All Apologies

      I am sorry. For the past week, I was busy doing other things. My actions might have been self-indulgent and wasteful, but it felt so good. Aren’t I entitled to some good times? Or is that just for the rich and the five under par? Bottom line to my two readers who asked where I was...Once again, and only to you  two duo of greatness, I am sorry. To the rest of you who don’t read this, I have nothing to say to y’all.

     What happen to role models? I’ve always envisioned a commercial that goes like this...

     A basketball from great heights careens off of a lone rim. The netting shakes and the backboard rumbles, but nothing but bricks. There’s repeated shots of basketballs missing the rim. After a thousand shots of not even getting close the camera pulls back to reveal a regular guy or woman in casual dress. The person says, “I’m not a role model, I’m a teacher. So you know I don’t have a chance.”

     I have a friend, (mostly because of Facebook, I don’t really have any friends in real life.) in the Middle West who’s fourteen year old daughter wants to be one of the Kardashians. As an old unhip guy, I don’t know the Kardashians. I know of Bruce Jenner, star of the greatest gay/straight movie ever, ‘Can’t Stop the Music’ and the classic, ‘Dorothy Hamill Presents Winners.’ (Don’t winners equal role models?). I know who Robert Kardashian was, close friend of O.J. Simpson and one of the players of the infamous Dream Team. But I’m not familiar with the kids. And I’m not sure why they are role models? But they are.

     Pastor Benny Hinn, leader of a multi-million dollar generating ministry that operates out of Southern California and Texas, is being divorced after thirty years of marriage. It’s funny how Church leaders can transgress and sin and never miss a service. One of my favorite quotes in the last few years is when Ted Haggard (What a great biblical name!) the Evangelical Priest who sought out male prostitutes for sex and to be his Meth buddy at the same time was asked if his cure he was taking to be heterosexual again was working? Pastor Ted answered, “Not yet.” Does that mean you could find Tweakin’ Teddy still riding the mechanical fist on fifty cent beer nights at the Leather Vest on Wednesday nights? But soon after, his flock came back, along with the wife.

     All a guy can say is I’m sorry.

     How about John Mayer? This is what I know about John. He is an amazing guitarist. His first album was fun and poppy. I saw this video he did about being John Mayer and the inside view of his life and song making. It was hysterical. The Playboy interview, which I didn’t read but saw the highlights, what a douche. But it doesn’t matter. John and his brother have a gig with a cruise line that goes to Mexico. Apparently it’s a sexfest for Johnny boy. His brother plays pimp on the high waters and women...girls, wait their turn while John does his rounds. This won’t change until it does...

    I don’t know what it takes to be famous these days but I know it’s helping Sarah Palin. She is living in a day and age when you can get somewhere just because people like the idea of you being there. Qualifications, unimportant. What is important? How I am feeling? That is the uppermost priority. How does it affect me?

    Sister Sarah can say whatever she wants because her base doesn’t care about the facts or the truth. Again let me say this, I think Sarah Palin is so hot. I think she must be a freak behind closed doors, depending on her mood. She seems like she could be little moody. But I hope I can change that. We’ll have to see how that hopey, changey thing works out when the time comes. In terms of her being hot, I don’t think we have the maturity to handle that. We don’t mind John Kennedy and Bill Clinton fucking around, but the idea of a woman using a position of power for sex...That’s hard to fathom...Or that we would elect someone because that they are cute. Or worse, we would never take any candidate serious who was short and not good-looking, no matter how hot his wife is. Sorry Dennis...

   You know why people might relate to Sister Sarah? She never apologizes. She never cops to what she is doing. She’ll throw her closest friend or any old guy who plucked her from obscurity, under the bus if it suits her. And her suits are expensive.

    Same thing with the Republicans of this country- They aren’t going to apologize for their Anti-American stance. Again, the Republican base doesn’t care. Bill Maher so correctly pointed out on last night’s show that our President has actually brought down taxes for 95% of this country. Try to tell that to a Tea-Bagger. They don’t care. They will argue about taxation. They will say that Obama is killing this country with over spending, but when the facts come in that the stimulus is working, fifty percent of this country holds their hands over their collective ears and say, “La,la,la,la...”

    You can’t fight that kind of devotion. That kind of loyalty. That kind of Stupidity. If the Base doesn’t want to hear it, they won’t. So Sister Sarah has nothing to apologize for in their minds. Oh yeah, when Sarah said she was riding the bus to the stops on her book tour but really rode a charter jet from place to place and then would climb on the bus before the bookstore stop, her fans could care less. Besides, they saw her get off the bus when it pulled up. Those are the facts they need to know.

    But she never apologized for her lies or behavior. Don’t we somehow deep down, respect that? Besides for how she looks in jeans, isn’t that another reason she is hot. I’m talking Kennedy-hot. Never backing down, making history with ever conquest and global decisions. Maybe someday we’ll look back at Sarah and find out how much hotter she really was when the truth comes out about her and the First Dude’s open relationship. But I digress...

I’m sorry, sometimes I get carried away...

More Later...



Leno, My Funny Roomate's Niece and The So-called Road Warriors

         Here’s a little story...When I lived in L.A. with a couple of very funny comedians, one of the girl’s niece from the Middle-West came out for a visit. When asked what the little visitor wanted to do in Tinsel Town, she replied, “Meet Jay Leno.” Leno had just had be anointed with the Tonight Show. At this point in time, Leno and his shining, gleaming, bright white comedy-producer, Jimmy, were accepting jokes and material via faxes from comics. You could fax Jay, see your line or bit in the monologue, and then get a check for fifty bucks per bit. These were heady, new times. My roommate called Leno to see if he would meet her and her niece who in a Make-A-Wish moment, wanted to meet him. Leno said, “Yeah, yeah, sura, b’ing har up and Ah’ll give her a toura of tha place.” So Mr. Leno, who at that time could be argued as THE comic’s comic, one of the best jokesmiths that ever existed, gave a tour of his home and legendary garage to two complete strangers for a few hours in the Hollywood Hills, making this young women’s dream. That was almost twenty-five years ago...

          Since the Conan debacle, the girlfriend and I have boycotted
NBC. It actually wasn’t that hard. She had to give up Matt Lauer and Thursday night comedies and I in turn threw out my American Apparel catalogues. I know it doesn’t make sense but that is a by-product of negotiations in a relationship.

        We might watch the Olympics and then get rid of the Peacock again- until mandatory viewing is required at another time.   

       The reason I bring this up is because that great organization, NORML, the pioneers of the War against the War Against Drugs, had paid for an ad to run on a CBS owned billboard preaching Legalization. The company that ran the advertising wing was okay with putting on NORML ad forty feet high in Times Square, but when it came time to play, CBS nix the advertisement. Now people are asking for a boycott against CBS. I may be all about boycotts and supporting stuff with our dollars or not. I’ll do what we have to see legalization through in a responsible way. But don’t ask me to give up Dave and the Mentalist.

And that my friend is called subjective reality.   

View From the Haight

          Yesterday my production staff, TeamBrian and I hit the streets trying to find what the papers are calling ‘Road Warriors.’ Road Warrior is the name given to a new batch of homeless kids, and they are kids, who are more aggressive than your usual street people who walk up and down Haight in a trance with sporadic shouting and rants. There are the Hippie kids and oldsters who end up on Haight St. for a variety of reasons but the so-called Road Warriors are different because the stories say, they shake down other homeless and threaten the straights with violence if they were to call the cops. Besides for the in-your-face confrontation when you don’t give the Road Warriors spare change when asked, they travel with Pit Bulls and other flesh eating animals. Intimidation is key tool here.

        Shortly before Christmas the talk of the Road Warriors surfaced. Although they were never given that name by the people and merchants I knew from the street. Mostly my friends talked about these punks that were sitting in front of their stores, scaring off customers. Then a feature columnist from the Chronicle started a series on the Haight and this so-called new crop of aggressive street kids. Apparently he came to Haight Street to do some interviews. Okay, this is where I come in, but many weeks later.

          So when TeamBrian and I went looking for these punks, these Road Warriors, we couldn’t find any of the usual suspects in the usual places. See, my Haight Ashbury encompasses many kinds of street people-the way I see it. There are people who live on the street I’ve seen or known for years. With a few exceptions, these men and women live among us without much fanfare. Living in the Haight, everyday kids get off of a magic bus with sandals, a dog and a guitar, hoping for a better life than the one they had back home. Blame Jerry and Janis for this. In the Panhandle close to the DMV, the brain cases sit. They’re mostly men who sit depressed, talking to themselves. They never ask for money. The smell can be over-powering but for the most part they are harmless and don’t cause trouble. Then there are the poor children... They’ve been asked to be pimp out by a parent or there is some form of sexual abuse or a parent strung out and these kids have absolutely no other place to go. Not everyone has choices.

        I’m leaving out the ones who are on a party circuit and those who don’t fit between the lines or who have fallen through the cracks. Or they are smoking crack and have given up. And of course, like the Birdman of Telegraph Hill, he didn’t trust the Man and hid in a shack for twenty years feeding pretty parrots.

There just isn’t one kind of homelessness.

         When TeamBrian and I went on a search for Road Warriors, we couldn’t even find any homeless. Usually like the way Sarah Palin can see Russia from her doorstep, I can see people camping and bivouac out in the neighborhood.  Y’know the old saying...cops, whores, and the homeless- they never around when you need them. We walked the length of the Panhandle only finding one guy crashed out in his sleeping bag.

       Since getting a new Police Chief a few months ago and the Chronicle stories about the crazy homeless in the Haight, there has been morning sweeps by the cops of Golden Gate Park, the Panhandle and the surrounding streets of the Haight, rounding up the vagrants and putting them somewhere???

       Before the Chronicle articles there were as many as fifteen to twenty people sleeping in doorways and between trees and cars on my block. I’m talking in a one block range. This was the new normal.

       My belief is the confluence of the new police guy, the poor sales of the Christmas season in the Haight, and the Pit Bull toting street punks contributed to the new policy concerning the street people and the sweeps.

      We couldn’t find anyone really until we went to Hippie Hill in the Park. TeamBrian and I approach a group of maybe ten to twelve kids age sixteen to thirty with one old guy around fifty sitting in, sharing some joints and a few Forty's. Some sat on the green park bench while others jammed in the mid-morning sun laughing and singing. That is until I showed up.

     We had a camera and a microphone recording. Walking up to the gang, I asked if I could talk to a few of you guys for a documentary I’m doing about people living in the Park. That’s when they turned on me. They no likey cameras and microphones.

     There were shouts of who do I think I am taking their pictures without signing something. That’s when TeamBrian starting backing up slowly towards the bike paths and I found myself alone with this band of homeless kids. I showed them that I turned off the mike and my camera man has vamoosed. A couple of harden street chicks, maybe nineteen years old, egged a few of the guys on to inflict damage against me, who they now saw as the Man.

      That’s when I asked about the Road Warriors. This stopped them dead in their tracks laughing. One of the quieter kids spoke up. Letting out his hit, barely able to contain himself, he blurted, “I was there when this reporter asked a bunch of us questions. He wanted to know what we called ourselves, or who we thought we were, or something.” The kid adjusted his wool cap and said, “So one of the dudes I’m with said we’re called the Road Warriors. And that was it. HE believed us.”

      Oh, they all laughed at pulling over one on the Man. So I asked, is there a type of person on the street aggressive like the paper suggested?

      That’s when the pitchforks and burning torches came out again. They all got in face shouting and taunting me with verbal jabs.

1. “Man, ninety percent of the people on the street, WANT to be there, MAN.”
2. “The hip-hop club on Haight Street is more dangerous than us!”
3. “There are no Road Warriors. We’re all Road Warriors!!!”
4. “You know what a fucking shelter is LIKE!!! Bedbugs, you get rob or raped.”
5. “—There’s no smoking in the shelters either...”
6. “What about our RIGHTS! Our HUMAN RIGHTS!!!”
7. “It’s an eighty dollar ticket if you get caught sleeping in the Park. G.A. gives me 59 bucks a month. Do the math!!!”
8. “Dude, I liked to see you live on 2 dollars a day. I get TWO HUNDRED FUCKING BUCKS A MONTH in Food Stamps. TWO FUCKING DOLLARS A DAY FOR FOOD!!!”

      There was more but due to the lack of movie equipment going, I could only write down a partial list of their complaints and suggestions. Plus their mood was getting piqued by my questioning and thought that might be enough for one day.

    I caught up with TeamBrian near the edge of Stanyan Street and like intrepid explorers, we laughed at our good fortune of having made it out alive once again from the belly of the beast.

    Tonight there is a meeting about the Homelessness in the Haight at our local library. The kids at the bench said that they were going to be there to stand up for themselves.

More later...



Last of the Monday Morning Quarters...

      I am so tired of purple pot. There used to be something cool about having the oxygen deprived weed in your possession that is until it becomes the new marketing tool used by dispensaries everywhere...Unless it’s Afgani gooey-like, I don’t care much for the Harold and the Purple Gangs’ faves...What kind of Weed does New Orleans get and will there be enough for the partying that will be going on from now until...well until the end of Jazzfest for sure...I hate Glad bags and all the rest of the Weed industry that acts like they don’t know stoners are half of their market. Glad sandwich bags used to carry an anti-drug statement in each box. What a bunch of bull...If you don’t keep your Weed in glass jars, you’re not with it. Plus, they keep the Weed fresh and glowing unlike the drying out process done by Glad rags...I sure would like to get mad at Sister Sarah Palin. It’s just that she’s so hot. In that Dana Perino way, y’know like she’ll do anything you say. My question to Sista’ Sarah is, “Shouldn’t we abolish the Drug Czar position? Isn’t that like asking Russia to run our drug     markets?”...Speaking of Weirdness...Did you know that your regular old prescription drug that comes out of your mom’s medicine cabinet isn’t taxed? I never knew that or ever thought about it until now...As We Run Out Of Money Dept: A Cali lawmaker proposes that all growers and sellers in California be license by the state. The bill wouldn’t legalize Weed but provides “a system of regulation” for Medical Marijuana. This means paying sales tax. Right now the Board of Equalization of Ca. is only collecting around 8 million in taxes from the state’s Weed operations. They feel it could go as high as 168 mill in revenue. In 2007, Americans for Safe Access put the number around 100 million in collected taxes and revenue that the state receives. Don’t forget, that’s per year...Straight corn-eating Kansas is looking into Medical Marijuana. Maybe I will reconsider volunteer work in Lawrence...Colorado is thinking about calling their dispensaries, ‘Non-profit Health Centers’ for tax reasons...If I said this once, I’ve said it twice, Medical Marijuana is the face of the business plan that Weed has never had. It will be MM that shows the Straights how it can and will be done...Thank Whoever who keeps up the good work...How about my idea of a National Marijuana Dealer’s Day on April 18^th? These unsung heroes who have been providing Weed for all of us with very little profit margins. I’m talking about the guy who buys a pound or so for friends and clients, not growers or merchants. When these guys have legal problems, have you ever sent them money? Me neither...Maybe it’s time...Bob Marley would have been 65 last Saturday. Smoke a spliff for the Grand-dad of the movement...We’ll meet again, I don’t know where or when but some sunny day... 



Growing Fears

       Chillaxing on the couch last Sunday, baking like Betty Crocker, a commercial came on the flat screen depicting three jovial stoners bumming out about something. Since the sound was down, I thought at first this was a bong-heavy version of American Idol, and the guys were looking for a piano player or a new drummer. Turning the volume up I was informed these obvious fellow bakers are for Free Credit Dot Com. Huh? Then Thomas Haden Church did a voice-over for what I thought was Medical Marijuana sold over the telly the way he was encouraging us to “score, man.” His whole spiel sounded like something out of Cheech and Chong: The Next Generation. Next up was a Hyundai add that was completely trippy. It was so good, I had to mute it and sync it up with some Floyd. Now I have the Dark Side of Hyundai. I think it Hyundai.

     Here in San Francissy, we’re gearing up for legalization. It not for sure, but then I’d be hard pressed to see it not happening. For people my age, I voted for Jimmy Carter, legalization is a double edge sword. We want to be able to smoke, to buy and to travel with Weed, and not end up in jail for it. For Cali kids under twenty-five, it’s like it’s always been legal for them. They’ve had friends with cards scoring for them. They might know someone in Mendo’ who cops for them at a rate cheaper than the Zig-zag man pays. Watching TV with so many commercials showing stoners in action, the demographics are reaching out to them. It’s cool to get stone. Even the Golden Arches, which I said before in one of my columns-- that as soon as Weed is legal, we’re going to see that Happy, Happy, Happy Meal. Right now they’re suggesting after leaving the all-night rave, check out McDonald’s before going home to crash. Big Business is preparing the next generation for, “Hey dude, don’t you want the Weed that going to make your girl stay with you and not go out with Bobby ‘cause the Bobster has the Kush? Try R.J. Reynolds’s ‘Sweet Blueberry Harvest.’”

      My generation is different. The government and big Business scares us. Not because of money or commercialism, because...they’re going to fuck it up. Plain and simple, we’d rather have it decriminalize and left in our hands rather than have it get the one-two punch of some governor or mayor saying how it’s going to be.

Side-bar...

         During the Viet Nam war, I like many others saw some weird, freaky things, and this was states-side. Once I had the privilege to be in a room as these monstrous Klipsch speakers, easily as big as a couple of kids from ‘America’s Biggest Losers’ were being unloaded into the living room of a buddy’s place. When the back panel was removed, inside were pounds and pounds of some of the best smuggled Thai sticks I’ve ever smoked. Also during this time, I saw a pack of Park Lanes. Park Lanes, (I think I have the name right, this was the sixties, and did I mention the Thai sticks?) so far in American history, is the only time Marijuana has been package and put out for public consumption. Yes, Virginia tobacco, there has been instances of legal Weed, kind of. Park Lane Cigarettes were available in Viet Nam, and then of course, made its way here. Maybe Uncle Sam didn’t roll them, but we sure looked the other way when it came to the soldier’s ‘RnR’.

        These are funny times. There is an abundance of powerful Weed being grown...well everywhere. Right now it is like we’re all private vintners. The states are full of little family wineries that instead of grapes, we have killer Weed.

        Believe it or not, the Weed I smoke is organic, grown outside (for the most part) and I know the growers. I like that. If the government takes over, that all goes out the window and sooner or later, we’re smokin’ Boones Farm Blueberry Kush wine. Those are the fears of my friends. I think different...

More Later...



Facing Facebook Daily

Everything I say is true, somewhere...

        Around 2005 I ended up on a no-fly list due to the closeness of my Judaic sounding first two names to that of an U.S. born Aramaic terrorist who also happens to have a social security number relatively close to mine. I have to take this on faith because the State Department is very tight lipped why I find myself in dark rooms that I never knew existed in our fly the friendly skies airports that dot the familiar American landscape that I thought I knew so well. This Kafkaesque scenario could have easily been wrung out into a Capraesque ending if only things didn’t turn out so bad for our hero, namely (now with a new name) me.

       Since Bill Ayres, my covert connections were afraid to communicate with us who needed the subterranean mass transit system to find freer grounds. Out of desperation I moved to America’s universal identity carwash to go underground, Las Vegas.

      I first tried my kin. Because of an upcoming planned family trip to the theme-park, B’Nai Brith’s Land of a Thousand Guilty Pleasures, (which no one had told me about, that should have been my first clue on my family’s feeling about me) in Trafesville, Mo. They said they couldn’t risk talking to me unless they wanted me to have them rent an R.V. which is obviously out of the question. “How crazy would that be for us to rent a motorhome? Who could drive it? What’s a hook-up? Jamal Ben Binlanden, how could think about putting your family through this? Sometimes, you’re so selfish.”

    All my brothers and sisters, their wives and husbands, their kids, said, until I make this no-fly thing right with them and America, we’ll call you. I said, but I don’t have a phone anymore, let alone an address and a place to live. They repeated, “Like we said, we’ll call you.”

    In the next circle came my friends. Once they found out their phones were being tapped and agents would soon call them for information on me, they hung up on me quicker than you can say, “John Edwards, are you my daddy?”

   I found myself alone living in the cheapest weekly apartment there was in Vegas. Crack whores gave me rusty, slimy quarters out of compassion for my predicament. I had never been more alone in my life. I wasn’t sure how I was going to eat, live, or survive. But through it all, two people stuck with me. Through means I didn’t know possible, funds and love were able to reach me via an adhoc network that I didn’t know existed. Now, many years later, I call that coordination a Network of Love. And I will never forget the two who came through for me.

So here we are now...

    I’ve been working with a little company in the north woods called B.K. Industries developing nuclear fueled toys for kids. Because of my agoraphobian ways, I delegate to remain indoors but still need to get my business’ name out there. That’s when I stumbled upon this thing called Facebook.

   Here’s my first problem with Facebook: it is a social networking tool that connects people for a variety of reasons. The obstacle I’m facing, I’m neither social nor do I want to connect with anyone. I don’t want to say, “Where were you all when I was living on the corner of Louis Farrakhan Blvd. and Crack Ave.?” Now I’ll be the first to say, I don’t trust people anymore, and that is my problem. But now I am being hounded? Sought out? by old friends, school-mates and strangers who want what? My friendship?

    I’m not sure what the criterion is for being friends with people today. Is it the Ashton-effect to try to gather as many rosebuds and buddies as possible, displaying a big fat number of friends to show off with to...your friends? Or is it to tempt that person in friending you so they know how you feel about them some twenty, thirty years later. Or worse, knowing they don’t want you as a friend now anymore than they did when we had the chance to be friends in real life.

     Then there’s another addiction that I need to deal with, constantly looking to see if anyone wants to be my friend today. No bites. That okay I say. I don’t need friends that have been made abundantly clear to me.

    But what about the newbies that have no idea of my F.B.I., C.I.A., Homeland Security trail and the disgruntled Kiwanis’s members who for reasons unknown feel like they won’t rest until I’m am proven as Chemical Jackie. There are people out there totally unaware of my government prodding. There are innocents who know nothing of my past, or I should say, my future after our relationships ended as we went our separate ways into Life. Still, no new friends.

   I have thirteen friends today on Facebook. The two friends who saved my life and took huge chances in doing so, aren’t part of my friends on Facebook, even though they are registered Facebook users. Our feeling is we don’t have to befriend each other in Cyberspace because we actually really talk in real life.

   I am very confused about Facebook. Over the weekend, I tried to join a thread of a conversation that had been going on for hours. I like that part. Everyone added their two-cents worth over a course of a day. It does let you know what different parts of the country are thinking, and different mind-sets, too. People were asked by Facebook to show their profile picture as someone famous they thought they look like. When someone wasn’t sure what famous person another person’s picture was, I chimed in with a small story how I met that famous person years ago, before I became a paper terrorist. I kind of got a ‘WTF’ from the other users. I guess I shared a little too much or was inappropriate by kissing and telling about a conversation that really wasn’t about me. I got embarrassed. That so far has been my social interaction online besides saying yes or no to your possible friendship.

   I know the human experience is made up of relationships and communal ties that lead to acknowledgement and the feeling that, yes, I do exist. I just not sure what the test is to see who your real friends are? I had a real life experience that separated everyone I know from those I don’t. Now, I’m not sure how many people I need to have be counted as my friends until I really believe I have friends.

Or maybe I’ve got the whole thing wrong.

More later...