It is news to me — great news, in fact – -that Frank Gehry is designing a new home for the non profit jazz venue The Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles. This was announced about a month ago but I am out of the loop.
I also read that Jeff Gauthier of Cryptogramophone Records is their artistic director, working with Ruth Price. Andy Gilbert the great Bay Area writer was also once on team Ruth.
I went there in 2000 to check out another show with Rachel Z, Allison Miller and Miriam Sullivan, and continue to read about it at least if I haven’t been back there much.
But gives me hope that something good could happen in Palo Alto, at 456 University or somewhere nearby. Someone suggested to me just this week that maybe Arrillaga will tap Gehry to design his complex at 27 University, top of the tangent squared.
Speaking of complexes, story in LA Times said Sydney Pollack who made the movie about Gehry and his shrink, would take Gehry to jazz shows there. I like talking about this movie and the part about all these frustrated architects going to the same shrink and saying “Can you fix all my problems so I can be as good as Frank Gehry?”
For me Frank Gehry is tied in with the fact that my first job out of college was an intern for Chiat Day SF and Jay Chiat was an early supporter of Gehry and I visited not long after that the old Chiat Day which had Gehry furniture and conference room shaped like a fish. I have not actually seen the new Gehry designed Chiat building, with the Oldenburg in front.
writing about music is like dancing about architecture the maple kind
I caught a jazz act named Robert Glasper on national tv — I was guessing it was in inside joke about leap year — but now a reggae act, SOJA, on way to Bonnaroo June 7, managed by Red Light booked by Paradigm Duffy McSwiggin, from northern virginia with a dude named Hemphill:
I got sucked into this whole thread apparently by wacky Drew Carey faking his own artistic death with help from National Enquirer, Robbie Fulks and The Palo Alto Daily Compost (“the poop, the whole poop, and nothing but the poop”), but lo and behold Jenny Scheinman (who toured with Robbie, plays with Frisell and most indictingly let me stay at her Brooklyn uber-hipster hideout back in 2001) has a new cd out!.
It’s called “Mischief and Mayhem” my kind of title and I know nothing else about it — it was reviewed already in LA Times blog and Village Voice — but I would stake my professional reputation on it to tell anybody who likes jazz folk or pretty women (and milfs) to buy two copies.
I would only use the term “milf” to cover for all the bad things Robbie Fulks said in a song years ago that I blogged about earlier today.
I still hear Tom Harbeck or see his red pen on a column I wrote for high school newspaper back in 1980 “what the hell is a Titan” and he asked “Does that add to your style?”
Back on topic: Jenny, whose sister Kate Scheinman was briefly my classmate but I met her nearly 20 years later via the Scott Amendola band (Amendola, Sickafoos and Scheinman – -they should have signed an interband agreement to work exclusively as ASS, ala MMW, as in they would be kickin’).
I saw her about a year ago and got a very professional hug at Stanford Lively Arts or Stanford Jazz Workshop (as if they were synoymous — hardly — better check that) but she had actual friend and relatives in the house so I knew my place.
One of my weirder recent years Artist Management sensations was driving back to Chicago Martyr’s to see Robbie Fulks Rob Gjerso and Jenny Scheinman and nearly falling asleep at the wheel, from Springfield, rather than taking the shorter trip onwards to St. Louis where I was guestlisted at Chris Isaak show, and had tickets via my cousin to see the Cards baseball. I guess I had the smallest hope of getting involved with either RF or JS professionally and that trumped all the splendors of Gateway City.
Hey, JP Cutler – the guitarist and former Six Degrees in house publicist — if your search-injun settings find you this, send me a comp copy of this, don’t I rate?
Edit to add, and personal to “PD”: dude, if you are big enough to manage total awesomeness, aren’t we beyond reviewing your own client’s work on Amazon? I mean, I do that for my recently-shed former clients (CB, JAE, JW, SB) but not for about three years now and I am a total hick:
more edit to add, after digressions into Marika Hughes and others:
Benjamin Lozovsky in Voice (the indispensible document of culture not the bad Nirvana covering reality show) has lengthy review and bio of JS and reveals MAZEL TOV she is preggers again!
The local real estate rag in their celebrity digest mentions a crack up by Drew Carey and the fact purported that he social media-engaged with an “offensive song” by one of my heroes Robbie Fulks. That prompted me to finally upload from dumbass phone to public internet (here I am at Foothill College, at their admissions office — I study this quarter, “The Literature of Poverty and Inequality, with Dr. Jordana Finnegan” — my photo of Robbie Fulks shot at a semi-private event he did at Ladera Country Club in Portola Valley — I have it dated July 29, 2011.
Robbie did me a solid by letting my client Dao Strom open for him at a radio show in Springfield, Illinois that was back in 2009, last time I was on the road at all.
He also, and I don’t mean to brag, signed by cd something like “To Mark Weiss a fuckin’ awesome manager” not sure if he was being sarcastic or just liked Dao. He was traveling at the time with a very pregnant string player by name of Jenny Scheinman who years earlier gave two stellar clinics here, at Castilleja and and at Ohlone Elementary. Jenny attended Palo Alto schools for exactly year — I recall her sister being in my class that year at Gunn. A couple times, fucking awesome manager that I am, I hinted to Jenny that I could rock her world in that department but she held out until now she shares manager with David Bowie.
The local rag — which sounds like the title of something I was taught to dance to, back at Mount Mousilake — says Carey is fond of a little dittie called “Fuck This Town” (although they wrote it up as “F___ this Town).
Earlier in Plastic Alto I had merely cut and pasted something Robbie wrote in his Own Damn Blog, about REM, and called it a “guest submission” but I owned up to that state of affairs to RF in July and he didn’t seem to mind.
My title here also references the fact I was psyched to steal a flyer from a kiosk on Cali Ave for a ((folkyeah)0 show upcoming. The promoter is a based in Big Sur but is making waves up and down the coast; this was for a show in Oakland at New Parish that, according to Rich Corny features the same sitar player that sat in with him at my Earthwise 15th Anniversary show at Bottom of the Hill — boy, a lot of 2009 news here.
Also, and now I am way of course, I ran into a guy from my 1974 Los Altos Hllls Little League team the Dodgers, Charlie Crakeler, who recalled me as being new in town that year from Saratoga. We had not spoken in 37 years. We met at Peets.
don’t get me wrong, i love los altos hills, palo alto portola valley, saratoga; robbie’s rant is on Nashville:
edit to add, later that night: I put this or tried to on Robbie’s own blog, but it goes better here: later that day I requested RF – cued by their playing a Pine Valley Cosmonauts death penalty track — to KFJC Sally Goodin and she responded about a half hour later — as I waited in my car and had to reinsert into my NEW Chevy Cruze keys — with Robbie Fulks song about she likes all kinds of music except country. Robbie has a more thorough account of his Drew Carey lovechild therein. Also: this led to Jenny Scheinman pregnant and new cd out on her own label with Nels Cline, Jim Black and Todd Sickafoos. Sick!
Bill Friskics-Warren covered the matter at the time for No Depression.
edit to add, March 16: I left a voice mail for Robbie Fulks hoping to do some original research but so far no response.
Ever picking up a loose thread is that the girl with the dragon tattoo is Noomi Rapace or Karen Orzolek yet it is Laura Veirs who sent me a demo of “Tiger Tattoos” that I am just now reviewing and looking forward to her upcoming 2012 show in SF.
On this track Laura sings (plural – more than one part) and plays at least four instruments: guitar, bass guitar, banjo and mbir – thumb piano for the non-Setswana spearkers. Yes, Tucker Martine produced the demo and played drums on five tracks. It says “Made by Tucker Martine and Laura Veirs at Flora Ave. Studios” which presumably is a producer credit. Rob Syrett was jonesing for a clarinet part when I played him “Tiger Tattoos” today in my dented but I would have had to zip ahead to track 9 to, yes, hear Amy Denio on “alto saxaphone and clarinet” – sic. Oh shit, I am just noticing that it lists Bill Frisell on “Tiger Tattoos”, on National Guitar – is that the loud metal acoustic type? – and electric guitar on two other tracks. I still have to catch myself sometimes calling a National guitar a “steel guitar” which would be a horse of a whole nuther timbre. The demo she sent me has 10 tracks and I don’t recall really listening to it at the time but today I notice that tracks 2 thru at least 8 have hisses and scratch noise that don’t sound quite right and track 8 doesn’t seem to want to be heard at all; it seems to skip back to 7. Laura notes that these are rough mixes; it sounds more like a poltergeist or a ghost in the machine.
Mark- here are my two best records. Keep in mind the new one has rough (underlined) mixes! (bang) Hope to hear from you again re. putting together a show or two. Laura.
That’s on a teeny sized green post it note and there’s a second one that I guess I had moved to the verso that says “more info inside jacket”.
I had noticed Laura’s name on a website of a venue in town – in this case at that time I presume Seattle – because I was doing a Danny Barnes show and she was appearing somewhere supporting Danny. The Danny Barnes trio show featured Amy Denio and a couple others – not the Bad Livers and certainly not and probably before the Willies. It was kind of an Americana showcase that also featured my clients The Blue Eyed Devils – featuring Chris Cotton who eventually got signed to Yellow Dog – and Jerry Hannan who went on to if not fame than at least a good story as a writer for Eddie Vedder – Sean Penn was a longtime supporter of Jerry – you used to see Sean and Woody Harrelson gaping and awing at Jerry at that little club up in Marin. I remember sitting side stage on a bar stool so that I could less obviously watch Jerry and his audience simultaneously. Anyhow I guess I called Laura and sort of explained myself or in this case set myself up to make promises I could not deliver.
For five or so years I had been four-walling shows into the Cubberley Theatre in Palo Alto , a community space that sat 300, and sometimes free shows just for kicks (or licks) at Stanford’s CoHo – the student union. For instance: Dar Williams, John Doe and Jonathan Richman – ok, plus Bill Frisell a couple times – at the Cub and Matt Nathanson, Tim and Greg from the Motherhips and once (“Once”) not Glen Hansford but Freedy Johnston at the CoHo. (Actually Matt opened for John Doe at the Cub…) But the Cub became harder and harder to work with – for instance they almost tried to deport Femi Kuti and his wife and they locked Danilo Perez and I – he was the cultural ambassador from Panama – out of the box office; with the cash; they locked us out of the box office and I had to pay Danilo out of pocket – I was supposed to, on orders from his manager not give him cash, to write a check for his bonus, but the check book was locked in the office – some kind of juvenile throwing his weight around by the new sheriff techie. So the Danny Barnes show – this is about Laura Veirs – was at the old Edge or Keystone nightclub –and even there they almost wanted to switch the show, based on slow advance sales, to the green room rather than the main stage – there is a sad pattern here – and when I talked to Laura for the first time I had just agreed, or so I thought, to produce a three times a week series at a jazz club, from Memorial Day in May thru Labor Day, like 50 shows or so, in San Jose. I was calling it Din Din Din and booking it creatively – jazzy things but not jazz jazz straight jazz per se. You can picture that based on the way I tell this story. I never go straight. My straight lines are all Euclidean not Cartesian, or worse. Poinescare and all that.
I never got around to offering Laura a show I had been fired before that. The venue apparently wanted nothing but girl singers with a backing doing standards. The series started with Josh Roseman – who got a big write-up in the San Jose Mercury but soon I was hearing back from the musicians that they were being mistreated and hassled and people told me that they didn’t want to play. I had to call Leni Stern and tell her not to play. A sax player, with a record deal, told me the club called him and asked him to bring a vocalist. Ralph Carney, who has probably played everywhere from Carnegie Hall to a NASA windtunnel, got through his gig but told me the thing was a bad trip, man. So it is probably a good thing that I didn’t try to book Laura Veirs there. (That she ended up on Nonesuch probably proves my point that she was jazz enough; jazzy enough for Bill Frisell, Eyvind Kang and Amy Denio at least). I was just a talent buyer.
Maybe two years later, 2005 or 2006, I was in Austin for SXSW and I caught the last couple songs of Laura’s showcase. It was right on Sixth Street, right in the window. People like me were watching through the opened window, her back to us, from the street. The room was packed. I went up to her as she was packing up her gear and effects and told her who I was and she may or may not have recalled it, or she remembered vaguely that I had maybe let her down. That’s the only time I have seen her – maybe I tried to book her or checked her avails over the years although I don’t do shows even that regularly anymore. But I have noted and clipped various reviews over the years and watched a video or two and maybe bought a cd and watched her ascent or development –certainly noticed getting signed to Nonesuch and I think that set was reviewed I saw in Time Magazine, I think I recall. I met Tucker Martine at SXSW at his panel in 2009.
So I was psyched and motivated to find this old demo in my storage space. What a great song, the one that plays. I don’t know who the speaker is – a girl? A boy? – or who the subject is – I don’t generally take lyrics that seriously but the sound, the quality, the chops, undeniable. I mean I want to take credit yeah I dug this, starting in 2002, but kinda dropped the ball in not “working with” her any further. And writing you and writing this is not really working (or as Mac MacCaughan might have said, I’m working I’m just not working for you). I almost asked Robert Syrett, he has done album covers for Matmos, for Matador – to draw a dragon character to fit the song – or someone with shocking pink socks – to send as a fan gesture to Laura, we had just come from hanging his show, 11 pieces, at a little café in SF, in South Park, at Caffe Centro. We actually met two guys from a little label nearby, Om Records, doing a photo shoot for some collateral for Mark Farina and Miguel Migs. 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 Laura Veirs upcoming local show; I think it said Feb. 25, 2012 at Café DuNord in San Francisco. Maybe by then Robert Syrett 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.
If Noomi Rapace were there in 2002 she would have avenged the dissed musicians and put the lame promoter (lamer than me) in his place. Actually the American remake looks pretty cool.
edit to add: I guess I saw the trailer for the film with remake of Led Zep and Karen O.
Tiger Tattoo, Dragon Tattoo, plus we have Akira Tana at Santa Clara University De Saiset Museum for opening party of Smith Andersen tattoo art show “Indelibly Yours” already actually open and reviewed in Metro. Here is someone recently posted music to Youtube for the actual song I am starting with, a chestnut:
this actually ended up as track 7 on a 2003 release, first of seven full-lengths so far. on my copy it was track one and the only thing that played without pops and glitches.
edit to ad, years later, 2020, during the covid-19 sheltering in place:
also, i am just learning that the term “chestnut” for a song is more pejorative than what I mean. It’s from a play where a guy tells a joke over and over, about a tree, but he forgets the type of tree and the audience his friend corrects him “chestnut”. Also, I wonder if I am conflating Laura Veirs and Jolie Holland – I had some Jolie/Danny riffs. And maybe I am confusing Tucker Martine with Bob Boilen of NPR. I think Mary Halvorson stole Laura’s act a bit.
The Decemberists “The King is Dead” has been out for more than a year but I am just now posting my review. It is more like an outline of a review. These are all dated 2/17/11.
1. down by the river, down by the old main drag. (i meant “water”)
2. sounds like Driver 8 by REM and this one goes out to the one i love.
3. Peter Buck plays mandolin on track 1 Don’t Cry but “bass” or baritone guitar elec guitar on Down By the Water
4. David Wagner of the Chron says the Decemberists are an REM cover band i.e. derivative or implying too much in debt to, homage to, fealty to, worship.
5. It could be a shot across the bow (I actually drew a ship)
6. He could be f—ing Peter Buck in the — not blowing him.
7. Buck played on the cd, but Colin Meloy wrote all the music.
8. down WITH the river down WITH the old main DRAG.
He is usurping. Demolishing his idols, intergenerationally.
As old as Shakespeare this theme.
Revolution.
9. REM – southeast
DECS – northwest
or Portland v. Atlanta (I mean Athens GA)
Athens Inside Out
Portland In or Out
10. Notice the trees, on backdrop, in poster, on cd cover
11. Kill Rock Stars
the Capitol Label
is really tiny
12. Kevin French Big Shot touring>Paradigm
also White Stripes (David Kaplan) EZ Action>TAG
13. Capitol
Modest Mouse
Up Records
14. Red Light Charlottesville, VA + Ron Lafite (ex-label guy?)
I am debuting my comedic monologue “The Harbaugina Monologue” tomorrow at Cafe Zoe, at an open mic, from 1 to 3, a benefit for Project Read.
As it happens, I had two opportunities yesterday to talk about football, and how it fits my psyche.
First, I paid a condolence call to Mr. William Davis Parker, my old little league coach and father of my schoolmates Nancy Taylor and Bill Parker; Mrs. Joan Parker, who I recalled as having the world’s finest spinach salad recipe, had past away last fall. During our visit, among the recollections I had was that at the first week or so of school in the fifth grade, when I was new to Fremont Hills Elementary, in Los Altos Hills, Calif., (but of course part of PAUSD), there were some intramural touch football games the first of which ended with me catching a pass from Billy Parker in stride and for a long touchdown. At the start of the second game, the captain of that team, the 6th grader Frank Kull, walked up to me, poked me in the chest, and said “I know you. You are Mr. Bomb. Well, I’m gonna cover you myself.” The name did not last more than that one afternoon, but it was nice to be recognized.
Earlier that day I was waiting for my friend on Main Street Los Altos and a group of students passed, on their way to Linden Books, with a teacher. I heard one young man addressed as “Spencer” and recognized him as the son of my old Terman Tiger teammate, Brad E. (I knew Brad had a son of that name; there was a story about their baseball team in the local paper).
I followed the group into the store, explained myself to the instructor and asked for an intro to Spencer.
“You know my Dad?” he marvelled, shaking hands.
“Yes,” I replied. “We played football together. Many years ago. In the eighth grade. I blocked for him and he carried the ball. He was bigger than me, although he was also faster.”
He repeated his astonishment that I indeed know his dad, and I added the impressive facts (or the coincidence) that I also knew that his grandparents were celebrating their 5oth anniversary (because I am driving my Dad to that event, and my Mom).
We had a funny flag football team in that I was a tackle on running plays and reported eligible to line up as a receiver on passing plays. I recall telling the audience at a City Council candidates forum in 2009 that twenty years earlier on that same campus that I made a diving catch on the last play of the game, Terman versus Wilbur, but the officials said I was beyond the end zone and ruled it incomplete, and we lost what turned out to be our only blemish to the season. In the candidates debate so many years later I brought it up as some kind of vague example of the problem with arbitrary authority.
Beyond Terman flag football, I don’t have any actual experience on that topic, except as a fan, and as a sportwriter, and now I blogger. But I plan to start my comedic monologue – which might stretch to 60 minutes or so once I get the hang of it–although tomorrow I will probably be ready for the showers (or worse: retirement) after six minutes or so with these stories to establish my expertise.
The gist of the act –whether it is funny-ha-ha or merely funny-strange shall be revealed –is that I am the exact same age as the 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh and recall playing against him in high school basketball, when he moved to town in 1980. I never liked him — I admit he is or was an exceptional athlete, all league or better in football, basketball and baseball for Palo Alto High — while I was at the rivals, Gunn –and I think it funny that I have this angst I carry around about him all these years, 32 and counting.
In April, 1982 our high school newspaper staff, at the Gunn Oracle, produced a joke issue of the Palo Alto Campanile (the Crapanile) which featured several articles about a fictitious character, based on Harbaugh, called Jim Harbarph. We were commenting on the fact that the actual Campanile lauded him ad nauseum. They featured a picture of Harbaugh playing basketball for their Winter Sports wrapup tombstoned with a picture of the same guy pitching for their Spring Sports Preview. And the rest, as they say, is her story.
But it is also true that even as I try to unfold myself (that a term from Hamlet Ii) here people actually are adding to my tale with their favorite Harbaugh-hater-stories, including a dad from the fabled 1980 Vikings gridders, and a Mom from the Stanford team he recently coached. (I haven’t tried to reach the Detroit Lions coach, nor ask Ben Rothlesberger about that nationally televised pat on the tush, which I captured and released).
The dad I am talking about doesn’t hate Harbaugh but did recall something useful as comedic fodder.
It’s mostly my own viewpoints and perspective but here it seems I could read through 398 comments at Youtube to see who agrees with me (although many others side with and identify with Jim)
The title is a play on the famous Eve Ensler monologue, the title of which I referenced above because the local society columnist could not bring herself to mention it by name when the feminist author spoke to Castilleja here, a tony girls school.
I will have to procure some dental insurance as this thing progresses. Meanwhile, record mogul and budding monologist himself, Joe Sib of Side One Dummy Records and “California Calling” (which did include a riff about 8th grade flag football, “velcro versus snap-ons”) said to keep the day job.
Reading Rainbow in The Park organizers Debbie Bickell of City of East Palo Alto, Marlayna Tuiasosopo, the founder, and Kahlila Liverpool of Second Harvest Food Bank
I just came back from a meeting for the second Reading Rainbow in the Park, a book fair for kids and K-12, scheduled Saturday, May 12, 2012, 10 to 3 p.m. at Cesar Chavez Academy in East Palo Alto.
The fair is masterminded by Marlayna Tuiasosopo, a former Stanford rower and cousin of Raiders quarterback Marcus Tuiasosopo; she is an engineer by day and world-shaker, in the Sylvia Brownrigg sense, by night and weekend. She is also planning a similar affair in her homie, Hayward, at Weekes Park, next to the library where, as she tells it, her Momma and she stared down the children’s librarian back in the day who tried to too strictly enforce the 10-book limit on little Mar-mar. Na-uh!!
She also promises, in addition to enlisting the helps of Yours Tuias, PAUSD board prexy Camille Townsend; the mother of the mayor of East Palo Alto Laura Martinez, a former PAUSD PTSA mom; and sundry other East-side weavers, to bring her large extended family of volunteers, Tuiasosopi of varying shapes, sizes, ages and genders, but all with the trademark smile and ability to side-step the onrush and pick a receiver downfield, or go for it him or her self.
I will edita with more contact info for the rest of you volunteers and contributors, but HOLD THAT LINE, I mean STROKE, STROKE, I mean hold the date.
Marlayna is also kin to Manu Tuiasosopo of the 1984 World Champions San Francisco 49ers whom I saw crush the Dolphins (squish the fish), 38-16 at Stanford Stadium.
One of my goals for the event, as a volunteer and organizer, is to learn to spell “Tuiasosopo”.
Printers Cafe in Palo Alto, March, 2012, people free to assemble, discuss drink of pour coffee, beer or tea.
Posted by been there, a resident of Menlo Park, 2 hours ago (on Palo Alto Weekly comments to G. Sheyner’s coverage of the Arrillaga Proposal, ie March 5, 2012, approximately 9 a.m.)
How shocking that PA online would remove a very amusing comment by MW that I enjoyed very much. Why don’t they remove their own nonsense, for example “billionaire turned philanthropist”?” And what is this philanthropy? If these people, his daughter included, really wanted to do some good they would give their money to tearing down the system that made them so off-the-charts wealthy at the expense of everyone else. The kind of philanthropy they are doing is only making things worse.
Which, after all, is probably good.
Read this fast, as it is sure to be removed.
I had the good fortune to run into Pat Burt today at Printer’s Cafe, the former Printers Ink, the former bookstore. our former former mayor and the son of legendary Los Altos Eagles football coach Tom Burt , who won six championships and has the field named for him, and was the guest of honor more recently at a Rotary Club of Los Altos event that seemed to be open to the public that I wanted to check out but missed.
Last summer Mr. Burt, the younger, and I had a not very useful exchange, while waiting in line together to buy tickets to Kiwanis Club bike and food event, regarding the future of the Varsity Theatre, and my initiative there that I call TLPW456.
I guess I am frustrated with his reticence to either use me as a sounding board for his ideas on projects I am interested in or figuring out how to use my energy and ideas to advancing his initiatives. We are so far like the video I saw not of teamwork but of a basketball and a soccer match being played on the same field but at crosspurposes.
Pat Burt told me he was disappointed by my comments on the Weekly site. I said on Palo Alto Weekly comments section that Burt has said “We are taking the lead here, or at least that’s what John Arrillaga told me to say — I am paraphrasing or check the record.”
You can of course check the record and compare what he said, on City website archive of public meetings, as I know and helpfully suggest.
He definitely said “we are taking the lead here” which is the point I am disputing, the history of the proposal, the context et al.
Is is fair comment, in a comments section –where half the people don’t even use their full names — to playfully (but with method to the madness) suggest that Arrillaga conferred with Burt prior to 10 p.m. on Monday March 5, 2012 about 27 University Avenue proposal (new theatre, perhaps exclusively for Theatreworks AND 250,000 of office space, perhaps in nine stories, i.e. in excess of existing limits, AND requiring undedication of park lands AND moving of historic building, its tenant MacArthur Park Restaurant AND Red Cross — using funds dedicated for bike and pedestrian enhancement, to offset the addition of hospital workers).
If Burt or I had more time for each other at the cafe I would have wanted to put my journalism training to better use and get answers to these four questions that seemed to be not answered in staff presentations and council comment Monday, to Mr. Burt:
1) Pat, how would you characterize John Arrillaga’s role in the community, if my comments and posts mischaracterize it? Is there a distinction between how Stanford as a private non-profit education corporation deals with its constituents and how a public government agency like Palo Alto does? Does it matter how Menlo Park deals with these offers — is the Arrillaga gym there an exact model for how we can or should act here, or is this case somehow more complicated, or do we have differing standards and values and considerations?
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?
3) What do you mean by “taking the lead here” if Arrillaga and not Theatreworks and not staff or council initiatiated the discussion.
4) What about, Pat, Mr. Herb Burok’s public input and question of why are we taxpayers subsidizing the billionaire’s proposal if otherwise he would have to pay for the study himself?
By the way, in my somewhat fantastical reaction to and coverage of Nancy Shepherd’s comment at Council in the fall that she was asked by Chop Keenan to ask the citizens to quit yapping about 456 University –my coverage included a link via wordpress and youtube to a famous movie actress in a pink tightfitting outfit dancing to Imperial Teen “Yoo Hoo” from “Jawbreaker” movie — I was going from “no yawping” to “yoo hoo” — I recall that Aram James a former public defender and local public safety activist who endorsed my 2009 campaign saying, off the top of his head, that Sullivan Vs. New York Times (1964) still holds and protects citizens’ comments on public officials.
Certainly Nancy Shepherd, Pat Burt and John Arrillaga (he whose name is on at least three gyms or stadiums nearby) are public figures and therefore fall under Sullivan in terms of can they accept a certain amount of criticism and comment from the hoi polloi like moi.
But generally speaking I would rather find overlapping grounds to work with council members current and prior than chalk out a playing field of civic affairs with too many markers, yard lines, territory, red zones and perpendiculars.
In terms of following local issues and trying to make a positive contribution, to civic engagement, nothing is easy, and and neophyte quickly learns more about setbacks than progress. But it reminds me of one of my favorite Tom Petty songs: I won’t back down.
edit to add, March 17, 2012: as luck would have, my girlfriend and I and our guest were seated at a community table tonight at a local public house and kitchen with who else but former Mayor Pat Burt, his wife and four of their friends, two couples, most of whom it turned out were also interested in the same civic initiative as we three. Politics can make strange breadfellows….Although the dinner talk was more about the arts and youth services, I did pick up the fact that the Giants have a 6’9″ lefthander working his way fast through the system with local ties. And that “Kaptain Crazy” Fulton Kuykendall of the Atlanta Falcons before all that was from St. Patrick’s of Vallejo and then a fraternity brother of Art Kuehn of Cubberley while at UCLA.
edit to add: on June 6, 2014, or two years and two months later, a Santa Clara County Grand Jury report asked essentially the same questions I was rebuffed for asking Pat Burt, and concluded that Palo Alto did not follow its policy in how it worked here, and in one other case, with Mr. Arrillaga. It also cited us for not answering public requests for information. The Weekly did, somewhere in here, this timeline, run a firmer story on the problems with the 27 University deal.
I picked for a title of today’s post a coining “Allen raga.”
“Allen” is Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), the poet and prophet whose “Howl” first changed the world’s definition of obscenity (with “redeeming social importance” or not) then years later became a James Franco movie.
“Raga” is a type of Indian music. I don’t know much about Indian music although I’ve seen Anoushka Shankar’s tattoo, and I met recently at least by phone and internet a guy named Scott Davidson in Delaware who is willing to fly out to play tabla behind me while I read the following famous literature passage, perhaps for Fathers’ Day, (when Palo Alto has a street music event), perhaps at Lytton Plaza (where I’ve performed the entirety of “Howl” several times), or perhaps at 27 University Avenue, for reasons I am too coy and sly to lay out here. For Ginsberg, he thought of “Moloch”, a Hebrew monster, when, (perhaps after some bad mind-altering substances) he started to be extremely worried about a society that worshipped (perhaps contrary to #2 of the Ten Commandments) giant gods of steel and glass, and were making if not yet dropping Hydrogen bombs. I woke up this morning initially wanting to write a take on Emma Lazerus’ “The New Colossus” but substituting “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” something about computer programmers huddled over their desks yearning to be IPO billionaires. I am not on any substance this morning, not even a double cappucino from either Coupa, Philz or Peet’s. (edit to add, four hours later: YES I AM. Thanks, J.P. Coupal et al):
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open
their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the
stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men
weeping in the parks! Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories
dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities! Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch
whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch
whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch
whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! C——– in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom
I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch
who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!
Light streaming out of the sky! Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite c—-! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bulls—!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs!
Ten years’ animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street![ El Camino, Uni Ave or Mitchell Lane.!?]
This is my way of saying that Palo Alto has too many multi-millionaire commercial real estate developers trying to out-do each other, in puerile Terman-locker-room-showers kind-of-way, and too few council members, commissioners and staff willing to tell them our home, our community is not their sandbox.
By the way, I too, thirty years after Ginsberg, saw one of the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. His name was J.N., he was Gunn’s valedictorian and a Harvard sophomore — who liked baseball and basketball and bad jokes about how a teenager could define “torque”, working in pairs, with our comely classmates, in Art Farmer’s AP physics class — and J.N. he jumped off a ten-story courthouse in New York City. He broke #7 and indirectly #6 of the Ten Commandments but proved definitively at least the #1 of Newton’s Three Laws of Motion.
I know only slightly more Latin than Indian raga but here is Newton’s actual utterance:
Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare.
I guess if we did build a nine-story tower (with theatre, and three levels of hell I mean underground parking) at 27 University Avenue in Palo Alto or Stanford land ground-lease it would give our teenagers the choice between throwing themselves in front of trains and jumping off the top of a tower like my classmate and friend and co-religionist did. And save them the trip to New York. I am being crass but I do wonder if people smarter and better than me have put much thought into the question of whether the prevailing ethos of money (and MOLOCH) contributes to the apparent epidemic of adolescent ennui.
In Palo Alto we give lip service and 39 flavors and then some of mumbo jumbo to “youth collaborative” and “safety nets” but then SERVICE in every sense of the word, when each and every one of these big-shot/money-shot truly pornographic developers comes to the 7th floor with a tall phallic biggest-bestest-yet scheme.
edit to add, Aug. 7, 2012: I seemed to hear some things on KPFA today, Layna Berman show, about community health and the importance of children having free play and not just structured play, like for their teams, seems to fit in here, about Palo Alto values.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 