Sea Reddy at Palo Alto City Council candidates forum, with Lyda Kuo, A.C. Ace Johnston, Wayne Douglass, Hans Gregory Scharff and Nancy Shepherd
Or: The silver saxophones say I refuse you, PASZ and Measure D considered, with kid gloves
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF): Keep Council at 9 not 7, but vote for 5 not 3, who do this for love not money and are not realtors or video game or tech corporate suit types. Look for a guy in a 4-cylinder Chevy, or riding his or her bike, and not a guy in a $100,000 Tesla. Wear sunscreen.
wow, what fun, last night. But I admit I kinda merged the two forums in my mind and came in there with NO prepared materials, not even a statement, save the remembered lyrics to “I Wish I Knew How It Feels To Be Free” the Nina Simone song, which, in fact I worried that if I brought the lyrics Sheri would come running to podium and yank them from my hands, and I would pull out another like in a Groucho Marx skit.
Coincidentally I had linked to Puzzling Evidence, back in June: seems oddly to fit, in my mind (mentions “silicon valley” at 100 sec).
And I am writing, as we speak, 500 words on, as I call it “9>7 v. 3>5, $”.
See you tonight, tonight, and tomorrow.
Hey Tom if I ask a dagger question Tues it won’t be directed at you. {I will ask Scharff about MLK and Nelson Mandela}. If I ask a softball question I won’t write it until 5 minutes before my turn, FYI. Feel free to fire away or feed me as you wish. Good luck, Mark Weiss
Sounds good. Thanks.
Hope you appreciated the juicy pitch.
Thanks. Now I have to write 500 words on PASZ w. 9/7 w. $?. Or what I call puzzling evidence/thick as a brick {I had said that believing PASZ Palo Altans for Sensible Zoning or what I call Self-Serving Palo Altans For Self-Service will be sufficient to stop the billion dollar per year special interest of commercial real estate developers was like “building a castle with not enough bricks”}
Locomotive breath?
Did the Establishment ask you to run as a stalking horse? {I was mostly kidding, will get to, hereabouts}
Who framed Roger (Smith) rabbit? (Roger Smith, who I like, is the guy behind the 9 to 7 initiative or at least is their spokesman; I believe it was put on by current council and not, significantly, citizens per se, how it got on the ballot. Roger has spoken in public forums, oral communications, at least twice, that I’ve seen, while Vic Ojakain, meanwhile, has spoken, quite effectively against it and for the status quo of 9 council not reduction to 7. Many believe that the switch is to prevent a majority of “residentialists”. It is a power grab or preservation of power and unwilling to yield. It is like the switch from 2011 to 2012 odd to even elections, which some, and myself, feel was somehow a vehicle to time with Liz Kniss being termed out of County. Meanwhile and perhaps related, others feel, or some of the same, and maybe I am out of bounds to go there here, A.C. Ace Johnston, the managing partner of Morrison and Foerster Law firm, or MoFo, was he drafted by Kniss, Liz and Richard, to run specifically so that The Establishment has a lawyer in the room at all times — like in that PBS documentary on football head injuries, it played again just last night, they said that having a lawyer and not a doctor at all the health forums, on CTE chronic traumatic encephala or TBI traumatic brain injury was to cover their interests and not further the debate per se).
I also posted, last night, while watching the PBS, and maybe Tom Dubois, who I may end up voting for, went to asleep:
South (palo alto) Park.
{I was thinking about Trey Parker and Stone’s “Book of Mormon” the Broadway show I only know of via a cd I borrowed and is now overdue from Palo Alto library — I wanted to come up with amusing ways to critique these events. Overall, I feel they are meta-issues and secondary to the bigger issues like protecting the Comp Plan and not gutting it.
Vote No on Measure D (keep council at 9. Nine is fine).
Vote Yes on B — raise the TOT tax to fund services. Greg Schmid asked me to endorse and I said yes in about two seconds.
I may go to PASZ meeting tonight on Orme Street. I knew some of the Orme’s my classmate. There is also right before another or the last training or orientation for we wannas by City Manager Jim Keane and staff.
I guess I can tape the Giants-Pirates playoff. I went to Planning and Transportation meeting the night Pablo Panda Sandoval hit 3 home runs, and recall hearing about the game from Gennady Sheyner of the Weekly.
If you are a first-time reader of Plastic Alto and came here specific-like because you were at the Candidates’ forum and heard me say “read my blog” I admit this is stylistic and kind of ramble like and yeah this would take about 8 minutes to read not 1.
I will edit to add to gloss the 20 “tags”. (Peter Yarrow?)
The headline references not “Puzzling Evidence” by Talking Heads but both “If I had a Hammer” the Peter Paul and Mary song and “Can’t Touch This” or the album “Hammer, Don’t Hurt “‘Em” by MC Hammer also known as Stanley Kirk Burrell, who Reggie Jackson Mr. October said looks like Hank “The Hammer” Aaron. See it all fits, that’s sort of what I was going for. Outro is Artie from Glee:
I was chatting with the early morning dudes at Peet’s and Harbaugh came up again. One of the dudes is the father of a blue chip player, Paly class of 1981, who played with Jim and together they went deep into the CCS playoffs. There was some talk, just before, about Reggie Jackson, “Mr. October” and the fact that baseball now goes into November.
Then I picked up the local rag and it said something about “Harbaugh mutiny”. Huh? Harbaugh mutiny is 1982 when, following the graduation of Marc Ford (son of NFL black pioneer Henry Ford), Mark Johnson (son of track star and VC stud Pitch Johnson) and son of my unnamed neighbor (hint: former Cornell basketball player, covered Rudy LaRusso of Dartmouth, retired head of Physics Depart, three letters, sounds like, but isn’t “whack”), Vikings go 5-5 or 4-6 and by end of the season, or so was heard thru the grapevine moving towards South Palo Alto (i.e. Gunn-Cub, or former Cub guys at Gunn talking to former Cub guys at Paly) Captain Jim, aka “The Peacock” was losing control of his guys. Indeed, as Scott Ostler hints at in his Chron column — “Let someone else pick up the blitz, dude…” said Vikings were more agape and placate than “rape and pillage” (these are sports metaphors…???) toward the onrushing non-sons of football coaches and non-scholarship to Big Ten and whammo! Or: something out of “The Longest Yard”.
That was the rumor and one of the seeds of what became the Gunn Oracle’s April 1, 1982 fake Paly Campanile (The Crapanile) and our “Our Boy Jim Does It Again” spoof.
Thirty years later, I am researching what became a 20,000 word treatise on “history of jazz in Palo Alto” going thru the Palo Alto History Association archive of clippings, and the verso — Ivy League English guy word for “other side” — of a music clip has a Palo Alto weekly sports article, no byline on Paly football: Jim Harbaugh running for his life…direct quote.
(And I had a riff, for a while, whether published here, or in my head only, or maybe one of the five or six or seven times I described this, as part of a comedic monologue I was calling “The Harbaugina Monologue”, that in that moment, with his life flashing before his eyes, Jim had a psychic break and everything else weird is therefore explainable, his behavior, like in a Philip K. Dick movie or story).
And I always say: Type O positive that I am, I want to heal brother Jim — I played with/against on the hardwood, hoops — not bury him; I picture a second life as hand drums in a world music group of bass player in a reggae or Christian reggae group ala the mayor of Portlandia.
Never thought I would have anything in common with Deion Sanders (who is the one talking smack about Harbaugh and people doubt him).
also: weird segue or coda: I was writing a random exercise in information management, sorting Raiders coaches by wins, and noticed the oddity of Bill Callahan as both a Raider Super Bowl coach and the folksinger also known as smog. By the way, Bill Callahan the coach — a Cowboy these days — is from Chicago and Bill Callahan the singer, who I met in SF and dates or did date Cat Power who just played or is playing tonight in SF, who I saw at Bottom of the Hill in 1997 or so with Rachel Metz whose kid brother Noah Metz I visited in Chi-town in 2009, shaggy dog, shaggy dog — Callahan is from DC area or Maryland but his label Drag City is in…wait for it..Chicago. But that also got me searching “drug addicted losers” and Jim Garrett coach of Columbia and not to be confused with Bill Campbell, to whom I sold a Chevy Celebrity in 1983 and some weird comparison between bad coach Jim Garrett and bad coach Harbaugh, who does, I admit, have one of the top percentages in NFL history.
Coda 2: at NoLas’s Monday I spotted a man I had seen in stands at Gunn-Prospect who said he is Greg Badger (I have this proper and written on a menu, will double-check) and seems knowledgeable and legit on football, and said he is Noah Riley (of Gunn) personal quarterback coach and says Bill Walsh was under-valued by Paul Brown. Also: I named-checked “Jim Sparaco” today to a large football-sized Palo Alto Police Sergeant named Rich Bulljahn I think and stuck out. The Sarge (not to be confused with South-West Illinois indie band “Sarge”) was waiting in line to update his parking pass, commuting 18 miles does he from San Jo area. Which reminds that my former client the singer and Broadway star Mark “Stew” Stewart who is 5’5″ or so but was called “linebacker sized” by some music writer, largely because he is black. Stew told me once, we were backstage or in our green room, opening for John Mayers and Counting Crows in 2002, that he has never, ever bluffed his way out of a fight by acting, like his character in “Passing Strange” blacker, tougher or more street than he actually is. I did this exactly once: at the Ramp, 1988 or 1987, with Greg Hulbert, an actual former Dartmouth lineman, and his pesky blond friend: the two got confronted by a group of four or five, for stealing beer from the bar back and — I thought we were on our way out, home, done for the evening, I was designated driver — I turned back to see a stand-off, and they go “Yeah, you got the big guy, but it’s two versus four” and I rip off my eyeglasses, run back, shoulder up to Hulbert and, in a vocce an octave lower than my normal bass, or contralto, “Four against THREE”. They backed down enough for us to retreat with our dignity, but not before Pesky Blond prop-type (rugby-term), tried to bait them further.
Anyhow, if Jim Harbaugh catches whiff of my preaching here and wants personal management in his music career, I will ring Pat Monahan of Train and offer him big money to reprise his famous 1998 show at the Cub (attended by: Hulbert, ex-SI quarterback and Dartmouth 2-sport and A-USA Brian Stretch, AND Sam Abbey of SC Builders, who built the Oliveira Windhover Contemplative Center at Stanford which just opened). What would Jim Harbaugh call his act, the one which would open for Train?
Also: and I went out of bounds miles ago, but did cover ladies lacrosse, they of no boundary, if you are still in pursuit: the former Stanford lineman, who beat up his boyfriend, Kwame Harris, I recall the news showing him on piano and wanted to rep him. And weirdly I wanted to confuse him with Jon Martin, ex-Dolphin.
That’s all I got. Release the self-hounds.
dude: passing strange. or Jim Harbaugh’s Passing Strange.
Jim Harbaugh’s Passing Strange Featuring Jim Harbaugh — I will tell this story, or read this post during the changeover.
edit to add, thirty minutes later: I mean “Greg Barber” — I asked if he is kin to Tiki and Ronde — and found:
Greg Barber has been hired as quarterbacks coach at Sequoia High.
But that’s just the beginning of this story.
The 78-year-old Barber has had all four limbs amputated. He gets around on a wheelchair with handlebars, sort of a motorized scooter.
“I have half a thumb left,” Barber said.
He suffered an aortic dissection — a tear in the wall of the aorta — in 2007. An adverse drug reaction necessitated the amputation of all his fingers. Both legs were amputated at mid-calf.
Now Barber, who has coached at San Mateo, Burlingame, Gunn and Los Altos, is returning to the high school ranks at Sequoia.
“I want to extend our passing game,” Sequoia coach Rob Poulos said. “Greg’s got a great mind for quarterback mechanics. We’re similar in how we look at football, at developing kids. He’s very positive.”
Sequoia employs the no-huddle, spread, read-option Oregon offense. But last year it was run-heavy. The Cherokees rushed for 267 yards per game in 2013, passed for 89.5. Barber will work with 250-pound junior quarterback Fa’avae Brown, who rushed for 683 yards and passed for 498 as a sophomore.
“Now I get a challenge,” Barber said. “I get to work with a quarterback who can throw the ball a million miles, but not very accurately. My job is to make him accurate.”
That challenge might pale in contrast with what he’s already been through.
“I got lucky,” Barber said. “I’ve been lucky my whole life.”
Vedantic philosophy, Bagadavita, as related thru (me and) David Shields, Shane Salerno and J.D. Salinger:
we have the right to work. we do not have the right to fruits of our work.
John Madden, 112 (1978)
Tom Flores 91 (19870
Art Shell, 53 (2006)
Jon Gruden, 39 (2001)
John Rausch, 35 (1968)
Al Davis, 23 (1965)
Tom Cable, 17 (2010)
Eddie Erdelatz, 16 (1961)
Bill Callahan (not the folk singer also known as smog), 15 (’03)
Mike White, 15 (1996)
Norv Turner, 9 (2005)
Mike Shanahan, 8 (1989)
Hue Jackson, 8 (2011)
Dennis Allen, 8 (2014)
Lane Kiffin, 5 (2008)
Joe Bugel, 4 (1997)
Marty Feldman (not “Young Frankenstein”), 2 (1961)
Red Conkright, 1 (1968)
I must admit that Sheryl Gay Stohlberg of The New York Times scooped me by five months on the Amanda Renteria of Sanger, California (Central Valley, near Delano) for Congress story.
I met Amanda last night at a taco klatch in Portola Valley, an event anticipating the 250th anniversary of Portola discovering Palo Alto while looking for Monterey, coming in 2019.
That I said to her “Did you overlap with Michael McFaul (class of 1985) at Stanford?” meant that I sensed something Presidential in this future congress member, who is about 38 to McFaul (and my own) 50 or so.
I caught up with Michael who I knew slightly from his salad days, for the first time in 32 years and it kinda blew my mind.
For Amanda, who is also a chief of staff for the Senator from Michigan, I humbly suggested she bring into her fold Sid Espinosa, our former mayor, from Gilroy, a former Clinton speechwriter, and Greg Zlotnick, a water expert, a registered Dem although he was Pete Wilson’s water advisor.
I improvised to get to this event, at a private residence, thanks to Phyllis (who endorses Mark Weiss for City Council) and her associate Lindsay Carr Griffith Farino, who is part of a woman’s Democratic caucus. It reminded me that my dearest mumsy, Barbara Weiss was part of something called “20-20” led by Brenna Bolger which sought to get 20 percent of all elected roles filled by women “by 2020”, from 1990 or so.
Anna Eshoo was also in the house, but was spirited away before I could greet her. I attended the Clinton swearing in, the one that featured Maya Angelou, thanks to Anna (and the fact that my parents are among her backers).
This is too tangential, but yesterday when Karen Holman (the incumbent, I endorse) had lunch at Togo’s, I mentioned having worked for Tom Campbell in 1988 who ran against Eshoo — I walked a precinct with Gunn / Stanford tennis legend Stephanie Savides — Steph’s district, bordering that of the Weissi, and I told Karen, who shared a joke with me about being “heard” vs. “herd” that one of the reasons Anna lost that race, or so we believed over there at Campbell central, was a mailer that said “We are challenging the sacred cows” and had a picture of a bovine. Why not just a picture of the candidate? People were joking that it’s not a good idea to confuse the voters on whether the candidate looks like Elsie.
To the extent that Anna lost and is now found, I am still optimistic about my third try here in Palo Alto. Meanwhile, I do not have the eye or ear for Central Valley congress races as I do for Future Farmer recording artists, but I was fairly “wowed” by Amanda Renteria, and wish I could vote for her.
I put her up there in my pantheon with Elizabeth Warren and Zephyr Teachout, as real comers.
edita:
Tim and Greg of the Mother Hips (one-time Future Farmers) would probably “Pull Us All Together” and stump for Amanda Renteria:
and1: four months later: judge Griffin Bonini, a former Gunn Titan hoops star (to my championship, from the bench, so to speak) said the other day that his twin Colin Bonini worked on a Tom Campbell campaign while still at Nixon Elemtary, trumping my 1988.
Hoover Tower by Michael Broadhurst, of Abilities United and Greensboro, N.C.
In the film you and Gehry compare filmmaking with architecture. What similarities or differences in the two arts struck you the most?
A: They’re both mosaic arts in that they’re comprised of many, many, many other art forms all put together like a big puzzle. When they’re successful, they have a pleasurable dreamlike element – the shape of a piece of sculpture, of a building, the way light hits it, the dream of a movie, the idea of a movie. But in order to achieve either you have to break it down into technical components, which are sort of mosaic in nature. In order to build the building you have to understand all kinds of physics. You have to figure out how to get people in and out of the building, how to get sewers in and where to put the loading docks, etc. If I want to make people moved or cry in a film, I figure out what the room looks like, what the people are wearing, what time of day it is, what the light is, how to photograph it, where to put the camera. It involves optics and costume design and set design and architecture. (Sydney Pollack on Frank Gehry and Dr. Milton Wexler)
event 9/20/14 Lytton DESIGNED site specific by mark weiss for earthwise of paloalto
I’m lampin’, I’m lampin’, I’m cold cold lampin’
Arrington et al
1. What is it about ARB that is compatible with your experience and of specific interest to you, and why?
I design concerts, especially site-specific events like on Sept. 20, 2014, “!Taylor Ho!” featuring Taylor Ho Bynum and Ben Goldberg, free jazz concert at Lytton Plaza, when the music stopped Taylor and I biked from Lytton Plaza (he had started his day in San Francisco), to Bol Park and past Gunn High, towards Foothill where he proceeded on to Cowell Redwoods Park and eventually Los Angeles. I’ve produced more than 200 events here, most at Cubberley, and, based on that, submitted to Mandy Lowell et al a white paper on the value of Cub as a regional arts venue. I think the board would benefit from non-architect design values.
In Pollock’s film about Gehry and his therapist Milton Wexler, the doctor noted that couples come to him to be happy while artists come to change the world
2. Please describe an issue that recently came before the Board …and describe why you are interested in it.
I’ve spoken on about 10 projects in the last six months. Regarding the antennas at the Little League field I wrote, published and read into the record a prose poem about there being no “center field foul pole” which was not quite to the standards of Jack Hirschman or Lawrence Ferlinghetti, but borrows form it. I called it “chin music for corporate creep”: Old timers recall Art Kuehn bouncing a ball off the library, a long home run — he is our Babe Ruth. calling a shot Also, because my partner Terry Acebo Davis, the former two-term arts commissioner, once owned a house on Venice beach, which we checked on in July, I commented on a current downtown plan, the one designed by a psychologist but not Dr. Milton Wexler, and lauded it as “sorta Abbott-Kinney”. I knew slightly–ok, we met once, on the stairway, between the 5th and 6th floor of 77 Maiden Lane — Jay Chiat, the early champion of Frank Gehry — this is 1986 — and immediately sero-converted to Frank, and just this same July — we actually stayed Downtown LA at the old Universal Studios buildings — Pickford, Fairbanks — now called the Ace Hotel — with the JESUS SAVES neon intact — on Broadway but zipped out to Santa Monica Venice to see the Oldenburg binoculars at what is now Google La (goog lay lah) and made a little film there, similar to a film I made just last weekend walking from the new Anderson building thru the Richard Serra corten steel structure, to Cantor. We also, Terry and I, walked on the Disney concert Hall, exterior, a Gehry. Palo Alto needs, if not a Gehry, our version of such. We are more garish than Gehry.
artwork by Stacey Carter, based on photo by Mark Weiss, NYC, summer 1988
I also own a print of the Oldenburg baseball bat; if you want to put one of those on Middlefield and pack that with senders and receivers, that I will support.
3. If appointed to ARB — but not seated by will of the people to Council November 4, 2014 — the specific goal I would like the ARB to achieve, and why and how I would suggest achieving, as part of process per se, an effect where, as Thoreau in 1849 and George Packer — Gunn 1978 — said in 2013, the leadership seems representative of and responsive to the people, and it’s not so much what color stucco or how much glass each new investment into our skyline and walking tour adds, but that there is a little of us in each brick, nail or plate so to speak, and, with due respect, to for example my Fremont Hills, Terman and Gunn schoolmate RP, there is at least a perception of lack. So maybe a sound and ambience slash negative space bricklayer would add a nuance to these proceedings and not just as a finish fetish.
At the Tsuchianura Festival at Lucie Stern Sunday a lady named Nemet (but not unlike “Broadway Joe”) suggested we, like our Japanese Sisters, adopt a mascot; maybe we need a monster-mascot, to exorcise from these flippers and tear-downs and carpet-bagging opportunities, that which lurks herein. Maybe a zombie-ice-cream-cone fetish will make the monster homes seem more humane.
4. (long question, but opens doors, so to speak, to these visual aids)
event DESIGNED by mark weiss for earthwise, lytton
I like 250 Hamilton just fine, with or without the $4 mil facelift, Phil Ciralsky. (insert photo).
I can also link to or reproduce in entirety here my previous draft of this posted as “Dancing About Architecture”.
(I wrote two previous versions of this, from 4:20 to 5:25 while seated in lobby of 7th floor of 250, on my Apple laptop, but twice had the file deleted after answering the 4 questions above; David the clerk said “use Acrobat not Preview” and I admit I don’t know everything about this little doo-hicky — Terry did pay for, it was my 50th birthday — time at the “genius bar” but so far I have been faking it like an idiot savant, so maybe its just me. Number 5 I could not even get the thing to let me squeeze in a doomed bit of copy between all the links. I did suss out a bit on the previous links, thusly:
Our forty six (46) not 80 zoning ordinances under Title 18 and our 38 not .62 building regulations, (i.e Title 16 et cetera) including the new ordinance about Public art and private development (which incidentally, I privately opposed, although I am somewhat known as proponent of the 1 percent in muni projects, and my partner is a former two-term arts commissioner).
I likes me some Birge Clark.
I think we should be charging Joe Bellomo for his bike racks on Civic Center MKL Plaza — it is not a park, it is a limited public forum. Can I say that here?
This is my 59th post this month alone and my fourth attempt to be boarded.
Two hundred fifty patters by “Christ” to 618 shields of reality by “King” David.
Ten titles, or volumes, pulled somewhat hastily from my shelves, and then stacked neatly on a table at Peet’s about three hours and two posts ago:
1. Hiroshi Sugimoto & Jonathan Safran Foer, “Joe” about Richard Serra and Ando, in this case;
2. Art in America, June/July 2014 for article about architecture at Venice Bianalle,
3. Off The Wall!: A Guide to Greg Brown’s Murals in Palo Alto;
4 Trisha Brown, So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing — if and only if it has the photo of her site specific piece of people waving flags from rooftops;
5. Scott Meacham, Dartmouth College: The Campus Guide;
6. Almanac Chapple-Mazinani-Thomas which I think is about recent grad students at Stanford, and something in a tower, ala Ann Hamilton tower at the art colony up in Petaluma I toured a whiles back; which reminds me to look for content I created or documented when John Barton had some cute young French exchange students talk in a compelling way about 27 University; and further about John Barton, who said, at the time, I could ring him>
7. Al’ America, by Jon Curiel, the former Chron writer and friend of a friend thru the dear Charlotte Gerstein (Dartmouth 1986, from West Hartford, CT, whose father made a film about the fact that Mark Twain deliberately made his house there face that of Harriet Beecher Stowe, to annoy here) the connect being that Barton and Carrassco here build a lovely mosque;
8. From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe;
9. Fodor’s New York City from 1983 back in the good old days (and very avid Plastic Alto readers or close personal friends my recall that I spent February, 2001 that is in the final seven months of Western Civilization in New York, or Brooklyn for you sticklers and bums;
and lastly a 10. Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide Clayton, Running Press Cyclopedia, this fits in my pocket although I shlepped all ten, plus David Shields Realty Hunger and a Linda Ronstadt cd in a canvas bag from SXSW 2009;
I regrettably sold off my Christopher “Christ” Alexander, “A Pattern Language” which I bought in 1988 because Rob Bagot had it, Rob a future Howard Gossage winner, compared to Dan Mountain the 1988 Howard Gossage winner, Dan and HISWIFE, who Terry and I saw in July, Clay Kershaw was on the mound and the tv, in Venice Beach, an Abbot Kinney kind of thing, you know.
This is my way of announcing that beyond or technically before in some ways running Mark Weiss me that is for Palo Alto City Council — and again, since we are on topic, exactly 26 years after conceiving of an actualizing and presenting the 1988 Goose Gossage Award for copywriting-reading to Jeff Goodby– I am also concurrently little poMo and yes “pomp” (my computer is now ghost-writing this part, on auto-Pilot the pen) that I am applying for the appointable position or seat for Architecture Review Board. Not being an actual architect – although Matt H. Porteus and I, in Clay Leo’s 1978 HisGoBAM/APB History and Geography of the Bay Area Metropolis slash American Political Behavior did once design a lovely little piece of fiction, and fishin’ for that matter, Port Weissius, somewhere between Escondido and San Diego or in another dimension, an architect. But I have a good eye for music.
More to comb.
(Do I get bonus points, in some universe, parallel or on a different plane, for bridging, like the grandfather of a nice lady from Michigan in Old Palo Alto, Claytons Kershaw and Leo?)
edita, ten minutes later: I also shot on my Moto Android a group of 11 photos of works on paper (and in one case tin) of architectural themed art works, that I hope color, shapes, supports and bulwarks (if that is a verb) this application, or essay, or exercise, from a private collection; a private collection {self-edited} and then addendumbed down.
>>>sarsaparilla, and this is NOT a Palo Alto Buildings Inspector training film, unless we want to be SEIU’d:
Terry and I sat under the Bruce Beasley arch, at Mitchell Park Library, Saturday, September 27, 2014, more than five years after we first met at Bruce’s Oakland studio.
Gunn footballers also known as “14 Angry Men” console themselves after tough loss Friday
Gunn dropped a 35-28 decision at Prospect of Saratoga Friday, its four straight defeat.
Coach Shinichi Hirano’s Titans are continuing to remind me of “The Seven Samurai” from the famous Japanese movie about a small group of fighters trying to defend a village against a powerful group of brigands (bad guys). The Titans lost two players to injury, sophomore linebacker Sam Rothstein (hand surgery) and senior back Forrest “Bubba” Larson (possible broken tibia, his leg). They finished Friday’s tilt, which went down to the wire, with only 14 players. Okay, in the Kurosawa film of 1954, there are 7 Samurai but only three survive. For Gunn football, the intrigue is can they garner a win before injuries become insurmountable.
I’ve watch four straight Gunn games, three of which were closely fought. I don’t believe I had ever seen four straight games, two home and two away, ever, in 40 years of living in this community. Even as a Gunn student –and sports editor of the Oracle – I doubt I saw four games in a row. My senior year I skipped Gunn games to go on assignment for the Peninsula Times Tribune – I distinctly remember that the night I covered a 55-0 Carlmont over Mills game, Gunn beat Santa Clara as Chris Strausser to John Chovanec accounted for 227 yards, a league record.
I will update this with more from my notes and my interview with Shinichi. For now here are some random photos.
The highlight was Jared Bibo’s 90 yard touchdown return, on a kickoff. Phil Bibo, Jared’s dad, said it was his first score of the season. Moments earlier I had greeted Phil, my classmate at Terman and Gunn, 1978 – 1982, for the first time in years. I pounded his back somewhat vigorously as his lad romped up the near sideline and left the Panthers in the dust.
Nozo Imanaka, despite struggling with cramps in his legs, reeled off an electrifying long touchdown run, his fifth this season of 20 yards of more. But Gunn clearly felt his absence in the fourth quarter, on defense, as the Panthers worked the clock and ate up the field to break a tie and revenge a defeat from the previous season. Nozo is normally one of the eight Titans who go 2-ways, while 10 others had been working in shifts. Hirano praised the play of Max Chiew who scored a TD and picked up some of the slack of Larson and Imanaka.
Another player I would highlight for Gunn is sophomore nose guard Drew Maltz, and not just because his father Matt Maltz was my teammate for the 8th grade A-team at Terman, or that I knew his mother Jamie Sparaco before Matt did, or that I chatted with Jamie’s father, a retired Palo Alto police officer who was also a stalwart footballer at San Jose High back in the 19(50s, for the first time Friday, for most of the pre-game warm-ups. Drew looked to dominate his opposite number for most of the game; in fact that Titans seemed to dominate line play before the attrition and fatigue combined to yield just enough to lose.
There is some solace, going in to league play, that you could say that as measured by aggregate scoring Gunn is having a finer season than the Paly Vikings. When Gunn lost to Branham by 35, Paly lost to Mitty by 41. When Gunn lost to Prospect by 7, Paly lost to Palma by 30. (And by the way I met Eli Givens’ mom, a red-head who told me that she went to Gunn a few years after me, but sent her boy to Paly; meanwhile Mrs. Larson, Bubba’s mom, before responding to the page from PAMF, said she is from Kansas but is married to Brock Larson, who either went to Gunn a few years ahead of me, or is our age and went to Paly).
I also had a nice chat with Mr. Sweat, his son Dietrich Sweat had another stellar game, at tight end and inside linebacker. He says his son is starting to think about how football might impact his college strategy; off the top of my head I think the young man might look into, for varying reasons: Dartmouth, Hamilton, Wesleyan, NYU. Something about this family makes me think Buddy Teevans would back his application. (There is a sibling at BYU, father reports). Sweat made a nice catch and run in the second half that went for a long game but maybe should have stood as a touchdown. The refs called him out of bounds but something about that reminded me of the lady in the Panthers’ concession who told me that the rotten Polish sausage they sold me was actually a smoked sausage that got snuck in the mix. Politics may be, as von Bismarck said, like making sausages but football should be football and they should give the game the benefit of the doubt and Dietrich’s romp should have gone the distance.
Gunn coach Shinichi Hirano likes his prospects for league play despite a win-less start to season; his Titans have stayed within a touchdown of winning in three of four starts.
from Prep2Prep/MaxPreps/Mercury/DailyNews/PAWeeklyonline:
Gunn 14 7 0 7 — 28
Prospect 6 15 7 7 — 35
Gunn — Bibo 90 punt return (Riley kick)
Prospect — Pollard 55 pass from Adams (Kick failed)
Gunn — Paletua 1 run (Riley kick)
Gunn — Imanaka 55 run (Riley kick)
Prospect — Adams 2 run (Avdagic kick)
Prospect — Sainz 3 run (Jones pass from Adams)
Prospect — Pollard 8 pass from Adams (Avdagic kick)
Gunn — Chiew 3 run (Riley kick)
Prospect — Pollard 8 pass from Adams (Avdagic kick)
With 81 reviews on Amazon alone 4 “Reality Hunger” I might have expected and with 2 books in pipe line, as did the planners booking these 3 rooms ore 1 room with three doors Speak Friend & Enter kind of thing to have felt less alone today
I’ve read the Grand Jury Report. I have not seen the response, written by Pat Burt (council),Greg Schmid (council) and Jim Keene (staff, City Manager).
Here is a reprint of a speech I gave to ARB two years ago, in November 2012 — I tie the hulabuloo about 27 University to the lack of response or failure to act regarding 456 University, the Varsity Theatre. What isn’t well known is that Arrillaga first started thinking about the office towers during the months at the end of 2011 when people were talking about the Varsity and that staff member Amy French (or so she told me, later) is the one who suggested adding a theatre (for Theatreworks) to the office towers plan. In my opinion, staff might have put the same energy in brokering a deal to bring a nationally known concert promoter to 456. Meanwhile, based on hearing Chop Keenan out on the topic, and his insistence that the plan to let SAP corporation run a type of incubator at 456, that features food and programming for all citizens — Chop says it will “rock” – I have stopped obstructing the project.
My thoughts from two years ago (and this is a recreation I wrote up shortly thereafter; the actual address is searchable):
I want to thank the Board for its diligence, on this matter, and the preceding item (on Newell Street Bridge , where residents decried the plans for a new bridge design five times bigger in “footprint” than the existing bridge, built in 1911).
I attended the meeting on October 24. I want to highlight something I found interesting from that meeting. I noticed that three of you, or two (Architectural Review) Board members and one Planning Commissioner noted that in terms of the plan presented, (for the Arrillaga Office Towers and Theatre proposal, at 27 University) you would do, professionally speaking “the opposite”, that you would place the theatre closer to University Avenue and the office towers back near the soccer field.
I think this is relevant in that it speaks to something about the aesthetics of the proposal. I think there are concerns over both the product – what is being proposed – and the process – how it is being proposed.
I first heard of this project when it came up at Council in March, 2012, this year. But in the staff report from September it turns out that the project was initiated back in August of 2011, meaning that it has been going on partially in secret for more than a year, in addition to these types of recent hearings and discussions.
What I just learned last week however, speaking with staff after the meeting, and what Bruce (F_, consultant to the City for the project) spoke of just now very briefly – and I believe that is the first time this fact was part of the record – my understanding is that the proponent of this project first approached the City with an idea for an office tower, and it was staff that suggested that the project would go over better with an arts element, as public benefit. So the theatre is something of an afterthought, despite the fact that it was described in the local media as “a theatre project” and then you go down the story and it says office space and in fact it is three times as much office space as theatre.
Another thing – a semantic thing about the proposal, a quibble – is that they call it an “arts and innovation district” but in terms of innovation we are talking not about start-ups, spin-offs, clusters of entrepreneurs, incubators, that are the heart of the Silicon Valley ethos, as distinct from a mature company, with a thousand employees, that the proponent says he wants to lure to 27 University – and that in terms of arts it is really one art – live theatre – and only one potential beneficiary.
What I find interesting, and I am interested in hearing staff or leadership make this more clear as more daylight reaches this project – and I work in the arts – is that at that same time, August, 2011 myself and others were looking at 456 University, the historic and beloved Varsity Theatre, and whether leadership could work with that private owner and find a suitable nationally-recognized concert promoter to take that lease. Staff was given a list and did some outreach to people who run, for example, the Warfield, the Fillmore, Fox Theater in Oakland, Yoshi’s, Freight and Salvage [which completed a $15 million capital campaign, to rebuild and renew in Downtown Berkeley, for concerts, at a time when Palo Alto City Manager Jim Keane was city manager of Berkeley, he is familiar with the project, and instructed staff here to research 456 University]. I am curious for someone to compare the two proposals, in terms of the need for a downtown arts amenity.
Anyhow I am anxious to hear more discussion here and that there is more public input. Thank you board and staff.
(the buzzer rang — today of all day’s I was cognizant of what Shakespeare called “the brief candle”)
Since I heard Michael McFaul speak locally recently and wrote about him or that, I am re-posting something I wrote about culture and Russia during the 2012 campaign, on my “Swayambh-PA” blog; the title of the blog referenced a concept my Anish Kapoor about natural growth.
Russian authorities interrupt performance by agitprop group Pussy Riot, February, 2012
The United States is concerned about both the verdict and the disproportionate sentences handed down by a Moscow court in the case against the members of the band Pussy Riot and the negative impact on freedom of expression in Russia.
We urge Russian authorities to review this case and ensure that the right to freedom of expression is upheld.
Pussy Riot is a group of young female artists and activists, recently sentenced to two years in prison. They were deemed to offend Orthodox followers because they staged a musical protest February 21 inside of an important cathedral. Many believe that the harsh punishment is part of a larger and more…
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 