Corvette. I know John from the Fantasy Football league we are both in — Kenny, too. (I actually founded the league, in 1978, with Brian Evans, whose two brothers were part of The Streak).
I said hello to Jeff Arons, a former Terman, Gunn and Stanford star. His brother Rick was my classmate and teammate, I guess. (And also part of The Streak).
I met a man named Jue or Jew from San Jose and Milpitas with a daughter at SF.
I chatted up a man in a Cornell sweatershirt and it turned out to be Joe Mitchner, Zale Mitchner’s cousin, who went to M-A with Bob Melvin. (Our parents would have known each other, close enough; maybe we are distantly related).
Sara Choy won her match handily. I think SHP won. They are Top 10 CCS in football these days. I will read John Reid tomorrow in Merc and Daily News to get the part of the story I may have missed.
Not sure if I think I am channeling Hemingway or Salinger here or Twain inventor of the shaggy dog story.
Good luck, Sara. (I had previously kind of trash-talked her on behalf of Sami Andrew of M-A, Stephanie Savides daughter, my Terman, Fremont Hills and Gunn schoolmate).
Previous times I had met Sara I had mentioned a list of former Gunn ladies champions: Savides, Rebecca Dirkson, Barrie Bulmore, maybe Cami Mitchell.
Mitchner is re-elected to the Mountain View Los Altos High School Board so has a good excuse to watch student athletes like Sara and her opponent. I mentioned that I helped Zale get his first job in advertising, as John Noble’s assistant.
Joe Mitchner
edit to add: the headline is a reference to Joe Hill, Wayne Horvitz, Wallace Stegner and Joan Baez; people say “Plastic Alto” is obscure enough but I almost wish I had called this “I dreamt I saw Alex Swetka last night” I never died said he.
three weeks later: Sara Choy, CCS champ: will she 4-pete?
Congrats to Sara Choy for winning CCS. You missed the point that unlike 70 percent of the young people you mention in your prep coverage Sara is actually a Palo Alto resident (and in fact, my neighbor). She went to Terman, before Sacred Heart. She gets a pass on that in that SHP tennis coach is former Gunn and Stanford All-America Jeff Arons.
You might have mentioned not the random San Mateo player but Rebecca Dirksen, like Barrie Bulmore a Gunn player and 2-time CCS champ. (And Dartmouth “Wearer of The Green”).
Sara with due respect dodged a bullet in the form of Menlo-Atherton ace not Van Linge but Sami Andrew, a senior playing doubles but maybe not singles in the post-season, who is the daughter of another Gunn CCS champ Stephanie Savides. (Savides by the way, reminded me apropos of Sara that by age 16 she was California State Champion women’s not just 16s, because I asked). Sara would likely beat Sami at least until she learns to tap her inner-Savides, then all bets are off.
Tom Savides meanwhile played Harvard tennis with PAUSD Kevin Skelley.
39 minutes later, and oddly Terry is back at Dr.Nguyen today:
ok, stand corrected, or you can update and edit as you see fit:
The five Gunn CCS ladies champions individually, total of seven crowns: Bulmore (’77, ’78), Serena Wu (’86), Tammy Robertson (’88), Vedica Jain (’92) and Dirksen (’94, ’95). Stephanie Savides despite being ranked #1 in every age division in her youth career for NorCal never won CCS invididual title, but did win team championship with Gunn in 1982, her junior year. She played for Stanford, went as high as #263 in the world and is a successful realtor in Menlo Park, and mother of Menlo-Atherton’s Sami Andrew, a quarterfinalist in doubles this her senior year.
Kudos to Sara Choy of Palo Alto and Sacred Heart. Here’s to a 4-peat!
(I met Stephanie at Fremont Hills of Palo Alto school in 1974, never hit with her in tennis but wrote about her as sports editor of the Gunn Oracle…and Plastic Alto my blog; I met Sara meanwhile in the laundry room of our building in 2012).
I last saw Dirksen meanwhile at a restaurant owned by the wife of Mac MacCaughan of Superchunk rock band (Cubberley, 1999) and Merge Records in Chapel Hill, North Carolina circa 2003, she coaching Lady Tar Heels and me managing Blue Eyed Devils band on tour. I saw Dirksen win CCS in 1995 and then one match for Dartmouth circa 1998.
I think it’s by Ian Parker
Marty Ivener the founder of Marty’s Restaurant in San Jose and Annette Ivener’s ex-husband — Annette Sunshine? — not bad for AARP-age speaking of delicacies and sweets — said that at his house they eat desert first. This makes me recall. She was living at Santana Row and Palm Desert or Dessert as the cake may be. Here is link to LadyM.
They are on East 78th in New York or West 3rd Street in L.A. although I don’t know what that means. If they actually have a Thiebaud on the wall or poster even, the way MacArthur Park had some real David Gilhooly’s I will eat a $75 cake to celebrate order in. Maybe I can send The Flying Cohen Brothers also known as Steve and Eric Cohen or Steve Cohen and Eric Cohen to investigate. Belated 50th birthday present me to them: all you can eat at Lady M in L.A. but they have to read this and inquire first. Offer expires 3/16/16
I am such a nostalgic little momma’s boy but when I was 5 or 6 the phone rang and it was Annette for my mother and I left a note: Anet. Mom thought it was good try!
2. Carrying on, to make this more like a post and less of a joke, Terry and I saw a Wayne Thiebaud show at San Jose Museum in 2010.
thiebaud baker case shown in san jose in 2010 but whipped up in 1996
Seventy years of anything is both not enough and too much.It is of Ian.
Kudos to the young filmmakers who parodied the Pharell monster hit “Happy” as a type of ex parte Dartmouth recruiting film. I am actually trying to suss out the film they showed in 2011 at my 25 that featured a diverse group of students talking about THEIR Dartmouth and about six minutes in they all, in a succession of quick cuts add “and I sing”, “and I sing” “and I sing” and it is revealed that the link to them all, beyond their and my Alma Mater is that they are members of various singing and a cappella groups, Aires et al. (I am guessing their are five or six).
How about an all-Israeli a cappella group at Dartmouth? Or one comprised strictly of people who touched pay dirt on the gridiron either there or during their prep years? (Stanford has for instance an All-Indian meaning Hindu a capella group).
We’ve come a long way from this circa 1984 Hums Kappa Sig chestnut, a Sting parody:
There’s a little white spot on my sheets today/
It’s a different spot from yesterday.
To be honest, I was thinking about doing a parody of Taylor Swift “Shake it Off” to deal with my not being seated either to Palo Alto City Council or ARB, and all the grief I took, the flak. (Haters gonna hate hate hate but I will shake it off, etc.)
Maybe I can hire these guys to do it. (Also: Ed Lee “Too Legit” especially the Marissa Mayer booty-shake, not bad; she, of all people, does not have to work that hard).
caveat or disclaimer: I have not actually seen the actual video but know the song; actually Terry, my Terry, Terry Acebo Davis the artist and arts commissioner emeritus, and I first “got” the song driving home from LA-LA near her July 9 birthday fest and adventure.
I got the Orozco Murals part. That’s 1.
And there are less than 109, surely.
But for yucks, and without going to the directors themselves, I’d like to identify 50 or so scenes. Some of them are new since 1986 or I cannot get.
X-Delta by Mark Disuvero. North-east corner of Green, near English department library.
(Experts of course, would name the kids. I would say this guy is in league to be next — what’s the Broadway guy from my class, David Foster?)
Gordie Quist
Austin Keith Willacy
Michael O from Sing Off
edot to off: ok, I am both way ahead of this and hopelessly and cluelessly lagging, but the Dartmouth Happy video is indeed a shot by shot derivative of the video per se and not an interpretation of the song, but in today’s age that might be just as valid. Personally and again I knew (and managed) Stew before “Passing Strange” and booked Pat Monahan of Train at 50,000 not 50 million units sold, so I am picky, I would cover the song not just lip-synch and would loosely reference the variety of people places and situations but not ape it, so to speak. Not sure who are the collary of the Magic Johnson and Steve Carrell cameos. Or what else did I miss? If it was an official video I guess we could get Jay Fiedler or Brad Ausmus and Mindy Kaling? Hey, Mindy should do her own version and be Pharell, not that she needs me for ideas. And yeah I am the only person who saw Nathan Ford throw a pick off attempt into center field and saw Matt and Ben off Broadway.
But this is great. Top Marks. Samsom Occum drinks to you,lads!
Like any honest fellow, I like my whiskey clear….
edit:
who knows ten? I know ten: shot ten is the new library the narrator guy is doing a Pharell move while walking thru the library, the LEDs spell out “earth science”, at :42.
OR, HOW BIG IZ THE BABY?
courtesy ACS Architects
Young Master Kim also apparently, and this is news to me as of 2 minutes ago, applied for PATC in 2012, the seat Carl King took. Sayeth he:
If appointed, I would specifically like to see the commission change and evolve for the better of the city’s future in a way that is actively productive. While Palo Alto is a historic city and the past and present civil servants have done their best to bring us where we are, I believe the city needs to continue to adopt ways of setting itself up to prosper and succeed in being a place our residents are proud to call home, as the birthplace of the Silicon Valley.
Though some might wish for Palo Alto to stay only as populated as it is (or even was), it is inevitable that our City will continue to grow. We must make the best recommendations to the Council to not only prosper in growth, but so that even as we’re growing, we’re always staying one step ahead.
The file is here.
edit to add: For comparison sake, Robert Gooyer was a San Mateo planning commissioner and licensed since 1980 in California as an AIA architect (i.e. for 30 + years) at the time of his appoint to the same board; Kyu-Young also applied for that seat; this appointment is his third attempt. 3rd time da charm, bras!
and1:
Currently serving as a kindergarten teacher at New Community Baptist Church in addition to being a small group leader and facilities rental coordinator.
(I guess age is relative; actually this is making me flash to the Adam Johnson story about precocious Palo Altans).
outro, Palo Alto’s teenage sensation Ragady Anne, en route to becoming The Donnas:
coda: more from the file:
What is it about the Architectural Review Board that interests you? What qualities, experience and expertise would you bring to the Architectural Review Board?
I am a young and competent Architectural professional with a high level of enthusiasm for my city and Architecture.
I’ve traveled around the world and will lower the average age of the board members. I am also a long-time resident of Palo Alto and have grown up here. (He says above this that after graduating with a b.a. from SLO and being “en route” to becoming an actual architect he had visited Paris, Seoul and New York).
Yikes: As I continue to work thru the Kyu-Young Kim file and update this post, my anticipation that attempt #4 for board or commission would be a break thru falls flat, like a house of cards, in that for attempt 4, his third waving of the bat I have to say more like Tim Lincecum at plate than Tony Gwynn, he turns in barely 10 lines and 200 words, to my 2,000 or so. Check it.
I’m confused: was their a secret bathing suit segment of the competition only open to the Millenials in this packet — YaKaterina “Kate” Vershov-Downing, Adrian Fine, and Kyu-Young Kim – that I was not privy to? Also, I do feel it is odd that so many of the ballots came back identical, in groups of 3, 4 and 5. Looks like a possible Brown Act violation to me, I wrote to Clerks office and City Attorney today, especially in the wake of the Grand Jury saying we did this – serial meetings — before.
Bottom line: short honeymoon for The Residentialists.
outro2 and really these guys and gals look more like someone at SXSW for the first time than helping We The People vet the billion dollar real estate industry here. Stinky puffs
todays post is brought to you by the color GREEN
And more:
After we got married, my wife was offered an internship at the United Nations office for UNICEF and I successfully found an internship opportunity working on a Park Avenue penthouse apartment for a big name New Yorker.
Q (this segment brought by the letter ‘q’):
How big, your big name New Yorker? Big enough to influence us little farm kids?
And:
Here he says “I followed my wife to New York” and “My wife got a job in Paris so I followed her there” — sounds like we should have seated the wife!
It is a mere surmise, sir, that this guy is not remotely qualified for Leadership in Palo Alto
Do note that the person that Gennady Sheyner copiously 10 times refers to as “Kate Downing” or “Downing” is also and perhaps more commonly known as either Yekaterina S Vershov (at the State of California Bar for instance) or Yekaterina Vershov Downing in her application and by the Clerk of Palo Alto yesterday.
She was also, research shows, a summer associate for Fenwick and West a prestigious law firm, for two months in 2009, here before landing at VMWare I mean ServiceNow.
Not to be snide but I am saying that Vershov Downing the lawyer PATC and Kyu Young Kim the architect in training at ARB are not Mark Michael and Robert Gooyer; being unqualified is not diversity, please.
ok, ok, an encore (but this does need a wee bit of editing, especially if I sent it on to Council per se): Ms. Ballentyne or Ballentine the seated ARB person, I crossed off, in my head, for two reasons: 1) despite the diversity of her skill-sets and I think I can recall finding her somewhat pleasing to listen to, that she is a Realtor is for me a strike against; 2) further in her packet she offers 385 Sherman as an exemplary project. Huh? This is creating havoc in the neighborhood; myself, in sympathy and numerous others panned it; you have a fully leased building and you want to knock it down and replace it with a bigger building, just to make bank, damn the torpedoes and neighbors? And she calls that “harmony”? To wit:
As an advocate for contextual harmony, I cannot help but be attracted to the project at 385 Sherman Ave. near Sarah Wallis Park that came before the board in August.
It illustrates well how perceptions regarding development trends coupled with ARB design review effectiveness have polarized the community. One only has to look to a few of the online comments to get a sense of the passion ignited by the complicated issue of context. That the ARB voted 3/2 to approve it, is further evidence that even given a couple design cycles, ARB architects still wrestled with it’s scale/ramifications/contextual harmony.
May we live in interesting times.
Makes me want to finally read Oakley Hall “Warlock”. Cue Oakley Hall, the Merge band
and as i read this to a trusted friend and advisor the next a.m, i am adding a Oakley hall track as third musical needle drop:
I had Manila and she had Lanzhou. Dad was having C3-C6 surgery from a “Dr. M” just “Dr. M” at UCSF and we walked down the street to have some noodles in a big abundant bowl, at Pomelo, which I found initially when Tim and Lydia lived nearby, before Sydney and Jake, and the East Bay. It was very sunny, an auspice.
I think of the internet and by extension Plastic Alto as a business tool, rather strictly, but could not help but shout to Moms in this visual format. (following from plug to Avenidas capital campaign post, perhaps)
I will tag this “SF MOMA” rather than “uncategorized”.
I look very tired. We stayed at The Saint Francis. Mom got lost trying to find her way from her room to mine, and ended up knocking on my door, one of the earliest examples of her dementia. This is nearly six years ago.
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Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 