Category: the ancient past

Remem­brances of things past, days of yore, old­en times. 

Categories
san francisco the ancient past visual web

Living all over / Google-mapping my life

All over the place


So how come I just now learned that you can cre­ate your own Google Maps mark-up? As a lover of both maps and per­son­al doc­u­ments, the abil­i­ty to cus­tomize an online map has the poten­tial to have a Shabu-like effect on my life. The above map has all the places I've lived in the Bay Area. Check out the com­plete, inter­ac­tive thingy here. It has essen­tial, all-impor­tant com­men­tary on each place. Maps I want to make: killer runs in SF; fun night-time wan­der­ings in SF; lit­er­ary locales of SF (from fic­tion and from real life); TV/movie locales of SF; (this guy already made a cool music-relat­ed his­to­ry of SF); crazy work trav­el trips of the past few years; places I want to go; a bur­ri­to tour of the Mis­sion; the list GOES ON.

Categories
inside art san francisco the ancient past visual

Small worlds / Phil Collins, The World Won't Listen

Flickr photo


I met Phil Collins (the British artist, not the British pop star1) at a bar in Brook­lyn in the mid 90's. At the time, I didn't know him as "the British artist," I knew him only as my friend Tom's leg­endary boyfriend. I remem­ber lit­tle of the night, but I do remem­ber a hub­bub accom­pa­ny­ing Phil Collins's wan­der­ings around the bar; he seemed to cre­ate some kind of event wher­ev­er he went. At some point, he approached the table with two tall drinks, placed them in front of me, and said some­thing like "These are from an admir­er of yours." As it turned out, they were from an admir­er of his, and this admir­er per­ceived, shall we say, a lack of grat­i­tude when his drinks were giv­en away. There was a con­fronta­tion, as I recall, and Phil said some­thing like, "Well, I'm sor­ry, I nev­er turn down a drink, but you can't hon­est­ly expect me to drink [dis­be­liev­ing voice] rum & coke?" (Or what­ev­er the drinks were). All of which serves as back­ground to my reac­tion to Phil Collins's piece, The World Won't Lis­ten, at SFMOMA, which was pret­ty excel­lent. The premise is pret­ty sim­ple: He filmed young Turk­ish folks singing along to The Smiths best-of com­pi­la­tion "The World Won't Lis­ten." The effect, on the oth­er hand, is deep and res­o­nant. The Smiths' odes to teenager­dom — all vac­il­lat­ing emo­tions, frus­trat­ed inar­tic­u­la­tions, pierc­ing moments of under­stand­ing, sex­u­al ambi­gu­i­ty — take on a deep­er social dimen­sion through the voic­es of (in many of the cas­es) non-Eng­lish speak­ers. Add to this the fact that the singers are Mid­dle East­ern, and it becomes dif­fi­cult to avoid a polit­i­cal read­ing. Songs like "There Is A Light That Nev­er Goes Out" sounds less the over-dra­mat­ic nihilism of a West­ern teenag­er and more like a very real plea from a teenag­er caught in an increas­ing­ly fun­da­men­tal­ist world:

Take me out tonight­Be­cause I want to see peo­ple and IWant to see lifeDriv­ing in your carOh, please don't drop me home­Be­cause it's not my home, it's theirHome, and I'm wel­come no more 

Real­ly impressive.Cool: a web post­ing for the event that he filmed.1 Speak­ing of the British pop star, here's a clas­sic: The video for "Sus­su­dio" [YouTube]

Categories
lit the ancient past

Lit / Simpler, more anarchic times

Anarchism!

Let's just say that I've crossed paths with the Anar­chist Cook­book [Wikipedia] [Ama­zon] a cou­ple of times in my life. In my youth, mak­ing a film can­is­ter bomb was a pop­u­lar diver­sion, and the cook­book teach­es you how to make it with stuff you can buy at a sci­en­tif­ic mate­r­i­al sup­ply store. The first step is mak­ing gun­pow­der — a much more straight­for­ward process than you'd think. Before I moved to Berke­ley in 1995, I'd nev­er owned a copy — I didn't even know that it was sold in book­stores. I fig­ured that you'd have to locate some anar­chists and then trade them some veg­an stir fry and/or a black hood­ie if you want­ed a copy. But soon after I moved here, I ran across a real­ly old copy of it (at Shake­speare and Co on Tele­graph, for those keep­ing track), and I fig­ured that it couldn't hurt to have it around. You nev­er know when you're going to need to make mus­tard gas, right? I brought it up to the counter, and the clerk — a griz­zled, old­er Berke­ley bear­do — glanced at the cov­er, then looked grave­ly at me. He said: "I'm sor­ry, but I'm going to need to see some ID before I sell you this." Assum­ing that one need­ed to be 18 years old to buy it, I start­ed to reach into my pock­et. He start­ed laugh­ing, and said some­thing like, "Hey man, I'm just kid­ding. We still live in a free coun­try, right?" I laughed, and then anoth­er clerk added, "Yeah, some­day you'll have to reg­is­ter that book with the local police." It was qui­et for a moment, and then we all laughed. Was 1995 real­ly that long ago? It seems like a much sim­pler time.Related: the Draino bomb. Beware.UPDATE: I didn't read the Ama­zon entry for this book before I wrote this, but I just noticed that it con­tains a note from the author, William Pow­ell, who request­ed that the book be tak­en out of print: "Dur­ing the years that fol­lowed its pub­li­ca­tion, I went to uni­ver­si­ty, mar­ried, became a father and a teacher of ado­les­cents. These devel­op­ments had a pro­found moral and spir­i­tu­al effect on me. I found that I no longer agreed with what I had writ­ten ear­li­er and I was becom­ing increas­ing­ly uncom­fort­able with the ideas that I had put my name to."Salon chimed in when it learned of Powell's request: "It must be hard to spend your whole life try­ing to live down an unedit­ed screed that you wrote at the surly age of 19, which just hap­pens to con­tain some recipes that might acci­den­tal­ly kill, maim or oth­er­wise dis­com­bob­u­late the bud­ding anar­chists try­ing to brew them."

Categories
kansas city the ancient past

Kansas City / Home for the holidays

Flickr photo


I love Flickr, but the good times are killing me. It's got too many amaz­ing high-def and beau­ti­ful­ly com­posed pho­tos. How do they do it? After doing some research, I decid­ed to step up my game and picked up a fan­cy­pants cam­era. Above is one of the first pic­tures I took with it, a panora­ma of down­town Kansas City from the Lib­er­ty Memo­r­i­al. The bent hori­zon is the result of a cheap‑o fish-eye attach­ment that I bought on Ama­zon. I used the 30D/­fish-eye set­up through­out the hol­i­days, as you'll see in this set, and while I had fun, I also had the inevitable real­iza­tion that an equip­ment upgrade doesn't auto­mat­i­cal­ly result in glo­ri­ous, high-def pho­tos. Back to the draw­ing board. Or the dark room. Or the Inter­net forums. While I was in KC, I sam­pled some of its finest. I vis­it­ed some home­grown let­ter­press print­ers (Ham­mer­press), ate some leg­endary BBQ (Fiorella's Jack Stack in Mar­tin City and Gates on Main), and made a pil­grim­age to a bas­ket­ball tem­ple (Allen Field­house, to wit­ness KU's run-and-gun thump­ing of Boston Col­lege). All in all, a mer­ry and bright time.

Categories
flickr new york san francisco the ancient past

Thanksgiving remix

Flickr photo

Thanks­giv­ing 2006 came and went, attend­ed by friends, fam­i­ly and the cus­tom­ary dra­mas. An East Coast / West Coast feud flared up in the week before the hol­i­day. Gabriel (East) sent what some in the West per­ceived as "a sal­vo across the bow" in the form of a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion (a slide of which is pic­tured below). It con­tained a finan­cial-style analy­sis of Thanks­giv­ing: how Thanks­giv­ing East has per­formed over the past decade, trends, pro­jec­tions, and out­lines for future growth. Some saw this as evi­dence of a dia­bol­i­cal plan; I was naive and asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on specifics:

Dear Gabe, TYs (Thanks­giv­ing years) 2003–2004 were char­ac­ter­ized by broad guest sec­tor diver­si­fi­ca­tion. What is the like­li­hood that a diver­si­fied strat­e­gy, with expo­sure to the Shana­han sec­tor, for exam­ple, will be pur­sued in the future? Sec­ond­ly, to what extent will "val­ue" guests (e.g., McClo­rys and Preslers) con­tin­ue to anchor the port­fo­lio? Will you pur­sue more (poten­tial­ly) volatile "growth" guests in order to boost per­for­mance in the com­ing years? 

Gabe replied:

Gabe's projection infographic

Like oth­er mis­sion-relat­ed offer­ings, we believe that diver­si­fi­ca­tion is impor­tant for ensur­ing steady, depend­able per­for­mance in any envi­ron­ment to pro­tect against sec­tor-spe­cif­ic risk. But our com­mit­ment to diver­si­fi­ca­tion goes beyond our con­cern for the bot­tom line: indeed, we believe that it reflects our group's core mis­sion. We are con­vinved that when we serve a broad range of atten­dants and when our offer­ings range across the geo­graph­ic and social spec­trum, our Thanks­giv­ing is ulti­mate­ly stronger.I want to empha­size that we con­sid­er all of our par­tic­i­pants "core" can­di­dates. Alas, our com­mit­ment to value–illustrated by our proven track record of offer­ing Thanks­giv­ing at a deep dis­count to its intrin­sic value–means that we are not always able to serve as broad a con­stituen­cy as we would like. For exam­ple, many of our sought-after par­tic­i­pants fall out­side of our geo­graph­ic uni­verse; we are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in oppor­tu­ni­ties in California. 

Need­less to say, this kind of talk elicit­ed skep­ti­cism and cries of region­al pride among the West Coast­ers, feel­ings which became even more acute when addi­tion­al news arrived: The East Coast guest list had grown so large, so ginor­mous, that the hosts scram­bled to find larg­er accom­mo­da­tions for their dinner. 

Now [East Coast Thank­giv­ing] reports that their 2006 expan­sion plan has been so suc­cess­ful that they're relo­cat­ing to a BAR for their fes­tiv­i­ties. clear­ly the bar has been raised. are we going to let presler corp. out­do us at what we do best? we have to ral­ly around the turkey and show the east coast who rules this holiday.

Would cool­er heads pre­vail? Some West Coast­ers called for "focus."

i hate to say it, but this whole thing reeks of a ploy to take us off our game. start chas­ing the presler-yamadas with this whole thanks­giv­ing at the bar thing, and next thing you know you'll be doing blow off some stranger's anato­my at 5am while real­iz­ing that you for­got to even *buy* a turkey. we have to stick to what got us here. the fun­da­men­tals and an easy-going atti­tude that there's no rea­son to get stressed out because our moms are at least like a thou­sand miles away … focus, people.

Laying on of hands

Of course, Thanks­giv­ings of yore were char­ac­ter­ized by spon­tanae­ity that often resem­bled chaos. (See right. More here.). To this end, there were appeals to pull together: 

If Robert Alt­man taught us any­thing it's that great works of art are NOT cre­at­ed with scripts, busi­ness plans or Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions. We will hon­or his tra­di­tion and fol­low our usu­al free-flow­ing, impro­vised pat­tern. We will cre­ate a rich­ly lay­ered Thanks­giv­ing that will touch on all of the major themes of mod­ern life in a heart­break­ing, at times com­i­cal, at times vio­lent, but always inci­sive way. Like Alt­man, we are not afraid of fail­ure. How­ev­er, it's also true that some great works of art were cre­at­ed with blow (John Belushi, the DeLore­an, Dwight Gooden) …

In the end, there was focus and togeth­er­ness on the West Coast, and, by all accounts, steady growth with div­i­dends in the East. A wise man once said: "Let love rule." It shall.

Categories
music the ancient past

Silver Jews / 27 goes into 50,000

In the Sil­ver Jews song "Trains Across the Sea," there's a line that goes: "In 27 years, I've drunk 50,000 beers, and they just wash against me like the sea into a pier." That's 5+ beers a day from birth until your 28th birth­day. If you start at 16, you're drink­ing a 12-pack a day to get there. (I didn't account for leap years, actu­al­ly, so you'd have 2–3 days to let your liv­er recov­er dur­ing those 11 years).Recently, I came across a diary I kept in 1994, the year I moved to Cal­i­for­nia. I was clear­ly obsessed with the Sil­ver Jews at the time, and I'd done a lit­tle math in the mar­gin to cal­cu­late how I matched up to them, beer-wise. (I was 22 at the time). Shock­ing­ly, I found that I had to cram rough­ly 40,000 beers into the next 4.5 years. That's a lit­tle over one case per day, every­day, i.e. a true 24x7 sort of endeav­or. Did I make it? Short answer: No. How­ev­er, I did pre­dict that I'd be get­ting there by the time I was 33, my cur­rent age. Am I there yet? In my esti­ma­tion, no. Prob­a­bly not, any­way. My revised cal­cu­la­tions put me at the land­mark some­where around my 43rd birth­day. I'm com­ing for you, Dave Berman! Watch your back!

Categories
baseball the ancient past

SportsCenter catchphrases & their usage contexts

I watch so much Sports­Cen­ter that I fig­ured I'd try to chron­i­cle the non sequitors that they use to punc­tu­ate excel­lent sports moments.

  • Three beers apiece for my co-work­ers – While high-fives among team­mates are being exchanged. Deriva­tion: Shaw­shank Redemption
  • What's on the grill? — Punc­tu­ates the moment when some­one, usu­al­ly Dwayne Wade, dunks in some­one else's face, i.e. "Jason Collins, what's on the grill?"
  • Pay for my dry clean­ing! — Accen­tu­at­ed a Vince-Carter-admin­is­tered NBA play­off dunk. Deriva­tion: SNL
  • Bar­tender! John­ny Walk­er Red. — High­light involv­ing the Cincin­nati Reds.
  • _____ has pow­ers com­pa­ra­ble to Won­der­boy! — Fill in the blank with any play­er who is about to do some­thing amaz­ing in the high­light reel. Deriva­tion: Tena­cious D.
  • That's lev­i­ta­tion, homes. — Dunk that could oth­er­wise be described with the words "heli­copter," "wind­mill," or "tom­a­hawk," or any dunk by Vince Carter or Andre Igoudala in the month of Decem­ber 2005. Deriva­tion: Tena­cious D.
  • Bar­tender! Cana­di­an Club. — used in con­junc­tion with the Blue Jays, Rap­tors, or any Cana­di­an NHL team.
  • Get to the chop­per! — Var­i­ous­ly applied, e.g. Albert Pujols has just ham­mered the crap out of the ball and is begin­ning to trot around the bases; Ben Wal­lace has com­plete­ly plas­tered an opponent's dunk attempt and is sprint­ing back down­court, where he receives an alley-oop from Chauncey Billups and throws it down in some guy's face; Julius Pep­pers has just sprint­ed 20 yards in approx­i­mate­ly 1.5 sec­onds in order to light up a quar­ter­back. Deriva­tion: Predator
  • Bar­tender! Shot of Jack. — This, I think, was the orig­i­nal "Bar­tender" excla­ma­tion. Usu­al­ly used in con­nec­tion with a homerun.
  • Bar­tender! Cuba Libre — Intro­duc­ing any sto­ry involv­ing Cuba dur­ing the World Base­ball Classic.
  • Kill me, I'm here! — Gen­er­al excla­ma­tion. I've only heard this one once, and it accom­pa­nied a hock­ey high­light. Deriva­tion: Predator
  • That's it and that's all. — Usu­al­ly to punc­tu­ate a player's exe­cu­tion of a coup de grace, e.g. "Allen Iverson's three in the clos­ing sec­onds puts the Six­ers up for good. That's it and that's all." Deriva­tion: Lil Sis
  • (Always in progress)
Categories
kansas basketball the ancient past

Kansas basketball / The basics

I have irra­tional feel­ings about Kansas bas­ket­ball, and this entry is a sim­ple effort to con­tex­tu­al­ize and pro­vide foun­da­tion for com­ments I will make as the 2005–6 sea­son unfolds.I grew up in Kansas. My grand­fa­ther, great-grand­fa­ther, dad, uncle, and aunt all attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas. My fam­i­ly had sea­son tick­ets for both foot­ball and bas­ket­ball games, and I spent a size­able chunk of my child­hood run­ning around those sta­di­ums. At foot­ball games, we sat on the 50-yard line, about 30 rows up from the field. For bas­ket­ball, we sat court­side — sec­ond row, actu­al­ly — behind the Kansas bench, Jack Nicholson-style.Any fan of col­lege sports will tell you that sea­son tick­ets to Kansas foot­ball have nev­er been in high demand, at least not in my life­time. The last glo­ry year for Kansas foot­ball was 1969, when they were edged 15–14 by Penn State in the Orange Bowl. My dad trav­eled to Mia­mi for that game, and the sto­ry of pro­found heart­break still stings, even though I wasn't there. The bas­ket­ball Jay­hawks had hay days in the fifties, again, well before my time, win­ning a nation­al cham­pi­onship in 1952 and com­ing up one point short of anoth­er in a clas­sic 1957 duel with North Car­oli­na.All of this began to change in 1984, when jour­ney­man genius Lar­ry Brown was hired as head bas­ket­ball coach. He had not yet attained the sta­tus of wiz­ard as he seems to have today, but Brown con­vert­ed a team that had been run into the ground in the ear­ly 80's into a nation­al title win­ner in the span of five years. The after­math of his tenure wasn't pret­ty: he took a job with the LA Clip­pers after the title game and left KU to deal with the grad­u­a­tion of one a Jay­hawk great (Dan­ny Man­ning), and, umm, some NCAA sanc­tions that result­ed in a year-long sus­pen­sion from the NCAA tour­na­ment. The future looked bleak in 1989, even more so when the ath­let­ic depart­ment hired a rel­a­tive­ly unknown North Car­oli­na assis­tant named Roy Williams.As it turned out, 1989 was mere­ly the begin­ning of a 15-year run of bas­ket­ball excel­lence. Sal­ad years. Coach Williams proved to be an unques­tion­able mas­ter of the col­lege game (an ency­clo­pe­dic account of his achieve­ments), patch­ing togeth­er the team that remained after Brown's exit and lead­ing them into the Final Four with­in two years and in the process cre­at­ing a new style of offense that proud­ly bears the name, The Kansas Break. Acco­lades accu­mu­lat­ed: Final Fours in 1991 and 1993. A nation­al­ly-tele­vised 150–95 drub­bing of Ken­tucky in 1989. One of the all-time great col­lege bas­ket­ball teams in 1996. More Final Fours in 2002 and 2003.When Coach Williams returned home to North Car­oli­na after the 2003 sea­son, the ques­tion on everyone's mind was: Will 2003 be looked at as anoth­er 1989, or as anoth­er 1969? The begin­ning of a new era of great­ness, or the begin­ning of a long decline?

Categories
inside art the ancient past visual

Art / Robert Adams at SFMOMA

Flickr photo

I'd nev­er heard of Robert Adams before I saw his show at SFMOMA. Called "Turn­ing Back," the pho­tos doc­u­ment the destruc­tion of the old-growth forests that Lewis & Clark passed through on their jour­ney west­ward. The title refers to the impli­ca­tions and com­pli­ca­tions of west­ward advance­ment. When Lewis and Clark reached the West Coast, they turned back and head­ed east; the vast dev­as­ta­tion in Adams's pho­tos con­veys the sense that — these days — there's no turn­ing back."Turning Back" is bound to strike a chord with peo­ple. It evokes indeli­ble Amer­i­can ideals and icons — the nat­ur­al beau­ty of Amer­i­ca, the promise inher­ent in the West, the brav­ery of Lewis & Clark — and presents it in a for­mat and style eeri­ly reminscent to anoth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Adams — Ansel. Where­as Ansel's clas­sic pho­tos endeav­or to com­mu­ni­cate the vast­ness and beau­ty of Amer­i­ca, the best of Robert's man­age to con­vey an equal­ly vast devastation.While I walked through the show, I thought a lot about my hike on the PCT, which took me through a few of the same forests fea­tured in the show. As I approached the north­ern part of the west coast, I was pret­ty curi­ous about the clear cuts. Of course I knew that it would be depress­ing, but real­ly I had no idea what to expect. I imag­ined a sort of Lorax‑y land­scape of smooth hills dot­ted with lit­tle stumps.As I hiked through the vast clear cuts of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton, I was stunned *not* by the absence of trees, but the obvi­ous bru­tal­i­ty sur­round­ing their removal. In the new­er clear-cut areas, there was upturned earth every­where, huge mounds of soil, man­gled stumps — I've nev­er been on a bat­tle­field, but there's prob­a­bly more a few sim­i­lar­i­ties between the two. In some places, the dirt mounds and fall­en trees com­plete­ly oblit­er­at­ed the trail, and we had to do some pret­ty thor­ough route-find­ing before we made it through.In the areas that had been clear-cut years before, the trees grew in thick clumps. One didn't so much hike through them as swim, or claw, or climb. The small trees were them­selves fight­ing for space, and their branch­es were so dense­ly inter­wo­ven that the ground was invis­i­ble for hun­dreds of yards around. In the morn­ings, before the dew evap­o­rat­ed, one could eas­i­ly get soaked in the space of twen­ty yards while push­ing through the branches.Adams's pho­tos con­vey the bru­tal­i­ty and upheaval well, though I real­ly wished that con­text had been pro­vid­ed along with each pho­to — where was it tak­en? when? what used to be there? I want­ed to con­nect with specifics of geog­ra­phy and fit the pieces together.

Categories
flickr the ancient past visual

Rust Belt road trip

Rust belt!

Pitts­burgh. Buf­fa­lo. Nia­gara Falls. Toron­to. Detroit. It's not exact­ly Route 66, but it was hot. 

The whole trip is on Flickr.