Akira Tana 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 Enrique Chagoya, Kara Maria, Kathryn Kain and George Herms.
Artist, printer and teacher Kathryn Kain is one of twelve artists comprising "Indelibly Yours" which debuted at Smith-Andersen last winter and continues at Santa Clara De Saisset Museum, and in a beautiful catalog of the show.
Stanford professor and artist Enrique Chagoya chats with Palo Alto arts commissioner, Stanford affiliate and artist Terry Acebo Davis at the Fall, 2011 opening of "the Tattoo Project" which is on display at Santa Clara University.
THE LOVELY SANTA CLARA CURATOR LINDSEY KOUVARIS IS EXPECTING great things from the Thursday, April 12 opening party for the tattoo art project.
Henry Adams wrote a famous essay about a hundred years ago about the dynamo and the virgin. He was observing changes especially technology and his eloquent treatise states that the machines are upsetting the apple cart in terms of the way people looked at nature and nature and Mom and Jesus and Europe and all that.
Gosh, what would he have said about Nellie McKay the triple threat and almost femme fatale pop jazz whirlwind, who I noticed in New York Times had some sort of song-cycle or thru-composed piece?
Reminds me of the time….twinkle, twankle, tfinkle, tfum….help Mr. Wizard…transporting…
I once barged into an interview that Steve Horowitz of Pop Matters was conducting in the lobby of the Driskill Hotel in Austin during SXSW2009 and put Nellie McKay on the phone with Ian MacKaye and just noticed, two years after, that the incident made it into Steve’s piece.
At this point in the conversation a stranger intrudes and asks who we are and what we’re doing. This is one of the perils of doing an interview in a public place during SXSW. His name is Mark Weiss. And he’s a concert promoter. When Weiss learns who McKay is, he volunteers that he’s a friend of the musician Ian McKaye (Fugazi) and proceeds to get him on the telephone because the two share the same last name. The two musicians have never met before and chat briefly. I hear a mention of Washington D.C. and the names of shared friends. The two people share a history of combining their music and social activism. After the call is over, I ask McKay what they talked about and if it felt like an historic moment. She laughs.
“He’s in San Francisco at a party with Shirley McLaine. So it’s a “Mc” kind of day. The Scots must be out in force now that St. Paddy’s is over.”
I had met Ian a couple years earlier when I had presented The Evens (Ian MacKaye and Amy Farina) at Terman Middle School Auditorium in Palo Alto, and, although I had no business doing such, I had saved his cell phone number in my handheld. But Ian took the call and I put him on with Nellie. Steve’s account differs slightly from what I heard, but I thought Nellie said, punning on their mutual prefix, “It’s a ‘muck’ kind of day.” or something (Steve has it spelled out “mc” more literally, but easily confused with the abbreviation for “master of ceremonies”).
Ian’s The Evens show was notable for having taken place in a room that years earlier was the scene of a school dance in which, or so he told the crowd, he was too shy to ask anyone to dance: Ian had lived in Palo Alto that one year, for him eighth grade, when his father was a fellow at Stanford. The Palo Alto Weekly reported this, about Ian’s Palo Alto connection. It is also true that Ian or someone in his camp had seen listings about my all ages series at Cubberley and had tried to rent the space for a show but was refused.
Besides seeing Fugazi at Ian Brennan famous co-bill at Dolores Park (with Sleater-Kinney, Greil Marcus described it in the New York Times
check p 202 for mention of Sleater-Kinney in this new book, as I saw it in Mountain View store
) I also happened to visit the second floor of the Whitney Museum in New York in 2000 at the precise time Jem Cohen’s “Instrument” was sceening, which I took as a sign and took in the film.
It was Ian Brennan (pronounced “EYE-an”, and not the guy from “Glee”) who put MacKaye (“mick EYE”) in touch with me, and he also produced the show the following night at Cafe DuNord (that featured BARR as openers — at that show I recall Kim Chun of the Bay Guardian introducing me to Joanna Newsom as “an old ‘G’ concert promoter”!!!).
Ian MacKaye, as memory unwinds like an onion or salt-water taffy, also graciously did a “meet the artists/ career in music” lunchtime appearance at the middle school day of show. He later said he had lost his yearbook of that year but fellow Palo Altan Gina Arnold had had a mimeographed copy made, which he keeps. (There is supposedly an archive at Palo Alto Library, via Steve Staiger, called “Palo Alto Rock and Roll Archive / Jerry Garcia Day” and I add musicians to it as I find them — The Donnas, Third Eye Blind, the dude, Chris Appelgren from the Pee Chees, who did one year in PAUSD — and I hope to get a copy of the copy of Gina’s gift to Ian — maybe now that Karen Holman is on City Council the Palo Alto Historical Association will actualize my concept here, but I really, really digress…)
Here is a brief excerpt from the Fugazi film:
Edit to add, the next day: not to digress too far from Ian and Nellie, but Greil’s long review of the Sleater-Kinney Fugazi show is actually for Food Not Bombs 20th anniversary, fitting in with Steve’s socially conscious theme.
Edit to add, forty five minutes after previous — 2:30 Friday, April 29, 2011: I am going to paste in Molly Tanenbaum’s 2000 preview of The Evens in Palo Alto because there is some vagary in the way it is archived on the Palo Alto Weekly site; there is also a less relevant (!) review of cd by Marc Burkhardt and I found a blogger review and photo of show itself — and kinda fits, in “plastic alto logic,” because Horowitz notes that Nellie McKay appeared on a panel about concerts in unusual venues:
Terman Middle School proves just the right venue for Fugazi founder Ian MacKaye
by Molly Tanenbaum
It’s hard to beat paying $5 for an evening of live music in Palo Alto. But punk rocker Ian MacKaye will tell you that’s exactly how it should be.
MacKaye will perform with his new band, The Evens, next Tuesday evening at Palo Alto’s Terman Middle School. All are welcome — and the price is right.
Performing in a school auditorium is nothing new to MacKaye. As singer-guitarist of indie-legends Minor Threat and Fugazi, Mackaye’s anti-corporate reputation set him apart from the crowd. Believing in music for music’s sake, Mackaye has released $10 CDs, favored community concert spaces over rock clubs and turned down numerous lucrative offers from large record labels over the course of his career.
“What it does is it inhibits innovation and new ideas,” said Mackaye, the co-founder of Dischord Records, a 25-year-old independent label. “The thing with new ideas is they have no audience. They haven’t been thought of yet. I think it’s important to have access to spaces. The idea of free spaces is very important,”
MacKaye’s new group, The Evens, is comprised of himself and drummer Amy Farina of The Warmers. The two are longtime friends who met through MacKaye’s brother, Alec, the Warmers’ guitarist and singer.
Farina and MacKaye have performed over 50 shows since forming a year ago. The Evens will arrive in the Peninsula after a week of touring in Los Angeles.
When asked about The Evens’ style, MacKaye replied, “That’s the thing about music. If you could put it into words, you wouldn’t have to play the music.”
But he did provide some hints.
“I will say this: We’re not super loud. We sing. Lots of singing going on. And we’re definitely not interested in playing in rock clubs. We’d like to reclaim music and let it come back into spaces that are a little less commercially oriented.”
The Evens selected the Palo Alto concert venue because of MacKaye’s history in the area. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., he attended seventh grade at Terman Middle School while his father was on fellowship at Stanford University.
“That was the only nine-month period that I didn’t live in the District so it’s significant in my mind,” he said.
MacKaye was dismayed at how difficult it was to find a concert space in Palo Alto, but he is pleased to be able to play in Terman’s auditorium, the locale of his very first school dance.
The concert will bring back memories, both fond and a bit painful, of the time he spent in Palo Alto. He remembered the difficulties of being the new kid in school.
“I had really long hair and was pretty tattered. I was a hippy kid. It was 1974. I walked into junior high and these kids were wearing corduroys and Adidas and Izod. I felt like I was dropped off in another land. It was intimidating. No one would talk to me and I thought they were all snobs but it turned out everyone was scared of me because I was from the East Coast,” he recalled.
Prior to the concert, MacKaye will give a lunchtime talk to interested Terman middle-schoolers. But, from experience, he doesn’t expect the students to have heard of him, The Evens, Fugazi or Dischord Records.
“I’ve only spoken to one younger school and they’re like, “Who is this guy?”
MacKaye won’t bring a prepared speech; he just hopes interested students will attend and ask him questions. But MacKaye has an inkling as to why producer Mark Weiss asked him to talk to the students.
“I just don’t practice the general American business ethic, which is to grow and sell, grow and sell, grown and sell. And I actually have a really different approach. So maybe he thinks that it’s a voice that has been overwhelmed by the din of avarice,” MacKaye said.
Palo Altan Weiss, producer of the upcoming show and fellow Terman graduate, set up the afternoon Q&A session because he views MacKaye as a potential role model for the young audience. He was impressed when he heard MacKaye speak in the past.
“He’s not a really famous musician on MTV but I think kids can tell who is an interesting person when they meet an artist or a musician. He’s an interesting guy and he’s done interesting things with his life and I think kids will find that rewarding and inspiring,” Weiss said.
MacKaye’s modesty and down-to-earth attitude about creating music may be just the right message for middle schoolers who have grown up on MTV, “American Idol” and the fleeting stardom of countless performers.
“If you think back to when you were 10, 11, 12 years old, kids are just coming to grips with music and they’re engaging with the music that’s being spoon-fed to them.”
MacKaye admitted to liking The Monkees as a youth, pointing out that simply the idea of music fascinated him at a young age, and that was what was available to him at the time.
What’s important for young aspiring musicians, MacKaye said, is sticking to their passion and not prioritizing money over art.
“What’s more discouraging to me is when people make decisions based on what’s expected of them and that’s crippling in the long run in terms of creativity. It’s more important that people actually believe in what they’re doing,” he said.
“If me and my friends could do it then anyone could do it. My advice is not to get caught up in the way things are supposed to be and focus on the way you want them to be,” he continued.
Recalling his middle-school days, MacKaye said he felt discouraged about the possibility of becoming a musician.
“I had given up at that point that I’d ever be able to play rock because at that time it seemed like rock and roll was out of reach and that people doing it were anointed by the queen. They were so high falutin’ and so far removed and unreachable by a kid like me,” he said.
It wasn’t until 1979 when high-schooler MacKaye taught himself to play the bass, and then the guitar. It was the freedom of punk rock that revived him.
“That was what was so deeply important about punk rock in the late ’70s…For me, punk rock was a free space where new ideas could be presented because profit was not the primary motivation.”
His late high-school band, the Teen Idles, launched his music career. From those roots, MacKaye formed Minor Threat in the early ’80s and Fugazi in 1987. The band, comprised of Mackaye, Brendan Canty, Joe Lally and Guy Picciotto, was known for its austere, mid-tempo punk sound. They toured for 15 years but have been on hiatus since 2002, allowing members to attend to their personal lives.
Although The Evens will release their self-titled album March 8, they decided to tour the Bay Area in February. When asked why he wasn’t waiting for the album’s release to tour, MacKaye said, “I’m of the mind that records support shows and not the other way around. The industry has skewed that idea.”
Ok, that’s more about Ian MacKaye and Me than it is Nellie McKay — I’ve really mucked this up. Her show is called “Silent Spring – – How not to Fool Mother Nature” and for someone called Earthwise Productions I should really get down with it so to speak and think about how to bring that to the 650.
Nellie played the excellent and influential Los Gatos free music series recently — Palo Alto lags there. We are like that dun beetle in that children’s film I took my nephews to about 1993 pushing the little ball up the hill and back like Sysyphus. But he or she or dun beetle who is first will later be last and vice verse, although the recent Philip K. Dick essay I was reading here at Foothill College library makes me worry that time is a lot more complicated than that.
I think of Nellie McKay as piano but she also plays uke and what we have in common is that she has a song title from a previous recent album that is the same as my Fantasy Football League team: Beneath the Under Dog.
She is on Verve now and I wonder if she overlapped with Jason Olaine there. I met Jamie Cullum for the first time via Jason, at IAJE.
I don’t think the Rachel Carson tribute NY residency new stuff has been recorded yet but her birthday is coming up April 13, she turns 30.
I captured Meridith Valiando, a publishing executive with Universal, about an hour ago, while watching Letterman, then cracked upon the laptop for some random post, meanwhile vaguely monitoring now, 45 minutes later, Charlie Rose about “Ad Men” a show I haven’t really seen, although I am a refugee from that industry, would see the Lee Clow doc, and dug the reference to “Putney Swope”.
The lady in the ad says she gets 1,000 emails every day, and also says that if we buy the other brand of hand-held computer and phone device we would not be able to type as easily so many emails.
Notice that she does not, of course, say that she returns 1,000 emails per day. That part would be fibbing. Or fibbing twice.
I won’t mention the brand name, the people that paid for her endorsement –although it seems they spelled her name wrong — “Meredith” vs. “Meridith” — or is it just me — that’s the danger of late night blogging — I got the Valiando part right — I am leaving it tagged both ways — but it is the one that had or has a nickname that references an addictive cocaine derivative.
Although they don’t say this in the spot she is the founder of a tour of bands that all score well on the leading online video site which I tend to name but don’t here even though it integrates so well with this format and with Patch.
It came thru Oakland at the New Parish which I somehow missed, but is coming to Boston (or Cambridge) to the Middle East a cool club, I saw Mark Kozelek there and I think was even guested that night by the Mitch Okmin’s office. As cool as I am.
The nice looking publishing lady and tour producer also, to me more relevantly, attended or was perhaps a panelist at something I also missed called Creators Project, a joint production (“are you cool?” — did I really post on Patch about Joe Simitian speaking “High” …”on what?” today? ) of Intel and Vice. That was at Fort Mason — though strangely overlapping a wee bit too closely with SXSW -which I also missed this year — and featured Yeah Yeah Yeahs and something I sussed up Zola Jesus which must be cool because it is booked by Sam Hunt of Windish.
Off topic slightly but I liked the cover of Joe Jackson “Fools in Love” by a female vocalist I will have to track down later. Unless of course my new best friend Meridith Valiando knows off the top of her head, or better its her song — her company or division is actually called Rondor and seems to be a residual of AlMo records — Herb Alpert and Al Moss — I recall them as Ozomatli’s first label –and writes me back.
I will drop her a quick line — maybe thru the tour publicist — and see what happens and will report back.
Oh yeah (but not Karen O. Yeah Yeah Yeah) the digression to Creators Project led me to suss up a local band –although one site said Brooklyn not Frisco, like Sleepless the band that opened for AOL at GAMH at Noise Pop that I have been saving in my phone but maybe can sneak in here uber-gratuitously I mean Big Sleep — its a little rary reference Chandler and all that, don’t you know, but from Brooklyn, but not Motherless Brooklyn but close enough, lethem read it and weep, I wanted to mention Hundred in the Hands — which for a second hand me believing included a South African visual artist I kinda like named Zander Blom —no they don’t work with him they just write about him — that sounds familiar — a guy and girl named Friedman I think and something kinda Frenchy, with 18,000 “likes” on the leading over-valued pre-IPO but only six reviews of their cd on Amazon, and no agent or management contact one can find quickly — the record was 2010 on Warp and the name seems to reference Lakota vs what Custer’s Last Stand or something? Anyhow, maybe they partied with our Miss Meredith. http://thehundredinthehands.com/
link on! Do people say that, like for a while they said “Right on!” (the second time — then they said “right arm” — “link arm?” that sounds like you are getting ready for pepper spray or something — man, Charlie Rose is dead I mean done, why am I still writing? I wanted to say that it took me and my stupid phone 8 minutes to load up Ms. Meridith becuase I had to delete something else to fit it. Now I’ve deleted her, accept here at wordpress and my yahoo storage).
Danny of Big Sleep at Noise Pop 2012 booked by Windish Agency and formerly on Frenchkiss but not necessarily endorsing a smartphone or Universal or Meridith photo by Mark Weiss sounds like Sonic Youth
edit to add, June, a few months later:
This is a surprisingly popular post for me. I will link to the dude who is outright claiming less delicately than me that the lady in the video does not actually get 1,000 emails per day. Also, I answered my own question, rather than waiting for Valiando to do so, that the Joe Jackson cover I heard on “Grey’s Anatomy” is by Inara George, daughter of Lowell George of Little Feet, and partner with the ex-partner of my friend Tommy Jordan Greg Kurstin ex-Geggy Tah Bird and Bee. Joe Jackson makes about 8 cents per unit for every bit Inara sells and presumably half the money from movie and ad placements, although don’t quote me, tv might be part of a blanket agreement.
Tip of the hat — or should I say hermetically sealed on helmet — to former mayor Pat Burt for saying at the meeting tonight that there is an overlap between the arts commission and the human relations especially in the work of the people who want to create art opportunities for our youth.
I want to expand later but meanwhile calls to mind a classic (from the 1990s) song by Palo Alto’s own Dar Williams. Well, Dar does not live here but her sister Julie does! Dar has done at least four shows in Our Fair City, most of them benefits for schools or such: at St. Michaels Alley, at Cubberley, at Paly Haymarket and at Stanford. Here she explains that “Western New York wants to be Washington, DC”:
Terry used sound hound to capture the lyrics to New Radicals “Get What You Give” which was spinning after the typical pedantic intro on KFOG.
I recall that Jenna Adler of CAA called me about giving the band a show at the Cub but I wouldn’t do it because it would have come the day after a Train show and we were just not equipped to do that many shows in a row. Likewise I recall getting queries about Lifehouse and John Mayer.
Jen Silver said she loved the guys and was psyched to peg it that he produced a song for Santana featuring was it Michelle Branch?
I do like soundhound, which I first heard via Steve Cohen. (although it confused my version of Geggy Tah with Jules Rouse or something)
With Kansas trailing Purdue early in the second half, and the dog curiously obsessed with the taste of her own front paws, our neighbor Marjorie Ford, wearing a furry cap she bought recently in Budapest came by to ask us what more we know about Jade Chamness and her Break Through the Static group that helps teens impacted by suicide.
Marjorie Ford against the wind
Preliminarily Marjorie talked to her daughter Maya Ford of the famous The Donnas and reported back that Maya too wants to help.
Meanwhile, after scanning electronically thru “Plastic Alto” to reveal Marjorie’s other appearances here, we surfed — not unlike the world class waves of Mentawai — from the Donnas to Green Day (did you know that Tre Cool pounded the toms with Torry C?) to Bratmobile to Molly Newman at cooking school to is Lookout still a label to is Larry Livermore still alive (YES! I was thinking sadly enough — and we started with suicide — about cancer victim and Maximum RocknRoll founder Tim Yohannon — Gilman Street, Lookout, Maximum RocknRoll — what’s the difference?) — to finally landing — not unlike Dorothy in a whirlwind — as Kansas closes to within six at 47-41 12:162Q — on a Malay punk band called Carburetor Dung from Kuala Lumpur.
There is more to the world than in your philosophy, Horatio.
Or, what’s the frequency Kenneth?
Or, as Tracy Chapman says, pride cometh before the fall.
edit to add, three minutes, basketball time, later: 49-44 Purdue at 9:44
edit to add, 9:40 or so basketball time, later: Kansas steals and dunks to go up 63-60 with 2.5 seconds left and commentator says “he should have dribble around run out the clock”. Kansas victory bodes well for teen music and art initiative in that one of the community leaders backing Break Thru the Static is Becky Bechman who is the grand-daughter of the famous 39-season Jayhawk coach Phog Allen, who I just learned also coached at the Indian academy in Lawrence, Haskell.
WHEN THE DAY ARRIVED last summer for new transfer students to visit Stanford, the sense of anticipation grew. “I am looking forward to meeting the former rock star,” an admissions staffer told Sally Mentzer, who coordinates the advising program for transfers.
As Mentzer notes, that was perfectly accurate, yet someone still could have gotten the wrong impression. To meet Torry Castellano, whose career as a drummer has spanned recording studios, the set of Saturday Night Live and stages in Barcelona, Paris and Tokyo, is to realize how unconcerned she is with popular acclaim.
In fact, Castellano, ’13, was somewhat intimidated by her new surroundings, and she recognized similar feelings among the other 18 transfers. To help cope, she tried to bring them together for karaoke, but then found a better lure: dinner at Mom’s. “Pasta and meatballs,” explains Castellano. “About 15 of them were there.”
Mom is a Palo Altan, as was Castellano when she was growing up with the three female friends who became her bandmates, the Donnas. A pop-punk act reminiscent of the Runaways, an all-girl band of the 1970s, the Donnas have been recording and touring since the mid ’90s. Plans were announced at the start of the year for a new album, but it will have to be made without Castellano. The victim of uncorrectable shoulder pain from tendonitis and repetitive strain injury, Castellano became one of rock’s most youthful retirees last year. She turned 32 in January.
‘CRAZY NIGHTS’: Injury forced Castellano to retire from her band, the Donnas.
Courtesy Torry Castellano
She didn’t surrender her drumsticks easily. But months of rest hadn’t worked. Over time, another part of her Los Angeles-based life grew in importance. She had enrolled at Santa Monica College—she took one final online when the band was on tour in Brazil—and began giving serious thought to full-time studies at a university, where she could reinvent herself. She applied to various schools that seemed like reasonable objectives, plus Stanford.
“I really didn’t think I was going to get in,” says Castellano. “When I got the acceptance email, I was shaking. And I didn’t totally trust it, because it was email. I was crying. I had my mom read it.”
No matter how accomplished transfers are before arriving on the Farm—Castellano’s contingent includes a former Green Beret, a former radio DJ and a former professional dancer—there’s enormous apprehension that comes with entering such an imposing environment. “That’s particularly true,” says Mentzer, “if they are transferring from a community or junior college,” as Castellano did.
With the Donnas (www.thedonnas.com), Castellano shared a juicy image: “Pabst-swilling, sex-crazed party animals” was how a Los Angeles Times writer once distilled it. In reality, the article went on to disclose, they appeared to be “just regular girls” who liked iced tea, candy and watching TV.
Looking back, Castellano says, “There have been many crazy nights, many crazy tours. I don’t want to kill the fantasy image of rock ‘n’ roll life. But there’s also a lot of work that goes into being successful, and I was always involved in the business decisions.”
The fall quarter at Stanford was partly about solitary nights of keeping up with assignments. But the rest of the experience, in class or almost any conversation on campus, played to her like an intellectual concert. “Politics, or religion, or philosophy. Everything!” Her first set of grades: an A and two A-minuses.
By winter quarter, she had declared a major in political science. That made sense, she said, because she now is thinking ahead—drum roll, please—about possibly applying to law school.
I haven’t talked to Torry for about 15 years; I heard from my neighbor Marjorie Ford that Torry had quit the band due to injury and had gone back to school at Stanford. She was admitted originally to NYU drama program but never matriculated (Whereas the other three Donnas were UC students who stopped out to go on the road.. The night that Jim Harrington of the Weekly covered the Electrocutes show at Cubberley I spent a fair amount of time chatting with Torry; of the four girls, she was the one I had the most normal rapport with. One of these days I will dig through my archive to remember which three of the girls had their parent sign the permission slip — for their first paid gig, when they were 15, sophomores, in January, 1995 — and which one was telling me she was already too cool for school.
I am of the age that “Who Killed Laura Palmer” led to “Laura” the movie.
I caught about 40 minutes last night of Jean Renoir “The Southerner” which in my mind I was comparing to Jeannette Walls “The Glass Castle” recent memoir (and also caught the last 20 minutes of John Ford “Wagon Master” which had me asking the lady at concessions if they were serving Coke that night – -yes.). I go to the movies an hour at a time which is still a bargain for the Packard Foundation subsidized historic theatre — $6 frequent flyers card.
A favorite ritual is to cross check the Stanford Theatre pamphlet with Halliwells and mark my copy * ** *** or sometime ****. By Halliwells, “Wagonmaster” was a * and “Southerner” a *** which means three reasons to see it or three times better than the other, and infinitely better than the bulk of Hollywood especially recent issues (gesundheit or excuse YOU).
Posted by XXXXXXXX, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on Mar 8, 2012 at 1:42 am
XXXXXX is a member (registered user) of Palo Alto Online
Thank You for all the good comments and support everyone.
I am mxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx i just want to say that this article makes me look like a criminal and i am not even close to one.
But i want to speak the truth hidden behind this article and i am not accusing of Ms. Sue Dremann of hiding it because she just wrote what she was told i am assuming.
The truth is that before the fight i was doing the right thing. I was asking for help from the teacher and he did help by calling the main office once. around 15 minutes pass by and no one shows up and so he calls a couple more times. And so the teacher and I wait for the campus supervisor to come and help me. And more than 35 minutes pass and still no one shows up. I know the teacher got connected to the main office because i heard him talking to them. so the end of the period arrives and i go out side with the teacher. i tell him i am very upset and he says that he is too. So at the time i was waiting for some one to help me i was printing out an essay and thats where the stapler comes in. But what the article didnt say is that i was being pushed and had been thrown a backpack at my chest and face by the main other student. So i felt frightened and my first reaction was swings with what i had in my hand and it happened to be a stapler. I am sorry for my actions and i am very sorry for the other kid getting hurt.
Ok but that was only the fight i was really disappointed with Gunn Staff
throughout 45-50 minutes of asking for help no one came to help me and the teacher. Now i am thinking what about if it was a life and death situation would they respond??
But thats only one of the problems. the second problem i have is that when i was in the office i over heard assit. princ, the dean, and front desk secretary blaming the teacher for not grabbing the phone and for not having an urgent voice and that why didnt he use the panic button every class has. In my head i am like wow how can you blame this on him?? When he was doing his best in class because he cant lay a hand on a student. I didnt say anything about what they were talking about. then when it was me and assit. princ i asked her why didnt you guys send another person. And she gave me an excuse that her little radio thing wasnt working that she can only speak through it but not hear anything. And that was a big shock to me. As well with the Campus supervisor i asked him where were you i really needed you he told me i couldnt hear anything from the radio.
So in a way thanks to the Gunn Staff My family Mom, Sister, Dad, Even my Baby Brother saw me get arrested for something that could have been avoided by at least one out of all higher authority personnel that could have came and help me. Now ihave to go through all the reqiurements of a $25000 bail that if i dont make one court date i willhave to pay all $25000 and do week ends and anger classes on top of that i have work and 9 classes to graduate high school and try to pursue college.
[Portion removed by Palo Alto Online staff.]
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(my gut reaction is that this is a crock and that it should not be reported by name in the media nor should the young man / boy be in the system over this.
That two or more people wrote in in his defense makes me think I am right. I am tempted — because I volunteered briefly at Shromila Gupta’s fifth grade class at Barron overlapping with this kids time there — to call around and try to get traction.
I think PAPD has a history of profiling kids by class, by their neighborhood especially Venture –and ironically the Weekly had a section on Ventura last week. (And I tend to defend PAPD unions).
The title references something I saw in Michael Moore “Capitalism: a Love Story” about Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania where they first privatized the juvie hall then let corrupt judges game the system to the tune of a million dollars or more in bribes before being caught. Not to mention the thousands of kids locked up beyond reason.
I was gonna jokingly write that Palo Alto should grab the post office and turn it into a juvie hall for money. People would not know I was joking.
I hope there are some quality defense lawyers out there who can help this from getting out of hand. (no pun intended — did he throw the stapler or strike with it?)
Sadly but way off topic, I saw there was a recent CCS wrestling champion by the same name who died suddenly. thank you search-injuns.
off to read and argue “tortilla curtain”
(this has been kinda bugging me for a week, and i was gonna let it pass but then my Archers of Loaf “Greatest” video posted above gave way to “throwing things” by superchunk and I could not resist:
Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga Talks About Her Visit to Dartmouth
“The Lorax” is a Dartmouth Tale
President of the Republic of Kosovo Visits Dartmouth
2012 Dartmouth Idol Final
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 