I noticed a week-old New York Times magazine, in my dad’s to-recycle basket, and rifled thru it: the cover story was about Silicon Valley, from the perspective of a grad student working a summer job at a hot new generation company. How, I wondered immediately, does this snapshot of the place I live –and am outside of — compare to recent screeds by George Packer and (TK), in the New Yorker? Article is by Yiren Lu, although my quasi-dyslexia had me thinking of Liren Yu, which I meant to suss out later. This a.m., ensconced at Cafe Zoe, eating a scone I mean sesame bagel, I skimmed thru most of Lu’s article, since after all I have pre-committed to spending 50 cents per day on New York Times website. She graduated from Harvard, is born in 1992, is from NorCal, maybe Sacramento or Petaluma, is in grad school in New York, is a computer science major who plays classical music and writes brilliantly, is cute, of course, and worked for Uber over the summer. She also has two blogs, including one in which she refers to herself as “an alumni” of a certain piano teacher or music school. (She’s an “alumna”, to us old folks who grew up speaking Latin at home. Whan april shouer and all that* ).
Her tech blog talks about git and github. News to me. But the search-injuns sent me over to thinking about Mia Zapata the singer of The Gits, who was murdered in 1993. The way local SF bands, including my high school friend Mia Levin of Mudwimin and Frightwig, rallied around the cause to raise consciousness about safety, and to hire a detective to get justice in the Mia murder, influenced me when I was in transition, from tech and advertising writer to, um, blogger. I never knew Zapata and actually at first worried for Mia Levin when I heard about the tragedy — a call to the Bottom of the Hill bar-phone set me straight. It turns out that git the software is founded by Linus Torvalds who also is the namesake and founder of Linux and deliberately chose a self-effacing name. “Git” is British slang for lowly person.
Today is the 10th anniversary to the day that a court in Florida found J.M. guilty in the cold case trial, which was the first case in Washington history to use saliva DNA to find a match in the system. There’s also excerpted on youtube a movie from 2006 about Mia Zapata case. Perhaps it’s odd to link Mia and Ren this way.
My main point is that as ubiquitous as it seems, the “social network” culture or whatever you call it is a sub-culture and new, and in this case is probably a bubble in two ways, being insular, and vulnerable to a collapse. I joined more or less a different tribe, of people who think their voices and words and art could be the change the world seems to need, and generally speaking don’t get any higher-tech than a tube amp. Maybe it is more fair and auspicious to think of Yiren Lu in the same stream of thought as these other women of (roughly) my generation who rallied around their friend, or are making a difference in music per se: Mia Levin, Joan Jett, Kathleen Hanna, Carrie Brownstein, Maya Ford, Penelope Houston, Billie Eyeball, Ramona Downey, Dana LeBreque, Margrit Eichler, Heidi Rodewald, Molly Neumann, Lynn Drury, Michelle Malone, Laura Ballance, Dawn Richardson, Patti Rothberg, Jorjee Douglas, Allison Miller. Zoe Keating comes to mind as someone definitely in both tribes, as a musician who used electronica in her work and also is a poster-child for Twitter, with millions of followers (compared to the dozens at most of people who find these little bits of electronic ink on my wordpress Plastic Alto).
My critique of 3.0 or whatever this is is that it seems to be more about how clever venture capitalists can eke out one more IPO or deal than about what the devices are actually doing. (And I am also thinking of a Charlie Rose Show last night with Jaron Lanier and the CEO of kickstarter, which I think is just a fad, a billion dollar fad, but a fad nonetheless. I resigned a potential client once when he wanted to use kickstarter). Will keep eyes peeled for updates from Yiren Lu on how she sees this fishbowl.
*WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote 1.The droghte 2 of Marche hath perced to the roote Canterbury Tales. It’s actually Middle English not Latin of course
edit to add, 10 days later: today’s Sunday Times, has something about sexual harassment at high tech company’s including something about a woman who left Github — news to me, indeed. “Technology’s Man Problem” By Claire Cain Miller>From their blog:
This weekend, GitHub employee Julie Horvath spoke publicly about negative experiences she had at GitHub that contributed to her resignation. I am deeply saddened by these developments and want to comment on what GitHub is doing to address them.
We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer. The founder’s wife discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in the office.
GitHub has grown incredibly fast over the past two years, bringing a new set of challenges. Nearly a year ago we began a search for an experienced HR Lead and that person came on board in January 2014. We still have work to do. We know that. However, making sure GitHub employees are getting the right feedback and have a safe way to voice their concerns is a primary focus of the company.
As painful as this experience has been, I am super thankful to Julie for her contributions to GitHub. Her hard work building Passion Projects has made a huge positive impact on both GitHub and the tech community at large, and she’s done a lot to help us become a more diverse company. I would like to personally apologize to Julie. It’s certain that there were things we could have done differently. We wish Julie well in her future endeavors.
I was gonna title a post “Painting” or “Paintinc” comprised exclusively of paint-oriented photos in my phone.
James Turrell art installation at SF’s DeYoung Museum, Terry and I checked out the other day.
This actually belongs in a previous post about Steve Cohen and I at Stanford – Utah hoops tilt.
Another view of Turrell
Although the differences are subtle, I actually took and now posted three versions of Turrell (and isn’t that the quintessence of all this?)
This is my computer, my cappuccino and Modest Mouse “The Lonesome Crowded West” Up Records, up44, 1997, which I am reviewing
Flipping thru a cache or cachet of Arizona Highways mags I bought from a retired rocket scientist in Menlo Park, I noticed this reference to Ben Quintana a Pueblo Painter who died quite young in World War II, in Europe
This belongs anywhere but here as Mona Simpson might say but here is Flat Stanley, from Springfield, IL, dressed as Abe Lincoln, with Palo Alto Mayor Nancy Shepherd
27 University elicits controversy about development, most of which ignores its historic status and these landmarks I spied the other day (details)
27unimon
should have insured the planetbefore it crashedworking real hard to make internet cashwork your fingers to the bone sitting on your assI know now what I knew thenbut I didn’t know then what I know now Isaac Brock, Jeremiah Green and Eric Judy, 1997, rather prophetic and timeless. Plus check out the Polaroids dated 4-5-97, mostly by Isaac I rescued this disc from the burn pile of about 1,000 of its brethren and cistern, not to mention the cassettes that suffered even worser fate. Or as Kurt Vonnegut might say, if you are talking about a rather smelly cheese, what else could you do to it that hasn’t already been done (I am re-reading my autographed copy of “Hocus Pocus” from 1990). Please excuse my hocus pocus (which the f-word-obscene-gerund computer wants to change to “locus”). edit to add, a couple hours later;
detail of the WPA mural at the beach chalet at golden gate park, which is also a brewery
more details from the mural at Beach Chalet, I think his name is Laboudt or something and this is supposed to be his wife, playing the guitar; Lucien Laboudt, 1937.
something with David Hockney, show at De Young, recently
Palo Alto Public Art Commission enhancement of utility boxes, downtown PA, shot after seeing a preview of upcoming movie about Hadron collider
grand old flag, at 27 University, Palo Alto, where I counted 7 historic markers
Is Menlo Park’s Guild the only place in God’s Green Earth where one might, even for a separate admission, see Philomena back to back with Rocky Horror Picture Show — which gave me idea about a film about a lady who travels to America to adopt the clone of her first love., talk about miraculous concepts.
One of my favorite Gerhard Richters, Strontium, at De Young, in lobby (detail)
Richard Serra, corten steal maze, on loan to Stanford, close up, detail
Playing with my food, the ramen at Palo Alto Dohatsuten, on San Antonio near Charleston
edit to add: would be remiss not to mention fiddle work by Tyler Reilly on this track. Christgau says “A-“. Forgive me father for I have sinned (in appropriating this rather long quotation from his site, which I found via the wikipedia entry): With unadorned melody suddenly fashionable among superannuated indie-rockers who have seen the limits of both irony and techno, I still prefer my tunelets noised up. And until these become the exclusive province of undistinguisheds and indistinguishables like, oh, Versus or Polvo, I’ll crow about every exception. Skirting the professional class they were born to for a poverty that’s real if voluntary, these three youngsters are probably wise-asses, probably thieves. But their songs never quit even when they’re divided into the kind of stylistic segments that usually irritate the hell out of me. Although their glimpses of a cockroach world living on its own discards may seem jejune to some and homely to others, the lyrics are observed, informed, and explicit enough–in fact, as brave and beautiful as the blues, albeit at a more rarefied level of cultural specificity. A-
JD Optekar is a Dartmouth-trained engineer (class of 1991, Th’92) out of Wisconsin, holding down the guitar slot in and c0-leading a pretty decent regional blues-soul outfit, celebrating a cd release at Buddy Guy’s in Chicago this spring, I noticed in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. Check out Tweed Funk.
For comparison sake here also is a version of the Guitar Watson classic by local San Jose area legends John Wedemeyer band, at the PHB the Poor House Bistro, near the hockey arena, a more than decent place for po’boys, brew and music.
I also sussed out a song on cdbaby by a Dartmouth lawyer and singer-songwriter, “Twilight Rising” by Ben Riley ’79 which I am pretty tempted to download. Here’s to our Alma Mater and whatever influence it puts on us that comes out in our music (writing). And it’s probably an unfair comparison but Smokey Holman and JD Optekar brought to my mind (too much granite of New Hampshire or cheap beer in basements?) JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound, new release “Howl” on Bloodshot: maybe Tweed Funk can appear on a bill with JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound in Wisconsin. (Maybe my headline should be To Real Mothers Four Ya, or Four Real Mothers To Ya or some such…also reminded me of Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings, Roy Tyler and New Directions, Steven Bernstein MTO Sly Stone project, Natasha Miller and Bobby Sharp, Charlie Hunter and Dionne Warwick — inside joke: we mean Dionne Farris, who was named for Warwick, although Charlie and her’s project does cover Dionne Warwick, if we permit a digression into relationships between singing legends and their guitar players more than old school singers finally getting their due –; Otis Taylor — delayed his success for twenty years before exploding on blues scene in his late fifties, in early 2000s; Candye Kane featuring Laura Chavez; Sugar Pie DeSanto; since I digressed from JD Optekar to Wedemayer at Poor House Bistro of San Jose might as well go to Lara Price and Laura Chavez, since Lara married Jay who owns PHB: mazel tov!)
edit to add: JD Optekar responded to a brief note (and the link) left on the band’s site:
Mark:Thanks for the heads up and the mention in your blog, I appreciate it. Would love to do a show with JC Brooks, of course he has quite a few years (youth-wise) on us!
I was in Hanover the first weekend in March for the Track & Field Indoor Heps/25th Track Indoor Championships Reunion. My teammates had a great time kidding me about the article. Looking forward to playing back there for reunion.
Let me know if you would like a copy of our new CD and I can drop one in the mail or send you the Dropbox link. Also, we will be releasing our debut music video from our new CD next week.
We should be getting a fair amount of airplay on KZSU out in your area.
March 24, 2014 – Press Release – “Blues In My Soul” Official Music Video Release Tweed Funk (Milwaukee, WI) released their music video for the song “Blues In My Soul” on March 24, 2014. The song is from the upcoming album First Name Lucky (release date 3/31/14). The song was inspired by an article on frontman Joseph “Smokey” Holman that appeared in American Blues Scene Magazine (11/22/13). The video includes: footage in front of Smokey’s old school in Gary, Indiana where he learned to sing harmonies in the bathroom; shots from Memphis where the Domestic 4 recorded with Willie Mitchell and Rufus Thomas at Stax and Willie Mitchell’s studios; imagery of Smokey’s path away from music at US Steel and hustling on the streets; and Smokey’s rebirth in the music scene in Milwaukee with Marvelous Mack and his success with Tweed Funk.
Stills from Tweed Funk video, shot in Memphis, Indiana and Pittsburgh
Tweed Funk will be holding CD Release Parties in Milwaukee and Chicago What: Tweed Funk’s First Name Lucky Milwaukee Area CD Release Party
When: Thursday, April 17 , 2014 from 9:30 pm to 12:30 a.m. Cost: $10 (if you are traveling some distance or are an e-commerce junkie, might as well buy in advance at Etix)
About Tweed Funk
Formed in late 2010, Tweed Funk has garnered national and international acclaim for their horn-driven, sweat- soaked, soul-blues. This Milwaukee, Wisconsin band is fronted by Joseph “Smokey” Holman, who recorded under Curtis Mayfield in the early 70’s. Tweed Funk boasts 3 Wisconsin Area Music Industry (WAMI) Wins for the band and it’s members. Tweed Funk has appeared at some of the top festivals and blues rooms in the Midwest including: Chicago Blues Festival, Marquette Area Blues Festival, Byron Crossroads Blues Festival, Paramount Blues Festival, Prairie Dog Blues Festival, Buddy Guy’s Legends, Slippery Noodle Inn, House of Blues – Chicago, Jazz in the Park, Summerfest, and many more. Tweed Funk played 30 festivals, concerts, and club gigs in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin in the summer of 2013 and received excellent reviews and praise from festival bookers and the press. Tweed Funk’s sophomore CD, Love Is, charted nationally and been played on 170+ stations around the world. The band has had reviews in major print and internet publications including: Living Blues Magazine, Blues Revue Magazine, Big City Rhythm & Blues Magazine, IconFetch, The Blues Blast Magazine, and many others.
Contact and Media Inquiries Press and Radio Frank Roszak Promotions 2014 KBA Awardee Publicist froszak2003@yahoo.com 818.679.7636
Social Media BratGirl Media Amy Brat bratgirlbaby63@aol.com
(I don’t think they’d mind if you contacted them to ask them about Tweed Funk “First Name Lucky” — I noted that the publicist/radio promoter Frank Roszak worked on Candye Kane’s cd “Superhero” during his tenure at Delta Groove Records).
edit to add, April 1: coincidental to noticing Tweed Funk, whose new cd was released today, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings also have a new cd, and appeared on Jimmy Fallon. I just bought that cd for $12.95 at Starbucks, but noted that it also has a free download at the Daptone Records website, which I will attempt to access. Re Tweed Funk, I am saying that they might want to keep track of comparable acts like Sharon Jones — they probably already do. Or you could say that Tweed Funk is riyl Sharon Jones. The cd by SJDK came out in January.
Above photo by Andrew Quist in 2011 courtesy of Fast Atmosphere Mother Hips website. Hips are celebrating 20 years as a rock and roll band, and extended family or brotherhood.
Off the top of my head, I can think of four places I did shows with the Hips in Palo Alto: two shows at Cubberley, one duo show at Stanford CoHo and a biggish free show at City Hall Plaza as part of the post-race festivities of the Chronicle Classic 5-mile run.
Mother Hips play tonight at Oakland at Fox Theatre — Terry and I are opting for something less interesting, burritos or Chinese take-out at some friends’ house and perhaps not sleeping thru a screening of “The Hobbit-2”.
Mother Hips also played the Edge several times, produced in-house by the club.
Dave Schwartz of Fast Atmoshphere had sent me archive tapes of the two Cubberley shows; he may have a complete set of all Mother Palo Alto Hips events.
I have some posters by Jon and I, and abstracted photoshopped nude by Ruth Bernhard.
(“Stet” to mis-identifying the web host company two graphs above)
The other Palo Altism that comes to mind is that Tim and Greg were originally in a band with Ali Weiss, Ali and the Cats — she is from here and I met her by phone for the first time about a year ago and chatted her up about all this. The four-disc retrospective the band put out recently includes a radio interview back in Chico from that period.
Not that I am that down with Gov. Jerry Brown, but I am sometimes tempted to write him a letter about some cultural protocol for honoring Mother Hips and “california soul”. I worked on his 1992 campaign for U.S. President when we both lived in SF.
Here’s a selfie back when you used a disposable camera with actual film, from that Stanford CoHo event, of Tim Bluhm and myselfie.
Another funny Earthwisism about the Hips is that I met Stanford basketball great 6’9″ Joe Kirchofer recently at a football game and he told me that he first discovered the band at that CoHo show I organized. (Seeing him at a Hips show I imagine is like seeing Bill Walton at the Dead).
Here are two posters from those days.
Now that I am adopting the digitized protocol of music and using this fairly functional lapdance thingy, I am taking advantage of their free download offer. (but believe me, no matter how many more $10 billion dollar app deals there are, music and otherwise, you got to see Mother Hips live or you just don’t get it)
This one was for a run of shows that included Mother Hips and Train
1. At Georgia O’Keefe show I visited yesterday at the De Young, the taped tour featured a recitation of Emerson’s famous “transparent eyeball” passage, from “Nature” (1838) — I am nothing, I see all” which made me glad to have been an English major — Ingles — and makes me wonder the difference between re-reading intense ideas 30 years later versus solving problem sets again. I have been re-reading and re-thinking Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” for instance.
(A man interrupts me, somewhat politely, and asks me directions to a watchmaker/”monetary” company located, according to search-functions, very nearby, and I am somewhat miffed by, even with reading glasses, not quite seeing the small print on the business card, speaking of eyeballs — I have allotted myself two hours to tap on keyboard and try to organize 0s and 1s and no crooked figures, little blots of electronic inks, ideas, words, which appear insignificant but keep me going, although Einstein or Whitman or Ginsburg or someone who presumably would know said all our actions and words (and perhaps thoughts) are important, could move mountains, by the butterfly effect and chaos theory; I’m trying to get to baseball game)
2. On my reverse commute this morning, before doing exactly 41 pieces of laundry, KQED had a disturbing talk about Venezuela, and 29 dead there so far in this recent bout of unrest. Since death of Hugo Chavez, rise of Maduro and I’m not sure what else. But I am carrying a stack of trading cards, including a 1959 Topps Chico Carrasquel, Baltimore Orioles shortstop, from Caracas, and the 2013 (last year’s) Who’s Who in Baseball, with lifetime records of 775 players, and Miguel Cabrera, 2012 Triple Crown winner, of the Tigers, from Maracay, on the cover. I am jonesing to buy the 2014 book but only groped it at the 5 and Dime (di me, “give me”) yesterday. Maybe I will take a break from by tap tap tapping and plunk down the 10-spot for the newer 775 bios and photos. I would estimate that each book has about 100,000 facts and figures to ponder, for those that see patterns in such. I am planning to flip thru the book and make a list of players as of 2013 from Venezuela — although I know there is probably a quicker way to merely glean the info, and have written about such (VZ beisbol) before.
3. 29 is the leap year number for the 2nd month. It is a prime number. It is 2 more than the number of consecutive outs required for a perfect game, and probably someone once lead the league in homers with such a number, I could probably suss out, but in this case it is the number dead according to the radio of people in Venezuela over this current set of problems. I am guessing, by a factor of four or more, that we have helped produce that many more Venezuelan beisbol millionaires than there are protest-dead, but it makes this knee-jerk liberal wonder what we could do better, spreading around the wealth and turns at bat.
I want to outdo with Thad Jones Mel Lewis 1974 Potpouri album cut, a cover of Stevie Wonder “Don’t You Worry About a Thing” recorded or manufactured and marketed out of Philly but with a distinctive clave Latin tinge, flutes, and a stellar cast, that was playing on KCSM when I got back in my car post-wash-and-fold-and-counting and this handy doo-hicky let me learn that pretty durn e-z-like, compared to when I used to call in to ask what was playing.
I will hopefully, lord willing and the creek don’t rise, San Francisquito Creek, not too far from here, very near where I pretend to sleep and do sleep, add those names of our diamond heroes. Like
Bobby Abreu, of Maracay, who just celebrated his birthday 40 (but may not be in the league, since I am using last year’s book, and had 2,437 hits thru 17 seasons including 2012;
Jose Altuve, also of Maracay, 228 hits;
Alexi Jose Amarista, of Barcelona, VZ, 74 hits;
Elvis Andrus, Maracay, 628 hits plus 11 more in the World Series;
Gregor Blanco, de Caracas, 279 including 96 for World Champion Giants;
Jose Cabrera, the Tribe ss, of Puerto La Cruz, 717;
aforementioned Triple Crowner Cabrera, of Tigers, 1802;
Miguel Cairo, of Anaco, 1044;
Alberto Jose Callaspo, of Maracay, 680; and I admit some of these guys I don’t know what name they go by; I am taking in most cases a quick glance at the tiny mugshots which usually include a team logo on cap;
Ezequiel Manuel dare I say “Manny”? Carrera, of Guiria, 89;
(and I also admit it does feel weird that I am passing by Vernon Christopher Carter of Redwood City, California whose place of birth is a stones throw, or realistically about 500 big leaguers lined up along El Camino, like a Joan Brown site specific piece; that would be interesting to try to line El Camino with Big Leaguers and see how many throws it would take to go from Santa Cruz Avenue to the Redwood City hospital; maybe we can do this in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Portola Expedition, coming in 2019 (from 1769 trek), stage some weird Latin baseball players relay of “cut off” men. Maybe it could dovetail – -and now this is entering classic Plastic Alto plasticity — plasmicity it took three tries before spellchecker let me have my weird way — with my yearning to honor Gregg Rolie, who founded both Journey and Santana bands, went to high school in Palo Alto (Cubberley) and whose best discs on Vinyl and this is how my brain works, can still be found at Redwood City’s Record Man store; I daydreamed of inducing Brian Ho the organist to arrange jazz versions of Santana and Journey songs, the ones penned by Rolie, as compared to actually bugging Rolie about trying to honor him here; maybe Suzanne Warren, I ran into yesterday, here on Santa Cruz Avenue, MP, and we posted for a selfie (“Selfie Arts Admins Takeover” working title) can help with that, she being a piano player and teacher and former City of Palo Alto cultural programmer; will edita with Chris Carter detes, beyond 71 hits, for A’s, at 1B and OF; N.B.: okay, search engine claims distance from British Bankers Club in Menlo Park to Record Man in Redwood City is 3.4 miles, which I will round to 18,000 feet, divide by 200 feet to produce rough measure of needing approximately 90 to 100 MLCOUs — major league cut off units — to produce a fairly safe chain of ballplayers able to relay a ball, faster than a speeding bullet train, or certainly faster than SamTrans, up the avenue, to celebrate Daniel Descalso Day / Portola’s Expedition @250 in South San Mateo County, give or take a few more guys if we want to go all the way to the Courthouse and Museum, depending on avails of Gregg Rolie and The Record Man, who in my head are medleying into an Aerosmith tune, “Dream On”).
edita to add, one minute later: ok, in the real world and not Plastic Altlandia, baseball fans immediately knew that Chris Carter, a big, right-handed first baseman, had been traded to Astros where he hit 29 home runs but struck out a league-leading 200 plus times, most ever by a righty; although born in San Mateo County, a 500-cut-off-man throw from Palo Alto, he signed for the big show after leading a Las Vegas high school team to a state championship, so probably does not merit inclusion in local Hall of Fame, but will keep my all-seeing transparent transcendalist-wanna-be eye on him, especially for preserving my 29 theme.
more from our beisbol friends al sur:
Ronny Cedeno, Puerto Cabello, 565; not related to Cesar from D.R.)
Endy Chavez, Valencia, 714; which would be fantastic if it were homers;
ok, Daniel Descalso, born in Redwood City, October 19, 1986, while I was a senior at Dartmouth, did attend St. Francis High here and is considered a local boy making good, if you permit another digression; had 180 hits in first 302 games, for St. Louis;
Alcides Escobar, Lasabana, 475;
Eduardo Jose Escobar, Villa de Cura, 30; (which would be a good place to stop, if I were even lazier and short-spanded;
Jesus Miguel Flores, Carupano, Venezuela, 226 hits for the Nats;
ok i’m gonna stop at Salvador Perez of the Royals, making 29 players, or first 29 field-players alphabetically from two seasons ago, according to Who’s Who’s 98th year, who by the way, out of their 1115 Broadway office, NY, NY 100 10 are selling back issues, including 1977, 1976 and 1971, for $85 each, for those of you adding and not deleting your baseball junk, although I admit I still have not said much very substantial about why I am thinking about baseball or beisbol and only pretending to think hard about economics and politics and current events, and ladies standing in line for cooking oil and corn meal or was it flour. How could major league baseball, office of the commissioner that is, do more to spread American values in these places? Is it enough to help these 29? Meanwhile, in a way that only connects in my brain, I noticed that a Dartmouth classmate named Todd Bean was reported to be working in Amsterdam, South Africa and other foreign theaters promoting soccer values or at least an app, TOVO (Dutch or Afrikaner for “total football”, maybe affiliated with famous Ajax Academy, and I think of Ed Burns who years in the Commish Office, was involved in growth of league per se in Dominican Republic, maybe traveled to Venezuela as well. Hoping also to leave room to measure distance from here to Redwood City and divide by 300 feet, to calculate this new measure “cut-off-men”. Also noted Dan Nava big leaguer from same Redwood City and Heywood, who is son of a Dartmouth guy. Noting also that Pablo Sandoval, “Kung Fu Panda” from Puerto Cabello, is a few stops past our minyan, even with 636 hits in his first 571 games at the press-time, and a cool .303.
edit to add, and I’ve been here about 90 minutes, length of a soccer match, and three fourths of the way thru my free parking, and one coffee cup, I was amazed to see that there were about 30 1959 Topps Chico Carrasquels on the leading online marketplace, most for about $2, depending on condition.
I shall return to go from the 15 or so players I’ve honored here to the 29 I was sort of hinting I would list (which is less than if I had gone thru the whole book, including pitchers, and listed I am guessing about 50 players).
I want to also see the latest from New York Times (since I am paying them 50 cents a day already).
edit to add, same setting: most of the Times coverage is from about a month ago; I should check the list of speakers on today’s Forum show with Michael Krasny, or tune in for its re-broadcast or check for an archive version. Not sure if “29 dead” is current or old news. A Times report also talks of a local “beauty queen” “Miss Tourismo” who was killed, plus twitter feeds, her last pictures on her cellphone, photo of her holding a sign which I could read but not quite interpret, and 7 comments. Jennifer Preston reporting on Genesis Carmona.
Here is the info from KQED page:
At least 29 people have died in Venezuela in clashes between the government and opposition groups. Violence between police and those protesting high crime, inflation and shortage of supplies under President Nicolas Maduro have been escalating since last month.
Host: Michael Krasny
Guests:
George Ciccariello-Maher, assistant professor in the Department of History and Politics at Drexel University in Philadelphia and author of “We Created Chavez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution”
Moises Naim, senior associate for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former editor of the Foreign Policy Journal and author of “The End of Power”
William Neuman, Andes region correspondent for The New York Times
In terms of randomly mentioning Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” my take on it is that it is not about protest in the street but about speaking truth to power and either demanding more from leadership or asking them to “move on”.
after the rain delay and checkpoint 19, now at the nifty free wireless spot at Cogswell Plaza, site of soon to be revived nooners:
Freddy Jose Galvis, Punto Fijo, Venezuela, 43 hits in 2012 for Phils;
Carlos Gonzalez, Maracaibo, 648;
Carlos Gonzalez of Colorado hit a 2-run homer into McCovey Cove on Friday, April 11, 2014
Franklin Rafael Gutierrez, Caracas, 618;
Jesus Antonio Guzman, Cumana, 153;
Gorkys Gustavo Hernandez, Guiria, 30 hits;
Jonathan Alejandro Herrera, Maracaibo, 204;
Omar Rafael Infante, Puerto La Cruz, 1,021 safeties;
Macier Izturis, Barquisimeto, another guy who parked for the offseason at 714 hits;
Jose Manuel Lobaton, of Acarigua, with 44 hits and almost as many stops between Idaho Falls of the Pioneer League and Tampa Bay;
Jose Celestino Lopez, of Barcelona, 215, for the Mariners, Rockies, Indians and White Sox, before turning Japanese to be a Giant-Yomiuri for 2013, it would seem; he also signed with the Marlins organization briefly, getting back to what I was implying about more than 100 pieces of information you could get per player, if you were so inclined; in the case here, the grid is like 18 by 14, which is almost three hundred little factoids, plus five footnotes about transactions, his place of birth, birthdate, bats right, throws right height and weight, over 9 years;
Victor Jesus Martinez, of Ciudad Bolivar — where I would just guess they pay pretty close attention to potential revolutions and brouhahas — a catcher for Cleveland and Detroit Series teams, with 1,298 hits before sitting out 2012, after six times on disabled list since 2000. Godspeed to VJM wherever he is now;
Jesus Alejandro Montero, of Guacara, 154 hits;
Miguel Angel Montero, of Caracas, I am presuming unrelated, although they are both catchers, 581; aka Miggy the Microwave;
So that is our starting lineup of 29 Venezuelan current and recent former baseball players, glossed briefly in lieu of thinking any harder about what is actually happening in their homeland apropos of leadership, conflict and dissent. God bless the Americas.
The Donnas actually played their first two or three years under the name Ragady Anne, on the teen circuit of venues like Cubberley, Mitchell Park and the Cupertino Library. Many fans, especially Palo Altans, feel that the Ragady Anne era was the high water mark for these young artists, and that the Ragady Anne ep is by far their best material and recording. Mark Weiss, “to the editors” Feb. 23, 1999
Collapsing two storage units into a leaner-meaner document housing, costing me only $178/month, machine, I noted about 20 banker boxes or about 60 yards of documents, my files from my days more actively scouting the local-regional-national-international music scene and working my ass of, as, compared to James Brown, one of the one-millionth hardest working dudes in rock and roll, producing Earthwise Productions’ “The Palo Alto Soundcheck” > “The Cubberley Sessions” :: “the Palo Palooza” “Earth Day Rock n Bike” “Glad I’m a Girl Benefit” and well before “ICOBOPA” the international congress of buskers of Palo Alto (plus about ten or twenty concepts that never made it passed meeting one and three or four pages in a manilla file: Palo Alto Hip Hop Festival, Palo Alto Earthwise Film Festival, and more).
I pulled three such files, looking for clues, and thinking of John Goodman Roland Turner character in backseat of car, as Oscar Isaac Llewyn Davis contemplates Green but he sees “brown” rhymes with “frown”.
1. The Donnas — I have about 100 documents, mostly clips, 1994 thru 2001, including some letters sent and some notes. I quote above and in head from one such.
2. Cake, thinner, maybe 30 pieces, but probably distinct from “show files” for two separate dates, in 1995 and 1996 which would include contracts and ad slicks. I have thousands of clippings on local and national acts, in about 26 files, sometimes like in these two cases grouping them in own file. I also have most of the cover letters and one-sheets of the 200 or so bands who sent me their demo tapes. Literally cassettes, I recently deaccessioned and in fact recycled because they are plastic but in retrospect clearly might have tried my chances donating them and having them sold for $2 each or at least offered to Palo Alto library sales. I felt a little guilty dumping all these mediated version of human expression, even after, like the librarian at Alexandra, paying about $500 or more (prorated from total storage fees of about $10,000 or more) to keep them safe all these 20 years, and at least I am keeping their names, and will maybe publish a good section of, if not the entire list.
3. Oliver Lake, 1/22/98 This is a “show file” including the contract, and the faxed offer sheet (which is barely legible, fading, talk about ephemera). Noe Venable was the opening act (she is not jazz, but was produced by Lee Townsend).
If I get to an edit to add here, I mean to expound and explicate about the Donnas per se. Recent sightings have Maya in LA studying graphic design at local college, Tory at Harvard Law (and she should be negotiating to do a punk rock riot girl version of “totally blonde’), and Allison probably the most active still in scene with Brett not too far away.
I have a permission slip signed by Marjorie Ford (mom) and Maya from January, 1995 when Maya was fifteen covering me against claims of child endangerment for paying them to perform what was their first paid gig (after probably 20 other shows in free rooms, I allude to in the letter).
Hindsight is 20-20 but I wonder what would have happened if they stayed going forward as Ragady Anne and Electrocutes but not the Donnas and a co-producer and co-writer (likewise I wonder about my self if I had taken advice of Jon Stoll my parents met at Canyon Ranch who suggested I intern at Monterey Artists or Rosebud before spending my own money on do-it-yourself…)
An uncle of Mark Everett of the Eels is famous for parallel universe theory under which perhaps there is somewhere were Maya, Brett, Tory, Brett and I are all not at all conflicted about what we saw and what we did with our opportunities.
I am wondering about the value of writing about all this, and whether it helps or hinders doing it. Makes me want to read Mark Twain about “Adam and Eve” and how naming is doing, which is also glossed by Sapir and Whorf.
To the extent that “Plastic Alto” is a memoir of the concert series I produced in Palo Alto, 1994-2001, I am influenced by Danny Goldberg’s “Bumping into Geniuses”. He says he’s kinda smart but had a talent for surrounding himself with true geniuses and bumping into them (as opposed to bumping them off, which would be in a famous book about radio payola). Meanwhile I am recalling taking a course on modern poetry at Dartmouth fall, 1985 with Tom Sleigh and reading Adrienne Rich “Fact of a Doorframe” which says something about having something to hold onto as you bang your head again and again, like a Sysyphus or Prometheus. I think my paper or classroom report must have been barely passable. I recall not knowing what “makeba” meant. I think I did better, somehow, with Elizabeth Bishop “the Fish”.
Here are two links to the main texts. I should probably link to Marian Makeba, who came alive to me in the film about Ali in Zaire (and I admit I rooted for George Foreman at the time).
(I would have seen this in a different edition, of course)
I may still have my edition on my shelves, although I did recently deaccession about 1,000 cd’s and 300 books, most to last-man-standing indie shop but one-tenth to public library sale — I wish I had given it all. Here is the relevant Makeba line:
as Makeba sings a courage-song for warriors music is suffering made powerful
During my stint last fall as a “junior historian” at Guy Miller Archives of Palo Alto Historical Association at Room H-5 at Cubberley Community Center the former high school (NFL’s Art Kuehn played for the Cougars there), I turned over a clipping, I think it was Mike Doyle’s long story listing all the music venues of the time, in the Palo Alto Weekly, and noted a recap of a Paly Vikings football game that said something like “Jim Harbaugh running for his life…”
That, plus Ann Killion’s recent piece in Chron about Harbaugh’s “act has worn thin” had me thinking about my otherwise dormant research project and performing arts spectacle, “The Harbaugina Monologues” in which I work through, sometimes in front of an audience, sometimes merely here in the blogosphere and alternative-reality of “Plastic Alto”, the fact of being a life-long Stanford and 49ers fan AND hating Harbaugh since about 1981. (Search “harbaugh” or “harbaugina” here in the internal search feature for more info).
Plus I was reading a Philip K. Dick collection of essays and had this notion: maybe the rumored mutiny against Captain Comeback is true and worse than that in caused some kid of psychic break from which Our Boy Jim has never completely gotten over. Maybe what drives him, beyond money you can earn throwing a football 70 yards with tight spiral and later picking the Colin Kaeperniks over the Russell Wilson’s and motivating them, is trying to outrun whatever it feels like, with guys chasing you and the nagging feeling that your own teammates, you are not sure whether to trust. Clearly I have no idea and am just speculating. (And am no Philip K. Dick, clearly, and thru a scanner darkly, without total recall, and maybe via my own volition and free will).
So I thought of a post here called “Run From Daylight” which references a book by Vince Lombardi., “Run to Daylight” which I think means that as you approach a mass of men you run towards the least dense portion of the scum, where there is “daylights” and not “three yards and a cloud of dust”. And not, if you permit my mind to wander as is my nature these days, like the paintings by Theopholis “Bill” Brown, circa 1958, in Life Magazine (ask Matt Gonzalez, who has seen them, and found a set for Bill, who is now in heaven), in which he merely painted the form and did not preserve the color-coded distinction of who is blocking whom, he painted all 22 or so as one tangled mass. Which is also, with the slight exception to what I seem to be saying about Our Boy Jim, although if you read it thru you may note that I suggest an exit strategy, a happy ending, as it were, that when I think of my old teammates in football, baseball, basketball, tennis or bowling, and our opposition, I think of us all the same, that the guys I was against 40 years ago I am now for; if I meet one, as time to time I do, I think of us having both survived something, or learned from each other, as being one, one mass.
Oddly, I had thought the title “run to daylight” was from guard Jerry Kramer’s bio and not Vince Lombardi’s, which I thought was called “Winning is The Only Thing”. I read a lot of these books when I was a kid, and actually, with my neighbor Andrew Dieden, used to write NFL teams and players asking for photos and stickers, circa 1972. (And that was the chief thing Andy recalled of our youth, when he contacted me out of the blue a few years ago: Are you the Mark Weiss with whom I would write to NFL teams asking for stickers?).
Do note that this version of Kramer has a forward by Jonathan Yardley, whose son Jim Yardley attended Gunn for one year, 1980-1981 and recalls sacking Jim Harbaugh twice (although I think Harbaugh was yanked for Paul Kraft, but close enough).
I wrote to Ann Killion and am curious whether she takes the bait or ignores this somewhat trivial set of data and ideas. I may end up posting my note to her here but will first see if she wants to use it somehow in her work.
Also in a somewhat related matter, I saw Seattle Seahawk Super Bowl champion Russell Wilson on Charlie Rose’s show and was pleased to note he is actually the son of former Dartmouth standout wide receiver Harrison B. Wilson (known as “Harry B” or “HB Productions, and a teammate of NFL standout Reggie Williams), and nephew of Dartmouth Trustee Stephen Wilson. Showing my true color, (Big Green), methinks young Wilson could quit the day job (ala Steve Young) and maybe think about the White House some day. (Also thinking of Bill Bradley, “A Sense of Where You Are” by John McPhee). Wilson ended up on my Fantasy Football team and helped me “place” two years in a row — I knew there was something I liked about him.
We refrained from saying “hey” to Jim Harbaugh at recent Stanford hoops game, I describe below. I am probably through with working through all that as a monologue but may update from time to time here.
I’m curious what I would have thought of Philip K. Dick if I had met him in his prime, as a peer: would I be in awe of his genius or detecting something sad or tragic or amiss? I think generally with people they are that much more deeper than we could know; it is especially dangerous to try to understand so-called celebrities we don’t know. I liked the way Rachel Kushner phrased such, in something I ripped and re-posted — I don’t know Rachel but have met her parents. I also said somewhere herein recently: Who’s afraid of Helen Sung?
I think Archers of Loaf have song about “the light”. Maybe outro with that, if I find it.
Tig Notaro and fact that she appeared at Stanford a few weeks ago but I saw the flyer too late and am losing a step. I had pretty much abandoned the Harbaugh tribute excepting fact that Ann Killion had a rant claiming “his act has worn thin” which I wanted to note and respond to, plus the fact that Steve Cohen and I sat within spitting distance of Jim Harbaugh at Stanford-Utah basketball game and that Our Boy Jim was there with his four-year-old daughter from his second and current marriage and had trained her to wave a pom-pon non-stop until start of fourth quarter and that visiting high school girls basketball teams wanted to pose with him en masse. Weird (and I probably should not comment, and had refrained until just now, and bury this, sort of. There is also something about Harbaugh doing push-ups at Marine World in Vallejo Six Flags with a female walrus, that a couple electronic news outlets recast. Big ups for Six Flags) -30- (this is actually pasted in and carried over from an update to something about Michigan politician Lisa Brown; somewhere I have a photo of my friend Steve at the Stanford-Utah hoops game that may or may not have Harbaugh visible in the background behind Steve…Tig Notaro was featured in the Times and had a riff about running into Taylor Dayne and I was comparing her use of that quasi-relationship to how I handle my set of ideas about Jim Harbaugh…-ed)
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 