Island Life 2005  -  Jan. - June

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JANUARY 2, 2005

 

SAILING ON THE SEAS OF ACCOUNTANCY

 

Greetings and Happy New Year fellow Islanders! Another year has come and gone and Island-life still stands, all aswash with buckles and waving our cutlasses madly upon the decks of the good ship The Crimson Red Assurance LTD with ostrich feathers in our caps and dark poison in our barbed quills.

 

If you really want to relive last year, you can hop down to the bottom of the page where we have hyperlinks to past years. As the clock revolves per annum, we shuffle all 400 pages or so of the preceding year to storage, leaving the new year HTML as spanking fresh as the shiny hiney of a brand new baby's bottom. As we shifted our coding to a more professional engine midyear, we have the opportunity to clear out all of that tedious basura left by previous editors, leaving this site a sparking marvel of fresh, crisp, newfallen code.

 

That all means, dear and gentle readers, you get to browse faster.

 

Enough of that drivel: now to the juice. Here is the site report from the webhost on visits last year.

 

Site Report for: www.island-life.net
Date Range: 1/1/2004 to 12/31/2004

Summary
Total Visitors 27,005
Total Pageviews 25,584
Total Hits 299,804

 

The monthly report indicates a steadily growing readership.

 

 

We are now searcheable by www.google.com, Altavista, Yahoo, and a number of other entities on the web. This site does not pay for any subscription to any websearch engine.

 

Let it be said that you are not alone in your devotion to Island-life, which began with a humble readership of some 500 souls in 1998.

 

FOR AULD LANG SYNE

 

Last year, we had another Infamous Poodleshoot around the time of Thanksgiving, began the Island-life line of apparel, and attending several events remarked upon by the local Institutional Media as "Best of", including the remarkable collaboration between Tom Waits and W.S. Burroughs "The Black Rider" as well as ACT's presentation of "Eurydice". We now receive the BGP monthly calendar for the Bay Area and the Solano Avenue Business Association sends us updates on Whats Happening.

 

FOUNTAIN OF SORROW

 

Before we get down to business in the New Year, lets think about the empty places at the 2005 New Year's Celebration. Of course we lost a raft of precious souls -- not even including the terrible catastrophe which we will address later -- this past year. The previous column mentioned a few and here are a few more worthy to mention. In no particular order, we remember fondly the following:

 

DAVID DELLINGER- Montpelier, Vt. - Peace activist David Dellinger, one of the Chicago Seven arrested and tried for their part in the violent anti-war protests outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, died at 88 in May.

Dellinger was a pacifist who devoted much of his life to protesting. A member of the Old Left whose first arrest came in the 1930s during a union-organizing protest at Yale, he was a generation older than his Yippie codefendants in the Chicago Seven case.

"Mainly I think he'll be remembered as a pacifist who meant business," said Tom Hayden, a fellow '60s radical and member of the Chicago Seven who went on to become a California legislator. "His pacifism was very forceful. He didn't mind interjecting himself between armed federal marshals and someone they were pushing around."

At the Chicago Seven trial in 1969 and 1970, Dellinger and four codefendants - Hayden, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and Rennie Davis - were convicted of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 convention. Those convictions were overturned by a federal appeals court, which cited errors by U.S. District Judge Julius Hoffman.

When Hoffman invited Dellinger to address the court during sentencing, he continued to speak after the judge ordered him to stop.

"You want us to be like good Germans, supporting the evils of our decade, and then when we refused to be good Germans and came to Chicago and demonstrated, now you want us to be like good Jews, going quietly and politely to the concentration camps while you and this court suppress freedom and the truth," Dellinger told the judge. "And the fact is, I am not prepared to do that."

Greg Guma, editor of the political magazine Toward Freedom, called Dellinger "one of the major figures in terms of peace and social justice of the last half century."

Dellinger fought for unions in the 1930s despite being called a communist, and walked with civil right leaders in the South in the 1950s and '60s, despite the risk of violence.

A conscientious objector during World War II, Dellinger spoke out against the practice of putting black soldiers in the back of trains ahead of defeated Germans. During a three-year prison term - one of several stints behind bars - Dellinger refused to sit in the all-white dining area.

Just three years ago, at age 85, Dellinger got up at 2:45 a.m. at his home in Montpelier and hitched a ride to demonstrations in Quebec City against the creation of a free trade zone in the Western Hemisphere.

"Three percent of the richest people in the world control more wealth than 49 undeveloped countries," he said. The trade agreement "is going to extend that kind of system."

Dellinger contended capitalism led to imperialism and violence.

"The evils in the society today are greater than they were in 1968," he said in a 1996 interview with The Associated Press. "I enjoy life this way, I enjoy life being in solidarity with the people who are fighting for a better world."

SUSAN SONTAG has passed at 73.

American essayist, short story writer, and novelist, a leading commentator on modern culture, whose innovative essays on such diverse subjects as camp, pornographic literature, fascist aesthetics, photography, AIDS, and revolution gained a wide attention. Sontag also wrote screenplays and directed films. She had a great impact on experimental art in the 1960s and 1970s, and she introduced many new stimulating ideas to American culture. On the bohemian New York scene of the early sixties, Sontag swiftly acquired a reputation as the radical-liberal American woman, who had not only deep knowledge ancient and modern European culture, but could also reinterpret it from the American point of view.

Rejecting interpretation, Sontag advocated what she called 'transparency', which means "experiencing the luminousness of thing in itself, of things being what they are". The 'meaning' of art lies in the experiencing both style and content together without analysis. "Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art."

YASSER ARAFAT
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died November 11 at a hospital in Paris. He was 75. Arafat had been sick for some weeks with an unknown illness. Arafat, known throughout the world as the face of the Palestinian national movement, rose to prominence by waging war on Israel, and years later publicly called for peace with his lifelong enemy. To Palestinians and supporters the world over, he wore the mantle of a statesman. To his enemies and detractors, his name became synonymous with the carnage of terrorism. For Arafat, it was all in the name of establishing a Palestinian state.

HANK GARLAND - Guitarist for Elvis, George Shearing, Charlie Parker, George Benson, Conway Twitty, Hank Williams Sr. and others.

ARCHIBALD COX - He served as United States Solicitor General under President John F. Kennedy and was the special prosecutor for the Watergate Scandal. On October 20, 1973, in an event termed the Saturday Night Massacre, US President Richard Nixon ordered that Cox be fired as Watergate scandal special prosecutor, upon Cox's insistence on obtaining secret White House tapes. Rather than comply with this order, both Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned. The order was ultimately carried out by the Solicitor General, Robert Bork. Upon being fired, Cox stated simply: "Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people". He was born may 12, 1912 and died May 29th.

PIERRE SALINGER
(June 14, 1925—October 16, 2004) was a White House Press Secretary to US Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. He also worked as a journalist and is well known for his work as an ABC News correspondent.

RICHARD AVEDON
Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 - October 1, 2004) was an American photographer. Avedon was able to take his early success in fashion photography and expand it into the realm of fine art. He is most noted for photographing models in natural, non-artificial poses, and for his unsentimental portraits of the famous.

JACK PAAR
(May 1, 1918 - January 27, 2004) was an American radio and television talk show host. During Paar's career, he was the cause of two international incidents. In 1959, he was criticized for his interview with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Two years later, he broadcasted his show from Berlin just as the Berlin Wall was going up.

TONY RANDALL
Tony Randall (February 26, 1920 - May 17, 2004) was an American actor. Over his long career, Randall was nominated for five Golden Globe awards and two Emmys, winning one Emmy in 1975 for his work in the sitcom The Odd Couple.

FRANCIS CRICK
Francis Crick, who helped discover the structure of DNA, died July 28. He was 88. Crick and James Watson discovered that the DNA molecule is shaped like a spiral staircase. Along with colleague Maurice Wilkins, Crick and Watson were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work, which many experts hailed as one of the most important scientific discoveries of the past century. The discovery in 1953 of DNA’s double-helical structure gave birth to the fields of genetic engineering and the biotechnology industry.

JACQUES DERRIDA
French philosopher Derrida, who pioneered the complex school of thought known as deconstruction, died October 9. He was 74. Derrida's theory challenged the Western idea that speech, language and text can have clear, unambiguous meaning. Instead, he argued that text could be deconstructed to reveal another interpretation of what the author means. The theory, which resists a simple definition, found support in academia but also opposition from those who criticized it as nihilistic and an attempt to argue that concepts like logic and truth don't exist.

SPALDING GREY
Actor-writer Spalding Gray was found dead in the East River in New York City on March 7. The 62-year-old had disappeared January 10.

Gray was sui generis: He looked like an Ivy League professor and spoke with a New England accent, but spent years in the often avant-garde downtown New York theater scene and created a painfully confessional style in which the stage practically became a therapist's office. He performed sitting down, usually with only a desk, chair and glass of water for company and the film adaptations of his performances have preserved this presentation.

"This man may be the ultimate WASP neurotic, analyzing his actions with an intensity that would be unpleasantly egomaniacal if it weren't so self-deprecatingly funny," Associated Press Drama Critic Michael Kuchwara wrote in 1996. "He questions everything and ends up more exhausted than satisfied."

Gray was known for his monologues, which included "Swimming to Cambodia," about his experience playing a bit part in the movie "The Killing Fields;" "Gray's Anatomy," about his struggles with a serious eye problem; and "Monster in a Box," about an endlessly growing semi-autobiographical novel concerning his mother's suicide in 1967. He had battled depression throughout his life and had attempted suicide several times after he was badly injured in a June 2001 car accident in Ireland.

PAUL WINFIELD
Actor Paul Winfield, best known for his role in "Sounder," died March 7. He was 62. His portrayal of a sharecropper in the 1972 film earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor. He appeared both in films and on TV, portraying Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1978 miniseries "King" and winning an Emmy in 1995 for his portrayal of a judge on the TV drama "Picket Fences." He also won fans for smaller roles in a variety of science fiction TV programs and movies, including "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," "The Terminator" and "Babylon 5."

JANET LEIGH
Janet Leigh born Jeanette Helen Morrison on July 6, 1927 in Merced, California - October 3, 2004 in Beverly Hills) was an American actress. Leigh's best-known role was in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho. Years later, she wrote a book about the making of that film, in which she dispelled the urban legends which had popped up around it, notably, about the immortal "shower scene." Her performance earned her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.

Leigh married her third husband, Tony Curtis, on June 4, 1951. Curtis, who has admitted to cheating on her throughout their marriage, left Leigh in 1962 for the 17 year-old German co-star of his then-latest film. Leigh was granted a divorce, and married stockbroker Robert Brandt later that year in Las Vegas; they remained married until her death.

Leigh starred in more than sixty films.

VINA FAY WRAY
In the camp classic, "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", Dr. Franknfurter turns back in a wistful moment and comments, "Whatever happened to Fay Wray?" Well, now we know.

Vina Fay Wray (September 15, 1907 - August 8, 2004) was a Canadian-born American actress. She is best remembered for her role as the blonde seductress of a gigantic, prehistoric gorilla in the classic horror/adventure film "King Kong" (1933). Many of her fans refer to her as "The Queen of Screams."

Wray also appeared in over a hundred other films, mostly in the 1930s and almost all of them supernatural thriller vehicles or adventure westerns although she began her career in 1926 in the starring role in a film directed by Erich von Stroheim called "The Wedding March."

Her later years were spent largely in seclusion.

JOHNNY RAMONE
Johnny Ramone, guitarist and cofounder of the influential punk rock band The Ramones, died September 15 after a five-year battle with prostate cancer. He was 55. Ramone, whose birth name was John Cummings, helped found the pioneering punk band in 1974. The Ramones never had a huge hit but their rapid-fire songs influenced the next generation of bands, like Nirvana. Johnny had a number of late entries which almost hit the top charts, especially with a cut that savagely attacked the imbecility of Reagan-era antics with "Bonzo goes to Bitburg", referring to an embarrassing moment in which the increasingly dotardly Reagan referred to the SS Nazis interred at a German cemetery as "having suffered much." The Ramones were inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.

ARTIE SHAW
Clarinetist and bandleader Artie Shaw, who ranked among the greats of the Big Band era, died December 30. He was 94. Celebrated for his recording of "Begin the Beguine" and other swing hits of the 1930s and 40s, Shaw stepped out of the music world by the 1950s, concentrating on other pursuits. His numerous wives -- including actresses Lana Turner, Ava Gardner and Evelyn Keyes -- were as famous as his music

SPECIAL INSERT - JUST IN OVER THE WIRE, 7:04 PM PST 01.02.05

We have just been notified of the passing of Representative Robert Matsui, who has represented the Sacramento district in Congress since 1979, in a Naval hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. Bethesda is a suburb of Washington DC.

At his death, Rep. Matsui was the third-ranking Democrat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and among the highest-ranking Asian Americans in House history. As an infant, he had been interned in a detention camp for Japanese Americans during World War II and later pushed through a bill hoping to redress the psychological damage suffered by internees.

During the early 1990s, the congressman was President Bill Clinton's key ally for getting the North American Free Trade Agreement approved by the House despite opposition from labor groups who have traditionally supported Democrats. In 2000, he took a leading role in formulating permanent normalized trading relations with China, again at Clinton's behest.

"I've always believed that technology and trade were the two engines that really drive economic growth," he said during the China debate. "If we want to continue to be the number one nation in the world when it comes to job creation, when it comes to leading the cutting edge, we have to understand that these things are important."

In recent years, as the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security, he battled against President Bush's proposal to allow people to direct some of their mandatory Social Security contributions to private retirement accounts. He never was seriously contested by anyone in his district at each election, when his constituents overwhelmingly chose him with enviable devotion.

He had been admitted for complications from pneumonia -- a deadly disease in the dank and miasma atmosphere of Washington DC (originally built upon a swamp) and a rare stem cell disease. He died at 10:10EST and is survived by his wife, Doris; his son, Brian; his daughter-in-law, Amy; and his granddaughter Anna.

Of course it would be an obscene omission to forget the two most terrible losses of 2004: the lives lost as a result of the Iraq Occupation and those who perished as a result of the earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Over 1,300 American boys have lost their lives and some 10,000 returned home severely wounded in Iraq, not mentioning another 130 "coalition troops" from other nationalities and well over 100,000 civilian and combatant Iraqis who have died since the invasion.

Also, we cannot forget the some 120,000 Asians and visiting Europeans who died during the recent catastrophe in Southeast Asia.

By now all of you have seen the TV and newsprint reports of the horrific disaster that overtook Southeast Asia and parts of Africa. But we have some good news.

We have reports that some villages which provided home to "sea gypsies" managed to survive with all inhabitants saved. The sea gypsies have such in-depth knowledge of the sea, its currents and its weather, that they apparently knew that the swift pullback of water after the first wave foretold a more violent recurrence. At one village their elders informed the locals of what was to happen and over 187 persons saved themselves by fleeing posthaste to an inland mountaintop.

In other good news, we hear that two of the world's longest running civil wars have come to a halt as all combatants on all sides have formed interim truces and are now working cooperatively to provide emergency services to the affected regions.

We also have a report of a sailboat piloted by three Americans rode out the tsunami and then floated back in to rescue as many people in water as they could.

Here we have a Madras man sitting before the ruins of his house, calmly mending fishing nets and not giving up in the slightest.

 

SKATING AWAY ON THE ICE OF A NEW DAY

We tend not to toot our own horn here too often, but let it be said that this space is affiliated with the Langalist newsletter, which is piloted by one Fred Langa, who long ago realized that we who have the luxury of owning so much have an opportunity to give to those who have very little. Fred, with a subscriber base of some half a million, has shunted a percentage of subscriber fees aside to benefit kids in third world countries who otherwise would never encounter a computer or any technical device except in the torn scraps of advertisements used as fuel or bedding. Herewith we present the list of children who have benefited from Fred's kind largesse in the past year.

1. Yoline Louis, age 3, Haiti
2. Pape Tanor, age 9, Senegal
3. Derlan, age 12, Brazil
4. Suradon Janno, age 6, Thailand
5. Contribution to assist those hurt in the World Trade Center Attack
6. Reyna, age 12, from Guatemala
7. Macy-Jean, from the Philippines
8. Faisal, from Indonesia
9. Tizita, from Ethiopia
10. Ranganath, age 9, from India

More information, including photographs and letters from the children, can be obtained at www.langalist.com.

Island-life has had a number of conversations in the past few weeks with people troubled by the state of the world and the seemingly irrational and destructive way things in general seem to be heading. Perhaps the problem is simply we have been too comfortable for too long when things like freedom and Democracy require vigorous defense. Perhaps Steve Earle is correct when he says, "The Revolution starts now," meaning not the tired idea of a Marxist revolution pushed by pathetic idealists, but the original Revolution upon which this country was founded, a Revolution of Fire and Ire and new concepts of Freedom. We have slumbered for some 400 years and there are signs that the original promise may finally yield fruit, for now there are thousands and millions across the country who now are finally filed with a sense of purpose and desire long buried. Code Pink is planning an organized protest at the Inauguration of the Pretender and has already obtained parade permits. Countless environmental organizations are rising to the challenge to thwart the NeoCon's earnest attempt to rape the entire planet and render it virtually uninhabitable. There are so many people and groups out there we have a smorgasbord of activities and communities in which to join.

Yes, they are Bad. Yes, they are Horrible. But life is not a movie by Peter Jackson with inflatable puppet-dragons and flying wizards coming to the rescue. There is no saving King in this story and there is no magic all-powerful wizard. If this society is to survive what is to come, each of us must stop being a "muggle" and become the Wizard, each of us, for there is no one else. By your actions you will transform the world, and only the sum of your actions together can have any chance of success, for as a man said at the start of the Revolution, "We had better hang together or we surely will all hang separately."

And so let us cast these imaginary defeats behind us as we arise with the sun that will shine upon the new world, expectant and breathing clouds in the cold, frosty air of morning, a world awaiting the battles yet to begin, which will be waged by you. There is no other choice. "One day our children will awake / and flee / to another America."

THIS ISLAND LIFE

Okay, I admit we skipped an opportunity to catch the Flaming Lips on their last trip this year through these parts. Heinous omission, that. They provided the impetus for the name of this site in their album "New Times" and we skipped their show. Man, are we bummed with guilt most grievous. Oh well, that's the way it goes.

Rain has been slaughtering the local landscape to the extent that we have reports that even the LA River has started flowing again. Quel suprise! The latest reports have drops of some three feet of snow to be laid down in the next 24 hours around the Tahoe area, continuing a trend of some two weeks. Snowbunnies planning on enjoying new powder may expect to spend another 8 hours on the road coming back in long lines of folks unused to the weather and the traffic.

In the meantime, the lower elevations have been hit by front after front of heavy rain, leading to yet more forecasts of yet more rain through the following week.

This does not bode well for the Midwest and the East.

IN THE COLD RAIN AND SNOW

Its late in the evening with the rain pelting down at the end of the year and KFOG has Mike Powers hosting a live concert. You can guess already what it is: a Bay Area tradition. The Grateful Dead performing down the way at Kaiser Aud in 1987. There are many who hate the Dead, more for something they seem to represent for some people than the quality of their garage rock music and Jerry's inspired noodling on the guitar.

The Dead never managed a very smooth set of vocal harmonies and Jerry's antipathy to rock 'n rock, which he publicly stated was a playground for puerile minds, manifested itself in his distanced, obviously bluegrass-inflected riffs, which other less informed listeners took to be brainless wanderings, and others took to be sheer genius. All misunderstanding and bad interpretation.

The West Coast tends to affiliate Jerry and his kids with a certain period of time and a certain "hippy" attitude over a continuum of time from 1969 to Jerry's death in 1995, while the East Coast, with its ever present culture of oppression, tends to regard Jerry as the apostle of the workingman, beginning some time around 1980, when the Dead had decided as a group to put aside recreational drugs and start performing real music. The Dead were a respite from the terrific repression propelled by anxious Conservative reactionaries against the mythical "Sixties.".

By then, the 1980's, all of the surviving members of the Dead had actually learned how to play their instruments, a terrible fate that was to befall the Punk movement a bit later.

But that is all History now. The newly minted year is 2005 and rain patters on the windowpanes.

"All I know is that something within her like a bird would sing. . . ."

Well, one cannot argue seriously against sentiments like that.

NIGHT OF A THOUSAND STARS

Welcome gentle reader to the New Year, 2005. No other year offers such promise. No other year offers itself up like the body of a fresh Virgin for all that is possible. Only you will determine what is to come.

Outside the furious weather is pelting down the rain like another age is about to begin. Perhaps it is, in joy and hope and possibility. Perhaps this generation has yet to fulfill its promise in vigorous action and shouting defense of freedom and all we hold dear. Many have fallen and many will fall before this war is over. Make no mistake: We are at war. And our Enemy is not Islam.

Our Enemy pushes Law aside as an inconvenience and redefines torture according to its needs. Our Enemy lies to the populace so as to justify immoral wars and sacrifices people for the sake of its ideological program. Our Enemy considers Democracy old hat, outdated and irrelevant. Our Enemy considers the idea of Freedom to be an antiquated and nonsensical concept.

I strongly suggest you kick the Enemy in the balls.

This Island is an island which considers itself members and citizens of the world, as well as citizens of the State of California and lastly, of the United States of America. And we sing of Freedom. Freedom that should be.

That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.

 

JANUARY 9, 2005

 

LIKE THE WEATHER

 

Drove up to the Project in Petaluma on Friday against better instincts and promptly regretted the decision. On the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge visibility dropped to about 100 yards in the lashing rain. Long lines of stalled traffic choked the far southbound lanes of the 101 behind spinout wrecks. Just stayed on up there in the refrigerated Operations Center until all the folks in the Center and the factory had trundled on home and the map shown at www.sfbaytraffic.info showed fewer red marks. Sloshed on home the 60 miles or so in about two and half hours.

 

By evening a solid inch had swashed down on the drenched hills of California, which ordinarily gets a total of about 9 inches for the year. Three feet of snow dumped on the Sierra within 12 hours, on top of the three feet dumped last weekend.

 

Its been pelting down here every day and every night for the past seven days, bringing back memories of the torrential downpours of the early 80's, and if you don't believe in global warming you had better get yourself decent raingear and learn how to row anyway.

 

Bad news for you folks in the Midwest and East, for you got another dockwallopper heading your way.

 

THIS ISLAND LIFE

 

We hope you all got what was coming to you this past Holiday Season. Because of the weather and the general mood, the celebrations were subdued all around the Bay Area.

 

For those of you new to this space, a little recap of what we are about is in order here. We live on a little island set in the San Francisco Bay on the eastern side. The Bay hosts five inhabited Islands, not including Alcatraz, once home to the infamous prison, and this one hosts the largest population. We are joined by bridges to two other islands, one of them devoted entirely to the Coast Guard.

 

On this Island, with its tree-lined avenues peppered with period Edwardian homes, the strictest anti-development measures in force in the nation, and its penchant for art-deco along the handful of blocks that constitute "downtown", we cultivate an atmosphere of some indefinitely quaint period time warped in the past, a time of big finned automobiles, green lawns, church socials, Elks Club dances, and suspendered attitudes dressed in overalls. Down the street from here a lady keeps a perfectly restored jet black Ford Mustang on the street with the license plate "Sally 66". I kid you not. You can come over here and have a look yourself.

 

So we have this island, in the center, literally, of a major international metropolis of some 8 million souls, where kids play ball in the streets and the ice cream parlor is the hottest thing going on sweltering summer nights and old fashioned barbers compete on an even keel with them newfangled"hair salons." We also host the largest collection of churches per square mile in the entire Bay Area. We even have a mosque of which we are justifiably proud.

 

And it seems we have a perspective, living in a time warp as we do, worth writing about. And this is what we write about every week in this space begun long before the "Blog" explosion. We write about San Francisco Bay Area culture and life, with an attunement to the East Bay especially, in all of its vigorous American flavor, of its restaurants, theater, art happenings, and music.

 

Our cast of characters has persisted throughout the brief six years or so of existence. Except for Mayor Ralph, who died by his own hand. We have, however, a very splendid Mayor Beverly and a better name for a mayor we could not have invented ourselves. And let it be known, this space tends to lend itself to very liberal nomination standards, for we seldom call anything by its published name if we can possibly help it. We don't do this for legal reasons; we do it out of a persistent fit of whimsy.

 

We are distinguished among all other municipalities in having the most efficient traffic ordinance organization in the world. It is not so good at collecting criminals or stopping crimes other than traffic infractions, but no one can deny that the IPD, spearheaded by one Officer O'Madhauen, is dreadfully effective in collecting parking tickets and issuing DUI, speeding, jaywalking, yellow-light running, fishing without a permit tickets of astonishing frequency. All this activity has not slowed the rate of hit and run or vehicle death in the slightest, but the boys really enjoy their work.

 

We have our Seasonal Celebrations, the highest of which has come to be the annual Island Poodleshoot and BBQ, which invariably leads to much bloodshed and merriment each year.

 

Of late we have been covering with embedded reporters the invasion of Newark by Eugene Shrubb, President of the Bums, who has declared war upon the terriers and their Weapons of Mass Doo-Doo.

 

Also, we have a Work in Progress here which chronicles the descendants of Oog and Aag, the original progenitors of the Bay Area who fought a great battle due to overcrowding on Twin Peaks during Pleistocene Age. Um, well, we shall discuss more of that anon.

 

Well, that's about it for an introduction here. If you don't get it at first, just keep reading and come back for more. Something interesting is always happening on this Island. Of course it is only fair to warn you that if you are demented or otherwise mentally impaired, and you find that George Bush is a moral fellow with honest intentions, you may find this site not to your liking. As you will not by the sample below, headed by those immortal words by RMN, "Here's my dog Checkers."

 

 

WHERE DOES THE LOVE OF GOD GO WHEN THE WAVES TURN THE MINUTES TO HOURS

 

Almost two weeks into a brand new year and the world is just beginning to move to the rescue for the survivors of the tsunami that claimed -- at last estimate -- some 150,000 lives in a matter of minutes. The US Army is sending 80 some badly needed helicopters to drop supplies in areas unreachable by land vehicles due to destroyed roads. The US Navy has send three desalination ships, each of which can render some 30,000 gallons of water a day. In some places, such as the Maldives, desalination was the sole source of fresh water and those plants have been entirely destroyed along the coast.

 

Now that is a proper employment of military resources: proudly saving lives instead of slaughtering them.

 

Prodded by the angry UN Secretary, Kofi, George Bush finally stirred himself to raise the initially proffered 15 million worth of assistance after some 12 days of indecision to a more useable 350 million, while a seemingly rejuvenated Colin Powell is now visiting the disaster areas. The largest contributors to the global assistance effort to the stricken region remain Norway and Sweden. Sweden, a country of some 9 million souls, lost an estimated 5,000 people in the disaster. Our international contacts are reporting heartbreaking scenes of anguish and grief in that country.

 

On the upside, the Internet is assisting people reuniting with loved ones as people post photos of rescued children, which get broadcast around the world with their locations. KPFA reported many many reunifications happened this way. And that is a good use of technology by any standard.

 

 

HERE'S MY DOG, CHECKERS

 

And now for something completely different.

 

It is interesting to see Powell, who had stated publicly a desire to retire from public life after four years of obviously straining the boundaries of personal ethics and forthrightness in the political muck of the Bush Administration now responding with a professional soldier's zest to a problem set with clear and morally unambiguous issues. He has already tendered his resignation to the Bush cabinet, but it is quite likely that the generally well-liked Powell will be appointed to some position in charge of tsunami relief efforts.

 

Other than Ashcroft -- who is a vicious, cruel and obnoxious jerk -- Powell stands alone among the criminals and savage mutants that makeup the Bush coterie. Ashcroft may be a vicious, cruel and obnoxious jerk, but its clear that in his obnoxiousness, he actually believes the crap he foists on the rest of us is all to the good of the Country, for even though he pushes forth policies that are proven failures, he does have a sort of conscience which has resulted in delightfully painful gastric problems. At night, the souls of those murdered by his cruelty howl about his sweat sopped bed, pointing long boney fingers while an immense trapdoor pops open to show the shrieking millions inviting him to kindly join them in the pit of hell. In the daytime, the effects of these nightly visitations show on his harrowed, sunken face and only a poisonous shot of botox plus a handful of Quaaludes manages to still the nervous tic in his bloodshot left eye.

 

Even Dick Cheney, who has no conscience and no soul to speak of -- he sold those long ago at the infamous Crossroads long ago -- has started to develop a nervous little twitch. His problem is not any nightly visitation, for the man gulps enough little blue pills before retiring to knock out an elephant. Dick is the beneficiary of daytime visits while he sits in the Oval Office, where he has made himself quite at home, enjoying the pleasures of ultimate power without any of the sticky strings of actual entitlement. Normally, as he sits behind the big desk he has little Georgie perch on a stool to teach the rude Texan some manners while Dick, the real Prime Mover of things, makes all the major decisions and teaches Georgie how to talk.

 

But when Georgie is off on one of his many, many, many vacations on his ranch, Dick receives his Important Visitor. Yes, this is not the first time we have had a big dick in the White House and his opening words never vary.

 

"Dick, I am not a crook," Richard says.

 

Cheney, who is not a Catholic nor Jewish, if you must know, has brought in a priest and a rabbi to attempt exorcism of the spirit of Richard Milhouse Nixon, but aids began to talk and Pat Robertson started sniffing around like a poodle, concerned that his tenured position of White House Spiritual Advisor was threatened. Pat, too, has had his visitors each night and he has started anxiously tugging on the strands of his hair to the point that a small bald spot is becoming obvious. His problem is that he insists on trying to bring George Bush around to considering a few little things. Little things like consequences and the possibility of being wrong and what to do about it.

 

George always answers the same way.

 

With Condi Rice now absently tapping her pencil, you can imagine how the latter days of this sad Cabinet have gone. Meetings have turned into embarrassing shambles with all members driving each other absolutely nuts by their knucklepopping (Pearle), pencil tapping, hair tugging, compulsive grooming with combs (Wolfowitz), nervous tics, belching and farting from ulcers, pill popping, gum chewing, anxious over the shoulder glancing, sudden starts at apparitions and mumbling talking to one's self.

 

This is the real reason Cheney snapped one day and barked an unambiguous"F--- You!" in the sanctified hallway of Congress. He was not addressing the Senator; Cheney was speaking to Richard Nixon, who keeps begging for reexamination of his China legacy. The true Leader of the Free World is being driven to distraction by the solid evidence of everyone falling apart. This is also the real reason that dozens of people are fleeing the Hell Ship of State like savage rats. Once proof that the hackers and RNC toads like Blackwell had managed to "deliver" another election became clear, Cheney called the entire Cabinet into the Oval Office and fired the lot of them, shouting, "I am sick of all your toe-tapping, finger-cracking weakness! Get out of here!"

 

The next day, on advice from his Spectral Advisor, RMN, he rehired most of them back into the Cabinet, realizing that he perhaps should inform George Bush as to what he had in mind first, but the writing was on the wall for the majority.

 

Pearle, whose Project for the New American Century had come up with most of the stuff inflicted upon America in the past four years summed it all up best during a recent interview on KPFA.

 

"Well, we had no idea that things would be so badly mismanaged," former Cabinet member Richard Pearle stated. "Say, did you see that . . . oh . . . nevermind. What were you saying?"

 

EVERYBODY DESERVES MUSIC

 

The past three nights Mark Hummel has held forth with his annual blues Harmonica blowout in the intimate atmosphere of Yoshis Nightclub. Why we are not there? The venue has sold out all shows each night, for James Cotton and Charlie Musselwhite were slated to appear on stage together. Oh man, this was one not to be missed, but the Yoshis in Jack London is prestigious precisely because the venue is so small and only so many tickets can be sold for each performance.

 

Here is the Bill Graham concert calendar update, hot off of the wire. It tends to be a bit long, even with edits, so just page down through this if you are not interested or do a page search for Ten at Ten.

 

New Shows Just Announced!

Finn Brothers
Palace of Fine Arts
San Francisco, CA

Monday, February 14 at 8:00 PM

 

Nanci Griffith & The Blue Moon Orchestra
The Fillmore
San Francisco, CA

Saturday, February 12 at 9:00 PM
On Sale Sunday, January 09 at 10:00 AM

 

Ron White - Has some really nice acoustic guitar work.
The Warfield
San Francisco, CA

Saturday, March 12 at 7:00 PM
On Sale Sunday, January 09 at 10:00 AM

 

David Byrne - founder of the Talking Heads
The Fillmore
San Francisco, CA

Wednesday, February 23 at 8:00 PM
On Sale Now!

>>SCHEDULE DELETED <<

Our bets for best shows here include jazz artists Ani Di Franco and Jill Scott, followed closely by Nanci Griffith and David Byrne. Ani DiFranco is an amazing powerhouse of a performer whose stage presence goes well beyond her studio recordings and her styles stretch from Lilith Fair-type folk and political rock to very sophisticated jazz. Jill Scott is a jazz vocalist of significant underground renown and is worth checking here out. Nanci Griffith is one of those oddly shy performers who, although a phenomenal genius, had to be forcibly persuaded by friends to step on stage, much to the benefit of music and audiences everywhere; Her style has a quasi country-folk feel to it. David Byrne, as founder of the Talking Heads, needs no introduction. His solo work has shown a developed maturity of style without losing the trademark quirkiness of his unpredictable sensibility.

TEN AT TEN

 

If you happen to be like us, and you are a known "news junkie" then we have just the fix for you. Over the wire today from correspondent Chad, we have the following URL.

 

http://tenbyten.org/10x10.html

 

This site compiles a list of the most significant news stories every hour using an heuristic engine to intelligently sift the major news orgs for keywords. The result is a completely objective series that is independent of any private news "filter" which has so plagued the major news media.

 

Reuters, BBC and AP are represented there.

 

 

KEEP ME IN YOUR HEART FOR A WHILE

 

The clock is ticking down the last minutes of the day and as we ease on into the Witching Hour, the long wail of the through-passing train comes wavering over the estuary and through the fogs that seep around the dripping houses. There have been several trains tonight, indicating some kind of ferocious activity down at the Port. The great cargo ships unload entire freight cars at the docks of one of the largest sea ports in the world only a few miles away -- as the seagull flies. The trains then hook up and pass through the Jack London Waterfront at night, blowing a "Keep Clear" signal as they trundle south 3rd Street. Where they go after that is anybody's guess. Maybe down to the Oakland Airport or the warehouses and factories all along Fremont and Hayward and on to distribution centers in San Jose or East out to the Valley past the windmill clusters of the Altamont hills and beyond to Livermore and Pleasanton and Modesto, Water Capital of the West.

 

Or maybe, this train swings around the lower end of the Alviso slough that marshes out the south end of the Bay to swing up past Great America theme park and then through the ravaged Silicon Valley towns of Sunnyvale, Los Altos and Mountain View. From there we continue north to the great salt flats of East Palo Alto and the University there on the western side. They have a deli there in the shopping center where the owner makes a jet black thing called a Fred Steak. Costs about $30 a pound for this flesh and people have been known to fly up from Brazil and down from Canada to fetch a couple Fred Steaks to feed a special occasion.

 

Leaving Fred and his deli behind, we sail on up through the surreal artificiality of Redwood City, once an expanse of orchards and past the peninsular Foster City, now a set of semicircular streets arranged concentrically around an emptiness that is entirely bordered by liquor stores, auto body shops, tile and linoleum stores and the San Mateo bungalows tucked up at the base of the peninsula ridge which separates the urban sprawl on the east side from the long watershed of the Crystal Springs reservoirs.

 

If you were to take a jaunt that a way, you would pass under the disapproving outstretched finger of Father Junipero Serra, whose statue looms over freeway pointing at god knows what. Perhaps the mists that crawl over the forested coastal ridge. If you were to descend to the reservoir itself and sneak past the barrier fence, you would come to the Pulgas Water Temple, which is a Greek-style temple built over one of the outflows into the reservoir, and which sports a greensward and regularly-spaced trees set about a rectangular mirror pond, which --- this dark night -- would reflect no stars or moon for the mists are heavy.

 

Zigging our zag back to the Bay side, we approach Burlingame and South City, with its name set Hollywood style, in big block letters on the side of the mountain, and little Brisbane, City of the Stars tucked off into a hollow in the hills there. And we pickup our train on the Amtrak line chugging north past the bulk of San Bruno Mountain where kit foxes and deer and azure butterflies once roamed as recently as 1988. Not anymore, for the Developers fought a long battle for the rights to destroy the Mountain, chopping down the forest that grew there to build a gated community for the wealthy on the northern slope while they made the south slope a rock quarry. The Developers tried to level the entire mountain behind Brisbane and turn it into a golf course, but the good people of Brisbane would have none of that nonsense and so they put a stop to it with a 200 year moratorium on building.

 

With a great wheeze our train pulls into the now abandoned train depot dug into the side of Potrero Hill -- the last train stopped there about 2001 or so -- and we use our wings to lift off and sail south over the present Caltrain Depot in China Basin south of Market so as to gain altitude and head north again over Soma and the imposing City Jail at 7th Street with its slit windows shining in the fog. We bank over the Powell Street cable car turnaround and scoot past the sleeping pigeons at Union Square and zip over famous Harringtons Bar and Grill and the equally famous -- but not so chic -- window where they used to sell sausages to people on the go across the street. Through North Beach and past Specs and a couple homeless poets asleep in the alley we bank to the west to skirt between the Marina and the bulk of Russian Hill to see if any friends are working up late at the SF Art Institute. Nope, not even a performance artist is cavorting in the nude down there on this chilly night.

 

So we zoom past the Presidio without checking in on our favorite Greek deli in the Richmond -- best gyros this side of Chicago -- and track the Bridge into the well matriculated hills of Marin. The little brooklet in San Anselmo is gushing in the darkness, a regular torrent sweeping down and all the friends are asleep there. So we bank to the East through San Rafael somewhat north of the old Portugese fishing villages of Sausalito and Tiburon, Peninsula of the Shark. The fishermen are long gone from there, leaving trendy art boutiques and expensive homes perched on the hillsides. There is a great Mexican restaurant there, however. But we are not going to tell you where it is just yet, for the food is cheap and its good.

 

From there its a quick hop over the water to the industrial zone of Richmond with its factories, chemical processing plants and Chevron oil refinery. Then its down through Albany with its Solano Avenue and through the packed avenues of the Berkeley flatlands. Nothing happening tonight at Gilman Street, where the brightest and the darkness of the punks still hold forth with slashing guitars and heavy beats.

 

It is not long before we are back in Oaktown, slinging around the Tribune tower with its newly (in the last five years) repaired clock and then we are back over the water looking down on The Island, home to some 70,000 people, several opossums, at least two families of raccoons, one flock of Canadian geese and a motley gathering of egrets and storks.

 

Its misty, its wet, its cold and we're tired after all the travel. That's the way it is on this Island. Have a great week.

 

 

 

 

JANUARY 16, 2005

 

IF IT KEEPS ON RAINING, THE LEVEE'S GONNA BREAK

 

We have some basically good news for the snow-embattled midsection of the Country in that the raging storms that have been pounding the California coast appear to have eased off and we have nothing but the usual fogs forecast for the next week. Los Angeles, which normally gets about fifteen inches of rain over the course of an entire year absorbed 24 inches over the past two week period, making this the wettest season in 89 years.

 

Severe weather conditions caused a major mudslide to destroy an entire town, named La Conchita, south of here, killing 10 people outright in a house-crushing wall of mud, stones and uprooted trees. Local authorities monitoring the hillside, which had been known to slide before, had begun evacuations of well over 200 people; if they had not taken action, the death toll would certainly have been astronomical. A six-foot high retaining wall meant to hold back debris was swept away like a fence made of paper.

 

The weather has been holding off and the snow appears to have stopped dumping on the Sierra. Truckee, a major town en route to the ski areas reports moderate temps of 34 degrees in the day and intermittent clouds.

 

Reporters from Europe, on the other hand, are relating tales of balmy days with little or no snow where it had been commonly expected to arrive in November and persist into February. There appears to be snow in the alpine regions, albeit lighter than usual, but the warming trend covers most of Spain, France, Germany, northern Italy, Austria, Poland and Bulgaria.

 

 

ONE TREE HILL

 

 

1968 seems like such a long time ago, a year recorded in history books for many things. Today we have no Statesmen worthy of the name who possess one tenth of the stature of those who seem like giants to us looking back at their immense deeds. But in talking with those who knew him, and of him, people say that Rev. Martin Luther King, was an humble Man of the Cloth who was an unwilling participant in heroic events. They say that he was a man of flesh and blood who knew fear and self-doubt and who possessed a constant sense of self-questioning, but who did not hesitate to take on responsibility and decision when those heavy weights came under his stewardship.

 

Monday, the Nation celebrates the life of a truly great man, whose principles, morality, integrity and steadfastness elevate him well above any of those today who possess little in quality beyond hectoring demagoguery.

 

LET THE SHOW GO ON

 

Somebody over in Silly Hall has been chucking a serious hissy fit over the tiny Central Cinema located on the street of that name. The owners hf the 20 seat showplace located in a former mortuary chapel that still sports cruciform stained glass windows have been slapped with notices of violation from the Fire Department on top of orders from City Hall to shut up shop due to variance from zoning designations in the area. Mark Haskett, who owns the theater, never expected such flack from Big Bureaucracy, for the previous tenant, The Multi Cultural Community Center, owned a use permit allowing occasional films.

 

This use permit, however, seems to differ from that required by a commercial movie house. Haskett, who has furnished the theater with old couches and discarded bus seats had approached the entire enterprise with a bit more informality than someone in City Hall wished, so he and his partner have been continually harassed with orders to cease and desist.

 

Let it also be known -- although it seems on the face of it to be unrelated -- that City Hall has a vested interest in an enormous cinema multiplex that is planned to be built over a large parking garage at the end of Park Street in what passes for the Island "downtown".

 

Oh no, there is no conflict of interest here, not at all. None what so ever. Yep.

 

WAVE

 

When Patti Smith sang that song, she was talking about her exclusive meeting with Pope John Paul in 1972. But we are talking about the more recent wave of note that took place across the Indian Ocean the day after Xmas, 2004. The Islanders have an understandable concern over events of such kind, for the highest point on the island is all of 36 inches above sea level. California has been hit by 14 tsunamis since 1812, the most recent and memorable being the one of 1992, when a wave caused by shift on the San Andreas fault line raced up to slosh up against Crescent City, at a distance of some 80 miles from the epicenter. Crescent City, which barely noticed that 1.5 foot wave fighting a low tide, ahs not always been so lucky. In 1964 a 9.2 Richter scale rumbler killed a number of locals in the Aleutian Islands before whipping a series of waves down to demolish nearly 2 million dollars (1964 values) worth of property and kill another 12 people. In 1960, a disastrous earthquake in off the coast of Chili caused waves that killed over 2,000 people in that country alone and sent additional waves that killed people in Hawaii and distant Japan.

 

The local Red Cross here has been inundated with offers to help. Local Jim Stephenson, a Red Cross volunteer, has been deployed to Sri Lanka and an Island-based Coast Guard cutter has been diverted from its course to Irak to South Asia to assist with the relief effort.

 

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT REDOUX

 

Some people have lamented the terrible loss of civility and reasoned discourse in Politics today. Heavens to betsy that political discourse should decay from the high levels it has sustained since 1864 . . . er, since 1929 . . . er, 1955 and HUAC . . . er that Golden Halycon Time that exists purely in the Imaginations. Of whom we have no idea, but surely we never had to suffer one Senator caning another on the floor . . . . We have? Oh well. Rowdy bunch of Punks, those Senators.

 

Truth be told, we have had legislators who have behaved quite badly to one another in the past and in much worse ways. We have had spitting. We have had beatings and we have had to endure knockdown bare-knuckled fisticuffs. We have even had them shooting one another, as the fate of Hamilton and others will attest. We can now see in certain provocative behaviors by members of the RNC a decent Conservative's desire to return to the pleasant Westside Story rumbles of Yesteryear, back in those distant times when an elected legislator could have been a professional wrestler or a stage actor as well as a business tycoon, and when passions inflamed debates on issues of the day to the point of violence.

 

Now this puts us in mind of our original proposal that we stage a grand Mud Rassle match between our boy, Georgie Bush, and the Savage Saudi, Osam Bin Laden, to determine the end of all conflicts via an honorable contest between two of the most dishonorable men known.

 

Strike that last modifier.

 

But this entire election fiasco thing has given us a great idear, as the rugged mountain men who founded this country west of the Mississippi would say. Since we have proven that we simply cannot hold a decent, fair and legal election to pass even the sorry marks posted for places like the Uruguay, Ukraine, and Albania -- our status has been lowered to the same levels as these by the independent UN Council on Election Monitoring -- we propose to do away with this entire election thing entirely.

 

Let our chosen Headman meet his opponent upon the field of battle, surrounded by chanting of his supporters, the clashing of spears and the pounding of drums not unlike the war rituals of the Rikukyu, the savagely painted Tasmanians, the famous Masai, the Hottentot and the Lords of Flatbush, who unlike us, preserve society from the ravages of total war by pitting individuals against one another. Terminate elections once and for all.

 

It does appear that we have significant backing for such a measure from most of the Republican Party, so its not an entirely unreasonable proposition devoid of support.

 

In its place, we propose to have controlled mud rassel matches by district for the legislative bodies and a sequence of elimination matches similar to the vastly overrated Presidential Debates which indicated their lack of usefullness many times. So Kerry won all three debates hands down -- so what? So the man was more reasonable -- who cares? Obviously the American people do not. You don't have to be reasonable to become President. What on earth every gave you that idea? Certainly not the Past. History shows the guy who is more obstinate, bull-headed whether wrong or right, and pliable to Special Interests always gets the job over the reasonable man.

 

If a reasonable man ever attains the Presidency by accident, they simply shoot him. Like they did to JFK.

 

Proven capacity is no way to choose a President either. Just look at GWB, the incumbent, who has failed at everything he has ever set his meager qualities to handle. Failed to capture Osama Bin Laden, who has killed more Americans than any one individual in history. Failed to find assured Weapons of Mass Destruction in Irak. Having failed to do that, he has failed to bring about civil order in both Irak and in Afganistan. And all of this is because he failed to defend the American people to begin with. He has pretty much failed to balance the budget and bring spending under control. He has failed to provide jobs for Americans, having lost more jobs than any other President since Herbert Hoover. He has failed to do much of anything well ever since he was a child, so lets not hear any more claptrap about the need for proficiency in a President.

 

What is wanted is obstinacy, simplistic sports-bar thinking, and a manly presentation. Since sumo is clearly one of them unAmerican Asian things, we propose a good old fashioned mud rassle, presided over by a band of Christeen shouters, led by Pat Robertson, and subtitled in rotation by the Dallas Cheerleaders, Playboy Centerfolds, and California Hardbodies. And for delectation of the ladies, perhaps the Chippendale Dancers.

 

We think Georgie would really go for it, since he claims he maintains topnotch conditioning with all that bike riding, barrel rolling and joggin stuff. And its sure to be easier on the boy than that difficult debating stuff, which requires a lot more thinking than the man was ever given to.

 

This poposal will have many positive effects, such as increasing general citizen interest and involvement, boosting the economy, and improving national health in general even better than any old unrealizable national health plan which the RNC will never in a thousand years spring for.

 

You can just see the boost on the playgrounds of America from the installation of such a plan. Thousands of boys doing pushups and chinups and running around the track, telling their gals, "Someday ahm gonna be President! Don't hafta be smart or good at nuthin. Gonna be just like Georgie Bush!"

 

That Georgie. Such an inspiration.

 

Now there may be some of you who find something a bit, well, akin to the Teletubbies in a couple of guys getting nekkid down there and rolling around in the mud. Some might even dare say the long honored tradition of rasselin' in America is just a little bit . . . gay.

 

All I can say is that is where the Liberals come in. But I don't have any more time to talk about that now.

 

 

THIS ISLAND LIFE SEPERATES RIGHTS FROM WRONGS

 

The Election being done with and the Country headed certainly for Perdition, brings a kind of relief. We return to such pleasant diversions as Poodleshoots, the ongoing adventures of Oog and Aag (the original progenitures of the Bay Area), Officer O'Madhauen's excesses in traffic enforcement, and the astonishing imbecility of our Criminal Elite, who manage to evade capture time after time by simply obeying the traffic laws.

 

The latest report has it that a bank robber was caught by the intrepid Officer O'Madhauen who observed the perpetrator engaged in an act of littering.

 

No lie: the man threw an orange into the street in front of the police car. They caught him with the bankroll and the gun.

 

What on earth led the police to frisk a man stopped for littering is quite beyond me, but stranger things have happened here.

 

We also have a report that several hundred cars were stopped and detained on suspicion of DUI during the New Year's weekend on the Island alone as part of the annual crackdown on drunk drivers in the five counties area. Several hundred?! Everybody who lives here knows the checkpoints are on Webster and Park every year in the same place. Who are these people?!

 

Well, we interviewed one of them. They claimed they had drunk a single beer and were enroute to the laundromat -- not exactly peak hours for drinking, mind you. Nor an activity associated with drinking. They were detained, judged not sober by the Officer and sent to 12 hour lockup overnight. They received a bloodtest only when demanded by the irate citizen. No breathalyzer test was employed. How the Officer determined intoxication without an objective test is a matter of conjecture, but we suspect some "words" were exchanged.

 

So the perfect little facist sends a peaceful citizen to detention to "teach them a lesson to behave", not because of drinking. And this is the America in which we now live.

 

Now drinking and driving is a serious matter. Over 14 people died and there were over 80 injury accidents as a result of alcohol during the New Year's Holiday. But arresting people for being a bit lippy during a traffic stop will never fix this problem.

 

BLACK THURSDAY

 

A precious opportunity to unite a seriously divided nation was brusquely rejected by an increasingly strident and extremist Administration. On Thursday, the Pretender will stand for yet another questionable Inauguration as a result of a corrosively divisive election fraught with corruption, fraud, intimidation, and obstructionist tactics which most free nations of the earth consider to be criminal offences deserving of long prison terms.

 

As a result, that half of the Nation, for which the president-elect has stated publicly he does not represent in any way, shape or form, plans to demonstrate in force against a tyrant who refuses to admit the slightest input into policy-making, national decisions or any display of unification.

 

In addition to the media-friendly "turnourbacks.org" -- which plans to fill the inauguration crowd with people who will turn away as the presidential motorcade passes -- and Code Pink -- which plans arrestable acts of civil disobedience -- a number of groups are gathering siginificant opposition forces, with the most potentially effective and injurious to the Bush regime coming from the swelling antiwar forces. The United for Peace, coordinated by Leslie Cagan, has collected over 850 national organizations under its umbrella, all willing to put aside minor differences in pursuit of a common agenda.

 

Some of these groups are based in so-called "Red states."

 

Very interesting are the as yet volatile "not one dime" groups who are seeking to leverage economic pressure on policy. As yet too diffuse to make serious impact, these groups stand a very good chance of making long term impact through changing consumer spending habits, and ultimately leveraging financial institutions. We already have seen the growth of "socially conscious" groups such as Working Assets, develop from minor lending banks and small telecom outfits into multibillion dollar serious contenders on the market playing field.

 

For more information on Black Thursday actions, go to www.Black-Thursday.com. For actions in the "red state" of Florida, google Citizens Take Charge.

 

 

SOMEWHERE OUT BEYOND THAT BLUE HORIZON

 

All quiet tonight. After the frigid temps that followed the heavy rains, the air feels balmy under the fogs shielding the Island. Across the estuary, the neon lights of Oaktown shine through the murk while the gold dust outlines the Berkeley Hills. No trains tonight and its approaching the Midnight Hour. The heavy trucks which had been unloading freight from the port these last two weeks have disappeared from the freeways and the brief financial blip that was to fool people into thinking better times had return, has now vaporized.

 

Drove out to Marin today from the Hills on a Work Project and the freeways were filled with people coming down from the mountain ski chalets and from the tailend of Holiday Vacation and was reminded of lines from the Springsteen song called "The Angel". Our job demands hella freeway time.

 

The freeway's choked

With nomadic hordes

of Volkswagen vans

With full running boards

Draggin' great anchors . . .

 

Got back into town and Paul's Produce had a broken card reader, so we had to walk around the block to fetch some cash from an ATM machine to buy groceries. Could have said to hell with it and gone to Albertsnobs or Waifsay, but am getting to dislike the attitude at both places, where the managers fake pretend this obnoxious obsequiousness while they harass their help. Much prefer Paul who shouts, "Ah get the HELL out of here! Just be back in an hour!" to his staff. "Let the girls go today. Hafta make some kinda nice once in a while," Paul says. We much prefer this market over all the others.

 

The roadside attendent nervously jokes

As the Angel's tires

Stroke his precious pavement

 

 

Rolled the bike in after another 'hundert mile day. Started working the Sunday crossword with that song still in the head.

 

Baseball cards poked in his spokes

His boots in oil

Lovingly soaked

 

Filed all the remaining reports for the week, feeling like 2004 cannot be put to bed until the end of Black Thursday, when all of us start working in earnest. All of us become members of the Warriors gang fighting through a very dark night to get home alive.

 

There's Madison Avenue's

Claim to fame.

With "tranes of bronze"

[flatly]

and "eyes like rain."

 

 

Well that's a bit melodramatic. On this Island, we have our good days and we have our bad days. Sometimes the card reader breaks and then work is a bitch. But we make it through somehow. That's just the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.

 

The woman strokes

His polished chrome

And lies beside

The Angel's bones.

 

Words by Bruce Springsteen.

 

 

JANUARY 23, 2005

 

THERE WILL BE NO MORE TURNING AWAY

 

The last hours of the day ooze down into a red glow that fades to indigo somewhere over the barren Farallon Island rocks a bit west of here. Good news for those digging through the powder in the East: all predictions are for clear and cool heading your way. The pounding rains have let up here and down south memorial services for those who died in the horrific mudslides took place under increasingly sunny skies.

 

Listened on NPR to our local fave, Barbara Boxer, rip into that paragon of obfuscation, Condi Rice during the approval hearings. These days, Boxer looks like a Imperial Tribune or a Greek Magistrate with those streaks of gray in her dark hair and that look of dignified command. She is a rara avis of integrity in a field of low-rent contenders and California is lucky to have her.

 

There are signs of life stirring in the Hinterland. Driving out the other night, listened to "Prairie Home Companion", that homespun distillation of common sense and plain speech emanating from the conservative icelands of Minnesota and headed by moderate Garrison Keillor. To our astonishment, he related a little fictional parody of Fox news in which a report of a comet about to destroy the earth within 12 hours causes the President, the Vice President and all of the current Administration to board a rocket so as to avoid annihilation, pronouncing "We'll leave no child behind."

 

The voice of Bill Clinton is heard broadcasting from the Oval Office even as the rocket takes off amid corrected reports that indicate the impending comet was a misidentified ball of solar gas.

 

"I was just wandering by," says Bill. "And I noticed the White House: all the lights on and nobody home. So I just wandered on in. Gee, its good to be back."

 

To our astonishment, the entire concert hall erupted in obvious shouts and stomps and handclaps of approval.

 

In other news, we got this little item from our Hardcore Conservative Correspondent, Paul. Now we should mention that Paul is so Conservative he wears two pairs of pants and keeps his Barry Goldwater memorabilia next to his FDR dartboard.

 

COWS

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington. And they can track her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal
aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give them all a cow.

CONSTITUTION

They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's
worked for over 200 years and we're not using it anymore . . . . .

TEN COMMANDMENTS

The real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments in a Courthouse: You cannot post "Thou Shalt Not Steal," "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery" and "Thou Shall Not Lie" in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians! It creates a hostile work environment!

 

The opinions reported here are not necessarily those of the Editors, but that 2nd item is worthy of reporting. It has been said before but it is worth repeating here, "It is always darkest before the dawn."

 

ELDERLY WOMAN BEHIND THE COUNTER OF A SMALL TOWN

 

The saga of the Central Cinema, which planned to offer 2nd run movies to children and families on its single screen continues with a another series of reports published in the Island Sun. Appears the owner, Haskell, was given to believe that he had obtained all required permits until inspectors showed up 30 minutes before the first showing with an order to stop. The 40 seat theatre has been slapped with virtually every violation conceivable from the fire department to the zoning commission even though inspectors have refused to enter the building on request to identify code violation sources.

 

In other news, the recent flap over the outrageous eviction of 300 families from the Harbor Island Complex may provoke passing of rent control measures on the Island, a first for this area. The City Council took testimony on Tuesday of the past week on a proposed ordinance to increase renters rights and there is a strong push, as well as an amenable Council, to pass additional legislation. The Fifteen Group, by acting so severely, may have damaged their own cause and created a more difficult situation for other landlords in the area through their irresponsible actions.

 

The two fellows who got into a little contretemps after racing their cars down on Atlantic Avenue, may wind up having to pay substantial costs for Emergency services. The two, racing a Mercedes and a BMW at speeds in excess of 105 MPH, brushed together, causing the BMW to pop a light pole 60 feet into the air before swiping a 2nd pole, while the Mercedes slammed sideways into a tree, cutting the car in half and ejecting two occupants. Miraculously, no one was killed. Officer O'Madhauen is in quite a wax about the entire affair.

 

In another case of rampant Nimbyism, the City Council joined with the County and the City of Berkeley in opposing the Las Vegas style casino that is planned by the Coi Nation for the i-880 corridor. Even Oaktown, which stands to gain $600 million in subsidies voted 5-0 against the casino. Final decision will be a State and Federal matter, but the fact that Alameda County, the largest and most populous county in California voted unanimously against the casino may bear some pressure on the final decision making. Alameda county is home to some 2 million people.

 

EVERYBODY DESERVES MUSIC

 

We have a plethora of music sources coming over the wire lately, and here we cull the best from the short lists of the best. First off, here is the Bill Graham Presents calendar:

 

On Sale MONDAY at 10am

Jimmy Buffett & The Coral Reefer Band
HP Pavilion
San Jose, CA
207738
Saturday, April 16 at 8:00 PM
On Sale Monday, January 24 at 10:00 AM
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Just Added Shows!

Elvis Costello nice intimate setting to catch this artist.
Paramount Theatre
Oakland, CA
207493
Tuesday, March 22 at 8:00 PM
On Sale Sunday, January 23 at 10:00 AM
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O.A.R. quite nice acoustic ensemble not averse to electric when required. Recommended.
The Warfield
San Francisco, CA
207080
Saturday, March 5 at 8:00 PM
On Sale Sunday, January 23 at 10:00 AM
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This Week's Shows!

Gomez - young rockers with promise. become a groupie now. Recommended.
The Fillmore
San Francisco, CA
Friday, January 21 at 9:00 PM 206663
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See you at the show!

For those of you who love strictly acoustic stuff, here is the KFOG listing for the next month

 

JONNY LANG ACOUSTIC QUARTET– JAN 27 – Fox Theater
"Songwriters in the Round" – LYLE LOVETT, JOHN HIATT, GUY CLARK, JOE ELY – Jan 28th – Fox Theater
KELLER WILLIAMS – Jan 28 – Fillmore
SAMBA NGO – Jan 28 – "Heart of the Congo" Film premiere – Herbst Theater
Songwriters in the Round – LYLE LOVETT, JOHN HIATT , JOE ELY, GUY CLARK – Jan 29 - Montalvo
RICHARD THOMPSON – Feb 2 & 3 – Bimbo’ s
BLAME SALLY – Feb 6 – Café Bazaar SF
NANCI GRIFFITH – Feb 12 - Fillmore
PAUL BRADY - Feb 12 - Great American Music Hall

STEVE EARLE – Feb 15 & 16 – GAMH
LOWEN & NAVARRO – Feb 18 – Freight &Salvage
ANI DIFRANCO – Feb 18 Warfield,
ANI DIFRANCO – Feb 19 Fillmore
BLAME SALLY - Feb 20 - Rancho Nicasio (Marin)

 

Please note that the Fox theatre is going through some growing pains as management hooks itself up with the Paramount Theater in Oaktown. It may be that you will find no other public announcement for some of these concerts than what you find here. The Fox is quite small, so buy your tix NOW! Also GAMH is the Great American Music Hall.

 

We know from personal experience none of the above listed concerts will disappoint. Also note that Rancho Nicasio is "an intimate bar setting", and you had best get clear directions before going up there.

 

Also just over the wire is an announcement from Girltalk, a local jazz group which has a date scheduled at

 

Caffe DiVino
37 Caledonia St., Sausalito
Saturday, January 29th, 2005
7 to 10:30 pm
(call for reservations at 415-331-9355)
http://girltalkband.com

 

The Villa Montalvo folks have been quietly running a little revolution down there in Mountain View, with top-notch acts scheduled week after week under the radar for a while. But we have noticed, oh yes. Buddy Guy. BB King. Steve Earle. Folks like that quietly coming and going. Well, its finally time to say that the Montalvo Winery has one hell of a booking agent and you had best start paying attention for they have something good in store for you at the Fox.

 

In first hand reports, we have stunning accounts of the recent harmonica Battle of the Blues that took place recently at Yoshi's Nightspot. The annual event, hosted by Mark Hummel, featured Charlie Musselwhite and James Cotton. Rumor has it that the New Boy on the block blew both out of the water. Got no more to say on that.

 

SANCTUARY

Drove down to the Fox theater to catch a basically unknown show with bad publicity on behest of the Significant Other. Knew only that it was billed as a Robert Cray concert.

 

Got there and discovered that Coco Montoya and Charlie Musselwhite were also on the bill and this was third in a series organized by some genius at the Montalvo Winery.

 

Hell, the first two were draw enought for us. Coco Montoya, a relative unknown due to poor studio engineering and artistic direction decisions, has never failed to electrify audiences everywhere when performing live. His performances have typically been classic examples of "this is how you do it" and Saturday night he hardly failed to provide as audience members demanded in vain for a return to the stage after his opening set. Montoya was adopted as a "wayward child" by Albert Collins, for whom he played the drums, and was encouraged by the master bluesman when Coco set out on his own. The left-handed Coco learned how to play the guitar from Collins and quickly established himself as a master musician.

 

 

His studio recordings have been fairly indifferent in quality -- plenty of musical integrity but lacking the fire that comes out when Montoya plays live. Whenever Montoya steps on stage with his signature "upside-down" strat, the atmosphere seems to yank an incredible spirit out of the man, for he then turns the simplest of songs into a slashing, wailing, searing attack upon the emotions. Largely because of those studio recordings, he has remained unknown except to a few in the know who will understandably travel hundreds of miles to hear him play. The crowd begged him to stay and play some more after his brief 45 minute set, but it would have been presumptuous in the extreme to hold off the following two headliners.

 

Memphis-born Charlie Musselwhite is an old hand at the blues, one of the few survivors left from the golden days of the gods in Chicago where he would go to listen to Sonny Boy Williamson when not performing himself. We first heard him in 1982 in the famous Rathskeller in Berlin, the dinky old club where the Beatles got their start, and man was he hot. In the mid-ninties we saw him rescue the show for John Lee Hooker at the Fillmore, where Charlie tore the place up, impressing even the young punks who had come to laugh at the increasingly feeble Hooker, who was to die only a few months later well into his 90's. Saturday night, Charlie proved he still has the stuff, coming out unannounced and unnoticed to place that old metal briefcase of mouth harps on to a little side stand and wander about chatting with the roadies.

 

 

On his website, Charlie has this to say, “My father gave me my first guitar when I was 13 in 1957. I already loved blues and decided to teach myself guitar. I’ll never forget how good it felt when I played an E chord and then put my little finger in position to play an E7 chord and how good that felt. Blues not only sounded good, it felt good! I went on to get to know a lot of old time blues players around Memphis and picked up quite a bit from them.”

“In Memphis there was Will Shade, Furry Lewis, Willie Borum, Earl Bell, Abe McNeil, Red Robey and more; later in Chicago there was Big Joe Williams, Homesick James, John Lee Granderson and just too many to name in this space - I just about knew them all. I remember when I was a teenager, Will Shade telling me he was going to teach me the same way he was taught. When he was a teenager Will met an old man that taught him and now he was going to pass it on to me - guitar and harmonica. "

 

His most recent album, Sanctuary, winner of the WC Handy award for Best Blues Album of 2004, is unusual in that, like Charlie's other studio recordings, it managed to capture some of the liveliness and zip in his live performances. At the Fox theater, his set caused a rousing standing ovation, which brought him back for an excellent encore featuring the title cut from his album and a Sonny Boy Williamson song, "Need Your Help."

 

With his substantial background in other forms of music, such as various South American folk styles, Charlie brings quite a range to the blues form, managing to avoid the tedious shuffles and dunta-duntas that make the staple of so many lesser bluesmen. It helps to have guys like Charlie Sexton backing him up on guitar as well, for Sexton plays a crisp, sharp slide that compliments Musselwhite's long glissandos and wavers. No question, the night could have ended right there and