Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

1. my notes from last night at CoHo, although filed under “Tuesday Sept 2” (“Strike up the band” was crossed off, meaning i missed seeing the showing, at Stanford Theatre)
Tues at CoHo – Esther Berndt, Giants, 3-0 Game 1

Halliwells on Lauren Bacall

Can We make Friday, Oct 24 Elisha J. Cook Day in Palo Alto? (for NS re DP)

Tom Stoppard, Araceda, you cannot stir things apart, from James Gleick re Chandra

2. My day book for today, Wednesday, Oct 22:
or back up, for Tuesday Oct 21
a. Jeannette Smith-Laws stanford vice provost, I met at Windhoever and wanted to further the acquaintance. She’s been there 32 years I think she said. I have posted photos of her twice. She said to send the second one along, the one with Patience young.I probably have four.
b. laundry — took the risk of letting my clothes sit in dryer for two hours while I moseyed
c. Jazz Esther 8 p. heard the tail end of it, and instead of walking the sax player my former Gunn classmate to her car (“Raji” did, Raji the Death Cab fan), I chatted up Bill Murphy a Paly ’69 or so, and heard his stories about Ellington in Palo Alto, a second Monk show and more. Jerry Garcia sat in with Vince Guaraldi during his residency.
d. my bike front tire had a blowout so I left the wheel at CoHo shop and put the bike on Margueritte, will fetch it this noon.
e. a lady from Andreeson Horowitz or A16 has my four-color ballpoint pen, I will demand to be made whole, deep pockets and all that. I got a free shirt so no loss really, if that’s her argument. She should pay me to wear the shirt. E D U or something clever and insidery but not “incoherent and irrelevant” in the Victoria Thorpe sense.
f. Erin a Stanford student is writing about the Palo Alto City Council elections for a journalism class, the one that features Alex Blandino writing on Cory Wolbach. Will meet her later today on campus.
g. I missed a Yemen panel and film at UnAFF but caught 30 minutes of a film about Andrewe Goodman the “outside agitator” killed by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in the sixties; I think I had seen it on tv.
h. not on the actual list but I went by Ross Road Y to use by new $137 membership –which I think of as temporary, and did 3 miles on a elliptic trainer raising to beat the 35 minute clock by 30 seconds.

3. the Stanford Theatre has six programs featuring Bacall thru Nov. 2 (but not on Election Day?!)
I am shooting for catching The Big Sleep on 24 or 25 with or w/out Dark Passage.
Maybe Young Man with a Horn but probably not sticking around for Woman’s World. Maybe How to Marry a Millionaire, for Marylin but really the schedule kind of is weak. Is Lauren Bacall Jewish?

4. Cupertino Pioneers 2014 football media guide, and I have more to post or add from last weeks Gunn loss to Cupertino 14-6, which I falsely reported (on the internet?) as Gunn wins 12-0, which was only true for a second.

5. Los Olvidados a film by David Feldman, at UnAFF or was. A documenter about cardboard cutouts by Ramiro Gomez an homage to unseen workers (references a film by 1951 Luis Bunuel also known as Young and Damned I saw in Al Lavalley class in Hanover

6. I bought an $180 pass for UnAFF out of respect for Jasmina Bojic but in truth may only use it for $30 worth if that. Happy thought. Like this whole thing.

7. Two cd’s: Michael Franti Yell Fire and something that belongs to Terry or her ex-husband, Sonny Rollins RCA includes Don Cherry on “Dearly Beloved” which is a Jerome Kern tune in a Fred Astaire movie “You were never more disorganized” or something.

That takes me about 20 percent into the scene I can capture self-reflexiley here, PoMoMoJo flo.

This is Mark Weiss for Palo Alto Council news break in that I just placed a yard sign — designed by Terry Acebo Davis and Rob Syrett — at the new home of my old neighbor Suzanne Tamarang who is near Middlefield and Woodside Road but you never know.

This one has Newk or Sonny about 12 years later, 1974 at Ronnie Scotts and with Rufus Harley not Don Cherry — will have to dig in deeper; fairly certain I can distinguish a trumpet or cornet from a bagpipe.

Also: what says AMG about other covers of “Dearly Beloved”.

I heard of “Newks Fade” on the Bob Dylan radio hour, baseball special. Rollins it to look like Don Newcombe the Brooklyn baller. A fade is a type of curveball. A trick. A gimmick. Jazzy in the pre-Columbian sense.

note to Victoria Throep: if this is confusing to you, write me and I will break id down.

I think I had this card and lost it in the Great Ransack and Burgle of Feb. 1, 2008:

like Jackie Robinson homeward bound, I tried this:
A few more thoughts on Sonny:
Sonny rollins 06 DonNewcombe

In the 50s, Sonny’s nickname was “Newk” because he bore an uncanny resemblance to Brooklyn Dodgers’ pitcher Don Newcombe. I’d never known the story of how he got the name until I happened upon an excerpt from Miles Davis’s autobiography on Sonny’s official website:
“One day, me and Sonny were in a cab…when the white cabdriver turned around and looked at Sonny and said, `Damn, you’re Don Newcombe!” Man, the guy was totally excited. I was amazed, because I hadn’t thought about it before. We just put that cabdriver on something terrible. Sonny started talking about what kind of pitches he was going to throw Stan Musial, the great hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals, that evening…”
Is there any jazz musician today who looks a lot like a famous professional athlete? And if, say, a great young bassist was a dead ringer for Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, how many of today’s jazz fans would get it when the bassist billed himself as “Big Papi”?
Plus: The first video to surface from the concert. (It’s Sonny playing “Global Warming,” which is called “Global Morning” on the set list.)

I am pretty weak on Scott Turow, but I could not resist posting mention I teared literally from the Times of some weeks ago a blurb about “Identical” a murder mystery involving twins. Because I had been writing Muff Bonini a former Gunn basketball player one year behind (and five inches fifty pounds and three hundred points ahead of) me, now a judge, a “hanging judge” even. That plus the Cohens Steve and Eric are all over Plasti cal to, too.

Eben. Ok, Terry, Carol and I were walking to breakfast in a remote Central Coast town, nearly halfway to Los Angeles, if you excuse the Zeno-ism. They had bought the previous day a painting from Betty and her bassett hounds. As we passed Betty’s yurt, there was a sign “Bassetts Crossing”. Then a man (name dFred) approached walking a black dog. “Does your dog know or nose the bassets?” I asked. Sure he said, but the bassets are not to friendly (somehow Katherine Chrystal Foster or whatever he name, the snobby school board lady wanna be from Princeton or Yale comes to mind, and my freshman and sometime roommate at Dartmouth Edward Brandes Teddy Conway, who said “anybody can be nice; what is hard is being cool”).

I went into my slightly mis-remembered riff from Alterman about “a stone and a stone” do not give false measure, “eben” means ebony but also is a false stone it is wood. That’s the short version.

I am late to a movie about Yemen and then one about The South in the Sixties, the Gaints are up to 5, safely, we believe, Esther Berndt is playing sax soon enough, there will be bear or beer, and I said “sounds like heaven”. Also, a softball player and journalist named Emily may call or drop by to try to say something kind about the 50-year old teenager in the OBEY lid lampin’ lampin’ lampin’ robber-baron style, and aspiring for public service. or as Madigan Shive – now there’s an endorsement, would say, “on the aspire”.

The character in the story is Paul Gianis if that is close enough for plastic alto.

despite the fact that there are twenty typos and weirdos above I take pride in announcing that the Times blurb has “Gianis” “One N” while the Amazon has “Giannis”.

The name “stone” derives from the use of stones for weights – a practice that dates back into antiquity. The ancient Hebrew Law against the carrying of “diverse weights, a large and a small”[6] is more literally translated as “you shall not carry a stone and a stone (אבן ואבן), a large and a small”. There was no “standard” stone in the ancient Jewish world,[7] but in Roman times weights crafted to a multiple of the Roman libra (a pound of about 327.54 g) for use in commerce were often made of stone.[8] Such weights varied in quality – 10 and 50 [Roman] pound examples acquired in Italy, possibly from Pompeii, were of polished blackstone,[9] while a 40 pound example on exhibition in Eschborn, close to the Roman frontier in Germany, was made of sandstone.[10]

Actually what is inspiring me to run this gratuitous Esther Wojcicki James Franco item is the blogger Victoria Thorpe who called my Michael Wolff – Nat Wolff – Val Kilmer – Jack Kilmer – Billy Kilmer – Mateo Romero – Naked Brothers Band — Teddy Franco – Arsenio Hall- MC Hammer – Michael Stubbs – Aleta Hayes -Richard Sherman — Kent Lockhart -Rich Kelley riff hard to follow (I think she said “incoherent” and “irrelevant”)

But an LGBTQQ charity at 375 Cambridge made $600 on the deal so is all good, aight?

Christina Velazquez has work installed at Palo Alto Art Center, thru December 23. I missed her residency per se, perhaps owing to the campaign trial. Terry my Terry the artist and arts commissioner Terry Acebo Davis has known Velazquez for some time, but I have met her seldomly these last five years.

I will paste in later a couple shots I took of the work.

Also, when I was doing a type of residency at Palo Alto History Association archives at Cubberley, H-3 I think it was I noted a work of Christina Velazquez hanging there in an inner office.