Zoh Amba vs Zelmo Beaty

Posted on February 2, 2023 by markweiss86

this is stupid, and i was you may have noticed phasing out my blog but I had basketball on my mind. Zoh Amba a – m-b-a, Zelmo ABA…

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The Lockhart Loo (2023)

Posted on February 2, 2023 by markweiss86

Seale Park playground, Palo Alto

Here is a photo of the basketball court at Henry W. Seale Park (formerly known as Stockton Park) in Palo Alto. The PAHA calls it a “multipurpose bowl with basketball hoop.” It is quite near to 3134 Greer, where Kent lived from 7th grade on, and where he and Jerry Chang, and Mark House, famously (at least, according to Kristin Huckshorn of the San Jose Mercury News) would in the driveway bounce the basketball for hours on end, and where, not entirely incidentally, Lockhart helped his mother Marlinda Fitzgerald design and install a very unique surviving garden, itself fit for either PAPAC attention or Steve Staiger’s files as an arts landmark.  Kent later said that carrying and placing the 50-pound boulders, which supposedly came from San Simeon with the direct permission of William Randolph Hearst, was equivalent to putting in that many hours in the weight room. When they weren’t in the drive way, they were often around the corner at the single hoop at Seale Park; Kent and I re-lived those days in a shootaround in 1988, the year he was MVP of the SF Pro Am league that also featured NBA’s Scooter Barry and Lester Conner.

Seale Park, formerly Stockton Park until 1982 and named currently for a large land-holder who was part of the founding of Palo Alto and died in 1888, is getting some sprucing up; a sign says that the new restrooms were to be finished in March, 2011. I left a voice mail last week with Holly Boyd of the City hoping to find out, at the very least, whether there would be a re-dedication ceremony (apparently there was one in 2000). Although these matters are better first vetted via Roger Smith, Greg Betts or Annette Glanckoph, I did mention in my voice mail for the City engineer something about wanting to dedicate the new bathrooms “for a famous Palo Altan.”

Lockhart led Gunn to two SCVAL basketball titles in 1980 and 1981 and was also the Central Coast Section player of the year (and an honorable mention Street and Smith’s All-America).

 

At University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) he set a school record for most wins and most games in a four year career, for a team that was ranked as high as national top ten and was featured in Sports Illustrated (he played with Dave Feitl, Luster Goodwin and Jeep Jackson, and against John Stockton and Karl Malone). In the 1985 NBA draft he was selected by the New York Knicks, as the 119th player chosen overall, but broke his arm and missed the cut. After time in the CBA (playing for Cazzie Russell and Phil Jackson), he signed to play pro ball in Australia, where he was first team All Australia (a continent of 3 million square miles and at the time about 15 million people, as in he was among the top five players among that many people), and continued coaching and playing for about 20 more seasons at various levels. (He coached Andrew Bogut, for instance). He teaches art at a secondary school near Melbourne and makes sculpture. His mother sold 3134 Greer in 2007 and now lives Down Under with Kent. Continue reading →

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Dispatch from Austin

Posted on January 22, 2023 by markweiss86

Spring, 2017 nearly six years ago: has Palo Alto degraded as dramatically?

 

The more than 260,000 new residents who have moved to the area since 2018 might not understand that they’ll be frolicking in a symbol of Austin’s transition from livable city to tech-bro theme park. Nor would the hundreds of thousands expected to join them in the coming ten years, filling jobs at Tesla, Oracle, and countless other companies lured here by generous tax incentives. There was nothing we could do. Austin was now a surf-park town. Texas monthly 

…The bang you get for your buck is terrible traffic, doubled property taxes, annual rent hikes, chain restaurants from Denver and Portland, Oregon, sidewalks littered with electric scooters lying flat on their sides, and a “culture” owned primarily by Live Nation.

Austin was never as laid-back or “weird” as it claimed it be, but it was appropriately grungy, and relaxing, and you could flourish here even if you didn’t have a ton of money. Not anymore. The cost of living in and around Austin shot up by 17.8 percent between 2010 and 2020, and home prices have almost doubled. Average rents are now higher than in Paris and Naples (and, yes, we mean the ones in France and Italy)

and:

I started my day with a observation that the month that David Crosby died at age 81 the cover of the Rolling Stone issue #1371 was Rizal Leah, who writes her own rules.

andand (but not Anand Wilder, x-Yeasayer, not yet at least…): after a three month hiatus, Earthwise will announce a 10 show spring series, mostly jazz, but eclectic. March 1, Tiptons Saxophone Quartet Plus Drums; March 4, Damn Skippy f Amendola, Bernard, Scheinman Schott & Sickafoose; March 11, Stephan Crump; it still feels quixotic; would the planet be worse but for Earthwise? Part agit prop and Situationist, “MOLOCH! MOLOCH! MOLOCH!” and all that but I think I know how Zidane felt right before he head-butted his way to a red card and out of the World Cup…

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Would this win the Super Bowl of carne de res, or only the World Cup?

Posted on November 28, 2022 by markweiss86
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Dylan admits machines wrote his masterpiece

Posted on November 27, 2022 by markweiss86
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Amazon has a $953 BILLION market cap and can pay more than $500k for a Palo Alto business license

Posted on November 27, 2022 by markweiss86
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AFI ‘96 v. AFI ‘22

Posted on November 24, 2022 by markweiss86
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Lord of the fried

Posted on November 23, 2022 by markweiss86

The harder they bank, the harder they spank

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Mule variations

Posted on November 17, 2022 by markweiss86

OK you can delete this if it’s too tangential or self referential or if I am just persona non grata on these pages: [Palo Alto Weekly, column about dinosaur exhibit at Palo Alto Children’s Museum, by Diana Diamond; in fact they did delete my post]
It’s a typo: we the people paid consultant Peter Kageyama $5000 to spitball a bunch of ways to show how much we love our city, in 2015 not 2005.

The big Takeaway was we gave $500 to a citizen to procure and then trot around a stuffed animal that looked like the Bol park donkeys Perry and Miner. 

My idea was to hire the musician Ralph Carney for the same $500 to go down to the park and play clarinet and see how the donkeys would react. Carney had played on a Tom Waits record called “the mule variations” and was from Akron the same hometown as Peter. Also it would have honored the late Malcolm Smith a music professor who lived in barren park and loved the donkeys. 

It never happened although I did leave a voicemail to Ralph who unfortunately died in an accident soon around that time.

But my point is that if you have a lot of local knowledge you can spend money better than just what I unfortunately think our leadership is doing where maybe they have not researched either the need for the dinosaurs or who can make them better and cheaper.

[original post: Couple related points:
1) in 2005, the City paid a consultant Peter Kageyama to lead a workshop that included giving a resident $500 to make a replica of the Bol Park donkey;
2) Rufus the bobcat a former actual feature at the old Palo Alto Zoo, was stuffed and on display at the Mid Pen Open Space District headquarters, last I looked (don’t know if he survived the move)

I’d rather spend the money on music in the parks.]

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I’ve met your mother and your brother, but I’d like to see your grammy

Posted on November 15, 2022 by markweiss86

Select list of 2023 Grammy nominees: aka I’ve met your brother and your mother, but someday I’d like to see your grammy….

  1. Molly Tuttle, best new artist —one of ten finalists — 
  2. Molly Tuttle, best bluegrass album—Molly Tuttle band played an Earthwise show at The Mitch, November, 2019, same weekend as the Gryphon 40th anniversary party.
  3. Pascal LeBoeuf, something jazz Snapshots
    Pascal Le Boeuf, composer (Tasha Warren & Dave Eggar) composer arranger
  4.  
  5. Remy LeBoeuf, something jazz —Have never worked with these guys but have been following them since they were in high school, in nearby Santa Cruz. 
  6. Spoon, best rock something Lucifer On The Sofa— played my Cubberley Sessions their first time out here, on tour.
  7. Charlie Musselwhite, blues something (not by Kid A)— played Earthwise show at the JCC December, 2019 but I also met Charlie when he toured with Henry Butler, my then-client, 2002.
  8. Danilo Perez, Latin jazz
  9. Danilo Perez: Fronteras (Borders) Suite: Al-Musafir Blues
    Danilo Pérez, composer (Danilo Pérez Featuring The Global Messengers) — played The Cub in fall, 2000 and did an amazing workshop for middle-schoolers in Redwood City.
  10. Christopher Tin, instrumental or video game something; grew up in Palo Alto.
  11. Greg Kurstin with an asterisk I don’t even know how to read this but it mentions Greg three times:

30
Adele
Shawn Everett, Ludwig Göransson, Inflo, Tobias Jesso, Jr., Greg Kurstin, Max Martin, Joey Pecoraro & Shellback, producers; Julian Burg, Steve Churchyard, Tom Elmhirst, Shawn Everett, Serban Ghenea, Sam Holland, Michael Ilbert, Inflo, Greg Kurstin, Riley Mackin & Lasse Mårtén, engineers/mixers; Adele Adkins, Ludwig Göransson, Dean Josiah Cover, Tobias Jesso, Jr., Greg Kurstin, Max Martin & Shellback, songwriters; Randy Merrill, mastering engineer (Beyonce’s song lists 123 people in the credits— only that an early bandmate and mentor was Tommy Jordan, Paly ‘81)

  1. Steve Lacy with an asterisk —only that it reminds me of the soprano sax player with the same name;
  2. Samara Joy with an asterisk— bought a ticket to her show at the Freight, but missed the show;
  3. Norah Jones —#7 — old story— saw her before it was common knowledge that she was Ravi Shankar’s daughter.
  4. Robert Glasper best r and b Black Radio III — met him, in NYC in 2003 winter.

31. Best New Age, Ambient, or Chant Album

For albums containing greater than 50% playing time of new vocal or instrumental new age recordings.

  • Positano Songs
    Will Ackerman— see also, The New Varsity, circa 1985.
  • 14. 32. Best Improvised Jazz Solo

For an instrumental jazz solo performance. Two equal performers on one recording may be eligible as one entry. If the soloist listed appears on a recording billed to another artist, the latter’s name is in parenthesis for identification. Singles or Tracks only.)

  • Rounds (Live)
    Ambrose Akinmusire, soloist

#35 best large jazz ensemble:

Architecture Of Storms
Remy Le Boeuf’s Assembly Of Shadows

Best Latin jazz:

Crisálida
Danilo Pérez Featuring The Global Messengers


Blind Boys and Black Violin The Message

Best music for a video game Christopher Tin: Old World

70. Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals

An Arranger’s Award. (Artist names appear in parentheses.) Singles or Tracks only.

  • Never Gonna Be Alone
    Jacob Collier, arranger (Jacob Collier Featuring Lizzy McAlpine & John Mayer)

Best historical album:

Life’s Work: A Retrospective
Scott Billington, Ted Olson & Mason Williams, compilation producers; Paul Blakemore, mastering engineer (Doc Watson)

88 best classical compendium:

88. Best Classical Compendium

Award to the Artist(s) and to the Album Producer(s) and Engineer(s) of over 50% playing time of the album, and to the Composer and Librettist (if applicable) with over 50% playing time of a world premiere recording only.

  • The Lost Birds
    Voces8; Barnaby Smith & Christopher Tin, conductors; Sean Patrick Flahaven & Christopher Tin, producers

Note: I also sent a note to the agent for Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas, plus the manager of Blind Boys of Alabama.

Maybe I will award these people the first Eartie-Artie-Hearty — an amalgam of “earthwise” — you can spell “heart” or “art” or “ear” or “hear” with “earth”.

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