Lethemless Berkeley and Lami@50

Posted on November 21, 2011 by markweiss86

I circled or cruised Palo Alto’s Lytton Plaza this afternoon, not completely unlike Travis Bickle, because I wanted to hear on my car radio the completion of an interview on KPFA featuring the author Jonathan Lethem. I logged, therefore, an extra three miles or so on the aging dented import front-wheeler and jettisoned from time’s winged chariot about 20 more minutes of this Plastic Alto life.

Lethem has a new collection of essays out.

Lethem is based in New York –he is nearly synonymous with New York hip — but is out here in the Bay Area for at least two events; tonight he is at Book Passage in Marin; Tuesday he is part of a panel discussing Philip K. Dick  at Moe’s in Berkeley.

I read “Motherless Brooklyn” at the suggestion of a cafe owner on Smith Street, The Fall Cafe during my sabbatical in the winter of 2001. It was the best of times, and a pretty good read, like a soundtrack. A word-track.

I call this post “Lethemless Berkeley” because I was surprised to learn that the author had a Bay Area sojourn in the eighties. Apparently he was a clerk at Pegasus and Moe’s when I was a returns jock at Green Apple, or close enough for Plastic Alto. It’s not so much that Berkeley misses Lethem; we were damn glad to have him. He said his most recent book is a collection of essays that he wrote mostly on request. Like he was asked to write a cover story for a magazine that was to feature Drew Barrymore and instead he wrote a series of short fictional vignettes. I took a note — tapping the info into my cellphone as a draft outgoing text, contrary to California law — that there is something salient on page 437.

The show I caught is called “Cover to Cover with Denny Smithson” and is archived here (meaning you can check it out without imitating your favorite DeNiro weirdo, or my second favorite Deniro weirdo, after Rupert Pupkin; go ahead and imitate Pupkin by listening to this in your mother’s basement, while imagining your own answers to queries by Lethem or Smithson, or me; for bonus points imagine yourself on my defunct KZSU radio show “Fits The Format”, which was a show-within-a-show for Sarah Bellum and then Raya Zion’s “The Jewish Alternative”).

Maybe I could invite Jonathan Lethem (for even more bonus points) to write a few words about Alden Van Buskirk. Better, I could claim to be polling hipsters about their top ten Alden Van Buskirk poems. Too bad it is too late to contact Harvey Pekar.

I am producing a tribute to Alden Van Buskirk on Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at Books and Bookshelves, 99 Sanchez in San Francisco. The event will feature presentations by Jack Hirshmann, who taught or at least knew Van Buskirk at Dartmouth, and Matt Gonzalez, who studied literature at Columbia. And David Highsmith, poet, publisher, store owner, father of a painter named Alicia Highsmith, carpenter, promoter. I am calling the Van Buskirk event “Lami@50” in reference to the fact that his collection of poetry, “LAMI” — a pun on “to my friend” — was written 50 years ago, much of it in Oakland. It was a few hours into my prep on the event that someone pointed out that Van Buskirk died in 1961 — but I prefer to think of it as 50 years since his work was created. He died on a rare blood disease called PNH. A more focused pitch or preview is forthcoming, I am promising myself.

In the KPFA interview Lethem mentioned that one of the perks of his fame and acumen was that he got to interview his hero Bob Dylan; here he also gets to interview for about 54 minutes, Patti Smith.

edit to add: Fact-checking my post, I learn that The Fall Cafe is being replaced by a small plate tratoria. It is on 307 Smith, not Henry, as I wrote in previous draft. It is off the F, in the 718, Gowanus-Carroll Gardens although my very humble (read: fire-trap) temporary abode was actually over the BQE and more like Red Hook.

another edit to add, a few minutes later:

I guess these essay collections are like the literary version of a music singles compilation and rarities. But I found this essay on The Go-Betweens, on the Jonathan Lethem website. I guess you could save the twenty bucks or so by engrossing yourself to get your JL fix online for free unless this is atypical. I have to admit I never heard the Go-Betweens and only found them in the odd way in that I met former bandmember Robert Vickers at SXSW when I tried to pitch him my band or my client. He is a publicist, and worked for example with Palo Alto’s Corner Laughers a relationship I take some credit for. When I met Vickers I rang Allen Clapp my former client because he had the same name as Allen’s drummer. Allen alerted me to the fact that the man before me, there at a day-party might be the former indie rock star. Allen produced The Corner Laughers session and followed up on the news of Vickers’ doings to suggest the relationship. Anyhow, Lethem was into the Go-Betweens in their heyday. Which is another reason he is a hipster icon and I am not.

This excerpt, which you can read for free on Lethem’s website, I linked above, probably exceeds the standard for fair use:

In Berkeley I lived on Chestnut Street, three blocks from a homely rock club called Berkeley Square. Every poor, scraping-along act touring California would get stuck there for a night, and it was rarely a full house. For years of afternoons I’d sit at home writing with the radio tuned to KALX, the college radio station, and when they gave away tickets to shows at the Berkeley Square I’d call up and answer a trivia question and get my name on the list, then walk over a few hours later and see the show. I’m good at trivia. I saw the Proclaimers and the Violent Femmes and the Throwing Muses there, along with other bands whose names I’ve forgotten. I was once one of literally five people at Berkeley Square for a My Bloody Valentine show on a Tuesday – we stood at the lip of the stage and endured the harshest volume I’ve ever experienced. When the announcement came that the Go-Betweens – an Australian band, whose very existence seemed mythical – were coming to the Berkeley Square I don’t know whether I purchased or won my ticket, only that I wouldn’t have missed it, you know, for the world. They played to about twenty-five or thirty people, a loosely-packed herd of worshipers, but our worship couldn’t console the Go-Betweens, not this night. They were at the end of a tour that must have been some kind of disaster, and twenty-five bookstore clerks in Berkeley weren’t going to turn it around. The band had been arguing, I think, before the show even began, and Lindy, the drummer, the original Go-Between, had been drinking. Really drinking, so she was lurching and obvious and couldn’t keep time. By the fourth or fifth song Robert and Grant were both glaring at her in turn, and expressly showing her their hands on the guitars to try to dictate the tempo. The violinist, another woman, wouldn’t look at her. They were miserable. They made it through a song, argued again, and then Lindy stormed off, between the two singers, towards the bar. She weaved. At the bar she got something – another drink? Water? Carrying it she lurched back to the stage, and as she moved through the crowd she brushed me, a butt-against-lap-swipe, the kind which happens late at night at crazy parties, when intentions are blurry. I know this seems ridiculous, but it happened. She was taunting one or both of the men onstage by making physical contact with men in the audience, and in the small, loosely-populated room it was apparent that it was having an effect, though what sort I wouldn’t presume to say. The horrible intimacy, the unexpected access to the band’s unhappiness, was wrenching. It was also terribly sexy – I learned something that night about how vivid a smashed woman can be.

NB: Now that I actually read the thing, as opposed to merely cutting and pasting a chunk that seems topical, I can say Jonathan, I feel you. The exact same thing happened to me once when Jolie Holland butt-swiped me for unknown reasons at The Make-Out Room at a Danny Barnes show around 2006. Although I didn’t recognize her and it’s ambiguous whether she in fact remembered me from our meeting a few weeks earlier at Alabama Chicken; I had been sitting the entire time of our first encounter and didn’t realize, looking up at her, how short she is or was. It was 2003 or so; more of a hip check actually, but not sure what it was about. I recall that Danny thought her accent was a put-on, or at least he asked me if I knew where she was from.

edit to add, Monday, November 28: I was psyched to see Lethem’s new collection reviewed in the Times, next to the Vonnegut jump. Moreover,the Lethem piece was by Robert Christgau. I thought it odd, however, that Christgau used “Fortress” (2003) as his Lethem milestone and seemed to lump “Motherless Brooklyn” in with the author’s earlier work. He made reference to “90s novels”. Check it:

Jonathan LETHEM’S hefty and remarkable new miscellany, “The Ecstasy of Influence,” is his fifth book since his best-selling breakthrough of 2003, the hefty and remarkable bildungs­roman “Fortress of Solitude.” It follows the fanciful story collection “Men and Cartoons” (2004), the memoiristic criticism collection “The Disappointment Artist” (2005), the rock novel “You Don’t Love Me Yet” (2007), and the, well, hefty Manhattan novel “Chronic City” (2009). There have also been side projects, including “They Live,” a book-length critical essay about the John Carpenter film, and “Believeniks,” a pseudonymous collaboration about the 2005 Mets. And that’s not counting the five ’90s novels (and two story collections). The man writes a lot.

I also wrote this slightly-tongue-in-cheek request for Lethem to write something for my Alden Van Buskirk event and his assistant Lucy Benjamin at least ackowledged the request. actually she kinda lauded my letter.

Dear JL or JL’s assistant, perhaps named Lucy,

This probably sorts as fan letter rather than bona fide professional solicitation of service — ok I have maybe $100 to offer.

 

I heard JL being interviewed recently on KPFA and was inspired (or am inspired) in several corollary ways.

 

The cheekiest would be to ask:

 

Might JL, perhaps with a small inducement, write something, anything, no matter x>0 how brief, in honor of an event I am producing on Dec. 20, 2011 — three weeks from now — in San Francisco regarding the 50th anniversary of the previous writing of a collection of poems by a man named Alden Van Buskirk, more specific his one and only volume later collected and published (1965, actually, by David Rattray and Andrew Hoyem) as “LAMI”? 

 

Not sure how reading “Motherless Brooklyn” inBrooklyn– I was staying at30 Carroll Street, near Van Brunt — in 2001 influences all these other thousands of choices, and tens of thousands of word choices subsequently, but certainly it could not be completely deniable. I would fairly confidently say that the spectre sitting crosslegged in a zen center (in that book) and his weighing on me todavia might be comparable to what I am claiming to experience currently in the form of Van’s ghost or memory or legacy on my shoulder. I actually feel two such presences — one of Van as a robust 22 year old writing, skiing, thinking, drinking, wincing, et cetera and the second somewhat distinct essence would be an older man, in his twilight years — now 70 or so. The ghost of who Van would be if he hadn’t died so young, of if ghosts age the way their living peers did, and bifurcate or divide by mitosis, or like the dude from “Matrix.”(or maybe it’s sort of like Dorian Gray…or I’m over-reaching)

 

Here’s saluting JL if or if-not he reads this greeting, if or if-not he replies, or responds.

 

I also wrote this tribute or commentary or preview to his PKD thingy. Let me know if I’ve borrowed too liberally from the Go-Betweens post. I think I say in there that I work with bands and music, and have for 17 years, yet I gotta believe (like Tug McGraw, who begat Tim McGraw) that someone like JL knows worlds and worlds more about the subject than I ever could. I’m kind of a hack who merely studies or mimics or stalks the true aficionados. This is an aside request but: what if JL put all his energy into either making music, curating music, promoting music or managing musicians, and contributing to repertoire choices? Does he think he could survive at that, not about what kind of money he would make relative to writing but whether he would find it satisfying? Sort of like the Kiefer Sutherland film where he fantasizes about managing a band…I guess I am asking him to comment on the suggestion not actually quit the day job….

 

What I did already write:

https://markweiss86.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/lethemless-berkeley-and-lami50/

Lethemless Berkeley and Lami@50

Verbatim pasting plus where I mention recently deceasedHarveypekar I add a dumb pun on Mediums: (or maybe that’s what is meant by “the medium is the message”)

******

Anyhow, you probably aren’t reading this far so no sense in posting or pasting any more of this, or the part about comparing bumping into me by Jolie Holland to what may or may not have been going on between JL and the female drummer of the Go-Betweens…

Thanks for inspiring this. I will try to pick up TEOI. (right after 1Q84 — I held up a small sign at a small Palo Alto Occupy event reading 1Q84 and someone asked if that meant that my I.Q. was 84. I said No, it’s a Japanese Orwellian novel that provides keen insight into Occupy).

Word. But hopefully not “word salad.”

Someone named Mark Weiss who worked at Green Apple around the time JL worked at Pegasus.

inPalo AltoCAin the 650 but fond memories of his time in the 718

 

nb: this is to JL but for AVB and “LAMI@50”

another footnote, still here on November 28: I learn that Alden Van Buskirk, born on July 3, 1938, shares a birthday with Franz Kafka and Tom Stoppard. Meanwhile Steinbeck dies exactly 43 years before our December 20 shindig, at 66. And Joel Chandler Harris of “Uncle Remus” fame has an overlap with Van — I am drawing a blank on it. I should also quote my source, my literary day book.  

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Long interview with Jessica Yu, lifted in honor of 148th anniversary of Gettysburg Address

Posted on November 19, 2011 by markweiss86

IDA met up with Yu at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which screened her first feature-length fiction film, Ping Pong Playa. Protagonist opens November 30 in New York City  and December 7 in Los Angeles, through IFC First Take. (which I thought initially was about a beach resort NB)

(reviewed 40 times here, not sure how to actually best buy it

IDA: Did you read the Classics in college? Is that where you first encountered Euripides, in particular, and Greek tragedy in general? 

Jessica Yu: Well, like a great many students, I read the great works of art much too quickly! And Euripides was one of them. I remember reading The Bacchae, but I really had zero recollection of it. So this project was a way to revisit Euripides’ work in the context of being able to re-read it, actually absorb it, and think about it. So, just that alone, even if the film hadn’t happened, was a great experience.

IDA: How did it work to take this classic and set it in our contemporary world?

JY: The concept of the film came to me from the Carr Foundation–Greg Carr and Nobel Smith–and they were interested in making a film about Euripides. I think they were more interested in Euripides, the man. And I couldn’t quite figure out how that would work, because there is very little known about him. But, there were 19 existing plays. So in reading the plays, I was trying to stay open to what emerged out of them. But at the same time, I was aware of a couple of things: Could you make a film about who Euripides was? Could you make a film about ancient Greek Literature, in a way that is not going to be totally alienating to the viewer? Of course the film ended up being about the themes, the structure of storytelling. But I think that turned out to be the connection between the architecture of narrative structure and the power of the human narrative structure, from the time those plays were written, until now.

Here is a link to the trailer to “The Protagonist” which, after 90 seconds of study, appears to be like an Errol Morris film — “Fast Cheap…” meets “Thin Blue Line” — but it also features her hubby Mark Salzman, under the subtitle “The Warrior”. (Don’t Yalie and “warrior” cancel each other out? Plus he plays the cello….)

And it also struck me that Euripides was called the “first psychologist,” that he really wrote about the way people think and the way they act. So in reading these stories, they came across as very fresh in a lot of ways. The same flaws he was interested in are the ones I’m interested in as well. So finding stories to populate that particular arc was not as far of a stretch as one might think.

IDA: Talk a little more about “the human narrative structure”?

JY: What I think was interesting about what Euripides was attracted to is that you have an idea of a “hero,” who has good moral reasons behind what he is doing. But because of his very devotion to that cause, he loses track of it; he loses track of who he is. It’s kind of an extremist story that intrigued me: When does a good quality become too much? Or the classic character versus fate: Are you who you were born, or are you the circumstances into which you are tossed? Where does the real person emerge?

The other thing is that those stories really work. They’re great, compelling stories about the anti-heroic character. Your hero goes off track; how does he or she recover after they’ve created damage by their own very strong qualities? So in making the film, I was trying to find stories that were strong enough to stand on their own.

But, first, they had to be really strong stories, because I think that’s how Euripides attracted such a large audience–that sense of, What happens next?

IDA: Well, let’s address that component now. You interviewed 200 individuals?

JY: Actually, we didn’t interview that many. I worked with my producers, Elise Pearlstein and Susan West, and we had a couple in interns who were helping out. We scoured every place we could think of: reading a lot of books, reading memoirs, going on the Internet, doing crazy Google searches, talking to people at cocktail parties.

IDA: What did you say you were looking for?  

JY: It depended. Originally, I was looking for people who’d had a kind of “dark epiphany.” And it had to happen in a moment. So we were looking up weird phrases like,  “All of a sudden I realized my whole life changed at that moment ….” But that’s actually how we found one of the subjects in the film, Hans Joachim-Klein, the German ex-terrorist: from a bad Googly-translated German website.

IDA: How long did this process take?

JY: It was about eight months looking for everybody.

IDA: How did you select the four men who made it into the film?

JY: Two people I knew could work in the film right away–Joe Loya and Mark Salzman. But we had to hold off on how it was going to work, until we had all four, because they couldn’t be exactly the same story. And, ideally, we wanted to find four characters whose circumstances seemed very different.

It was really hard to find them. In fiction, there is often the great “clarifying moment,” but in real life it usually doesn’t happen that way, that the moment of realization strikes so definitively.

IDA: Or sometimes if that does happen, the person is on his deathbed and it’s too late. 

JY: Right! And we also didn’t want people who just became the same person for another cause–someone who is a fanatic for one cause becomes a fanatic for the opposite side. And we found quite a few cases of that.

So, we didn’t want the exact story, but there had to be certain elements in the arc of each person’s experience that had to be the same for the film to work.

The other part we looked for is what we called “the fever.” There’s some moment that sets things into motion–this idea that “Oh, okay, this has happened to me and this is how I’m going to fix it. I’m gonna keep going down this path until it works.” And that “fever” is when someone becomes completely obsessed with whatever this journey or activity is. So they had to have that obsession, that “fever,” that would lead up to that moment.

IDA: So we’ve got the “fever,” then the epiphany …

JY: Right, and the other thing is that there had to be an acceptance of responsibility. That didn’t mean that we were looking for people who were going to flagellate themselves for the rest of their lives. But it couldn’t be someone who has this moment and then makes a lot of excuses. And that was also very difficult to find. We realized how true reckoning in someone’s life is quite rare.

That was something I was very grateful about, that the four characters in this film are at a point in their lives where they are completely clear-eyed about what happened and what they did. This doesn’t mean that they are all fine and good with what they did and that it won’t always stay with them. But they are at a place in their lives where they can talk about it. Then, their eloquence in talking about it was also important. They’re all good storytellers!

IDA: You have a very visual style. It’s not just a matter of point-and-shoot talking heads. For instance, in In the Realms of the Unreal you were able to make the imagination–the unconscious–visible.  

JY: I really appreciate that because, with In the Realms, and Protagonist as well, it makes it difficult when you have so many limitations. For example, in the Darger film, there’s no living person; and there’s so little evidence of who he was, in terms of photographs. But we had this room that was filled with everything he had gathered over many years. It was like the room was who he was. And I was trying to figure out how to show that; and, of course, how to deal with the paintings, how to make them come to life.

interlude a successful short feature by Jessica Yu, 1992:

With Protagonist, I wanted to have the themes of Euripides provide the chapter headings in the film. So, again, it was like, how do we tie it together with some kind of look that’s a more versatile form of storytelling device? And it was lucky too because again, Joe Loya, the bank robber, isn’t someone who’s life is filled with pictures and home movies, and he wasn’t a famous guy, so how do you depict those scenes that happened, or how they might have felt? That’s where the whole puppet thing came to fruition.

IDA: Had you had any previous experience with puppets?  

JY: None at all. I have to say that it was very late in the production that the idea of the puppets took shape. I had been thinking animation, but as much as I love animation, it’s very expensive and it’s too time-consuming. And it’s very mutable; it might be difficult to create the same look and feel for each of the stories. I did some research about the look of the plays during Euripides’ time and, actually, the actors wore these large, exaggerated masks. I liked the idea of having the masks as a way to represent several characters in the stories and then the pivotal events from our subjects’ pasts. Almost like a little theater troop of puppets. That process with our puppet designer, Janie Geiser, was so collaborative and immediate and fun.

IDA: I read that out of the many possibilities the production team had found, only six of them were females! You’ve noted that “Men, it appeared, were far more likely to experience the particular breed of obsessive pursuit–and crashing revelation–that we were looking for.”  

JY: Well, I didn’t set off to find only men subjects. Toward the end of the searching process, we said, “God, we’ve got to find a woman!” But what seemed to happen is that when things started going south, women might sense that things were crumbling and they would kind of stay with it and things would fall apart that way. It wasn’t them hitting the wall. It was just a lot of signs that things were falling apart.

As an example, we looked at a couple of memoirs of candidates, but when things started going not so well, we saw phrases like, “Well, I realize that it wasn’t working out,” or “I knew that things were falling apart ….” So they seemed to have a self-knowledge about it, which doesn’t mean that they can save themselves from terrible disaster. But the men had such dramatic cases. Like a guy wakes up one morning and he’s king of the world, then that afternoon something happens to change it all. It’s like the Talking Heads’ song: “How did I get here? This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful life.”

IDA: Protagonist is a great primer on storytelling–what makes for a strong story, and how the essential architecture of a story is so timeless and rooted in something so ancient. 

JY: The story in a documentary still has to have a structure. It doesn’t have to be the classic three-part structure, but it’s still about what happens to the character, whether it’s a person or a place. What is the event that sets everything in motion? What is the turning point and how is your protagonist changed by it? Is there something learned or lost, or what’s the result at the end? So I think it’s the sense of dramatic tension that there is always something in balance, something that is pivotal.

Protagonist is a very classic kind of anti-heroic journey in a way: These four men set out to change destiny in some way. There was a moment when they decided, “I need to become another person. This is the way I’m going to control my life”–it’s a lot about control–and then this super-human monumental effort to make that happen, and the consequences, the ramifications of that. That there was damage and how do you recover your sense of yourself after you’ve completely lost track of yourself?

Cathleen Rountree is a film journalist and author of nine books, including The Movie Lovers’ Club, about the process of creating community through finding meaning in movies. She covers film festivals and writes extensively about films and directors for print and online publications. www.womeninworldcinema.org.

edit to add: above was from fall of 2007 with Cathleen Rountree.  A little more sussing presents as Yu marketing a new film about water, with Skoll Foundation; she should be reunited with Greg Zlotnick — Greg, Jessica and I were editors at the Gunn High School Oracle, in Palo Alto, Calif. Our staff also included future tv comedy writer Marsh McCall just shoot me. Jess Yu’s older sister Jennifer Yu is also in film, more on the IT side (“Ants” PDI). Marty Yu I didn’t know but he is in the game also, methinks. I recall, when producing a benefit screening of “Breathing Lessons” that I took the opportunity to mention Jessica’s Oscar TRADEMARK to Larry Chu the celebrity chef and he knew the family – he actually said “Connie Yu’s daughter?” — she being a famous fencing instructor and historian, and we presume married well, mazel tov — but of course it looks like now the Chu kids are doing as well as the Yu’s, in Hollywood.

I was trying to clothes by seeing if indeed there is a bad pun by Groucho on “eurpides pants” but all I got was this lousy t-shirt, Dick Cavett and “Lydia” which does gloss Waterloo if not Battle of Gettysburg, close enough for plastic logic.

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Michael Ballack tribute jack-o-lantern

Posted on November 19, 2011 by markweiss86

ich bin ein ballack

It took me until November 19 to get to it, and it is rather under-articulated, but I finally found literally five minutes to actualize my jack-o-lantern idea, which came the other day when I caught my recommended weekly requirement of sports bar time, watching UEFA soccer, and I noticed former German National Team captain (and Chelsea) midfielder Michael Ballack wearing a pretty scary looking facemask. Not to be too unsympathetic — but hey its quite possible that it was his great-great-great-great greatparents — his Grand Umpapa playing demo version of “Iko” with my great — you get the picture — I come from, in at least one direction, a family that were the equivalent of sharecroppers in Eastern Germany, Gros-Bieberau I think it was called, my cousin was a VP for European Business at National Semi and did some research back to 1750 or so. We could live on someone else’s land but not actually own land. We had to “apply” to be a member of the community and in fact most of the family lived outside of that designation. We were “kept” or “protected” but not actual Germans.

Anyhow my Halloween art and creativity ritual includes this crude homage to Herr Ballack.

If I get a minute i will suss the etymology of Jackolantern — I also have half a mind to reread a Washington Irving story that fits this general topic. “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. Also kind of sorta calls to mind that I talked to David Hess recently in Baltimore and am psyched to see or at least hear tidings about some huge outdoors piece he is doing there, and it gave me chance to recall and retell the story of visiting Edgar Allan Poe’s grave and placing an offering in the form of a Teddy Ruxpin pin. (LIke when I left a purple Longhair coin or maybe Satchmo at a voodoo hall in NOLA).

edit to add: I am not liking my quick take on “Jack-olantern” but will try to check it with my trusty Webster’s 9th. “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving susses up, featuring a chase between Ichabod Crane and a “hessian trooper” known as The Headless Horseman, but I cannot quickly find the animated version I saw as a child that would have featured the villain launching like a Randy Big Unit fastball a flaming and presumably lethal jacko at poor Ich. We had a guy in our Dartmouth class who was called Ick. I think his real name was Jeff. (I didn’t call him Ich or Ich). Dartmouth has or had a humor magazine called the Jackolantern or the Jacko coincidentally although I never worked for it and hardly read it, although Mindy Kaling and Dr. Seuss did (not overlapping). I also need something to sort will-o-wisp from whip-poor-will, which I think Irving glosses. Glosses, susses, the SS — oy vey. There also seems, according to wiki, to be some kind of a Nathaniel Hawthorne cite re Halloween or Jacko. Anyhoo, I will perhaps get permission from my neihbor to put Michael Ballack in his lawn until he rots or is stolen. I also have a cool yellow and gold and green gourd I bought for aesthetic rather than culinary purposes from Palo Alto Saturday Farmers Market, which I guess we will eat soon enough. I also grabbed a cool leaf that I plan to reproduce with help from Accent Art inventory and labor and give to my dear old mum. I’ve done about 100 pretty crap art efforts over the past year or so, probably ringing up $500 in charges from Accent Arts, the official purveyor of Earthwise/MBW11/Plastic Alto art staples, that in addition to probably procuring 50 pieces or things, more if you count flyers I steal prematurely from polls and boards and kiosks. Way off topic. Back to football, US college variety. Why do we call it “College Football” and not “University Level Football” when the majority by far of the teams are from major Universities, outside of Ivy League. How is NCAA still “collegiate”.

Michael Ballack, 35, is wearing a carbon-reinforced mask to protect a broken nose suffered a few weeks ago in Bundesliga play for Bayen Leverkusen.

I am also drifting into someone’s posts about an Italian (Bologna) artist ericilcane I think doing versions of teddy ruxpin as medical drawings — also bleeds into street art. Save for another day.

edit to add, November 24: It took me a while to check my Webster’s Ninth, to add this minutiae:

1) jack-o’-lantern, note the apostrophe, entered the language in 1673, a lantern made of a pumpkin cut to look like a human face — but when did painted or in my case badly drawn features become en vogue? also, foolish fire, translated. —  ignis fatuus is first definition. Ignis fatuus, see also St. Elmo’s Fire, entered language in 1573, although that’s Latin. a cognate. A delusional goal or hope; a fire over a marsh; St. Elmo’s Fire entered language in 1804. Will of wisp entered language in 1608; see also whip-poor-will, whipperwill, 1709, a nocturnal goatsucker, nightjar, 1630. Caprimulgus. I still have to find the animated version of “Sleepy Hollow” that includes the jack-o’-lantern tossed as projectile…moving on to next holiday. Let’s talk turkey.

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Jack Hirshman at Meridian Gallery SF, November 2011

Posted on November 18, 2011 by markweiss86

Although I missed the opening of Kimetha Vanderveen’s show at Meridian, Terry Davis went and snapped this photo of the artist, who is rather shy and probably prefers that it does not show her face. On the other hand, I happened to sit with Kimetha at the poetry event a few days later that featured Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Hirshman and introductory remarks by art critic Peter Selz. Kimetha and I met Selz after the presentations.

I was pleased for her that the esteemed critic Kenneth Baker of the Chronicle reviewed the show. Her work is so minimal that you couldn’t expect Baker to be any more effusive in his praise. What he did say:

Paintings (by Kimetha Vanderveen) on panel such as “Winter” (2011) or “Lifting” (2011) look breathed into being. Their gray on gray surfaces appear so nuanced as to court dismissal – even disposal – by anyone who values observation too little.

The defenseless quality of Vanderveen’s work shows differently in her drawings, where ink strokes accumulate with apparent confidence, yet refuse us the obvious satisfactions of imagery. Meridian has justly honored her with a handsome publication of drawings, “From the Devotion Folio.”

Vanderveen makes a theme of trust in our interest in seeing as an expression of our interest in living. The bravery of this posture will too easily go unnoticed.

Delving slightly deeper, as deep as the ocean by internet standards perhaps, Baker offered a more articulated critique and praise when Vanderveen had a show at Mina Dresden in the Mission in May of 2010.

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My first earthquake

Posted on November 18, 2011 by markweiss86

I got this tip from the cousin of My First Earthquake singer and c0-leader Rebecca Bortman, who walks past my girlfriend’s house occassionally here in Palo Alto AND whom I have twice mistaken for someone I think lives nearby but have never met, the brother of jazz pianist Uri Caine, while Frida is out doing her business. The band has three cds out and got the plum opening spot at Stern Grove last summer when The English Beat played there. Rebecca Bortman is also appearing solo, doing some of her famous (300,000 youtube plays) holiday songs on December 22, during Chanukah, and it may also be her birthday, somewhere in the outer Mission. Makes me wish I or Sarah Bellum were still doing a Jewish show at KZSU.

My actual first earthquake I don’t remember, but I was at the World Series in 1989 during The Big One and I recall writing something not terribly profound in my journal in Oaxaca in 1981 about their terramotos.  In terms of the first band I went gaga for, it was probably Ragady Anne in 1994 or the Mudwimin in 1992 or 1993, plus watching Stone Fox rolling in to the Mia Zapata benefit at Cyclone Warehouse in 1991. My First Earthquake deserves mention in the Plastic Alto Hall of Fame merely for their use of this outrageous plastic tube dress, by Charlie Buckets (that’s what it says) in one of their excellent videos.

Search-injun her or their holiday songs yourself.

edit to add, November 29: according to the Chron, it is David Katznelson, of Birdman Records, also a former Warner A&R honcho, also cousin of Palo Alto’s The Shedroffs (who are also cousins of Joshua Shedroff Redman), behind the pop-up record store, at which Ms. Bortman will perform. The Bay Guardian also had this (six days before the Chron). They have Zach Rogue of Rogue Wave lighting a menorah directly opposite our Alden Van Buskirk events.

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Grass Widow is new to me

Posted on November 16, 2011 by markweiss86

I found my way to this after spending a considerable amount of time on Jamie Stewart’s Xiu-Xiu blog, the connection being is that both projects overlapped on Kill Rock Stars label. Meanwhile, I did also trade voice mails with Madigan Shive, of Bonfire Madigan. I left her a voice mail because was trying overly hard to help the intern at Meridian Gallery, who said she played cello. Then I also had a fleeting fantasy that Madigan would back me for some kind of Beat Hotel Rm. 32 project; maybe it was imagining reading Wallace Stegner “The Chink” while she improvised on cello, with a recording device rolling. There is some kind of a continuum from imagining ridiculous and trite things, to mentioning them on even an obscure blog, to actual shows, projects, good ideas and superlative utterances. There is also that line by Howard Gossage about the inverse ratio of how good an idea is as a function of how many people are in the room when they first come up with it — I also lost another part hour of my life spying on my old colleagues from the ad realm. Like the characters in “Melancholia” trying to extract a “tagline” — I saw an old friend at the De Young and he gave me his card. I just learned now I missed the 25 year anniversary party of one of my one-time employers — which was open to anyone whoever worked with them. I also read a blurb in New York Times about a tv commercial for a Detroit Museum with a show about Christ.

More real, I’d like to hear Mia Levin (Mia Simmans) busk some day soon. Also, progress with The Pueblo Girls.

Two notable facts about this link: one, the video is 38 minutes long; two, the poster lists 1,677 total posts, ZEBU1212.

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Interview with Scott Amendola

Posted on November 16, 2011 by markweiss86

(this is a re-paste of my July post for Patch, regarding Scott Amendola. Scott seems to be in Alabama heading towards Snug Harbor, with Charlie Hunter as I write this, and my faithful canine companion Frida snores on blissfully. Hunter Amendola play Dec. 8 at Dana Street in Mountain View and Dec. 11 at The Independent. I had a flurry of inspiration to book or persuade Charlie to come by Lytton Plaza to busk in that window – I ran it by Eric Hanson who did not hang up on me. Scott has about 15 shows left this year, including about 8 or 9 in Bay Area, according to his site)

Even in the social media age there is a type of currency best conveyed in old-school communication, in person or on the phone. Jazzbos’ talk can come laden with important subtexts or add-ons. “How are you?” one might ask. “I’m fine. Miguel Zenon got a MacArthur grant. How are you? “Just great. I hear Blue Note is signing developing acts again. My kids are great. And Montalvo residencies are booking hipper fellows.”

I took 10 minutes by phone with or from Scott Amendola, the East Bay jazz drummer, while he was prepping for a run of four shows with one combo, an upcoming Palo Alto gig with his quartet, trips to two continents, pre-production for an album, and enjoying face time with his kids.

The Charlie Hunter Scott Amendola duo plays (tonight and Saturday at Berkeley’s Freight and Salvage, Monday XXXXXXXXX) at Stanford Jazz Workshop and Festival and Sunday at Mountain View’s Dana Street Roasting Company (which is sold out).

The Scott Amendola Quartet plays the SFJazz free Thursday series at Stanford Shopping Center (got that?) on XXXXXX features Amendola, John Schifflett on bass, Eric Deutsch on keys and Joshua Smith on sax.

Charlie Hunter is famous for his trio, which had featured Scott Amendola for a spell, but also, in turn Jay Lane, Derrek Phillips and Eric Kalb. Hunter and

Amendola were part of the Grammy-nominated guitar band TJ Kirk (or James T. Kirk) which featured music of James Brown, Thelonious Monk and Roland Rahsaan Kirk.

Meanwhile, Amendola has a Monk repertoire band called Plays Monk, with Ben Goldberg, clarinet, and Devon Hoff, bass. Plus there is something led by Goldberg called Go Home, also featuring Amendola, Hunter and trumpeter Ron Miles. On album, but Scott wrote me to check it and it was now Ellery Eskelin on horns, with Ben. Ron has left the building or went home or something.

In short, the best jazz players all seem to know each other, are polyamorous, and the scene is interwoven. “An injury to one is an injury to all” as Joe Hill would say. I recall a clinic of middle school students, led by Danilo Perez for Music For Minors in Redwood City, in which jazz music was explained as basically a dialogue or conversation. So a dialogue between Charlie Hunter and Scott Amendola, for example, is different that a dialogue between Hunter and Leon Parker, Stanton Moore or Bobby Previte. (And I had a chance to re-visit our Danilo moment with Orlene Chartain of Redwood City Music For Minors, I ran into recently in Los Altos).

With that in mind, I wanted to get Scott Amendola’s thoughts on two other offerings at the Stanford Jazz series. At first he was reluctant, as it is hard enough to get attention to his own work, as a drummer, and in jazz generally. But when I reminded him of the Downbeat “blindfold test” feature, in which Dan Ouellette (who used to live in Berkeley and go jogging with Charlie Hunter) asks musicians to identify musical tracks played by their peers and antecedents, he relaxed and relented.

“This is great for Jenny. I’m really happy for her.” Amendola said, of the player who appears on two of his cds. Amendola also reminded me that the string quartet started as a commission from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as a tribute to Gerhard Richter, the painter. For her to join Bill Frisell’s band was received locally like Jeremy Lin going to the Warriors. He noted that Frisell sat in with Plays Monk in Seattle recently.

Amendola said he also appears on the Frisell soundtrack recording for the 2008 Leonard Farlinger film “All Hat” as does Jenny Scheinman.

The other show I wanted to feel him on is The Bad Plus, .Plus being a trio of Ethan Iverson, piano, Reid Anderson bass and David King drums. They are kind of like the Grateful Dead in that there are people who don’t like jazz but go to every Bad Plus show they hear about. An exemplary track for me is their roundabout version (like mentioning Sam Parker before Jeff Parker or at all) of the theme from “Chariots of Fire” on their 2005 “Suspicious Activity?” release. (And I’m glad Wallace Stegner is not here to not feel me write “feel me.”)

“Ethan Iverson is a genius,” Amendola said, although he has never seen his famous trio play live. “We were loading in once when they were loading out, that is as close as I’ve come to seeing them.” (Charlie Hunter Trio toured with The Bad Plus, but when Phillips was behind the traps). We both like Iverson’s blog, “Do The Math.”

Regarding the drummer King, Amendola rates two of his other projects, Happy Apple and Buffalo Collusion, as on par or better than Bad Plus. (They are bad plus plus, one could say. “Bad” meaning “good” here, natch). Actually, I was thinking of, but not communicating it, unless telepathically, Dave King’s Trucking Company, with Chris Speed, reviewed recently in the Times, with a new set on Sunnyside.

After this Elvin Jones sticks of fire flurry of local shows, Amendola is traveling to South America (with Mike Patton) and Europe (with Nels Cline), and then to the East Coast with Charlie. He is hoping to find time to arrange his recent Oakland Symphony commission premier “Fade to Orange” into a small group setting, and record that.

“Are you recording this?” Amendola asked although he may have said “Is this being recorded?” He said I or my readers (hypothetical, imagined or actual) could go to his website for more info, or more photos. I like the piece in the New York Times archive wherein the writer Nate Chinen compares Amendola to Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen.

Things are going great then, I suggested, in earnest. “Much respect.” “Keeping hope alive,” he responded. “Keep on bangin'” I offered.

Later we traded texts and he sent Palo Alto Patch readers this exclusive self-portrait which doubles as a plea to buy his excellent cd “Lift” featuring another excellent guitarist Jeff Parker (the Chicago by way of Virginia and Berklee one, not the former Paly soccer, Dartmouth rugby All America and father of a Menlo state meet finalist Sam Parker in the 800 meter, Geoff Parker, a banker, not a banger).

Can we link to the site that sells the cds? http://www.amazon.com/Lift-Scott-Amendola/dp/B0041ON3F0 Excellent! Amen. Or Ajazz.

Edit to add: and this is Amendola, Goldberg and friends playing Ornette:

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To be young and well-hung in New York: Diego Rivera at MOMA

Posted on November 16, 2011 by markweiss86

I saw in the New York Times the news that five of Diego Rivera’s murals are being reunited for an exhibit at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). The murals were part of a show in 1931 that set attendance records. (Diego Rivera was 44 at the time).

edit to add: Don’t read too much into the segue (and the joke was not funny the first time, apropos of Matisse in Palo Alto), but this is a good enough place to post the link to a Shingo Francis video. I met Shingo recently at a life ceremony function of a mutual friend and we traded contact info.

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Malcolm Welbourne say, “Keep happy”!

Posted on November 16, 2011 by markweiss86

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When BC met JC kinda sorta

Posted on November 16, 2011 by markweiss86

I crammed a lot into my evening in SF the night of Beth Custer’s showcase at Brava Theatre. First there was a pre-show art happening in the lobby, featuring Alex Garcia, formerly of Buenos Aires.

Then I wandered into Galleria de La Raza and bought two sugar owls (a variation of sugar skulls for Dia De Los Muertos) and re-introduced guitar player David James to an old housemate of his, Michele Simons, who was running a clinic in the gallery. David’s licks were as tasty as ever later that night in his set with Beth.

While flipping through the Bay Guardian at a nearby taqueria,  I noticed the display ad for Bottom of the Hill listing JC Brooks from Chicago, about whom I posted six months ago. Temptation turned to spontaneous action as a cab dumped a fare right in front of me and I took that as a sign to try to meet the dude; My roll continued because BOTH proprietess and high priestess of indie Ramona Downey was behind the bar and offered to take me to the green room to introduce me to her headliners. the two clubs are an $8 cab ride apart, or two of them in this case, but well worth the investment especially since Ramona bought me a beer. I also met backstage Gordon Eigart from Spinning Platters blog, and visited with him by phone the next day to get his skinny. The name is a Radiohead reference (see “Spinning Plates” which to me sounds like a vaudeville act).

Beth Custer’s show as always was a solid sender. She said from the stage that she was interviewed on air recently by KALX’s Anthony Bonet, who is also the former booker for Bottom of the Hill, and that he had been spinning a chestnut of Beth’s from her catalog, which she re-added to her live set. Although she forgot to keep her promise of working a melodica solo into the show — she sufficed with clarinet, vocals, writing, bandleading and booking — she did humor me by demonstrating briefly post-show her melodica (see above). It’s a plastic instrument, like Ornette’s famous plastic alto, although more associated with Alphonse Ellis in this case. Beth and I have several schemes going, including a reprise of Beat Hotel Rm 32 (the Ginsburg Tribute), her Bone ‘N Drone project with Glenn Hartman and hopefully something arty-Indie (in the Fritz Scholder sense) like her commission for De Young Museum referencing their AOA collection.

Between Beth’s soundcheck and set, I indeed scurried over to Bottom of the Hill to meet JC Brooks from Chicago, and his bandmates Ben Taylor and Bill Bungeroth, the guitarist. I heard about JC and the Uptown Sound because he played the lead in a Windy City production of “Passing Strange”, the Broadway star-vehicle written and acted by my former client Mark “Stew” Stewart (with Heidi Rodewald). JC Brooks and band tore up the club, and are picked to click with help from Bloodshot Records and uber-agent Bruce Solar of The Agency Group. I liked his cover of Wilco “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”. Slightly off topic, I enjoyed a screening of  1948 filmed on location “Call Northside 777” (although I am actually from the South Side).

back in palo alto or chicago

I also heard from, via texting, Terry Abrahamson of “Doo Lister’s Blues” who has a new schtick called “Hannukatz”. Meow or me-oyy? Circling back, JC Brooks is a ROAR! like Otis Redding meets Tom Jones and Beth Custer is a PURR!  like Eartha Kitt meets Alice Coltrane, and I lived 9 lives in one charmed night in the Mission/Potrero Hill. (Oh yeah, I also met Farrah Ancell of The Struts and promised to take her to see Candye Kane at Yoshi’s, Monday, November 18, in SF).

"Aquarium drinker" only in the sense he has outsized talent, JC Brooks

 

edit to add, Dec. 31, about a month later: found this video of The Struts, from same night:

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