I had a weird dream this morn.
One of those early rising not quite asleep thingies.
Like the Kubrick movies, eyes wide shut.
It was mostly about Sled Allen the baseball player. He was from the 1920s, Lawrence Ritter-era.
But there was also a bus ride, a ham sandwich, that changed to turkey midway through, and a Willy Wonka-esque guide.
On the top of the hill was this hyper-dense obelisk. Not really that much like the other Kubrick movie. The CIA were somehow involved. There was some kind of math problem that I could not quite grasp. Twelve. 7 feet. 4 feet. The elevation falls 85 feet total. The art turns the hillside into the canvas, rather than merely being the place the art is located.
it took a long time to deliver. Jordengen Steel, They almost had to bypass Oregon altogether and reinforce 12 bridges.
There was a tower where you walk up about 116 steps and then back down the other side, of the interior another 116 steps, unless Kronos Quartet was playing, then you could sit in the outdoors amphitheatre. It reminded me of where? Sevilla or Italy? Something Islamic.
There was the mirror image house with cement walls that slighty would start to converge. And all the tomb-stone cutters were hijacked to cut the walls.
And there was the boat made of white wood planks…and the uh, hull of the upside down boat — did I mention there is a ladder, a white ladder, in the tree? — has a little silver pin in it, put with permission, and this pen represents the point on which the two cement walls from the house on the hill would meet.
And there is a foundation of a house — the house is actually in Poland, or is it in Venice? I mean Italy. No, Poland. The foundation of the white house is very white, with sand from Pebble Beach. I mean Carmel. And there was running water. In the pillows. Of the beds. Which were exactly the side of a man — a particular man. Not Sled Allen, another man. Maybe his son. And the water represented memory. Of family. And a dog. The dog need surgery. Or needed rest. But the dog wanted to play, or fetch or swim in all the pools.
And there was a pool and the base of the tower. And other one next to a giant glass wonton from Japan.
And there was an ashy set of 4,000 or so wooden planks. That represent family. And Poland maybe too. But not Stan Musial. Who played for the Cards not the Browns. Sled played for the Browns.
And there was a man with his head in a tree and his trousers down by his ankles. I touched his tie. It was rather flexible, yet rigid. But not hyper-dense. And a woman bent over with her skirt and I tried not to look too closely but I don’t think she had underwear.
And there were sheeps. I could not see them. I could not hear them. Or I did hear them but they sounded like Niagara Falls. And they were connected by a whole room full of computers but some day a man will come and will hold a device in his hands and if he pushes a button the room full of computers will go away and be replaced by that one button. And some satellites.
And there was a long staircase, made of cement. And some stairs were really big steps. Not Giant Steps like Coltrane but 17″ which is considerable. Maybe 423 steps.
I recall noticing when I was on step 86 coming down from the tower.
I threw a sliver of one and the top brought me back a ham sandwich, chips, water, and a cookie.
The man said he was from the CIA but if we told anybody about it he would just wave and disavow.
Martin Puryear was in the dream, but then he left and boarded up the room in which we were eating our sandwiches. I was not sure if that was the real Martin Puryear or just another man using his name. I took a picture but it was blurry. My phone had no memory.
A man who said his name was not Jorgensen and reminded me of Willy Wonka said “do not touch the art.”
I walked around for about four hours. There were other people there , that I tried to connect to, with mixed success.
I stood on the 86th step, from the top
When I could see the Golden Gate Bridge and Transamerica I knew I would soon be home safe.
There was more weird lucent art objects there but I cannot remember them.
Oh yeah, the sheeps would huddle next to the obelisks and warm themselves.
And then I was trying to climb this concrete wall and I had a hold in a crevice cut into the wall but I wasn’t sure if I could maintain and then I woke up
edit to add, more photos from my weird art dream only I forgot or disavow what they are or what they mean:
I am reading “Kepler’s Dream” by Juliet Bell, a name used by Sylvia Brownrigg, who I’ve known since the fifth grade, at Fremont Hills. Coincidentally, the story is told from the perspective of an 11-year old. Here is Syliva or Juliet today, or a week ago:
This is Julie Bell. Or is it Sylvia Brownrigg?
As promised, the book was reviewed in the Sunday New York Times, which I skimmed while on the bus en route to Oliver Ranch with a bunch of Palo Alto art aficionados.
Mr. Brownrigg, I mean Sylvia’s husband and baby-dad Sedge Thomson, made a joke to me about how at the shindig there were bagels and donut-holes, but not donuts nor bagel-holes. I took a picture of the bagel platter, but then erased it. A lady at my table, perhaps not realizing the roles here, said “Somebody should tell that guy to shut up!” He’s self-syndicated, don’t you know.
Then I caught WCL the following week and texted Matt Gonzalez about Jonathan Richman singing in Italian, which I called “an ode to Ferlinghetti”; Matt wrote back to say he was not familiar with the show. His loss.
Sylvia and Sedge met on the show. For a while he would make reference to “Sylvia Brownrigg, our London office” but I heard him say “Sylvia Brownrigg, our Albuquerque office” in reference to her book, that takes place in New Mexico. I hope that if they expand their family even further they consider the name “Billy the Kid”.
edit to add: meanwhile I was gonna post something about comparing the Freight and Salvage schedule arrived yesterday in my box with the CalPerformances.
And: you know that dream you have, that I have, where you realize you are in a class but have forgot to go for the first six week of class? I just remembered I am the publicist for Beth Custer show coming up in two weeks, May 25, at Montalvo. To wit:
My Grandmother is a silent film made in 1929 by Soviet Georgian director Kote Mikaberidze and banned by the Soviet regime for 40 years. Beth Custer has coupled this amazing film with her own score, a quick-paced pastiche of American jazz and blues, contemporary classical, and world folk music. Forgotten for a half-century, Kote Mikaberidze’s film is a delightful example of the Soviet Eccentric Cinema movement as well as an irreverent satire of the then still-young Soviet State system. Noted for its anarchic styles—which include stop-motion, puppetry, exaggerated camera angles, animation and constructivist sets—the film unspools the foibles and follies that abound when a Georgian paper pusher, modeled after American silent comic Harold Lloyd, loses his job.
The Beth Custer Ensemble features guitarist David James (The Coup, Spearhead), drummer Jan Jackson (Will Bernard Motherbug), bassist Vicky Grossi (Graham Connah), trumpeter Chris Grady (Tom Waits, Grassy Knoll), Jessica Ivry on cello (Real Vocal String Quartet), and Dina Maccabee on violin (Vienna Teng), and Beth Custer (Eighty Mile Beach, Club Foot Orchestra). Freddi Price (Rube Waddell, Extra Action Marching Band) narrates the film.
Or call the Box Office at (408) 961-5858 10am-4pm Mon-Fri.
Service fees are significantly lower when purchasing tickets through the Montalvo Box Office. Box Office is open one hour prior to all show times.
edit to add, July 13, or two months later: the Beth Custer show was a hit, if a little under-attended; I missed Ikue Mori at CCRMA — sometimes even going one mile to see great world class music is somehow beyond me. Meanwhile, I thought I saw the name Ikue Mori as part of the band that will perform Coltrane’s “Ascension” at a big jazz festival in Guelph, with ROVA. It looks like she is part of a stellar group of 12 who will take on that formidable composition – it deserves its own plug herein.
Yale-educated, Pulitzer-winning author Richard Rhodes of Half Moon Bay has written four books on the science of the history of “The Bomb” — that’s, by my simple math, about 2,000 pages and a half-million words — but by my reckoning, regarding his one-act play “Reykjavik”, which workshopped two nights this week at the Knight Complex at Stanford, he should spit in the hole, or mile-deep salt mine, and tune again.
Drama stalwart Rush Rehm directed here and played Ronald Reagan, in 1986, in Iceland, talking Turkey/Afghanistan with Gorbachev (played by Equity actor Peter Ruocco, although yesterday’s Stanford Daily was written as if the former Soviet Leader was playing himself). Rush towered over Ruocco which made me not buy the casting at all. It was like Steven Seagall as Reagan and Danny DeVito as Gorby. Ted Danson over Steve Buscemi.
I would have preferred Mindy Kaling as Dutch and Callie Withers as the Russian. Or Rinde Eckert, who has workshopped and performed various times on campus, with Stanford Lively Arts (who take no credit or blame here; the show was produced by the Federation of American Scientists and Center of International Security & Arms Control and three others, but not anyone named Bialystock as far as I could tell. Although I thought it would be interesting and an improvement to to tape the audience watching the piece, which is based very closely, we are told, and we tend to believe, on actual transcripts of the 1986 arms reductions talks, and perhaps add confederates to laugh on cue, and then send the whole package — play, audience, spin — to other countries, for propaganda purposes).
Rush Rehm in a wig also conjured to me Fats Domino, but that’s just me, a guy who has put two hundred hours in to jazz and NoLA “make it funky” for every hour I’ve ever put in to either physics or international affairs.
The event included some multi-media previews, which I missed. In fairness, as if this were an actual review, I should mention I got to CEMEX at 7:30, and stayed until about 9:30, so I missed the first part.
My first observation is that the play could use some cue drops, some sound, some music, a subtle soundtrack, perhaps performed live by Ava Mendoza or licensed from Sigur Ros.
Things it reminded me of, my frame of reference: Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”, “Frost vs. Nixon”, John Adams/Peter Sellars/Alice Goodman’s “Nixon in China”, “Matt and Ben”, “No Exit” et cetera. Even Indiana Jones comments on this.
I met a reporter from the Stanford Daily named Natasha Weaser; she had lovely candy red manicured nails and tapped away on her Apple, which featured a cool, faux-Frankenthaler cover. She said she was a freshman, who prepped at an International School or American School in China, wanted to major in “IR” (as oppossed to, as Austin Powers might say, “MEOW!”)
sat next to me, interviewed me for her story, which was more about the post-event talk, featuring Sidney Drell of SLAC.
For a play like this, one bombshell in the audience is too much and 433 is not enough, if we are talking strategic arms limitations. I can picture Tom Wolfe, back on campus, tearing his manuscript in half and starting over as “I Am Natasha Weaser”. (Actually, finally fact-checking and correcting her name, Ms. Weaser is all over the internet, most conspicuously for carrying the Olympic Torch in 2008; she could end up a Tom Wolfe subject, but it would be a different book…)
I went to Dartmouth in the 1980s, where thanks to the Dartmouth Review SDI the strategic defensive initiative was almost pop culture. I don’t have to search-injun to recall that Greg Fossedal, the founder of the Dartmouth Review co-wrote the book on SDI with Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham.
If I understood Rhodes and the panel Reykjavik was actually a red herring in that the strategy was bluff the Ruskies into folding then get them to agree to let us build SDI — the Star Wars weapon system, like “putting an Astrodome over the Earth” — to save us all. The only problem being that the lone person who didn’t realize this was a ruse — that the science was not going to happen — was Ronald Reagan, who was just reading from cue cards and or was such a Patriot that he could convince himself that this works – the science, more than the poker.
The other irony of “Reykjavik” by Richard Rhodes is that he said it started with seven characters and was whittled down to two. Huh? You mean, you cut the other five people out of the picture?
It also reminds me of the time I ran into Professor Paul J. Cohen, the Fields Prize winner and father of three — his sons Steve and Eric were classmates of mine at Gunn — and tried to make small talk about the recent New York Times article about Poincare Conjecture and a brilliant young Russian mathematician.
“Oh, there are only four people in the world who know what they are talking about!” meaning, even the Times writer was in above his head, with their rabbit-head diagrams and all. So with due respect to Rhodes, I doubt Drell was any more impressed than I was. And Rhodes told an anecdote about being not-welcomed by Ed Teller who shook the book at him if he didn’t throw it — but Rhodes said “I was scared at first then I realized I could take the guy, who was twenty years older than me.”
Note to self: don’t make jokes about possible fisticuffs with octogenarians.
I wanted to ask about the significance of the generational shift about having Michael McFaul, Stanford ’85, who is Burton Richter’s son’s age, as ambassador as compared to the Cold Warriors and Baby Boomers but remembered botching a similar opportunity at Dartmouth when, in Spalding Auditorium I asked a government scientist “Kurt Vonnegut says weapons researchers are ‘third rate –morally and scientifically’, what do you think?” not realizing who I was talking to, and Jim Newton, my editor, telling me later “I am glad you didn’t identify yourself as a reporter for The Dartmouth”.
This is Mark Weiss, drama and policy critic for “Plastic Alto” signing off from Stanford, or as Arte Johnson would say “Very interesting. But stupid.”
edit to add:
1) I like the idea of using art or drama or music or poetry to get a different take on policy, so “thumbs up” and godspeed to the workshop version of Richard Rhodes’ one-act play “Reykjavik”, despite my one thousand somewhat snarkily articulated words of reaction, more fizz than pop, I admit. Like pouring a Bodington and having it run over the rim, my review.
2) the Rhodes volumes on this topic are closer to one million words and comprise 928, 736, 432 and 480 pages respectively, including indexes and notes. I pecked my way through Gleick on Feynman, and am working on Newton on Ike, but passed on Rhodes last night. More people gathered on stage to greet the speakers than stepped into the lovely warm night air to purchase books, hum along to Peter Wegner, or chat up the nice lady from Stanford Bookstore.
3) this is completely self-serving but this discussion reminds me that I actually wrote Rinde Eckert about converting to stage a lecture Paul Cohen gave at a Godel conference.
4) “Nixon in China” will be at SF Opera next month:
edit to add, some hours and one parking ticket later: my mile deep salt mine is actually only 600-meter deep salt basin…You could do more with the projection screen. The show I saw ended with a Google maps sequence of Reykjavik point of view withdrawing to reveal view from space or what-not which is not that interesting since it has become ubiquitous, almost a cliche. How about licensing some imagery from Olafus Eliasson . The other thing that came to mind was Butoh, the Japanese reaction to Nuclear War. A little more Butoh, please! This was barely better than someone reading their term paper aloud. I would prefer Aleta Hayes at Reagan and Steve Sano as Gorby. I was also among the thousands who stood on top of Nob Hill in 1992 or so to watch Gorby’s limo go by. How about a play with a thousand people on why they were standing there, what they thought it all means — one can made a t-shirt that borrowed from “Twin Peaks” and “The Simpsons”. I thought of Shakespeare “we are all players” and that it, as Faulkner later chimed in, riffed on “it all means nothing.” It was kind of Stoppard absurdist — you can play that up. Like Gorby and Reagan are each sleep walking and talking past each other — go the other way from how they interacted. There’s also a Wallace Stegner monologue grafted to a piece about another Wallace dude, for reference. (And yes, I imagined Rinde Eckert as Stegner, or wrote about it). Or Dohee Lee doing Gorby in Korean shrieks (ala Munch), or Vijay Iyer’s anti-nukes performance piece with Japanese gibberish…That’s called “In What Language” with Iyer and Mike Ladd, and is post-911 but has a unique feel, that could be informative here (literally, to shape, to form); this link is to the follow-up, I am looking for photo from Joe’s Pub from APAP ie Jan., 2003 or so. Dave Douglas “Witness” I wanted to stage here, perhaps with Hoover. And lastly: just for yucks or because I am 48 I did fact-check my line that I remember without looking it up Fossedal and yep, Lt. Gen Daniel O. Graham, a former assistant director of CIA. There initials spell out “dog” and “gaf”. Ok, I admit that I was deliberately confusing Brenda Withers, Mindy Kaling’s former partner in crime, with Callie Withers, the former Stanford soccer standout: but, Callie apparently wrote a thesis archived herein about the relationship between inner peace and world peace, so she fits the bill here, could be tapped to contribute here. She is also an excellent visual artist, and a singer. I used a Callie Withers collage, published by Gunn High School Oracle, as poster art for a Cheryl Wheeler concert, ok, way off topic.
edit to add, again, May 15, 2012, the following Tuesday: I have been flipping through and around John Adams’ “Hallelujah Junction” and Richard Gleick “Genius: Richard Feynman” especially sections about “Dr. Atomic”, “Nixon in China”, Edward Teller and Oppie; Adams based a lot of his libretto on the work of Richard Rhodes and befriended him, the old-fashioned way.
edit to add, June 20, although this could use editing rather than more: reading Goldberg “Bumping into Geniuses” sent me online to find Killing Joke “Eighties” (which some say gave Kurt Cobain the riff to the more famous early nineties world changing collection of songs including “Come As You Are”). I like the montage here, although it might be too clashy for part of the “Reykjavik” show:
I heard Kat Edmonson on NPR a few weeks ago and made it a point to suss out her site a bit. As a guy who caught Dar Williams playing for tips, received Jane Monheit’s first autograph (or so she wrote) and lead Imogen Heap to the ER 12 minutes after her first U.S. tour ended.
Then today, randomly (even by “Plastic Alto” standards) I was flipping thru the 2009 SXSW book — from more than three years ago — and tried to ring the number she listed therein, before she had Paradigm Agency, Mick Management and a very good publicist on her team.
It rang through and the voicemail sounded like her. We’ll report back if she responds. I didn’t remember she had such a powerful hookup, or would never had had the nerve to dial.
(I did this trick with Kip Berman a few months ago to no avail; I had rang Kip in March, 2009 because I liked the name of his band, and we spoke. But timing is every thing, right? Four other numbers I tried today from SXSW 2009 got me next to nothing).
Meanwhile, Kat used crowd-sourcing to raise $50,000 for her cd.
The above video is from SXSW a year ago.
I spent a month in Austin, in 2009, renting a little house in South Austin (there’s a difference), but have not been back since. So much for “offices in Palo Alto and S.Austin” as my cards said for a whiles).
Another funny thing that only a former editor of a high school newspaper would notice: Kat Edmonson is filed in the SXSW log as if her name were spelled “End” not “Ed” — not sure if that hampered her.
Nate Chinen lauds her “honey-flavored, light-gauge and slightly crinkly” voice. He actually said “honeyed, light-gauge and faintly crinkly” which is why he is where he is and I am here.
It’s been a long time since I got to check the “austistic” box, plus “words”.
As synecdoche and review my two favorite points from the Frank Gehry movie:
1) the shrink says he is tired of frustrated architects flocking to him and claiming that they could be as good as Gehry if he could cure them of their neuroses;
2) his name is actually (if we believe all we read) Milton Wexler and the other take-away I got was “Couples come here to make things better and artists come here because they want to change the world.”
3) something else I got from the library recently, “Midnight Cowboy” featuring Jon Voight as “Joe Buck” and a song by Nilsson “Everybody’s Talkin” written by Waldo Salt, based on a novel by James Leo Herlihy, d and p by John Schlesinger — I like the film within the film.
4) “Hairspray” with Sonny Bono, Ruth Brown, Debbie Harry, Ricki Lake and Jerry Stiller and the music is much better than the Marc Shaiman things; Dartmouth did a production recently which makes me want to nominate John Waters for a Montgomery Fellowship.
5) “Blow-up” by Michaelangelo Antonioni featuring Vanessa Redgrave — I only watched thirty minutes of it but I liked the bit about worrying about people with poodles. I think I already referenced it somewhere below, superficially.
6) Barry Eisler,”Inside Out” (2010) more because he is a friend of a friend, apparently; I thought I saw him in the produce section of Whole Foods and started stalking some dude near the celery and whispering “Barry?…Barry?” but somehow did not have the seeds near the grapes to tap him and find out. This dude was wearing a pro-marijuana shirt, if that is a clue. I got only five chapters in before it started creeping me out; it also made me think that Wikileaks may have actually blackmailed We The People for $100 million before they gave up Brad Manning. I like the bit from the previous bit about taking out a biker on Old Page Mill.
As I was on phone talking about Gehry and drinking strong coffee, I noticed my stack of books and papers looked like one of his maguettes.
7) back to Gehry, and I list this here rather than above as the text itself is less substantial than the previous five or six referenced, as I was talking about the “Sketches of Frank Gehry” on my cell, at Printers Cafe, I noticed that my books and papers had formed what looks to me like a Gehry maquette. I saw the show of maquettes in LA, and walked the roof of the concert hall. I first heard about Gehry when I was an intern at Chiat Day SF; Jay Chiat was an early backer of Gehry, as I understand it, although not in the Pollack film*.
8) I grabbed Richard S. Tedlow’s “Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American” and grazed and what I find remarkable (by “Plastic Alto” standards) is that the author, a Harvard professor, mentions that a 1976 breakthrough marketing campaign is called CRUSH but does not, as William H. Davidow does, go into the detail about Denver and the Broncos — football, people — and call it or reference Orange Crush, the defense. Reminds me that Yiaway Yeh’s wife, CeMo, aka Cecillia Mo is studying links between politics and sports culture, at Stanford. I was also preparing another riff about Davidow, who I met once very briefly at a Dartmouth event AND READ HIS BOOK, and gardening; there is something in or on the Buck’s menu about high tech food growing, using high tech lights and less or no land or water.
Gotta go. Let’s go bowling! Perhaps back in St. Paul. Today my safe word is “Hamlin College”. Or is it “Hamline U”?
9) “I forgot my mantra” — Woody Allen reference.
*edit to add, about six hours later: as I was revising this, and checking “jay chiat” and “frank gehry” I only then realized that Jay is dead. He died almost ten years ago, at age 70 of cancer. Briefly, my first gig out of Dartmouth was an unpaid intern at Chiat Day SF, on 77 Maiden Lane. I got the gig through my former high school newspaper advisor, Tom Harbeck. It was 10 weeks or so in 1986, the year the Mets beat the Red Sox and Bill Buckner became a goat, unfairly, and also Sugar Ray Leonard beat Tommy Hearns, we all watched from Rich Durante’s kitchen and back room, on Hayes. I worked on Worlds of Wonder, studying toy commercials. I only met Jay once or twice, he had no idea who I was, and I did not make the list of “anybody who anybody remembers who worked for Chiat Day.” I was walking down the stairwell from 6 to 5 floors and Jay was coming up and he asked me about the toy gun I had, which was a Star Wars license and not anything from WOW, and I was embarrassed to be holding the toy and basically froze like I was hit from phasers on stun when he asked me. I recall showing my book in LA a couple years later and Jay’s assistant as far as I could tell, was the lady named Carol Madonna, who was quite attractive. The LA agency had the fish shaped conference room, by Gehry. Jay Chiat left us a grandparent, and even people like me were somehow touched by his excellence. I also recall that Fred Goldberg would stop to pick up paper clips, singular, an eye for detail that I try to emulate.
I’m happy to say that I’ll be on tour in Europe and in the eastern U.S. with a few different projects for most of the next two months. First up in Europe I have several improvised music shows with terrific players in the Netherlands and France. Musicians include trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, Luc Ex (the bass player from The Ex), drummer Tony Buck, and saxophonist John Dikeman.
Next is a few weeks of touring around Italy with drummer/vibraphonist Marco Di Gasbarro (Squartet) playing duo renditions of my songs. Marco has a weird way of knowing my music backwards and forwards. He’s a unique and versatile player and it’s a treat to play with him on both drums and vibes. I also have no problem at all with spending a few weeks hanging around in Italy in the summertime.
After that I head to the east coast of ‘merica… I’ll respam with more info closer to the dates but if you like you can check them out below.
A highlight of the last month for me has been writing live scores for four Buster Keaton silent films with Merril Garbus of Tune-yards. We played live to these films with the full Tune-yards band at the Castro Theater in April. Fortunately we are going to get to do it again in the future. There’s a review of the show here:http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2012/04/live_review_4232012_tune-yards.php).
Thanks everyone! I know most of you aren’t in places I’m playing on this tour but if you like please forward these dates to anyone you know that might be interested. Please let me know too if you want to be taken off this list.
Best,
Ava
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EUROPEAN DATES SPRING 2012:
5/9/12 @ OT301, Amsterdam, NE QUARTET w/ John Dikeman- saxes, Luc Ex (The Ex)- bass guitar, me- guitar, Onno Govaert- drums
5/11/12 @ Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR w/ REGENORCHESTER XIV-(Franz Hautzinger- trumpet, Raphael Vanoli- guitar, me- guitar, Luc Ex (The Ex)- bass guitar, Tony Buck- drums) http://www.latriennale.org/fr/agenda/concerts5/12/12 @ Sonore- La Carene festival, Brest, FR w/ REGENORCHESTER XIV (Franz Hautzinger- trumpet, Raphael Vanoli- guitar, me- guitar, Luc Ex (The Ex)- bass guitar, Tony Buck- drums) http://www.lacarene.fr/index.php?id=2321
MENDOZA/DI GASBARRO ITALIAN TOUR: me- guitar, Marco Di Gasbarro (Squartet)- vibes, drums 5/18/12 @ Init, ROME 5/21/12 @ Clan Destino, FAENZA 5/22/12 @ Volume, FIRENZE 5/23/12 @ The Hub, Rovereto 5/24/12 @ Rock n Roll Club, BOLZANO 5/25/12 @ Mearivolutionae, ANGHIARI 5/27/12 @ Circolo Hemingway, LATINA 5/30/12 @ tba, CATANZARO 5/31/12 @ Il Bak, REGGIO CALABRIA 6/1/12 @ Le Macerie, MOLFETTA 6/2/12 @ Riot Studio, NAPOLI 6/3/12 @ Teatro dei Calanchi, VITERBO
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EAST COAST U.S. DATES SUMMER 2012:
6/8/12 @ BONNAROO MUSIC FEST 2012, Nashville, TN MERRILL GARBUS (TUNE-YARDS) + AVA MENDOZA live score of four Buster Keaton short films
6/16/12 @ venue tba, Brooklyn, NY w DOMINIQUE LEONE BAND also: MICK BARR-guitar/MIKE PRIDE- drums
6/17/12 @ The Stone, Avenue C and 2nd street, Manhattan, NY AVA MENDOZA TRIO: me- guitar, Dominique Leone- synths, Nick Tamburro- drums
6/18/12 @ Galaxy Hut, 2711 Wilson Blvd., Washington D.C. AVA MENDOZA TRIO- me- guitar, Dominique Leone- synths, Nick Tamburro- drums and w/ Aaron Novik’s DANTE COUNTERSTAMP- AN-bass clarinet, me- guitar, Michael Coleman-keys, Jordan Glenn-vibes, Bill Wolter-bass, Sam Ospovat-drums
6/19/12 @ The Stone, Avenue C and 2nd Street, Manhattan, NY Aaron Novik’s DANTE COUNTERSTAMP
6/20/12 @ 8 pm, Elevens, Northhampton MA AVA MENDOZA TRIO Aaron Novik’s DANTE COUNTERSTAMP
6/21/12 @ Intercambio, 756 Chapel Street, New Haven, CT AVA MENDOZA TRIO Aaron Novik’s DANTE COUNTERSTAMP
6/22/12 @ The Lily Pad, 1353 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA AVA MENDOZA TRIO Aaron Novik’s DANTE COUNTERSTAMP
6/23/12 @ Highwire Gallery, 2040 Fraford Ave., Philadelphia, PA AVA MENDOZA TRIO Aaron Novik’s DANTE COUNTERSTAMP
I first heard Ava Mendoza at Make Out Mondays booked by Lisa Mezzacappa, maybe two years ago now. The best part was last summer I could hear that Sunset Magazine had started their yearly party and told Terry we should go check it out and rush over there — we live near enough that they comp us in to keep us from complaining. I recognized Ava in a pop surf band and chatted her up and then went to the City later that weekend to see her accompany a dance concert at Fort Mason. The leader of the short lived surf band is a bassist who now also plays with Beth Custer. I think they are the Salmon Ellas.
I also had to search-injun to distinguish Mick Barr from Andrew Barr of The Slip, from BARR the gay rapper who opened for the Evens from The Barr Brothers Canadians booked by High Road.
Wired Magazine cover story says it was Marc Andreessen who discovered the browser but I say it was future Mayor of Palo Alto Peter Drekmeier in 1976.
Peter tells the story of catching a gopher snake and putting it in a cage. Then he bought a mouse to feed to the snake. But the snake would not crawl out from beneath the rock to eat the mouse. Then Peter updated his business plan and figured there was a greater future in the mouse (like a browser, more social) than the snake (like a router, and not actually that much fun) and dropped the snake and renamed the mouse Marcel Mouse (or Marcel Mouse-so, like Marcel Marceau the Mime) and kept if for a very long time, and later became Mayor of Palo Alto.
Drekmeier revealed all this yesterday to PAHA at a book launch, and I said it would take me a minute to find the parable and spin the story properly.
Speaking of “story”, I walked past, not thirty minutes ago, time being of the essence if not of infinite speed, as technology wants to or software wants to, as if it were a being, like a corporation or an android or a person a people, of this agreement, we capitalists and linguistically-conscious apes, past a store front I mean an office space, a non-descript office space,at 777 B something here downtown, and noticed a banner, not quite a shingle. It said Clear Story, which was enough to lure me in to this place of work, who are the next Facebook or Twitter or Loudcloud or something.
There were three young guys there. One said “which one of us is ‘Security’?” The other said “May I help you”. He pointed a funny looking not-quite-a-gun at me which told him my fastball was only 35 miles per hour, I was wearing Banana Republic tighty-whities and that my cellphone was stupid.
“Hello, Mark Weiss, 1788 Oak Creek Drive, 94304, whassup?”
I asked him if he knew that his new start-up shared a name with one of my favorite pieces of public art, Clear Story, by Mildred Howard which is on loan here for about a year, in front of City Hall.
He said that he noticed that on the search engines when designing the banner (the “shingle”) but that otherwise he was not associated with Mildred Howard nor did his venture have enough backing to further publicize the total coincidence or to sponsor our Clear Story.
I wished him luck with Clear Story II, was not offered to read a prospectus and went about my business. I did not accept a fee to tell this Clear Story.
Which reminds me of the time I walked in on David Choe and Mark Zuckerberg, above Jing Jings and paid $20 for a Choe calendar, thus ensuring that Choe had cab fare home and he took the $200 million stock option on FB rather than the $10,000 in hand. You’re welcome, David. Any time. No worries.
My only observation about Andreessen and Wired, if anybody is still reading, is that earlier in the book they quote Paul Saffo, formerly of IFTF, but more recently of something called TK, that he looks for contradictions as a sign of something about to happen, and in Andreessen’s case I note that he married a real estate heiress rather than say the founder of 23 and Me biotech, or her sister. What could it mean? I also recall getting a chuckle that New York Times wrote that Andreessen will make $100 million on an early investment in Instagram (back when it did something else, see The Snake and The Mouse parable above, aka “Clearer Story About The Mouse“) but not $200 million because he later invested in a competitor in the same space and his shares got sort of diluted.
I am writing this from the library because I am still in the naysayer camp about all this high tech stuff and refuse to join FB or buy a computer.
Here are a couple shots of Clear Story, and Clear Story II.
Fee free (although you are actually under surveillance) to add this to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_(computing) splitting the difference between mouse and browser which is the literary equivalent of putting fish genes in a tomato; work with me.
edit to add: this is a bit off topic, but as far as my Harbaugh monologue Peter Drekmeier yesterday, after his mouse-snake speech, told me that he was the year behind Jim at Paly, played football and actually thought Harbaugh was very inclusive of even the least-likely of his teammates, duly noted.
edit to add, about five minutes later: coincidentally or not, Clear Story II is actually a five-person company, has a female-founder and is backed by this same Andreessen fellow, according to Times.’
edit to add, again: it’s more about challenging the official story of anything or anybody, but I would probably enjoy, as would my readers (both of you), reading and writing about the teachings and doings of Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, for example this. Also, I am subtly riffing off of, and trying to digest, like a snake swallowing a Frenchman, the Wired story about Stanford grad and rapper Daniel Lee. And I am channeling early Randy Newman, if that explains.
2. SHOWS NEXT WEEKEND!
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 