Amnesty International has said that industry claims that Taser stun guns are safe and non-lethal do not stand up to scrutiny. The organization called on governments to limit their deployment to life-threatening situations or to suspend their use.The call came as the organization released one of the most detailed reports to date on the safety of the stun gun. The report “USA: Less than lethal?” is being published as the number of people who died after being struck by Tasers in the USA reached 334 between 2001 and August 2008.”Tasers are not the ‘non-lethal’ weapons they are portrayed to be,” said Angela Wright, US researcher at Amnesty International and author of the report. “They can kill and should only be used as a last resort.
“The problem with Tasers is that they are inherently open to abuse, as they are easy to carry and easy to use and can inflict severe pain at the push of a button, without leaving substantial marks.”
Amnesty International’s study – which includes information from 98 autopsies – found that 90 per cent of those who died after being struck with a Taser were unarmed and many did not appear to present a serious threat.
Many were subjected to repeated or prolonged shocks – far more than the five-second “standard” cycle – or by more than one officer at a time. Some people were even shocked for failing to comply with police commands after they had been incapacitated by a first shock.
In at least six of the cases where people died, Tasers were used on individuals suffering from medical conditions such as seizures – including a doctor who had crashed his car when he suffered an epileptic seizure. He died after being repeatedly shocked at the side of the highway when, dazed and confused, he failed to comply with an officer’s commands.
Police officers also used Tasers on schoolchildren, pregnant women and even an elderly person with dementia.
In March 2008, an 11-year-old girl with a learning disability was shocked with a Taser after she punched a police officer in the face. The officer had been called to the school in Orange County, Florida, after the child had become disturbed, pushing desks and chairs and spitting at staff.
Existing studies – many of them funded by the industry – have found the risk of these weapons to be generally low in healthy adults. However, these studies are limited in scope and have pointed to the need for more understanding of the effects of such devices on vulnerable people, including those under the influence of stimulant drugs or in poor health.
Recent independently-funded animal studies have found that the use of these kinds of electro-shock weapons can cause fatal arrhythmias in pigs, raising further questions about their safety on human subjects. It was also recently reported that nearly ten per cent of 41 Tasers tested in a study commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, delivered significantly more current than the manufacturer said was possible, underscoring the need for independent verification and testing of such devices.
Although most of the 334 deaths nationwide have been attributed to factors such as drug intoxication, medical examiners and coroners have concluded that Taser shocks caused or contributed to at least 50 of these deaths.
“We are very concerned that electro-shock weapons such as Tasers have been rolled out for general use before rigorous, independent testing of their effects,” said Angela Wright.
edit to add: I am hardly “law and order” dude, but I do tend to speak out in favor of all our civil servants. For instance, I was one of 50 “leaders and residents” listed by the No on D committee — the group defending the fire fighters union from the legislative attack on their cba — and when I ran for Palo Alto City Council I suggested there could be measures to improve relations or public relations in terms of outreach from pubic safety to the public. But just in case I — for example in the course of defending public assembly at Lytton Plaza — get tased, is the record re Palo Altol and tasers.
He dropped to one knee and drew back a deadly arrow,/and a dreadful twang rang out from the silver bow.
Homer’s “Iliad” translated by Stephen Mitchell, as quoted and discussed in “Word Craft: Found in Translation” Wall Street Journal, Saturday/Sunday, November 12-13, 2011
It is not an every day occurence to meet a seven-foot Nigerian dressed in a red-and-blue rugby shirt, so this asute and amiable water hare took the opportunity to mix it up a little, in front of the water cooler, at Stanford’s Cantor Museum Cafe Thursday. It turns out my mark was Ugonna Onyekwe, a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year for Penn and now a fledgling music producer. So I talked turkey for a minute with this Super Eagle/Quaker and then we traded digits. I didn’t offer that digits for me could mean the fact that I averaged a tiny point-one-seven points per game (0.17 or 0.2) — four points in 28 games in my entire varsity high school career — whereas he scored 1,762 points, second best all-time for Penn, and was a two-time Ivy League champion). We traded digits which meant we followed up later by text and then by phone, and I am doing the modern and digital thing by putting this all together on the web.
But it wasn’t until I searched for info between my first and second attempts to ring him that I realized the full extent of his collegiate prowess, or even the half of it. The first thing one finds in the leading search engine about “Ugonna” is a 360-degree dunk Unyekwe unleashed on rivals Princeton during his freshman season in 2000. In actuality, Ugonna Onyekwe, while not in the Penn or Big Five Hall of Fame — for shame!!– is in the top ten all-time for his school in scoring, games played, blocked shots, free throws, rebounds and steals. He ranks alongside such fellow Quakers as Corky Calhoun (Phoenix Suns), Michael Jordan (heir of Air Jordan), Walt Frazier Jr, Koko Archibong, Howie Dallmar (the former Stanford star, who enlisted in the army and then was stationed in Philly, so he transferred), Perry Bromwell (I saw play) and John Edgar Wideman (later a Rhodes Scholar, an author, a professor, a writer, and father of a Stanford women’s star Jamilla Wideman).
Sophia Hollander of the New York Times described Ugonna’s zen qualities, his lack of emotion even after performing jaw-dropping (from the perspective of fans, teammates and the opposition). It also described him as being a marketing major who made gospel and soul demo tapes in his apartment.
This is raw stuff, as any literal version must be, with no life in the language. At this point I begin to listen for they rhythm (a music that I hear before the words themselves come into focus in my ear), and line by line, sometimes after a minute, sometimes after 10 — magically, it seems — the word begin to configure themselves, my hearing creates what I want to hear, the pen starts to write, and I am a fascinated witness.
As a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year, Ugonna must rank with Bill Bradley, Gus Broberg, Dave Gavitt and Rudy LaRusso as Ancient Eight all time great. Maybe someone who saw him in his prime can write something as powerful as John McPhee’s tribute to Bradley, “A Sense of Where You Are”
Like my former high school teammate Kent Lockhart, Ugonna had a tryout with the New York Knicks.
My teammate Lockhart pick #6 for the Knicks, #119 overall
I noted the recent review of Harvey Araton’s saga of the historic age of the championship Knicks, the team that featured Bill Bradley, Willis Reed, Jerry Lucas, Dave DeBusschere, Earl Monroe and Walt “Clyde” Frazier.
I woke up with ideas that Ugonna could be as big as Bob Marley, and filled a page of notes at the local chain cafe. A lady walked in with a faux vintage “Rocky” shirt, something about Apollo Creed (the Muhammad Ali archetype played by Carl Weathers, to the Chuck Wepner based underdog played by Sylvester Stallone) and 1979. But when I read Stephen Mitchell’s column about the Illiad and Apollo, my strong regard for Ugonna and his musical upside morphed in mythic terms.
I see Ugonna as the archer, setting his sights on the music biz. I would think there is a huge crossover between basketball fans and the music community movers and shakers that could help Ugonna get his bearings (“get his bearings” sounds funny when talking about a guy who was said to perform 360 dunks with his eyes closed). And although his play was flamboyant, the New York Times Sophia Hollander for one also noted a stoicism and zen quality to Ugonna. In our brief interaction, he let on that its been tough going so far.
I hope I can be helpful. I am going to send him a list of people I met during my Philadelphia minute (when for example, I befriended Ryan “Honus Honus” of Man Man when he was a barrista at Last Drop, and took a UArts course with Aaron Luis Levenson).
It reminded me of the time I ran into Roger Craig in front of Wells Fargo and offered the tidbit that the son of Julius Erving was a music manager; Roger’s said his son was on his way to Philly for a tryout with the 76ers, but that music was his son’s “Plan B”. “Thanks, man.” the former Niners great said. “I’m gonna ring Julius on that account.”
Not to give myself too much credit but I do find some incredibly exciting prospective projects; most don’t pan out to Titanic proportions. But there was also something in Mitchell’s discussion of finding his words — the music, the magic — that rang true for me as I thought of ideas that might help Ugonna.
That Ugonna played in Spain makes me want to hook him up with my Barcelona music buddies Sam Lardner and Pedro Hermosilla. That he played in Israel makes me want to suggest to him going straight to the head macher (who doesn’t know me from Moses), Lyor Cohen. Ugonna was visiting a friend in Palo Alto he met in Israel when they met at the trainer’s table. On his recent visit he shot around and lifted at the new JCC — didn’t get any reports if he set the standards there with any dunks — next time. Next year.
Maybe his story plays out like “Sense of Where You Are” mixed with “What is the What”, Dave Eggar’s account of a Dinka immigrant.
A propos of getting to the nature of adulation, and comparing 8,000 fans at the Palestra to what it’s like doing showcases and open mics on the come, maybe Ugonna might also look into Scott Raab’s book on LeBron James:
Musically, he should ask for a shoot-around with Michael Franti (ex-USF player) and JC Brooks, a very tall up-and-coming soul singer I met at Bottom of the Hill last week, signed to Bloodshot and The Agency Group. Or Alex Kadvan, the manager of Sharon Jones and Antibalas (the group featured in “Fela”).
As I do with every Nigerian I have met in the last 11 years, I recounted for Ugonna the time I brought Femi Kuti and band to the Cubberley Center in Palo Alto.
And I told him my “I am four bounce passes from the President” riff based on the fact that my teammate Lockhart played with Arnie Duncan in Melbourne, who plays with Barack Obama (and is Secretary of Education and a former Harvard staff — could we get Ugonna into that same game?)
Who knows — if his music rises to the level of his hoops, maybe someday Philadelphia will build a monument next to the one they did for Sly. (Although, to keep on topic, Ugonna Onyekwe (oh-NICK-way) should emulate Sly Stone not Rocky Balboa. Also, if it is not obvious, Stephen Mitchell who’s writings inspired my estimation of Ugonna is not to be confused with another Mitchell, Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell, SF’s playground legend, and subject of a documentary, who I saw in person in a dunking exhibition on the Panhandle (Golden Gate Park) in 1990 or so. Ugonna is only 6′ 8″ — I rounded up to calling him a “seven-footer” by poetic license. In real life terms six-eight is basically seven feet, but obviously in basketball per se in conjures up a different image. Ugonna seems to be a 3 or 4 not a 5 — although he did get mad blocks. But he is definitely more well-rounded than the most famous Dinka (Sudanese — yes I am drifting a few hundred miles) shot-blocked the late great Manute Bol. I am 5′ 11″ and three-quarters of an inch, barefooted but I claim, on my CDL everywhere, more than a thousand times since age 16, and have almost convinced myself, that I am six feet even. Ok?
Although I would advise him, for multiple reasons, to try to simultaneously develop his own act, craft and stage presense, for now he is focused on helping as producer and writer his sister, who performs as Dobi Kwe:
Gunnational Fantasy Football League team in Palo Alto, Calif., in its 32nd season, founded in 1979, at its mid-season re-draft, Wednesday, November 9, 2011.
“Gunnnational” comes from Gunn, Henry Gunn High of Palo Alto, where four of the current 10-team owners were freshman together in 1979 when the league was launched. Sports Illustrated had an item about a team comprised of Oakland Raider beat writers callng itself “Gnational Football” connoting something small like a gnat.
Team owners munched brownies and chips drank Brother Thelonious beer, and due to the preponderance of pushy Wesleyan football former players, listened on Youtube to fellow alumni Dar Williams and Das Racist — resisting the urge to send a lackey out for Taco Bell or Pizza Hut.
From the SI Vault, 1978, Marvin Webster of the Knicks on cover:
GOOD GNUS
“If you can remember where the Kansas City Chiefs originated, or San Diego‘s Chargers, or recall the AFL New York original nickname—or Oakland‘s—then you will survive in the G.F.L.” So says, in slightly confusing prose, the weekly Gnus of the Gnational Football League, which arrives in a plain brown envelope with a Santa Rosa, Calif.postmark.
The eight northern California teams of the GFL—Tiburon Hot Tubs, Walnut Creek Weasels, San Mateo Critical Rays,Humboldt Crabs, etc.—held a draft of NFL players during the summer to establish 15-man rosters, and each week during the season the club “owner” sends his starting lineup—one quarterback, two running backs, two receivers and a kicker—to the commissioner, Mike Carey, a former University of San Francisco sports information director who lives in Sebastopol. The winners of the weekly GFL “games” are determined by the scoring of each team’s six starters in NFL play that week.
According to Commissioner Carey, a typical GFL game was the season opener between the Big Plum Buckeyes (now the Big Plum Pits) and the Sonoma Geysers (now the Sebastopol Escargot). The Geysers appeared to be on their way to a narrow victory over the Buckeyes thanks to Dan Pastorini‘s two touchdown passes against Atlantaand Chuck Muncie‘s two touchdowns against Minnesota, even though Rafael Septien had missed two field goals inDallas‘ 38-0 win over the Colts. But, when one of Pastorini’s touchdown passes was belatedly ruled a lateral, instead of the Geysers winning 41-38, the Buckeyes came out on top 38-35.
Within minutes of the decision, Rank Link, a disciple of Woody Hayes and general manager of the Geysers, kicked in the mailbox of his opposite number on the Buckeyes, thereby forcing the commissioner’s office to take a stand against the “criminal element” surfacing in the GFL.
Trades are frequent in the league and they are reported weekly in the gnusletter. For instance, last week: “When the Escargot had lost Bob Griese, Doug Williams and Pastorini to injuries, it sent Chuck Foreman to the Walnut Creek Weasels for Dan Fouts, whereupon Foreman rewarded his new team with a Monday night touchdown against the Chicago Bears that helped the Weasels nip the Critical Rays, 15-9.”
It could develop into the gnational pastime.
(I read the above article and re-wrote it in a letter to Brian Evans and together we founded a similar GFL, and at our 25th high school reunion I was invited back into the league that Evans had kept going thru college and the ensuing years)
I don’t know what to say. I wore a Jeff Adachi button today. I did a couple hours of work for Adachi, handing out flyers in front of Whole Foods in SF. I met the man three times during his campaign and was impressed. I heard that Matt Gonzalez made a video for Jeff, and saw that it was viewed about 8,000 times.
But the Ed Lee Joint has about 200,000 views. It has cameos from very fly-looking baseballer Brian Wilson, Will I Am of BEP and more. In small print, it says it was paid for by multi-millionaires Ron Conway (the former Palo Altan – or is he still registered here?) and Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake in the movie).
Maybe we can have a real cool video for Palo Alto 2012 elections. When fascism returns, it will at least have a cool new soundtrack. And that Google chick looks like she can kinda sorta shake it. Fear the mustache indeed.
Josh Roseman (far right) and band at Stanford on Nov. 12, 2011 -- they were more Sun Ra than Skank frankly
My rabbi, Steven Bernstein (Sex Mob, MTO, Berkeley High, Earthwise Productions 10th anniversary show), gave “Plastic Alto” six minutes and 37 seconds by cell to help me and my readers get ready for the Josh Roseman show, which is coming to Stanford Lively Arts as a sextet on Saturday, November 12.
Josh, who also in recent years helped out at the Stanford Jazz Workshop and sometimes frequented Printers Cafe in Palo Alto will be playing Jamaican-tinged jazz as found on his recent Accurate Records release:
I wrote about Josh’s upcoming visit previously, and had the briefest conversation with him, but was somehow moved to get the skinny on him from another renowned bandleader, Bernstein. I call Bernstein now and again for ideas or advice and interviewed him a few years back live for KZSU (as I did for three other of Roseman’s colleagues Peter Apfelbaum, Charlie Hunter and Don Byron).
As part of our banter, Steven Bernstein agreed that people might have at times confused Josh Roseman with Josh Redman, “especially when they were both young and coming up”. First I joshed Steven so to speak to pretend slightly stoopidly that somebody might confuse Steven’s instrument, a slide trumpet, with Josh’s axe, a trombone.
Steven Bernstein and Josh Roseman have each played with Charlie Hunter, but it was Curtis Fowlkes who played trombone recently in Charlie’s section with SB, not Josh, and on Steven’s recent cd. Allmusic dot com would have cleared up all this in a more forthright manner, but it is fun to marvel in the interconnectedness of today’s generation of jazz gods with a little faux naive teasing and questioning. Josh has a long list of sideman credits and notably was a member of the first SFJAZZ collective. He also teaches at the New School and a couple other places plus runs a venue in Brooklyn.
The fact is that Steven Bernstein said he has known Josh Roseman for more than 25 years and remembers the first time they met when they were both in a section in the Big Apple, when Josh must have still been in high school (before he went to New England Conservatory, but well after Bernstein had left Berkeley High, where he has gigged copiously with his classmates Apfelbaum and another great trombonist Jeff Cressman).
Somewhere therein with Bernstein a propos of Roseman I mentioned that I had verbally committed to Rush Gershon of Either Orchestra and Accurate Records that I would raise some money and fly his group out here next year to do their Ethiopian bit. Russ is another Josh Roseman colleague, having hired him for his band back numerous times back in the day and having put out the most recent sessions on his label (following Josh’s work on Enja and Knitting Factory). Steven had said that his most recent and perhaps mos def MTO (orchestra) project was indeed a Sly Stone tribute but had not been out to San Francisco Bay Area yet. “It takes real money. It has 12 players.”
I also asked Steven Bernstein, in code, in yiddish, like in the prologue for “A Serious Man” whether Josh Roseman, despite recording a Jazz Ska attack thing also came by honestly his stint with Don Byron’s Mickey Katz thing, and we agreed that although Steven and Josh have not yet recorded together their ancestors and mine, and Charlie’s, and Russ’s were all in a section together, back in the day, shlepping stones to the top of the pyramid of Giza, but not on the sly or as a family outing, as in when Israel was in Egypt’s land, let my people go. Paul Robeson you know. O Brother where art thou and all that. Sullivan’s travels. If you feel me. What is the frequency, Faulkner? Oley, Grandfather. Oy. Oy. Mine aching back.
Finally getting to my one question (as opposed to the four questions, if you permit me further exodus in a subtle Pesach subtext):
What should the listeners shed with to prep for Josh Roseman at Stanford, coming up next week, his Jamaican thing?
Or he said “Breaking Bread”. It is true that the cell cut in and out a few times — nature of the beast — six six six and all that — sometimes eleven seven – but never four four four — that would be Bernie Worrell, no misrespect mind you — but I’m still a greenhorn or a tenderfoot and am not actually on the bus or on the horse thank you Jesus and was afeared to ask the rabbi to clarify, like soup. When John Ellis opened for Bernie Worrell at B.B.King’s in New York he pointed out that it wasn’t really jazz in that all the songs were 4/4 timing. Actually, Worrell adds a lot of spice to Bernstein’s cd so I should bite my tongue).
He said “Roswell Rudd” and I have taken poetic, self-serving and plastic alto license here to be more pacific about which cd. I like this one because tru-dat Roswell and Steve Lacy (and JJ Avenel and the other JB John Betsch, as distinct from JB Jenny Bilfield the producer of Josh’s show — had to get that mention in here somewhere) rehearsed together for the first time in years in Andy Heller’s San Carlos studio the night before the first show of a tour that finished probably at Iridium in 1999 in NYC before going into the studio to make this cd. Get it? I mean “Get it!”
See the link to Josh’s cd see above.
I mentioned that the night after Josh Roseman at Stanford there will be light in the form of Abraham Inc at CalPerformances the next day. And Beth Custer on clarinet has a big show in the City on Thursday.
Abraham Inc features David Krakauer on clarinet and Fred Wesley on trombone, and yet another Josh, Socalled, Dolgin on keys and beats. I went by Jack’s I mean Boom Boom Room in SF — it’s on Fillmore near the Mildred Howard public art piece Blue — and spoke to the owner Alex Andreas about how we should on the down low bring a bone summit with Josh and Fred. If it happens it will be like 2 a.m. and no publicity — but either or and if, you heard it here first.
edit to add: I just noticed that on Wednesday, Nov. 9 at noon at Cantor Museum Loren Schoenberg of the Harlem Jazz Museum will lecture on the relationship between Latin or Caribbean culture and Jazz. I met Loren earlier this year when he came out to lecture at Stanford on Mingus. I also noticed — although this is more about Steven Bernstein than Josh Roseman — that someone has posted online a recording of the show Bernstein did for Earthwise, The Diaspora Suite.
I still don’t get it why sometime the links to the online store come out with the album artwork and sometimes just the address but since this link worked in the previous post I will add it here to lively up:
edit to add, November 9, 2011: Checked in with Josh Roseman’s studio assistant, the Fugazi-loving Sam Lawrence (?), who got JR to send me this update:
Hi, Mark
i understand you called the studio looking for the lineup for Saturday-
here’s a mini blurb from the (social media page) event I put up, see below…
holler if I can be of further asssistance, OK
JR
Josh Roseman solar flare double trio in performance at Stanford Lively Arts
Saturday, November 12 · 8:00pm – 10:00pm
kind of dubby ridiculousness- fresh from underneath a planet, we bring a sigil of blasts, sparkles and righteous group mutterings to Stanford’s Campbell Recital hall.
And check the band out:
Joshua- trombone and digital appliances
Myron Walden- alto saxophone
Peter Apfelbaum- organ
Barney McAll- sound design, tuning and sprinkles
Mark Guiliana- drums
Curtis Hasselbring- trombone and guitar
I am only like two years late to give props to Thao Nguyen. I met her in 2009 at SXSW NPR show in Austin, day party. I met Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney a few minutes prior, and then Tom Waits’ publicist.
I like the other video which starts with her using a stencil.
This stencil art graffiti is on California Avenue near the authorized Palo Alto Public Art triptych by Joey Piziali, and also Chris Johansen and David Huffman. A clerk from Accent Arts said that in the alley near their storage space there is also a pretty good, but perhaps with a different tag, image of I think Sitting Bull, an Indian at least, or a Native American icon, perhaps like the “Sitting Bull” by Warhol I saw at Hood Museum in Hanover, NH.
I also used the same image for a poster for Archers of Loaf back before I even heard about fair use. I am pretty sure my posters are illegal but I’ d be happy to sell you one under the table for twenty bucks. The run was about 200. Twenty bucks here and there, pretty soon you have to report the income and to State Board of Equalization. For now it is just a line on my tax returns, the storage locker — my former Chiat Day manager and brother of my hero the Stanford Lively Arts honcho Jen Bilfield Mark Bilfield was a macher at the storage company so he at least made some money off my white elephant idea of seasoning my posters — about 70 designs in runs of mostly 400 but there are two that are four-color and in the thousands, 5,000 or so.
Stencil art is like Buddhist sand paintings in that after they put them up they are destined to get painted over pretty quick.
There is a rumor that a pseudo-hip tech firm in Palo Alto is invited Shepherd Fairey to not only tag their building — the former where I booked a couple bands including The Butchies and I used to do their ads when they were Zebra Copy of KOME Jungle Copy, still exists but is in a little chink of a space — can I say chink? — but get Mr. Fairey to work with some of Palo Alto’s Utes — we have mostly Coastanoans actually. I will believe when I see it and not even then.
Also, another uber-hip tech firm told me that they flew in someone named Milo from Australia to paint their walls, but then their security chased away a guy taking photos of their building. They may be right, he may have been an industrial spy. I swear I met Mark Zuckerberg and David Choe painting a room above Jing-jings a whiles back. I bought a calendar from Choe and can check the date if I ever turn it up.
I will get a comment from Mr. Piziali. I sent him the jpeg.
edit to add, or update, four years later: when the building was gutted the murals, by Hoffman, Johanson and Piziali were spared, but Elephino, hell if I know! (And worse: Greg Brown is dead).
I was thinking of changing the title of the previous from “Plastissimo Alto” to “To Be Young And Well-Hung In Palo Alto”. I reached that line about two hours in, and 2,000 words spent, of the previous post. I am referencing of course that a Palo Alto couple famously hung in their salon, at 433 Kingsley near Waverley, a collection of Henri Matisse paintings in the 1930s and their influence helped establish Matisse as well as engendered San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art.
In the previous post I also give a shout in this context to Palo Altan Eugene Robinson the uber-macho writer, singer, poet, author and fighter. Think Norman Mailer mixed with the roomful of black and blues –the blindfolded boxers –in Ralph Ellison “Invisible Man.”
There is also a song by Jim Thomas and the Mermen called something like “To be Naked and French is Always Hard”.
I also made a perhaps indecorous reference to the reason why my friend Candye Kane was removed from a concert lineup in Birmingham, Alabama, previously. I used a common if vulgar term for oral pleasure, thought it sounds like something you do at a county fair, except in Alabama perhaps. (Or what about that fairly vulgar and redundant simile about a “one legged man at an ass-kicking contest” — who said that?)
And as always there is Groucho Marx wondering how an elephant “got” in his pajamas.
Or my monologue in the making about Jim Harbaugh hunched over the center. I said that someday due to his influence there will be a lot of high school teams here where due to demand they will be running offenses not with two tight ends (bad enough) but two centers — all these little kids for whatever reason, who met Harbaugh and now want to be centers.
Or about twenty titles from Jon Ginoli.
Or Beth Lisick and BLO opening for Ozomatli and then years later giving the world a giant banana.
Go ahead make my day. Bring this up when I run for Palo Alto City Council 2012. Like I would not have noticed that Janet Jackson’s boob popped out, until the tv people caught it, zoomed in, then replayed it a million times all the while blaming her.
It ain’t easy being smart, loose-lipped, (as opposed to loose-limbed, or being able to do the splits — I can do the Banana Splits. I can do Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper but not Snork. Snork requires too much discipline. Like piano lessons. I don’t play that “Yes, sir. No, sir” safe word stuff) funny, conscientious and having two hours a day access to a computer at the Palo Alto Library. Go ahead and attack me. I resemble that. I’ve been called verse.
edit to add, about six months later: at this point I have made jokes about it five or six times, and even skimmed a wiki article about it, but looking through my fingers in front of my face; the phrase, which I don’t actually understand and I don’t think I need to, appears in the recent New Yorker, thusly: !
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 