This way for bike signage reflectivity clue

Posted on May 7, 2013 by markweiss86

NewBikeSignsRushing home, at my customary 22 mph, to water the aging Cocker Spaniel — my mother’s euphemism for letting the dog out to make water, I stopped for a moment to shoot the new signage at Bryant and Everett, along the Ellen Fletcher Bicycle Boulevard in Palo Alto.

After parking the car — the gardener was in the driveway — closer to Poe, a half-block up, I took a closer look at our new little (metallic, reflective, bureaucratic, semiotic) babies, delaying checking on the aging but still loveable pet just long enough to for her to test me, or so it appears —

file photo of the Cocker

file photo of the Cocker

she was still sleeping by the door. I meant to only plug in the battery-dead laptop, but it sucked me in for about 10 minutes before poochie’s bad dream awakened me from my spell.

Bryant

Any hoo, I found time in my busy afternoon to suss through the search-engine long enough to ask and hopefully direct these quick three (actually seven) questions (to a website run by either the City or a vendor called Alta) and post in kind:

Three quick questions:
1) how much did we spend on the study (i.e. to Alta)?
2) how much is the total budget for the bicycle improvements, according to this site or report or initiative?
2.a does that include the $10 million bike bridge over 101 that County is paying for?
3. I notice some new signage (blue not white, lowercase, more reflective, conforming, with a bike logo) on Bryant near our home — how many of these are there? a. what is the total cost for this exact type of signage? b. what is the total cost of signage, or as percentage of the total in 2), above? c) how much per sign, i.e. like the one I photographed at NE corner of Poe/Bryant?

Mark Weiss
resident
(650) 305-XXXX

ok, I admit that is actually 7 questions — could not find answers in your 128 page document…

edit to add, a few minutes later, an hour all-in, and I really should be doing my workout and still bothers me to think I might have saved poor aging ward from her embarrassment if I and not she had just “let it go”: Palo Alto Weekly had this on-point from two years ago, by G. Sheyner.

By my quick reckoning (distinct from, for example, reflection) the chief difference in the signage is that it is reflective and incorporates the bike logo, as you approach Bryant, and apparently have no clue. I also notice the sign is blue not white, is “upstyle” but not all-caps, indicates “street” as opposed to “avenue” and points in the direction of ascending numbers, if that matters. Ok, but at what cost?

Seems to me there is a dissonance between the fact that we like to bike to work and we are part of this work culture that is so obsessive about outcomes. But of course I am also curious about the bureaucratic response to this and its effect on the semiotics. (My hypothesis, albeit cynical and only semi-informed, is that somehow the obsessive work culture undermines “we the people” from self-governing to our highest standards; that is, there are factors that seem to obscure our ability to be more bike-friendly — but I am willing to hear the counter-arguments and admit where I am clueless; like truing a wheel, our process can be improved).

I have a mental list of people I know who track this more closely.

See also, the improvements at Stanford Avenue and El Camino. (I went to a party for, and recall we spend $1 million or so to improve the crosswalks and what-not; one friend, SR, felt it was well-worth-it in terms of safe-to-school, i.e near or towards Escondido from Evergreen Park area.

The difference between this and reporting (and recall I went thru training program at Times Tribune in 1984) is that I am putting online the first three (seven) questions that pop up in my notebook.

coda: a couple weeks ago, I drove, as typical, from Palo Alto North towards Downtown per se, and when I got to the light at Lytton, a guy in bike get-up passes me on right and stops in front of me, but then turns around and glares at me and I think I can hear him thinking “you dirty rat”. What I assume happened is that, Joe Biker He, was either drafting me or riding in my blind spot on the right for a spell, completely unobserved, and maybe as I veered right to give room for an oncoming bike — a mom, or a lady on a commute bike — maybe he had to correct to avoid me. I think he was of the mind that cars should stay off Bryant even around downtown. I am sure I was going a bike-speed — my usual 22 mph hereabouts. I am thinking, if I get his drift, that he should take the middle of the road, in this case behind me directly, rather than pass me on the right, even if he can.  One point is that Bike Boulevards, in this case Bryant, probably work better outside of Downtown, and maybe two, it is more geared for a commuter than a racer. Three, and this is my bad in this case, it is hard to communicate your point if one or both is behind a wind-shield. And, finally, not sure how these new signs help in this case, but I feel him. Lo siento.

edit to add, a few minutes later: Actually, GS has two stories on this, one from July, 2011, I linked above and a second from July, 2012, that I found from link from Alta site. Alta is a bike-advocacy consulting group with offices in Portland, Berkeley and about 10 other places, and about 100 staff. Again, not to be too cynical, but there is a distinction between what is good for an abstract like “bicycling” — for instance, good for environment, good for our health — and the real world, what we get, institutions that feed off other institutions — to what extent does the bike lobby have its own agenda, or has been compromised, for example, hypothetically, by the Reflective-Sign-Mongers (friends of the Ten-Million-Dollar-Bike Bridge-Backers)? Also, in glancing at the comments feed of the second cite from the Weekly, I think it is Doug Moran who uses the term “spandex bikers” which is the shibboleth for people like the Joe Biker He, I described. I bike mostly as a commuter — although I am self-employed — and wear mostly cotton shorts not spandex.

edit to add, the next morning: I ran into my friend B.K. an avidly self-powered Palo Altan, and asked him if he had noticed the new signs on the Bryant Street Bike Boulevard. He said no, but that he had noticed that the awkward bike lane on Park, over Oregon, between Sheridan and the AOL Complex on Page Mill, had been improved some with a green painting fill-in. On his suggestion, I circled Ventura neighborhood via Park and side-streets to find that the Bike-friendly sections of Park now featured these same style of new signage, the blue reflective signs with the bike logo — I counted six of them, up past Gryphon and one block into the residential section, or 3300 Park, but no further. Similarly, after posting above last night, I drove — : ( — Bryant from Embarcadero to the creek and counted a total of 17 of the new signs, including two each at Lytton and Uni.

Pedaling on, up this hill of information, I found this comment by City consultant Jaime Rodriguez, posted on Quora, from October, 2011:

Great responses so far.  Any Bike Boulevard prioritizes bicycle use on a corridor over vehicles through traffic calming measures as noted by other responders.  In Palo Alto, we will begin branding of bike boulevards through new signage and roadway markings treatments as well as aggressively expanding our bicycle boulevard network. New purple brand signs will be installed at each intersection and gateway signs at major intersections.  The City’s first green bicycle lanes will be installed on Channing Avenue between Newell Avenue and Lincoln Avenue. A similar concept for Bike Boulevards will be used called Super Sharrows.  Please be sure to check out the City’s DRAFT Bicycle & Pedestrian Transportation Plan 2011 at: www.cityofpaloalto.org/bike

A “sharrows” is a symbol that tells motorists to share the road with bikes. (“share” plus “arrow” as in merge, I guess) BK made a morbid joke about their utility.

The Barron Park neighborhood website covers this topic, including a post from my former neighbor Art Liberman, who I think of as an avid runner, and also a leader in terms of the discussion of the risk of toxics exposure from nearby BPI; in Barron Park, they are inputting to leadership’s treatment of proposed expansion of the bike plan to include Matadero connecting to Margarita — sounds iffy, due to its narrowness; it travels along the creek and has no bike lane per se.

As B.K. and I finished our discussion of the topic, I turned around to notice our current mayor Greg Scharff meeting with the Weekly’s Gennady Sheyner but held back from approachig them with this topic.

I also found coverage in the recent couple of years from Patch and Bay Citizen.

To oversimplify my point, or my question: once we have established, forty years ago, Bryant Street as a “Bike Boulevard” meaning bikes sharing the road with cars, and removing stop signs for bikes, while adding some obstacles for cars, how does signage per se augment that, and at what cost?

There’s also a somewhat recent document apropos of using county funds to create a Palo Alto w. Stanford Bay to Skyline bike path that quotes from the 128 page Palo Alto bike plan but is itself only 10 pages. And a 6-page one.

There is also a Palo Alto Bicycle Advisory Committee (PABAC), chaired by Robert Neff and Eric Nordman that met last night at Cubberley as I was writing this.

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To Be Young and Well-Strung (Jim Campilongo, Stella Brooks, Beth Lisick riff)

Posted on May 6, 2013 by markweiss86

I’ve done about 500 posts now and have about 20,000 hits, which works out to roughly about 50 people per post. I got to thinking most of them stop by on their way to something else. At first I numbered each post in Roman Numerals, like the Super Bowl, which has the amusing effect that the thirtieth post, about street musician Emily Palen, is a huge hit: people find it while seeking out porn (“XXX”). It is true that I ocassionally post some blue material, but more likely I talk about the blues. Do you consider the Groucho Marx joke about shooting an elephant in his pajamas dirty? I’ve probably referenced that bit about ten times here in “Plastic Alto”; I also said that when Candye Kane was removed from a festival in Alabama that she would do slightly better in Tuscaloosa. (She’s doing fine, god bless).

I have a picture of Beth Lisick on a post under the headline “To Be Young and Well-Hung in Palo Alto” which is actually about the Stein family who had a collection of Matisse here, famously. Looking back (and repenting) I clicked thru to a Beth Lisick post in the Chron where she talks about Jim Campilongo and Norah Jones playing at the Make-Out Room in 2002. They played a song named “Stella” which makes me wonder if it is somehow related to Stella Brooks (who, I should disclose, i was for 18 months working for her estate or at least her niece on “legacy” work — as compared to the fact that I am a fan of Jim Campilongo but I don’t recall ever hiring him; at one point I had his cellphone number and when I was subletting Jenny Scheinman’s Carroll Gardens apartment I was supposedly also authorized to look for a place for Jim Campilongo — I guess I missed out on the chance to be a bigger part of his picture. He may have played Cubberley with Steven Yerkey, in 1995).

The link above or embed shows a player named João Pedro Martins· Joao Pedro Martins doing a minute of the Campilongo “Stella”. We presume it has lyrics in the version Norah joins.

There is also a 45 minute tutorial and conversation with Jim and Justin Sandercoe.

Jim’s site has numerously teaching aids where you can learn how he plays many of his riffs.

I have two of his earlier cds, and hope to someday complete my set.

I did see the very early Norah Jones show with Jim at the Jupiter.

Beth Lisick, who like myself once attended elementary school in Saratoga, performed at Cubberley in 1996 or so as Beth Lisick Ordeal (BLO), opening for Ozomatli and she sometimes takes my call or answers my emails years later.

With her long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail and a pair of specs perched on her famous face, Blue Note chanteuse Norah Jones took the stage at the Makeout Room last Sunday night, sitting in for a couple songs with local guitar hero Jim Campilongo. Last week, in 2002, she means.

Stella Brooks is a jazzsinger who recorded for Moe Asch Smithsonian Folkways six tracks or so, in 1946, then left the limelight to return to SF and was a hair stylist, but she also was a muse or friend to people like Marlon Brando, Tennesse Williams and Terry Abrahamson. I still think someone should re-release her tracks on a local imprint with an update on the liner notes, but what do I know?

edit to add, hours later: fact-checking the first 600 words here, I found this strange Stella Brooks tribute (coming from me!), someone adding cue drops to a novel “The Recognitions” by William Gaddis, which includes “Little Piece of Leather by Stella Brooks. Gaddis pops up sometimes when I am checking up on Stella but I haven’t quite grasped what it is, other than the fact he has a fan who would post 38 cues. To wit:

 

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A&R: stitsr

Posted on May 6, 2013 by markweiss86
The New Yorker

The New Yorker

smoke signals from search-injuns leads to>

Spires That In The Sunset Rise

hsl03-cover-web1

In 2012, STITSR released Ancient Patience Wills It Again Part 1 and 2 available as separate LP releases.
Available in the US at record stores, Hairy Spider Legs, or at our upcoming shows. Distro at Carrot Top/Saki. In Europe, available from record stores, Norman Records and Shiny Beast. Distro at Clear Spot.

Part 1

  1. Veiled Undertow 
  2. Grandma 
  3. Child of the Snow 
  4. November 
  5. Well Tempered

Part 2

  1. Before Dawn
  2. Smoke
  3. Ancient Drains
  4. Winter Song
  5. Ours Is Not The Only Society
  6. Revella

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Stevie Nicks at Cubberley Aud, 1967

Posted on May 3, 2013 by markweiss86
Stevie Nicks, of Fleetwood Mac fame, was a Menlo Atherton class of 1966 grad and sang with a local band, Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band, for a Christmas Dance, 1967, the FM fans sussed out, thanks to the Cubberley Catamount, on line in various places. I was researching a reference to a Buffalo Springfield concert at Cubberley, the Tri-School Concert, from 1967 — found a picture of the promoter, Rod Jew, student, and posters by Bill Sperry.
Lindsay Buckingham was also in this four-piece, all students at M-A, later forming Buckingham Nicks and then FM, according to those who know.
For what its worth, I had recently been reading Danny Goldberg’s book, “Bumping Into Geniuses” and the section on Nicks (he was her manager for a while). I have never met Goldberg, but saw him lecture at a conference when he was with Mercury, way off topic, which is Palo Alto cultural history.
A wikipedia entry, that doesn’t get much traffic, on Cubberley Center lists about a half dozen concerts there, the bulk of them produced by Earthwise:
Cubberley also once hosted rock shows by local bands and touring artists including Buffalo Springfield, Santana, William Penn and His Pals, Cake, Third Eye Blind, blink-182, Daniel Tsai Band, and Frank Black.
William Penn being among other things a Gregg Rolie early project (during the days at Cubberley High, which has its own wiki….).
edit to add, a couple hours later: this seems like a pretty seminal article on the early days of rock and roll on the Peninsula, with Mike Shapiro, a Cubberley grad who co-founded William Penn.
Paul Freeman fairly recently with Gregg Rolie in the Merc. Robyn Israel for the Weekly with Rolie, about 10 years ago. (with the hilarious headline “His roots are showing”….)
edit to add: this is from nearly 6 years ago — I am updating in March 2019, a visitor from the future. A man named H_ wrote me, after coming to a Scott Amendola show at Palo Alto Art Center to say:
(the above)
was taken by Bill Parrish, Cubberley class of ’69. Bill’s younger brother, Michael “has been writing about rock, folk, bluegrass, world music, and jazz for two decades in publications including the Chicago Tribune, Dirty Linen, Sing Out!, Down Beat, and the Deadhead’s Taping Compendia. In his real life, Parrish is a university administrator” at San Jose State University.
also on related topic I went, with TMW who at the top of this page was merely TMT, to The Fox in Oakland and saw a show with Neal Schon and Gregg Rolie, and loved it. To the extent that Leo Herrerea seems to have a yearly Santana Tribute show in the City of Palo Alto civic series, I always say we should try to get Gregg, a founding member of both Santana and Journey, both Hall of Fame bands. I also spoke to Lenny Siegel then mayor of Mountain View and Jerry Hill now an outgoing State elected, to erect a plaque in Mountain View near the site that Gregg met Carlos.
And 1: Greg Brown once called me to say he was digging thru his archives and found a flyer he drew for Old Brown I think it was called, a band that he claimed featured Schon or Rolie – -I know forget. But he never delivered it to me for inspection and Julie I mentioned this to, but she hasn’t in earnest gone thru the somewhat sad task of archiving the Greg Brown vault. I pass the murals every day, one or more, about four.
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Frida re-visits her stomping grounds, Johnson Park

Posted on May 2, 2013 by markweiss86

Fri0513

Not so long ago, Frida would run circles at Johnson, up the steps to the slide and down the chute

Not so long ago, Frida would run circles at Johnson, up the steps to the slide and down the chute

It was too hot to do much more than sniff the grass; I agreed to carry her home, two blocks

It was too hot to do much more than sniff the grass; I agreed to carry her home, two blocks

FRIDApark0513

edit to add, in flashback:

12

Frida and Charles

Frida and Charles

 

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Getting word in edgewise

Posted on May 2, 2013 by markweiss86

EdgeHandMost of the smart people I know want nothing to do with politics. We avoid it like the plague—like Edge avoids it, in fact. Is this because we feel that politics isn’t where anything significant happens? Or because we’re too taken up with what we’re doing, be it Quantum Physics or Statistical Genomics or Generative Music? Or because we’re too polite to get into arguments with people? Or because we just think that things will work out fine if we let them be—that The Invisible Hand or The Technosphere will mysteriously sort them out?

Whatever the reasons for our quiescence, politics is still being done—just not by us. It’s politics that gave us Iraq and Afghanistan and a few hundred thousand casualties. It’s politics that’s bleeding the poorer nations for the debts of their former dictators. It’s politics that allows special interests to run the country. It’s politics that helped the banks wreck the economy. It’s politics that prohibits gay marriage and stem cell research but nurtures Gaza and Guantanamo.

But we don’t do politics. We expect other people to do it for us, and grumble when they get it wrong. We feel that our responsibility stops at the ballot box, if we even get that far. After that we’re as laissez-faire as we can get away with.

What worries me is that while we’re laissez-ing, someone else is faire-ing.

(An essay by Brian Eno, “We Don’t Do Politics”; Brian Eno
Artist; Composer; Recording Producer: U2, Coldplay, Talking Heads, Paul Simon; Recording Artist; my connection to Eno is rather trivial and indirect: he wrote liner notes for Doug Hilsinger and Caroleen Beatty tribute album “Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy” during my tenure as Waycross manager, “individually, professionally and collectively known as…”)

I found a couple random snapshots from ten or so years ago that I thought to, via my stupid cell phone, swede into this blog. I thought the photo of the defunct nightclub “The Edge” relevant apropos of my recent post about the plans to demolish 260 California to make way for even more office space here. I presume what ocassioned the shot, in March, 1999, was the novelty of the band name, Nashville Pussy. (I didn’t see that show, but caught them once at Bottom of the Hill). I recall being afraid, for example, to book Sex Mob, because of the name. I booked the Matador Recording artists Fuck, into Cubberley, and the facility manager called me into his office to protest. Not the band name, but that the flyer was so poorly done, with hand lettering (my pseudo-Finsteresque scrawl) and featured a line drawing I stole or transformed from a book about P.T Barnum, of a sea creature or some marvel. Gina Arnold marvels on Pussy here in Metro, and thereby earns a “tag” — I am trying to reach her, indirectly, mostly, about so-called Palo Alto Rock and Roll Archive.

Here is relatively recent shot of 260 California Avenue, Illusions nee Edge nee Keystone Palo Alto nee Sophies nee Vortex, also conjuring Abbey Road cover and Lance Armstrong, speaking of illusions.

260cali

(bridge)

To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.

(verse)  `

If we have a million photos, we tend to value each one less than if we only had ten. The internet forces a general devaluation of the written word: a global deflation in the average word’s value on many axes. As each word tends to get less reading-time and attention and to be worth less money at the consumer end, it naturally tends to absorb less writing-time and editorial attention on the production side. Gradually, as the time invested by the average writer and the average reader in the average sentence falls, society’s ability to communicate in writing decays. And this threat to our capacity to read and write is a slow-motion body-blow to science, scholarship, the arts—to nearly everything, in fact, that is distinctively human, that muskrats and dolphins can’t do just as well or better.

The internet’s insatiable demand for words creates global deflation in the value of words. The internet’s capacity to distribute words near-instantly means that, with no lag-time between writing and publication, publication and worldwide availability, pressure builds on the writer to produce more. Global deflation in the value of words creates pressure, in turn, to downplay or eliminate editing and self-editing. When I tell my students not to turn in first-drafts, I sometimes have to explain, nowadays, what a first draft is.

Personal letters have traditionally been an important literary medium. The collected letters of a Madame de Sévigné, van Gogh, Jane Austen, E.B. White and a thousand others are classics of western literature. Why have no (or not many!) “collected emails” been published, on paper or online? It’s not only that email writing is quick and casual; even more, it’s the fact that we pay so little attention to the email we get. Probably there are many writers out there whose emails are worth collecting. But it’s unlikely that anyone will ever notice. And since email has, of course, demolished the traditional personal letter, a major literary genre is on its last legs.

Writing ability is hard to measure, but we can try and the news is not good. Recently the London Daily Mailreported on yet another depressing evaluation of American students:

While students are much more likely to call themselves gifted in writing abilities [the study concluded], objective test scores actually show that their writing abilities are far less than those of their 1960s counterparts.


It’s hard to know how to isolate the effects of net-driven word devaluation in the toxic mix which our schools force-feed our children every day. But at any rate, the Internet Drivel Factor can’t be good—and is almost certain to grow in importance as the world fills gradually with people who have spent their whole lives glued to their iToys.

At the Huffington Post, the future is now; the Weekly Standard has republished parts of a Huff-and-Puffington piece by the actor Sean Penn. Even assuming that Sean Penn is a lot more illiterate than most people, the Post is a respectable site and the Penn piece is eye-opening.

The conflicted principle here, is that which all too often defines and limits our pride as Americans who, in deference to an omnipresent filter of monoculturalism, isolationism and division, are consistently prone toward behaviors and words, as insensitive and disrespectful, while at foremost counterproductive for the generation of young Americans who will follow us.

The only problem with this passage is that it is gibberish. The average ten-year-old hasn’t fallen this far yet. But the threat is real, is way under the radar and likely to stay there; prognosis: grim.

David Gelernter. “Worry About Internet Drivel”
Computer Scientist, Yale University; Chief Scientist, Mirror Worlds Technologies; Author, America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled our Culture (and ushered in the Obamacrats)
I found my way to Edge dot org because there is a lecture coming up at Stanford about “Buddha and Green Goo” which is a reference to Eric Drexler and “grey goo” and he contributes to this site from which I so shamelessly pilfer. It is true these 1,200 words of mine are devalued relatively to say, writing for the Gunn High Oracle in 1982, but in the moment I find it useful, absorbing and fun. I still think of it as a notebook more than a broadside. I was meaning to revisit Faulkner/Williams/Newman and “Barn Burning” and to look again at whether the meandering style is just nuts, or, worse, mixed nuts, but found this a nice digression, and a use for the photos. Fittingly, if there are gods out there who care about where I park my carcass or peck my keyboard, directly after I asked the guy next to me to document me for this purpose, I knocked over my water glass, here at Peet’s and maybe fried this little purloined Macbook. Also: I want to cross the street and shoot the mosaic of a harp in the sidewalk, at University and Kipling, recently site of Apple Store but formerly a music store. Isn’t there a constellation of the Harp? See also “Welcome to Dopeland” which I call “Touch of Grey Goo”.
STARBUCKS ON THE WAY . . . Those craving a coffee fix as they drive along The Royal Way in Palo Alto will soon be able to pull into a new Starbucks at the corner of El Camino Real and Stanford Avenue. The new coffee house will be occupying the old Mountain Mike’s pizza building at 2000 El Camino Real. Starbucks plans to improve the dark brown building with new storefront windows, colors, signs, outdoor seating and landscaping. The Architectural Review Board is scheduled to discuss the improvements on Thursday. Starbucks’ other Palo Alto store is on University Avenue. (Palo Alto Weekly, August, 1998 — I have fond memories of that pizza parlor being the official post-game headquarters for Gunn basketball, 1980-81, but had never heard of Ai Weiwei or his “Studies in Perspectives” at the time I shot this):
I like Peets but hate the other guy

I like Peets but hate the other guy

regarding Gelernter, well said. I do think of the writing here at “Plastic Alto” like not just a notebook that I am merely leaving open for you to peek at, but also like a rough draft. What is the point in bash-bash-bashing away at deeper thoughts if this is not actually being fixed in ink somewhere? Also, there is this thing about going back and finding links, competing with, displacing, finding better ways to nick and tuck in my flow per se. Ginsberg has its impact on me, but also Rauschenberg, and David Shields. Although I can also still here the paternal and reassuring voice of Chauncey Loomis on audiotape (itself presumably lost, except in my head, my mind’s ear) telling me “now you are really writing” as I explicate some sophomoric assertion about Milton “Paradise Lost” — or was he just being nice? Flash forward to Harry Connick last night telling off Randy Jackson about the singer being both “original” and more like the Etta James version, versus the Lena Horne version of Arlen’s “Stormy Weather”, and also recalling Teddy Conway saying that as a freshman at Cardinal Newman Connick was bullied and transferred out. Or me, in the first row at the Orpheum in SF in 1991, spitting out four words almost on key of Queen “Death on Two Legs” and getting Harry’s hand, a high five, speaking directly of my sub-theme here of all things digital. (Harry was saying that at one point before he got into Cole Porter he was a “yat” and liked stoner rock, and arena rock, as I did — I also wrote him once via his manager’s office about whether or not he was Jewish and got no response — it was the year that I commissioned Elizabeth Hutchinson to make me a “5751” New Years Card, reclaiming the swastika, the four descenders linked, like a yad — years later Connick did come out as black, I mean gay I mean Jewish, as if it makes a difference.

(coda)

The coda six hundred words later has links back to Gelernter’s paintings, and a picture of

The Author

The Author

in the moment and I think Daniel Kahneman is his name.

If we have a million photos, we tend to value each one less than if we only had ten. And here I’ve added five more to the mix.

(trucks)

This is my old Forerunner, Andy Heller's LDR rig and a mystery rig, loading into Cubberley Theatre, Earthise Productions' Palo Alto Soundcheck, circa 1999, and tip of my thumb, 2013

This is my old Forerunner, Andy Heller’s LDR rig and a mystery rig, loading into Cubberley Theatre, Earthise Productions’ Palo Alto Soundcheck, circa 1999, and tip of my thumb, 2013

edita, two minutes later but two hours all-in: Drexler has a wordpress blog and his sample of Kahneman drew me in then led me to Edge.org, if we really care to know how my mind and the internet work. I have a clip from a while ago on Kahneman and the rationale for artists to make art, that I wanted to research and comment on…

–2014-

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Alden Van Buskirk news flash

Posted on April 30, 2013 by markweiss86

BEYOND THE NEWS
In-depth coverage and analysis of recent significant items
in the news, produced by our news department.

8:00 THE POEMS OF RATTRAY AND VAN BUSKIRK

Poet David Rattray reads from his own work, and that
of Alden van Buskirk, a young poet who died in his early 20s several years ago. Mr. Rattray has translated many European poets,
among them Antonin Artaud, and lives in New York, (to be re-
broadcast Friday the 17th, 2:30 p.m.)

9:00 MUNDO CHICANO

Musica para La Raza, y los demas tambien. Antonio
Salazar hosts a program of music and guests of interest to the
Chicano community and to all.

11:00 HOUR 25: sf

Kathy Calkin, Mike Model and John Henry Thong with
science and sci-fi (pronounced skiffle) [“. . . Who was continually
crion. . . .”

This is from Pacifica Radio, KPFK in LA in August, 1973. I found this by searching “jazz poetry” and “alden van buskirk”. I was sussing out Yusef Komunyakaa, who won the Pulitzer for Poetry in 1994, and was quoted by David Wayne Hampton in his blog hillybillyinthesky, and who also borrowed a Faulkner line for his new novel, “The Slow Constellations Wheeled On”.

I had been reading “Barn Burning” from William Faulkner, from 1930, originally published in Harper’s, but I got it from “Collected Stories, Vintage, 1995, borrowed from Palo Alto Main. “Barn Burning” presages “The Hamlet” with the exception of certain aspects of Sarty Snopes described therein.

Another writer suggests the cosmological image is based on Endymion by Keats.
To me it also calls up Journey’s “Wheel in The Sky”, from 1977, but I will save that for another story.

This thread inspired by the Paul Newman double-feature at Stanford Theatre, “The Long Hot Summer”, based loosely on “Barn Burning” and a couple other Faulkner sources — although the credits don’t admit as much — and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” which of course is Tennessee Williams, both from 1958.

suddenly last week, on a hot april aft

suddenly last week, on a hot april aft

Halliwell is medium cool on each film, one star each.
Thomson is pretty harsh on Newman generally.

The director also worked with Newman on “Hud” which I guess is a better movie.

ode to last week's marquee

ode to last week’s marquee

In terms of depicting the South or being a literary adaptation, I think Robert Penn Warren “All the King’s Men” fared much better, there is a consensus. It’s not just me.

I am wondering about the new movie “Mud” starring Matthew McConaughey who is actually from Texas.

I think Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” probably gets it closer, and certainly delivers a better dramatic wallop — like a full-load to the face, Cheney-esque.

A bit off topic, but the Jimmie Rodgers song used in “Long Hot” reminded me of driving with Henry Butler from New Orleans to Huntsville, and noticing a roadsign for a Jimmie Rodgers memorial in Meridian, Mississippi, three hours from either place.

Any hoo, Professor Yusef might include Alden in his work…and yesterday was his 66th birthday, it tern’s out Whan that aprill with his shoures soote indeedy.

edita: A thing of beauty is a joy forever…but…I am not sure the value of trying to read through 992 lines of Keats “Endymion” to ascertain how much he influenced Faulkner and or indirectly ended up influencing “Wheel In the Sky” by Journey… a thread or rabbit-hole suggested by literary scholar C.D.Holmes. More scholars, pseudo-scholars, sophomores and fakers tend to cite “Ode to a Grecian Urn” as a more obvious influence, and of course MacBeth. I took a Faulkner seminar with Chauncey Loomis in 1985 but was pretty distracted from doing my best work so have only a vague residual sense of William Cuthbert, enough, however, to catch a whiff of something non-popcorn-esque the other day at Stanford, which I admit I’ve done a pretty shabby job of cleaning up after.

edita, 2: and somewhere in my latemorning to earlyafternoon ramblings, here at Coupa, as my cappuccino has been reduced to a cold milky residue, drained of its precious jolt, because the KPFK transcript went there, as I skimmed for more Rattray milk or meat, I shot off a query to an actor about an anti-war play, apropos of the news of Dao Strom setting a May release date for her cd and chap book — nothing to do with “Lami” or Faulkner, other than Dao is a Michener Fellow and genius. And a bit of the original Muse for “Plastic Alto”: 24 mentions so far…it is time for a new mythology.

edita, 3: I am about two hours into this, and tiring, but I wanted to slather on this quote from a Faulkner scholar about “all-timeness”, a conflation of flashback and flash-forward; “Barn Burning” was told in a combination of real time and twenty years later; I am rationalizing the switch from a discussion of the movies per se (last week; from 1958, texts I had read or were taught mostly 1983-1885) to Van Buskirk, forever 1961, and December 2012, and NEWS TO ME, 1973:

According to [retired Redlands professor Rebecca] Rio-Jelliffe, Faulkner reinvents the conventional narrative techniques of flashback, flashforward, and the suspended moment to capture and preserve not an instant of “timelessness” but a moment of “all-timeness” (pp. 101-102). 

Although this does muck up my Dao-ism about new mythology, or not?

Or is this the world’s most occluded “Mud” preview?

To the extent that the two films, “Long hot” and “…Tin Roof” were billed as a Paul Newman feature, is either clumsy or brilliant in that indeed the scholars (Thompson and or Halliwell at least) think the two films comingled and that “Long Hot” although a Faulkner vehicle was also a reaction to the Williams masterpiece, which was making waves on Broadway and was, we presume, an anticipated Hollywood offering. So to me what is more interesting, besides marveling at a Newman who is younger than me, by far (he was 33 at the time, and I am “thirty-something”) is the respective father-son relations, between Newman and Orson Welles (b. 1915) in the faux-Faulkner and Burl Ives (1909-1959!) as Big Daddy. (Getting over that neither father-actor was actually old enough to be Newman’s father in real life). Secondary is comparing Liz Taylor to Joanne Woodward (who, of course, was married to Newman at the time).

I wonder about Ives portraying a man who is dying then actually dying soon thereafter. (scratch that, the bit about Burl Ives being sick during filming; he lived on, but made some bad commercials)

David Thomson is pretty harsh on Newman: “the emotional intensity eludes him”, “(a) young, middle-aged man wondering what could replace prettiness”, and later “so too his ‘straight’ parts seem neutered and derivative” and jumping ahead a few years “a pickled schoolboy pretending confidence in ‘The Sting'”.

Here is the Thomson book, from 2010, although I understand he has a new book, more narrative and less resourceish, and was interviewed about such by Greil Marcus last fall (and DT taught at Dartmouth but not in my era):

http://www.amazon.com/New-Biographical-Dictionary-Film-Completely/dp/0307271749/ref=la_B000APTXPI_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1367362278&sr=1-2

My Halliwell, by the way, is from 1995, which is fine with me since I am mainly interested in his views on twentieth century films, that came out before I was a viewer; Amazon is selling a 23rd edition, from 2008 (and my stance reminds me of my use of Webster’s Ninth, I sometimes mention):

http://www.amazon.com/Halliwells-Film-Guide-Movies-Matter/dp/0007260806/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367362709&sr=1-1&keywords=halliwell+film

Tracing from the Times obituary of Newman in 2008, I am seeking to read the comtemporaneous opinion of these films by the film critic, who is said to have been forced out soon after for not getting “Bonnie and Clyde” (displaced by Pauline Kael and her ilk, for instance).

Thompson does not even mention Welles turn in LHS in his account of the star of “Citizen Kane” and “The Third Man.”

Lee Remick coincidentally or as Fates would have it, was in a version of Faulkner’s “Sanctuary”, but “never totally convincing as Temple Drake.” She plays Eula Varner, a sexpot not entirely Faulkneresque.

Someone more thorough than me can compare these two films to “Hud”, five years later, 1963, also, like “Long…” directed by Martin Ritt and also dealing with father and sons; this one is based on a Larry McMurtry story.

edit to add: distinguishing the two Jimmy Rogers might make a nice post; the Jimmy Rodgers singing the title song for “The Long Hot Summer” is a pop singer born in Washington in 1933, while the Jimmy Rodgers of Mississippi is “Father of Country Music”, subject of a Bob Dylan tribute and died in 1933. I also traced the “Antonio Salazar” mentioned in the KPFK log in the intro to find that he had moved to the Bay Area, was active in journalism and there is now a scholarship in his name at SFSU, again, perhaps worth looking into on another day. Part of the inspiration for this piece is my discovery that although the Stanford Theatre showed “A Star is Born” as part of a Judy Garland festival, Halliwell ranks the original 1937 with Janet Gaynor as superior — I haven’t seen any of the three versions, although I recognize the Barbara Streisand song from my days as a Casey Kasem regular listener, “(Ageless and) Evergreen”(1976, by Streisand and Paul Williams). Much of this, I now see, was covered much more cogently although as an aside by Palmer and Bray in their book about Tennessee Williams, which I found by typing “Bosley Crowther” in the search-injun.

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Nampeyo of Hano bowl with bird motif, circa 1905

Posted on April 28, 2013 by markweiss86

25618-nampeyo.jpg

“The painted design is classic Nampeyo, and in fact, there is a similar bowl also by Nampeyo in the permanent collection of the Milwaukee Public Museum that is the match to this bowl.  Both bowls show the classic heavy black double framing lines around the elaborate abstracted bird design in the center.  Under a polished red sky band, the spirit bird dangles its beauty to please the Hopi deities.  At the top of the design, we see the classic triangular accordion shapes of the kachina’s lightening frame ending in a large bird’s wing, a frequent Nampeyo design element.  Beneath, we see the bird’s body with its interior nicely abstracted, while three tail feathers complete the vertical design.  To the sides, elaborate feathers are presented.  Interestingly, the classic swirl design that Nampeyo originally borrowed from the prehistoric Sikyatki potters and which dominated much of her early work is here reduced almost to an afterthought and used only as a small portion of her design on the right side of the bird.  But it is this shift of focus that dates this piece to Nampeyo’s mature period, from 1910 to 1920, when she has integrated the great Sikyatki designs into her work and is producing fluid masterful painting from her own genius, surpassing her original models.”  Steve Elmore Indian Art

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Signs of the times: Peet’s, Nirvana and Susan O’Malley

Posted on April 24, 2013 by markweiss86

I’m rushing through this, mostly visual post:

Peet's facade on University Avenue, Palo Alto

Peet’s facade on University Avenue, Palo Alto

Although I sip on at least five brand name coffees and probably 10 physical locations, all within 5 miles of my abode, each month, totally about 20 trips to a coffee house, in lieu of office in home, and supplementing the public library, I am most partial to brand Peet’s. I like their coffee, backstory, wireless access (and the hour-limit actually saves me from falling down a rabbit-hole) and overall experience. But I was kinda trippin’ the other morning, on University, the 400 block, the redundancy of all the signage. I noted 11 different places with the logo on front of store, most obviously sign above door, two-sided shingle above door, and two-sided sandwich board on sidewalk. I would think the product is strong enough and there are enough repeat customers that we don’t need the flurry of signs.

here we are now, over-charge us

here we are now, over-charge us

FFurthr down the block, I was stopped by the Nirvana poster in the window of the sports gallery. Krist, Kurt and Foo flanked by Posey, Jackie Robinson and a Shark. Having recently been mulling over and posting some about my poster collection, I took it as an auspice that Nirvana had infiltrated the jock world. Purists might note the irony of the band showcasing at the New Music Seminar — sounds like something that the label would have had to convince the band to do, although I will have to consult my Gina Arnold or my Danny Goldberg to verify that. The poster says “early” or “vintage” or “rare” ephemera, which I guess says “collectible”.

But when I asked the clerks about the poster, they directed me to a wall at back of store with another half dozen supposed gems: for the Dead and Stones et all. I started to notice a little serial number in the bottom of each poster, including the Nirvana, you can see above, which scream REPRINT. There all about $90 each, including the frame, but I would pass and wait for something more authentic. I will edita to confirm whether these are all from Wolfgang’s Vault. The clerk says that the gallery sometimes does auctions at Slim’s.

Actually, according to Jon Parales, four months later, Nirvana playing New Music Seminar was keeping it real and supporting college radio for the band that was already multi-platinum for “Nevermind” and was releasing “In Utero”, duly noted. And despite my cup of Joe from Le Boulange today (top of Uni, local chain bought by EVIL CORP for millions), I did space on Dave Grohl ten minutes ago, above, but like the use of “Foo” as a placeholder, to stet.

susan o'malley good call

susan o’malley good call

Terry and I met Susan O’Malley at an event at Palo Alto Art Center, for the closing of the group show there that featured part of her “Community Advice” project. Susan interviewed 100 Palo Altans about life and attitude and then created 10 letter press pieces, some of which hung in the gallery, some sold in the gift shop, some still available on her website and others placed all over Palo Alto, most notably or noticeably on Embarcadero near the Art Center.

As someone who has spent numerous hours placing posters and notices on surfaces protected and unprotected, I couldn’t help rescuing the piece I saw taped to a newsrack on Cali Ave some months ago. I could tell from the chop that this was the work of an artist and not just some naive well-meaning person, or superior being from outer space, trying to reach us with a message. I also pulled off of Embarcadero and rescued another of these, before I did the math and realized it was an extension of a current exhibition, which I later viewed.

But I also had my own riff. I wanted to re-purpose the one about sleeping in the RV for the sake of raising consciousness about the current debate here about a subgroup of community members who indeed sleep in their cars, or RVs. I contacted Susan’s gallery, my friend and sometime collaborator Joey Piziale and asked him to ask Susan if we could re-run a batch of these and put them up especially near the areas with car-sleepers, like off El Camino, near College Terrace. I had been invited to go to a meeting that I think is ongoing on this issue, on campus, at the Episcopal Lutheran Church on Stanford Avenue; I thought they might like to see these posters.

I also wanted to modify and maybe reproduce the one that says “Do Not Lie” and change it to “Do Not Sit-Lie” which is the legal term for when a panhandler goes beyond his First Amendment rights to aggressively solicit or beg, whilst in the stationary position, on otherwise public and free property. I still may do that — create my own set of “Do Not Sit-Lie” xeroxes, after O’Malley.

Susan did not seem mad at me for threatening such a repurposement of her hard work. Meanwhile. one of our local rags mentions that in SF Tom Ammiano is behind a statewide measure that would rescind some local sit-lie bans.

Susan’s work reminds me also of course of Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer.

As a McLuhanist, I was into anything that is letterpress and tacked to a telephone poll, so retro, in this era of social media and all that. Medium is the message regardless of what the message actually says (which I thought some would think author is being ironic).

I think I have the actual poster documented on Susan’s site, on Cali Ave.

Reminds me that I mean to contact the Paly High young lady I saw present at PAPAC who had a sketch of a proposed mural that featured the Paly Viking mascot self-reflectively holding a spray can and stencil. I’d like to publish that work here. Her name and email address were on another site’s comments page.

Also, need to lament here the passing of Colby Posters in LA, from whom I ordered a Asylum Street Spankers poster circa 1999 and we also have from LACMA an “ACCEPT THE GOOD” part of the Third Drawer collaborative series. I did do a Blue Eyed Devils poster from the same letterpress group Susan used in Oakland about 10 years back.

The photo above is Terry decorating her studio with this O’Malley derived set sold at the event last week and pulled or scraped by a budding artist named Katherine B Nammacher.

That’s about one thousand words more than I thought I would get into today. Now to walk the Cocker and maybe go for a swim, leaving laundry, car wash and oil change for another day, if the good lord is willing and the creeks don’t rise. And, oh, yeah, enjoy your hair while you have it.

edit to add: regarding the Nirvana poster, I’ve found two different versions of the 1993 poster. The one in Palo Alto storefront is definitely a reprint, but probably not from Wolfgang’s Warehouse (which does offer reprints of a RHCP/Nirvana poster, prices ranging from $38 to $600 or some such. This thread had me following gigposters subsets for Nate Duval and Pat Hamou, and then reading about Pat Hamou two recent shows in Bay Area on Jewish gangsters, he’s painted. All roads lead to digression, in Plastic Alto. Today I am at Zoe Cafe, for the bagel, but might pop up at a Peet’s or that Peet’s, soon enough.

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Medway Forest Indians

Posted on April 23, 2013 by markweiss86

way past my bedtime but I am trippin over the news (to me) that Perry Lane is now Oak Creek — and who are or were Medway Forest Indians?{that’s not actually true, but close enough for Plasty late night}

sent me

edit to add, a week later: I am wondering about the use of Edward Curtis photographs as source material for early BGP and Family Dog posters, contemporaneous to above….I also caught about half of Ken Kesey/Milos Forman/Jack Nicholson “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” last night on ION/710 and notice that it takes place in 1963 at least for the movie and want to catch even the blooped version (with blurred lips for the fucking lipreaders), “Al Downing” pitching first game of the World Series, versus Koufax, et al — see also Meatloaf and Phil Rizzuto — I want to read the book, I think it is hiding somewhere in my shelves — and there I am not far apparently from Perry Lane. I should try to read the thing at the Oak Creek Pool. I met Kesey at Bay Area Book Fair 1991 and my job was to grab him by the elbow and gently lead him from Furthr to the podium in time for his hit. I also proposed, at least in my head, that in response to Jim Burch’s proposal to paint FREE on Palo Alto Shuttle that we paint it psychedelic as homage to Kesey — that would get attention, more than the talking heads, I contend.

I have an email thread with Wes Wilson loosely speaking on this topic…I had never noticed an Indian (probably from Curtis) in Family Dog logo…

From a famous movie, with Indian theme:

Chief

I had no idea that Will Sampson (1934-1987) was an amazing painter:

edit to add: the rock history blog on which someone said that Perry Lane is now Oak Creek actually had other commenters correct him: Perry Lane is just over the creek, and up Sand Hill west from Oak Creek 1800s; I will check it out soon enough; I’ve walked past it about 100 times not making the connection — the cottages are all wiped out.

In a somewhat related matter, Greg Brown mentioned that he ran across an old Old Davis poster than either Gregg Rolie or Neil Schon asked him to design back in the day, and he said he would show it to me. Weird place for me to mention that I caught MGMT at Frost Amphitheatre the other day but didn’t recognize any of their songs, and didn’t realize until I learned it online that they are a psychedelic band from Wesleyan — I was sort of thinking Flaming Lips and Olivia Tremor Control. Their videos are quite good even if I am jumping on a bandwagon pretty late in game (or pretty lame in gate).   I recall Ramona Downey moving my BOTH showcase in 2008 to give priority — rightfully — to MGMT.

Added a year or so later, or exactly two years later, Earth Day 2015, and Greg Brown has been gone nine months):
I saw this Grateful Dead artwork in a private collection. It has autographs from band members Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and Vince Welnick. It says “1988” and that the artist was named Jack Johnson. The shirt was for an east coast fall tour including nine dates at Madison Square Garden. It’s a pelon, which means a test-print or A/P or proof. I saw the actual shirt on sale for $179 on line.

Grateful Dead or DaedlufetarG

Grateful Dead or DaedlufetarG

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