What Can Brown Do For Yu?

Posted on February 15, 2012 by markweiss86

Former Paly stalwart Steven Brown, on February 12, 2012 in Palo Alto

I ran into Steven Brown who was Jeremy Lin’s teammate and main man at Paly. Steven said that they played on Mr. Jim Brown’s AAU team for years, then played separately at JLS vs. Jordan, then reunited at Paly.

My headline alludes to the idea that Jessica Yu, who made “Ping Pong Playa” and went to Gunn, could make a biopic about Jeremy Lin, maybe with Steve’s help. Maybe the biopic could be called “MSG Playa” which might look like a cooking show but is actually the answer to Spike Lee’s Jesus Shuttlesworth movie. MSG here being Madison Square Garden.

Again, if you light up Madison Square Garden for 38 points on a Friday night, on national tv, with or without Kobe, you have reached a pinnacle of sports and can live off that for a few decades if not forever.

He said “Superlintendo”.
I like “Linderella”.

I’m not sure I am feeling this “god’s fingerprints” rhetoric, however. I’d still like to see the document at 25 Churchill and how they got into Paly over Gunn.

Meanwhile I am off to Old Pro to join my old Gunn teammate Brian Evans and some others for more Lin.

edit to add, hours later: I checked out his 13 assist game at Old Pro, which was pretty packed. Matt Porteus and I disagreed on whether Jeremy elevated his game (my stance) or was overlooked by systematic group think (Dr. Porteus’ theory).  When he is on the cover of Sports Illustrated on Feb. 20, maybe they will solve the mystery. For comparison, Kent Lockhart was pictured in a 1984 article in SI, regarding UTEP, but never on the cover.

Also, saw this link about Pinoy love Lin:

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/sports/02/15/12/pinoy-basketball-fans-fascinated-lins-story

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7th Grade Bitch

Posted on February 14, 2012 by markweiss86

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO5h6cLwlt8&feature=related

I called Mia Levin (Mudwimin, Frightwig) about Etta James who died recently. I am trying to piece together that Etta James recorded an album in Nashville called “Seven Year Bitch”, in 1989. Then, in early 1990s Selene Vigil starts a band called Seven Year Bitch. Then, in late 1990s, Lisa Fay Beatty (1964-2011) of the Mudwimin joins 7 Year Bitch, first as a sound mixer then as lead guitar. Then Lisa happens to work for a Thrasher Productions show for Nina Simone and strikes up a friendship with Nina Simone. Is there a creative thread that connects those events?

Mia says that Selene is part black, if that helps, and married, she thinks and I believe her, the drummer of Rage Against Machine.

When prompted or asked, Mia confirms my recollection, somewhat extraneous and perhaps gratuitous here, that the original guitarist for Seven Year Bitch, died, maybe of an overdose. Well off subject but still close to my heart, I recall Kathy Moffeit calling me once to say she saw an album of 7 Year Bitch and bought it just for the name. Kathy and Mia knew each other as kids and maybe in junior high, if that helps — actually, and not to brag, I kinda dated each of them, in the 7th Grade kind of way, although both relationships evolved into more like me being a brother, a safe guy, but still Jewish not Asian. Digressing to: who was I talking to about not being visibly Asian? A trustee for the De Young, a Kathleen Hall I believe, the biochemist, who claims to be part Chinese. (Kathy is part Korean, half Korean, even, like Steve Kressie, the Gunn basketball star, whose mom I shot at a recent game — I discussed all this with Hans Delannoy yesterday, who says that he thinks of himself as part Asian in that his mom and maybe his dad are both from Indonesia. Hans can rattle off the names of the four NBA Asians: Wat Misaka — I had to explain him–, Ray Townsend, someone else from San Jo and Jeremy Lin. I am way off topic.

Mia said that Friday was a nice lady, the one who died.

Lisa and I were working supposedly on a monologue or show about Nina, which I have posthumously working-titled “Save Me, Yeah.”

I will have to look in to Etta, at least.

edit to add: Selene Vigil also known as Selene Vigil Wilk having married Rage Against Machine drummer Brad Wilk. 7YB bassist Elisabeth Davis was also a member of Von Iva, I wrote about recently. Slightly off topic, I tried to produce a show for Lyme featuring forme L7 stalwart Jennifer Finch but the band no-showed. otherstarpeople aka. Thanks to Madina Salaty, who gets a pass because she also sent AFI our way, I was recalling with Kepi Ghoulie Sunday at Rockage. What was my  potential Kepi headline? Oh, yeah: “Finders Kep-ers” although I had to look up the TK reference.

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Grafton versus Selmer

Posted on February 14, 2012 by markweiss86

For a guy who names his blog “Plastic Alto” it is amazing how long it has taken me to get the name straight, Grafton as in “skin graft”.

Ornette switched to Selmer after that, which has white enamel.

Dig?

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Plastic Alto Top Dozen Posts All-Time

Posted on February 14, 2012 by markweiss86

META, not Etta–As in, “I met-a nice lady from Guyana on my way to write about Etta”, Ivonne Baker — good name for a singer! Thirty words in, and I digress…

Dude, I haven’t even finished writing on this, so quit commenting! Thank you to Brian Moore, our most attentive reader, lonely out there I guess in Cleveland I mean Springfield, home of Vachel Lindsay. Now back tot he news, as opposed to the Hottentrot Venus or Sutton Hoo, or Don Sutton or Horton Hears a Hoo:

I’ve been blogging for about a year-and-a-half under the name “Plastic Alto” — it’s a jazz reference, regarding Ornette Coleman and his white Grafton saxophone.

WordPress lets me track how each post is doing, relative to each other. The results are humble. Maybe I should switch to Tumblr or something hip.

But I still think of this as a notebook where I keep track of my ideas. What I would be DOING if i were not merely writing about it. The internet — millions, ‘lo, billions of potential readers — imbues just enough potential reader looking over my shoulder to keep me honest.

Here is a list of my top 15 posts, in popularity, plus a very brief summary or abstract — I was gonna post about Etta James, Lisa Fay Beatty and Selene Vigil, via Mia Levin. (Palo Alto Downtown Library kicks me off after an hour; public time share; plus I gots to walk the dog — Frida the Cocker — and get ready for the VaLINtine Show, at Old Pro –Knicks v. Raptures). My girlfriend works until 8 today so I drew the perfect hand to watch basketball then be romantic. TMI.

1. Paul Cohen and Evan O’Dorney — math and prodigy

2. Lockhart Loo — Kent Lockhart, Jeremy Lin, Jungle Jim Loscutoff, top 3 ballers of all time — Ron Wyden not far from the bunch –and the unofficial proposal to rename a court at Seale Park for Lockhart and or The 3Ls. Hans Delannoy and I talked about this yesterday, while dining at Chef Chu, who just moved a picture of he and Jeremy to a better table.

3. “XXX-The Busker” about street music– and Emily Palen the violinist — but I suspect people looking for porn accidentally land there because for the first 30 posts I labeled them in Roman like they do for Super Bowl. Triple X is a type of hardcore, or so I hear. “Busker” being a term for street music, from Spanish “buscar” “to look for”.

4. The Varsity and “the last picture waltz 456” initiative — Plastic Alto has been headquarters for my log or blog about organizing and lobbying to help a cultural group to be determined get the lease on the historic The Varsity Theatre, at 456 University Avenue, with perhaps a little Keynsian help from local council or commissioners. I have posted about 10 times on topic, including one meta-coverage with links to previous eight or so, plus random posts at several other sites, like PA Weekly, and a couple articles for Patch.

5. This is What Democracy Looks Like — my incidental coverage of an Occupy march in SF when Terry Acebo Davis and I were attending a matinee performance at Bindlestiff Theatre near Market and Sixth in San Francisco.

Fuck This How Bout Some Zep:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6dnfm-OQ3k

6. and 7. (dr. moore is refering to my possible LINCOHERENCE)

Free Concert Saturday at Lytton Plaza with Magnolia Sisters

Alden Van Buskirk event in San Francisco’

Both of these posts were used as previews to events I produced in 2011 and I also sent the link to people on my email list. The Magnolia Sisters event, April 1, 2011 was part of an ongoing effort to bring music to Lytton Plaza, and part of a series I’ve written on that topic. Also, there are plans to keep going to promote Alden Van Buskirk a Dartmouth graduate and poet who died before his poems were pubished, fifty years ago.

8. Last Hippy or what did you expect

This is one of several posts about Michael McFaul a Stanford professor and Rhodes Scholar who I knew briefly in that he took me and three Gunn students to see the Grateful Dead at Greek Amphitheatre in Berkely in 1982. He is now U.S. Ambassador to Russia. I have a Russian theme going on elsewhere in Plastic Alto regarding Elif Batuman, another Stanford alumnus, or alumna, who wrote “Possessed: Russian Writers and People Who Read Them”.

9. Calling ICOBOPA relates to my ongoing work and lobbying for live music in Palo Alto including a proposal about a theoritical event in which someday hordes of hippies on recreation drugs will descend on Palo Alto to play free live music, based loosely on Mavericks and something I worked for in its first year here, World Music Day Fete De La Musique which I actually told the founder sounded more like a dragnet than a festival in his description of it – he wanted all the musicians to be finger-printed before being allowed to assemble.

10. Thurston Moore and Alden Van Buskirk – a quickie about new cd from founder of Sonic Youth and the fact that a sound title reference hematology — Alden Van Buskirk died of a blood-related disease, although it actually presented through his urine.

11. Wallace Stegner tribute via song

12 “V. Monocles or How Do Our Burgers Rank” about my Dartmouth contemporary the comedic genius and hottie and bodybuilder or boxer Jen Dzuria and our spoof on Zimbardo. It was called “Vagina Monocles” but I wimped out.

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Lin “gunning it out” with Kobe Bryant

Posted on February 10, 2012 by markweiss86

I GOT A COLOR TV, SO I CAN SEE, JEREMY LIN PLAY BASKETBALL!!

Did I just see a highlight of Jeremy Lin spinmoving past Derek Fisher thru the lane? Did I see him go down there again and do a reverse layup?
My cousin in LA texted me “Jeremy Linn” — excuse the spelling error, he thinks Lin’s Irish — and I turned on the tv to see Jeremy Lin, 3 points. Jeremy Lin, 3 more points. He finished with a Knicks-seaon-high 38 points, and the lady from the network congratulated him for “gunning it out with Kobe Bryant.”
A list of all the puns, headlines and tributes would take pages to list here.
A Hollywood movie, I could picture.
When I turned on my computer (Terry’s computer, actually) did it say “Lin” or “log in”?

On the other hand: yesterday I left a voice mail for Mitch Stephens the prep sports writer for the Chron and explained “the Gunn Lin Conundrum.”
I will spare you from the description here.
I will quote, out of context, Tom Jacobousky of Gunn High:
(by text): I had asked him in a text — in code — if I should explain in public “The Gunn Lin Conundrum”. Tom said:
I wouldn’t bother. We’ve moved on. And I’m actually rooting for him. I don’t want to be viewed as sour grapes

What I almost wrote back was:

So you are resigned to conceding 20 points per game each year? (I went to the Gunn-Paly last week and was impressed but even so: Floreal and Dawkins, who both live in Gunn district, combine for 40 points.)

I said on another site — Patch — that Lin is Wat Misaka meets Tim Tebow.

In Mrs. Cushing’s English class, back in 1981, we read Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon” and were taught the distinction between “expediency” and “morality”. I woke up yesterday with this headline: ”
Darkness at New Lin

I guess the expediency of lighting the NBA on fire for four games outweighs
4Q 2:29 nice job, “takes his man”

He was gracious in post game thanking and crediting his teammates.
“the phenomenon of Jeremy Lin continues”
“The Yellow Mamba”
All I do is Lin Lin LIn
May the best man Lin
I definitely thought even after making the Warriors that he could do wonders as a barnstormer thru Asia, maybe hooking up with Kurt Schneider of Harlem Globetrotters org (a Dartmouth ’87) if the NBA doesn’t back it.
I would say he is worth more than the $800,000 certainly.
He could be the Ty Cobb of hoops — I just noticed that there in recent years was a Ty Cobb at Sacred Heart — a great-grandson of the baseball great?

I wil say it again: Lin is part of the legendary 3L’s as one of the top 3 players in Palo Alto prep history: Jeremy Lin, Kent Lockhart and Jungle Jim Loscutoff.

most in first 3 starts since NBA ABA merger

shooting 58 percent

great for basketball in New york

Jeremy Lin draws the charge! (4q :41)

Wow. Again. Wow. Legend in NewYork LIN
outro with the rap:

“I’m just thankful to God, man” Jeremy Lin to ESPN’s Lisa Salters.

edit to add, March 19, 2012: finally got my hands on the SI and noticed that the article reference the fact that Joshua Lin played for Gunn:

When Josh’s Gunn High team completed conditioning drills, there was Jeremy again, sprinting and keeping pace on the sideline. Long after the middle child went on to star for the Crimson, finally growing bigger than any Lin in memory—”When he was a baby, Jeremy ate twice as much as his two brothers,” their 5’6″ father, Gie-Ming, likes to say—5’9″ Josh still knew, better than any defender in college basketball, how to nullify 6’3″ Jeremy’s best moves.

dana o’neil in 2009 espn.com article also references the Gunn vs. Paly conundrum for the Lins.

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Absurd tension for IM

Posted on February 9, 2012 by markweiss86

courtesy Chronicle Books

 

edit to add, Monday, Feb. 20, 2012: I went in to Safeway to try to buy the Jeremy Lin Sports Illustrated but instead walked out with The New Yorker because it had a blurb about Doomtree in New York doing something called Wugazi, a mash-up of Fugazi and Wu-Tang clan. Now I only know of Doomtree because it or they played a show at St. Olaf’s College in St. Paul, MN the same day as my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah – his band Souldiers played an old school bowling alley — in fact, the photo above on the “Plastic Alto” masthead is me throwing the rock that very day, by Terry Acebo Davis — I was digging Desa from Doomtree and bought her cd, a book of her poetry and two t-shirts from that show – it also featured Ted Leo I spoke to that day. I was watching Coen  Brother’s “A Serious Man” during a break in the Bar Mitzvah weekend action.

I don’t really know that much about Wu-Tang other than the music from “Ghost Dog” if that says anything. And I only saw Fugazi once, plus “Instrument” screening at the Whitney, yet I am obsessed by Ian MacKaye who I sent the above cryptic cellphone capture to, or tried to. It’s words from the recent book, also called “Instrument” about mostly indie musicians and their guitars.

three years later I am editing to add to this post in that the computer generated a link from Today’s post — March 8, 2015 to this post because they both reference RZA: the “IM” in the headline refers to Ian MacKaye, who I met when his band The Evens played at Terman. (Truth be told, I kind of wore him down, with my gushing enthusiasm). Here is a link to the book, on Chronicle imprint, I bought, also called, like the movie about Fugazi, IM’s other more famous band, “Instrument”

and1: if you are reading this but thinking about Stevenson House the senior center in Palo Alto, California, ask yourself if you want to subject the well-being of seniors to market forces and “savvy investors” (so now I can tag this “plato’s republic”, i.e policy).

andand: the Dessa Doomtree Ted Leo show was actually at The Mac.

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Foothill molehill post

Posted on February 9, 2012 by markweiss86

I don’t have time to actually write either of these but I was seized by two ideas while wandering Foothill College today: one, Janis Stevenson had a notion that Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” was influenced by Woody Guthrie, and two something about Jo Ed the dj “Lubbock or Leave It” who played today: Adam Carroll, Fred Eaglesmith, The Damn Quails (not to be confused with the former Vice President, he said), Dan Reeder, friend of John Prine who makes his own axes, JC Brooks, a Wilco cover, which is what drew me in like a syren.

outro: Sharon Jones “This Land” — which should be our national anthem: molehill in title because it is small not big and maybe it should split into two like an Amoeba:

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Obscure Ukrainian Radiohead cover via youtube and wordpress blog

Posted on February 8, 2012 by markweiss86

My thought process went: Jerry Hannan>Dan Bern>Matt Nathanson covers>Jonathan Richman>JR covers Leonard Cohen>a skinny chick covers same Leonard Cohen song>I notice her weird name, which looks like my name and email address>Ukrainian pop singer singing Ukrainian song that the skinny uke chick also covers>skinny Ukrainian chick posts recent cover, of Radiohead “Paranoid Android” and has filled out some. To wit:

Ok, eta, I might as well back up to “the Ukrainian Uke girl” doing Richman and then Richman himself at HSBG:

Ok, so if she, Morkwa, sees this maybe she will write me a letter (earwopa at yahoo dot com) and ask my help in getting a visa to come tour U.S. and I will pass it on to Matt Gonzalez who will ask Jonathan Richman if he wants a 23 year old Ukranian Uke player doing covers to open a few shows — and Matt, Jon and I will pool in a contribution to help make it happen. I would match whatever Matt and Jon could or would put up, just for the story (which gets me back to “Sounds Like a Story” by Jerry Hannan). We could call the tour “Twice” as in “Once”.

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Kepi Ghoulie at first Rockage Fest in San Jose Sunday

Posted on February 7, 2012 by markweiss86


I am psyched to see good ol’ Kepi Ghoulie at the first Rockage Festival in San Jose Sunday.
The two-day event for gaming and music is produced by Eric Fanali of Grand Fanali Productions of San Jose. Fanali has produced about 1,000 concerts, including a run at Palo Alto’s Mitchell Park Center, over the last 15 or so years; he got started as a fifteen-year-old at Saratoga High, where teachers compared the kid to Steven Spielberg. (Eric is also a film buff).
For a while we had a running joke that we were like Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzmann in “Rushmore” and of course I cannot think of their names but Fanali would get it in a snap.
Good luck to Eric and Rockage. Remember even dwarves started small!

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Wishing a full Ricoh to TPH

Posted on February 7, 2012 by markweiss86

This is the wordpress/youtube/77MaidenLane version of a mixtape, for TPH:

There is a minor theme here, especially in the denouement, about Stanford University and fast food, for what that’s worth. Also, no need to do more than about 30 seconds of each video, except as an encore. For some reason I want to find something rhythmic by Fugazi, like Furniture, if it exists. Also, I would have liked to find an excerpt from “Treasure of Sierra Madre” about “badges”. We all have our badges, of courage, of inclusion, some are like scars, other self-incurred, with varying levels of self-inducement and self-consciiousness. Paraphrasing Jes Yu quoting Mark O’Brien, we are all co-creators of everything else.

If you presented this to a client in the ad world burger wars, you would have to mention BPM (beats per minute) and SPB (seeds per bun):

If I was a, for example, purely hypothetically, 54-year-old Stanford grad with time on my hands, in the “free time life-style”, I might strike up a correspondence or make a study of this, my favorite young Farm Product, Kristine Flaherty, from Chicago, pka (performer known as) K.Flay. 2fer from her:

I don’t want to explain any of this too much but it is useful to note that here K.Flay is reacting to something else, which both limits and frees her. Not that I have ever been, but it’s a marriage of sorts:

I just counted. It would take about 34 minutes to watch all these, so like I said, just watch the first 30 seconds of each to get about 90 percent of the effect. I added about 364 words to the above plus this not-very-flaherty-like self-capture:

Hey, man. I know where you are coming from. (Yeah, bullshit. Which reminds me of the time you edited my

MBW on 2/7/12 at 6:45 p.m. photo (c) Earthwise Productions by Mark Weiss, for Plastic Alto blog, "4tph"

column “What’s A Titan?” and suggested that my phrasing “what the hell is a Titan” did not add much to my style; remember the admonition, follow it, but dissent from it here, because I am quoting I.M.)

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