Karaab is coming back to San Francisco this weekend, and -- not being one to waste any time -- she's having an open studio:

Oct 5th and 6th (this Sat and Sun) from 11AM-6PM at 5155 Mission (Mission and Geneva)

You're all invited.

What'd I Pay?
I've got a new reason to go to Vegas: Ray Charles Slot Machines.
Under the direction of Mr. Charles, Bally Gaming is developing three game titles -- Ray Charles' America The Beautiful, What'd I Pay and Ray's Jukebox -- scheduled for release by the end of the calendar year on a daily fee or revenue-share basis. Featuring new performance video of Mr. Charles at the piano surrounded by the gorgeous "Paylettes," the games will capitalize on the advanced audio and video features of Bally Gaming's new Evolution Series (EVO) platform.

Anna and I rode in the 10th Anniversary Critical Mass last night. What a blast! I remember the first time I did it, back in 1996, feeling that sense of euphoria riding up Market Street, the whoops and hollers and ringing bells of about 4,000 cyclists echoing between the skyscrapers, and the streets so open and accessible. It really gives you a sense of how wonderful urban spaces can be when you do those rides. Usually, when city streets have no cars, they get this creepy, Omega Man feel to them, but with bicycle traffic it just feels like you're living in this less obstreperous, happier future.

Of course the sense of gentle anarchy usually subsides as the sun goes down, and things get a little more Mad Max. Anna and I ended up pretty close to the end of the mass last night, which meant that we ended up driving through intersections with cars that had been held up for 20 minutes or so. Some of these people were losing it -- a fact that the mainstream press never fails to notice -- but it was amazing to me how many people were applauding us. You'd see people who had turned off their cars and were just sitting there, chatting on a cell phone, reading a book, and giving us the thumbs up or even applause as we'd drive by. One MUNI driver -- his bus was in a line of about six that had all come to a grinding halt -- said, "Y'all are making this place a better world," as we drove by. Sometimes kids will come out with their parents and watch us drive by the neighborhood, and you get this old-school block party feel to the whole thing. People hand out candy and high-five the kids as we go by. You drive down streets you would never otherwise visit, and because you're on a bike, you see and interact with them in a completely novel way.

And the cyclists are so cool to each other. Food gets shared; if your bike breaks down, there's instantly someone there with the tools and ability to fix it. People spontaneously volunteer to keep intersections clear for the cyclists behind them. You get that good-anarchy feel: the sense that if people just made that slightest bit of community effort, we'd all be OK in the end.

You run into people you know. Chat for a bit. Have a pizza, and then re-join the Mass. If you're in it, it's a fun, exhilarating party. At the end of the ride -- Mission Dolores Park -- a spontaneous block party erupted and the celebrants had the audacity to take over the intersection of 18th and Dolores. This drew the riot squad (heaven forbid an intersection be closed to traffic on a Friday night without a permit), who marched in unison for a bit and then, according to the Chronicle, left everyone alone after 30 minutes. Anna and I and Candace and Doug joined the party at 18th street -- we ran into a guy that does the art on Burning Man tickets (I'm shaking his hand in this photo) and another cyclist who knew a mutual acquaintance, Chris Carlsson. Chris has just edited a book on Critical Mass, and this guy contributed a chapter on the very first bicycle massing in San Francisco. Apparently, in the 1890s a group of 5,000 cyclists massed on Market street in protest of the cobblestone paving (they wanted something smoother). They wore costumes and acted crazy, and stirred up shit. So, in fact, the history of bicycle anarchy in San Francisco goes back very far indeed.

Yes, there are cyclists who have an attitude -- they'll harsh on someone for driving an SUV or -- horror of horrors -- talking on a cell phone while behind the wheel of an SUV. They're just as big of jerks as the muscle-bound suburbanites that get out of their cars and threaten the cyclists just because there is a bicycle traffic jam. As if that's somehow worse that the thousands of hours of automobile-generated traffic jams that we all have to sit through each year.

I think people need to chill. And to realize that Critical Mass is an important part of our civic life -- like the Pride Parade, or the Columbus Day Parade, or a thousand other events that inconvenience some, while providing an amazing experience for others. Driving a car (like, say, a 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme that gets 9 miles to the gallon) infringes on other people's rights. You take up a huge amount of space, you can threaten and kill people,, you and pollute the air. It's not such a big deal to let the cyclists have their moment for two hours every month.

It was Vinnie Dow who first introduced me to the idea of Critical Mass, ten years ago in Montreal, when he got me a job with a bicycle advocacy group there, called La Monde a Bicyclette. At the time, he was the most zealous anti-car person I knew, but people change. You can read his take on last night's Critical Mass here.

Supereponymous Update:

ATF is a supereponymous band -- a fact that somehow elluded MSG, though he did come up with Chick Corea's supereponymous offering. I was talking to Anna about Supereponymity today and it was the first thing to come out of her mouth.

ATF is a bit tricky, because they have a song on their album called 1980-F. One day in 1987, completely high, Anna and Mike and I realized that 1980-F was a homonym for 19-ATF.

I related this story to supereponymous list maintainer, John Galvin, and he wrote back:

nice. mind = blown.

but...um...why not just call it "80-F"? is there a
relevance for the "19" part that i'm missing, other
than that it made it the year it was released or
something?


This spawned the following email exchange with ATF Guru and Christian Music Journalist Mike Rimmer:

>Thanks for that excellent review of ATF's After the Fire reissue on
>Amazon.com
>( http://www.amazon.com/exec/yadayada

>I bought the tape around 1982, but knew nothing more about the band
>until I read your write up.
>
>One thing I've always wondered about this recording. Why did they call
>that song 1980-F? I got the ATF/80-F thing, but why not just call it
>80-F? Is there some significance to the "19" part of the name that I've
>been missing? I've always wondered about that. As a kid, I imagined
>that they wrote the song in 1980 or something like that, but I've never
>really gotten it.


Thanks for the encouragement Bob! The song 1980-F was indeed written in
1980, hence the title! It was actually a big hit in Germany (of all
places). The original 80F album was meant to be released in 1980 as an
immediate follow up to their CBS debut Laser Love. (they'd released an
independent album Signs Of Change on their own label)

Anyway the original 80F album was rejected by CBS because drummer Iva
Twydell had left and thecompany didn't like the drumming of Nick
Brotherwood, Iva's replacement. I saw them play with Nick drumming and live
it was ok but having heard the original version of the album, CBS were
right to reject it! Anyway by the time the band had found a replacement CBS
were happy with, it was 1981 before the album was released! :-)

So that explains everything I hope! :-)

I wish Sony would release the albums properly and not just the compilations.

Did you ever see the band live when they toured America?

cheers

Mike

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
MIKE RIMMER is a freelance media professional managing CMBC MEDIA
PRODUCTIONS which is involved in a number of activities.

He presents a Europe wide morning show, MIXDOWN on AC radio station UCB
Europe from 10am - 1pm UK time (to listen check out www.ucb.co.uk)

He presents an evening show RIMMERAMA, for CHR station Cross Rhythms which
is webcast at www.crossrhythms.co.uk every weekday 6pm-10pm UK time (7-10am
CST USA)

He also hosts three other CMBC produced radio shows - Independents' Day
highlights all that's best in independently produced music across the
world. Profile Special and In Conversation With Mike Rimmer are both
interview programmes.

He is also the former assistant editor of Cross Rhythms magazine and
continues to contribute to that mag, reviewing albums and writing features
as well as Premier Magazine which is produced by Authentic Media, Britain's
leading Christian record company. He also writes for Christian music mag
BGM Magazine.

If he isn't busy enough doing that, he's married to PR genius Pippa and he
also belongs to Church Alive in Birmingham, works amongst students in
Birmingham and speaks at various churches and student events.

IF YOU'RE A CHRISTIAN BAND WANTING EXPOSURE IN THE UK, WHY NOT GET IN TOUCH?

I don't know why, but I am completely obsessed with supereponymous bands right now. Galvin got me into them. He's compiling this list of bands that have albums & songs named after themselves and it's all I think about.

"What about Menudo? Surely they had a song called "Soy Menudo," didn't they? I'll just go check on Amazon.com." I click on the site and see that they had a self-titled debut album (debut supereponymous efforts are the most prized). My heart skips a beat. Maybe this is the one. Scrolling down furiously, I race through the song titles, far too fast to actually read them, hoping to see Menudo there. "Hold Me," "You and Me All the Way," "Don't Hold Back..."

I re-read the list, more slowly this time, in case I've missed somthing.

Damn. Nothing.

What about the Backstreet Boys? They sound like the kind of band that would do this?

And so goes the next half an hour.

It's not just the thrill of the chase that has sucked me into this. It's contemplating the forces behind supereponymy. Are these just obvious marketing tactics (Strengthen the brand through repetition!), or are the supereponymous artists who, like me, are have driving obsessions they must realize.

Take Bad Company. They named their first album "Bad Company." And there's a song on the album called "Bad Company." Its first two lines?

Bad Company
Bad Company


The song goes on to explain that the singer was "born 6-gun in my hand," and that "behind a gun I'll make my final stand. That's why they call me bad company."

There's a cultural difference here that you have to understand. Bad Company was from England, where not even the police have handguns, and they recorded during a time and place where gun toting wasn't especially respected. So no doubt, the band's name sprang from a sense of alienation and rejection. Because of their gun obsession, they were, no doubt, considered "bad company" at parties and such in the British post-glam rock scene.

But the song goes deeper. "Rebel souls Deserters we are called." This obvious military reference indicates a sense of connection with some mythical group of military misfits (a "company"). Now we realize that the gun is not in Bad Company's hand out of aggression, but that it is a defense mechanism ("behind a gun."). Not something they chose, but something they had to do.

Obviously this was a central metaphor for ex-Free vocalist Paul Rodgers, who recalls the fight he had with Swan Song Records (Led Zepplin's record company) to realize his vision. "I had to fight to get the management and the record company to accept the name Bad Company," explains Rodgers. "They thought it was a terrible name. Peter Grant called a meeting and the band met beforehand. I told them that I had been through this before with Free as Island Records had wanted to call us the Heavy Metal Kids. We agreed to go in and tell them that we were going to be called Bad Company and that was the end of the story. As soon as Peter heard how strongly I felt about the name, he became very supportive and turned the record company around."

Was the Bad Company name, further, an ironic swipe at the record company and the corporatization of Rock and Roll? The song goes on to say, "Tell me that you are not a thief? Oh, But I am." Would anyone other than a Bad Company come up with the name "Heavy Metal Kids?" By having a record, a band name, and a song all called Bad Company, Rogers and, er, company invite the music listener to contemplate these different levels of meaning, and to ultimately question how we arrive at these notions of "Bad" and "Good" at all.

As the song says, every act of artistic creation is, equally, an act of destruction: "Yeah We're Bad Company
Kill in cold blood."

Just to prove that Anna is not the only person who can blog pictures, here's one of Vinnie's street in 1926. You can see Vinnie & Dave's place at the end of the street on the right. It's the building in front of the telephone pole.

Fox TV beware. The Bumfights guys are going to jail. This stuff is shocking and awful, but how different is it, really, from Fox's lineup? And why is what we want to watch never what we'd like to imagine ourselves as being?

The latest from Craque POT: Why Sun and Dell should merge.

Babylon Reconsidered

And the autumn fruit your soul longed for
has gone from you
and all the luxurious and the brilliant
are lost to you
and never will be found

--Revelations 18


The wet leaves snake the road in a pummeled soggy procession
Snip-slapping at tires that return me home

The cloying and unwelcome reek of fertilization
(Which can become a secret love)
Has given way to a gentle autumn sweetness
Like a clear breath
... and then to the task at hand

A vinyl banner on Main Street
A plowing match
Two-dollar rides
Sickening-sweet candy
A biting tiara
And a sash

And that fall sunshine
So fat and abundant
It binds the straggling leaves
In happy amusement
It capsizes that mad and desperate impulse to flee
To the brilliant and the luxurious
It returns
A simple longing
For the autumn fruit
Of my native home

If you wait long enough, pretty much any coincidence is bound to happen. Farting around this morning, I found my birthday in pi.. Anna's too.

John Ralston Saul defines the Birth Control Pill thusly:
Responsible for a sense of loss and even failure among people who came of age in the 1960s, the birth control pill produced a twenty-five-year-long holiday from reality. For the first time in history, sex had no consequences. It was what it felt like. Nothing more.

Then a rising tide of new venereal diseases appeared, culminating with AIDS... And suddenly, like a ghost from the past, the condom was back. For the rest of their lives the sixties generation will live in an atmosphere of regret -- some over the good times lost forever, but most because they didn't take advantage of a once-in-eternity opportunity.

I was thinking of this passage as I read Laura's book, Have You Seen Me? this morning, as she seems to pick up where Saul left off, and examine the consequences of the reproductively self possessed generation of babies born during this "holiday from reality."

Laura's protagonist, Juiliet contracts Hepatitis B after an ill-conceived teenaged tryst with her father's best friend and then -- six years later -- sets about spreading the disease to a rats nest of sleazeballs and no-good men in her equally ill-conceived career as an exotic-cancer-cum-prostitute.

Death to the Fascist Insect!

Is Juliet a bad person? Well, sort of. She has sex with people without informing them of her STD. And sort of not. They're all hypocritical fundamentalist Christian shock jocks, or cheaters, and shouldn't they know to use condoms anyway?

Born in the froth and passion of the sexual revolution, is this post-"holiday" generation really ready to moralize in any way about consentual adult sex, and by the way, how does a nice University-educated girl from Santa Cruz become a whore and S&M porno slut anyway? Well, according to Laura's book: "No," and "By looking in the classified ads, silly."

No, Laura's moral compass points toward only two kinds of sinners: sleazy guys, and obnoxious dot commers -- and usually they appear as one. But even her Johns and pornnographers are basically OK fellows. Basically, the question of what is bad and what is good is irrelevant -- an interesting idea when applied to sexual morality, and even moreso when obliquely extended to terrorism (a theme I wanted to read more of in the book).

The book was a lot of fun to read, and it's extremely well-written. Laura has a gift for clever and striking description. For me, that was the best part of the book -- the clever asides about CBs being the Internet of the 70s (an idea that's been near and dear to me for awhile now; by the way, my conclusion: the Internet is the Ham radio of the 90's), the unpleasantness of children's books, San Francisco fog as a schoolyard bully with at wet towel.

But I had a hard time connecting with the characters. At one point in the book, someone talks about how hard Juliet is and I found myself wondering how anyone could ever have picked up on that -- her interactions with others seems so random and emotionally abrupt. She has friendships and relationships, but they all seem to have the same kind of momentum as twigs carried downstream -- random and thoughtless and without passion.

In part, I think that this is because the book tries to present a number of morally ambiguous situations, in John Ralston Saul's terms, as "what they felt like." And so the characters in Have You Seen Me are what they feel like too: they may be exploiters, terrorists, whores or hippie computer people, but they all just felt like people passing by to me.

I just registered for my first ever triathlon. I am so completely unprepared for this. Just to give you an idea... I still haven't got a working bike. Now that I've shelled out $80 for this event, that's about to change. I'm going to put Nick's pedals on the fancy racer that Karaab lent me and start training like a madman.

If I ever do go skydiving. I want to be wearing a safety belt:

The Hondas and the giant wagon, however, went without chutes, gaining speeds of up to 140 mph depending upon angle of attack.

Hey Bay Area People. Laura is reading from her book at Barnes & Noble in Oakland tomorrow.

Thursday, September 19th, 7:30-8:30pm
Barnes & Noble
Jack London Square, 98 Broadway, Oakland, CA

The New York Times Thomas Friedman argues, quite rightly, something that the mainstream media seems to be mostly missing: that Iraq's posession of weapons of mass destruction is no more of a threat to us than China, Pakistan or Russia's. Less, probably, because we'd beat Iraq in a war of attrition.

Remember Moammar Quadaffi? He was terrorist threat #1 to the US in the 1980's -- until we started killing members of his family. Now you don't hear anything more about him. Dictators like Quadaffi and Hussein, who have something to hold on to, would be insane to risk the unholy wrath of the United States by attacking it directly. I don't believe that they're the real threat. In fact, I partially agree with Friedman when he goes on to say that the real threat comes from angry dissidents. We disagree on what the best way to staunch the flood of violent dissidents might be. He thinks that bombing the shit out of Iraq will help. I disagree.

Friedman writes:
I think the chances of Saddam being willing, or able, to use a weapon of mass destruction against us are being exaggerated. What terrifies me is the prospect of another 9/11 — in my mall, in my airport or in my downtown — triggered by angry young Muslims, motivated by some pseudo-religious radicalism cooked up in a mosque in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Pakistan. And I believe that the only way to begin defusing that threat is by changing the context in which these young men grow up — namely all the Arab-Muslim states that are failing at modernity and have become an engine for producing undeterrables.

The latest from Craque POT: Public Shame in the Olympics. An idea inspired by Dr. Phil.

We are only at the beginning of the Age of Reality TV. Check out this cross-promo marketing bonanza!

Should it reach agreement on buying a seat on the rocket, the soft-drink giant would back the program with a powerhouse marketing budget. Among its plans: a reality TV show with contestants competing to win a trip to space. Executives working on Pepsi-Cola's behalf are fashioning a program around the concept and are negotiating with at least one undisclosed network, according to a person familiar with the situation.

In case you ever wondered, it's official: Keith Richards is cooler than Mick Jagger

Richards says the idea of Jagger being knighted filled him with "cold, cold rage at [Jagger's] blind stupidity," since it stood in stark contrast to the rebellious "Street Fighting" music and hedonistic rock 'n' roll lifestyle the Stones charted during their heyday in the '60s.

I would have never thought of a movie about the Polaroid camera as a science-themed film, but according to this CBC article, it counts. If you're a budding screenplayer, you should check out this link, as it has the address of a Tribeca Films screenwriting contest:

De Niro's Tribeca Films and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have teamed up to fund a program which will produce a film with a scientific or technological theme.

"What we're doing here is really looking for the next A Beautiful Mind, Memento or Good Will Hunting," said Doron Weber, program director of the Sloan Foundation.

Time to dust off that Donner Party in Outer Space idea I've had for years.

This strange week continues. Pete called me up this morning to tell me that he doesn't like James Bond or Asian porn. Apparently he's also become a vegetarian, watches "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" while making jewlery, and has something nice to say about cats. Like I said: "Thanksgiving Dinner of Sadness."

This is what we do in America: We do it, we do it first, and we just keep doing it. I feel like there is no end to the grief that the Media can dish out to me, and that this week has been a kind of Thanksgiving Dinner of Sadness. I'm stuffed. We're all stuffed.

And what's worse, I have this nasty feeling in the back of my mind that I am being fattened with propoganda for the slaughter in Iraq. I watched this PBS Wide Angle documentary last night that showed how Slobodan Milosevic used state media to keep his country in the dark about what was really happening in Kosovo, and when I watch the international news coverage on the major networks, I have to ask myself: Is it better? How much?

In case you were wondering. Propoganda works.

Remember all the 911 songs that came out a year ago? The New York Times has a story about why there aren't any about our impending war with Iraq.

"It's been strangely quiet," said Damon Krukowski, a founder of Musicians for Peace and a performer with the psychedelic folk duo Damon and Naomi. "I think that people are worried that since it is a time for mourning and grief, it's awkward to mix it up with the plain talking that's necessary to combat the aggressive foreign policy initiatives being taken by the administration right now. A lot of musicians are afraid that songs speaking against war will sound unpatriotic at this time."

This Emanuel Leutze painting sits in the west staircase of the House wing of the US Capitol in Washington DC. Its title, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way," is taken from a line by George Berkeley:

Westward the course of empire takes its way
The first four acts already past
A fifth shall close the drama with the day
Times noblest offspring is its last

The founders of the University of California, Berkeley, no doubt, had this line in mind when they chose to name their school after him.

Berkeley-trained geographer Gray Brechtin makes much of these lines in his history of Bay Area rapacity, Imperial San Francisco, linking the greed and all-consuming material hunger that built my city (and eventually the Atomic Bomb -- which was really conceived in Berkeley, where Oppenheimer was on staff, and nursed in San Francisco's exclusive Bohemian Club -- that is now causing us to contemplate war with Iraq).

Imperial SF is a heavy read, because it meticulously connects greed, public corruption, and environmental catastrophe in such a relentless and depressing way that it takes everything you've got to not turn cynical from reading it. But in my 30's, it seems that everything I learn tugs me in a cynical direction.

It's all too much for me to ever get comfortable. What is the ultimate reason behind these things? Greed? Hatred? Just getting by?

I walked out into Washington Square this morning. The local Chamber of Commerce, whose role in life is to promote North Beach businesses through phony events like the North Beach Festival (trans. A bunch of crappy bands and e-coli spreading food stands), had filled the park with over 3,000 flags -- one for every victim of September 11th. Though I often question the motivation of the Chamber of Commerce, this was a moving and effective tribute, giving locals a space to meditate and reflect on this national tragedy by forcibly taking up this familiar public resource and making everyone in the park share it with the dead.

While watching the press and curious locals like myself photograph the monument, I got into a conversation with a man named Don who was walking his three dogs in the park.

"Some day they'll talk about the real perpetrators of this crime," he said.

"Who was that?"

"The US Government."

"What, because of their foreign policy?"

"No, because they flew the planes into the World Trade Center?"

One of his dogs began chewing on a flag, and a reporter stooped to grab a photograph. Don yanked the chain. Is it unpatriotic to chew the flag? Probably.

"How did they do that?"

"Remote control."

We then got into a discussion of motive, means, and opportunity. Church bells began tolling, apparently at random, as they have been all morning. Don believes that the US Government wanted to get into Afghanistan, so it engineered this crime to generate the public support it would need for a sustained middle eastern war. I told him that past experience would dictate that a national catastrophe of this proportion was unnecessary as casis belli. America has proved itself willing to go to war for far less.

But Don's position was understandable. A year later, the mighty symbolism of those two great obelisks burning and then crashing to the ground, unwrought by that most powerful and transforming of 20th century technologies -- the passenger jet -- gives this day a metaphorical depth that will not be plumbed for years, if ever.

And add to that this notion of American Exceptionalism -- the idea that somehow things like this simply do not happen to Americans (except maybe Indians or African Americans) -- and it's pretty easy to see how people here can no limit to the depth of this tragedy.

They are building a temporary monument to the victims of Sept. 11 outside of my living room window. One American (and possibly non-American; we'll see) flag for every victim of the attacks, planted like a gravestone in Washington Square Park. Over three thousand of them taking up almost all of the park. It's eerie.

Checking my email, there's a photo from Trish of another monument, in another park not far from here. The subject matter is love, but the effect is somehow equally eerie.

I am processing these days.

So much is going through my mind, with September 11th just two days away.

And I'm reading the Apocalypse. Not for any melodramatic reasons, but because it was given to me as a birthday gift. It's bunk, but metaphorical bunk, and I can't help but think that I am living in Rome.

A few weeks back Trish, Anna, I and some friends of our dearly departed Kathlyn Free snuck into a little park of Bay Street in San Francisco where 20 years earlier Kathlyn and her husband, Art Grant had constructed a giant heart out of quince bushes. It was a conceptual piece -- a living heart to leave in the heart of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Symphony honored the occasion by having Tony Bennett sing at its unveiling. When Art died in 1995, Kathlyn spread his ashes there, and on this foggy San Francisco night a few weeks back, our gang performed the same service for Kathlyn.

Somehow, perhaps because of my father's trade, I was given the sexton's job: Digging holes in the thick underbrush and ripping open the urn and such. It was a little awkward -- who ever knows what to do during a burial, never mind a late night clandestine ceremony -- and I had some trouble breaching the urn's metal shell, which may or may not have been designed to be sealed for eternity. Someone's Swiss Army knife was broken out and that got me where I needed to be.

Anyhow, once the metal shell had been penetrated, I tore open the plastic bag and there was Kathlyn: dust. With the help of a dear friend of hers, who was crying, we buried her in strategic little holes dug into the different chambers of the heart. Then we polished off a bottle of champagne and went home, telling ourselves that Kathlyn would have been satisfied with the event.

Today I drove by this little living memorial on Bay Street, but instead of bushes I saw cold dark ground. A heart-shaped scar where the quince bushes used to be. A shadow desecration that left me cold and filled with foreboding as I drove back to my books of Apocalypse and greed gone wild. There was a post with a sign in front of the evacuated heart: "Pick up your dog's litter." My guess is that the city -- tired of maintaining this strange little bush -- simply decided to rip the whole thing up to make more room for the dogs.

Sophie says she "can't stop laughing" at this article about two dudes in Manitoba who spend 10 hours a day waving at cars. It just goes to show that celebrity requires only one thing: will.