I was driving in my CAR listening to FM RADIO, COLLEGE RADIO, even, KZSU, the local station, one of two, I was on my way to FOOTHILL JUNIOR COLLEGE, actually, to read a BOOK, in a CLASS — and they have their own station there, KFJC, and I sat in my car and the lady played my request (I made by CELL), DAR WILLIAMS “WHEN I WAS A BOY”, from HONESTY ROOM, for Emmie Fa’s daughter, the wrestler CADENCE LEE, from GUNN HIGH WRESTLING CHAMPIONS, and she said she had a SHOW and a BLOG. So I thought I would salute her it the media the whole flat tortilla with:
I had a Vietnamese client, Dao Strom, who is still my partner in our Wallace Stegner Tribute, a Taiwanese American client named Annie Lin who I believe is a 8th cousin of Jeremy Lin, a Pinay girlfriend, Terry Acebo Davis — when we went to Bindlestiff for PMSTA showcase I had ideas for about five projects from that — a mostly on the internet meaning not in real life Santa Clara Pueblo (Native American) project with Jody Naranjo, and I worked briefly as Chris Cuevas’ intern at the launch of Rupa Marya’s April Fishes, BUT, what I really really want (that’s a Spice Girls reference — and did I mention anywhere yet today that I discovered the Donnas — and speaking of today, today I met Tracy Chapman, and she turned around to wave goodbye to us, although she was probably doing it out of respect for or was charmed by my mother — I want to manage this really happening from San Jose part Khmer part Flippin’ band The Like Me.
The probably don’t need management since they are already on NPR and travel three continents, self-helped by the bands Helena Hong.
Did I mention I worked for Helena Norberg Hodge the honorary Ladakhi?
Did I mention I kinda sorta know Jamie Cullum the half-Thai popstar who wrote and sang for Clint Eastwood’s Khmer movie “El Camino” — isn’t that now a cd by Black Keys, who I don’t know but I KNOW PAT CARNEY’S UNCLE, RALPH CARNEY^, WHO PLAYS CLARINET?
Call me Khmer Pilipina goddesses of rock Like Me of San Jo and I help you stay small long time — much better. {if they read that, I can see why they didn’t call back -ED}
edit to add, or collection of boo-boos: Gran Torino is a muscle car made by Ford while El Camino is a utility car built by Chevy as my namesake and Chevy Dealer grandfather MB Weiss would surely correct me from heaven if he read the above or likes Clint. Jamie Cullum is part Jewish — maybe he’s my cousin, like my actual cousin Craig Ruda formerly of Joe 90 and Godschild major label signed bands — and part Burmese, not Thai. Oh yeah, my cab driver, from the Vietnamese Cafe Dolci on Market back to ACT at Yerba Buena at 221 Fourth – our feet hurt, $7.50 cab ride to go back two blocks the long way but keep the change for the lesson on Mongolia versus Mongolia Beef — “dos vadonya” was from Mongolia, which is not Nepal or Ladakh — it is where Genghis Khan is from, Duh! {and Terry TMW and I got the same lesson again from a Lyft driver, that he likes Russian cuisine, six years later}
Jack Walrath and I met Jamie Cullum because Jack freaked out to know that Jamie’s radio breakthru hit steals the riff from Charles Mingus “Haitian Fight Song” and our little “gotcha” note we sent back stage earned us drinks after show with Jamie and Dana Collins his p.m. anyhoo — and I had met Jamie at IAJE thanks to Jason “Don’t Confuse me with Jeremy Lin” Olaine, he of the three-pointer I mean triplets of not Belleville but Storyville. Here is Jamie :
the Like Me’s video is by Marco Bercasio of San Jo. I would say it’s the best video I have ever seen. I would say Marco Bercasio pound for pound and from 2010 on is a better filmmaker than Clint. Tell me more, tell me more, like do you have a car — ha, ha, ha, ha — that’s a Summer Lovin’ Grease allusion — this guy may be better than Jerry Zak at this point.
edit to add like 6 years later: the auto-refer / auto-reefer feature of this blog format suggested I revisit this — I had just posted something cheap about Kanye West and “bowfinger” and I’m glad I took the bait: this video is pure genius. I hope the Like Me featuring Laura Mam I think are still rocking in the free world. I gather its Khmer more than Vietnamese duly noted. Big world.
And because I name-checked him above — as Rupa’s onetime manager — I might post or edit again here with a yoga video by Chris Cuevas.
^and now Ralph Carney has left us, as has my dear mother
Hi,
I wrote a not-so-intelligent but fawning review or notice of the famous Like Me video on my obscure blog Plastic Alto about six years ago.
Today the auto-refer function of WordPress suggested I re-visit that. Wow, that video was or is so great!
Is Laura Mam (perhaps now known as Laura Tevary?) still making music?
My mind jumps around in weird ways but I also flashed to, from San Jose then moved far far away, my briefly client Lara Price (born in Vietnam, adopted by U.S. Utah couple, voice lessons, marriage, documentary about return to Vietnam, also a gemologist).
I’m celebrating (or processing) 25 years as Earthwise Productions of Palo Alto.
I don’t know who played what in your band but because I was re-visiting fellow South Bay types Smash Mouth (because of the miracle of these new proliferated hand-held computers, and their convenient access to music) it makes me think you should work with their producer Eric Valentine or Greg Camp their genius. Or for different reasons Julie Wolf in Berkeley.
The former mayor of Palo Alto Yaiway Yeh (who is Taiwanese) is married to a professor who is an expert on trafficking which I see is a concern of yours as well. I have a lot of weird trivia not sure that is so helpful.
My best to you.
Mark Weiss
Earthwise Productions and Plastic Alto blog
andand, this is a hot mess but here is Chris Cuevas:
If you live in the San Francisco area, you know the University of California’s Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive has a great program, and in great news, the BAM/PFA was awarded a $100,000 grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for a Barry McGee retrospective exhibition in 2012. Can’t wait. (info via rvca)Barry McGee
August 23 through December 9, 2012 BAM/PFA
Berkeley, California
i hope it kept the part about $100,000 and Andy Warhol because I was gonna segue or outro with the thing in the times today with berkeley getting reamed about losing a million dollar Johnson, Sargent Johnson carving that they sold for surplus for $150 which also reminds me that my chair in my office is from Charles Linder from his MFA at Berkeley reclaimed from surplus something about Bear Chair Lair I use it as an actual chair not part of an elaborate and hard to explain art project — i can insert my recent Linderism here — also I guess it doesn’t hurt or warp fabric of universe to add bit about meeting Barry at Claire show and him saying he would tag Palo Alto Caltrain station as public art commission if we get green light from that agency and PAPAC.
I also need to luck up that thing that Blake said about Brian Bosworth coined the neolism Johnson as men part? Neologism. Did I just write neo low gism?
Les Blank is a prize-winning independent filmmaker, best known for a series of poetic films that led Time Magazine critic Jay Cocks to write, “I can’t believe that anyone interested in movies or America…could watch Blank’s work without feeling they’d been granted a casual, soft-spoken revelation.” John Rockwell, writing in The New York Times, adds, “Blank is a documentarian of folk cultures who transforms anthropology into art.” And Vincent Canby, also in The Times, declared that Blank “is a master of movies about the American idiom… one of our most original filmmakers.”
Born in 1935 in Tampa, Florida, Les Blank attended Tulane University in New Orleans, where he received a B.A. in English literature and an M.F.A. in theatre. In 1967, after two years in the Ph.D. film program at the University of Southern California, and five years of freelancing in Los Angeles, he began his first independent films, on Texas blues singer Lightnin’ Hopkins (The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins ) and the newly forming sub-culture known as flower children, ( God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance. ) To finance these and other of his own films, he continued to make industrial and promotional films for such organizations as Holly Farms Poultry, Archway Cookies and the National Wildlife Federation until 1972.
Blank’s first independent films began a series of intimate glimpses into the lives and music of passionate people who live at the periphery of American society– a series that grew to include rural Louisiana French musicians and cooks (Yum,Yum, Yum!; J’aiEte Au Bal– I Went to the Dance ; Dry Wood; Hot Pepper ; Spend It All; and Marc and Ann); Mexican-Americans (Chulas Fronteras; Del Mero Corazon); New Orleans music and Mardi Gras (Always For Pleasure); chef Alice Waters and other San Francisco Bay Area garlic fanatics (Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers); German filmmaker Werner Herzog (Burden Of Dreams; Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe) and the very unique and inspiring multi-faceted Artiste, Gerald Gaxiola (The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists); Appalachian fiddlers (Sprout Wings and Fly); Polish-American polka dancers (In Heaven There Is No Beer?); rock musicians (Huey Lewis and the News: Be-FORE!; RyCooder and the Moula Banda Rhythm Aces; and A Poem Is a Naked Person, on Leon Russell); Serbian-American music and religion (Ziveli!: Medicine for the Heart); Hawaiian music and family traditions (Puamana); Afro-Cuban drumming and religious tradition (Sworn to the Drum); more East Texas bluesmen (A Well Spent Life), featuring Mance Lipscomb, and Cigarette Blues with Sonny Rhodes; American tourists in Europe (Innocents Abroad) and even gap-toothed women (Gap-Toothed Women. His latest work, All In This Tea, follows tea specialist David Lee Hoffman to China in search of the perfect leaf.
Major retrospectives of Les Blank’s films have been mounted in Los Angeles at FILMEX in 1977; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1978 and 1984; New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1979; the National Film Theatre, London, 1982; Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City, 1984; the Cinematheque Francais, Paris, 1986; the Independent Film Week, Augsburg,Germany, 1990 and the Leipzig Film Festival, 1995 and the Sofia Music Film Festival, Bulgaria, 1998. Feature articles on Blank have appeared in American Film, Film Quarterly, Take One, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Image Magazine, Mother Jones, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Premiere, Downbeat and Video Review. In 1984 Blank co-edited the Burden of Dreams book, which included journals written during the making of Burden of Dreams by him, sound recordist-editor Maureen Gosling and Werner Herzog, plus an article by legendary journalist Michael Goodwin. In 1986, National Public Radio aired a half-hour special on Les Blank’s work and in 1991 CNN aired a special on him worldwide. In 2007, a 30 minute interview with Nick Spitzer on nationwide NPR. 2008, Film Forum, New York 2008 presented a complete retrospective in 16mm.
shoot i may have to cut miss jordana class and stop by miss landry’s just for you with my mama to get me a po boy with shrimp
Psyched to see Galactic in yesterday’s Times today which is how I realized today is Mardi Gras. Or, as Fess would say, The Mardi Gras.
I then also heard Stanton Moore on NPR although at first I didn’t recognize his name or his voice. I thought they said “Steve Moore” and I was somehow thinking Seattle not NOLA. Duh! I also got an email from a friend of Glenn Hartman, looking for a Klezmer gig in June. Stay tuned.
I am one of the few people who booked NOKAS before I booked Galactic, so Stanton Moore and Ben Ellman I knew from that first. I got a call from Adam Shipley asking if I would add Galactic to a bill I had announced in a series called A Quantum Decoherence of Jazz Shows that featured Ledisi (under the name Anibade) and Broun Fellinis. Galactic became the opening act, for like two bones. This was 1997. The flyer, which featured four shows, a ripped picture of Steven Hawking, designed by Michelle Nelson formerly of La Para Street and then Santa Cruz, is how I met Danny Scher — I was putting up the poster and Danny saw me, in Palo Alto Sport and Toy shoes, of all places. Dan Prothero came to the show, I gotta believe that’s where I met him.
I should probably check out that show or shows! So should you!
The new album art is sick. This video has crappy sound but is remarkable because its like from yesterday:
Matt Gonzalez, Jack Hirschman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
David Highsmith, Garrett Caples, John Paige.
John Ceeley, Lauren Van Buskirk Pikes.
John Mitchell, Clive Matson, Martha Muhs, Andrew Hoyem
Sarah Hartwell, Dartmouth Archives.
Bob Rosen — IS BOB ROSEN’S STEP-DAUGHTER HERE?? –
Don Cherry, Doctors Richard Shapiro and Brian Edward Moore
who lived at Richard Eberhart with David Rattray and
Melinda Lopez — Thurston Moore.
Terry Acebo Davis, Guillermo Gomez Abascal
“no vale la Pena”
David Womack
David Hess
David Rattray
poem?
Franz Kafka seven three
Tom Stoppard seven three
1964 thru 1977
Published with Notice
95 years after publication date.
Nineteen seventy eight to one march eighty nine
70 years after
d
e
a
t
Plate magnet drops beard of iron into ship’s volcano: rust red smoke stains the California sky
I sit on the wharf hands in pocket & lift cars from Broadway with my Giant Crane, Ladies freeze & beseech wordless — my straining arms Lift higher into the blue & they signal by dropping Kleenex tissues into the sea, silly ladies, those Fish will explode & return to sniff . . . they seldom sneeze
But now the sun much nearer in summer so it’s now or never — My crane hoists black steel &
I walked to the back of the room to provide a break from the format the previous six or seven presenters established. David H has some good photos on his photostream as I had linked to below.
I am still a little miffed at the dude who made the video but trying to stay pro-positive. (This has officially morphed from poetry to journal…..) how bout a little fughttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4IR2wLOE4k
I heard Catherine Russell on NPR which sent me to my palantir to seek out her version and more info on “He’s All I Need” a gospel track attributed in the fifties to Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I was gonna dedicate it here in Plastic Altlandia to Jeremy Lin, he of the Cross over dribble fame.
But the oracle told me that Catherine Russell will appear in the flesh in San Francisco’s Yoshi’s on March 9 doing a Grateful Dead-influenced program, pre-empting my first impulsive.
Well, I will resist any articulated Jesus versus Jerry versus Jeremy allusions, but I do recommend people of varying tastes, stripes, creeds and tax brackets check out Yoshi’s Frisco now booked by born again West Coaster Eric Hanson (who used to work out of a caboose in Half Moon Bay, and brought albeit briefly Nina Simone back from the Dead, or from France at least, to Newark, New Jersey that is, where they also briefly gave us Whitney Houston, and Walt Whitman).
The video above is from five years ago but despite a synch problem got me psyched. Somehow the whole thing makes me wonder about Catherine Russell touring with Papa Mali (7 Walkers, featuring Bill Kreutzman, of Palo Alto and GD).
Also, Stew is at Yoshi’s the week before, been itching to git to.
I’ve spent a little time on the mountain, don’t you know.
Cryptic note to self: I can’t believe I used “booger” in a headline twice within five days.
edit to add, three minutes later: argh, never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn: 1) Stew is in Oakland Yoshi’s, March 6, which has a relatively new “booger” (booker) of the name escapes me now that longtime booker Peter Williams is at the Uptown in Napa. Speaking of which good luck to orginal Yoshi’s booger and fellow Gunn hoopster alumnus Jason Olaine (that’s J-Olaine not Jeremy Lin, but I understand your confusion); 2) Catherine Russell’s appearance coming up is part of a project called American Beauty Project which draws from two particular GD releaases — and by the way, I took me about 13 years to realize that “American Beauty” is a type of rose before it was a Kevin Spacey 1999 movie, which used roses to a delightful effect. 3) finally, not sure which instrumentalists in my video, five years ago in New York will be in SF next month, or if this song is even in their repertoire, but I am sticking with it. 4) Catherine Russell has a new release of jazz and gospel on Harmonia Mundi out of SoCal. 5) I hope Bonnie Simmons reads this post and books Catherine Russell and or American Beauty Project into Hardly Strictly Bluegrass whether or not Rusell has played there before; which reminds, did they just rename Speedway Meadow for Warren Hellman, such that I could have somehow called all this New Speedway Meadow Hellman or some such? It works for me, in Plastic Alto.
I got the chance to update my scorecard of heavy-hitting bookers, or Boogers, in the Boog Powell sense — I am moving on to baseball in many ways, already, here in this weird dry February — during my initiative to Save The Varsity Theatre here, which I, if merely to confuse Satan, called TLPW456: Hanson, Olaine, Steve “Home Run” Baker, Gregg Perloff’s assistant’s assistant, someone in Dawn Holliday’s office, Bill Bragin I think, Danny Scher, David Lefkowitz, and others.
Dianna Arnspiger never called me back but it’s cool; she’s got a daughter and all that; she got us in to the Decemberists last Valentine’s Day.
edit to add, again: i switched the title here from “New Yoshi’s Booger” pun on booker to “New Yoshi’s Boogie” back to GD and Hellman reference, sort of.
Here’s a link to a Huff Post about Hellman, slightly snarky and three weeks of Hellman’s passing, but most people didn’t know he was sick. I even texted Bonnie Simmons’ former assistant something about calling it “Billionaires’ Bayou” or some such, but then felt bad once I knew. And, to go full circle here, like a Jeremy Lin around Derek Fisher spin move, I stayed home and watched Jeremy Lin on national television versus going to the Hellman Memorial Concert, although I was and still am tempted to ask my fellow Oak Creeker Ms. Ann Ozer to give me a review (she’s a former School Board candidate, and her daughter works on Farm Aid). She said she went to his memorial at the synagogue.
weird personal note to EH: i saw a phil rizzuto poetry book, which was just some fans transcribing weird things he said and printing it unjustified; thought of you.
Billie Eyeball, whose World For Ransom played one of the earliest Earthwise Shows, in January, 1995
KFOG local favorite Alexis Harte
Chris Cotton has the blues this morning and the blues all day today
Justin Markovits
Lisa Fay Beatty performing as El Fay
Glenn Hartman performing as Drone N Bone
Squeeze-boxer Salane C. Schultz who also created a poster design for the event
Rich Corny of Intersteller Grain, Earthwise's Mark Weiss and Justin Markovits
Rich Corny Interstellar Grain
Big thanks to all the artists, to Ramona Downey and staff at the Bottom of the Hill and to Michelle Budziak for the photography and creative direction.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 