I am racing, 9:30 on a Sunday morn, to publish this post before my nemesis Doug Moran deletes the first draft, which is published for the time being on his Town Square Palo Alto Weekly site, about the LCV forum.
I was attempting to dagger Hans Gregory Scharff by asking him to compare MLK and Nelson Mandela, because he literally choked on the words “Dr….Reverend?…Martin…Luther…King?…Junior?” at a private function at City Hall last fall, and I thought not enough has been made of how rare it is for a foreign-born to be Mayor of Palo Alto –and excuse my Lindberg-ala-Rothism (“Plot Against America” — that’s a literary reference for you PhD’s in computers) but he handled it deftly; if not a softball, he fouled off the pitch, or batted it into right field.
He told me later, I think, discussing this moment — it all becomes a blur after a while — that he actually adjourned a Council meeting in honor of Nelson Mandela, maybe the week the man died.
I had actually asked Greg Scharff to sign the ballot statement AGAINST D 2014 (9>7) that Tim Gray helped me write, which might have qualified it and not that of Dubois et al to be printed with our names in the pamphlet, but he passed. (Sea Reddy did sign it). Politics does make strange bedfellows. I am surprised, as the banner on top of this page notes, that Bob Moss is backing Scharff.
I am endorsing Holman (and Dauber) but may actually vote 3 not 0 or 1 incumbents on the grounds that the devil you know is better than the devil you dubois, I mean do not.
A slate: Scharff, Holman, Shepherd, Weiss and either Johnston or Walbach for continuity (considering that I have been here since 1974) or;
another slate: Holman, Kuo, Filseth, Dubois and Weiss for residentialism (considering that their platforms overlap with mine or were influenced by New Residential Platform of 2012, which garnered close to 6,000 votes; more people, arguably voted Mark Weiss for Council in 2012 for residentialism than voted Against D Maybell Referendum for that reason, despite what PASZ tries to claim.
Also, and this is drawing on info not mentioned above: it’s nice that the Daily Post gives Lydia Kou ink for supporting Buena Vista in principle, by why did it take her two years to get there? I specifically did not work on the referendum because of the inconsistency of not supporting the Buena Vista residents in kind, although I did vote with it.
Done!
good, 1, evil 0 although the race continues….
Take 2, twenty minutes later: I man named Holland, a couple actually, he’s a Carlmont 1982, on their way to watch their twin daughters coaching soccer at Mitchell Park — we are all at Peets South Paly Style, or a I call it Peets At The Cub — longish talk on philosophy of sports or sports sociology and how it has changed over the years, boy v. girls, club v. school, football with a helmet vs. association rules et al. Spurred by the fact he was wearing an Albuquerque Kokopelli t-shirt and a Giants lid. I went into my Joc Pederson riff.
Continuing on my South Africa theme — a man named Lawther or Lauther who is a Duck dressed in cardinality and sweeps the sidewalks, as Cooper stands sentry, of his HOA, near Whole Foods, and near, since this is Sunday, Thomas Aquinas — says he traveled to SA and had insights in how the middle class there differers from ours. More to the fore, my Gunn and Dartmouth schoolmate Kim Porteus was down with Apartheid, or I should say down with Mandela and down with Divestment since the mid-1980s and is actually the President of the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Doug Moran was not talking about South Africa — I doubt he could find it on a map. So I probably won’t addend this there, maybe just the link.
Doug and I, despite our recent differences — I called him an “a_______”(try: butt-head) and a “p_____”(try: hot-head, together that makes him a “head-butt”) because of the way he misrepresents me on his own blog, and because of the way he deletes dissent on his PAW blog, and I told Lydia Kou about this and she stood by him rather than to disavow – -she said that she didn’t like my use of “vulgar” language — would up seated at the same table the other night after the forum. The Slate was having a post-event briefing but Karen Holman — who I had just called “our next Mayor” invited me into the circle, maybe not realizing the unlikeliness of Doug and I at this point breaking bread. Jim Colton — Lydia’s campaign manager — signed for the tab. I had asked the server, a teen, to give me a separate tab but he said the cashier would adjust all that. John St. Clair, Lydia’ partner in crime — so to speak, it’s a colloquialism — Lydia’s () husband () and her real estate agent partner — chastised the waiter for including my pork chop –literally, that’s what I ate, it was the special, forgive me but it was good* — that too is a literary reference for you philistines and PASZ reductionists — but I told him that a) I was not trying to eat on his dime — or the developers, even indirectly, or HR Horton, or Horton Hears a #$% — and b) I had tried to pre-plan around that.
Filseth came in late and had to sit on the end, forcing the waiters and patrons to step around him, eventually a waiter asked him to squeeze closer-like to John, no problem. I said ‘Hey, watch yourself, someday we will condemn this place!” Not really. I certainly endorse the Peninsula Creamery milkshakes, I can hardly conceal my enthusiasm, even with bagging clothing. I also like the hot roast beef dip at the other Peninsula Creamery, the Kevin Santana joint, frequented by a cluster of ex-Paly jocks of my gen who dabble in real estate. or as I say “the meat-hammers”.
Zane McGregor realtor and former Paly noseguard Steve Niethammer is not at all involved in a plot against America or Palo Alto despite how it looks some times
take 3, 44 minutes after the original post, and I meant to write 2013 not 2012:
Mandela died, that is, 2012; while Scharff lurks among us and is on the ballot.
For Doug’s edification, although he will quickly delete the link so as to continue the fantasy between he and his readers, free or dissent and messiness of an actual free and free-thinking republic:
The Plot Against Palo Alto by Mark Weiss (his general blog, nearly 1,000 posts, since 2010, arts, sports, food, Ornette and more, including roughly 200, including 60 or more since this campaign started on policy and local politics, and the campaign — it functions as his campaign headquarters), aka Plastic Alto, on wordpress:
Web Link
Part 4 might involve a discussion if you excuse the digression deeper into Africa, my friendships built around Botswanna and Zimbabwe, and the Congo, and Muhamed Ali () and Michael McFaul, my Deadhead friend who I fantasize will join me next weekend at Dark Star Orchestra and then will write about it here for Plastic Alto, Michael McFaul the Rhodes scholar and Hoover Fellow and Stanford Professor and Gunn hoops daddy and expert on Putin, who went to a rock concert with me and our two dates, back in 1982 and I said hello to for the first time in 35 years the other night at a Amanda Renteria event, who is an expert on Russia but wrote a paper, his thesis perhaps, about the role the Soviets played in, if not South Africa then Southern Africa.
Eric Cohen, a Gunn 1982, Stanford 1986, UCLA MFA 1987 and son of a Fields Prize winner (Paul J.Cohen) endorsed Mark Weiss for City Council, even though he cannot vote for me. He is the 10th or so artist or media celebrity to log-roll as such. (I promoted Eric as part of The Flying Cohen Brothers, a couple times at The Cub; as The Dancing Twins he or they, along with twin brother Steve, were on cover of The Palo Alto Weekly, back in their Ally McBeal days — I first met Eric in 7th grade at Terman, home room class cluster, Ms. White, Ms. Mundell and Coen for science, I think???, but notably did not, unlike Chris Strausser, go to my Bar Mitzvah). I have photo to prove it (which reminds: was Peter Drekmeier joking or just a cynic when he said “did you get it in writing?” when I mentioned to him, in front of the Wheelers, that Greg Brown had endorsed me as well. After the event at Palo Alto Art Center but hopefully before November 4, I will ask Julie Brown if she wants me to redact Greg’s words or join him or be listed separately or what. I have photo of Peter and I as well.
Part 5: Hardly Strictly Campaigning
KFOG played Jason Isbell this morn, and implied that I too could catch him at Golden Gate Park, or Hellman Field as it were, a Hellman Fields Prize. But I am finding it amusing enough to stand around on street corners with a Mark Weiss for Council sign and greet the occasional fellow Democratic Republican. Steve and Eric and I and maybe Terry, my Terry the former arts commissioner Terry Acebo Davis may try to sneak into the Windhohver at Stanford. Joey Oliveira texted Eric to suggest we stand by the door and wait for it to open; you need an I.D. to get in, accept certain hours. I took two naps outside Windhover (it’s a literary reference, featuring art by Nathan Oliveira, father of our Gunn and Terman classmate and teammate, and neighbor, for 40-plus years, of the Cohens, on or at San Juan Hill; and kudos, and I actually read this into the record, to Mr. Cottle, David Cottle’s dad and Lori Davis Cottle’s ex-boss, Lori daughter of Alan Davis, who endorses A.C. Ace Johnson.) There is also the Hunk and Moo show.
Oh, yeah, I met a man named Gad who answered a soft tap on his glass of his door, on Middlefield, and let me leave not one but two Mark Weiss for Council signs (please note I am speaking of the sign and not speaking of self in third person, which is obvious sign of egomania or psychosis, if Mark Weiss starts to do that Mark Weiss will be in deep doo don’t, salmon oil pills or not). I ran into two nice ladies and their nice dogs, downtown, near Peets North, and they claimed to be sisters — quite credibly — of my Gunn classmate Angela Ambrosio, and pretty much on the strength of that, they agreed to take my sign and pledge their vote to me. God bless Angela and all the Amrosios, I count now at least five I’ve met; Angela told me in 1982 that she voted me “most likely to succeed” and I will remember that. Andres Fajardo won, by a score of about 409 to 1.
Part six, about an hour later: weird flash to “Holcombe Waller” a Paly and Yale grad, real name “Michael” something, who was part of a show Earthwise Produced with special and atypical sponsorship from Hear Music (now part of Starbucks), at Mitchell Park, maybe opening for Maria Muldaur, and a line “booted up again, as….” with a nice chord change, vocally, whatever you call it, a hook. The idea of identity being fluid, and you can long on as someone and log on again as someone else. Michael is gay — as Holcombe presumably is — so I’m not sure how that filters into or factors into reading or really close-listening to his songs — and people or a writer, maybe in SF Weekly said he is a future MacFound genius laureate — so the idea of identity, and this is a guy performing under a pseudonym fits. The content fits the back-story, so to speak. And a guy came up to us — not came on to us, I don’t think — and told a story about knowing Ginsburg and Allen getting along quite well with literally every person man or woman at the party.
Karen Grove Ms. Olive Borgsteadt or Mrs. Borgsteadt at the time by the Grace of God sat Karen and I side by side in a cluster of four desks in the fifth-sixth combo at PAUSD Fremont Hils, she was my “fifth…grade classmate”. I forget why she came up. Oddly her first cousin, a Mrs’ Weiss (!) I met here at Peets-near-Cub just two weeks ago, she is married to a former co-worker of Hans Delannoy, a cousin of Karen and Robbie via Eva not Andy. So they are Austrian or something on that side not Hungarian. I met just now an interesting man who teaches literacy or technology-litearcy and a Jewish private school here, and is a poet or poetry-scholar; I will refrain or show restraint (?! me?) until and unless we actually correspond. I was envisioning interviewing each other simultaneously for our respective blogs.
Plot thinkens.
Same bat time
Bat matumba ay ay, bat makumba oh oh.
Bat man.
Brent Crawford
Monday is my Dad’s 90th birthday but I may have to log off early and log back on with $200 cash and a sign “I need a miracle” to experience –even from the knothole — that rarest of rare: October day baseball.
God bless.
Part Seven, the last part:
oh year, S_the poet nailed and ratified the above: this is just to say, by William Carlos Williams, which I got from Tom Harbeck, a former Trinity relief pitcher of note, “forgive me they were good” which is a literary reference for all you computer PhD’s on the spectrum.
Good bye, Doug.
Lang nap or nappy lang, or lucky 8:
Jason Green of the News cannot get my name right. The News looks no better than the Post of PAW in terms of giving credit where credit due for Weiss for council. For the record I am “music industry insider veteran, concert promoter AND former semiconductor executive” thanks to tenure with Rigoli Pamphilon and Demeter in 1987-1988, fyi. Also, if Lydia Kou is to be noted for her concern for Buena Vista, why did it take her 2 years to get there, likely too late to matter. Also, I was the one who spoke on the subject at PATC (not PASZ, and that makes all the difference) last week AND the one who wrote to all 12 candidates and cc’d council that the gag order was a joke. But, as Austin Powers says, and Nina Simone seconds, ignore me doing this. Snap.
*I usually, like David Shields, do not foot note but:
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
How is Tom Harbeck, by the way, ye powerful oracle?
^ edit to add, 11 hours later: Doug Moran deleted three-fourths of my post, to his portion of the Weekly, and left a fairly complete account of my rationale for the softball question, about King and Mandela, compared to his complete deletion of my description of the Ice Cream Social which refutes his assertion that I was a deserter (not pun intended). I changed my characterization of him, as described in an email to Lydia Kou, whom he champions, to soften the blow: “hot-head” and “butt-head”, or combined “head-butt” as the search-injun suggested a photo of a soccer player being a very bad boy. I plan to update Doug with this news shortly, via his email. Meanwhile, a banner on my box says that just now, as Terry and I are screening a somewhat recent — 1 hour ago — “the Good wife”– Jason Green got my email and it seems, from this perspective that he is being sarcastic when he calls me “classy”.
I also have to re-check all of above to make sure I have “Kou” and not “Kuo”. I chastised him Jason for calling me “Marc”.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 