JUNE 24, 2007

IF IT WERE NOT FOR BAD LUCK

All the page code has been cleaned up and the hyperlinks restored after last week's snafu. The responsible parties have been identified and suitably punished in the Island-Life Official Oublette of Manacles and Wasps. The screams have been deleted for sake of propriety.

OUR HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BLOCK

Island-Life bids adieu to Kathleen as she departs the House after 15 years in search of decent apartment maintenance and a change of life. She will remain on the Island however.

DIEHARD BLUES?!

Just over the wire we have news that local fave, Ron Thompson will be teaming up with some unusual Big Marquee Names this summer, starting with a rocking gig in Las Vegas with that well known Blues Rocker . . . Bruce Willis!

What?

You heard that right. Ron is hooking up with Mr. Sin City Pulp Fiction himself at the Tachi Palace Hotel for a two night run. Should be interesting, to say the least.

After that, our Ron next hooks up with The Boy From Stockton, Chris Isaak for a six city tour of the West Coast.
Details about these and other gigs, such as his local show with Johnny Rawls, can be peeped at www.rtblues.com.

We picked up a copy of Ron's solo CD, "Resonator" which earns a full five porkpie hat stars for its truthfulness to the Old School.

In other news, John Butler played tonight, fronted by Kaki King, a female guitarist who is so good you think "Wow!" even before marketing makes you want to have sex with her (image). See with your ears, people, and then you will know who is really Good.

Hot Tuna blows into town on the 29th with a gig beneath the purple chandeliers at the Fillmore. Hopefully the rising religiosity gets stowed under a hat for this one.

Jonny Lang, most definitely in the profane school of the blues, will rock the house June 30th. You like the Blues? You will like Jonny.

Page McConnell is not a Name in the Big Marquee sense, but he is a spin-off from Phish, for whom he laid down many righteous bass lines, and has some tasty tracks for you and yours to enjoy on July 10th, also at the venerable Fillmore.

At the Warfield, Les Claypool conducts the Fancy Tour on June 29th to your insane edification and irrational delight.

We hear over the wire that Dave Grohl is mopping it up right now. You go guy. No more Virginia Jobs for us!

GOODBY MR. PEEPERS

Well, at least goodbye Mr. Sonneman, principal of Encinal High and an Island administrator of others on the Island for 21 years, added to his stint as a teacher making his resume end with 37 years of smelling chalkdust. To Island-Life, Bill Sonneman seemed the epitome of the Quiet Man, he who calmly and lifelong made the positive big difference to thousands, without fuss and without self-endorsement.

We remember well his baptism of fire when, shortly after he took the helm of the then troubled Encinal High, the school leapt into national news over the installation of a restored A4 Navy Jetfighter on the front lawn when opponents objected over what they percieved as a military symbol.

Reasonable heads prevailed as Sonneman indicated that the athletic teams were all called The Jets, and held the old plane more as a lovable mascot than any expression of violent military truculence.

Encinal had long held the reputation -- among certain snobs -- of being the Island's "blue collar school" on the West End (as opposed to the "better" Alameda High, located symbolically crosstown), but Sonneman turned that image around to make the place a stellar leader in test scores. No one now seriously compares the two schools in any qualitative manner.

In true retiree spirit, the 61 year Mr. Sonneman will first visit Hawaii.

ON THE WATERFRONT

Islanders please be notified that Council meetings are in session to discuss what will become of the formerly industrial area bounded by Sherman, Buena Vista, and Grand, fronting the estuary with some 110 acres of suddenly prime real estate. At present, parts of the old Belt Line railway and the old brick delMonte Cannery occupy most of the site along with a fair amount of weeds. Ship repair facilities and a few other minor warehouses occupy the area, but the 235,000 square-foot cannery is the ruby in the prize sought by a few developers here.

A court fight released the section from some Measure A restrictions, so a live-work facility in keeping with the industrial nature of the place is a possibility endorsed by councilmember Frank Matarrese.

IMPEACH GONZALES

The movement to oust our out-of-line Attorney General is growing. A Major independent group has established a fund to excise this cancer from our Body Politic. Seems Gonzales is just another failure in the long list foisted upon America.

Go to http://www.commoncause.org for more information.

THIS ISLAND LIFE

Its been a quiet week on the Island, our hometown. Various things come to mind. Summertime. The Island. Gonzales. Blues. Lake Woebegon. Dahlias. Development.

What is one to make of this melange?

One goes to the Pampered Pup to scope the news is what one does by day. By night, one attends to the Old Same Place. Eulalia still serves up dogs and buns with relish behind the counter in that diner parked a storefront down from the Old News Stand. The Old News Stand has been there at least since 1945, when even Islanders started paying serious attention to the News. No one knows how long it had stood there as a freestanding shack before that. Maybe some relative of Don Peralta set the thing there way back when the Island boasted no more than four streets connecting the hamlet of Woodstock to Brooklyn across the water, and the East End consisted largely of wind twisted oak trees.

A paper cost a nickel on Sunday back in 1945, and the Islanders all gathered around that shack first thing in the morning to track the progress in what they called the European Theatre and then the Pacific when General Patton was done with the Germans.

Lately the news is not so optimistic and the war is a far cry from that earlier one when it was easy to tell the Good Guys from the Bad Guys.

But the first dahlia has bloomed from the burgeoning bush. The last freesias are reluctantly wilting in the shade, and the fava beans hang in long strands, drying on the racks. Hummingbirds have been inspecting the progress of the hydrangeas that had been cut back last fall. All the schools have commenced their final graduates and it is safe to drive past Woodstock Middle School around three pm again without fear of hooligans and little monsters rushing into the roadway. This is not exactly news, but its true all the same.

Harlan is still putting out his signs on Lincoln Street. Last one said, NO GIRLFRIEND HERE, and for once, we believe him.

Harlan, as long time readers will know, is the madman of Lincoln and Lafayette who puts up cryptic signs on the side of his house every day. No one has ever figured out just what Harlan is trying to say, but that's okay. He is an Islander through and through.

Down at the Pampered Pup David Sanchez is trying to gather up a crew to raise a house on Santa Clara. Because of the City Ordinance forbidding new construction with special attention to height limits, Islanders have figured out an ingenious way around the rules. instead of building on a story on top of a house, they will jack up the place above the foundations, claiming "earthquake retrofitting", and add the new story underneath. Neat trick when you can get away with it.

But getting a crew together can be the greatest challenge, for everybody needs work, and no one will deny they possess the skills. Many are the houses which, upon completion lacked a few essentials, such as a stairway to the newly elevated front door. Or toilets which possessed plumbing that went all the way to the City system. This can be disconcerting for anyone living on the new ground level.

The language barrier also can be a problem on the job around here, but David has no issues with that, for he can curse fluently in several dialects of Spanish and Chinese.

A good phrase we learned recently after a bathroom job went awry is "El estante es al reves montado." The shelf is installed upside down.

We have an important addition to the currently debated and debatable "Immigration Bill" set before Congress. All new immigrants to this country must pay for and take a class on basic carpentry to obtain a green card.
And electrical work. That would be good too. Does not matter if the man or woman is a physician or a physicist, basic carpentry should be required.

In fact, we think ALL Americans should take a class in carpentry. Give us all something in common at least.
There is nothing like making something with wood to give a sense of solidity and a place in the universe.

Chicago was a fine place inhabited by genteel folk, but it is great to be back home amidst the linguistic babble of the Bay Area. Brad Pitt didn't need to visit Morocco to get lost in language. And there are plenty of kids right here in Oaktown who would be happy to accidentally shoot his wife, just like in the movie.

The Bay Area is a whirling medley of languages and peoples from all over the world and right here on this Island we have not less than thirty churches, Islamic mosques and Synagogues all cheek by jowel with one another. We even have The Home of Truth down on Grand Street with its own delightful Minister of Faith. If you don't believe, just go over there and see for yourself.

Down at the Old Same Place, Suzie ministers to a different sort of Faithful. Between drinks and dishware, she attends to her anthropology book while the mating rituals of Summer on the Island play out all around her. Eugene is there, and Bear with his Sophie. He is dressed, as usual, in a t-shirt occasionally used as a rag, pants treated the same, mismatched blue and red sneakers and formerly white socks. Various living creatures may be living in his beard. Sophie is neatly dress in a man's white shirt, slacks and loafers. Percy drops by for a quick Manhattan, dressed as usual in beige plus fours, spats, cream trowsers, waistcoat, gold watch fob and dress coat to match the upholstery in his immaculate 1929 Mandeville-Brot coupe with full running boards. His companion, Lydia, wears a red feather boa and strappy shoes. She remains a member of the Berkeley Explicit Players, but people are used to her around here. And for a naked person, she is not bad looking, which is maybe how she and Percy hooked up. She does add much to the upholstery.

Officer O'Madhauen cruises by, noting the cars which have been parked in the neighborhood of the bar for longer than one hour. There will be no accidents due to DUI on his watch if he can help it. No sir.

It is life on the Island in the Bay Area on a quiet night at the end of the weekend. And in the Old Same Place Suzie opens her book. "The Bonobo are characterized by a great joy in life and companionship between one another . . .". And Suzie sighs. Its a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but in the Old Same Place sits one bartender still pondering life's persistent questions.

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

JUNE 17, 2007

NO BULLETS MAN

June 12, 2004 - Naked Bike Ride San Francisco. This item is from Chad on the Island.

Photos from the World Naked Bike Ride San Francisco. The clothing optional event, one of several held around the world, was a protest of oil dependency, the war that this dependency leads to, and a celebration of the human body.

The ride started at Justin Herman plaza, went down Market street, rolled past City Hall, then went on to the Castro, and finally ended up in Golden Gate park after riding through the Haight.

MUSIC DO I HEAR?

The summer season heats up with the following items of note appearing in and around Babylon.

At the Greek Theatre, we have the Goo Goo Dolls with Lifehouse on the 22nd, followed by Alison Krauss and her inimitable banjo band on the 30th. The Rodrigo y Gabriela show sold out for the 28th at the Fillmore, understandably so, within a week of the unscheduled announcement.

Skinny Puppy returns from the dead with industrial noise aplenty to welcome Summer on the 21st. The considerably smoother Australian band John Butler Trio follows up for two nights 6/23-6/24 with the phenomenal Kaki King opening, one opener you do not want to miss for all the virtuosity of this amazing artist on the acoustic fretboard. Expect soundboard tapping aplenty.

Hot Tuna slide into town for the 29th -- Jorma has a new CD out, so expect some covers from that one. And Jonny Lang closes out the month with John McLaughlin for a bluesy seque into July.

Les Claypool sails on seas of cheese into the Warfield with his bass-heavy attack on the 29th, for those fans of the wierd and wonderful. On a jazzy note, Ani diFranco, the pint-sized powerhouse, will rock the house on the 14th of July in that same venue.

Just missed due to illness: the Russian River Jazz fest with Buddy Guy and Roy Rogers and E. Bishop. So much Blues, so little time. We sent up a contingent to report, but seems the good times and the tequila have resulted in delayed transmissions back to the news desk.

SWEET HOME CHICAGO

It was only a matter of time before we paid tribute to the City that launched a thousand hips. Took in part of the annual Chicago Blues Festival down in Grant Park this past weekend.

Beginning in May, the Mayor hosts a series of free open air events in the parks that border Lake Michigan, including the Blues Festival, which draws the old timers from all over the place back to the Source. This year, the main event heralded the 92nd birthday celebration of Howling Wolf, with family members and former bandmates all congregating for a shoutfest at the Petrillo Bandshell.

After a dubious period of weather shenanigans, the skies opened up to sunny, pleasant weather, albeit more humid than Californians are used to.

Island-Life staffers got pinned down by Severe Weather in Wisconsin as that state suffered seven tornados, upping its century-held record of one by as many times a twister touched down to make people miserable, which had us rolling into town late Saturday for the Festival.

We did manage to catch Cephas and Wiggins out at the Front Porch Stage, Little Howlin' Wolf, and the festival closeout jam with James Cotton with Hubert Sumlin at the Bandshell, followed by the raunchy roadshow of Bobby Rush, to whom Blues means nothing other than Sex, Sex and more Sex. That guy did more hip gyrations than Elvis Presley on Eveready batteries and his backup dancers could have supplied an entire city with electricity on their booty-shaking energy alone.

Cephas and Wiggins are probably the only surviving artists who still perform the Piedmont Blues style, a form that developed in the Appalachian mountains in response to local limitations. Each performer in the PB style must be prepared to supply the melodic line, comping, and basic rhythm for one never knew if all band members would be available to play. In addition, the mountain districts featured few piano instruments, or players who could use them, so the guitarists developed a style that attempted to duplicate the popular two-handed sound of the roaring-twenties barrelhouse. The result is a complicated thumb-roll combination with finger-picked melody lines that distinguishes itself from the spare Delta arrangements most people are accustomed to hearing. The Carter family picked up on this style most notably and employed it heavily in their country arrangements.

Little Howlin' Wolf stepped on stage in 1947 and has not stopped performing since that time. He, alone, has earned the fairly honorable sobriquet referencing the grand master by marrying into the family and carrying on the tradition. He is a reminder that the Blues is more than just an artform genre, but a warm, human, family and friend oriented community that is all about experience and real life. You can't just make a big noise and make musical pyrotechnics to get into the Blues. You don't choose the Blues, the Blues choose you. Anyone else calling themselves "Little Howlin' Wolf" had better check their credentials at the door.

Jessie Sanders (Little Howlin Wolf) was born and raised in Florence, MS, along Highway 49. He lived in Chicago most of his life, during which time he spent many hours in blues clubs and on the road with the late great Howlin' Wolf. Jessie first took to the stage with Howlin' Wolf in 1950. Wolf took Jessie under his wing and it wasn't uncommon for him to be heard referring to Jessie as his "son". Out of respect and admiration for his long time friend and mentor Jessie began performing as "Lil Howlin Wolf".

He performed on weekends with Blues greats such as Howlin Wolf, Jimmy Reed, Hound Dog Taylor, Albert King, Magic Sam, Freddie King, and Little Junior Parker. They did shows at Silvio's Lounge on Chicago's west side. During a visit home in 1947 while at WDIA in Memphis he met BB King and Bobby Blue Bland while they were there doing a radio spot. A decade later he would share the bill with not only BB King and Bobby Blue Bland but also the likes of Little Milton, Chuck Berry, Bobby Taylor, and Jimmy Reed. He's also shared the stage with (sat in with) legendary greats, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, and Millie Jackson.

The Festival ended after dark at the Petrillo Bandshell in Grant Park. A limited number of seats were available, but the vast majority of folks gathered on the grass to listen to the music and watch on the big projection screen set up at the fence.

In the true style of the City, the ensemble gathered for an old time Chicago blues jam featuring James Cotton and Hubert Sumlin on stage with Eddie Shaw, Jody Williams (vocals) and Willie Smith doing amped up versions of Howling Wolf tunes with members of the "Wolf's" family attending at stage left bleacher seats.

James Cotton just seems to increase in size everytime we see him. The man looks immense from any sort of distance, but that may be a function of reputation. Hubert Sumlin, lead guitarist for the original Howling Wolf, just keeps on playing as if he has made some pact with Another Power never to age.

Together the two tore it up for 90 minutes, getting a sizeable throng dancing in the side aisles.

Bobby Rush closed out the evening with a rollicking risque show evoking James Brown with a healthy dollop of high energy raunch and roll. When those backup dancers started shaking their booties, one after another, Bobby acted like a little kid, delightfully non-PC, as he spoke to the crowd. "Guys! Will you look at that! I know your wife doesn't want you to look, but . . . look at that!"

In the spirit of the Festival, the Blue Cross building that sits on the edge of the park lit up selected floors for the show.

GOT THE KEY TO THE HIGHWAY

Chicago turned out to be a fairly pleasant experience, with the people there unfailingly polite to an extent from which we here in the Bay Area could learn a great deal. With ten times the population density and surface area, the folks of Chicagoland consistently demonstrated fine manners, from the lowest streetperson begging for change to the most urbane of officeworker.

Still, after the humidity, we were glad to be breathing dry air again. One would think that with the fogs roiling over the coastal range that this place would be just as moist, but the prevailing winds coming down over the dry hills keep the air down to the 10% level.

Sure enough everybody came down with the summer flu on return, causing us to miss out on the Russian River Blues Festival with Buddy Guy and Roy Rogers. Bummer.

Must have been hot here, as all the spinach in the garden got toasted. Aint no cure for the summertime blues.

But summertime is not the time for despair, not even in Minnesotta. We had some walleye on our visit up there during the tornados. It's fine, very fine indeed, and we acknowlege the healthfull sedative traits of the toothsome pike, but we must remain jingoistically in favor of our own brookies.

The rainbow trout is quite possibly the most beautiful fish in the world as it leaps with a scattering of diamond sundrops after the strike. In California, we hike the banks of the Lost Coast, quaking aspens shaking their hands in the breeze under summer dappled skies, while the trout move slowly in the deep eddies, fins barely moving. So it has been for at least one thousand years. Summer time is the dreamtime of Notime and Alltime. That is why baseball flowers in summer, for in baseball, there is no Time.

Summertime is the season for planting and growing. It's the time of hot sizzles and BBQ grills, pale beer bottles stuffed with lime wedges, and sandals worn to business meetings. In Chicagoland, it was the time of the 17 year locust, fat buzzing bodies cluttering out of nowhere to fill the trees with astonishing hums, like every oak and maple have turned into power transformers. And the time of Lakeside festivals, with everyone coming down to the shores of the great inland sea of Michigan to enjoy the breezes.

Here on the Island, we don't have locusts, but we do have groundsquirrels and summertime is the time of groundsquirrel joy.

The salmon have finished their run, but May initializes the Season of the Trout. Due to the low snowpack, all the streams are down, but that means the trout are clustered together in those eddies, engaged in troutish confab together. Perhaps next winter the snowpack will return. Maybe the Democrats will learn some sense. The bushy dahlias appear to be making things down there in the garden and the cut hydrangeas have all come roaring back.

And maybe, just maybe, the Cubs will make it to the Series this year. Hope springs eternal in summertime.

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

JUNE 3, 2007

THEN CAME THE LAST DAYS OF MAY

Look upon the Sign that speaks unto you and weep, for the time of the Beast is upon us.

Well may you wonder how such things have come to pass. From correspondent, Chad, we have this image of the Editor in Thief on Earth Day, demonstrating his sincere committment to replenishing the earth's resources.

Of course, you can just sit back, watch your TV, and pay attention to the advertising like good little boys and girls.

THE GARDENER, PART II

We have this hyperlink forwarded by a considerate Islander, which connects to a blog that features a weekly garden photo from the Island and all sorts of ways to get things growing in harsh sandy soil with poor light, which pretty much describes the Island garden situation fairly well.

www.alamedagardens.blogspot.com

Claire managed to reveal to us the name of the mystery plant growing out by the trashcans behind the IslandLife offices. It is called "Four O'clock" by its common name, and Mirabilis Jalapa (Peru Wonder) by the more technically inclined. It grows all over the place here, and some people even plant it, although if it finds its way by accident into your garden you had better learn to love its brilliant flowers, for it is nearly ineradicable.

The flowers on the Island are primarily crimson, but it can take any number of other hues, sometimes with three or four different colors on the same plant.

YOU MUST NOT HEED THE CALL-UP

This news item was reported here in September of 2005, however recent events have caused us to reprint the document associated with the refusal of Sharon Olds to read and speak as an invitee of the White House in the Capitol.

Here is an open letter from the poet Sharon Olds to Laura Bush declining the invitation to read & speak at the Natl Book Critics Circle Award in Washington,DC.

Sharon Olds is one of most widely read & critically acclaimed poets living in America today.

Laura Bush
First Lady, The White House

Dear Mrs. Bush,

I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on Sept 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

In one way, it's a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, & in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents--all of us who need the pleasure, & the inner & outer news, it delivers.

And the concept of a community of readers & writers has long been dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women's prison, several NYC public high schools, an oncology ward for children.

Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for 20 yrs, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates & their students--long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage & wisdom, become our teachers.

When you have witnessed someone nonspeaking & almost nonmoving spell out, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion & essentialness of writing. When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely non-speaking & nonmoving (except for the eyes), & pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the 1st letter of the 1st word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, & she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self-expression, accuracy, honesty & wit--& the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person's unique story & song. So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books & meet some of the citizens of Wash, DC.

I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, & to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture & another country - with the resultant loss of life & limb for our brave soldiers, & for the noncombatants in their home terrain--did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top" & forced on the people by distorted language, & by un-truths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny & religious chauvinism--the opposites of the liberty, tolerance & diversity our nation aspires to.

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness--as an American who loves her country and its principles & its writing--against this undeclared & devastating war. But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Adm. What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Adm that unleashed this war & that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us. So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish & shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds & fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives & the flames of the candles, & I could not stomach it.

Sincerely,
SHARON OLDS

As a postscript, the following year there was yet another controversy about yet another refusal, this time from winners of the National Design Award, given to exceptional graphic designers in the publishing field. It is not exactly an art form that normally is associated with manning the barricades, but, as Ralph Caplan of the AIGA said " The National Design Award that includes graphic design carries the far roomier rubric, Communications Design. Which is precisely why five of last year's finalists or winners declined one of the accompanying honors: an invitation from Laura Bush to breakfast at the White House."

Here's what they wrote:

Dear Mrs. Bush:

As American designers, we strongly believe our government should support the design profession and applaud the White House sponsorship of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. And as finalists and recipients of the National Design Award in Communication Design we are deeply honored to be selected for this recognition. However, we find ourselves compelled to respectfully decline your invitation to visit the White House on July 10th (2006).

Graphic designers are intimately engaged in the construction of language, both visual and verbal. And while our work often dissects, rearranges, rethinks, questions and plays with language, it is our fundamental belief, and a central tenet of "good" design, that words and images must be used responsibly, especially when the matters articulated are of vital importance to the life of our nation.

We understand that politics often involves high rhetoric and the shading of language for political ends. However it is our belief that the current administration of George W. Bush has used the mass communication of words and images in ways that have seriously harmed the political discourse in America. We therefore feel it would be inconsistent with those values previously stated to accept an award celebrating language and communication, from a representative of an administration that has engaged in a prolonged assault on meaning.

While we have diverse political beliefs, we are united in our rejection of these policies. Through the wide-scale distortion of words (from "Healthy Forests" to "Mission Accomplished") and both the manipulation of media (the photo op) and its suppression (the hidden war casualties), the Bush administration has demonstrated disdain for the responsible use of mass media, language and the intelligence of the American people.

While it may be an insignificant gesture, we stand against these distortions and for the restoration of a civil political dialogue.

September 2007 is coming up. Think anybody in the Administration is finally getting it?

INSPIRATION! MOVING BRIGHTLY

Those jolly ladies, Terpsichore, Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Thalia, and Urania have been seen capering about the Island and East Bay in general for the annual East Bay Open Studios began its first weekend this Saturday. Pro Arts (proartsgallery.org) lists some 400 artists in its handsome 2007 catalogue. In addition, we note that the newest art venue to the Island, The Rhythmix Cultural Center flung open its doors in the old Clamp Swing factory on Blanding Avenue after a years-long battle against all kinds of odds. When you are done visiting over there, get on over across the water, having paid respects at our Frank Bette Center on Lincoln, to the Jingletown district in the middle of the fruit and vegetable warehouse area of Oaktown bounded by Fruitvale, 29th Avenue, East 7th Street and Glasscock, with attention paid to Ford Street Studios. Some of those artists have established relationships with some of our own folks here.

East Bay Open Studios is always a cheery event with lots of exciting stuff happening and tons of great treasures unearthed to look at, and perhaps take home for your very own.

If you drop in on Jim Kitson's studio on Santa Clara Avenue, you will be able to place your hands on the belly of "Generative Matrix" (pictured above). Feel something move?

SWEET HOME CHICAGO

Its been a quiet week on the Island. Still no word from the authorities regarding our standing application to become a Sister City to Lake Woebegon. The Dispatch Department has followed all the usual channels of communication: three carrier pigeons, two encryption hamsters, and a marching band that includes Gropius on Hardart and Inflateable. The engineers are all scratching their heads, as somebody usually says something at some point.

The last time the pigeons came back from their mission a bit woozy with shreds of what appears to be rhubarb adhering to their beaks.

Meanwhile, all along the coastal range, the fogs are surging over the crest and down through the trees in some Tolkein fantasy. Babylon, having enjoyed its Spring -- lasting some 36 hours -- is now settled back into its usual briskly chill habitude of fog and shivers which so put off Sam Clemens more than one hundred years ago. But so entrenched is the San Franciscan in his sense of superiority over Los Angeles, he stalks about his business in tee-shirt, bermuda shorts and sandals no matter how frigid the temperature, absolutely denying the weather as it is, for the season is summer and for summer he will dress, will he, nil he.

Max calls up from Burbank to say how they are all basking under sunny skies and everybody is at the pool and, heck, must be all overcoats and galoshes up there in that fog, guy.

No, we are all wearing shorts and sunglasses here. Thanks for calling. And Max? Please stay in L.A. Please.

That North-South rivalry has been going on for some time here and shows no sign of letup.

Sure, we have our summer rituals. The groundsquirrels all come out to scamper along the Strand and between the BBQ's at Crab Cove. We do have baseball and other dangerous sports. The parasails and windsurfers all congregate at the end of 8th Street and jollify the sky with their colorful kites. A few people bring real kites out there and among the simple diamond-backs from Walgreens are the fabulous dragon kites from China, looping and swirling right above. Over at John McClaren the Samoan Islanders set up the posts for their summer cricket tourney and there they go, big pony-tailed guys hurtling across the pitch like locomotives.

Fishing, of course, remains a popular sport, and one often will see anglers angling around the breakwater and bridges, often with apparent success. There to trundle home with their perch or whatever to toss into the seasoned frypan.

These people are idiots. Nobody but a fool would eat anything out of the mercury and cadium-laced bay. The entire reason the Island is an Island is that Oaktown used to dump so much sewage into the Bay it backed up around the occasional peninsula of Bolsa Alameda, so the Army Corps of Engineers cut a channel and turned the occasional peninsula into a permanent island.

No, fishing is what one does in freshwater lakes and streams, just about as far from the Bay and fertilizer-packed Delta as one can get. From the Russian River, there is the salmon run, followed by bass and steelhead with a few channel cat thrown in there. Up in the High Country one goes for rainbows, brookies, and the increasingly elusive Golden. The Golden Trout is so elusive that you can't even find a decent picture of one on the internet. Here is one.

They can only be found above 10,000 feet elevation and cannot compete with any species. Nowadays, few longer than 10 inches can be found at all. Sometimes they are called "pink trout" because their flesh is reddish on the plate next to brookies.

California trout, once teaming the streams so thick the natives here needed only to stand straddled over a weir to spear one among a dozen passing underneath to fetch dinner, now have become decimated to the point that every one of them trout out there has developed a critical eye towards feeding, with cautious approach and studied apprehension. Eugene Gallipagus is known, after prepping his rod, to crawl on his belly up to the riverbank to crouch behind a bush, and from there to cast up stream to allow the fly to drift down past his location and even then, sometimes they get the word somehow among themselves what the boy is up to.

"Hear Eugene is fishing up there again."
"Oh, that boy with the hat."
"Yep."
"Here comes something . . . "
"Oh I don't think you should go for that. Looks like a badly tied hare's ear to me."
"Yep."
"I aint fooled by that thing. Let's just sit here a while."
"Yep."
"Them young'uns can have it."
"Yep."

And the rest of the day is ruined for fishing.

Northern Californians can be emotional, but not as effusive as Southern Californians. When Southern Californians get emotional, they cry and mess up their clothes. Like Phil Spector, they occasionally shoot their guests at home. When Northern Californians get emotional, they break things or each other in strange places. The public bar fight was invented in Northern California by Jack London, who spent a lot of time here writing about workers rights and so forth. And getting into fights in bars. To the end of his days, he bitterly regretted making money on dog stories, and often would start a fight in a bar on the subject.

He may not have been the best exemplar of leftist thinking, but he sure wrote a good dog story when he had a mind. We can say that now, because he is not around to break anybody's nose.

Back to Eugene. One day he was fishing for trout at Lake Martha, which is the lake where, according to myth, golden trout first diverged from rainbows in evolution. The lake is some 11,500 feet in elevation and has a gravel place there which had been lake bed at one time far in the past people call Wotan's Parking Lot. If you have ever been there, you would know what I mean, for that is just about as flat and barren a spot for yards as you could ever find with Mount Goddard looming over the spot like some castle. Needless to say, the entire place is a four-day hike from nowhere with no showers, dancing girls, or trail for days.

Eugene went out in the morning from the shelter down below to the lake there -- no trees or bushes for miles in all directions, so you got to camp down below -- and he threw in his line. Now as it happened Eugene had a flask of that special brew Padraic had done up a couple of Thanksgivings ago and he was drinking this stuff instead of water. Seems this special homebrew involved the leaves of the rhubarb plant, which may account for its distinctive hallucinatory properties.

Eugene had not meant to take this brew up in his water flask, intending to use it at night for medicinal purposes, but Wanda had filled the sucker up at base camp, thinking she was doing a special service.

So come late morning there was Eugene at high Lake Martha, surrounded by shadeless Wotan's Parkinglot, the sun starting to beat down and not even cover for the damn trout along the lake shore. All the trout can see perfectly well the man is up there -- not a rock to hide behind, and not much is happening.

Eugene gets thirsty, pops the top of his canteen and downs a swig, realizing at once what it was. Oh, well. Damage done. So he keeps on tossing out his line, getting more and more leisurely as he takes a swig and another. Soon he plops down right there on the bank -- there is a place where the Parkinglot is high enough above the lake to make a sort of bank there and Eugene nestles against this embankment with his line sort of idly floating on the surface.

Soon enough it seems he has a strike and, after a brief struggle, an immense golden head appears above the surface of the lake. It's at least three feet wide, the largest fish of any kind Eugene has ever seen. It's a rare King Californian Golden Trout and it speaks to him.

It speaks to him in the language of Trout, which only true trout fishermen can understand. Those who fish for cat or steelhead or salmon know not the language of mountain trout. Just ask them. For they are interested only in size of catch and not the glory.

Do you speak the language of trout?

But Eugene understood, and unto him was imparted the wisdom and the scriptures of the Great Golden Trout. He was to drop his earthly trappings and go among men and spread the Word of Trout. For of field and stream we are born and into the field and stream we shall return. Glory unto the Trout! Glory unto the Brown! Glory unto the Rainbow! Glory unto the Golden who is first among them!

Eugene arose as if awoken from a dream and he cast forth his rod and descended from the mountains not unlike the Israelites of old, and he spoke the Word of Trout and all were amazed, not the least the Unitarians, who had never conceived of such a thing. And the Lutherans spake of walleye and smallmouth and knew him not for they are a prudent folk and not inclined to speak of such things. Of the Catholics, who fish not unless for sole, he was shunned and they abjured his talk for they like not that which causes Fuss and Bother preferring shame and humiliation and the exile of the rhubarb.

Among the Bhuddists he sewed confusion for they are verily Vegan.

Any whose way was the sword and violence were struck dumb with dismay and scattered like chaff in the winds.

If you come to California, wear flowers in your hair -- and carry an Ultralight, for the trout of the Sierra are fine and small and like not immensity. And consider the Word of the Trout, who saith, Be not asshole upon the Earth but do as little evil as possible and practice joy all the days of thy Life. Thus, I say unto the Great Golden Trout. Peace.

Eugene was put on three day hold at Villa Fairmont, about which place we shall speak anon. After Chicago.

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

MAY 27, 2007

IN A WORLD FULL OF PEOPLE ONLY SOME WANT TO FLY

After a great deal of work cleaning up broken and damaged HTML and much running back and forth with the staff diving into the coffee at all hours of the night into early morning and the Chief Editor tearing out his remaining white hairs, the Big Move is done save for some wrap up.

The Past Reviews project is moving ahead at a great clip and hyperlinks to the best concert and theatre reviews 2000-2007 will be finished in June. Hopefully.

Some multi-media clips, because of their large size remain to be forklifted up during the wee hours, including the tsunami videos.

Recent reports indicate large numbers of people rechecking their hyperlinks to all sorts of places with the myspace.com folks returing to their favorite discussion pages on the Iraq war for years 2005 and year 2003.

We anticipate some 30,000 folks next month doing a flyby, and double that plus some doubled each following month to the end of the year.

Some of the staff headed up to the Russian River to BBQ and chill once the DNS records replicated, so there will be little to report this week as far as news goes.

IS THAT THE POOLBEG FLASHER BEYONT, FAR? FAR?

IPD is warning female joggers in the West End to be alert for a serial groper who has been picking on women who jog wearing headphones, probably because this means the victim may be already distracted. The perp usually rides a bicycle from which he engages the victims in conversation before grabbing them and riding off.

As of this point, no traffic infractions have been committed, according to Officer O'Madhauen, and so the perpetrator remains at large.

EVERYBODY DESERVES MUSIC SWEET MUSIC

IslandLIfe will be sending a team to Chicago to cover the annual Blues Fest at Grant Park, so there will be no update 6/9/07, but -- as always -- we will provide IL extras following so that all of you may still obtain your Island-Life weekly requirements. Means we will miss both Johnny Winter and M'Shell N'Degocella at the Independent.

We've got folks in studio right now working on the Xmas Holiday Treat. From the antics of the soundman in the control booth, it should be, at the least, quite distracting.

Also am going to miss Garisson Keillor again! ARRRG! He is coming to the Greek on 6/9 in what is very likely to be a very interesting and unusual show because of the venue's unique qualities. We also will miss awarded and decorated David Elias at McGrath's 6/9. David operates at a rather stratospheric level normally, with grammy-award folks typically sitting in on his sessions, so an opportunity to capture the man in any version in a place like McGrath's is a definite Heads Up! sort of item. Ah, but Peter, the proprietor, definitely has his way with the Music Industry Insiders. O Peter.

Second show for the Goo Goo Dolls with Lifehouse has been added by demand for the 6/19 date.

So much music, so little time. And if you don't like the music, go out and make some of your own.

HUNK A BURNING LOVE

Got a 1st person report from our SoCal correspondent on Catalina Island which suffered disastrous fires we reported on last issue. This is the report from Julee:

"Avalon survived the fires. My family refused to evacuate, the menfolk stayed
up all night hosing down their rooftops, the womenfolk had rosary vigils on
the beach. Only one home was burned, a fella who is new to the island, but
neither he or his family was injured. 10 structures (garages, storage spots,
etc) were burned in the hills above town. Thank goodness nobody was
seriously injured, save for a few firefighters who were treated for minor
burns and smoke inhalation.

While growing up I hope and prayed high school somehow be destroyed (I
wasn't a very good student back then.) Well my hopes were answered, only
twenty years too late! Part of Avalon High School burned. The school was
closed for a few days, and some classes are being held in the casino, the
famous circular white building on the bay. . . ".

ON THE ROAD

The last Maze connector shut down by the fuel truck disaster reopened Friday, and an Island-Life driveby revealed full traffic going under and over the freeway overpass sections damaged when a tanker truck burst into flames one Sunday night, causing a major Bay Area freeway connector to collapse from the heat. Scorch marks remain on the lower deck but the upper deck appears solid and brand new despite concerns from some engineers the hasty fixit job was not substantial to handle the extreme flow of traffic over this section of freeway, among one of the busiest in the nation.

WILLKOMMEN, BIEN VENUE ETRANGER . . .

Since the Big Move we noticed Yahoo boost us to the top of its rankings. Not a surprise, since we are and have been the Premier site for Bay Area Culture and Life, reporting the news and items of interest regarding music, dance, theatre, food and the arts for some ten years. Long before Blogging, in fact.

So we imagine some of you are newcomers here to this space. Hopefully, you do wind up here after checking out the stuff on backpain -- which badly needs a reorg and update out of the files, and all the old stuff on past years, which is constantly undergoing reorg.

This particular page is updated each week on Sunday night, or Monday morning -- depending on the ration of booze available -- and we always welcome corrections and updates from anyone out there.

We do not charge, foist no advertising, and ask only that readers continue to support local music and art in any small or major way they can. We try to cover things that do not get Mainstream Press and hope our meager words help some struggling artist out there make an honest buck. Buy the albums and go to the concerts.

The interstitial tissue sometimes contains some satirical content among the factoids. Be prepared to meet Osama Bin Lassie, Shriek of the Terrierists. Notice the snarl of evil and the turbaned aspect of malevolence.

And know that we dutifully cover the long Occupation of Newark by President Eugene Shrubb and his Army of Bums. Which has been frustrated by the Insurgent Grammas armed with Weapons of Improvised Cast Iron Device, in the form of frypans.

There is, of course, a cast of characters assembled over some ten years of 52 issues per year, such as Officer O'Madhauen, dutiful traffic law enforcer, schoolteacher Ms. Morales, Eugene Gallipagus (a wannabe hunter of poodles), and the bevy of Island regulars whom you surely will come to know. The Island, that golden jewel, is set within the many-storied San Francisco Bay, and has its application for Sister City to Lake Woebegone in the works, which only time and bureaucracy may satisfactorily resolve.

And that is the precis to the main thesis.

DAMN RIGHT I GOT THE BLUES

It's been a quiet week on the Island. Spotty morning fog has come in to hold the temps down until past ten when the sun cuts through and makes the rows of lettuce glad. Lifers straggling in from the Russian River report similar behaviour up there and they have not yet completed the annual fish dam for the salmon run, so the water there is all still two to three feet deep. The dam is half up on the dry side, and the roadbed is in place, so we expect they will get around to that later completion in June.

It's approaching the Dead Hour on a long Memorial Day weekend. Evocative, that. Suzie sits pondering over her textbook in the Old Same Place, pages lit by the barlights. Eugene nuzzles his drink. Bear is watchin Netflix with buddies in his cave of sorts while Sophia makes popcorn. Officer O'Madhauen is parked down by the old cannery at Paru and Buena Vista, watching for violations of the Yellow Light. Mayor Beverly is playing Yahtzee with grandkids in her granddaughter's livingroom, Her Honor, shoeless, on the floor in her stocking feet. Two recently removed hedgehogs nuffle and muzzle about their new den on the grounds of the College. Soon it will be time to gaze at the moon from their new abode.

Had a confab with a couple of Rangers - enlist voluntary '62 and '65. Many reminiscences and many memories of comrades fallen in the foreign wars. LRP is a kind of duty experienced by few in any age and honored are those who rest. But a soldier's lot is to obey and to do, not to question why. And our age has been especially poignant with questions why. For, given that the soldier is not allowed to question, those of us who can, should do so and loudly and often, for too often the soldier's life is expended like some renewable supply of ammunition. When that happens, we notice, Empire falls inevitably into decline.

We don't question the designs of Empire here. What is the point? Countries conquer and subdue simply because they can and empires arise because it is possible.

Empires collapse because people who can collapse them do so. There is no real morality in any of it.

Knew a buddy who went on these camping trips with Boy Scouts trying to work out things inside himself all the while these Baden Powell clones imagined that this camping thing was just like tenting with buddies in Viet Nam or some such bullshit and very likely to heal wounds those assholes could never imagine.

Sorry to get pointed.

Well, nice to know somebody cared, but pitching a tent on the side of Old Nag is not like seeing your buddy get his spleen blown out in some tropical rice paddy. It's not like lying on a mat in the dark wondering just when your number will come up next. It is simply not nearly enough.

So this Memorial Day, give a thought to the soldier who had no choice really. Other than be there or somewhere else on that day when the flashbang went off, when the .50 cal round zipped by.

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

MAY 20, 2007

CHA CHA CHA CHANGES

Well, it had to happen and we should have seen it coming. Island-Life now really IS the premier website for Bay Area Culture and Arts. As of last month. When we experienced 27,000+ visitors. Seems a few folks on Myspace.com have started a lively discussion about the Iraq war with reference to our 2003 photos and this has led to an extraordinary number of hits numbering some 38,000 per day -- and some special attention from .mil and .gov addresses.

O U guys. Sneaking around with wires in your collars.

Sooooo, since Earthlink is rather miserly about bandwidth we decided to go to a more liberal host that understands the requirements of a professional website. At less the cost.

Do you think some fool dings Microsoft.com for "excess bandwidth"? I think not. Some Hosts understand that a site printed in Chinese just might get a good deal of Asia visiting in any logical fashion. Earthlink does not understand or care that there happen to be any fraction of a billion people on the internet at any one time and these kinds of numbers are real.

During this change End of Month, the usual Island-Life content will be unavailable for 72 hours during the DNS replication.

Sooooo, coming month end, we will switch to that more liberal host with some 1000 times increased bandwidth, allowing any number of folks to come and look at past years of Island-life without hassle so that they can continue to have intense discussions that we encourage, for our main goal here is to promote free speech and common discourse. Free Speech enhances life, stirs the blood, promotes freedom and democracy everywhere, expands ideas and critical thought, and revivifies the Body Politic. Besides, its good for you.

MUSIC DO I HEAR?

Coinciding with the Host move, Island-life staffers will be going to Chicago to report on the annual Chicago Blues Festival at Grant Park. This will be during the first and second weeks of June. We also will be visiting a view places north of Chicago at the Wisconsin Dells.

The early Summer Season is shaping up. MaryAnne Faithful returns to the Fillmore on the 26th. Glad to see the gal is still hoofing with style and grace. OAR comes to the Warfield on the 16th of June. They do a sort of Jamaican-inflected rock that is purely their own and have a number of very well crafted lyrics.

With a great deal of pleasure we note that Rodgrigo and Gabriela return to Babylon for an unscheduled tour-addition to the Fillmore on 6/28 where they are sure to sell out and then procede to blow the goddamn roof off of the place on nylon string guitars no less. Tix went on sale this morning. Maybe a few left as their entire formally scheduled US tour is entirely sold out already.

LIVE 105 holds its BFD at the Shoreline on 6/9, unfortunately while the music reviewer is out of town. Anyone want to volunteer for a piece on Bloc Party, Social D, Queens of the Stone Age, Sum 41 and others?

Smashing Pumpkins come to the Fillmore for a dominating 8 show run 7/22 to 8/1. That's right, eight shows at the Fillmore under the purple chandeliers.

At the Independent, Johnny Winter will slide in with little fanfare on 6/6, again while we are out of town. Bummer, as we have longed long to see the pale bluesman. The not-so-pale M'Schell Ndegeocello thumps that bass 6/9 in the same venue. Also an artist on the Must See list.

Some tix still available for the Indigo Girls at the Greek. Sorry, lesbians pay same price as everyone else. the I.D. are democratic that way.

DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD

Virginia, a basically benighted State with more than its share of assholes infesting the woodwork there for no fault of its own, recently enjoyed the extirpation of one of its really obnoxious denizens.

Another Evil S---t-head expired this week, adding to the pile of excrement in Hell. Jerry Falwell popped his nut, and hopefully fully awake as St. Nick came to haul his rotten soul down to that Other Place.

A miserly handful believe that Falwell unified various factions of the Extreme Fundamentalists and did much good thereby.

Victoria Kidd of Winchester, Virginia, believes the exact opposite: "The damage he has done to the Christian faith is immeasurable," she wrote to CNN.com

Most would prefer to think that he has no legacy at all.

"He should be erased from every history book and media story," wrote Brian Pippinger of St. Petersburg, Florida.

Jerry Falwell was the evangelical minister who founded the Moral Majority, the radical Christian right political movement, in 1980. He died Tuesday at age 73, and it's clear from the differing assessments of his legacy that he was a controversial figure.

Matt Foreman, head of the National Lesbian and Gay Task Force, calls Falwell "a founder and leader of America's anti-gay industry. His lasting legacy will be the polarization of the American electorate and the rise of Christian evangelicals as a nasty political force in American politics."

Susan Friend Harding, a professor of anthropology at the University of California Santa Cruz, studied Falwell and his movement beginning in the 1980s, culminating in a book published in 2000, "The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics."

"I see him as a major figure in American political and religious history," says Harding, who considers him the principal leader who forced fundamentalists back into the pop culture of society. "Jerry Falwell led fundamentalism out of political and cultural desuetude in the 1980s. He did so most famously as the leader of the vindictive Moral Majority in 1980s, but also through his national radio and TV ministry, Liberty University and countless sermons, campaigns, rallies, speeches, publications, broadcasts and debates over his 50-year career as a preacher. Under his leadership, fundamentalists transformed themselves from a marginal, anti-worldly separatist people into a visible and dangerously vocal force and reintroduced harsh and intolerant religious speech into American public life.

"Fundamentalists had been a separatist movement," Harding says, "which was stigmatized even by other Protestants" for three-quarters of a century, ever since their "self-imposed exile" after the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, which was ostensibly about the teaching of evolution in the schools, but in effect put fundamentalist intolerance on trial.

"True fundamentalists didn't have friendships, even with other fundamentalists who associated with non-fundamentalists," Harding says. "Falwell said this was wrong; we're going to stop having religious tests. He included you if you supported his agenda -- an agenda that involved attacking other groups."

To many critics, this paradox is what makes his legacy so lamentable. "He made it comfortable for churches to get actively involved in politics," says the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "His strategy will be continued by his would-be successors -- a focus on hot-button issues like gay marriage (rather than significant moral issues like child poverty and health care), and an eagerness to make outrageous statements to the media, in order to build a religious-political empire."

Many now remember him most for outrageous statements he made after leaving the Moral Majority -- in 1999, his house organ the National Liberty Journal warned parents that the Tinky Winky cartoon character was secretly gay and morally dangerous; in 2001, he blamed the September 11 terrorist attack on "pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America."

Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist, after a brief intro, summarized the demigogue's life and work with a simple list of quotes. Allowing the reader to decide for him or herself just what the man represented.

"But in the case of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, the grandfather of the fundamentalist religious right and the foremost champion of the creation of a brutally homophobic, mysogynistic Christian theocracy in America, perhaps it's better to let the man's most insidiously famous quotes speak for themselves, and let time and karma be the judge of whether Falwell left the world a better place than when he found it. (All citations are available at wikiquote.org and elsewhere.)

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

"The abortionists have got to bear some burden for [the attacks of Sept. 11] because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions."

"I listen to feminists and all these radical gals -- most of them are failures. They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men -- that's their problem."

"When you have a godly husband, a godly wife, children who respect their parents and who are loved by their parents, who provide for those children their physical and spiritual and material needs, lovingly, you have the ideal unit."

"The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews."

"I am such a strong admirer and supporter of George W. Bush that if he suggested eliminating the income tax or doubling it, I would vote yes on first blush."

"I believe that global warming is a myth. And so, therefore, I have no conscience problems at all and I'm going to buy a Suburban next time."

"It is God's planet -- and he's taking care of it. And I don't believe that anything we do will raise or lower the temperature one point."

"I truly cannot imagine men with men, women with women, doing what they were not physically created to do, without abnormal stress and misbehavior."

"It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening."

"There's been a concerted effort to steal Christmas."

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!"

"The First Amendment is not without limits."

"Someone must not be afraid to say, 'moral perversion is wrong.' If we do not act now, homosexuals will 'own' America! If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way ... and our nation will pay a terrible price!"

"If he's going to be the counterfeit of Christ, [the Antichrist] has to be Jewish. The only thing we know is he must be male and Jewish."

"The argument that making contraceptives available to young people would prevent teen pregnancies is ridiculous. That's like offering a cookbook as a cure to people who are trying to lose weight."

"The whole global warming thing is created to destroy America's free enterprise system and our economic stability."

"You'll be riding along in an automobile. You'll be the driver perhaps. You're a Christian. There'll be several people in the automobile with you, maybe someone who is not a Christian. When the trumpet sounds you and the other born-again believers in that automobile will be instantly caught away -- you will disappear, leaving behind only your clothes and physical things that cannot inherit eternal life. That unsaved person or persons in the automobile will suddenly be startled to find the car suddenly somewhere crashes. ... Other cars on the highway driven by believers will suddenly be out of control and stark pandemonium will occur on ... every highway in the world where Christians are caught away from the drivers wheel." (from Falwell's pamphlet "Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Christ")

"God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

"You know when I see somebody burning the flag, I'm a Baptist preacher I'm not a Mennonite, I feel it's my obligation to whip him. In the name of the Lord, of course. I feel it's my obligation to whip him, and if I can't do it then I look up some of my athletes to help me. But, as long as at 72 I can handle most of the jobs I do it myself, and I don't think it's un-spiritual. When I, when I, when I hear somebody talking about our military and ridiculing and saying terrible things about our President, I'm thinking you know just a little bit of that and I believe the Lord would forgive me if I popped him."

"The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etcetera."

"The National Organization for Women (NOW) is the National Organization of Witches."

"God doesn't listen to Jews."

"Tinky Winky is gay."

THEY PAVED PARADISE AND PUT UP A SHOPPING MALL

A much anticipated showdown between ardent supporters of a density-limiting ballot measure and those open to changing it ended Tuesday night with a whimper, not a bang, according to the official word, but we see the result as a definitive rebuttal to attempts to Manhattanize this Island.

After hours of public debate, the City Council unanimously struck down an appeal of a decision by the Planning Board to create a three-person committee to plan a public forum on the benefits and drawbacks of Measure A.

The 1973 ballot measure banned anything other than single-family homes and duplexes in Alameda's residential development.

The council took its vote only after insisting that members of the group that challenged the Planning Board's decision be included in organizing the forum. The council also insisted that committee meetings be held in public.

Members of both the Planning Board and the seven-member group of residents who challenged it said they were satisfied with the outcome. "I'm fine with it," said Anne Cook, who sits on the Planning Board. "We need to involve all sides."

Barbara Kerr, a former council member who was part of the group that filed the appeal said, "We don't mind discussion of Measure A. We never have. That wasn't the issue."

Measure A is sometimes called the "third rail" of Island politics, with many crediting it for saving the Island from overpopulation and crowdedness.

Others would like to see the measure amended for Alameda Point, on the former Naval Air Station, where developers are planning on building new residential and commercial communities in the next 10 or so years.

The council's vote Tuesday - which, essentially, amounts to allowing people to talk about talking about Measure A - is just a micro-step in the debate about whether any changes will ultimately be made.

Officials stressed that, as a charter amendment, Measure A can only be altered by a vote of the people - not the Planning Board and not they City Council.

"People can talk about it," said Council member Marie Gilmore. "People can talk about it until they're blue in the face, but it's still the law . . .".

The Island is NOT Manhattan and needs to stay that way.

I'LL BE ALL RIGHT SOME DAY

The opening of fishing season has none of the resonance here as in some places. Salmon and steelhead begin their run early and trout may not be taken until later. There are rules about these weighty matters. The dams on the Russian River remain down this time of year but the steelhead have finished their business, so there is little point going out there. The main show here is trout and always has been. Among trout in California, you may encounter brook trout or golden trout. The increasingly rare and hard to find brown trout is not to be trifled with.

We don't have walleyes here, but a few have proposed importing a few against significant objections.

The golden trout are thought to originate from Lake Martha, main source of the Joaquin River. Lake Martha is way up there around 12,000 feet and surrounded by a gravel basin they call Wotan's Parking Lot. We have stood there and it is quite a desolate place. The fish are found throughout the High Country but seldom on the plate in restaurants and never in groceries, for they are rare creatures with a bright yellow belly and a red streak along the body. They are colorful on the string but fade rapidly after gutting.

Brookies are multi-hued, like rainbows in their diversified colors, and will leap a great distance when hooked in a stream. They argue strenuously about coming to shore and often will shake loose right there on the bank only to flop back into the water, pausing momentarily as if to say, "this is what you could have had, were you only more worthy". Then they dart off with another "the one I almost had" story.

They, too, appear to be an argument for the existence of god while alive in all vibrant color, but fade quickly after death as most of us do.

In the High Country, where we at Island Life do the fishing, we do not encounter the bass, of any size of mouth. Bass do not inhabit regions above 11,000 feet, for that elevation is considered bass-verboten.

Jim and Mike went out to Bear Lake, fishing while Agnus and Susan remained on shore, hiking and talking about rebuilding carburetors - girl stuff, you know. Eugene went with them, the boys in the boat, and he caught a nice two pounder right away. Pretty soon he caught another, but neither Jim nor Mike got so much as a nibble. Pretty soon Eugene had caught his limit but he kept right on fishing and every time he caught another, he threw it back.

Meanwhile Jim and Mike sat there in the boat with Eugene catching one fish after another. Might as well have been tossing a string to the cat in the livingroom.

A gentle breeze blew across the lake. Spring had come to California some weeks ago, and after the initial hot spell, the weather had settled into morning fog along the coast and a moody archapelago of clouds further inland.

Eventually the boys headed back to shore where they cleaned Eugene's fish and had them for dinner. Susan wanted to know why there were so few, but they had rice to go along with it. At the end of the trip Jim and Mike had caught a crappie a piece, but Eugene's luck remained with him and so he drove back in his pickup with an ice chest full of trout.

While they were driving back in the van, Jim felt something crawling up his leg inside his trousers, so he pulled over. Sue asked him what was the matter and Jim cursed.

Wood tick.

Of course Sue wanted to know where it was. Jim pulled the van over onto an old unpaved logging road. He got out and unfastened his belt. The wood tick was on the inside of his left thigh, rather high up.

Well, said Sue. Let me see about it.

So Jim dropped his pants there while Sue got some vaseline and tweezers while images of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever ran through his mind. This had not been a good fishing trip.

As Jim looked down the sun glanced off of Sue's hair and he noticed the flecks of gray -- they had been together some eighteen years. He noticed that she had kept herself well for those years -- must be the dance lessons. Then, of course the inevitable happened and Sue commented, do wood ticks and vaseline always have this effect on you?

Golden poppies nodded, smiling, in the warm breeze beside the logging road in the dappled sunlight. It was Spring after all.

Eugene got back home and smoked some of the trout, and fried up the rest. Mike and Agnus got back in good time and went out to the Island Grill for dinner.

Jim and Sue did not get back until very late, and besides flecks of grey, there were leaves and twigs in her hair.

The wood tick died.

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

MAY 13, 2007

WORLD'S ON FIRE

The Chief Editor has been pacing a trough in the carpet after the latest news across the AP wire: Fire on Catalina and our SoCal Correspondent, Julee, not heard from, despite urgent emails.

Firefighters struggled early Friday to protect Catalina's main city, Avalon, from a wildfire that forced hundreds of residents to flee on ferries as ash fell from the sky like snow.

One home and a few small businesses in the canyons outside the city burned, but the weather helped firefighters keep most properties safe, Fire Chief Steven Hoefs said. Some 1,200 homes were under voluntary or mandatory evacuation orders.

"The risk has been reduced significantly," Hoefs said. "Most of the structures have been protected."

The blaze broke out Thursday afternoon on the island more than 20 miles off the coast, caused by construction workers using an acetylene torch to cut cables.

The orange inferno loomed behind the quaint crescent harbor, landmark 1929 Catalina Casino and homes, restaurants and tiny hotels clinging to slopes above the waterfront.

As flames threatened the city limits of Avalon, hundreds of people lined up at the harbor Thursday night to board ferries to the mainland. Many covered their faces with towels and bandannas as ashes fell.

The scene was in stark contrast to the idyllic image of the island cultivated in its 1930s and '40s heyday as a playground for movie stars, and in The Four Preps' 1950s hit song, "26 Miles."

Avalon has a population of 3,200 that swells to more than 10,000 on weekends and in summer, according to the Catalina Island Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.

At least 160 firefighters, aided by four water-dropping helicopters and three retardant-dropping air tankers, battled flames through most of Thursday and into the night.

Dozens of fire engines from as far away as Fresno arrived through the night aboard giant military hovercraft from the Marine Corps' Camp Pendleton. The high-speed hovercraft can carry 60 tons over land or water and are often used by the military on humanitarian missions.

Overnight, Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters ferried in firefighters, 32 at a time. Hand crews were positioned at the city's edge to protect homes.

In Avalon, authorities used a bullhorn to urge people to evacuate and head to the beach. Visitors were directed to the historic art deco Casino until it lost power, while residents were sent to another harbor site.

The Catalina Express ferry service added several night departures of 400-passenger vessels from Avalon. Hundreds of residents and visitors boarded the ferries to reach the mainland at Long Beach.

Despite being well offshore, Catalina has been left parched by the lack of rainfall that has made the rest of Southern California particularly susceptible to wildfires like the one in Griffith Park. Only 2 inches of rain have fallen on Catalina since January.

A long, narrow island, Catalina covers 76 square miles and is served by helicopters and ferry boats from Los Angeles, Long Beach and other mainland harbors.

We are all glued to the news and hoping for the best for our corespondent on the island there and our dear Editor has just about torn out the remains of the white hair that flies about his head like an aureole. Julee, wherever you are, phone home, phone home . . .!

HYMN TO HER

Sunday is Mother's Day, and if you haven't figured out by now you are an orphan and an ingrate. On this day scads of women who would rather sleep another hour get their rest interrupted by beaming boys and girls bearing trays of burnt toast, dry waffles, and overdone eggs for the Breakfast in Bed thing.

O Ma.

But mothers have a special place in pop culture. No less than George Carlin invoked the "No Mothers" rule regarding insults and jabs on the street. Jimmy Cagney portrayed a hard-boiled mobster with a soft spot for mom, abraded roughly as the word got passed all along the Cell Block.

Even rocker Chrissie Hynde penned a tender anthemic ballad to her ma titled, "Hymn to Her."

Got a friend, who happens to be a Mensa-level certified genius who's mother recently passed away, and she was, although not a Mensa genius a most extraordinary woman worthy of deep respect. She took Life, seized it, and shook it all about to shake the most out of it and be the best example possible. See, boys and girls, THIS is the way you need to be.

Mothers. Everybody has one, comfortable or not. Whether living or not, well, here's to Mom. Maybe she didn't do everything promised by the TV illusion of June Cleaver, but she did put you together as best she could, and all the rest afterward is happenstance and luck.

In the savage night that eternally inhabits the alleys of the City, in those places where the drug dealers have shot out all the streetlights, where the idea of Hope is a cynical joke, there are moms who spit out birth and then proceed through their own lives like a swallowed piece of barbed wire or a razor blade, causing as much blood and damage along the way as possible to themselves and everyone around them.

The troubles of the world are not their fault for women are biology's optimists. Despite all the shock and horror all around, they present life and then go their own way. For every life is another chance to make the fucked-up world perhaps a smidgen better.

Had a talk with a lady the other day at a Biker's Rally up North, leather-clad Dudes all around. Beards and potbellies and lives, well, not as well lived as one could wish.

This lady rode an '06 Dyna. Owned properties here in California and other states, and was distressed over some moral decisions regarding handling property in Texas. You might say, she, who had started with nothing, had done rather well.

Turned out she was Croatian, and had come out of a kind of Hell the worst of us can barely imagine. Some say, metaphorically, they had nothing at start, but few can claim, as this woman, they started with less than zero. "Visiting home" for this woman involves passing long lines of bombed out homes.

Well, you see, someone's mother might not be fully appreciative, but seems this lady had done all right and her mother done proud.

So those of you who may have endured a raw deal right from the start, and especially those of you who started out well enough, think of your mom with a bit of forgiveness and gratitude. She did the best she could, whoever she was, and she had her own life to live as well, after all.

Along these same lines we at Island-Life thought it would be a real nice token to drop a line in on a mom who outta be rather famous right now. Yes, we phoned Mrs. Hilton. Now, we understand there are problem children and there are Children who are Serious Problems. Mrs. Hilton happens to have a daughter who is facing some serious jail time for misbehavior and we thought we ought to offer some consolation, as it seems not a single tabloid, amid all the hoopla about Brittany's panties and other misadventures, has taken the logical investigative path toward asking what Paris Hilton's mother thinks of all of this.

Mrs. Hilton, as one would expect, was distraught.

After all, there was the Internet video of her girl and then the bad things said about her in the papers and then this episode, one among many, about her drinking and driving -- a behavior she certainly never learned at home by any means.

We offered commiserations. Clearly, a decent upbringing had been pulled awry by bad companionship and dire influences. Paris, really, was still that chubby gal in an Easter bonnet who did caca unexpectedly in the lap of the Archbishop. O how they all had laughed at that, even His Excellence!

So, Mrs. Paris, here's to you and moms everywhere who feel, well, perhaps this Sunday will not feature a Breakfast in Bed or even the possibility. If your baby is in jail, at least she is still your Baby.

MACARTHUR MAZE UPDATE

First, the positive news: The westbound Interstate 80 to southbound Interstate 880 south connector, reopened to traffic early Monday (May 7th) morning. Meanwhile, replacement of the connector between eastbound Interstate 80 and eastbound Interstate 580, which was destroyed by the blaze, is scheduled for completion by June 27.

EASTBOUND I-80 CONNECTOR TO EASTBOUND I-580 Remains Closed - Scheduled to Reopen by June 27 (Affecting travel between San Francisco/the Bay Bridge and Pleasanton on I-580 & Walnut Creek on Hwy 24).

This concerns traffic coming East from SF to 580 or Walnut Creek.

Motorists are advised to use one of the following two Caltrans' approved detour routes from 80E (the Bay Bridge) to 580E and Hwy 24:

Detour Route Option 1, West Grand Ave.

1. From 80E (the Bay Bridge), take I-880S
2. Take the West Grand Ave exit
3. Continue east on West Grand Ave to Northgate Ave
4. Turn left on Northgate Ave
5. Take the 27th Street on-ramp for 980N
6. Watch for signs for Hwy 24 or 580E.

*Note: To help reduce congestion on city streets, emergency towing service is available on West Grand Avenue between 6:30-9:30 a.m. and 3:00-8:00 p.m., Monday-Friday. Click www.511.org for detailed up-to-date information regarding towing services and maps for alternative routes.

The unofficial word is that traffic heading Real South on 80 still hit a massive backup from Albany to the Maze divider proper, where people hit the road changes, then take off at pretty near 80 MPH once clear. The overhead ramp still hangs imposingly over the interchange with no connection, but the lower one that scooted along past the Army base is now open again.

ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS

Ambled up to Marin's Open Studios, with our own region coming up, just for comparo purposes.

One difference stood out right away: wine and melon balls are served at all the galleries in Marin, where the East Bay serves up apple juice and cheezit crackers at best.

The well-matriculated slopes of Marin host a more sophisticated colony than most. The hallways of the old shipyard warehouse echoed with a plethora of languages and the art there is subject to more experienced scrutiny than in any other Small-town in the USA. The workspaces are enviable with light and clean walls and high ceilings. Open studios takes place over two weekends this Spring as well as the highly intensive period of December.

Naturally a more discriminating populace which has traveled well throughout the Louvre and other European sites will demand a higher level of attention to technique. This is not the locale for the paper mache amateur and the casual dauber, as the entire world will file through during Open Studios here.

Among the more notable artists we remark on Aiko Morioka, who provided the cover art for the well-appointed catalog, and Dana Draper, who does interesting things with copper cuts, employing acids and patinas to achieve a remarkable subtle effect. His wife, Ingrid, who owns a neighboring studio, assists with the creations, while continuing a viable industry with textured papers.

Draper's work cannot be photographed well, as the burnished copper will throw back blinding light from any flashbulb. As hung, the pieces express an uncanny dimensionality and unusual soft subtlety.

Morioka has done expressive abstract work for the County of Sonoma (pictured above)as well as detailed representative work in bronze.

Among these hard sculptors, resides Ms. Joanne Fox with her multidimensional works laid in layered Lucite so reminiscent of memory. Her most interesting work consists of "sampled" images laid into layers of Lucite so that each image allows those underneath to appear like palimpsests. Evocative, but damnably difficult to photograph.

She comes from a bookbinding background and so she has also a body of work which employs paper as medium, including several one-off whimsical books, such as "A Photo History of the Human Body" -- we had to drag sister Beatrice away from the sexual organ fold-out. O Bea.

But there were also cleverly designed boxes that unfolded ingeniously and a colorful interactive set in which visitors could write either Regrets or Fantasies and we observed several patrons grinning as they stuffed the Fantasy box.

We regret we could not stay longer as a fine time was had by all.

DARK CHORDS ON A BIG GUITAR

It's been a quiet week on the Island, our hometown placed within the many-storied San Francisco Bay waters. Census reports some 770 new folks among us with more to come but nobody is talking about that at the Old Same Place or the Pampered Pup or Pat's Cafe. We are some 74,000 strong and the Census Bureau is beside themselves with counting since the ouster of some 640 folks when the Harbor Bay Complex took place. Causes all sorts of complications for Census folks these mass evictions it does.

Idiots pursue the doomed cinema multiplex, blocking traffic along Central and San Antonio Avenues. Nevertheless the tulips have bloomed their brief glory. Furthermore, trout-fishing season is now open. Yes! The end of April and the beginning of May is regarded as the start of trout season and they are all agog over the possibilities at the Pampered Pup downtown. Steelhead have ceased their runs and the Russian River will not close the dam gates until June.

Speaking of which, two dog bites have been reported this past week which doubles the number of like events on the Island.

After that spate of hot weather, things have settled into a rather pleasant Spring. Hear that the lilacs are all in bloom again all around our Sister City, Lake Woebegon. Good. Good. The ice is gone from the lake and those pesky flies haven't come out yet. In a few weeks Island-Life will be heading over in that direction to cover the Chicago Blues Festival and poke around Wisconsin's waterways. The whole point is to give the Island-Life Psychologische Abteilung a well-deserved break from handling madness.

Meanwhile Spring has sprung and sister Beatrice has run off to find something better than a paper fold-out to handle and the hummingbirds have returned to sample the jasmine. Commencements are taking place all over the place around here, and fresh-faced boys and girls are clambering into and out of sedans, wearing their robes and mortarboards, and at night they do the same, most definitely NOT wearing robes or mortarboards there in the back seat. O Spring.

It's really killin'. They're so willin'
To be makin' whoopee, whoopee, whoopee.

Sympathies for Garrison; sounds like his Prom was much like ours. Show up, hang out, leave before ten with nobody noticing. Prom night is a big deal for some of the kids. The boys all in rental tuxes and the girls in fabulous floor-length gowns, all walking into the Grand Ballroom of the Regency -- if you were from Lowell -- or the well decorated basketball court -- if you were from MacAteer.

Just kidding about the basketball court guys.

Speaking of which, our local baskeball equivalent to the Cubbies seems to be quite on a role and all the fans have put away their big "We are # 13!" signs to go raving about the Warriors who seem to have actually learned how to play the game well. Will wonders never cease.

We were never very good at those games involving balls. Calculating the tragectories just took too long and by the time we had it, the man had dunked his shot and stolen for home three times over. Yes, we were Kings of the Bobble. As for batting, well the one time we actually connected the wood with the ball properly on a solid throw -- the pitcher got lazy that time -- the ball shot out right past the mound with a crack still echoing, dug a divot out there past second base and rolled past the outfielder like a scampering bunny rabbit as we tore out there rounding second, rounding third with Jimmy Patton standing there dumbfounded, knowing the little red-headed girl was watching up there, coming down to home. Here comes the ball there from outfield to baseman and there we go sliding into the plate most satisfactorily well in advance of the solid thwack of the ball into the catcher's mitt and there we stood as the catcher casually touched his glove to our right arm, as we thought in appreciation of such a fine play with everybody screaming there in the stands, everybody except the little red-headed girl who had covered her face with her hands -- why is she doing that? -- until the Ump tossed his thumb over his shoulder and shouted,

"Yer out!"

Seems we had neglected to touch First first, doing a beeline in great excitement right from the plate to Second. Its a lot faster to get back that way, but not especially legal.

In baseball, there is no Time. And that day, Time stretched out inexorably as we sat under the bleachers until everyone had gone home and then we threw our Babe Ruth sigature glove in the trash, never to play ball again. Or look the little red-headed girl in the eyes.

The Island-Life offices are located next to the Mastic Senior Center, which occupies the site where the school behind there used to have a baseball dugout. Where the field used to be is mostly a parking lot now. And that is just fine by us.

One time a client gave us box seats to a Giants game. Suppose those things are pretty fancy up there with the Press Corps and filet mignon served up instead of hotdogs, champagne instead of beer, and the game watched on closed circuit TV. In baseball there is no Time. The game goes as many innings as it needs to and every game is like the one just before or the one played half a century ago, ghost infielders keeping company with shadowy pitchers of the Past, firing fast ones down the line to batters long gone but still there somehow.

Years pass and we do other things, some heroic, most not. Never got to be a great Author, wise and respected, hosting a weekly radio show. Yet we did other things. But the cries still echo across the Field of Dreams.

Gave the tickets to a room-mate. Go Warriors.

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

MAY 06, 2007

MACAUTHUR MAZE UPDATE

We have had the dubious opportunity to traverse the broken section of the Maze several times. While travel times are not as bad as predicted, the place is still a route to avoid for the duration. Coming up from 80W to 580W you pass within 30 feet of the destroyed overpass, and the sight is so awe-inspiring that traffic slows to a crawl even though only fifty yards beyond the lanes break loose to a free and clear 80 MPH possibility.

Not that any of us would do that, of course.

Talked with a Novato-based CHP who lives in Atherton, and he said that cutting way out to 680 and then down was easier and faster than taking the direct route.

Traffic is now backed up constantly from the Maze to the Ashby Exit, and so we say, take BART my man.

LIKE THE WEATHER

The Bay Area abruptly abandoned Spring as a wild sirocco brought hot winds into the area, pumping temps and cloudless skies into the 90's with an unaccustomed heat wave after a week of cold rain. Sunday the whole island reeked with BBQ fumes and folks rushed for aloe as the sun crisped long sheltered flesh.

MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC

Summer schedule is shaping up. Live 105's BFD has posted the prelim lineup at the Shoreline with Bloc Party and Social Distortion headlining with Queens of the Stone Age and Interpol filling the main tent bill. The Lovemakers and Sum 41 own the side stage and all that is June 9th.

More on a soulful note, Lauryn Hill testifies at the Paramount on June 27th. This vibrant gospel/soul/blues rocker is one not to be missed.

The weird Grand Ballroom, where we caught Rodrigo y Gabriela, has a stellar schedule lined up, starting with 5/18 and Wavy Gravy's 71st birthday bash -- also a fundraiser for Seyva -- and headlined by Mickey Hart wtih friends.

Indigo Girls are returning as part of the KFOG series and this time they will own the Fillmore. The official word is "Foghead Favorites Indigo Girls return to the Bay Area for a KFOG show with Brandi Carlile at The Fillmore on Monday, June 11". Tix now on sale.

On the main theatre stage we have the following items of interest:

David Mamet's "The Water Engine": An American Fable
Off-Market Theater (San Francisco, CA)
Full Price: $25.00

David Mamet's play is the Depression-era story of Charles Lang, a laborer who invents an engine that uses water for fuel. First, Lang struggles to prove his machine exists. But when the truth comes out, those threatened by a machine that doesn't run on oil or gas intend grave danger for both Lang and his invention.

"Blackbird"
A.C.T. (San Francisco, CA)
Tuesday, May. 8 @ 7:00pm
Wednesday, May. 9 @ 2:00pm
and 6 more dates.
Full Price: $25.00 - $72.00

Steven Culp (Desperate Housewives, The West Wing) stars in the west-coast premiere of Olivier Award-winning "Blackbird", a controversial drama reminiscent of Nabokov's "Lolita". It's the story of a man confronted by the young woman with whom he had an illicit affair more than a dozen years earlier, when she was underage. The characters clash as they try to come to terms with the past.

Composer-Singer and Arts Pioneer Meredith Monk
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
Wednesday, May. 16 @ 8:00pm
Full Price: $28.00

A pioneer in extended vocal technique and interdisciplinary performance MacArthur "Genius" Meredith Monk has alternately been proclaimed a "magician of the voice" and "one of America's coolest composers." Her wordless music combines the technical virtuosity of classical music, the poignancy and directness of folk, the freedom and flexibility of jazz, and the excitement of rock & roll.

Leonard Nimoy's Hit Play "Vincent"
Academy of Art University 79 NM Theater (San Francisco, CA)

Friday, May. 11-20 @ 8:00pm
Full Price: $25.00 Our Price: FREE - $12.50

"Vincent" is based on letters written by artist Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo. Leonard Nimoy ("Star Trek") spent years researching and writing this tour de force one-man show that would eventually star Nimoy himself. Actor Jim Jarrett has been touring with the show all over the world for the past decade.

Learn more: http://www.academyart.edu/vincent

Lastly, we could not forget Rev. Gary Davis' pupil for the following engagement:

Hot Tuna
Fillmore, San Francisco
Fri, 06/29/07 9:00pm

DOS ERIZOS

Once upon a time there lived an hedgehog beside the field that bordered the Old Beltline facility where the maintenance buildings used to be. The Beltline had basically ceased regular operation some twenty years ago and now weeds occupied the yards and the siding and even the gutters of the sheds. A tree grew from the roof of the flat-topped one and the yards themselves were strewn with the casual ironmongery of this and that item laying just where it had been last thrown to rust away into unrecognizeability. The security fence was in poor shape and in need of mending, grasses choked the old siding, and unkempt fields within the boundaries of the fence, itself in significant disrepair such that earthworms and bugs slithered and clittered under the stones.

The only train that came through was a weekly donkey engine that ran between the Cannery at the far end of the Island where this place lay, and the warehouses by the water. Each time, the train tooted, came to a stop at the old gate, and huffed as the engineer climbed out to release the padlock and so allow the little yellow engine to cross the road, where it stopped again so that the engineer could walk back across and refasten the padlock. Save for this brief interlude, the train did not stop there any longer.

One time the engineer noticed the eyes of the hedgehog peering from under a lumber pile there and he threw the remains of his lunch out onto the concrete of the old yard before going. There was a bit of carrot and a celery stalk among this and that was good.

On the whole it was a perfect heaven of a spot for an hedgehog.

There, in a burrow snug and lined with dry grass, the hedgehog kept his bachelor apartments, safe from the rain, the clumsy human footstep and the errant poodle. And he lived there many a day plus a few years, happily munching that which scampered within reach or the occasional peanut from trash thrown over the fence. The occasional vagabond squirrel passed through, and one time a family of rabbits, who settled down the tracks away from the sheds, but that was all for company this hedgehog had, and he preferred it that way. Plenty of room and no one to tell him what to do.

Contrary to popular belief, hedgehogs are neither pigs nor porcupines, being far less aggressive than either. This particular hedgehog was retiring, modest, not inclined to violence, a great lover of personal freedom, and was especially appreciative of his privacy.

After the Cannery closed down, the men there all found work somewhere else, if work could be found, and the passage of the donkey train became more infrequent, otherwise life continued pretty much as always.

But this country in which he lived was changing about him all this time. One day another hedgehog came through the fence and wandered
into the yard. This was a strange hedgehog and not like any other this hedgehog could remember having seen. For one thing, this hedgehog was not a boy, but a girl, and this irritated the bachelor hedgehog very much for he preferred his solitude.

For another thing, well, this hedgehog spoke as follows, "Alors! Comme ca va?"

You are French, the observant hedgehog remarked flatly and the other assented. How did you get here?

The girl hedgehog cocked her head, appeared to think about it, then responded, "Par Avion." A bloody scratch on her ear indicated some travel contretemps.

I mean, said the increasingly irritated long term tenant of the yard, To this yard.

"Le Metro," she said cheerfully. "Et l'omnibus."

Why? asked the male, despairingly.

"Hein?"

Why are you here? Demanded the fellow.

"Vous et une Philosophe?"

Arrrrrrrrrgh! In disgust he huffed off to his burrow where he angrily tidied the straw, which needed no such attention, peeking out every now and then to see if she had gone, only to note her busy about the place, gathering up materials to make a burrow of his own. Seemed that he would have a new neighbor, and this displeased him a great deal.

Well it is difficult to go about one's hedgehog business entirely avoiding one's hedgehog neighbors, ignoring and disdaining them completely, but as with people, so with hedgehogs and he managed to work out his routine so as to minimize objectionable contact. One thing he missed greatly had been his habit of sitting in the open space of the yard, one time each month, and there to gaze with studied delight upon the face of the beautiful full moon as she blessed the yard with light, silvering the grasses and glinting off of the fence and such machine parts not made dull with rust.

As he sat there one night, gazing for untold hours at the great wheel of the stars and the moon's traverse, he heard a voice near him, "Elle est tres beaux. I have never seen her so beautiful."

Well, it seemed IT was beginning to learn how to speak properly in the regional dialect. Still, he went off to his burrow and did not come out to look at the moon again next month. As it turned out, he would not get a second chance, for the Way of the World is hard and for little creatures like hedgehogs, change comes hard indeed.

It had been some time since the little yellow donkey train had passed, and the decision had been made by Higher Ups to do away with the train tracks entirely as they were not needed and land was a valuable thing. Men came to open the gate and tear up the railbed, loading all the ties and rails into trucks, and so they took them away and that was that. Next, the men came back and started knocking down the old sheds and carting away the ironmongery. In consternation, the hedgehogs huddled in their burrows as jackhammers began pounding up the remains of the yard asphalt.

That night the two of them crept out to survey the devastation. The sheds were gone, the machinery and lumber was gone, the yard was all broken up. But at least the grasses and low scrub remained, and the field, and perhaps the humans would be content with that for the fence remained as well.

For the next few days, they were not bothered in their reconditioned home, but down the tracks -- or where the tracks had been, a fume of smoke arose, and the sight of more humans and much activity. Going further from his burrow than he ever had gone before the hedgehog scurried along the still mounded embankment stripped of rails to see the men were laying down a blacktop walking trail and burning the grass as they did so. The family of rabbits came tearing along, madly in terror, and passed him without speaking, leaping over an hedge and disappearing from view.

He scurried on back to the safety of his own brushy area to find his neighbor peering through some brush near the gate. She was still and tense.

He crept up beside her and looked out to see the intersection of the little road the donkey train had crossed and a big, wide, dangerous, open expanse of asphalt, beyond which rolled green fields and a copse of trees. He was looking at the grounds of the Community College across the way of the divided road that entered this area from a tunnel, but he did not know that. He knew only that all but one of the rabbit family had made it across this vast desert to the other side where they all stood looking at the poor fellow who lay there, as it happened, in the third lane going out to the tunnel. His legs had been crushed by one of the automobile machines and he lay there, unable to move, yet still alive, calling out, "Eee! Eee!"

They could do nothing but watch. Eventually, the rabbit lay his head down, sobbed and was still and one only hopes he was already past awareness when the next machine ran him down and put him into that other world where humans and rabbits and dogs and hedgehogs all go after death.

That night was somber and sleepless. Each of the hedgehogs had the image of that rabbit pinned down on the highway, like a soldier sent to some stupid foreign war for no real purpose, and left to die by some uncaring Central Authority. It is always the little people who suffer when the Big Ones decide to stomp around in great big boots.

The next day began with the scent of burn. The two hedgehogs came out and all the world was aflame. Fire came down on them, merciless and hot. They ran to the edge of the divide. Others have names for this thing: Die Todestrecke, The Road of Death, Alameda de los Muertes. All around the world the condition is the same and has continued down through generations. People fleeing the fire and confronted with that last border across which only a few come alive. It has become the icon of our age, made solid by decisions made far away and removed by the uncaring and the diffident.

A smell of chemicals hit them both and the fume of smoke increased. They could not hide in their burrows any longer; there, they surely would be burned alive or suffocated. There, they would die.

There remained only the wide stretch of the border road that separated them from safety.

"J'peur! J'peur! Mon ami! Compadre. Tiene miedo. I am afraid!", she said.

He saw the machines ran in groups, periodically. Between each group, there was a little time. Perhaps enough.

The smoke curled about them. He froze, unable to move, a small animal doing the only thing it knows how to do when afraid. It was she, she who broke this animal spell, by crying out as the flames approached, "Maintenent! Maintenent! Now! Now!"

They bolted across the two lanes of the road to the divider with its greenery and cedar chips, and paused panting as the death machines passed on either side. The body of the rabbit remained there in front of them. He had been mashed down into a mass of fur and reddish muck. He had been pounded into pure meat, by an uncaring universe. By act of war or simply inattention. For a long time they stared at the rabbit and the cars, until he recollected himself. Timing. We have only a partial chance on this side. They come through in a group, but there are stragglers. If there are no stragglers, then we can make it.

"Je te crois." She said. "I believe you."

At the given moment he gave the word and they rushed across. The first lane a long stretch and the last a longer stretch with its shoulder as the headlights of a straggler truck pushing the Limit for the last few meters of allowed 45mph came up over the tunnel rise.

With a whoosh the truck passed and the two gasped for breath in the reeds of the Community College. For a while they lay there beside one another, breathing, before getting up.

They ambled down the sward and found a nice brushy place near the main building and there the two live today in one burrow, with no more reason to fear. Two hedgehogs marching down the road of life together, without fear.

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

APRIL 29, 2007

I'M DRIVIN' IN MY CAR. I TURN ON THE RADIO. I HOLD YOU CLOSE. FIRE!

A tanker truck exploded early Sunday morning on the connector ramp from westbound Interstate-80 to Interstate-580 eastward near the heart of the Bay Bridge Maze, about one half mile from the toll plaza, causing the upper deck of the ramp to collapse onto the lower deck and eerily evoking reminders of the Cypress Freeway collapse during the '89 earthquake.

As of 5:15 a.m., the California Highway Patrol had reopened northbound I-880 to eastbound I-80. Still closed throughout the morning were westbound I-80 to eastbound I-580, southbound I-880 and westbound I-580 to I-80 east and west.

The oil tanker had exploded after hitting a concrete support pylon and triggered a fire at 3:42 a.m. on the section of freeway known as the MacArthur Maze. The Oakland Fire Dept. said the blaze had been extinguished by about 5:50 a.m.

Damage to the freeway was extensive and estimated to be in the millions of dollars, Oakland Fire Battalion Chief Mike Miller said. The CHP said it could be days if not months before traffic resumed as usual on the damaged stretch of road.

The driver of the tanker hailed down a cab that happened to be nearby on the elevated structure and so was taken to a hospital with 2nd degree burns. He is expected to live.

The NBC chopper showed at least two sections of the maze had collapsed, spanning 150 to 200 yards.

Nearly 75,000 vehicles use the portion of the road every day. But because the accident occurred where three highways converge, authorities said it could cause commuting problems for hundreds of thousands of people who use the most busy interchange in the nation. State transportation officials said 280,000 commuters take the bridge into San Francisco each morning.

Incidental reports from Island-Lifers in the field indicate that travel times on this calm Sunday spiked to well over 60 minutes from Berkeley into the City. The retrofit construction underway on the San Francisco side will almost certainly complicate traffic.

A preliminary investigation indicated the driver may have been speeding on the curving road.

Witnesses reported flames rising up to 200 feet into the air. Heat exceeded 2,750 degrees and caused the steel beams holding up the interchange from eastbound I-80 to eastbound Interstate 580 above to buckle and bolts holding the structure together to melt, leading to the collapse, California Department of Transportation director Will Kempton said.

Here is the official word with maps provided by Caltrans regarding tomorrow and the months ahead as for getting into the City.

"AVOID THE AREA"

Last updated 4/29/07

Take alternate routes, ride transit, carpool, or telecommute

Due to a tanker truck accident, the westbound I-80 connector to southbound I-880 is DESTROYED. Motorists are advised to use the following Caltrans approved detour route: 80W to 580E to 980W to 880S, as shown by the green arrows on the map below.

The eastbound I-80 to eastbound I-580 connector ramp is also DESTROYED. Motorists are advised to use any of the following Caltrans approved detour routes from 80E (the Bay Bridge) to 580E.

Island-Life notes that Monday is likely to be even more miserable than usual.

WISH YOU WERE HERE

On a somewhat incendiary note we segue to the scorching performance Thursday night at the Sold Out show at the Regency Grand of Rodrigo Y Gabriela. The Island-Life Social Coordinator managed to score Tix months in advance for this astonishing duo who have managed to entirely sell out every single North American gig, with maybe an exception for the Coachella Festival at which they are performing tonight. If you were fortunate to have squeezed into the packed hall Thursday, you really were in for a treat, as these two kids from Mexico have managed to cross the diamond with the pearl musically, inventing an entirely original, fully matured style entirely their own, much as Joe Satriani, Leo Kottke, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis and a select few and have done.

First off, let us say that some untutored reviewers have pinned the flamenco label on their style, which is about as foolish a judgment as it is unlearned. Flamenco is a style indigenous to Spain, consists of 12-part highly defined, very disciplined structures for each of its established song patterns, and has two major divisions into either accompaniment for song or accompaniment for dance, each with its own highly defined structures as well. The highest exponent of the form comes from a small area of Spain called Andalucia Comparing the Mexican duo to the Gypsy Kings or Paco di Lucia may sound like flattery, but such comparisons are not informed.

Flamenco employs a periodic finger roll called "rasquado" and a sound-board tap called "golpe".

Gabriela does employ the rasquado, but where a Solearas, Bulerias, or Sevillana uses the ringer-roll to stylistically punch out the end or the beginning of a sequence, to dramatic effect, Gabriela employs the rasquado as part of the continuous sound of rhythm while including taps, slaps and furious knuckle pounding to add percussion to her rhythm, employing all parts of the hand, not just the thumb. Nowhere do the pair do anything like a farruca.

That said, the two have captured native Mexican cancion progressions and combined them with -- pause breath -- heavy metal shredding. Yes, the two even did covers of Metallica's Sandman and Orion (included on their new CD, Tamacun), as well as tasty versions of "Wish You Were Here", by Pink Floyd, and "Stairway to Heaven". Their take on the old Led Zep chestnut was infused with Latin feel and a few nice jazzy chord changes with a B13 thrown in here and there, which revivified the one terribly overplayed song.

With all the head-banging -- on nylon string classical guitars no less -- and the metalhead "horns" hand guestures, you would think this stuff would trend to the lowest common denominator, but no, just as the screaming , shirt-throwing, pogo-jumping crowd got really raucous, Rodrigo climbed down to the edge of the stage to toss in a fifteen minute version of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," that was nearly unrecognizeable by the changes in texture.

Gabriela claims that she taught herself how to play music by borrowing the acoustic guitar of her sister's boyfriend and playing along to Led Zeppelin records before joining a Mexican heavy metal band, where she met Rodrigo. Heavy metal is not exactly a way to make pots of money in any country, let alone Mexico, so the two accepted a gig to play sambas and cha chas for American tourists at a seaside bar. Since neither one knew any sambas or waltzes, their repetoire consisting of Pantera, Metallica, Black Sabbath and Death Guild, they just adapted what they knew to acoustic instruments. When asked about their music, Gabriela responded, "Oh, iss traditional Mexican. Very old . . .".

In a sort of fairytale way, the two sold all of their electronic equipment to go visit Europe on a thin promise of a place to stay in Ireland. Like many Irish promises, that one evaporated almost instantaneously upon debarking in Dublin, so they set out to make money by busking on the streets. To their surprise, they succeeded. The Irish, above all else, appreciate a raw deal and sincerity, so the appreciated pair performed in cafes until wintertime when, not used to European weather, or informed as to geography, they decided to go to Stockholm, ostensibly to find warmer weather.

Along the way, the two developed a propulsive style that borrows from all over the world to make really exciting stuff. There are few, if any, who can simultaneously play percussion as well as rhythm as Gabriela can do, with not a single hand motion wasted producing some kind of sound at every chance, often at 185 bpm. On the accompanying DVD, she and Rodrigo break down for aspiring guitarist how Tamacun is done, and reveals that finger-roll she does is at least three seperate motions with three seperate sounds produced at lightning speed. And when she hit that fingerboard, she didn't just lightly tap, she pounded that sucker so that the vibration went through the floor into the chest and rattled the back windows. The shouting, screaming, stomping crowd in the Regency Grand brought the two back for two encores, and at the end, you could see the sweat plastering the hair to the sides of her head, while Rodrigo had to wrap himself with a towel a couple times during performance to keep the archtops dry.

The Blogs are full of adoration for the pair, with at least one containing the entry, "Gabriela, marry me!"

The CD is titled Tamacun, after a character in Mexico who "herds" crocodiles who have found the only unpoisoned pool along a river rendered toxic by industrial pollution. This is a reflection of the pair's committment to environmental causes, which anyone can note on their website, www.rodgab.com.

Seeing the pair live is Tamacun amped plus ten, as watching what the two and actually seeing them do the impossible is worth the price of standing in line plus some.

The number of youtube.com videos of various performances continues to increase. Last count the number was about 29. Their visit with David Letterman can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5VFWA2YKdo.

Their American tour has resumed with additions after an unfortunate incident reflective of the Culture of Incompetance in Washington, as Rodrigo was detained and denied visa entry for over a month by Homeland Insecurity because he happened to have the same name as a noted terrorist.

As requests to perform continue to come in from all over the world, it would be well to try to catch them whenever they appear in your town. Last Blog entries indicate that Mexico would like to see its native children home again, there to be recieved no doubt with triumphant accolades.

There is more stuff about them on the CD/DVD release, so just buy the damn thing -- it was only $8 from Amazon.com at last check. Do yourself a favor and buy new music and attend a live performance. Music revivifies the blood, stimulates the imagination, improves local economies, fights back the Darkness and, besides, its good for you.

I'LL SAVE YOU NELL!

Our local contact in Berzerkeley, the euphoniously named Ms. Bullwinkel, forwards a press release for the July 4th Extravaganza at the Berkeley Marina, calling for vendors.

"Vendor applications are now being accepted for the City of Berkeley's July 4th Celebration at the Berkeley Marina.

The event will take place on Wednesday, July 4, 2007, noon-9:30 PM on the South side of the marina at the foot of University Avenue in Berkeley. This alcohol-free event includes a stage of live music, free sailboat and dragon boat rides, massages, face painters, inflatables, a giant slide, Adventure Playground, and a fireworks display off the end of the Berkeley pier at 9:35 PM. Free admission and plenty of parking until 7PM.

Applications for vending booth space for arts and crafts, food, commercial, or organizations (free to non-profits) may be obtained by emailing LBullwinkl@aol.com. Sponsored by the City of Berkeley. Produced by Another Bullwinkel Show 510/548-5335".

Island-Life notes the annual affair is always trouble-free and a delight for all participants. And note that the marina has the benefit of being in sightline for both the East Bay as well as the City Fireworks displays. So you artisans out there, get your tchotchkes in order and make ready for a fun time beside the water on July 4th.

MIGHT BE SUPERSTITIOUS, BUT SOMETHING'S GOING ON DOWN THERE

Well, its been a quiet week on the Island, our hometown. Uncertain cloudy weather yielded to suddenly bright, hot sunshine on Saturday and Sunday, causing all kinds of traffic conniption fits. Every time the weather changes people start driving their automobiles like Death Machines.

Understand New Orleans will celebrate Jazz Fest down there next week, and we are envious of all those folks hustling down for some serious music on the Delta for this year the Fest will kick off with renewed vigor after the Katrina disaster. Snafus and Contratemps shunted the Island-Life participation this year, which included surgery and an unscrupulous used car dealer, but rest assured, this situation will not last, for Island-Life will rise again! We will be reporting first hand from the Windy City for the Chicago Blues Festival in June, so stay tuned.

Up in Lake Woebegone, our Sister City, we hear the lake is clearing of ice and that is a good thing. Requires different fishing gear for those situations. Hope everyone is prepared. As for here, we have our fishing license, obtained with great ceremony from Big 5 Sporting Goods. The innocent gal behind the counter did not believe that a license to take trout from streams was required in California, until her boss reminded her thats what a license was for to start with.

As soon as we got that license the word went out along all streams and lakes among the trout there that we were on the loose again, so there was no hurry for other things, such as flies and such. They know we are coming and they sure act like they knew all along when we finally get there.

California trout are the savviest trout in the world by reputation, and many are the angler who hide behind bushes and rocks, lofting their hapless bait upstream to allow a natural-looking drift to tease those fellers into chomping down on a metal hook, or more likely not, only to return home with naught but sandwich wrappers and sunburn to offer. We have personally observed trout rise up, examine the fly, then turn away in disdain.

O the ignominy.

The trout in California are smart and unlike anything you may find in, say, Virginia or Georgia. In those places Field and Stream loves to document with four color photographs guys standing out there right in the middle of the stream not giving a good god damn if the fish see them or not. You aint gonna get away with that in California. No sirree.

In California, you get a stream wader, you get a pair of trout talking to one another, like,

Fred, there's some big galoot standing there trying to hook folks in the mouth.
Ok.
He's standing right there in full view, trying to hook somebody. You see that?
I seen that, Clem.
I don't think that is right, Fred.
Ok.
Fred, we gotta do something about this.
Ok.
Well you just go around and tell everybody there is some damn galoot there with a pole trying to hook somebody.
Ok. I go now.
That's the end of the day for that feller's fishing and he ruined it all by announcing himself.

Besides the fishing season, Summer is announced in Northern California by abalone divers dying and by windsurfers. Abalone is a queer sort of snail that looks horrifying in life and tastes like burnt rubber when dead and properly prepared. It tastes like chewy burnt rubber when not properly prepared. One harvests abalone by donning a suit to protect one's sensative flesh from the abrasion of rock and waves and intense sunburn and using a crowbar to wrest a creature from its natural home underwater into a cookpot.

Abalone harvesters fondly refer to the process as delightfully akin to repairing a VW transaxle while partially submerged underwater. Their eyes typically glaze over ecstatically when talking about this venture, which is known to produce sinusitus and death. Or worse.

This is a typically Californian occupation, and is one of those things of which we who live here find typically embarrassing and among the list of acts and features that other states describe as proof of natural Californian nuttiness, to our extreme outrage and displeasure.

We would like to put an end to things like this, and we try by instituting all sorts of regulations, like no abalone under seven inches may be retained, no matter how difficult the obtaining, and no air tanks or scuba gear allowed. No shotguns may be employed in taking abalone. Only snorkels distributed here my friend, which means that the abalone hunter must not only reach under dangerous places blindly with bare hands, but must hold his or her breath while doing so.

Only the officially approved abalone crowbar may be employed to yank these critters loose and only five per day on a special abalone endorsement stamp may be taken north of Monterey, with payment of the proper fee. No wonder the preparation of abalone involves pounding the animal with a nine pound hammer until tough gristle remains. Heck, you would be furious at the end of all that as well, whether it involved taking abalone or mushrooms.

Since no scuba tanks are allowed while harvesting this indigestible creature, diving for abalone involves a multistage process. Find abalone, attach balloon, breath, return and pound the hell out of the thing until it yields. Breath again. Go back for more. Repeat for the next eight hours.

Had a friend who dived on down there looking for that abalone -- it got to be an obsession, since the abalone kinda figured out the game and all scooted down below, leaving precious few up above -- he dived down there so deep the salt water got up his nose and they had to drill him out with a kind of jackhammer and that part was no fun at all, jackhammers in the nose and all of that.

We don't understand why any sensible man would dive down into water where the fish all pee and do worse things to themselves and each other, but to each his own. Plenty of coprophiliacs out there, we guess.

They don't have abalone in Minnesotta and we figure that has something to do with natural Lutheran common sense. Always been envious of all that. They could always find a way to get them seeded in Lake Itasca -- those smart boys have their ways -- but there's no yashur yonit when it comes to abalone. Too strange a prize.

Well Jan, here's a snail I pulled up out of the lake.

Ya, sure.

Looks a big one, this snail.

Better throw it back, Betty. It looks funny.

I guess so.

[Plash!]

If you know someone who harvests abalone, perhaps that person needs more ketchup in their diet. Ketchup has naturally mellowing ingredients that redirect people from such extreme behaviors like diving down too deep in fish pee and searching for sea delicacies in unnatural and dangerous places. These are the good times for Barb and me.

These are the good times.
Ketchup and macaroni.
Ketchup is flowing, flowing on your Abalone.
Ketchup! Ketchup! Ketchup!

Brought to you by the Ketchup Advisory Board. Not affiliated with NPR or any radio station that we know of. Even though we may like them an aweful lot. With ketchup.

Strange de Jim is out there right now, pounding with a ball peen hammer on a piece of old copper plate to be used in one of his monolithic sculptures. He pauses to hearken unto the train. Even as Suzie looks up from her book in the Old Same Place Bar. Somewhere, in the depths of the Stygian Night. a poodle unleases a blood curdling howl. And Officer O'Madhauen peers over his styrofoam coffee cup at the quarter moon hanging over the old weed-infested cannery. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.

APRIL 22, 2007

PSA - WARNING ON FRUITVALE AREA

Our Woman-on-the-Street reported on a disturbing situation along the Hispanic section of International Boulevard in the Fruitvale district of Oaktown. Word is out a street war is in full swing over there with non-gang homies cruising the blocks with loaded rifles clearly visible. The staff at Sausal Creek Critical Care facility, long used to the occasional gunshot in an area largely ruled by drug lords have escalated their incident response patterns as nightly fullisades of pistol, rifle and machine gun fire send everyone diving to the floor.

There have been many murders recently and it appears that Nuevo Emigrantes are battling with the Viejos in the crowded area that is increasingly pressed by upscale developments in surrounding neighborhoods. The recent arrivals seem to have ticked off a number of the long entrenched folks with their Old Country manners and habits. The national attention to the "immigrant problem" also is stressing out already stressed out people.

"Hey man, you just don't do that a crap shoot!" Tempers flare, omerta is called upon and pretty soon shots get fired. Now the situation has exploded into uncontrollable fighting.

Island-Life recommends extreme caution when passing through this area until this thing blows over.

TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

The Island wound up in the news recently when the Contra Costa Times reported that over two dozen islanders have told police that they are victims of an identity theft ring that tampered with a personal identification number, or PIN, keypad at the Albertsons store on Marina Village Parkway and then used cloned credit cards to steal their money.

It appears the same ring also hit an Albertsons in San Lorenzo, replacing a PIN pad there with a nearly identical one designed to steal the account information of customers, according to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office.

So far, at least $10,000 has been stolen from the Islander victims.

Most of the withdrawals seem to have made from automatic teller machines in southern California.

One Albertson's employee told Island-Life that at least one woman had lost over $1,000.

The overall number of reported victims from the two supermarkets has topped 100 people who together lost about $70,000, according to sheriff's detectives.

The investigation into the identity theft ring began on the East Coast, then moved to Southern California, where several merchants were targeted, before shifting to the Bay Area, Swetnam said.

The federal Secret Service has been tracking the ring, and all the information gathered from local investigations eventually will be turned over to the agency, McNiff said.

Local police investigations suggest the PIN pad at the Albertsons in San Lorenzo was compromised between Jan. 26 and Feb. 4, with reports of fraudulent account activity beginning to be reported the first week of April.

It appears the same ring also hit an Albertsons in San Lorenzo, replacing a PIN pad there with a nearly identical one designed to steal the account information of customers, according to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office.

So far, at least $10,000 has been stolen from the Islander victims.

Most of the withdrawals seem to have made from automatic teller machines in southern California.

One Albertson's employee told Island-Life that at least one woman had lost over $1,000.

The overall number of reported victims from the two supermarkets has topped 100 people who together lost about $70,000, according to sheriff's detectives.

The investigation into the identity theft ring began on the East Coast, then moved to Southern California, where several merchants were targeted, before shifting to the Bay Area, Swetnam said.

The federal Secret Service has been tracking the ring, and all the information gathered from local investigations eventually will be turned over to the agency, McNiff said.

Local police investigations suggest the PIN pad at the Albertsons in San Lorenzo was compromised between Jan. 26 and Feb. 4, with reports of fraudulent account activity beginning to be reported the first week of April.

Another example of abuse by East Coasters on Californians.

MISTER .357

The Oaktown owner of Coliseum Pizza and Taqueria in East Oakland, not far from the Fruitvale area, shot and killed a wannabe armed robber and wounded one of his accomplices Thursday. The Owner, Catarino Piedra, 41, was minding the register when Allen Joseph Hicks III, 22, entered the shop with two other men, drew a pistol and pointed the weapon at Piedra, who keeps a gun under the counter because of numerous robberies of his delivery drivers.

Piedra used the gun because his wife and three children were present at the time and it was not clear what the final intentions of the robbers might be.

Officials agreed that the situation could have gone any way, and so Piedra will not be charged with any crime.

Hicks was on probation for a marijuana conviction, and was facing battery charges at the time of the attempted robbery, police and court records show.

The battery charges stemmed from his assault upon a former girlfriend who had asked him to stay away. He entered her apartment and smashed her head against an interior wall so hard her skull put a whole in the wall board. The marijuana conviction stemmed from being caught with 15 bags of pot he claimed were for "personal use" and not for sale.

Despite being a total jerk, an asshole and a dangerously cruel shit, friends left flowers and liquor gifts for the man at a street memorial. He was a rapper and personable when not pounding heads into walls and pointing guns at children. Good riddance.

NEW TIMES! NEW TIMES!

A survey around the world revealed numerous concerns about things Amercian -- or at least caused by America -- and not much of it was good. Lets start with some specific headlines, and then summaries for the shebang.

First, the International Edition of the Herald Tribune included the following headlines

The deaths of eight soldiers this month has led to an opposition motion in Parliament that calls for a fixed withdrawal debate and rising debate over whether other NATO countries are doing their fair share.

* U.S. rethinks foreign food aid
The Bush administration wants to end the practice of allowing only U.S.-produced food to be shipped during humanitarian crises.

* For Bush, what price for loyalty to aides?
Bush's ability to turn aside pressure as he stands by his aides is now facing a serious test as he grapples with what to do about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank.

* Congestion fee proposed by New York mayor
The mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, proposed a congestion fee for parts of Manhattan as one of 127 initiatives designed to help the city's environment.

* U.S. law would have denied Virginia Tech killer a gun
But divergent state and federal protocols meant that a Virginia court's declaration that Cho Seung Hui was mentally ill and posed an 'imminent danger' was never reported.

* Campaign style: Barack Obama, in low-key mode, gains admirers.

In England, now quite busy with trying to rescue the dollar from its current value plunge -- making odd partners with the PRC in so doing -- we have The Telegraph reporting as follows:

* Cho's police history

The Guardian - London's Mayor sets example for NY on congestion
* Madonna takes her child to Tenerife

* The killer of room 2121
It was 7am on Monday. Another week was starting at Virginia Tech. Then the first shots rang out. Within hours, 32 people lay dead and America was left trying to make sense of the carnage.

* 32 lost lives

* Philip French: Virginia Tech's vigilant professor of English is a true leader.

* The challenge of preventing violence is not just an American problem

* John Monahan and Jeffrey Swanson: This American tragedy surely holds lessons for the UK as it considers the revision of its Mental Health Bill.

Canada papers seemed concerned, naturally, with its participation in the Coalition of the Willing in the Middle East and loud are the calls for pullout from Afganistan.

Moving on to foreign language papers, Spain weighed in most sympathetically of all regarding Blacksburg but sided with a nearly unanimous opinion on the continuing fiasco of the US in Iraq.

El Mundo reported CONTROVERSY BY THIS “CONSTRUCTION”
Maliki gave notice that he will restrain the wall raised by the U.S.A. in a Sunní district of Bagdad

* The insurgency easily moves to kidnap prince Enrique
* Shiite groups think that the wall shows the failure of the U.S.A.

On Blacksburg - things getting back to normal

Always frontpage news in Espana, habits of US celebrities. This week Jack NIcholson celebrates 70 and Bob Dylan still singing.

El Pais also mentioned that wall : "Maliki orders to halt the construction of the wall raised by the U.S.A. in a district of Bagdad

* The goodbye of Cho

* More images of the assassin of Virginia hours before committing the murders.

* Shots fired in NASA
An ex- employee of the NASA kills a companion and quickly commits suicide.

Le Monde, understandably concerned with an history-making national election that now pits an attractive leftist woman candidate against a very unattractive rightist man for the runoff, devoted some thoughts to things abroad.

* The Construction of a wall in Bagdad Signifies "a Complete Failure of the American Plan", according to Al Qaida
The article went on to state that the wall invites "anger and incomprehension".

Its other article referred flatly to the known medical history of Cho Seung-hui and included a cross-link to a Washington Post article that printed the Virginia committment of Cho to a 5150 equivalent 3-day hold.

As a seque, the unattractive rightist in France held a current majority of over 10%, due largely to his one-two punch, promising more jobs for French by kicking out all the foreigners. Realistically, his plans will be difficult to execute in a land still governed significantly by the rule of law.

The weekly Der Spiegel did not have current items, but the Frankfurter Allgemein had extensive reportage, commentary and reader response to the massacre at Blacksburg with the main headline "Fight over the 'Right of the People to Bear Arms'." Much of the discussion concerned unlikelyhood of any stronger gun-control legislation passing through Congress and the observation that "Erfurt does not reside in Virginia", as in, Germany has different concerns, so get over it.

Okay now, the Summary. Seems the general tenor of folks abroad is that every new bit of information that comes out of the MIddle East reinforces the conviction that Iraq is a lost cause for the USA, surge or no. The incident about the wall -- first of about seven planned by the Army to physically seperate Shiites from Sunni's -- is seen as just another example of stuff people have done in other places and already proven unworkable to all except the seeminly obtuse Americans. The French commented pointedly that just such a wall surrounded the Green Zone when a bomber succeeded in blowing up Parlement inside just last week.

The release of the Cuban terrorist to Miami was shoved to back pages as more Bushian nonsense.

Just about all of Central Europe's nations feature rigorous gun control, so the events in Blacksburg are seen as a feature of typically American traits, whether it be gun ownership or lax agency documentation of Cho's illness. Germany, where no one can proceed anywhere without at least four official stamps from five bureaucrats, noted the effects of multi-culti meltingpot ethnic brews, according to some, yet others in Germany called such commentary utter foolishness.

For the record, our inhouse psych technician indicated that the thoroughly Americanized Cho was entirely American in his traits, his language, his quirks and even in details of his mental illness. That he was Green Card had less to do with his actions than his presence in the US from an early age. The boy was as typically American -- and just as sick -- as Timothy McVeigh.

So there you have it: news of the world. We read newspapers in five languages so you don't have to. Another benefit of reading IslandLife.

GIVE ME SOME OF YOUR DIRTY LOVE

This year KFOG's annual Listener Appreciation Party vanishes the way of many Bay Area benefits, becoming a Pay for Ticket event like all the others, still out on pier 39 and still featuring great bands as well as overpriced and unhealthy food, but at least the fireworks are still free. Occurs in May. Tix are 10 bucks. See Kfog.com. Its the KaBoom! Kenny Wayne Shepard reprises his past role on the docks, joined by Ozomatli and others.

In other musical arenas, Derek Trucks will testify the Blues in a serious way with Susan Tedeschi at the Fillmore on June 16. Meanwhile, we must live with the following. Iggy Pop just finished a gig there last night with the original Stooges lineup. The talented Damien Rice will grace the Oaktown Paramount April 28th. While the Old 97's take the Fillmore May 3rd, they just might have some competition crosstown from Elvis Costello at the Warfield on the same night. Miss both and Victor Wooten will jazz your Friday evening at the Fillmore the 4th of May.

Yet that night is devoted to the return of Houston Jones to their homebase here at McGrath's Pub.

Next week we will have reports on the US visit of Rodrigo y Gabriela in Babylon.

WILL THERE BE ANY STARS IN MY CROWN?

It's been a quiet week on the Island out here in the San Francisco Bay. Save for the jackhammers and all the traffic diversions at the Cineplex, where madness rules the pavement. The pastor at the First Church of the Nazarene cross the street glares at the chainlink fencing and the lack of parking for his flock and his glare has much significance, for the First Church of the Nazarene was the first church built on this Island of many many churches. A little plaque states that the church was built in 1850 and then subsequently moved to its present spot. Which now must suffer view of the cineplex under construction.

Spring has postponed the advent of Summer here with cold rainstorms sure to cause misery in Michagan and parts East. Sorry about that; we didn't make the weather. We simply report the news.

Gas prices have settled into the $3.50's range after their flirtation with the stratosphere. Paid $3.99 up the 101 corridor a few weeks ago. We are very likely to see such numbers again by summer.

Because of the uncertain weather, we remain uncertain how Earth Day went, a bigger event this year all over the place thanks to Al Gore and his movie. "Hello, I am Al Gore. I used to be the Next President." Does anybody recall that Bushie refusing to attend Kyoto while declaiming this global warming thing was all an inconvenient hoax? Now's a good time to unload that beachfront/ riverside property.

Down at the Pampered Pup on Park Street (unintentional alliteration) Jose has been serving up french fries again, now that the French have been proven entirely correct in the matter of Iraq and seem to be no more smug than usual about it. If any of you recall, a certain congressman renamed the trans-fat delicacy in a moment of outraged hubris when the French refused to go along with the thoroughly ridiculous and cruel invasion. The French, who call potatoes "earth apples" and fries, "apple fritters", could have cared less at the time.

Jose, who speaks another language entirely, felt duty bound to follow his Leader -- we do have a couple Republicans left on the Island -- but nowadays has put his signed photo of Bushie under the counter and put a small camp grill over that of Ronald Reagan to shunt aside the occasional flung tomato. Its rough being a true Conservative in the most Liberal district in the country, as Babar can testify. Babar has been sitting on the dark edge of the Old Same Place, nursing his Old Fashioned with sad eyes. It does seem likely the GOP will tap him again for the next election, but he has been pretty quiet about it all and whenever Papoon comes bounding in wearing his red, white and blue vest with donkey pins, chipper as a ground squirrel, he bends his head down.

Lately the national elections in France, his motherland, have his devoted attention. He is rooting, naturalment, for Sarkozy, the arch-Conservative. France, beautiful France, is about to go through what are euphamistically termed "interesting Times," after Chirac's 12 years of essential do-little regime which presided over a sort of gentle and steady decline of most things Gallic. Change is in the wind, and that part of France which is not so beautiful may have a large say in the matter, for a larger percentage of France consists of good ole boys not too much different from your basic gunrack, plaid-shirt, pickup truck, dixie flag, redneck of Macon County and who feel the rabidly xenophobic Le Pen does not go far enough. .

Meanwhile at home there has been some discussion around the tables at Juanita's Taqueria about why Eugene Shrubb has not been impeached for his disastrous and misleading invasion of Newark. Some may recall that five years ago Shrubb led an invasion of Newark in search of Weapons of Mass Doodoo in the form of terriorist poodles. At the time, nobody, not even people living in Newark cared much about it, for Newark has long practiced such laissez faire attitude, it barely ran a government that recognized itself. There was a long search to arrest the Mayor for crimes against Humanity and Aesthetics, but only after some months was it discovered that Newark never had bothered to create such a position for itself.

The upshot of all that hubbub, was that no terriorists were found -- initially -- and a large number of liquor stores were ransacked by Shrubb's Army of Bums from Sacremento. The trouble started when terriorists started moving to Newark for the purposed of wacking any number of bums found sleeping in doorways. The notorious Al Quibble rose up out of nothing and mayhem ensued. Now President Shrubb is quite disconsolate, with most of his friends in jail or absconded. John Ashpit run off to a brothel in Nevada. Tom Postpone indicted. Scooter Libbylabel arrested. Now Matt Gonzo is under fire for not paying attention to any of his staff and firing folks for purely political reasons.

Al Quibble is officially delighted with all of the events plus some. Their official mouthpiece, Muhammed Al-Setter has been barking most joyously and waggin his tail over the savings. In Newark, the bums keep coming, and Al Quibble doesnt even have to pay for plane tickets.

The Animal Control Officer has been looking for this Al-Setter for some time, and when he catches that doggie, there will be no more little Al-Setters running around and breeding uncontrollably, rest assured.

Here comes the midnight train passing through Jack London Waterfront. Time to wrap things up. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.

APRIL 15, 2007

LIKE THE WEATHER

Saturday brought a drenching before that storm went on to make things lively in Minnesotta and Parts East. Despite this late storm, the southlands here still experienced such a dearth of precipitation (2.75" against the average of 14") this season that all counties throughout the Golden State are buckling down to harsh realities in a place that hosts a bare three rivers along its 800 mile length. Santa Cruz has already instituted water rationing, not waiting for any note of despair from authorities, while most of the Bay Area Council of Governments are planning "voluntary water cutback" requests to all inhabitants. Word has it the Sierra snowpack is way down from what should be.

With the increase in population over previous years, these conditions spell hard times for the State.

You read it here on Island-Life: we now have incipient drought conditions in the year 2007.

THE BLUE DOOR AT THE BERKELEY REP

The Arts Coordinator here at Island Life slipped us into the Berkeley Rep for Tanya Barfield's Blue Door, directed by Delroy Lindo and featuring Teagle F. Bougere with David Fonteno. Mr. Fonteno, like Mr. Bougere, was culled from the Berkeley Rep pool of actors who have done time in NBC's Law and Order. The director possesses quite a long and distinguished list of stage, television and film appearances with a shelf of accolades and awards.

The play concerns the spectral visitations over a single evening to a man whose wife has divorced him for his failure to attend the Million Man March in Washington DC. The African-American man, named Lewis, ruminates over his marriage, his career as a mathematics professor, and is visited by the generations of his past, beginning and ending with his brother -- who has died from a disillusioned and cynical drug overdose -- encompassing several hundred years of ancestors, including a great grandfather who was castrated and burned alive while chained to a fence for daring to appear at a polling place during a critical election in the American South.

This is Heavy Stuff and not for the faint of heart who would endure the 90 minute performance with no intermission. Barfield does not let anyone depart the room with any false pieties comforted, and for this the young playwright deserves accolades. Like many novice writers, she has her characters declaim to the corners of the stage in long Shakespearean monologues, but unlike novices, she does prepare the way for such delivery, by setting up Lewis' insomnia and typically academic trait of lecture delivery. To solidify this presentation, she has the ghost of his brother bust down the "fourth wall" of the stage by persisting with his question, "Who is your audience here?" At which point, Rex (Teagle Bougere) steps into the bleachers and raises his arms, declaiming, "Who is your audience? Here they are!" Meaning that Lewis must address not only the demons in his head but Franz Fanon's demons of the White World as well.

Its a pretty daring move for a budding playwright but it works well, handling any number of additional issues economically and far better than anything Spike Lee has done recently in this dimension, and that is quite a compliment. This play continues a Berkeley Rep general concern thematically with identity and so follows in line with intellectual issues bound with emotional ties. It is a play about heritage and social inheritance with aspects that apply across the color spectrum. That said, the play written by Barfield has problems that stem from novice writing that simply cannot be ignored. Yes, the production earned a justifiable standing ovation on the merits of its attempts and the strength of the actors involved. Nevertheless, a review of the production history indicates a history of structural problems partially resolved over time. Early productions earned erratic reviews that complained about the declamatory speechifying, the lack of interpersonal relation between the actors, direction problems, and overly spartan stage sets, most of which issues appear to have been addressed and resolved by the time of the Berkeley Rep production. Oakland native Delroy Lindo, an highly acclaimed actor with many stage, screen and TV credits, has successfully welded this project together, providing enough "face" time to deflect previous criticism.

That Barfield had managed to dramatize critical aspects of the Black American Experience is to be commended. That she managed to bridge Black identity concerns into terms of Universals is to be applauded. That the manner of presentation is limited by novice techniques is a problem resolved by time. The issues presented by the play are timely and important, but the realization is less than actual. When Lewis decides to paint his front door blue, the result is less than satisfying against all of history and his need for resolution. It winds up being a theatrical moment with not nearly enough resonance., leaving the audience not entirely convinced that the man has fully accepted his past.

Still, the play does manage to defeat the public media presentation of all Black men as drug-pushing, pimpin' ghetto thugs dripping with bling and 'tude. The reality is that a large part of African-American culture is straight-forward Middle-class possessed of standard Middle-class values, and David Fontano manages to rise well above criticism levied against previous productions in fleshing out the character of Lewis with desperate humanity. He and Mr. Bougere earned well their standing ovations at the close of the evening.

We would say that the Berkeley Rep's production of The Blue Door is courageous for its presentation of engaged stagecraft in a world that seems increasingly disengaged. This sort of attention to theatre is what brings us back again to the Rep.

OUT OUT BRIEF CANDLE

Kurt Vonnegut was one of those authors who so permeated our high school and early college years that he had long since passed into the realm of mythos. The author of such black humor masterpieces as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday. He was 84, but for many years puzzled over his longevity despite his ineradicable smoking habits.

The author of at least 19 novels, many of them best-sellers, as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays, Vonnegut relished the role of a social critic. He lectured regularly, exhorting audiences to think for themselves and delighting in barbed commentary against the institutions he felt were dehumanizing people.

A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater as transparent vehicles for his own points of view. He also filled his novels with satirical commentary and even drawings that were only loosely connected to the plot. A simple asterisk adorns the pages of one novel with the terse description at one point, "That's an asshole." In "Slaughterhouse-Five," he drew a headstone with the epitaph: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

Despite his sense of humor and commercial success, Vonnegut battled depression throughout his life, and in 1984, he attempted suicide with pills and alcohol, joking later about how he botched the job.

His mother had succeeded in killing herself just before he left for Germany during World War II, where he was quickly taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. He was being held in Dresden when Allied bombs created a firestorm that killed an estimated 135,000 people in the city. He spent the next 23 years struggling to write about the ordeal, which he survived by huddling with other POWs inside an underground meat locker labeled slaughterhouse-five.

Many of his novels were best-sellers. Some also were banned and burned for suspected obscenity. Vonnegut took on censorship as an active member of the PEN writers' aid group and the American Civil Liberties Union. The American Humanist Association, which promotes individual freedom, rational thought and scientific skepticism, made him its honorary president. "Slaughterhouse-Five,"which came out during the Vietnam war solidified his reputation as an anti-war social critic.

His characters tended to be miserable anti-heroes with little control over their fate. Pilgrim was an ungainly, lonely goof. The hero of "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" was a sniveling, obese volunteer fireman. His alter-ego, Kilgore Trout, was a failed hack writer of pulp fiction.

He retired from novel writing in his later years but continued to publish short articles. He had a best-seller in 2005 with "A Man Without a Country," a collection of his nonfiction, including jabs at the Bush administration ("upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography") and the uncertain future of the planet.

He did manage to quell his suicidal tendencies, stating, "My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."

THUNDERING DRUMS AND CROSSROADS

It's been a quiet week on the Island, our hometown. After the excitement of Passover and all the wine and mortar-like haroset, everybody has settled down. Pastor Nyquist held an egg hunt on the same day as Father Morales down the block and there was some kind of altercation when some Lutheran kids wandered over into the Catholic demesne -- or vice versa -- to find eggs of distinctly different secularity, causing all sorts of uproar among the parents, but Sister Mary Angeles got it all sorted out with Pastor Nyquist and so everybody went to their respective places for the requisite Easter banquet.

The rains tucked everyone away into their snugs and old Filipe muttered under his grocery awnings at the lack of foot traffic on Saturday.

We have a new addition to the sidebar, with Floyd's talk at the Herbst Theatre on the Stealth Turn now available for download as an MP3.

In the still of the night here the long ululation of the midnight train comes wavering across the estuary from Jack London Waterfront. In the pullout beside the weedy fence that borders the old cannery, Officer O'Madhauen sits nursing his styrofoam coffee cup. Beneath blankets, the great bulk of Bear snores with the little head of Sophia upon his arm. Ms. Morales puts away her student's homework for the night and shuts out the light before padding across in her patched robe to slip into bed, accompanied by the shadows. Mr. Ramirez, already asleep, has a half-smile on his lips as he dreams, perhaps, of Ms. Morales. Eugene Gallipagus reposes face down into the goosedown, dreaming of a perfectly successful poodlehunt.

President Shrubb has another sleepless night, accompanied by his Barbara. "Ah told them if'n they don't like it, they can just use the power of the purse. Heck, I never thought they would actually use it! Ahm the Decider here!"

"Now Georgie . . .".

In the largely silent studios of KQED, a technician named Toni is trying to fix an antiquated tape machine for the Morning Show. The state of funding is deplorable and this is what she has to work with. Fine shows like City Arts and Lectures do not come cheap after all. If only more people would sponsor . . .

Down at the Old Same Place, Susie polishes a glass before returning to her textbook. It's a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets. But in the Old Same Place Bar sits one bartender still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions.

One answer is go to www.kqed.org and become a member.

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

APRIL 8, 2007

BORN TO BE WILD

One of our most distinguished Oaktown institutions celebrated its 50th birthday amid trepidation among the Tac-Squad and tremulous anticipation among the Citizenry for fear of the awful bloodshed and terrific howling of the atavistic beast of the Apocalypse unleashed with the Whore of Babylon sure to rend the peaceful night into ghastly tatters of purple newsprint.

Yes, the Oaktown Hells Angels, led so capably by Sonny Barger once upon a time, lit the candles on its Middle-age cake to celebrate its half century.

The birthday party went off with such external quietus that local KRON-TV had to go interview the pastor of the neighboring Zion Tabernacle Baptist Church, in the 3900 block of San Juan Street., who said, "Since I've been here, they've been very kind neighbors." He said neither the party nor the chapter house had caused his flock the slightest bit of trouble.

Nevertheless, the OPD, taking no chances, flew a chopper over the clubhouse several times after a load of fireworks was confiscated. Nothing more rowdy than about a dozen guys sipping diet cokes and beer standing outside the door while nibbling chocolate cake could be seen although Foothill Boulevard was lined deep with bikes between 40th and Rosedale avenues.

One reporter was told to go home and do some research as the official word on all subjects was, "No Comment."

Our insider reporter listed a number of activities taking place inside over the course of the three-day bash, beginning with a concert, that sounded a lot spicier than chocolate cake, but the informant concluded with a reminder that any number of human body parts can be removed with enough wacks from a ball peen hammer and perhaps silence would be well on this regard.

Well, perhaps the boys have just gotten some bad press and all boys wanna do is have fun. Nevermind the "funny-smelling cigarettes". That's organic, zero-nicotine tabbacky if you must know.

And if anybody is going to write about it, that person shall be named Sonny Barger, now into his second book on the Angels and with a film script in the works.

MR HANKY IN APRIL?

A form of that distasteful South Park figure, Mr. Hanky, has, um . . . dropped in on us early through a major international company's shenanigans.

Google is not a company with executives known to remain stick-in-the-muds no matter how sharp their financial acumen. A sole survivor of the dot-com boom, Google has not only succeeded where others have failed, it has triumphed exuberantly and with shouting glee while retaining its dot-com insouciance. As a function of this, the company's highest executives plot an elaborate April Fool's joke each year.

And why not? They are making money hand over fist.

Senior executives at Google Inc. launched their annual April Fools' Day prank last Sunday, posting a link on the company's home page to a site offering consumers free high-speed wireless Internet through their home toilet systems. Code-named "Dark Porcelain," Google said its "Toilet Internet Service Provider" (TiSP) works with Microsoft Corp.'s new Windows Vista operating system.

The gag included a mock press release quoting Google cofounder and president Larry Page, a step-by-step online installation manual, and a scatological selection of Frequently Asked Questions. On some Google sites, the company's official logo - a multicolored "Google" that changes according to the season and on holidays - substituted a commode for the second "g."

"There's actually a thriving little underground community that's been studying this exact solution for a long time," Page said in the statement. "And today our Toilet ISP team is pleased to be leading the way through the sewers, up out of your toilet and - splat - right onto your PC."

Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president, called TiSP a "breakthrough product, particularly for those users who, like Larry himself, do much of their best thinking in the bathroom."

Apparently April is not the only month in which high-jinks like this take place. Insiders report about someone injecting green dye into the the cafeteria milk and a certain vice president of engineering coming blithely into work one day to find his office filled with sand.

In the FAQ section, home users are enjoined to employ wireless distribution, as certain messy problems can occur if anyone in the household should, um, clog up the pipeline with excessive downloading.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?

Family and friends gathered at two separate commemorations in memory of Lynn Lindberg, born August 27, 1941. Died March 28, 2007.

The gathering for intimate friends and family took place at Pescadero's Hall of the Native Sons of the Golden West, built approximately around 1890. There friends and acquaintances gathered to commemorate a life well lived and well loved.

Lynn adored flowers and would burst into sunshine if gifted with a single bloom. As a result, the hall was strewn with extraordinary vases of orchids and sprays of color. The affair was catered by the good people who supply Teatro Zinzani, as Lynn was well known as a sincere patron of the arts.

In the old black and white home movies projected on to a sheet hung over the Native Son's charter, we watch history unfold from clean cut haircuts and puffed blouses of the 1950's into the maelstrom of the succeeding generation, of which Lynn was its best exemplar. Generous, kind, sociable, honest, sincere, unifying, experimental, silly, and human to a fault, Lynn Lindberg was the apex of an entire generation. She was the pure spirit never compromised of a time.

"Toi, tu auras des etoiles comme personne n'en a . . . . Quand tu regarderas le ciel, la nuit, puisque j'habiterai dans l'une d'elles, puisque je riarai dans l'une d'elles, alors ce sera pour toi comme si riaient toute les etoiles. Tu aras, toi, des etoiles qui savent rire!"

"You -- and you alone -- will have the stars as no one else has them . . . . When you look at the sky, because I am living in one of them, it will be as if all of them are laughing when you look at the stars. You and you alone will know the stars that laugh!"

TELLING STORIES

It's been a quiet week on the Island. The skies have been heavy with high fog all week, leading to spatterings of drizzle on Saturday. Got Mike Powers on the Sunday Night Jam chunking away those deep grooves. Stay Human.

Down at the Old Same Place Susie serves up another round. When the weather is grumpy, business is good. Miguel comes in grumbling about the wet and blisters on his hands. Bear sits down at the end of the bar in an unaccustomed mood of taciturn silence, deep in his beer. In the corner table a party is talking about the trout season, which has yet to open for month or so. All the high lakes are still locked in by deep snow drifts and everybody knows the trout don't rise under cloudy skies. Not around here.

The Pesach shabbos is just about all over and somewhere under some bush a solitary blue or lavender Easter egg still resides, doleful under the dripping branches. Or up in the crotch of the old chestnut tree where some overzealous teenager stuck it well out of reach of six year-old fingers.

No, you are not going up in that tree!

But there's an Easter egg up there! I can see it!

I absolutely forbid you to climb that tree! Get Uncle Johann to fetch it down for you, if you must.

Oh, Uncle is drunk again. . . .

Slap! Shame on you! Talking about Uncle that way!

And so that plastic blue Easter egg containing a whole quarter remains up there through spring, which conceals its disappointments in burgeoning foliage, while little Toby Tucker bears this frustration long after until it eats at him and he becomes a mass murderer, starting with small animals, working up to small children, women and other human beings until he is hunted down one dark night in a cave by a posse bearing torches and shotguns.

O the infamy. And all because of that little blue Easter egg, which remains in the crotch of that tree until swallowed by a bolus of swelling wood, crushed and surrounded and enveloped until the tree dies many years later and is cut up for firewood. The woodsman cutting the tree lets his chainsaw slip on this suddenly hard bolus and cuts off his own leg by accident, and so is born away legless and in agony. A small child raking through the ashes finds that quarter and bears it proudly to its mother, exclaiming, "Look ma! I earned this quarter by working!"

This child grows up to become a President of the United States. A Decider and not a Divider. A Mission Accomplished sort of guy. Long before the end of his terrifically awful Presidency, fraught with disaster, everyone in the country has come to thoroughly detest him.

His brother comes to Washington DC after losing the Governorship race in his own borrowed State and he finds this quarter in the White Room. He walks out to the 14th Street Bridge and angrily throws the coin into the Potomac River. But his brother's presidency is now over and everything is slowly getting better.

The coin is ingested by a catfish which dies soon after of apoplexy. The body of the fish washes slowly out to sea. Until the fish carcass sinks to the bottom of Chesapeake Bay while the once lucky President boy walks along the docks muttering to himself. Precious, my precious.

Meanwhile Susie serves up another round, lit by the subterranean lights of the Old Same Place Bar. Eugene is trying to explain to Miguel how you can turn an egg into rubber by soaking it in vinegar for several weeks and Miguel will have none of that.

That' aint no damn rubber. It may be something else, but not no damn rubber.

Hell, you can squeeze it right into a bottle. You can squeeze it and tease it so that makes it rubber!

It don't smell like rubber. I seen them eggs.

Sure it smells like rubber. You just remember wrong.

It stinks. Is no rubber.

Its rubber man. Nothing else acts like that.

You got a rubber on you man? You take it out and smell it.

I aint gonna do that! That's a perfect waste of a decent rubber!

Here, I got one. You smell that. Here.

You cant smell nothing here on account of the prophylactic powder!

What's that you saying?

Look -- it says right there: Prophylactic. That's the magic powder they put in there to help them rubbers along and do their work.

I don't know nothing about no powder. You a crazy gringo. . . .

Susie sighs and returns to her textbook on the manners and customs of the bonobo of Madagascar. One of these days, she would earn her degree. To shunt the bar chatter into the background she puts on one of her own compilation CDs and soon the sounds of Mavis Staples ease through the bar.
Down home blues.

The Bonobo possess curious and intricate social customs upon attaining puberty . . . .

Beatrice chose that moment to drop by. Beatrice had extricated herself from an odious husband and a difficult child and, like some sprung butterfly had been looping about the social scene to alight here and there with veins pulsing through brand new wings. Almost as if she were awaiting yet another transformation, some new chrysalis period followed by explosions.

Seems that Ruth finally has got herself something worth hanging on to. A difficult assignment after getting Steve hitched to Sandy. Now Steve had been quite a challenge, but Sandy was a gal who could make the noise of passing wind with her armpit -- with uncommon zest -- and so somehow the match had been sealed, allowing everyone to breath a great sigh of relief, for they all had been concerned about Steve and his guns firing off at odd hours of the day and night. Then there was Bear, who had managed to find a mate of his own species much to the astonishment of everyone, and Doyle seemed to have finally found his way out of the Dark Wood of Error after many years. He had taken up gardening, using old whiskey bottles as miniature glass starters for plants.

It seemed that this Spring. a number of couples had arisen out of the muck and many were setting out on brand new journeys as individuals as well. After a long dark time, glimmers could be seen among their kind indicating some kind of resurrection of spirit. Strange de Jim was planning on kayaking expeditions in the sloughs with Chris. Kayaking! At his age! And why not? Give up smoking and a man can do anything. Some kind of resurgence was going on here, and perhaps this was worth paying some attention to.

In other places people keep to bed and wait for the end to come in the last rattling breath, even if it takes years. In California, people climb mountains, go kayaking, fly to Hawaii, jump out of airplanes.

Beatrice left the bar for her samba lessons and Susie returned to her book. Its a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, but in the Old Same Place Bar, sits one Bartender still pondering life's persistent questions . . . .

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

APRIL 1, 2007

WE'RE ALL WAITING ON A TRAIN

A couple weeks ago a dismal message came over the transom regarding a friend, now on holiday, and once again we stood on that windy platform waiting on a train with a friend. While out attending the Obama rally, a wind swept up and the power went out. As of that hour, Lynn Lindberg passed over to the Other Side in Hawaii while on vacation with her husband after a multi-year battle against cancer. She took her ticket to the conductor, who accepted this one-way passage as certified, and so, our beloved Lynn was gone, leaving us standing there.

She was a vibrant spark among those who knew her. She lived life to the fullest in every minute, even before Death Sentence was pronounced by dour Medicine, and afterward insisted with determined will that every moment be lived with memorable thoroughness. She made friends among the wild creatures of the earth, and made common cause with eagles, hawks, leopards and such like with ease during her time and she was a durable model to emulate at all times in her strength and her joy.

You would do well to emulate in any part this magnificent woman who embodied all that we hold dear on this fragile earth. It is reported that while on a Last Holiday in Hawaii, organ failure set in subsequent to diagnosis of cancer and so the light went out. The boundless ocean was within sight of her window during her last hours.

A couple memorials are planned, with the big public one scheduled for Thursday. Her loving husband, Chris Lindberg, has reserved Cresta Blanca North portion of the ballroom at the Robert Livermore Community Center for April 5th. It is the north half or so of the ballroom. There is a stage and projection system for memorable photos of Lynn, and arrangments for about 80 seats + 48 with 6 round tables around the periphery of the room have been made. There'll be two 8 foot tables for food, a bar and another 8 foot table for non alcoholic beverages.

We have the room from 2:00 until 7:00PM. The actual memorial and reception will be from 3:00 until 6:00 giving us an hour for set up and another for cleanup. About 110 - 120 people are expected.

A celebration for close friends and family in memory of her remarkable accomplishments is planned for Saturday the 7th over in Pescadero. Contact Marybeth Whittemore for details.

Lynn Lindberg is survived by her loving husband, Chris, and her son, David.

IN THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER

Some of you have written in regarding the more personal aspects of this space. These emails and letters have touched the usually stoney heart of the Editor in a surprising way. We had heretofore no knowledge that the Editor was possessed of a heart of any kind previously discovered. In any case, here are some suggestions that the seasons are about to change. These are objective representations which are presented entirely in the spirit of scientific veracity.

It is possible other parts of the country might be getting impatient, however we urge beloved locals such as Minnesotta and Massechusetts to just hold on for these signs are tidings of good things coming their way. Excepting the storm now building for this coming Wednesday and destined to hit about Tuesday of the following week.

Any third-party verification as to the potential existence of a heart in the corpus of the Chief Editor remains temporarily in abeyance.

WAITING ON A TRAIN

Island-life sadly bids adieu to a notable colleague and cultural icon. Best-selling author and columnist Molly Ivins, the sharp-witted Texan reporter who skewered the political establishment and was the first to refer to President Bush as "Shrub," died Wednesday after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 62.

In a column in mid-January, Ivins urged readers to stand up against Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq.

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war," Ivins wrote in the January 11 column. "We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!"' (Read the column)

Ivins' best-selling books included those she co-authored with Lou Dubose about Bush. One was titled "Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush" and another was "BUSHWHACKED: Life in George W. Bush's America."

Ivins' jolting satire was directed at people in positions of power. She maintained that aiming it at the powerless would be cruel.

"The trouble with blaming powerless people is that although it's not nearly as scary as blaming the powerful, it does miss the point," she wrote in a 1997 column. "Poor people do not shut down factories ... Poor people didn't decide to use 'contract employees' because they cost less and don't get any benefits."

She wrote for the NY Times, starting in 1976, working her way up from local politics to covering a six-state broad region until her salty language and tendency to go barefoot in her office had the increasingly conservative Times oust her in 1981. She went from there back to her native Texas to work for varous news organs until 2001 when she went national as a syndicated columnist.

She leaves behind a great legacy of unabashed liberal reporting and a solid reputation of hard-headed attention to the facts of the case, regardless of government pressure. Molly Ivins was role model for all to emulate.

COLD RAIN, ICE AND SNOW

Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow on Friday, which, according to German folklore, means folks can expect an early spring instead of six more weeks of winter.

Since 1886, Phil has seen his shadow 96 times, hasn't seen it 15 times and there are no records for nine years, according to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. The last time Phil failed to see his shadow was in 1999.

More than 15,000 revelers milled about in a misty snow waiting for the prediction, as fireworks exploded overhead and the "Pennsylvania Polka" and other music blared in the background.

Each February 2, thousands of people descend on Punxsutawney, a town of 6,100 people about 65 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, to celebrate what had essentially been a German superstition.

Basically, a couple of trained handlers yank the groundhog from his burrow at the base of a tree stump on the occasion.

Longtime handler Bill Deeley was replaced Friday by Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle members John Griffiths and Ben Hughes.

The Germans believed that if a hibernating animal cast a shadow February 2 -- the Christian holiday of Candlemas -- winter would last another six weeks. If no shadow was seen, legend said spring would come early.

Pux and his handlers remain solidly East Coasters, and so any statements and pronouncements must be regarded therefore with some suspicion.

BABY BABY MAKE HIM STAY UP ALL NIGHT

CANCUN, Mexico (AP) -- He is called "Super Tonio," and at a whopping birth weight of 14.5 pounds, the little fellow is causing a sensation in the Mexican resort of Cancun.

Cancun residents have crowded the nursery ward's window to see Antonio Vasconcelos, who was born early Monday by Caesarean section. The baby drinks 5 ounces of milk every three hours and measures 22 inches in length. In appearance, reporters said he resembles something like a pile of pudding with a jolly pumpkin set on top.

"We haven't found any abnormality in the child; there are some signs of high blood sugar, and a slight blood infection, but that is being controlled so that the child can get on with his normal life in a few more days," Narciso Perez Bravo, the hospital's director, said Wednesday.

In Brazil, a baby born in January 2005 in the city of Salvador weighed 16 pounds, 11 ounces at birth. According to Guinness World Records, the heaviest baby born to a healthy mother was a boy weighing 22 pounds, 8 ounces, born in Aversa, Italy, in September 1955.

Antonio's mother, Teresa Alejandra Cruz, 23, and father, Luis Vasconcelos, 38, said they were proud of the boy, and noted that Cruz had given birth to a baby girl seven years ago who weighed 11.46 pounds.

NOT SO ITSY BITSY POLKA DOT BIKINI

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- In a lycra revolution, a cover-all swimming costume is bringing Muslim women on to Australian beaches as lifeguards, unzipping tensions which divided parts of Sydney little over a year ago.

The two-piece "burkini", popular in the Middle East, is proving key to a reshaping surf lifesaving Down Under -- once a bastion of white Australian culture and still a heartland of the country's sun-bronzed, heroic self-myth.

The shift follows race riots between ethnic Lebanese Australians and white Australian youths at Cronulla Beach in Sydney's south in the lead-up to Christmas in 2005.

Cars, shops and churches were damaged in the violence, which followed an attack on a pair of beach lifeguards.

The full-length lycra suit with hijab head-covering is not too figure hugging to embarrass, but is tight enough to allow its wearer to swim freely. It will soon be manufactured in the iconic red and yellow of Australia's surf life saving movement.

The burkini is making its appearance during the 100th anniversary of surf life saving in Australia, which began on Sydney's famous Bondi Beach and has grown to count 115,000 volunteers in more than 300 clubs.

Women were only allowed membership in 1980 and some clubs patrol inland lakes, including Lake Jindabyne near the snow-capped southern Australian Alps.

NOT SO MUCH COLD RAIN, NOT SO MUCH ICE, AND VERY LITTLE SNOW

A dry January in the northern Sierra Nevada contributed to a statewide snowpack that is only about 43% of average, water officials announced Friday.

That is the lowest snowpack measurement for this time of year since 1991.

The measurement was taken during the first major snow survey of the year, which comes in February about halfway through the water year.

Though the winter has been unusually dry -- this was the sixth-driest January since 1920 -- the news is tempered by the relative fullness of reservoirs after a string of wet years and the remaining few months of the snow season. In fact, the forecast calls for possible storms beginning the middle of next week, said Maury Roos, California's chief hydrologist.

'The last time it was so dry was water year 1991, which was during the six-year drought,' Roos said.

Bay Area water officials are keeping an eye on the situation and said so far water supplies should be sufficient. The stakes could be much higher next year, however.

Although global warming has diminished California's snowpack, there is no reason to think the latest measurements have anything to do with a warming climate. Rather, it is a lack of precipitation.

Climate experts say California will see a higher percentage of precipitation falling as rain rather than snow as the climate warms, but they are divided as to whether a warmer climate will mean more or less total precipitation.

Around September we will be doing some hiking during the annual Sabbatical around those measurement areas and we will provide a full report at that time.

VIVA LA FOTOGRAFIA!

Just over the transom from contributor Chad Chadwick comes this link to evocative photographic work, with shots from New Orleans among them.

Chris Jordan is a photographer who uses scale to illuminate the scope of our cultural imperatives.

Check out Running the Numbers: http://www.chrisjordan.com/.

I HEAR THAT TRAIN A COMIN'; COMIN' ROUND THE BEND

It's been a quiet week on the Island. The Cineplex monstrosity procedes forward with barricades and blockages and lawsuits continuing. The Southshore Mall continues with its own nonsensical set of changes invvolving bigger and better as the Walgreens moves from a reasonable space to a far smaller one with fewer resources in the name of progress. And at least as of this individual, fewer buyers.

Severe illness has struck this House, resulting in delayed publication and truncated issues for several of the past months. We have gotten familiar with foley catheters and morphine drips and the wierd echoes in ICU wards which are redolent of European train stations, all these people arriving and departing at odd hours of the night.

"Einsteigen, Tueren schliessen! Vorsicht beim abfaert!"

Imagine. A crowd of people all waiting upon a platform. Something is behind the curtain.

"Einsteigen, Tueren schliessen! Vorsicht beim abfaert!"

A bureacratic voice anounces from the PA. But no one understands what is being said. When one's perception is given the borders of pain, the Conductor is a severe German and the border patrol is more than usual cruel. Today's medicine had forgotten even Checkov's flickering humanity beside the bed of the invalid.

In echoing halls, comes the eternal command to prepare for final departure.

"Einsteigen, Tueren schliessen! Vorsicht beim abfaert!"

In our case, the patient was ejected, that is a better term than "discharged", without further complications beyond the removal of morphine drip about 48 hours too early.

Others, however remained there waiting upon a train. A train with only Endstation as its Terminus. Endstation is the last point of exit any of us can expect.

"Einsteigen, Tueren schliessen! Vorsicht beim abfaert!"

The Attendant bends at the waist to examine the ticket. Most unusual to examine a ticket upon entry, where one is expected to be carded after seating. But for this train, that is the way

"Dieser Karte erlaubt kein Zuruckfaerht. Bitte wissen Sie bescheid."

This ticket is a One-Way passage. Be so notified. This train does not return.

And that is the way it is. One starts out and has no guarantee of return. And so those waiting patiently upon the train platform begin to board even as the overhead PA system issues its eternal message.

"Einsteigen! Tueren schliessen! Vorsicht beim abfaert!"

Those passengers found themselves deposited upon the fire-lit sandy beach already described here. They pass through a little gate to the fires below and behind them, the world grows dim, forgetful.
Others found themselves like our collegue, deposited with scant resource back upon the sandy beach of our times in a strange room cluttered with beeps and muttering televisions and the echoes of passengers making ready for departure.

Dieser Karte ist nicht fuer diese Reise gueltig. Zuruckkehren und steigen Sie bitte auf.

This ticket is not valid for this trip. Please turn back.

Outside, night has fallen and the air blows cold but with a hint of approaching spring in the fogs roiling in from the Bay. And there it is: the distant wail of the through-passing train as it ploughs its way through the darkness of sleeping Jack London Waterfront. And a gentle rain falls, falls softtly through the universe, falls upon the uneasy waves of the estuary, falls upon the quiet Island Strand, falls upon the long stretch of Lincoln Avenue, falls upon the silent guns of the gated and closed Navy Base, falls upon the Bay Bridge with its modest string of pearls lights and uppn Treasure Island, falls upon the Ferry Building that withstood the Great Fire of 1906, falls upon the somber bulk of the notorious 101 California pillar rising forty stories above the street, falls upon the upsweep of California Street itself, rain falling and falling down upon the Twin Mansions Hotel, falling upon the feet of Parnassus where students prod among the donated bodies even at this late hour at UCSF, seeking knowledge always more knowledge, falling upon the Panhandle and its sleeping tramps and hookers and junkies huddled in doorways, falling upon the glass Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, glowing like a jewel from the interior lights, falling upon storied Speedway Meadows, falling upon the little windmills and the Beach House, falling upon the beach itself and so out to the poorly named Pacific Ocean with its mountanous waves, silently falling upon all of the living and the dead.

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

JANUARY 28, 2007

DUMB AND DUMBER

Business Week Online recently issued its annual "101 Dumbest Moments in American Business" for 2006. Walmart scored not only the top slot for its disastrous marketing attempt to portray itself as a "green" environmentally friendly and cuddly old giant as well as five more awards, all for slipups right up there on the level with the Darwin Awards for imbecility. Number Two, however really caught our eyes, for Northwest Airlines proved it was really trying when, after laying off thousands of ground workers in July, each jobless person was issued a "101 Ways to Save Money." The advice includes dumpster diving ("Don't be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash"), making your own baby food, shredding old newspapers for use as cat litter, and taking walks in the woods as a low-cost dating alternative.

And don't forget: you only need one kidney.

STATE OF THE ONION SPEECH

As everyone knows the Presidential Bum, Eugene Shrubb, delivered his annual State of the Onion Speech earlier this week.

President Shrubb stood, as usual, upon the dias of old tires built up at the base of the Island seawall, with an old commode for his throne and a bottle of cheap tokay for his refreshment. He opened the speech according to tradition, by holding forth the Onion of the State.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Congress and Senate, most honorific bums in the world, if not the Nation. The State of our Onion, most prized democratic symbol of our Democracy Today, is small and odiferous. I think we all can agree, that is to be expected. But . . . there are some here among us who feel that the State of the Onion is decayed. I want y'all to forget about that Katrina disaster. It warn't no disaster but a contretemps of order and supply and demand. As you know, Katrina is real mean and has a reputation indistinguishable."

The President was alluding to the notorious "Katrina Affair" in which Katrina -- a rather substantial woman dressed in an immense floral print mumu -- high, as some say, on extasy and PCP --busted up the New Orleans Hotel on Park Avenue and set the place on fire after a particularly rowdy "rave" party at the hotel where Vice President Shikanery had been living. A number of the President's Men were reported to have been involved in the fracas.

Instead of fixing up the damages and helping out the poor folks thrown into the street by this event, the President held another rave party, which some felt to be in bad taste. To say the least.

"Ahm the decider, and I decide we gonna let the free market take care of the New Orleans," President Shrubb said. "If'n you get a disaster on your punkin heads then that means God hates you and you probably voted Democrat. So there."

As expected, the President -- contrary to all good common sense and prudence -- announced a troop increase for the invasion of Newark, now some three years old. The troops, who are most definitely not bums at all, reacted to this news with some dismay. "Why should I continue to take orders from some god-damned bum who didn't even serve out his time." One irate warrior was heard to say.

We don't make these things up; we simply report the news.

Newark California was invaded a few years ago by the Presidential Army so as to seek out and eradicate Weapons of Mass Doo-Doo (WMDs) in the form of terrorist poodle packs. Although no terrorist poodles have been found in Newark, other than the usual individual insult to good taste and breeding, the invasion became enmired in a Vietnam-era style conflation of political footballism and grandstanding. Adding to this protracted engagement was the habitual indifference of the Newarkians to their environment. Possessed of no City Hall or City Council to speak off, with no civic pride at all, and no public monuments or sense of community, it took the citizens of Newark a full two years to realize that they had been invaded and a provisional government set up over them.

Owning an extensive coastline fronting one of the most gorgeous bays in the world, Newark has long failed to realize its own assets. Most inhabitants live in buildings with artificial windows and aluminum siding, seldom go outside except to drive to work in some other city and couldn't be bothered with development beyond the string of formica tile and auto body shops that line the main drag. Both Burger King and Walmart have refused to build there, out of principle.

The only person resembling a Mayor, the City Manager, was found and hanged in the parking lot of a dealer in venetian blinds, but even this public hanging failed to get much attention in Newark. Yet Shrubb will not withdraw simply out of a sense of personal pride rare among bums.

Nevertheless, this invasion costs booze and money, for bums require booze and troops require money. So this is understandably becoming rather unpopular.

Some are saying that Shrubb's "sticking to the course" is not the evidence of a man determined to doggedly carry out what he thinks is best, but the imbecile stubbornly insisting on having his own way against the realities of the world much like a six year old insists his way is better just because he wants it so.

The rest of the speech was all about explaining that the deficit does not really exist because the free market economy and tax cuts and bum incentives were doing their job. Please ignore the unemployment. And the sales indicators. All Chinese subsidiaries are doing really well! Hooray for the Chinese! Bother that business about shooting down sattelites. They are not part of the Axis of Evil because Harley-Davidson and Walmart have expanding interests there.

Is this not grand?! A Chinese Harley! What could be better than that?! Together with all the toasters, nose-hair trimmers, gas grills and knock-off digital cameras which also do not work.

As usual, the speech ended sometime after the third bottle of Tokay as the President toppled backward over his throne in a great cascade of old tires and sodden bums.

TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

Proving the worth of our Island teens once again, an intrepid pair robbed the Bank of the Island on Island Drive for the second time in six months last week. And because no traffic infractions occured, the perpetrators got clean away in their Lexus. The pair has been linked to yet another holdup at the Mechanics Bank in Richmond. The gunmen fired a single shot on leaving, but otherwise were well behaved as our youth are trained to be. The suspects are described as one Black male between 17-19 years old with a thin build about 6 feet in height. His collegue is an Asian about the same age and build but shorter at 5 foot eight.

We think it really nice to know that our boys can put aside racial differences to cooperate in business enterprise.

YELLOW MOON YELLOW MOON

It's been a quiet week on the Island, with the exception of a big house fire on Clinton Avenue a block or so from the Hospital. Helicopters hovered over the billowing smoke as the fire totalled the structure, but our doughty heros kept the blaze from spreading. Things have warmed up in other ways, just as the rest of the country hops into a serious Winter, balmy breezes brought in a few mild showers and warmer temps, really lighting up that green fuse that drives the flower. The Island-Life staff is running somewhat reduced since a staffer found it necessary to assay the condition of American medicine with respect to surgery and Intensive Care. That morphine drip really puts the kibosh on one's paperwork and the Chief Editor has been tearing out the remaining grey hairs that fringe his pate over the typos.

"Fact checking! I want facts checked!" he shouted this morning, waving a sheaf of reports like flags and those aforementioned grey hairs standing out above his wire-rims like Albert Einstein's mane. "We are here to preserve the honorable legacy of Edward R. Murrow!" Then he went striding up between the computers to enter his office with a slam.

Far be it for us to point out that TV is not the Internet.

If we had any ambition we would be more like Terry Gross (Fresh Air) on NPR, whom we imagine to be this lovely soul just professionally doing her job each day, interviewing everybody from David Sidaris to Paul Wolfowitz with equanimity. And unfailingly a strong impression of interest no matter what the subject. "You don't say! Tell me, didn't you think doing a movie about Betty Paige would involve, um . . . prurient themes?"

We may not be CBS or even NPR, but we do try.

Ever since the recent elections that swept the board of the GOP, neither Bushy nor Cheney have had that stupid smirk pasted on their respective visages, so perhaps the Media is finally started to work a little bit for their kibbles. And Gore Vidal was chuckling recently over the newfound integrity and perceptual acuity of the former shameless apologist for the White House, Wolf Blitzer of CNN.

Hopefully in the next week or so we will be back on track with the usual jolly assortment of stuff for you, including references to some of the better stories from the past to be lodged in the new sidebar.

Here comes that ululating howl of the through-passing train from the Port across the water. Every Sunday at midnight that train departs, although few have seen it winding its way through fog and mist on the tracks that cut across Jack London Waterfront. Perhaps it is a ghost train with a firey head for a beacon to light the way in the Other World. Perhaps it is a fast commuter simply returning empty to the place from which it will depart at six the next morning, packed with sleepy salarymen clutching each to each a copy of the New York Times, never to be read but carried as part of a uniform, useless and somehow necessary, like a tie. Perhaps it is the last laden freight taking off the remainders of the containers delivered by foreign ships that, arriving from all over the world to the third largest civilian port on the globe, know not the day nor the hour in this strange land.

Nevertheless, it is important on a rainy night like this for someone to hear the lonesome howl of that train and to remark upon its regularity. "Its a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets. But up high on the 10th floor of the ACME building sits one man pondering life's persistent questions . . ." Oh heck, thats the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.

JANUARY 21, 2007

DOCTOR, MY EYES HAVE SEEN THE WORLD

As promised -- because everybody likes reading about themselves -- we offer up here the stats about you, dear Reader, for the past year. 124,974 of you showed up, with about 3,000 of you popping in each day. Hit count is down from 2005's count of about three million due to increased anti-spam and bot activity from host Earthlink. Stats come from Earthlink who collects the data automatically in great detail, including browser type, referral pages, and length of visit. A few of you seem to like to spend well over 30 minutes in here. This number of visits doubles 2005's high of 65,000 readers.

Site Report for: www.island-life.net

Date Range:	1/1/2006 to 12/31/2006
VISITORS
Range Total: 124,974	Monthy Average: 10,414.5
PAGE VIEWS
Range Total: 57,410	Monthy Average: 4,784.17
HITS
Range Total: 812,867	Monthy Average: 67,738.92

THE PILLOWMAN AT THE BERKELEY REP

Our Social Coordinator hustled up some opening night tix for the savage black comedy by the Irish writer, Martin McDonagh, best known for his Leenane Trilogy (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara, and "The Lonesome West"). The quirky author wrote all seven of his highly acclaimed plays in 1994, and other than the screenplay for last year's academy award winner "The Six Shooter", has not written or published another word, although the word is that he is working on a full-length movie titled "In Bruges."

One time Wally Shawn warned us face-to-face in person NOT to see his own play debuting at New York's National because, "It's not a light evening of entertainment at the 'theatre'; its not a nice play at all." (Refering to "Aunt Dan and Lemon")

One could say the same about the far more graphically violent "Pillowman" as well, although there all similarities end.

Imagine if Kafka, Quentin Tarantino, Beckett and Vladimir Nabokov managed to cobble together a script.

A man is brought into a spartan room with a backdrop reminiscent of those old European buildings built in the 1700's by aristocracy but long since converted to drap bureaucratic use. He has been arrested and two policemen in an admitted "totalitarian state" set about to interrogate the man -- with no indication as to the details, nature, or cause of his arrest. The policemen taunt the man, trying to get him to guess the cause of his arrest, with the threat of physical violence ratcheting up from the level of silliness to direct action.

"Perhaps it has something to do with my stories?" The captive (played convincingly well by Erik Lochtefeld) asks.

"What makes you think it has to do with your stories?" Queries policeman Tupolski (Played by a superbly beaurocratic, yet intimidating, Tony Amendola).

"Because you brought them in a box with you. There they are on your desk."

"Have you been reading what's on my desk?!" Tupolski says threateningly as he rises up to stand over the seated man.

The immanent threat of violence continues to rise until, in a rage, the bear-like Ariel (played with just a hint of a Northern Irish accent by Andy Murray) throws Katchurian to the ground, straddles him and solidly lands punch after full swing punch into Katchurian's head with thuggish determination.

It is shocking and it is most certainly not a play for the squeamish as this beating scene is by far the mildest of the violence described and presented. Characters are murdered via suffocation, nailed to crosses in mock crucifictions, flogged, buried alive in see-through coffins, connected to electroshock devices, tortured half-seen through scrims with electric drills, and -- in the most graphic sequence -- shot in the back of the head to die in pools of blood. All done with a jabbing sense of humor.

And thats just the visuals. There are the offstage torture sessions with vivid sound effects that allow the imagination to conjure what it will. Far more is presented in the form of those stories by the writer Katchurian.

Well, it is our duty to inform the public. And inform them that the first act is 90 minutes long before the intermission sends the entire audience to the lavatory lines.

So much for the bad stuff. If this were Tarantino, who likes to shock with grisly images -- it seems -- just because he finds it amusing and all at the level of comic books, the play would not have earned the many awards it has. Jeff Goldblum and Billy Crudup snagged standing ovations for the Broadway premier last year, earned two Tony Awards, and caused many of the critics to applaud the appearance of intelligent, meaningful drama "finally!" to Broadway.

All right now, here is the stuff: A writer is arrested within an unnamed totalitarian state somewhere in the world because children are being murdered in the town where he lives and these murders duplicate details described in his substantially unpublished body of work; out of over 400 stories, only one has been published. In addition to the writer, his brother Michael has also been arrested. His brother, (played superbly by Matthew Maher) over the course of seven years, was subjected to such severe physical abuse by his parents during a ghastly social engineering "experiment" that he has become brain-damaged and autistic.

Over the next few hours, during several interrogations, torture and its justification, writing, child abuse, and the influence of childhood trauma upon adult foibles come into play. McDonagh's world on the stage is nasty, brutish and not nearly short enough for many.

As Tupolski says to Katchurian as the clock ticks down to "K's" assured execution, "You want to know what my 'World View' is? My World View is that life is shit. That's it: life is shit. . . "Actually maybe you cannot call that a World View, but a Point of View. . . Never mind. Fuck you. I don't care what you think. In twenty minutes you will be executed."

The "Pillowman" is one of Katchurian's short stories in which a character made entirely of pillows has the job of going back in time so as to persuade little children to commit suicide, thereby preventing in each case a life filled with horror and misery that will only end with suicide anyway as an adult. When the Pillowman fails one time to convince a child to change its destiny, and then is cursed by the adult who regrets not having killed herself as a child, the Pillowman goes back in time to convince his own child-self to commit suicide via immolation. As the adult Pillowman fades away -- never having grown up -- he hears the screams of the thousands in agony the adult Pillowman had "saved."

As a sidebar note, pillows are what Katchurian uses to suffocate his vicious parents during his rescue of his brother, which Katchurian turns into a short story, altering some of the "facts" and effectively blending the stage "reality" with a fog of uncertainty for the audience and for the characters themselves. During the second Act, in desperation, Tupolsky grills Katcherian about time and dates so as to come up with at least one verifiable fact: Katchurian's age at the time of his parent's death. Having come up with this useless bit of information, Tupolsky writes it down, comforted for a short while.

Critics can banter back and forth all about what the play is "about." Most seem to miss the point of contemporary theater's point of evocation over meaning. It was interesting talking to fellow audience members about how much the brutal first act reminded them of certain actual situations. The most common evocation was of Abu Graib, but for the Editor, it reminded him of The Troubles, Long Kesh and its infamous H Block and the "hard men" it made, of the IRA's midnight captures and shattered knees as well as the horrific interrogations by the Armagh paramilitaries. For others it evoked the Grande Guigonol of Cescesceu's horrific regime in Romania. It seems the 20th and 21st Centuries have produced this reservoir of assumptions, tropes, themes, and unfortunate knowledge about the world from which now we borrow our sadly pained shorthand for The Times.

Arthur Koestler's jailed bureaucrat dying with his cracked head upon the concrete of a Soviet prison was the Old World and that is long history now. Forget that; John Wayne has been dead for centuries. WE live in the brave new world of lunging attack dogs and naked men piled into pyramids in the middle of a prison set in the boundaries of some conquered territory where nobody seems to know the language, not even the inhabitants any more. And you cannot blame the Nazis or the Communists for this one.

In the United States of America public discussion recent focussed upon the uses and necessity of torture. In what country has this discussion ever happened before?

When the brutal Arial states emotionally, "When I take them into that room, put the electroshock on them and beat the bloody fuck out of them I feel good about myself. Once in a while one of them turns out to be innocent and we let them go, but you had better believe not a single one of them will so much as lift a finger against a child in his lifetime for he knows he'll be brought back here and I'll do the same thing to them all over again!"

Would you justify torturing a child molester? Ariel takes Katcherian and forces him to kneel in front of an electro-shock machine and as he attaches the electrodes, Tupolski comes into the room to remark, "Why are you torturing him? We have his confession already."

It is revealed that Ariel has experienced child abuse himself. Hence, his irrational anger at what he thinks is the source of child pain.

In a strange way, it is the "bullish" and crude Ariel who apprears to rise a bit higher in understanding over all the others as the play comes to an end, for he performs the sole act of charity and compassion, whereas the seemingly more cultured Tupolski commits the ultimate barbaric act in executing a man clearly innocent of all crimes charged and, in the process, violates even his own word of honor by shooting before the count of ten completes.

Other than a brief comic moment involving a "green pig", the play is devoid of beautiful images or higher thoughts, with the possible exception of Tupolski's story about the "Chinaman and the retarded Chinese boy", which is the only story told involving human beings that ends happily. But of course, the story is about Tupolski himself, and he would have it end that way, with the focus upon himself rather than the life saved. Each policeman does present the idea of their work somehow saving individual lives, but Ariel tortures the innocent as well as the guilty and Tupolski executes a man clearly proven to be innocent of the crimes charged simply because the execution has been scheduled in advance.

As the New York critics have indicated, the play is largely about the artistic process and the sources from which it derives, as well as what happens when the work goes out into the work to have some effect. What is really wonderful about Irish work is the way in which what seems to be familiar and about to lead up to the conventional so often shifts aside to the unexpected. Ireland, if it seems overstating the obvious, is a place which has never experienced the upside of Empire, so the expectations and understandings are vastly different from plays written by American or English authors.

But it would be reductive to say that the play is "about" writing and its sources, or the artist's responsiblity for what effects the work produces. Of course Katcherian, working by day in a slaughterhouse as a cleanup man and writing stories by candlelight at night is not the author of the horrific child murders; someone else has read his work and used it as a blueprint for child maiming and murder. It is more interesting to look at how any creative work arises out of some kind of muck and results in independently valued artwork.

Nor is the play about the relative value of writing, any writing, over any other elevated value. Such discussions are really stupid and reminiscent of nonsensical valuations thrust upon us at UCSF where some idiot would say something along the lines of "Is not the work of a doctor preserving life worth more than anything you do?!" The issue is entire specious for of what value is preserving life if that life has no value granted? Doctors seem to know this better than their wannabe defenders. And there are plenty of other arguments as well. And the discussion is, ultimately, really boring.

The show ends February 25th.

Tony Amendola (Lupeski) and Les Waters (Director) will be appearing to discuss the play at the Rep 1/29/07 and it should be interesting to hear what the two have to say.

LIKE THE WEATHER

This week certainly put the kibosh on our Great Decider's pretensions as regards the weather and global warming effects. As the Northeast finally got its long awaited snows, frigid temps slammed the California coast with unheard-of snows closing roads in SoCal. A recent headline announced "Blizzard closes I-5 north of Los Angeles". The grapevine is certainly a difficult mountain pass from the Valley into the basin, but its not the Himalayas.

Meanwhile, our own unusually frigid weather yielded finally to warm sunshine this weekend, bringing out all the sun worshippers. A rumbling phalanx of big Harley Davidsons emerged from battery tender garages to celebrate the coming change of the seasons. Meanwhile buds are poking through and it certainly seems that something is happening down there.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

If you have never visited the Island before now you would be astonished by the sight of signs painted on butcher block paper pasted to the side of a house on the corner of LIncoln and Lafayette. For at least ten years now, possibly longer, Harlan has been sneaking out at dusk, when the failing light makes movement hard to see, to deftly swap out each message on the wall with yet another one just as inscrutable as the previous. The signs are usually about four by three feet long at the largest, and the messages usually appear to have been drawn with broad-tipped marker in bold block letters. Here is the latest:

He does at least one new sign every day, each one about as understandable as what you see above.

THIS ISLAND LIFE

The midnight train is passing through and Jake is winding up the House of Blues Hour. Every Sunday night that eerie wail comes wavering across the water. Gives one pause it does. But the issue must go out before Monday afternoon, come what may. Recently a visitor to Babylon across the water there -- no, not Oaktown or Berzerkely, but The City -- was surprised to see such magnificent structures down there surrounding the Opera House. The stately former Main Library, now host to the Asian Art Museum, the dome of City Hall. The War Memorial Opera House itself. This visitor from Minnesotta was comforted by these emblems of solidity.

We don't really have anything like that on the Island. We have a downtown district that is barely four blocks long and scarcely a single block wide. A family of raccoons lives at each end of the Island and sometimes deer come scampering across the bridge. We do have Mayor Beverly and the Silly Council which have grandiose dreams of an enormous multiplex cinema and a six story parking garage, which they somehow imagine will be filled by scads of folks dropping in via hovercraft or sailboat -- they certainly are not going to politely march in single file across that narrow bridge down there to jostle for a space just to view Mel Gibson's latest gory B&D fantasy. Our former main library, a genuine Carnegie article, is a single room edifice that has been unused for well over fifteen years.

If our visitor had come across that marvelous bridge of memories, which they are in the process of replacing, to drop in here, we would have taken him down past the art deco neon signs past the renovated newspaper kiosk that has been dishing up dishy gossip and war news ever since Douglas MacArthur vowed to return and we would treat the man to an ice cream cone in winter, for compared to Minnesotta, the weather here is pretty amenable.

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

JANUARY 12, 2007

CHANGES

Hope you all like the revised format for this year. IslandLIfe was getting pretty big as it approaches nearly a decade of online presence. We actually went live a few years before anyone coined the phrase "Blog", starting life as a humble Ezine. From a staff of one we now have various contributors from all over the world sending material, including the lovely Russian gal who sent us pix and links to her site on Prypyat/Chernoble, the German gal who reported on the Rolling Stones concert in France last year, and a bevy of lords and ladies in the Bay Area sending in pix and reports on activities here.

We soon will be providing multimedia clips to the sidebar as occasion arises. And if any of you out there wants to submit a piece, just send it on to our Chief Editor at Editor@Island-life.net. That sidebar is where the hyperlink will go for text or media files.

WHAT IT IS

Just what the devil is Island-life.net anyway, you ask. Okay, we will tell you. Island-life.net is a news and satire space eminating from the Island set within the silvered aqua Bay of San Francisco. That Bay happens to be home to several islands -- besides infamous Alcatraz -- and we are a jolly seafaring folk who love music and good food and sensible behavior. Not all of these are available all the time, so we also love making do.

This space features a "column" that updates each week for 52 issues a year, with Special Editions to fill out the time when offices close.

We have a regular cast of folks who appear, much like a weekly radio program. The intrepid Officer O'Madhauen, vigorous in defence of the Island traffic laws makes an appearance now and then. Percy Worthington-Boughsplatt, dressed in immaculate wide lapels, matching waistcoat and plus-fours to compliment his splendidly preserved beige 1939 Mandeville-Brot coupe with full running boards, chrome shifter and gorgeous leather upholstery, shows up as the weather improves with this consort, Sandy from the Berkeley Explicit Players. On the further side of the social spectrum, Bear is known to rouse himself from winter hibernation about the same time, dressed in oil-stained t-shirt, tattered Levi's, mis-matched sneakers and a beard which carries reminders of his last four meals. His form of transportation is a 1953 Harley-Davidson, usually kept parked in his bedroom.

Recently we were introduced to Ms. Morales, the Filapina schoolteacher at Wadsworth Middleschool for the last thirty years and a certain distinguished Mr. Ramirez, he of the silver temples and poetry.

Padraic and Dawn show up each year to host the Annual Island Poodleshoot and BBQ. Eugene Gallipagus also appears from time to time, fully outfitted from Cabelas.

Father Guimon, he of the Basilica of Our Lady of Incessant Complaint, has begun a surprising friendship with Pastor Nyquist, he of the Lutheran church at the far end of the block. And it was all over a broken umbrella.

Eugene Shrubb, President Appointed to the Bay Area Congress of Bums shows up with his consort, Condominium Rice A Roni, John Ashpitt, Dick Buckshot Chevy, Rummy Feld and other known politicos during the Annual State of the Onion speech.

Around Elections time, Papoon shows up to lead the Faintly LIberal Party in the hustings against Babar, who espouses the Determinedly Conservative Party.

More or less "real people" appear of course, including the Island Dogwalkers Association. And of course we would be seriously remiss in omitting Her Honor, the distinguished Mayor Beverly. As well as Patrick, who owns and operates McGraths Pub.

Sometimes references are made to a tubby penguin named "Opus".

Well, all right; let us say, "pleasantly zoftig", instead of the obviously inaccurate "tubby". Opus does not really live here on the Island, but we like him anyway.

LIKE THE WEATHER

Thursday evening an idiosyncratic cold front blew down from the Arctic plunging Bay Area temps already lower than usual to truely frigid conditions. Pleasanton called in with a low of 21 degrees while Babylon reported a chilly drop to 34. The Island enjoyed a drop to 38, making those suffering from the particularly nasty form of the flu going around to huddle near space heaters. That flu, with lung congestion and diarrhea has knocked flat a quarter of the Bay area and was largely responsible for our absence from the Opera House when Garrison Keillor came to town recently. Understand that the man behaved quite the gentleman and Maria Muldaur helped keep spirits lively with her versions of old love songs written by her former comrade in arms, Bob Dylan.

We confess a fondness for the Prarie Home Companion and Garrison's avuncular personality, with a secret wish that one day we could pronounce with sonorous tones, "It's a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets. But high up on the tenth floor of the ACME Building sits a man pondering life's persistent questions. . .".

Yes, we certainly wish we could have aged with grace and wisdom while acquiring a bit of talent to charm and delight with a bit of music and really interesting things to say, instead of merely aging while acquiring only confused dyspepsia and rude comments. We really should have learned how to play the piano.

DOWN HOME BLUES

Same illness reported nixed our attendance to the annual Mark Hummel Blues Blowout at Yoshis. This three-day event tends to sell out within hours for very good reasons. Mark tends to assemble stellar performers who all try to outdo the next act before the entire assembly gathers together on stage for a rousing jam. This year, Billy Boyd Arnold headlined with Kim Wilson, Ron and Honey Piazza and Rick Estrin.

Our reporter for this event, Strange de Jim, put his votes in favor of Ron Piazza and Co., as Ron really cranked up the energy a notch or two.

Also had word that the largely un-heralded re-match of Roy Rogers with Norton Buffalo at the Freight and Salvage tore the roof off, as one would expect. Roy is probably the best slide guitarist west of the Mississippi, if not the entire country, while Norton earned serious blues chops in none other than San Quentin before going on to become a serious role model for all blues harpists everywhere.

PRIDE IN THE NAME OF LOVE

Memphis is a large city flush to the border with Arkansas on the Mississippi River. Crossing the river on I55, one travels on a big scary bridge high above the islanded Big Muddy before passing fifty-foot high neon signs of what are supposed to be representations of "naughty ladies" placed there beside the freeway to provide a hearty welcome to travellers and a provocation to the Arkansas bluehaired preachers. It's a gritty city with the usual mixture of problems and benefits peculiar to the South, with a fair portion of its economy devoted to the music industry. The greater Memphis Metropolitan area stands today at about 1.2 million souls, while the city itself hosts some 650,000 folks, about 61.1% Black and 33.6% White.

The Lorraine Motel, address 450 Mulberry Street, is about four blocks from the river between the arms of I55 and I40. The district is on the south end of downtown Memphis. The property was rescued from foreclosure after a long decline after April of 1968 through the efforts of several prominent Memphis citizens who were joined eventually by the City and by the State to found the National Civil Rights Museum.

Dr. Martin Luther King, present in Memphis to support an embattled sanitation worker's strike, was murdered via long-range rifle on the landing of the motel on April 4, 1968.

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

He definitely knew they were going to kill him, for in his last speech -- a speech he had made many times before -- he said, "I am not afraid of death, for I have been to the mountain top . . . and mine eyes have seen the Glory . . .". He also definitely did not want to die the way he did any more or less than any other man. What is incredible about him is that he went ahead anyway, for his cause was just and noble and necessary.

On Monday we thank Dr. King, not for his death, but for his life and his accomplishments in the face of terrible adversity. We will never know all the things he could have accomplished had he lived longer, but we do know that it was important and necessary for things to start changing more quickly, instead of allowing the "gradual change" espoused by figures like Jesse Helms, which would have allowed intolerable lynchings, racist Jim Crow laws and other dehumanizing and inhuman conditions to persist for another four hundred years.

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

NO WAR NO MORE

Our usually sedate populace got stirred up midweek on the occasion of the Bushy making his case to send 20,000 more boys and girls off to die or get appendages blown off for the sake of his failed policies in Iraq. The word went out and spontaneous gatherings happened all over the place, not just here in the Bay Area.

At 6:30 pm Dave Halprin announced to the crowd of about 150 citizens that all fifty states were having protest demos against yet more foolishness in that benighted country. All the news polls were showing well over 60% of the American people against any more escalation of troop levels, but the Decider is particularly bullheaded the more wrong he gets.

From City Hall a sort of impromtue procession marched down the length of Park Street with most passing automobiles honking support.

The President Appointee's allocation of yet another 20,000 troops is the fourth increase in troop levels in this increment. The previous increments didn't work either.

THIS ISLAND LIFE

Its been a quiet week on the Island. This unnatural cold (1948 was the last time it dropped around to temps like these around here) has all the Islanders huddling inside. After the social orgy of the Holidays, when everyone is thrust upon Undesireables such as one's own family to an uncomfortable degree of closeness not usually permitted. Sitting as usual in his usual spot, Man Mountain hulked in his layers of rags inside the entrance to the parking garage beneath B Daltons. Man Mountain has sat their every day and every night for some fifteen years, his great bulk concealed beneath unknown swaddles of blankets, sweaters, towels and oilrags and he has become something of a fixture recognized by everybody but acknowledged by no one. If you dare to look into his eyes you just may fall into something bottomless and so most people hurry by without greeting him. At least something like warmth steals from the lower depths of the garage and the restroom is right there, although no one has ever seen him use it.

Out by the BART HQ in Oaktown, less fortunate souls huddled as well as they could on cold benches in that little park there even as the thermometer slid lower and lower. Officer Oliver Popinjay drove as usual into the cobblestone circle, but instead of rousting the roustabouts as usual, he got out of his cruiser there and, gently rapping his thigh with his truncheon, walked over to a bench which hosted a suddenly scared pair of eyes beneath a foul hoodie.

"You gwine 'rest me again?" asked the eyes.

"No." said the officer. "Last time you peed in the back of the cruiser and made it stink. Now Rudy, you need to be gettin' yerself indoors out o' this cold." He spoke in the mellifluous tones of the 1st generation Irish-American.

"Downtown all full up. And Johnson's 'round the corner be closed for intake now."

"O I think we can get you into Johnson's tonight."

"Leave me alone, Oliver," came the pathetic whine. "I aint bothered nobody. Never bothered nobody ever."

"I can't let ya lie here and die, Rudy." Officer Popinjay said. "It's terrible cold. And the City cannot afford to dispose of your body."

"Leave me alone," repeated Rudy. "What is it that makes a man want to be a cop anyway? Always telling people to go here and go there. Making rules and stuff."

"I don't make the rules, Rudy. I have known you some ten years now and you know that. But I think you need to get out of the cold tonight. It's fearsome cold."

Rudy cursed the cold and a number of other things besides, including a digression upon the traitorous Raiders and their worthless "Nation". The lonesome wail of the freight train coming out of the Port a few hundred yards away came echoing across the lawn which began to glitter with frost under the streetlights even at this early hour.
Then, inexplicably he asked, "They still have popcorn Friday nights over their at the jail?"

That is true. Friday nights the wardens would make popcorn and if any left over, would walk it down to the cells of whoever happened to be a fortunate guest that evening on Seventh Street.

"By that I take it you have nothing in your belly -- other than booze -- to keep you warm tonight. And its Sunday, so you are a long way off from Friday. Come on now. Get on over to Johnson's."

Rudy continued to protest. Dellums was Mayor now. Oakland had a real Brother for a Mayor finally. Things were going to be different. Officer Oliver Popinjay had better watch out. Him and all them Riders. The frost began to build up on Rudy's blanket of newspapers and thin coat. He was breaking no law, just resting his eyes on the bench there. Waiting for the bus. To arrive at 6 a.m. To get breakfast at St. Anthony's in the City. But he stirred himself and felt the cold really get into his bones then. And so the two of them, the young cop and the homeless man named Rudy shuffled across the crisp sward to the opposite side and the warm spill of light from the doorway of the shelter, not one hundred yards from where dark-swaddled men slept on benches.

"Give this man a place somewhere. Anyplace, so long as it is warmer than out there, "Officer Popinjay said to Intake, who was refusing no one that night. And then he turned away to walk back to his cruiser.

He's right, the Officer thought to himself. The Raiders are full of shit for leaving town. All for a dollar more.

Sitting in his own warm cruiser on the Island at Buena Vista and Sherman, Officer O'Madhauen was thinking much of the same. The Giants are becoming Dwarves, abandoning the City for the suburb like cute rats from a ship. Me paddy would go down and thrash the Owner with his shillelagh if he were alive today. What are we now, a Nation of Dwarves?!

Meanwhile a few blocks over, the decayed apartment complex on St. Charles Street wrapped its blankets about itself behind Pagano's Ace Hardware and in the soundbooth of the IslandLife studios, the weary technician put down his headphones as the last minutes of Sunday ticked over to the next day. From across the frosty estuary and the rustling weeds of the still undeveloped Beltline railroad property came the lonely wail of the midnight through-passing train as it wormed its fiery head through the tangle of Jack London Waterfront. A week ago several loud bangs alerted us all to the fact that we all dwell by sufferance on the edge of earthquake's domain.

But for now all are asleep in their beds or stirring by dim light and space heater glow. Each clutches to each in this time of deep winter. But down in the gardens, green shoots of willbe tulips are already firing up energetically from the sandy loam.

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

JANUARY 7, 2007

WELCOME BACK MY FRIENDS TO THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS

A Happy New Year to all the dedicated readers out there. We'll be posting the annual stats in the next week or so but it looks like it was another gangbusters year topping 2005's record of 65,000 visitors. Looks like there was about 3,000 of you folks dropping in on various days of the week fairly regularly.

Due to illness among the staff we didn't do our usual retrospective of the year on the Island. There's a nasty chest flu going around, a localized outbreak of gastroenteritis over in Oaktown, and at least one other fever that has the Health folks concerned.

At least the spinach is okay by now.

We will be putting the Poodleshoot Media file up for archive in the Short Story section together with a comprehesive review of all Thanksgiving Poodleshoots of the past. The Olga story will also be posted as a PDF.

EVERYBODY DESERVES MUSIC

Mark Hummel finishes up his annual Blues Harmonica Blowout at Yoshi's tonight and we have reporters over there tonight to bring back the word. Local fave, Ledisi will surely levitate again in that venue 17th-21st.

Augustana, the talked-over opener for the Counting Crows at the Shoreline this summer proved their mettle and will headline under the purple chandeliers of the venerable Fillmore on the 10th. So there, people.

Over at Cafe du Nord we see the usual list of suspects, but on the 20th, Rhett Miller will surely show all the wannabe songwriters how to get the job done. At the Independent, we single out Carbon Leaf appearing on the 30th, followed by the gritty North Mississippi Allstars on the 2nd of February. The quirky Stockholm Syndrome completes a solid musical sequence on the weekend of the 9th and they shall be "Bouncing Very Well".

Especially worth reserving your evening for will be Michael Franti with Spearhead, appearing at the Warfield on the 16th and 17th of February with Keller Williams warming up the joint. Those shows are likely to be the Hot Hot Tix until Spring softens up the venues as a casual glance at the tours shows most of the interesting folks going abroad until then with one or two exceptions.

DON'T BE A GHOST, BULWORTH

Our perennial hustings hopefuls were spied drinking together down at the Old Same Place, located at the Brown Shoe Square. This is not a frequent occurance, as Papoon remains the Island Liberal Candidate, whereas Babar shall never ever change his affiliation from the Conservative Party, but such moments of bipartisan conviviality have been known to occur in the past. Just not for about seven years or so.

Papoon, frisky and bushy tailed as only a representative from the Ground Squirrel District can be, nursed a three-color pousse cafe while Babar curled his trunk about -- of course -- a dry martini. After the recent elections, Papoon was in fine form and already sounding the vox popli regarding yet another presidential bid. Papoon has run religiously every four years for the past thirty or so on the "Not Insane!" platform, never garnering more than .01% of the vote but remaining upbeat all the while, believing sincerely that the American electorate will one day realize that the vast majority of the legislature remains devoid of wits or cogent thought processes to the extent of being fully certifiable under any other circumstances other than elected office.

It has been observed by many that one would have to be crazy to want to be elected and thus subject to incessant abuse.

Babar, French, aristocratic, Conservative to a fault, monied and patrician, has the view that the recent elections are a disturbing result of allowing far too many people to vote. His plan to limit voting to a set quota has not met with great results, but he remains unfazed, convinced that the deviousness of Karl Rove and folk like him will surely skew the results on another date in the future.

"We stole Florida via superior methodology and intelligent design. We took Ohio using carefully prepared machinery. Nobody has ever had a better system for stealing votes. This all proves the native rights of our Party to rule and our certain victory in the future. " Babar mantained. Nevertheless, the recent elections did put a dampener upon his spirits. It really was looking like even an imbecile could see that this Middle East thing was a complete disaster. On top of New Orleans. And the economy.

When in US history has ever before the subject of abandoning an entire American city to the Enemy ever been discussed as a reasonable possibility? Papoon inquired.

The atmosphere in the Old Same Place is dim, with walnut and oak furnishing the bar and the railings. Jimmy, the bartender, passes his cloth religiously along the banquet. Passing cars briefly illuminate the frosted diamond panes of the windows. One is free to pass out in the "snuggery' so as to avoid the hazardous roads. In the parkinglot someone had parked his Volvo with the bold bumpersticker requesting, "Impeach the Bastard Already!" In the Old Same Place, getting back to business as usual was taking its time.

THIS ISLAND LIFE

It's been a quiet week on the Island, with many folks having departed the shopping frenzy and glitz of the Holidays for safer locales, such as Mexico and Ben Lomond. Even to such far flung places as Long Beach did Islanders fling themselves with severe anti-commercial spirit. The place emptied out so much that Pastor Nyquist got together with Father Guimon of the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Complaint on New Year's Day. On Xmas day seems barely five people showed up at the Basilica, with the same results for the Lutheran ministry. Seems a fair number of Lutherans had taken off for Hawaii this year to attend -- as they stated -- an international synod. The Catholics had all departed for Florida, and Fr. Guimon suspected that the weather was responsible for the absence of his flock as well as that of his friend Pastor Nyquist. Be it noted that unusual temps dropping to the frigid thirties hammered the Bay Area with unwonted freezings, such that some native San Franciscans were forced to shed their sandals and shorts in favor of long unused boots and trousers as the Holiday Season thrust itself upon us all.

Let it be remembered that the two opposing frames of thought had come together this past year due to a failed umbrella and the common habit of taking a walk about the block prior to sermon composition. Sharing a single umbrella, the two had come to syncronize their walks, first clockwise, then anti-clockwise about this block that housed both houses of worship.

So it was that the priest and the pastor found themselves perched on stools in the chilly rectory of the Basilica with glasses of claret on New Year's Eve. Each had a book beside to keep company and with which to bolster various arguments that only priests and pastors may find of significance. Father Guimon, something of a self-styled liberal, had a copy of Aquinas beside. Pastor Nyquist, a copy of St. Augustine.

Barbara came in late to stoke the fire in the hearth there and bid the two of them a good year and so the two of them left their books on the big oak table with its unlit candelabra to sit in the comfy chairs before a cheery roaring fire.

There they were minutes to midnight with a stillness all through the house except for the crackling of the fire and the sputter of the television set in the corner.

"We are quite different, you know, "said Father Guimon. He had already a bit much of the claret and was now on to the port.

"No doubt about that," said Pastor Nyquist who had brought with him a flask of brandy with which to share. "No common ground at all. Not with that German there as Pope."

The clock ticked over to the midnight hour and outside those who remained on the Island fired explosives and various armaments into the air while the television jubilated with scads of confetti and noise of its own. Father Guimon's arm wavered in its path to clink glasses with Pastor Nyquist. "Happy New Year in any case."

And that is how Barbara found them, asleep in their chairs before the embers of the fire that was 2006 the following morning.

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

   

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