My First House Concert

San Francisco is a music town. There are so many people that make their living in different facets of the Biz that I’m sure my experiences pale next to someone, who is gigging or working in the Industry in SF, but I’ve been very lucky and fortunate as a rock and roller as far as that goes.

In the last few years I’ve stopped going to shows. I don’t have the spunk it takes to see the shows I really want to see, and more importantly, stay either up for the nine o’clock start, which means my band, the one I came for, doesn’t take the stage until eleven. Then I have to do my best to make it till the end of the show. Not to mention when I go to shows now, I look like I’m there to pick up my kid.

I couldn’t imagine doing what I did for Springsteen when he played Winterland in ‘78. My roommates and I got in line around ten pm the night before for the general admission show. If I remember correct, it was a four hour show that Bruce put on that long night. By the time he finished his third encore, we were so tired, exhausted and drenched with sweat; we wanted Bruce to leave. I would see him another thirty times around the Bay Area from that humble beginning. There was that night at the Old Waldorf when he surprised us at the Gary Bonds concert by walking from the back of the room on the tabletops to join Mr. U.S. Bonds on the tiny Waldorf stage. Speaking of the Waldorf, I was there for young not-yet-raspy Tom Waits gig when his ex, a totally smashed chick named Rickie Lee Jones, heckled from the back for the whole show. Speaking of Tom Waits...There were his shows at the Great American when a stripper from next door would come over and join Tom on stage, bumping and grinding to the syncopated unusual rhythms of Mr. Waits, his drummer and tuba player. Speaking of Rickie Lee Jones...There was her five-night run at the Warfield where she was doing a performance piece that played only here and New York. One of the best shows I ever attended in terms of honesty and true feelings. We had all come a long way from the Old Waldorf.

And the list goes on...The night Jeff Beck and I hung out at the Cliff Hotel with B. Wyman, C. Watts, M. Maldaur, J.Cocker, J.Page, and did I mention me?

That was then and this is now. Unless it’s jazz and the show is early, it just isn’t fun for me anymore. I had told the girlfriend that the only way I can see a show now is if I’m backstage and have a nice spot. And if you know anything about being backstage; that’s a drag too because if you’re not the star or his friends or family and everyone’s looking at you, like why are you here?

I’m very uncomfortable at shows now. I need a barcalounger and remote for me to be really at ease.

I never thought I was ever going to have a good time again. Boy Howdy, I was wrong.

I wish I could be like Jon Landau and say I’ve discovered the future of Rock and Roll. How fucking cool would it to be to find an undiscovered act before anyone else knew how cool this person was, and how good their music is. I’m a little too late to that train...

You know what? Let me explain...

I went to the coolest thing that I have ever done in weeks. I went to my first house concert. The name implies exactly what it is. A full fledge real concert at someone’s home. The girlfriend and I were lucky enough to be on a short list for these kinds of things, so we got an invite and had to be quick with the RSVP or we’d be SOL.

I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a house concert? How bad could it be?

There had to be about seventy people or so attending, or should I say, sitting around on the couches and folding chairs around our host’s living room. It was almost too intimate, if that was possible.

The opening act was Megan Slankard. I knew a little about Megan from our host, the lovely and talented radio personality and playwright, Peter Finch, (Hi Alice, you’re part of this too) whose plays I seen with Megan in them. But seeing her solo was a whole ‘nother thang. She was great. It would be unfair to label her with all the artists that I thought she was like, but I’m going to try. Because that’s what critics do, I think. And that’s why critics are intrinsically bad. They can only review, not project.

But opinions are opinions, so here I go...

She has that Ingrid Michaelson sexy SF charm, mixed with the driving guitar playing of Anne Wilson, and throw in the wit of Rickie Lee and the hush whispering come-ons of Jewel in the morning, not a fair description by any means because she is who she is, but you weren’t there. Okay how about this...she was fun.

Being the first one up, Megan spoke of the unusual intimacy created by playing in someone’s living room opposed to a stage with thousands of people out there in the darkness. Not to go all Avatar on you, but she saw us as we saw her. She saw us. That kind of closeness only builds support for the performer on the stage. You just want her to do well.

She must have done about eight songs, performing a little over forty-five minutes or so. I didn’t time her act. The closeness allowed for a lot of banter with the audience. One of the conversations I think Megan had was, “Has anyone tried these chocolates? Are they any good?” There was a candy tray in front of the tiny space set up for the performers. After eating one, she said they were indeed tasty. Then when Megan finished her next song, she said she was worried for the whole song that some of the candy got caught in her teeth, and she was going to spray the room with tiny chocolate bubbles when she hit the big notes. It was very vulnerable, real, and cute. It was a house concert.

Megan had to leave; she had another concert in Napa that day.

 One of the reason I attended the show was the name itself; House Concert. As my many readers know, (the ten of you, up from two, mind you!) I am slightly agoraphobic. This is only comes into play when leaving the house. I can’t. Or don’t want to. I don’t know but it is another one of the reasons I don’t see many shows. But a house concert! That’s kind of like going to a hotel for a night. Just a change of venue is what I tell myself and my therapist.

When the girlfriend and I first arrived and took our seats all the way back in the third to last row, there were seven rows total, I was surprised at the amount of women attending. My first thought was, “Oh fuck, this is going to be a Lillith Faire.” I was thinking I picked a bad day to shave my legs.

The women were like most of the demographics of the moment, from mid-thirties to my age, old. I thought for sure someone was going to produce a zither or dulcimer at the very least and do a little Appalachian jig until the headliner came on. I knew very little of the headliner, except for his incredible cover of Bruce’s ‘Thunder Road,’ that someone streamed to me.  

Oh yeah, I also had heard the headliner before when he came into KFOG performing for the morning show, and there was some radio play, but I didn’t really have a clue who he really was.

Ladies, and I mean Ladies...Ladies and Gentlemen, I saw the greatest performer last Saturday afternoon that I’ve seen in years, really years, and his name is Matt Nathanson.

I know many people here in the Bay Area and actually, all over the globe, know who Matt is, (I now call him by his first name cause we’re buddies now, I have the signed CD to prove it!) but it was my first time to take in the Matty magic.

Where to start? Okay the women...When Matt started the candy dishes and trays were replaced by women’s bodies who took the opportunity to be as close to Matt as possible. That’s reason the room was so double-x heavy. Matt is a hottie. I mean I’m no homo, but Matt’s cool.

His first words were, “I live a couple of blocks from here...” I mean, how cool is that? The headliner actually comes from our ‘hood.

I really took copious notes when Megan was on. She was magnetic and captivating. It was like watching a young performer bloom. I thought about what awaits her and what a great career she’s going to have.

Today as I look at my notes for Matt, it just says his name. Matt Nathanson and a blank page.

I know what I was thinking though, I didn’t want to review Matt’s show; it’s not that kind of show. Matt is an entertainer. His songs are great. I could say he’s like Dave Mathews, John Mayer or someone else like Bruce or a Tom Petty with his craft and skills, but truly, to me, Matt was...a joy? Can I say that? Too gay? His songs were great but it is the banter, the stories he tells between numbers that makes his shows different. I could tell by the liner notes on the live CD I bought. The album notes that he wrote himself start with, “I’m always asked, when you are going to put out a live CD? You’re so great live.” That is so true. If I just heard one of Matt’s seven CDs, I might be intrigued by the wordsmith and fine guitar playing, but seeing him live, in a living room. Definitely one of the top five shows ever.

He played for like an hour and half, I don’t know, time went fast. He spun story after story. He talked about what it is like for him to be a fan of Rock and Roll, and music means to him. He was obsessed in a goofy, comical way with Justin Bieber and cleverly weaved Justin Bieber callbacks threw out the performance. We kind of wrote a song together collectively about the eventual dropping of Justin’s gonads. You had to be there to get it.

I recognized much more of his songs once he started with his hits. He played his guitar with wild abandonment and a glued on focus that rocked the room and made his fingers bleed. Really.

I heard he plays a twelve string but the space only allowed for one guitar, a brassy, twangy six-string. He did have a roadie for his guitar, or else it was a buddy that took it out to the car for him after the show. Is that a dickie thing to write?

His wife was due to delivery their first baby at literally any moment and Matt was ecstatic. But he couldn’t have been nicer staying and signing everyone’s CDs and dare I say some skin too.    

We spoke when he signed my CDs. I was kind of surprised that I didn’t notice his nose ring before. But that again, I was eighteen feet away from the “stage.” Can’t see everything.

I told my buddy Matty that I could never really see him again in a bigger venue now after having experienced him in Peter and Alice’s living room. Matt said, no problem, from this moment on, he’s going to reserve a space on stage at every one of his shows for me and the girlfriend, even the out of town ones, he said, in the odd chance we show up in Pittsburg one night.

I kind of believe him. He’s that cool.

If you ever have the chance, see him. Even if there’s going to be more than a hundred people at his next show, it is worth it.

I saw the next level of rock and roll, the Mod Troubadour, and his name is Matt Nathanson.

More Later...



More on the Politics of Meaning

I’ve been smoking WEED for over forty years, no brag, just fact. The periods that I’ve either tried to slow down or outright quit, has been hampered in my diluted mind by the fact, Life’s still too weird for me to take sober.

I have this theory; Life has no meaning except what we give it. That’s why Life’s always changing and yet, as we see every day as we grow older, it stays the same, only the player’s name have been changed. Life is how you look at it...

Let’s start with the Swastika. This striking, iconic symbol that represents Nazism and all that is evil has immediate effect for anyone with a shed of decency in them. Even though these days anyone we don’t like, we call the ‘New Hitler,’ but even that flippant use of Der Fuehrer’s name doesn’t diminished the impact of seeing the living stamp of Nazism splashed on a storefront window or hurriedly drawn on a gravestone. The symbol has been used by every civilizations since the Hindus, but I think we can all agree, Adolph made it all his own. So much for the Swastika.

This just in...

Over the weekend here in Frissy, I read that a Swastika was painted on the Russian...err...the Jewish Community Center over there on Presidio. I was pissed. Then I found out that the vandalistic marking was three inches by five inches. Yes, it is still a hate crime, no matter the height or dimensions, but what about the hate crimes over the weekend where people were hurt and maybe killed? I’m looking at you Phoenix.

Speaking of...After the passage of the Bill making it illegal to live in AZ unless your white, the next day, someone had concocted, created a Swastika five feet high, made out of refried beans.

The great Mel Brooks said his only job in life is to make fun of Adolph Hitler, tearing down the man. I think Mel would say a hearty, “Ole,” on the refried-take on a nasty symbol. See into it what you may... It is like one Swastika was a joke and the other was threatening. I let you decide.   

They are finally closing the LA dispensaries after much discussion and profits were made. I’m telling you, the greed of LA is going to kill the Medical Marijuana issue. They can’t help themselves. It’s really a town that doesn’t know how to say no, and worst, they send someone else to do their copping. Hey LA, this is why you’ll never be cool...

More WEED Weirdness...

This morning around 3:30am in Billings, Montana, a Medical Marijuana store was firebombed. The word, “Not in our town,” was spray painted on the burnt out windows. Remember this isn’t Frissy where you can get a card for having a pain from wearing high heels, this Montana where you need MS or another debilitating disease that weakens your flesh and spirits for a card. Today in Billings, there are police in black SUV’s patrolling the area with the Hardin Police Department seal stamped on the cruiser’s front doors. Only problem, there isn’t a Hardin Police Department. It is a front for a Blackwater-like company posing as Johnny Law. And the Militia of Montana, that’s their official name (guys, you might want to smoke some WEED, come up with more of a creative name than just looking outside at a street sign for some inspiration.), has called Billings’s home for decades. Its funny what passes for compassion and what passes for concern? I guess it’s how you look at it...

With everything that’s going on in Greece, I really recommend Costa Graves’ great film, yes, film, “Z.” I saw it stoned at a campus theatre in the beginning of the Seventies, I think, and to this day, it is still one of the best political thrillers of all time, even if nothing happens. See it; you’ll know what I mean. Or not...

Poor Mel Gibson, a stripper has come out talking about her and the Lethal Weapon’s love affair. Mel gives new meaning to the passion of the Christ. That is one horny son of God. Irony? You did know that the word ‘passion’ as in “Passion of the Christ,” means Death or Execution, right. Wouldn’t it be weird if the 400 mill Mel made for his religious movie gave him too many temptations? Marty Scorsese made it out okay.

Do farmers and the guys who deliver stuff really talk movie grosses? Does the regular Jane Two-Liter even care about weekend openings? Why do we care that Iron Man 2 is closing in on the Dark Knight money. Is our love of money so great that we literal follow the path of dollars even though we don’t care what we’re seeing?

Here’s your top fifteen grosser from just five years ago...

1      Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

2      The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe       

3      Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire      

4      War of the Worlds 

5      King Kong     

6      Wedding Crashers 

7      Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

8      Batman Begins      

9      Madagascar    

10    Mr. & Mrs. Smith  

11    Hitch      

12    The Longest Yard  

13    Fantastic Four

14    Chicken Little

15    Robots

Which one of these classics do you watch over and over again? Which one of these babies that you might have stood in line for or bought the non-knock off t-shirt celebrating the film’s release and that you saw it and believe in its cinematic reverence?  Which one of those movies, yes, movies, did you run out to see because you thought your life couldn’t go on if you didn’t? Can’t wait for Robin Hood, yes I can...

Money ruins everything. Comic-Con, the convention that everyone makes fun of in San Diego because it is so geeky and so honest in its hero worship of all that is Marvel, is moving to LA, actually worse, Anaheim. Why? Because it is making money now and the studios have learn that geeks rule when it comes to...well, thinking matters, like books and science fiction. The geeks really care and will pay for something if it’s cool. Speaking of Iron Man 2, there are no longer movies, only vehicles to get us to the Playstation on time, before the buzz leaves the platform.

 You know that the gamer biz brings in three times the revenue of your Hollywood movies. That’s where the really money is. But you lose half your life playing the games.

New York is still not allowing pro-pot billboards. Norml wants to put up a billboard along a causeway that is traditionally used for your more political messages. The message this time was N.Y. busts more people for pot than anywhere else in America. Bloomberg, the mayor stood up on a set of some Queens yellow pages and piped, “No way!” to the sign that would have brought a little attention to his big city.    

Too fat too fight?

The military is very concern. It seems they can’t find the right candidates for war and even sadder, they can’t promote the ones they have. Why? Because Sgt. Wideglide is too bulky, too big. Today’s military is popping out of their buttons to serve, but being rejected for being obese. So what are they doing about the ones who are being all they can’t be? Start with young’ins by going to the orchard, to the source as they say in Chicago. They’re going to the Child’s garden, or as teachers call it, kindergarten to pluck the young fruit.

It is the Majors and Generals idea to start whipping the ‘Merican kids into shape, starting with kindergarten.

After all the special meetings and hearings concerning our school lunches that have been debated in congress or at your local PTA’s. After having our governments endorse a packet of ketchup as a legitimate vegetable with a straight face. Even when some plucky Brit who was raised on moldy bird and over-cook everything, thinks that he could come to our country to try to change our children’s grazing habits in order to make them healthier right before our calorie-loaded eyes on the telly. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if the reason we implement a smarter dietary program is so that we have a better military pool to choose from? Remember, drones can’t do it all by themselves.

Aren’t there the willing and skinny in Billings that would be happy to enlist?

I don’t care what you say, after five minutes of Betty White talking dirty, I’ve seen enough. But it is great to see a show biz veteran honored, even if it was a one-joke show. Oops, there goes my NBC boycott. Wait...Here it comes back again. Leno has stopped me from watching Friday Night Lights. Is it really a boycott when you can order the season on Netflix in a month?

Again about the War on Drugs...

So we may have Marijuana legal here by this November. Why? Everyone says money. We need the taxes. While a person gets busted every ninety seconds in America for WEED, there is a new compassionate angle to stopping the busts. Is it because regular, other-wise law abiding citizens are being sent to jail erroneously? No. Is it because it seems like everyone you know is smoking the shit? No, it is because of Lassie.

I am not a pet or a PETA person. I believe animals should be care for and loved, but I have a problem when we love our pets more than the strangers we share the world with.

There is a new attention being brought to the police procedure of approaching a drug house, no matter what kind of drug house. When your average crime fighter advances to a call, a possible drug house, the accepted procedure has always been, kill the dogs in the front of the house or in the yard, tied up or not. As the sheriffs approach, they take out all animals. I guess this is ruffling the fur of concern animal lovers everywhere. It is becoming an issue in your more country-like living where ducks and geese are ‘a squawking. The City people don’t have the same concerns or the lazy dogs sleeping on the porches in the afternoons.

See, people in their fifties, sixties and seventies are being busted now. Hippies are older and they’ve taken their stash with them into their old age. I can’t imagine having a disease that the only relief comes from ingesting an herb for reducing pain or stimulated an appetite that’s given up on the idea of eating from many chemo treatments ago. The police are at your front door with their distinctive cop knocks, and your dog of fourteen years lies in the yard, breathing its last breaths.

Will our love of animals save our specie from being sent to prisons for smoking something that some can smoke legally and others, can’t? I guess it just depends how you look at it...

More later...   



Popular Tarts

 Hasn’t Obama done more to protect our country than he is given credit for? They caught the SUV Would-Be-Bomber pretty quick. Do you know what stops Obama from getting the credit that his administration lacks? It’s those crazy girls from Sex in the City and our love of money. We are experience a confluence of popular culture and money coming together unprecedented in modern history, (if they’re not the same thing) with the premiere of “Sex and the City 2.” The reason our president doesn’t get credit for being tough on terrorism is because the SUV-Bomber was caught getting on a plane to Dubai. The same place where Sex 2 takes place. That would be a publicist nightmare. We’re not going to charge a possible ally country in the Middle East with harboring terrorist when there’s an opening weekend to content with. Commerce trumps integrity again. Good Luck Girls in the desert with those wacky camels! Hope you don’t bump into any hiding terrorists, I mean old boyfriends there in the Vegas of Sheikdom.

Oh yeah, that’s the reason we stay in Afghanistan and Iraq. For no other reason other than the American people who don’t have a loved one fighting has forgotten about our two wars. We like our wars in remote places that we’ve never heard of, that is until we invade them.

Speaking of...

This is the forty year anniversary of the Kent State Massacre. For the kids out there too young to remember, Kent State is where four students were killed and another nine wounded. That particular demonstration that day was about America invading Cambodian in a secret war that Americans weren’t told about via the nightly news. It was more than your typical anti-war demo of the day against Viet-Nam. It would be like if we were going over to Pakistan secretly and not telling the American people that we are killing civilians in another war we haven’t told you about yet.

And don’t forget Jackson State in Mississippi, the predominantly black university where a week later two students were killed and twelve wounded. This was before a B.A. was worth dying for.  

It’s kinda surprising that none of those liberal do-gooders in Hollywood have made a movie about when our campuses were the hot bed of intellectual thought and the home of revolution. Now we leave it to over-weight white people in lawn chairs with Lipton promos hanging from their golf hats to do our protesting for us.    

More Anniversaries...

Congress is enacting to bills today to commemorate the anniversaries of the building of the laser and the telescope. First of all, I can no longer say the word “laser” without doing the finger quotes ala Dr. Evil and was the telescope really such a good idea at the time? It eventually put Galileo in the brink and science back some four hundred years. Oh yeah, it’s the 400 anniversary of the discovery of the telescope. Now you can point your Ipad to the heavens and it will show you the constellation above you. That’s while indoors too.

What’s with MSNBC? Either they replace that stupid David Gregory with his slushy cone of questions with the wonderful and insightful Rachel Maddow on ‘Meet the Press’ and scrap the whole network. Or don’t become like Fox News. Don’t make your people give commentaries if they don’t want to or look stiff doing it. Why not give us left leaning news and let us figure it out. We don’t need to be part of the joke or say “we get it.” Don’t try to sway us, let us take it in and get back to you. Not everything has to be immediate.

Joe Arpaio, the modern day southern sheriff who runs his town with an intimidating fist decided not to run for Governor of Arizona. When asked why Joe said, “Shit, with this new bill I can do legally what I’ve been doing undercover for the past forty years. The fish are running, and Am gonna catch me some ‘spicanics.”

I might have made some of that up.

“...Right, and by the way, Wind farms kill a lot more birds daily that are probably going to be killed by the oil spill...”

George Will, Sunday on a talk show.

Could that even be a little true?

And in the End...

In Fairfax, a little north of here in Marin County, they want kids to be able to come into Dispensaries with their parents. An activist with a dubious past is asking the zoning commission to allow kids who have gone through Chemo, be allowed to purchase Medical Marijuana. No age limit is given.

If I have said it once, I’m going to say it twice; We’re not free until we’re all free.

As we smoke our doobies and flaunt our skyscraper-high bongs in public, remember pot busts for SAN FRANCISCO has gone up. According to SF Weekly where I stole the info from, the Po-lice say Marihooey busts have gone up 15%. I mean what do you have to do to get busted in this town? Besides for all the grow houses popping up, you basically have to ask Chief Gaston for a light, and I bet even he won’t bust you because of the paper-work involved arresting someone who has a Medical Marijuana Card.

The Best Pot book ever...Smokestack El Ropo’s ‘Bedside Reader.’

That’s it for now. Hey...I would really like to hear from you if you are reading this. Your thoughts and what you like to hear more about. Just don’t correct the grammar or remind me that I forget words. Peace Out...



Mayday,Mayday,Mayday, Can You Hear Me?

There are many beliefs that I’ve virtually catalogued and incorporated in my daily regime. It makes me sick having to try and live by all of them. I do what I can. Two of the basics tenets that I try to remember as I go forward are; 1) we’re all on our paths. B) I don’t know Everything. The latter being a bitch because of all the stupid people on their own paths.

I’ve decided Human beings have made Life about the Journey because they barely ever reach their destinations and if they do, they hardly ever accomplish what they set out to do...So we make it about the ride and try to enjoy that. Who knows, maybe even learn something too from all those experiences.

I have these friends back home in the Middle West, good people. Some have moved crossed town, others bought their parent’s house for a decent price and live in the same house they went through grade school in. These same people might not believe that I don’t think badly of them for being stationary whereas I had the wanderlust. In the words of Kirk Douglas, “I had to moove.” Some of my friends back home think one of the reasons we’re different is because I live in SF and not there. I don’t hold that belief. I think you can be whoever you are, where ever you are...

Okay Sam, getting ready for your quantum leap...

I am haunted by some words, other words I love for their unknown poetic and mathematical value. Take facetious, great word. All the vowels are there, in order! And if you’re really grinning and being a smart ass, there’s facetiously. Now you got the ‘Y’ too. Great word. Nice word. Very comforting lexi-wise.

One of the many words that haunt me, and believe there are many, is resonance. Resonance isn’t as hard to define as say, ironic. One can get into it over ironic. Resonance, you practically need an oral dictionary so someone can describe the word to you while going, seriously. See ‘resonance’ is one of those stupid words that the definition is so limiting. Resonance: to resound or echo. Resonate: produce or show resonance. So ‘resonance’ means to resound or show resonance. Those kinds of explanations are very hard for my head to get around. For all its vagaries though, this is one of the more perfect words that I use throughout my personal writings. See, I think the whole world is based on ‘Resonance.’

There’s this friend of mine who studies guide books and historical novels, trying each year to find the perfect trip for him and his missus to go on. He shuts down his business for a month. For thirty days, this enlighten couple take in Prague or St. Petersburg, and then return to his house, the one he purchased from his folks. They scrapbook their adventure in words and pictures of one of them standing in front of something, hard copy or on-line versions available for all to see. Because of his yearly expeditions out of the neighborhood, it can never be said that this person is afraid of the outside world. Because for months of collaborating data and comparing hotel prices, planning flights and trains, it cannot be said that there is any fear of leaving the known for the unknown. After thirty days of matching pictures on the wall with actually being there, and of course, nowhere else that hasn’t been plotted and thought out stateside. It can be said that because one travels, one knows the world. And that’s why their opinion has weight. It echoes.

Okay, hold on...

Have you ever fallen down a well? In the middle of night, an open shaft that should have been covered but negligence had other plans for you. In the next second you’re upside down, unsure of your surroundings, barely able to call for help. Your only hope for survival is for someone to hear you. I bet that would be scary. I bet you’d be really appreciative if and when someone heard you.

Now you’re in Kabul for your brother-in-law’s brother’s wedding. You don’t even like the guy. You’ve flown in from Tehran for the weekend and can’t wait to get out of the craziness of Afghanistan and back home to the tranquility of Iran. While having a Coke at Ahmed’s Diner, you pass out. You wake up in Cuba. Nobody knows where you are at or what happen to you. You’re in a cell in Gitmo and there’s no sound coming from your cell that anyone familiar can hear.

Now you’re in Phoenix, driving to Costco or Trader Joe’s. It’s one hundred and fifteen in the shade. Unbeknownst to you there’s a bad wire leading the turn signals, causing an intermittent problem. Now this is before the official recall that’s going to be announced for your specific make and model of car in the next couple of weeks. But the officer doesn’t care. You’re off to the deportation center. It doesn’t matter. You’re the wrong color for this place.

As a youth, I traveled Europe as a long-haired, free soul who tried to mimic the travels of Leonard Cohen and Sir Dick Burton. My guide, Murphy and I were stopped more than once. There was a very scary night in where else, but Marseilles. It was classic. We were surrounded by black-shirt leather-coated bad boys of the local cops, asking for our, “Pa-pazz.” It was late at night in a dead end street; no one in the world knew where we were, except us. If we were taken away, shot, dump into the river, not a blip on the screen would...resonate. We showed our passports and international driving licenses. You actually end up saying things like, “Jimmy Carter, Betty Grable, Jerry Lewis.” You try to make contact with another individual, a human being, just like you through your false, forced smile. You suck up and try to be nice to the person you’ve never met before, who now has incredible amount of power over you, suddenly. Shockingly. Surprisingly.       

Most of us don’t know the feeling of not being heard. We expect it. We demand it. When we feel like we’re not being heard, we start wearing funny costumes like the ones on “The Price is Right,” and start demonstrating against that changy, hopey thing.

Most people don’t know what it’s like not to have resonance. Usually those people are white.

More Later...



Spill, Baby, Spill

There’s a certain amount of detective work that comes into play as one grows older, a connecting of the emotional dots, as it were. If you look for it, all the clues are there...

With that being said, yesterday Mr. Greengenes, my neighbor in the next building who experiments with strains for Venture Capitalist Seedsters and other Gen-tech companies itching to get into the Game, turned me on to some Steve Wynndowpain. A very strong hybrid combining not only Indica and Sativa components but may be the first human able to include a Tylenol PM and actual Epinephrine mixture. The symptoms were that I felt blinded and had the feeling of riding an elevator up and down for the whole day while abusing cocktail waitresses. So I’m really out of it today. I hope the following makes sense...

Living next to Golden Gate Park is a blessing but also a trip. Last Sunday I went out for a walk and became part of a march to end Politician’s Lying. I heard the demonstration had no ending...Can you imagine having to take a knee before Sarah Palin? Can you imagine what it would be like to have to ask for forgiveness from Sistah Sarah like that poor hacker has to do? Can you imagine anyone less compassionate than her? How about all those Miss America contestants that have done wrong and have to go into an office all alone, asking forgiveness from Donald Trump...This is why I don’t like to leave the house...It’s so weird out there...What passes as moral judges...

First the oil derrick done blown up and then disappeared into the setting sun and the deep blue sea. Oops, sorry...Someone forgot to turn off the spigot before it went Ka-booey. Now an oil slick the size of Delaware is slouching towards New Orleans and the Gulf...Delaware, home of all the Insurance companies except those in Omaha? Could there be a correlation between unctuous oilmen and an insurance industry that is so slick, we can’t stop them? The slick couldn’t have come at worst time for our president as he reaches out across the schism that called the Republican Party. Let’s see, we have guns in our parks and now 10-40 waiting to be skimmed and bottled, once those pesky fishes let go of their selfish oily coats. No one wonder Mitch McConnell smiles more than Spicoli coming out of a van after the 4:20 call.

Oh yeah, Chernobyl’s knocking again. You remember Chernobyl? It was that big nuclear accident that happened some twenty years ago somewhere else that we didn’t pay too much attention to because, well, it didn’t happen here. If you remember the fix was to cover the reactor plant with concrete. Really. Just pour a lot of Readi-mix over the gaping, smoulding hole, and we should be okay. Well apparently in the game of Rock, Reactor, Concrete; Concrete beats Reactor. There’s a place in the hills of Vegas called Yucca Mountain. This is where we store our nuclear waste. Behind concrete.

Spill, Baby Spill.

Drill, Baby, Drill.

Just don’t drill into a hot spot...Or where the concrete is thin...But don’t worry, it’s all safe, just ask Sistah Sarah...Not trying to connect anything here, M'am.

So I’ll never be able to fly again...I heard over at the Cannabis Expo that if you have a MM card, you could fly out of state with WEED in your possession. Well after talking to everyone and I’m sure Homeland Security was listening too, I found out that it is indeed against the law to fly with illegal drugs, even if you have a recommendation from some Vegan doctor South of Market.  Man, what I do for a blog...

On Fringe last Thursday, two innocent kids decide to blaze up near an old warehouse where unbeknownst to them, shape-shifters are bridge and tunneling over through a fourteenth or fifteenth dimension. Unified String Theory? C’mon people. Anyhoo, the kids stumble onto something they shouldn’t and let’s just say the kids are playing host to some new people, and they ain’t at a party. Anyhoo again, the detectives are doing their job trying to figure out what happened to one murdered young adult, dead in a car parked next to a vacant warehouse.   

Well the astute, hot chick detective who is not Sculley but did divorce her husband in real life last month deduces, that because the dead woman has red lipstick on and the roach found on the floor of the car does not have any traces of red on it, the detective believes there’s another person close by. A little pot logic if you ask me...

What is the Deal with the Fox channel? I watch my cartoons and a few other shows on it. Hate the news and all that the channel stands for. Yet, MSNBC, what is that? The same public opinion, only different? Then there is all those prison shows. Who gets their news from Fox? Me that’s who. From the Simpson’s and Family Guy.

If you’re keeping score...Osama Bin Laden, still free. Cat Stevens caught. This just in...Randy Quaid and his freak of wife just apprehended somewhere in Arizona for driving while not looking Amer’can enough...

What I’m Liking...

1)  Raw Papers with its little buddy, Lefties

2)  Durban Poison from Medi on Miss

3)  The Guys @ D-Tree

4)  Life After Legalization Forums

5)  The way L.A. can’t help being greedy