Somehow I found myself searching for Martin Kryska, my Dartmouth classmate who died in a car accident in 1992. I didn’t remember that he was at Anderson Ranch arts center near Vail, CO in residency at the time of the accident. Martin was a woodworker and sculptor, although more people probably thought of him as a Nordic skier and athlete.
I found a website that has footage of the top ten finishers in the Mt. Washington race, with Kryska placing fourth. I made this somewhat eerie still shot of his finish.
Martin Kryska (1964-1992), Paly grad, Dartmouth grad, nordie, runner and artist, circa 1988
I am tempted to call a number I found and talk to the person who curated a posthumous show of Martin’s sculpture in 1995 at Dartmouth, in Hanover, N.H. It also appears that the catalog of that show is at Stanford’s Green Library.
edita the next day: I did try artist Pamela Joseph in CO a couple times and left a message saying I wanted to ask her about Dartmouth.
edit to add, three years later: Dartmouth archive has a nice photo of Martin, plus a group shot of C&T.
(when I heard about the passing of Mr. Brubeck, I thought to post a video of a performance of Oranj Symphonette, featuring Matt Brubeck, his son, on the strength that this was the first of the Brubecks I had ever met, and when I started sussing around for suitable footage, I found a short film about Matt’s bandmate in that project, reeds player Ralph Carney — the uncle of Black Keys drummer, Pat Carney — and that same film maker had a clip about a West Indies Parade in Brooklyn, which lead me to this, from Martinique; for people who want more info on Brubeck I recommend Richard Scheinin’s story in the Merc, or I want to see what is in the Times. I also think of Brubeck as an early champion of the young Taylor Eigsti, who later hired some of the Brubeck’s in his group; I also enjoy correcting people about Paul Desmond being the writer of the big hit; also, how soon until another jazz musician makes the cover of Time? mbw)
Linda Perry, the song writer who penned Christina Aguilera’s hit tune ‘Beautiful,’ saw the song played more than 12 million times on Pandora during the first three months of the year. For that Perry earned $350.
(Credit: Greg Sandoval/CNET)
Read more of Greg Sandoval CNET’s reporting here. And here. I cut and paste the above of Linda and think of it as “fair use”. We’ll see how long it stands. I think of myself as pretty soft on intellectual property rights, if that does not contradict feeling that musicians and composers should be paid a share of a revenue stream that a public traded corporation rakes in off their backs. In the instant case, I feel I am promoting Greg Sandoval and CNET by re-reporting their ideas and linking back.
I was psyched to hear just now on KTVU that Pandora stock took a hit. I was psyched last week to hear something about artists complaining that they were being used by the service which to me is like a rain dancer charging money for the rain.
The article I am ripping from above, from CNET, says, for instance, that Linda Perry’s song “Beautiful” has been spun (or whatever) 12 million times and Linda has gotten $350 in songwriter royalties from them. (Compared, for example, to the statutory rate of about 8 cents per song if I record and manufacture that song: a million bucks).
Also, related links say that the spurious Internet Radio Act or whatever (Pandora whining again, about its business model, and wanting a bailout from idiot lawmakers) is failing.
Pandora is perfect example of the fact that music does a lot more for proliferation of computers than computers does for music. If it went public at $16 and is at 7 and falling it means Wall Street and vcs cashed in and out and investors got screwed.
On the other hand, I’ve always liked Linda Perry and love her comeback as producer and writer after the demise of Four Non Blondes. I met her once at Paradise Lounge and she claimed we had met before: “I’m like Al Pacino, I never forget” — not sure where she got that. Then I wrote a weird, anti-corporate screed to her that I hope her management intercepted and trashed. I made a lifetime pass for her that I never got to present at either of the Stone Fox shows I produced. (I think I only gave out two or three lifetime passes; not that they get you much these days).
Re Linda, that she and her manager Kat Sidowsky and famous ups and downs, there and back agains, I think about apropos of my own clients and former clients.
Tim Pandora has made millions on these musicians and meanwhile very few more musicians have gone from starving to working class since the advent of 2.0 and all that.
edit to add, a year or so later: not buying the B.S. about Pandora buying a terrestial radio station in North Dakota to qualify for a better deal on publishers’ royalties: Pandora steals content from thousands of performers and labels and then tries to dictate the ransom or kickback. Also: the supermath algorithm metaculus is a lie, just look how quickly any path leads back to “the single”.
(short review, plagiarized from heather desaulniers, about new work by mary armentrout)
read more here: ^ ^ ^ > > ^ ‘ , , hey look I made the little mark dance along the line
a little wacky and very specific, ms. armentrout self-reports, now thru feb. 23
edit to add or confuse: I spent the middle slice of a shabbat doing a little homage to Ms. Armentrout a while ago then wrote about it indirectly on Patch.
If it’s an okay (I almost said “aoki”) segue from Ai Weiwei below (and Kara Maria) to Rebecca Erickson, the self-described “Korean Swedish Jew”, I actually bumped to this because my morning email included a newsletter from my close personal friend, and quasi-client Beth Custer, which included mention of a Bruce Abbott of St. Paul, MN who bought 12 copies of Beth’s Clarinet Thing.
I met beckoclar at my cousin’s bat mitzvah a few years back and was intrigued by her story, and liked her playing. For a minute we corresponded about some kind of appropriate project to work on.
(the headline is the first 10 words of her bio — I was trying to recall to what level of confidentiality I had learned of her background — somewhere there is an article that gives her Korean birth name — Good luck, mazel, namaste to this spirit, under whatever pka…My advice, not that anyone is asking, is to change the name or go solo co-leader under the name You Betcha Klezmer All-Stars, I’m just saying. You betcha!)
I found this clip of her klezmer trio busking:
I defaced or de-penised the poster for the group show at Smith-Andersen when I delivered a poster to the buen gente at Stanford’s El Centro Chicano
This is a better likeness of Kara Maria’s work, featuring the rock star Moby equipped with special penetrating x-ray specs, well hung or hung low at Smith-Andersen, summer 2012. I was going to try to sell the piece to Moby’s team, via my acquaintance Mocean Worker, Adam Dorn, son of the Masked Announcer — see how that links, thematically?
This is either the worlds worst preview for an art show or a pretty lame fan letter. I can edit to add the actual details of #@&^ upcoming local show; I think it said Feb. 25, 20&^ at Café DuNord in San Francisco. Maybe by then #@&^ can be tricked or cajoled into drawing his version of a tiger tattoo. There’s also a great show here in Palo Alto – this could be a lame and confusing preview or review of several things – at Smith-Andersen Gallery in Palo Alto featuring work most relevantly of Kara Maria tattoo animals.
LESS EAR-ELEPHANTLY, SF-BASED ARTIST KARA MARIA HAS WORK IN A GROUP SHOW IN SF THRU DEC. 22, 2012 , AT ELECTRIC WORKS ON MISSION STREET AND SOMETHING PRETTY COOL IN L.A. HAVING TO DO WITH 7 DEADLY SINS.
#@&^ and his organ trio will perform at Santa Clara University De Saisset Museum Thursday, April 12, 2012 to honor “Indelibly Yours” Tattoo art show featuring #@&^, Kara Maria, #@&^ and #@&^.
The art show features work by 28 artists including #@&^ (my girlfriend), Kathryn #@&^, #@&^ Liu, Kara #@&^, Kara Maria, #@&^ Aoki, Vanessa #@&^, and Helen Frankenthaler – #@&^. The gallery is at 440 Pepper Street in Palo Alto, near the giant #@&^ at Page Mill and El Camino; info (650) 328-7762. (these are all excerpts from mentions of K.M. previously on Plastic Alto. The “#@&^” grawlix is a self-referencing thing about posting on Palo Alto Weekly and them deleting it as obscene or ad hominem despite it’s obvious reference to at least two Ai-deas)
edit to add: I described this project and even showed my actual sketch to the actual artistKara Maria (fka Kara Maria Sloat) and she took me serious enough or indulged me enough to ask about production per se. So yeah maybe I could write to Hood Museum about lending Juan Munoz “Hombre” and letting travel like the mother in William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” all the way from Hanover to Minneapolis in a carriage or hearse and then, so, yeah, can it hang from from the Cherry stem, so how, for a minute. And maybe Dave Douglas or Steve Bernstein can gather there and play Don Cherry, his music. But for now the piece is a thought-experiment (like a Yoko Ono thingy) or exists only in Plastic Alto. (And not to digress but last night a PBS doc about Mexico 1910-1930 and Eisenstein said something about “film and plastic arts”. What are “plastic arts”?)
wait, there’s more:
Apparently I share a birthday with Claes Oldenburg, whose pink Q lurks in the Cantor quartyard and does not look like a semi-flacid penis to me
On August 12, 2009 Ai was arrested by authorities and sometime thereafter I asked Kara Maria to write something about him, on the strength of Kara having a zodiac themed print at S-A…pretty weak hand, I admit. I came quite close to posting this on another site but pulled out before it was too late:
I cannot remember is this is the thread wherein some dude calls me names and in response I go “Or, as Ai Wei Wei would say, ‘ go #^&^’ yourself’ which translates as ‘pound at et pointy thingy’ or ‘have you tried the mock smoked duck?’ ” Maybe I said “smoked mock duck” which sounds more like suck my dick which would of course be somewhat inappropriate but the run of grawlix I felt was appropriate in that it references both the Ai Wei Wei series of flipping off authority and his crab feed – -the words for “river crab” and the government euphemism “harmony” meaning arresting dissidents are quite similar. But this all goes over the head of the Weekly — I did remark to Bill Johnson that I am probably the only person who posts under his own name and still gets censored on these grounds.
Thematically linked of course is another thread and deleted post wherein apropos of whether to call a certain public figure a billionaire or philanthropist I compared it to calling Genghis Khan a pioneer in family planning (based on true fact that thousands of people carry his genes).
I am stuck in this moment trying to end with saying something funny about “dong” and “johnson”. Insert your own joke here.
Your brain trust is in your Dong-Johnson?
Getting back to #@&^ briefly I considered producing campaign posters saying GET THE #@&^ OUT which would have simultaneously referenced “move on” and GOTV “get out the vote” a common campaign acronym. That, or “P*t my Bu*t” which is actually a Vonnegut reference.
edit to add: apparently, if search-injuns are still credible, I am the first and only person to coin the phrase “smoke mock duck”!
–from our correspondent mark weiss in palo alto with additional reporting by groucho marx in tuscaloosa, who thanks to modern modem technology where able to conjoin this morning in their pajamas; that’s not actually true but it is true I am writing this from Coupa, have not actually had breakfast yet and am wearing a shirt in which I slept. I was meaning to research the Stanford muralist Juana Alicia but had some unfinished business with Ms. Sloat, if the connection is not too oblique.
Well, piss on a stick. If it’s just a link, and not an M bed, I ain’t gonna waste a whole post on it. Ok. now it works (excuse the foul language. I don’t recall ever saying “piss on a stick” aloud, and certainly haint previously written it. I recall first hearing it from a college friend, from the South, who later became a clerk for the First Circuit Court of Appeals, a lawyer for Department of Justice and partner in a firm in his home town, about three hours north of Crooks Corner and Clyde Jones.)
edit to add: this is post CDXCIV which is code for Clyde Does (sound of chain saw chopping) (for his resume)
edita, plus 21: gratuitous Blake Babies outro:
which only came out as I was counting my year-end totals and sussed out that I had posted about 285 times this year, compared to the CDXIV — which is what, close to 500 — all-time. I noted that I forgot to check the “chapel hill” box — although my brother was in a wedding in the triangle area and claims he brought me back a weekly paper….kinda seems like a dream or an air chysalis in which I would glide over to Chapel Hill now and then to be dipped in a batter and slowly cooked in indie gooeyness.
“A huge muscular man walks into a bar and orders a beer.
The bartender can’t help but stare at the guy because in contrast to his large muscles, the man has a head that is the size of an orange. The bartender hands the guy his beer and says, “You know, I’m not gay but I want to compliment you on your physique, it really is phenomenal! But I have a question, why is your head so small?” The big guy nods slowly. He’s obviously fielded this question many times. “One day,” he begins, “I was hunting and got lost in the woods. I heard someone crying for help. I followed the cries and they led me to a frog that was sitting next to a stream.”
“No shit?” says the bartender, thoroughly intrigued. He had been watching a Rick Steves marathon on public television, and as it happened, Steves was touring Notre Dame in Paris and the camera zoomed in on poor St. Denis, martyred for his beliefs, or for his weakness for bad jokes.
“Yeah, so I picked up the frog and it said, Kiss me. Kiss me and I will turn into a genie and grant you three wishes.'”
“Keep going!”
“I looked around to make sure I was alone and gave the frog a kiss. POOF! The frog turned into a beautiful, voluptuous, naked woman. She said, You now have three wishes.’ I looked down at my scrawny 115 pound body and said, I want a body like Arnold Schwarzenneger.’ She nodded, snapped her fingers, and POOF there I was, so huge that I ripped out of my clothes and was standing there naked! She then asked, What will be your second wish?'”
“What next?” begged the bartender.
“I looked hungrily at her beautiful body and replied, I want to make sensuous love with you here by this stream.’ She nodded, laid down, and beckoned to me. We made love right there by that stream for hours! (editor’s note: not to get head of myself, but this incident is also, some believe, the source of the expression that you cannot step into the same river or stream twice. You cannot, as McLuhan later proved, before he succumbed to the same fate, step into the same river once! He succumbed to a Succumbus, wearing his pajamas.)
Afterwards, as we lay there next to each other, sweating from our glorious lovemaking, she whispered into my ear, You know, you do have one more wish. What will it be?’
I looked at her and replied, How ’bout a little head?”
see also: Ferdinand Magellan: “I said, CAN YOU MAKE ME A BOWL OF MACAPUNOS?” (he was asking about the ice cream); I’ll have what she’s having: from Tucker’s Ice Cream in Alameda.
As posted on Palo Alto Weekly site, in response to their downright journalistic report on the general stinkiness of the Arrillaga Office Towers project:
Also, as the Weekly reported at the time, Steve Emslie and Tom Fehrenbach of City staff were asked by City Manager to research finding a performing arts tenant for 456 University Avenue and instead basically kicked the ball out of bounds — now it looks like they did so to protect the competing idea of a performance space at 27 University. Or the matter should be looked at more closely.
Who do they work for, the public or the developers?
(Also, when I say we pay Tommy “$60,000” I think his actual take from us is more like $150k.)
Jim Keane meanwhile, on the subject of The Varsity’s viability, said he saw the merit in it due to the fact that when he was in Berkeley Freight and Salvage raised $16 million to build a downtown arts venue – -I suggested them as a precedent and F&S’s Steve Baker was on the list of people who Fehrenbach was supposed to poll or attract.
Many people’s first reaction to the “theater proposal” at 27 immediately responded by saying “the Varsity is a better idea”.
Also I am fairly tempted to reprint the original version of my Plastic Alto report from March, 2012 in which I state that council member Patrick Burt sounded like John Arrillaga’s puppet when he claimed that “we are taking the lead here” regarding 27 University. I ran into Pat at Printer’s Cafe later that week and and he basically tried to intimidate me into changing my tone on this subject. I did redact the piece slightly when Terry and I got seated at a table with the Burts on St. Patrick’s Day, at Vino Locale, and it’s true that I forced Pat into shaking my hand three or four times during the recent campaign — I got 4,316 votes to his 9,000 — but I stand by my contention that he is more self-serving than a leader per se. Plus the way he trumpets Vascular Access Technologies like its this really big thing when it is just he and three co-workers in a set of offices that is mostly shrinks — they probably salivate at the site of him, or chuckle. Pat Burt told me , the day that five of us candidates showed up to be vetted by Mario Dianda of the News, that he attended the Bridge School Concert and I used that as an opening to re-visit 456 and he said “I” did this or that – meaning he and not being inclusive or acknowledging that I had put in a lot of energy on that issue plus, with 18 years in the music biz, as Earthwise Productions, even as a small fish, do have some insight that could help a community effort to bring nationally touring acts in music to downtown Palo Alto. He sucks from others like a vampire bat rather than trying to incorporate, be inclusive or God forbid symbioticize like the rhino and the tweeter. Pat said he liked Jack White but had never heard of the White Stripes and had certainly probably never slept on Dave Kaplan’s couch when Easy Action was a small agency and White Stripes were among his relatively unknown first clients, as I had. Kaplan, now an uber-agent at New York office of The Agency Group, was flat-mate with in the Mission with Chris Lehman, whose Heavy Into Jeff and Magnified were mainstays of the Cubberley Sessions and Palo Palooza; Kaplan, who I later visited in New York — but I stayed at Gramercy Park — was the booker for Kilowatt when it featured live shows.
It is fair comment, well within Sullivan v. New York Times and practically a civic duty to point out that Pat Burt is more of a bully than a leader; he is self-serving and self-satisfied, although I do find him sometimes likeable nonetheless. “Pat my Burt in 2012” was my mock-campaign slogan for him . That or “I’m Flabbergaseous”. Yeah, I did that: when Adam Swart for the Palo Alto Patch asked me what I thought of Cali Ave I took the opportunity to cryptically swipe at (but not Swipes at) Mr. Bu*t by saying only that the recent events were “flabbergastuous.”
Not that it would be Easy Action to get Jack White to stump for 456 University but there is more in heaven and earth, clearly, than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Patricio. If he Patrick finds his way here, with a little nudging, he would be the 25 millionth person to catch a clue thereby ( I could amend to “27 + 456 = 404 plus 7 nation”, and forgiving the Broadway Danny Roseism or “tom cruise isn’t but his agent is”-ness of the distinction between hanging with Jack White and sleeping once on his agent’s couch):
edit to add: later that day, while Terry has my car and is holiday or pre-holiday shopping, I have her computer and am hunkered down at Peets at San Antonio where Ashley kindly gave me my 50 cents off for buying the KFOG Peets sampler – I left the coupon on the bureau at Terry’s but she gave me benefit of the doubt because I sang a passable version of Foster The People “outrun my gun” acoustic version on the cd. Meanwhile, Tim who mixed my chocolate, said he thought Jack White was passe, but dug the Neil. He said his lady is in a cover band called The Bang and they recommend at the DuNord a Long Beach band on Dangerbird Sunday The Fling. Hard to keep au courant.
speaking of the press, which was where I arrived here, I also want to laud Scott Herhold of the Merc for his recent coverage of Arrillaga Project, which he says calls for “control alt delete”. Bob Moss sent a link to Scott’s coverage to council. Pinging back to my controversial and burt-dander-in-an-uproaring commentary from March, here is an excerpt from my treatise:
2) What communication or contact or instructions did you have or get from John Arrillaga about this project, prior to your public from dias statements Monday?
So, whether or not Burt per se communicated with Arrillaga — Gennady Sheyner’s recent article articulates for example that Karen Holman expressed some misgivings about the extensive secretive communications going on — I was spot on to suggest there was something in their tone — council, including Patrick’s — that does not pass the sniff test. It’s not about Pat Burt as much as the general malaise in Palo Alto self-governance. But I have to let it out, that I also wanted to make some mock campaign posters for him, substituting the asterisk * for the “a” in his first name and the “r” in this last name, interlocking like a crossword puzzle; it would have served as a Kurt Vonnegut tribute, the way he signed his autograph with an asterisk. Also there’s what I would term a goofy-scary photo of Bu*t, apparently demonstrating the high tech apparatus he now Chief Executive Officers over; it makes him look like a character out of a Adam Johnson novel, and not someone I want talking to my doctor or surgeon. For a while I was always picturing him with a helmet, like B.D. Dowling.
My other thought about 27 University is that visitors from the future will confuse Portola and the giant twin pines with Arrillaga and the giant office towers. I wish he’d put more energy into the 75th anniversary of “Guernica”. Stop reading here if you are a Euclidian but fact-checking the previous paragraph I will now have to beeline to my parents’ attic to see if my shoebox of 1974 Topps football indeed includes the former Yale star, a true Patriot, even sans helmet. See this film.
-27-
Albert Camus, reprinted in the June, 2012 Harper’s, which I read last week while pedaling a stationary bike at the Oak Creek exercise room — talk about existentialism — says that using irony rather than straight diction makes you five times more likely to get by the censors.
edit to add, kickoff time Sunday: kudos to Elaine Meyer for rallying the troops “No on 27” for Monday’s council meeting. She says wear red to show that you are seeing red. I would: dress like Jack and Meg (above) in red with white stripes.
The search functions would like us to believe that all 51 of these posts mention Chicago, my kind of town, where I did burst forth two score and eight years ago, into this great nation:
Birds of Chicago is: JT “Jeremy” Nero and Allison “Alli” Russell
probably doesn’t fit here either but my original headline for my story of Birds of Chicago, intended for Santa Cruz Patch, was “Moves Like Kava”
and this one only mentions Chicago because I am cut-and-pasting a page from the Dartmouth blast, about Dr. Seuss, but it also links thru to a biathlon skier, in Ruhpolding, Germany, described in Tribune:
I do have the snapshot somewhere of that day in fall, 2000 of me Trouz and Jerry Hannan all with matching new luggage, while in Chicago to showcase, for Tom Windish and others, at an Irish Pub:
This one is more about my antipathy for Jeannette Walls than my love of my hometown but I do mention in passing that my former client Dao Strom won the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren award, which is a short story contest worth $3,500 this year, and a lady in SF, a Harvard grad named Jennie Lin, was a winner last year (which makes me think I should do a compilation of all things “Lin”):
That’s actually about Bindlestiff Theatre in Sf but I mention Anna Fermin from Chicago. So that is 20 links; if you are all that curious just type “chicago” into the search function. And yes one of these days I will write about Chicago per se, not just mention it.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 