tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31940932344799229132024-03-05T14:39:24.787-08:00Ideational ContinentUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-13991702687465256702011-10-26T20:01:00.001-07:002011-10-26T20:21:02.439-07:00Occupying My ArmchairJust want to say a few things from the comfort of my home which won't make any sense shouted in the streets. I think two forces are at work in bringing the insane brutality perpetrated by the OPD and surrounding agencies last night. Look at the national news reports and you hear, verbatim, the "sanitation and threat of violence" excuse popping up all over the place: Georgia, San Francisco, New York... This rhetoric, and the tactic it purports, are being perpetuated, and likely created, from deep behind the scenes. Mayor Quan just admitted that she had little to do with the planning of these actions, and was only informed of them after they had been decided.<br /><br />But that dynamic, where (soon to be ex-) Mayor Quan can't even participate in decision-making about a police action of this scale (assuming we can even believe this latest garbage statement out of her office) is a uniquely Oakland predicament. One the one hand, the protest of police brutality going back to the late 60's has institutionalized itself to a power base which Quan knows she cannot ignore. They essentially choreographed her isolation of former Chief Batts (can I just say, though I'm no fan of the guy, I can't imagine him conducting the OPD as poorly as his recent successor has. For whatever that's worth). On the other hand, Quan's gutting of several local programs merely to put another dozen cops on the streets, proves that she is desperately seeking the ascent of the OPD to her current young administration. Thus, with neither credibility nor authority, she was forced to let a deputy "make the call", which essentially meant giving OPD carte blanch to turn this into their fantasy of urban warfare. They even managed to shoot a soldier in the head- too bad it was a former US soldier.<br /><br />So much for "the police are part of the 99%". The police would shoot the officer next to them if they smelled blood.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-91675764601901176222011-05-01T11:26:00.000-07:002011-05-01T11:51:56.930-07:00Post-30 PostSome of my friends are in far away countries. Some are in different states. Some have jobs. Some have mysterious income sources. Some are musicians not playing gigs. Some are musicians playing jive ass gigs. Some are musicians making good music. Some are poets not writing books. Some are poets writing jive ass blog posts. Some are poets writing good books. I don't have any friends in fiction. All my friends are in fact friends, unless you count the ones who I just kind of know, and I don't know what they say about me behind my back. I don't want to know what my actual or former friends say about me behind my back.<br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />Some of my friends have babies. Some of my friends are expecting to have babies. Some of my friends' wives or husbands or others' are expecting to have babies only to find out their counterpart is not. Some of the babies are expecting to be picked up and held when they cry. Some of my friends have dogs. I ignore the fact that some of my friends have cats (and I don't visit them).<br /><br />Some of my friends rent in the area. Some of my friends move away because of the rent. Some of my friends have bought houses during the bust. Some are still looking for a busted house to buy. Some of my friends are embarking on careers. Some are in the middle of switching jobs for the nth time. Some of my friends are doing what they set out to do. Some don't remember what that was. Some of my friends take the drugs they took in college when they get together with their college friends. Some hang out until 9pm and then slink off to go to bed. Some of my friends lead enviable lives from the outside. Some of them lead lives that are impenetrable. Some of my friends lead lives that seem unsustainable for years and now decades. Thankfully, none of my friends has died.<br /><br />Some summers I would curse my blue collar fate for the want of all the laziness and carousing I was missing, but I can't really trade in what I have now because some days past I hung out with some group of people and we all became each other at different times and here we are as the trace of whatever wasn't transient about those forms.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-21094242907965375372011-03-14T22:12:00.000-07:002011-03-14T22:18:44.014-07:003 Photos<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-oLfEcChP3RIbcTkHpzfxlmHecsPFfT0bFm921dVALNxqefaBVJ4pHA9lVEJJi_kF62HrvIyBrq46M8fRFopIgB2sx-gJgljToP8P3uZzgZ2C9IWxpJkyll9dgIWfECs7SbKuD8VaF1E/s1600/CIMG0008.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-oLfEcChP3RIbcTkHpzfxlmHecsPFfT0bFm921dVALNxqefaBVJ4pHA9lVEJJi_kF62HrvIyBrq46M8fRFopIgB2sx-gJgljToP8P3uZzgZ2C9IWxpJkyll9dgIWfECs7SbKuD8VaF1E/s320/CIMG0008.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584171811919408850" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFgW0gX3t-jz9JJK9OxQWDHS9r9StOcZ69JmZODFmrWqOfdBt116jqHDymqPL2E3fqg42icGbGhYUsRParor55GhvKsN36FOwVEfbGT5ZuJAq4JgG3qSeP1ShHavKJLZILLOc6WoRp64I/s1600/CIMG0016.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFgW0gX3t-jz9JJK9OxQWDHS9r9StOcZ69JmZODFmrWqOfdBt116jqHDymqPL2E3fqg42icGbGhYUsRParor55GhvKsN36FOwVEfbGT5ZuJAq4JgG3qSeP1ShHavKJLZILLOc6WoRp64I/s320/CIMG0016.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584171644087242242" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0O2NHTAVSgOecz9BKEgrn7y8fSexiPcwZb8lFozh0o3BmSqG1gLMuHlFixyBbiciuQPnvQfap2ABGlffuSj_OgNNGO7ScxukH607Aqm7IBDs8LE94R9qCfBa1lqfSeMqnzQJ1z1ZfDEY/s1600/CIMG0013.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0O2NHTAVSgOecz9BKEgrn7y8fSexiPcwZb8lFozh0o3BmSqG1gLMuHlFixyBbiciuQPnvQfap2ABGlffuSj_OgNNGO7ScxukH607Aqm7IBDs8LE94R9qCfBa1lqfSeMqnzQJ1z1ZfDEY/s320/CIMG0013.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5584171509052644562" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-42993021293040967532011-03-12T09:46:00.000-08:002011-03-14T22:09:59.658-07:00on having a kid for realNot a narrative about our baby's birth:<br /><br />-At 7:53 the night of March 9th, 2011, Reginald Carter Westbrook emerged into the world. He weighed 8 pounds, 14 ounces, was 21.5 inches in length and his head had a circumference of 14 inches. These facts proved difficult for his mother, Corinne Humphrey Belew (Cori), but she was extraordinarily herself throughout.<br />-He was born one day before his Uncle, my brother, Lucas Francis Westbrook. (aka Uncle Luke).<br />- A family friend, Charles Ragen, my Father and their Chinese business associates came up with a transliteration of "Reginald" in written Chinese: Thunder Child, or Thunder Bean, depending on how literal one wants to read.<br />-25 hours and fifty-three minutes after Reginald's birth, an 8.9 magnitude earthquake struck the east coast of Honshu Japan. As I write this, millions of people are struggling with the aftermath of the quake, the aftershocks, and the tsunamis which followed. These facts are beyond our comprehension.<br />-We have seen 13 nurses at Alta-Bates Summit Hospital in Berkeley, California where Reggie was born. The vast majority of them have been extraordinarily caring and skilled. It's hard to express the feeling of being so indebted to, and intimately involved with, people you've never met.<br />-Reggie seems to like movement, jazz standards, Sam Cooke and his mother. He seems to dislike sudden change, having his diaper changed and whatever he sees every time he opens his eyes.<br />-Merconium is a phenomenon. Our nurse dooped me into changing his first diaper. That was some shit, yo!<br />-This is as close as I'll get to a horoscope reading for young Reggie:<br /><br />On the date of his birth in the Gregorian Calendar, the following also occurred:<br />-Ornette Coleman was born.<br />-Samuel Barber was born.<br />-Chingy was born.<br />-C-Murder was born.<br /><br />-Charles Bukowski died.<br />-George Burns died.<br />-Stan Brakhage died.<br />-Robert Mapplethorpe died.<br />-Bobby Fischer died.<br />-Notoriou B.I.G. was murdered.<br />-David Rizzio (Queen Mary of Scots' Italian Secretary) was murdered.<br /><br />-Emperor Wu of Han assumed the throne.<br />- Teacher's Day (Eid Al Maolim) in Lebanon is celebrated.<br />- The U.S. Supreme Court rules the case of the revolt on the slave ship Amistad in the favor of the captive Africans.<br /><br />-On the actual day of his birth, Hugh Martin the composer of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", died in -Encinitas, Ca., which is the next town over to one of Cori's childhood homes.<br />-On the actual day of his birth, the space shuttle Discovery made its final landing.<br /><br />- On the date of Cori's birth Philipino poet Vincente Sotto was born, Albert Einstien died, and Paul Revere rode through the streets of Boston.<br />- On the date of Dillon's birth Duke Ellington was born, Ludwig Wittgenstein died and Roger Clemens set the single game strikeout record at 20.<br /><br />-Some babies are small. Some babies are large. Some babies are squat. Some babies are long. Some babies are large headed. Some babies are small headed. Some pelvises are Gynecoid. Some pelvises are Anthropoid. Some pelvises are Android. Some pelvises are Platypoid. These facts, in the way they become actual, will determine how your labor progresses. These facts cannot be known ahead of time (despite what anyone may tell you to the contrary).<br />-As you make decisions upon the assumption of these facts, you are deciding in the dark. Every decision you make will give birth to counter-factuals which will haunt you like ghosts. We are lucky in that all our ghosts are worse than those facts which attained reality. Our hearts go out to those whose ghosts are better.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-23188145832793187692011-03-06T07:00:00.000-08:002011-03-06T07:15:52.524-08:00on having a kidMaybe this will post will both explain and end the drought of posts here. This is the only piece of writing I've done in 8-12 months. I wrote this in response to a query from Sean Manzano. I don't think he's going to publish it after all, so I'm finally putting it up here. You can tell from the Ecuador reference that this is old news- the question now is what is about to go down in Libya, when el Presidente Estados Unidos is calling for ouster (notice this is the only nation so far for which he's said that). Also, as of this morning, still no baby, for those keeping track...<br /><br />I had stated repeatedly and for years that I would never have children, to family, to friends and to the woman who would become my wife. That woman merely rolled her eyes or ignored me, because she knew that she would have children and, after some time, she knew that she wanted those children to be mine. The first of them, a son, is due as of this writing in late February of 2011, a little over 10 years from the inauguration of George W. Bush, the election of Ariel Sharon and the creation of Wikipedia, my source for much of what follows.<br /><br />When I taught briefly in 2006/2007 at the University of California Santa Cruz, a class of freshmen, I had the chilling realization that my students were in middle school, were not yet adults, when the West Wing of the Pentagon, the two towers of the World Trade Center, four airplanes, a swath of grass in Skanksville Pennsylvania and 2,996 human lives were destroyed. Which is to say they have not had a moment of their adult lives when they didn’t live in a country that was openly engaged in a perpetual war. The elementary school kids my wife began teaching around the same time were toddlers on that infamous date, and her latest classes had not yet been born. Some 40 million children have been born since 9/11/01 in the U.S. alone. This disproves one of my initial arguments, that ‘you can’t have American babies in the post-9/11 world’. In fact, you can, millions have and so soon will we.<br /><br />The counter-argument I heard often, that ‘you, Dillon Westbrook, an educated, left-leaning, rational and moral person in a world of jingoism, profiteering and war-mongering must have babies, if only to counter-act the direction this country, the center of power in the world, is headed’- that argument is disproven I think as well by all these births, for the simple reason that a baby is not an argument for or against perpetual war. Neither babies nor wars are rational, and arguments are. Arguments are what we would be having if we, meaning the royal We of nations as singular agents, were rational- wars and babies are what we have instead. <br /><br />Not only the core premise of the counter-argument is disproven, but the details as well. An educated, left-leaning, rational and moral person took the presidency of the U.S. in January of 2009, and he is bombing civilians in Pakistan from drone airplanes. In the interim, the U.S. ceased to be the center of power in the world. Now there is no center of power, or the center of power is in flux, in part because China had so many more babies, i.e. produced so much more capital, even when they tried rational schemes to limit those babies. The OPEC nations used to be our friendly petro-dealers, thanks in large part to George the Senior, and now they are a mass of feuding cousins whose allegiances we can’t predict or understand. Africa used to be a continent we could either ignore or stifle with charity, and now China is trying to turn Africa into its own petrol-and-mineral-dealer. Not surprisingly, neither China nor Africa wants to hear from an aging pimp like Uncle Sam: ‘just shut up and enjoy your iPad, grandpa- leave the economic expansion to us.’ <br /><br />But this too could shift, because wars and babies are what we have now instead of centers of power. Maybe that’s all we ever had. I’ve read that 1 in 200 men share a nearly identical Y chromosome, likely brought on by their sharing a direct, though distant, male progenitor- Genghis Khan. Khan was known to roll into town, line up all the men and execute them, then line up all the women and rape them. Now, some 800 years later, the babies are all that survived the war. The war is all that survived the historical record. Who knows what was going on in those towns before Genghis Khan showed up. They could have been educated, left-leaning, rational and moral people- lot of good it did them. If you read too much history, which I don’t, you can start to see why folks get caught up in starting another war- it becomes synonymous with all human activity, and people want to be known for doing something.<br /><br />On the daily, though, what we do is hump economic hod up the scaffold. It keeps us distracted, because it doesn’t look anything like the war out there, in a mass of fueled-up vehicles pulsing towards destinations, Retail, Tech, Construction, Customer Service. You can tell from the statistics that the war never distracted us much from baby-making, 2007 had a surge in Iraq and on the homefront, with a record 4.3 million U.S. births. But a little dip in the road economically and we fall off by 2% in 2008 and beyond. If the lady and I had bought our house, married and conceived in 2005/2006, the grimmest years of the war, instead of 2009/2010, the grimmest years in the U.S. economy, friends and family would have applauded our timing, instead of questioning our sanity. Back then I was arguing about how another U.S. consumer was tantamount to a civilian death, or maybe ten civilian deaths, in Iraq or Afghanistan. But that’s not a rational argument. The unstable housing and job markets are “reasons” to hold off on the baby front. Wait another year until things pick up before committing to the $100,000+ liability that is a middle class U.S. baby. The two wars, or is it one war or is it 10,000, and their decades of destruction- no rational person would hold off giving birth awaiting their end. That argument actually persuades me, however, in the most cynical way- I don’t expect the wars to end before my wife passes child-bearing age. The two named wars we are in now may officially end, in the same sense they officially started, but that will hardly end the war.<br /><br />“But wait!”, I hear you say, “Wars sure as shit are rational enterprises; they are instrumental to economic domination of one nation over others”. I am sympathetic to this argument to a point. It’s not hard to line up all the military interventions in the Persian Gulf and draw a line in the shape of an oil pipeline straight up to Afghanistan- mystery solved. But rationality requires that both means and ends are rational and are lined up through sound induction. From where we sit now, deposing the democratically elected Mohhamed Mossadegh in favor of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was a bad move, because it fermented the Iranian Revolution and its government and they don’t like to play baseball with no Americans. Aiding and abetting Saddam Hussein as a counterfoil to the Iranian Revolutionary Government seemed like a winner at the time, but low and behold, he no liked-a baseball either. In fact, I’ll bet you Reggie Jackson’s signed #9 uniform that you can’t name one of these interventions that swung the way we wanted it 10 years down the line. Yet, we’re still at it, most recently with President Aristide of Haiti, and what the fuck is about to go down in Ecuador right now, anyways?<br /><br />Nevertheless, we keep at it, and while that might look like dogged American determination, it’s also a text-book fit for the clinical definition of insanity- doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. And what about the results- are they rational ends? Sure, we all enjoy and agree upon super-sized cheese burgers and iPads. And, as Fox news will point out several times daily, hundreds-of-thousands of people annually try to bust in, legally or otherwise, to the land of super-sized cheese burgers and iPads. China is building its own, much larger land of cheese-burgers and iPads, and they don’t even have to import the iPads. But the Greeks took pains to show us that everyone and their mother agreeing on something doesn’t make it true or right. Ultimately, consumption to the point of engorgement is a losing strategy and one that we no doubt will pursue to our ecological, and cardiovascular, demise. If it is even rational to live, and there is plenty ground to argue inside that question, it is not clear that it is thereby rational to prosper. It may turn out that we would be better off struggling and starving a bit in the long run, and though it is certainly horrible to be the war-torn; the burned, the murdered, the raped and the beaten, it is by no means inversely grand to be the warrior. As of this writing there are more U.S. military deaths this year attributed to suicide than to combat action in either theater of the war.<br /><br />The politics of birth in this country are all defined around Choice, and I doubt whether any other country talks about it in terms quite so stark. Certainly I’m the first to say that I know damn-well how the biology works. If my wife has a bun in the oven I’m fully culpable. It’s a “choice” I won’t live down or, I hope, outlive. But the metaphysics are complicated in a way the political debate never seems to capture. If the choice is between a world that contains a new agency, the baby, and one that does not, in which of those possible worlds does that agency itself have any say about its own existence? If the agent is never-to-be and I or my wife exercise any of the various options my Catholic forebearers would disdain, did baby’s agency decide not to be or did that agency simply never exist? If we do nothing but what biology dictates, did baby agency ascent, or is it possible for the agency to decide post-facto that it would rather not have been? To put it another way, is it so obvious that every baby that is born wanted to exist?<br /><br />What choice would my future son have made if I had explained the full circumstance to him- the depleted environment, over-population of the human species, the hegemony of private agri-business over food production, economic and social injustice, war, rape and famine, the A’s moving to San Jose? Would he say, ‘fuck that shit, I’m out’ and reabsorb into his mother’s blood stream? Or would he say this: “You’re barely 30 years old, Dad, and I know you think you’re a smart guy and you got it all figured out, but by the time I’m your age the entire game will have changed in ways you can’t predict now, no matter what statistical or historical analysis you invent. Don’t ask whether I should want to be a future agent, but ask what you, old man, are going to do to prepare the future for my agency, to make it possible for me to even make meaningful choices, whose possible outcomes outstrip your imagination at this moment when my mother is pregnant, the house I will come home to from the hospital is half-built, and you don’t even know whether you’ll have a job in the next six months.” Then baby would giggle at me and put my smart phone in his mouth and chew on it. Because babies, like wars, don’t give a fuck about you and your mental anguish- they’re coming whether you’re ready or not.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-14400194833221455622010-10-12T19:59:00.000-07:002010-10-12T20:00:32.453-07:00Let's Go Texasyeah, I said it. If I've got any horse in this race, it's Tejas all the way.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-2706975842082347202010-10-11T20:28:00.000-07:002010-10-11T20:31:55.683-07:00Am I Doing Something Profound Right Now?It's hard to say.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-44534260475950802942010-07-27T20:46:00.001-07:002010-07-27T20:55:17.353-07:00lyrics can be good"even though you're smarter than me<br />I'll write your autobiography<br /><br />I'm using all the words up<br />got my grammar at the five-and-dime<br />I'm looking all the words up<br />now I know the words are mine"<br /><br />(David Bryne- from "Wanted for Life", off <span style="font-style: italic;">Everything That Happens Will Happen Today</span>)<br /><br />The beat also kinda slaps on this one, to the point where you want to throw a hand up and sing along. This guy still kills me, Brain Eno too. Funky middle aged white men.<br /><br />Makin' me wanna' go back to writing songs.<br /><br />Here's a recent lyric:<br /><br />left alone<br />I would die<br />gladly I, would die<br /><br />stately home<br />you and I<br />lately lost, you and I<br /><br />left a note, left of hope<br />for you and I<br />lately I, wonder why<br /><br />left alone<br />I do cry<br />rest assured, I cry<br /><br />(lyrics can be good, but I'm not sure these are. Ask me to sing the tune though, if you see me)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-48403687680839320792010-05-06T18:40:00.000-07:002010-05-06T18:45:15.538-07:00Poetry DisconnectI'm sure everyone's got their version of this, but I'm starting to feel like my utter lack of production in the literary world is making me a de facto pariah there. Whether it's self-imposed or not, the fact that I'm neither reading my cohorts books or flooding them with manuscripts of my own leaves me feeling like I'm undeserving of their company or something. It's a weird feeling, and I think I'm stating it publicly to see if it's a real phenomenon or not.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-33889036229329946382010-05-01T21:44:00.001-07:002010-05-01T21:44:36.024-07:00Didn't Do Dhit TodayHappy May Day.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-57703476405862679982010-04-02T19:24:00.000-07:002010-04-02T19:41:41.478-07:00Exercise 1It will take a sound to start<br />saying this twice <br />it will take a sound start at<br />saying this<br /><br />rest<br /><br />starts a sound from<br />the back of the throat<br />mind how you start each<br />sound from the mind<br /><br />more <br /><br />to blend sound minds<br />without one<br />who minds this sound<br />of mine<br /><br />move <br /><br />make room in the mind<br />feel like I’m<br />making field minds<br />of felt mice<br /><br />less<br /><br />more A’s in Oakland<br />less in its suburbs<br />a stay in Oakland is<br />a lesson blurred<br /><br />resist<br /><br />sense a talk with<br />meritocracy furrowed brow<br />from whence a tall<br />ferret breeds.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-44966521028696040322010-03-16T20:32:00.001-07:002010-03-16T20:34:12.443-07:00I Can't Hack It In the Digital WorldI think I'm getting old 'yal. I canceled my Facebook account tonight. I haven't hit up the old blog in a month. I was reading a book the other day. The pages were soft and they didn't hurt my eyes. I can't hack it in the digital world.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-39830342162992260442010-02-04T17:43:00.000-08:002010-02-04T17:52:33.333-08:00An example of 1:1 relation of text:musicThanks to John Sakkis for pointing readers to <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/readings/issues/issue5/michail_demosthenes">this project</a> from Demosthenes Agrafiotis and Michail Palaiologou<span style="font-weight: bold;">. </span>Apparently Morse Code served as part of the basis and compositional method. Would like to know more, but certainly seems to avoid any of the pedantry you might expect from close coupling of a semantically arbitrary aspect of language like alphabetic characters to musical values. Equally impressive that so much drama comes from a score that seems, on first listen anyways, to rely exclusively on one note, in octaves, between two strings.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-70759893942574611542010-01-19T15:06:00.000-08:002010-01-19T15:07:35.718-08:00Raj-A!Billy Beane narrowly avoided me coming to his house and kicking his fucking ass <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/01/19/sports/s111359S76.DTL">today.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-49854325922213270902010-01-17T14:22:00.000-08:002010-01-17T14:23:39.387-08:00to be an aging rockstarYou start out playing shitty club gigs and you get high because you want to feel good after being stuck in the back seat of a packed van, and you are a little nervous and you want to feel as bad ass as your stage act says you're supposed to be. And you know it's a persona but the only fun you have is believing the persona for a few hours, and the combination of all these things makes you an addict by the time anyone gives fuck who you are. But the wife or the money or the management figures out how to clean you up before you die and just in time to lock in some earnings from your one chart hit and book you on Letterman once in a while and you show up and your rider requests a sober wet bar and you're standing there under halogen lights talking to their handler and knowing you're supposed to pretend that you're the persona and that the persona thinks all this is really cool and the persona likes a sober wet bar in an undecorated green room under halogen lights, and if you happen to have a brain after all of the years on the road this has to be fucking hell.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-76315435653783280462009-12-31T18:25:00.001-08:002009-12-31T18:26:20.577-08:00Happy 20-teensAmongst other momentous things, 2009 became the year in which I would write something like a year-encapsulating letter/blog post. The only thing that can follow that up next year would be a family newsletter. What can you do. Really, what can you do when to resist when you live in a culture that co-opts all resistance, besides buy in unabashedly. Buy a house. Get married. Get a dog. Guilty, guilty and, sooner rather than later, guilty again. I could of course point towards irony and say, "but I at least <span style="font-style: italic;">know</span> what I'm doing". What good is that? The year-encapsulating blog post will flow from your fingers like the 16-digit credit card number flows through the Amazon's secure server. There is no swimming against this tide.<br /><br />Money dominated nearly every conversation this year, most noticeably those conversations in which it was conspicuously avoided. After years of fooling the toiling classes with dreams of jumping class by way of inflated home values, the market popped the bubble and ran off with every cent of capital said toiling class pumped into it. Now, we're supposed to be ashamed of losing everything in the first place (but not for the legitimate reason of being fooled, but for the blunt fact of wanting to believe we could climb in the first place), and thankful for whatever we can hang on to, most often mere subsistence. The latter part is supposed to be the moral of this year's story- be thankful for what you have. Fuck that. The moral of this year is be disgusted at what you hear out and enraged <a href="http://wwwwsonneteighteencom.blogspot.com/">at what you see</a>.<br /><br />But of course I am thankful for what I have- I have a new house (built by idiots in 1920, remodeled by morons in 1950- currently under a strict re-education regime by a neanderthal), a new wife (built by geniuses in 1981, no need for remodeling), and a full time job. Like any poet, if I give thanks for my job, it has to be with irony. But like any American poet, I'm used to that irony being read over or ignored. What can you do to resist when you live in a culture that co-opts all resistance, but sign a mortgage and go Christmas shopping. Except I love Christmas, without irony. Merry Christmas, especially if you're not Christian or of any European cultural extraction and hate this holiday- I hope you had the merriest one imaginable, because participating in the absurd is the only gift America has for the world.<br /><br />Oh, yeah, that and drone bombs- but what can you do to resist when you live in a culture that co-opts all resistance. Look at that genius we have in the White House. He was part of the resistance, if you recall, a pinko community organizer. Now he's drone-bombing Afghani (and Pakistani) villas, looking to make ghosts of the phantoms of faulty intelligence. This will continue, just as it was going to continue regardless of who got into his position a year ago. All those weeks of agonizing about a troop surge was agony over the numbers 20,000 or 30,000. All the options are bad. That's about the best we can say in our defense. Take a country that's been at war for the past 30 years, almost without rest, and ask that will happen if you pull the latest round of occupiers from the West or North. Civil war of course. Not really better or worse, just different war. That's what we voted in last year. Change=Different War. Different how, I don't know. War with feelings. War with reluctance. Heroic reluctance even. Just look at the Nobel speech, if you're able- I for one couldn't stomach listening to it, just like I avoided eight years of ever listening to Bush II. I still like the guy though, and would probably enjoy a drink with him if given the opportunity. I just wish he would give up on a second term and thus gain half a chance at actually leading us somewhere. Call bullshit on the entire Congress and their nonsensical health care economics arguments ("Keep your governments hands of my Medicare!"). Bring us some bankers' heads on a plate. I have to say, after a decade of three of the worst catastrophes to ever visit the American populace- 9/11, Katrina and the economic meltdown, the American people still don't have a single head on a plate. And since we've all forgotten who Khaled Sheikh Mohammed is, that little show trial won't hardly do the thing. How about Bin Laden, Bush II and Greenspan, apple firmly in mouth.<br /><br />But of course it wasn't Greenspan that did even the worst damage, it was Bubba's deregulation. And so it goes, the friends of the working man are the worst enemies he ever had. But what are you going to do to resist when you live in a culture that co-opts all resistance. You could write books. I keep threatening to do that. Lots of my friends did it this year: Sarah Trott, Stephanie Young, Linh Dinh Others are rumored forthcoming. I try to read them all, and as I try to do that, and read the ones by the people I don't even know and then some of the dead people I'll never know, it occurs to me that there's a lot of books, possibly (duck for stone throwing) too many. Not sure we should add any more. Ditto with albums. A friend said to me that the sixties must have been a great time to be alive and buying records, easily the greatest. I replied that maybe it was just the last time it was possible to digest all the records of a decade and savor the best. In this decade, you have no chance of finding all the best records, and thus the ratio of shit to shinola seems so much less savory. It will remain impossible to determine even the quantity of good music, let alone the essential character of that good music from this decade, because you couldn't even write software able to listen to all the shit we are putting out. Honestly, it seems cruel to even add anything to the pile for people to sort out. This is not an endorsement of Kenny Goldsmith's position on art and literature, this is a matter of manners.<br /><br />But what can you do to resist in a culture that co-opts all resistance. I recorded two records this year, one (The Gomorran's) which was released, the other which we are withholding until we (OUTHEAD) decide if we're still a band. I keep threatening with this book about music and text, the one which gave birth to this blog in the first place. We'll see what happens, but know, faithful reader, that a lack of blog posts on the subject does not equal a lack of thought. A scarcity for sure, but not a lack. When a dear family friend <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/arts/design/28halprin.html">Lawrence Halperin died</a> a month ago, I was taken aback by how frightening I found his life's output. Even in 93 years, two national monuments (U.S. and Israel), a national park and countless state and city parks is a little frightening. I got to work on two of those parks- I can point to the parts I played in these creations, but I have little to point to of my own creation. And these are like two poles for me this year- to create, in the intellectual sense, or to do. To keep your hands clean or to labor away with them without a moment to look up.<br /><br />But I did turn this:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfiiyR-GMsf-Dc7LJbdT9cjoX8RHGbyM1jbY6YT7F_kC4b7sfAuuFsow34IdA06Iwbet-PzmYTH1il6mowJl97GgQPgllUPvf7L0tzj8UAjf-wAfmBkCWkOLDzYdKOB_M_9cao75gRI_k/s1600-h/Back_Garden_3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfiiyR-GMsf-Dc7LJbdT9cjoX8RHGbyM1jbY6YT7F_kC4b7sfAuuFsow34IdA06Iwbet-PzmYTH1il6mowJl97GgQPgllUPvf7L0tzj8UAjf-wAfmBkCWkOLDzYdKOB_M_9cao75gRI_k/s320/Back_Garden_3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421588764828526802" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Into this:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYbXJEYSuwwKvOhokpb-2otWKgAf591No_wneTatLJ3iW-MD00Ac9-7Do6thoF-t_giLUU9YH418Z3AW2zqlJdi3WPUEToHP5ukGZfJvlhsCDvR10zV447fMccjmHrc8JS2ce-0g1LI8c/s1600-h/Backyard_002.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYbXJEYSuwwKvOhokpb-2otWKgAf591No_wneTatLJ3iW-MD00Ac9-7Do6thoF-t_giLUU9YH418Z3AW2zqlJdi3WPUEToHP5ukGZfJvlhsCDvR10zV447fMccjmHrc8JS2ce-0g1LI8c/s320/Backyard_002.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421588882039470898" border="0" /></a><br /><br />And that's something. Many thanks to my wife and family and friends and co-workers who helped. And many thanks to you, gentle reader, for trekking through the ideational continent all year. I shall try to keep it populated in the new decade with ideas worth wading through.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-90679752093125105052009-12-17T19:56:00.001-08:002009-12-17T19:58:31.793-08:00drunk + whatever's going on= awesomeTwo new cocktails from the creative department at Belbrook estates:<br /><br />The Toddler (aka The Kids Table):<br /><br />2 parts sparkling apple juice<br />1 part whiskey<br /><br />The Baron Maker:<br />1 part Barenjager (traditionally barenfang, a honely liquer)<br />1 part Maker's Mark bourbon<br />splash of soda<br />lemon twist<br /><br />happy hollowdays!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-77407552482195562642009-12-17T19:52:00.001-08:002009-12-17T19:53:47.410-08:00Solidarity?In my lifetime, only thing SF has done for its larger, sunnier <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/17/BA521B5T0T.DTL&tsp=1">neighbor</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-22353940086057397582009-08-30T18:12:00.001-07:002009-08-30T18:45:21.210-07:00The Return of Rock-Rap?Boots Riley, local hero, and Tom Morello are co-fronting The Street Sweepers Social Club, a well-rehearsed, if slightly pedestrian iteration of the venerable genre. Born when Aerosmith capitalized on Run-DMC's 1986 cover of "Walk This Way", originally recorded in 1975. The musical innovation was due entirely to Jam Master Jay, who snipped a beat from the prosaic drum and gitar line of 'Smiths, over which Run and DMC laced some <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HfAIJl7Fdk">seriously dirty lyrics</a>. Aerosmith's sole innovation was to notice that younger fans might start paying attention to them if they appeared in Run-DMC's video. This formalized a relationship that was already in play between DJ's and their MC's and the late-70's rock cannon, much of which was perfectly succinct and overly-produced for sampling.<br /><br />So why, in 2009, is the genre appearing again. The last significant airing it got was 2002's Bad Boy for Life, a mediocre P. Diddy joint with Dave Navarro as window dressing. The only interest in the track was the video that blithely portrayed P. Diddy as the talk of a suburban community, commenting no doubt on Rap-Rock, and consequnetly hip-hop's utter and complete domination of suburban youth culture for almost a decade. Before that, there was the soundtrack to 1993's Judegment Night, which featured some inspired and some insipid collaborations (Helmet and House of Pain on the track 'Just Another Victim' stands out in memory). To be completely discounted in this analysis is any further mention of rapcore or nu-metal, which are utterly appropriative subgenres. The necessary formula, MC+established rock artist must be adhered to.<br /><br />The question is- why again in 2009. Let's look at the years in question to find a pattern: 1986. Height of Reagan Era insanity, unprecedented disparity between urban and rural poor and suburban rich incomes. 1993. Beginning of Clinton-era chickanery, first obvious signs that health care reform was going to be railroaded out of town, as well as the pulling off of the mask of Bubba's administration. 2002. The massive wave of jingo-oistic populism begins to give way to questions like: "Anybody heard from Bin Laden lately?" "Why are we supposed to go out and buy new cars to fuel our addiction to Middle Eastern oil imports?". 2009. AKA "the shortest honeymoon ever".<br /><br />Disillusionment. Necessary irony. Somehow the genre of Rock-Rap serves these important purposes. I don't know: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/outsidelands#play/uploads/3/XbbQINgmohQ">you be the judge</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-50489611385286347102009-08-30T18:02:00.000-07:002009-08-30T18:12:05.914-07:00... you're in the woods(Chris) you're in the woods...... It's getting plaid out..... You're wearing your father's golfing pants (the ones with the ancient featherie in the right pocket).... Strange sounds follow your steps something like humphff a mphmphmphmphfgery oasdioaof latmpmdpamdpasde caaspidofasdpitjasdfasdfalist coasdoijiojaosdfrpse stealajsdofiasdnoeing.... you're feeling peckish..... you wish you had some Yoohoo! and some Big League Chew to keep you occupied while you watch your legs decompose.... shhhhh- do you smell something?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-951335181413081122009-08-24T10:52:00.000-07:002009-08-24T12:19:30.829-07:00Oakland/DetroitShall I be the first to blog about the Oakland-Detroit series and the Bill Luoma baseball-writing workshop on Saturday? A brief scan of relevant blogs tells me I shall. First, a thing that occurs to me (the anthem of the ideational continent).<br /><br />When you get obsessed with place-based poetry, something I was calling topoetics for a minute, the appearance of a place-name in the title of a poem or a collection becomes gilded in salience. Maybe so with any research project, that things possibly relevant to your query shimmer a little. Baseball games are all place-names, and when they are your place, they all shimmer. Another reason why a move to Fremont or San Jose for the A's would just kill me. It doesn't even matter if we hit like little leaguers half of the time. We's still <span style="font-style: italic;">our</span> little leaguers.<br /><br />But I bet you thought I was going to go on and say how every game is a poem, or how poetic the sport itself is. I think the Berrigan-Schiff book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Yo-Yo's With Money</span>, that Bill put up on <a href="http://oakdish.blogspot.com/">oakdish</a> has it right: every baseball game is a potentially poetic conversation, while only some baseball games are themselves poetic (some are so bad, even heckling is beyond their due). Friday's game was like the latter, while Saturday's was mostly the former until the very last play, when Kennedy (possibly on 3rd base-coach Mike Gallego's advice) took off from second on a Suzuki line drive and never looked back until a mercenary slide took out Alexis Avilla at the plate. That was a for a 3-2 win, in a game where Oakland stranded more than 7 batters, four of them left at third plate. That's great baseball, and that's terrible baseball. But at this point in a three-season slump, I'm not sure how to even relate to great baseball. Sunday's game was a romp (9-4 Oakland, with two homers from Cust), but I wasn't even listening to the radio, as we had a party to celebrate our completed backyard (completed is a word I rarely get to use in conjunction with any project I'm involved, so it was worth a party).<br /><br />There was great baseball conversation, which I'm afraid may have ruined the workshop for those who thought it was going to be quiet and observant or in any way scholarly or even much about writing. Gender roles at a baseball game are so easy to walk into, you can go a half-season or more without realizing you're acting like a Neanderthal. Maybe Alli or Samantha want to weigh in at some point on how the boys were behaving. The 1970's trivia was getting entirely too deep for me as well, between Douglas, Bill and Joshua (all of whom know admirably too much about baseball in general). I think if Walter Lew were there, this kind of inside-of-the-insider chatter could have elevated to the level of poetry, as he often remarks about the on-line fan boards of his Oriole's: there is a completely unique prosody that is waiting to be tapped for writing in the quieter dialogue of the analytic fan. On a cue from Bill's sheet of prompts, I had my head more in the macro-fan level of things shouted at the field or across the stands, which are really two completely different phenomenon. In the macro-world of baseball, every play is a complete and total surprise, a constant dumb-founding followed by occasional serendipity. In the micro-world of analysis, there are forms of strategy, in play for decades or even a century, which are being executed either brilliantly or badly, and appreciation of these events unfolding is closer to appreciation of gymnastics than a cock-fight. I was in a cock-fighting mood, part of the reason why I still have no vocal chords to speak of on Monday morning (which, thanks to the dysfunction of the construction project I'm on, is a surprise day off!):<br /><blockquote><br />we shout "Let's Go ______ "<br />we fill it in "Oooak-land." "Hairston." "Aaa-dam(Kenndey)."<br />or even "Ack-Mack"<br /><br />we shout "come on, Blue!"<br />"Buuuullll-shiiiii(t). Buuuullll-shiiiii(t)."<br /><br />we chant "M-A. M-A-R. M-A-R-K, Ellis!" (repeat).<br /><br />digital cues interrupt us, instruct us in rhythms to ape, sentiments to embody.</blockquote><br /><br />At this volume, there is no room for dissent, subtlety or any recognition of the fact that your boys may not be entirely virtuous, or even talented. Though lately, in losing games, chants of "Geren sucks!" have echoed from the Left Field Bleachers. And then there is the dispute over the wave in the bleachers, with most of the season-ticket holders claiming it's imminent bad luck. How to have these disputes with drunken body language and shouting across rows of seats is a problem of comedy more than poetry. Attempts at macro-poetry were tried.<br /><br />-I told Bill to send one of his baseball short poems via text message to the Gobotron (rejected from publication, no doubt by Verizon VP's of marketing).<br />- Douglas shouting to Leyland during batting practice: "Hey Leyland, I love what you did with Pittsburgh" (Leyland was not amused).<br />- There were covert across-the-park signaling attempts, first by Douglas, then by Buuck. They produced no runs.<br />- I think I made a "your mother" reference in the general direction of Raeburn (or was it Granderson?). I'm sure whoever it was heard me.<br />- Chevron sponsored the "Remembering Woodstock" fireworks extravaganza afterwards. Sometimes the fruit is hanging so low, it hurts your back to pick it.<br /><br />I did not have the patience to do the score cards, with or without animal pseudonyms recommended by the syllabus, but then I never have. I should instead sharpen my memory to where I don't need to cards to recall a game. I think I would become an alcoholic in the process. Though on the wagon Saturday, I think I drank 8 oz of straight JD on Friday. The problem with bootlegging into a ballgame is you can't employ mixers (my wife tried that once and got caught- on my birthday!). I forgot any kind of sweater and it did get a little chilly down on the field, but then there was the exhilaration of walking on the bluegrass and seeing the crowds who remained in their seats. I'm like Charles Legere, who once commented to me that even after his thirtieth birthday, he still has fantasies of becoming a walk-on ringer at spring camps and pitching a major league game. I think the longer you can suspend idiocy like that, the greater your fidelity to the game:<br /><br />i don't know what I need emotions for<br />when i've got statistics<br />the newspaper gives a .438 chance<br />i'm all in<br />for an irrational win!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-86008466594735267802009-07-17T06:57:00.000-07:002009-07-17T06:59:19.279-07:00This made me and the wife almost cry for laughing the other night,<br /><br />K-Mart now offers <a href="http://www.kmart.com/shc/s/dap_10151_10101_DAP_Kmart%20Layaway">layaway</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-19108588234229256422009-06-01T10:15:00.001-07:002009-06-01T10:15:58.782-07:00this almost made me cryand I wasn't even a very good <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/31/ING317S025.DTL&type=jobs">journalist</a> when I was one.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-61578783182832335262009-06-01T10:09:00.000-07:002009-06-01T10:15:13.869-07:00Poet's Basketball HighlightsPlaying one-on-one with a complete stranger before our game got underway- and winning (he wasn't great)<br /><br />12-year-old visiting ringer James to John Sakkis: "John, just stand under the basket!"<br /><br />Not-even-12-year-old visiting ringer Tikada's two three-pointers.<br /><br />Sakkis challenging the commissioner in abstentia (Horton, via video recording) to make a ruling on Dan Fisher's late-season walk-on.<br /><br />Fisher showing up in a Toronto basketball jersey (... the fuck?)<br /><br />Drinks with Stephanie, Clive, Charles Legere and Cori afterwards.<br /><br />Winning: 51-47.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3194093234479922913.post-42544188315243207492009-05-03T14:03:00.000-07:002009-05-03T14:11:44.914-07:00Chronic Illness in the Music IndustryMaestro <a href="http://www.peckthetowncrier.com/">Chris Peck</a> and his merry band have driven another nail into the coffin of the Music Industry: <a href="http://thecrymuscles.com/">The Crymuscles </a>dropped their new record fo' free. You should go pay free-ninety-free and <a href="http://lechronique.net/download.html">download that shit</a>.<br /><br />The record imagines California through some French chicks scooter ride through Brazil. Or something like that. It's deathly ill, monsieur.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0