Glancing Blows

Adultery Fridays

It's a rainy, horrible, no-good day in SF.  We can't complain much, though, because it's been gorgeous up to now, California desperately needs the precipitation, and the skiiers/snowboarders have gotten the fuzzy end of the lollipop this season.  Today was a great time, however, to bake some bread, light up the Merlot-scented candles on our hearth (our fireplace, tragically, doesn't work...#firstworldwoes, I know), and learn a little bit more about totally drug resistant/extensively drug resistant tuberculosis.  Yummy.  Take a look at my new post on the matter over at the Foreign Policy Association.  And kids, the next time the doctor tells you to take all of your antibiotics (or other meds), for the sake of a safe and drug-resistance-free world, do it.

Link Day

Almost everyone (including hipsters) derides Thought Catalog for being a den of hipster iniquity, but they do some really great stuff over there.  So I don't care, I'll like it all the same.  Check out this piece by Stephanie Georgopulos called "Who You Used To Be."  And in lighter fare (maybe), Brad Pike's "Dumb Day."  I think every day for the past month has been one for me.

In much more serious news, a crowd of prospective students trying to get into University of Johannesburg in South Africa trampled a student's mother to death and injured others.  There were several thousand students and parents waiting outside the school to register for a few hundred final spots, and the crush at the gates had tragic results. The NYT coverage is here.  This story just broke my heart and is so indicative of the difficult place in which South Africa is currently situated--politically, socially, and economically.

California is set to close seventy state parks in July of this year.  What a huge shame.  As always, environmental issues get short shrift in budget negotiations: environmentalists' hands are tied and must vote Democrat, and Republicans, generally, just don't give a shit.  Furthermore, 20% of state rangers and all seasonal lifeguards will be laid off.  It's clear that the California governmental system is broken.  Outside Magazine has more information, including the video below.  It's a trailer/short film for The First 70 by Heath Hen Films, which recently reached surpassed its goal on Kickstarter (awesome idea, BTW) of raising $35K to complete a film about the seventy parks and the effect of the closures on communities.  The three-minute version below is awesome.




In breaking and important news, Beyoncé and Jay-Z's new baby, Blue Ivy Carter has, among other things, a $600,000 gold rocking horse.  I know that gossip blogs are not bastions of journalistic integrity (though who is, anymore?) but D-Listed has the story (warning: D-Listed is not 100% safe for work or sensitive eyes.  Never stopped me though).  I am disgusted with everyone.  Additionally, you can kill me with fire for (1) knowing the name of Jay-Z and Beyoncé's baby, (2) caring about any of this, and (3) forcing you, dear reader, to look at it.

Finally, via Belle, Japan-born and SF-based Toshio Hirano, who has a serious jones for some old-school folk-country-bluegrass Americana.  I feel you, sir.  And I'll look out for you next time at HSB.  Below, he sings Hank Williams' "Hey Good Lookin'."  Want more?  Check out his incredible version of Jimmie Rodgers' "Peach-Pickin' Time in Georgia."

Glancing Blows

Glancing Blows

Link Day

First, heartening news from the Obama administration!  Secretary of State Clinton announced yesterday that the US government would do more to protect and promote the rights of LGBT(QI...and so on) people around the world.  In remarks to the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council, not to be confused with the UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees...it gets me every time) Secretary Clinton said: "Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct, but in fact they are one and the same."  Despite President Obama's caginess on his personal stance on gay marriage, this administration has done a lot for gay rights in the US and, with hope, now abroad as well.  I love you, Hils & Barry!

The SF-based music blog Positive Destruction put together a list of their 15 fave (local) albums of 2011, which include a bunch of sample tracks.  Take a listen--you might find something you like.  Oh, and if you haven't checked it out already, Turntable Kitchen's November Mixtape is pretty awesome.  Come for the surf-canyon-electronica-pop blends, stay for the Eurythmics cover.  Now that I've moved my turntable up from Ojai and (re)cut my teeth on a kickass show from The National (pictured above), I anticipate that this will be an expensive year, music-wise. 

 Courtesy of Pajiba, here's a beautiful series of photos of paint dropped into water.  Jellyfish-explosion hybrids.

I thought I had a bit more than that to share, but with Mercury in retrograde, I can barely focus on anything.  I don't go in for astrology, but after I read up a bit, these past few weeks make so much more sense.  I was contemplating getting checked out for ADD.  There's one more week of this nonsense, so look out.  FYI, I can't really tell if I'm joking about all of this or not. 

Glancing Blows

Adultery Saturdays

New post at Foreign Policy Association on World AIDS Day (it was Thursday).  Kind of failing at (self-imposed) deadlines this week, but so it goes.  I also can't spell the name of the city in which I live, apparently.  Oh well. 

President Obama's speech on Thursday was pretty good.  Check it out:



Happy weekend!

Glancing Blows

Adultery Fridays

New post at Foreign Policy Blogs, on World Pneumonia Day. 


It's another cold, rainy Friday in SF...Although I belatedly realized that the building has turned on our heaters, which would have saved me a lot of shivery, two-blanket grief, as a Southern Californian, all I can say is that it's icky.  And unnatural.  OK, it's not that bad.  I did spend a good portion of yesterday outside at the Wave Organ.  Which is awesome.  If you can find it.

Glancing Blows

Halloween in Lo-Fi

There are Hipstamatic/iPhoneography haters out there.  That's OK, I get it.  I don't own a lomography camera, I haven't taken an actual film-film photo in a long while (though that will change soon...I'm going to gather up my old Minolta from Ojai on my next trip down the coast), and it's kind of cheating to use a program that does it all for you.  It's also a ton of fun to use apps like Hipstamatic.  And it requires some expertise, as you will see from the washed-out, weirdly lit, and otherwise amateur shots below.  I'm getting better at it.  However, on Halloween, when everyone (/many adults) have had a bit too much to drink, have spent too much time sweating their make-up off, and are fighting a food/sugar coma, it's better to do things old-school.  With an iPhone.  No hi-def, ultra-pixelated for us.  Haven't you seen the 30 Rock with the HD camera (sorry, no link, go watch episode seven, season four)?  So, in closing, I don't care.

In the following images, you will see two Jeff Lebowskis (with Caucasians), a number of characters from Wet Hot American Summer, views from a Russian Hill rooftop, a one-percenter lurking in the background ("But I have yacht payments!"), a jeans-into-jorts incident, a honey dadger (she don't care), and Egon Spengler, Ghostbuster.

Glancing Blows

Happy Halloween.

A Walk in the Woods

 Being unemployed sometimes has its perks.  Such as mid-week trips to Muir Woods.  Before loggers put cutting implements (saws?  axes?  large machines that are possessed by the spirit of pollution, which sounds alarmingly like Tim Curry?) to trunk in California, there were two million acres of old-growth redwood forest.  Now, little remains.  The area that became Muir Woods National Monument was left alone due to its inaccessible location, and it was purchased by William Kent and his wife Elizabeth Thacher Kent (who must, according to a quick Google search, be an actual Thacher).  Today, Muir Woods is a major tourist attraction, and even on a cold and foggy Thursday lunchtime visit, it was packed. 

 I snapped a quick iPhone photo of the bridge in fog as my friend Sabrina drove us over.  

The tallest tree is over 252 feet, and the widest trunk is 14 feet.  The oldest redwoods in the park are over a thousand years old, with most of the mature trees aged between five and eight hundred years. 

 It's dizzying to be among such tall living things, especially ones that feel so primeval.  Stepping back into the land of dinosaurs, or something.  It can be a very reverential experience--when you manage to escape screaming children and clamorous tourists (note: it's not just Americans who are loud...I won't name names, mais vous connaissez qui vous êtes).

Fog is an important part of a redwood's viability, since it provides moisture in the summer months, condensing on the tree's needles and falling to the forest floor.  This makes it dark and damp down where we tread.  Moss grows like muppet fur on tree trunks and strange mushrooms sprout in many colors.  Some of them looked delectable.  Others, like these blue-tinged ones, did not. 

We kept thinking about ET.  I wish I'd had some Reese's Pieces.

Yep, the trees are big. (And yep, I'm a huge dork.)

 The foliage of the deciduous trees (as opposed to the Sequoia sempervirens) was starting to turn and fall. 

When informed that the grove would be named for him, John Muir wrote: "This is the best tree-lover's monument that could possibly be found in all the forests of the world.  You have done me great honor, and I am proud of it."

Glancing Blows

Glancing Blows

You Can Be My Wingman Anytime: Fleet Week Photos

Every Columbus Day weekend, the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard send their ships, planes, and sailors to San Francisco.  Although it gives the men and women in uniform a well-deserved chance to blow off steam in the original city of sin (trust me, you can find weirder stuff here than Las Vegas), it's also a blatant attempt to recruit more bodies for the military.  Apart from the political, social, environmental, etc. implications of Fleet Week (I won't do it today), it's a lot of fun.  And crowded.  The air show and rehearsals over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday culminate in demonstrations from the Blue Angels and besiege the city with earsplitting, window-rattling, car-alarm triggering fly-bys for four hours or so each day.  It's incredibly obnoxious (and slightly unsettling) when you're not watching the planes but awe-inspiring when you are.  I want to share a few of the photos I took while watching the air show on Saturday with friends, who were kind enough to bring a grill and delicious grub.  You have to have a much better camera than mine to really do it justice, but it was pretty darn cool. 

The opening planes, with patriotic jet trails.

Beautiful weather meant that a lot of people came out to watch.

 

 The support plane for the Blue Angels, making a low pass over the Bay.

 The Blue Angels' finale. 

Glancing Blows

Adultery Fridays

New (short) post up at the Foreign Policy Association.  I am seriously pissed off about the US foreign aid budget.  Not that anything new has happened, mind you.  The New York Times decided to write about it this week, so everyone started talking about it again.  Dark days, my friends. 

It's Fleet Week in SF (I am somewhat afraid to go to the Castro in this post-DADT world...or so very curious), so there are planes all up in our business.  Setting off car alarms as they buzz by, barrel rolling overhead.  It's kind of cool to watch--you can't help but have respect for someone with the balls (ladies too!), skill, and strong stomach to fly a jet.  It's also a bit scary: although I knew the planes were here for Fleet Week, I still got a little knot of worry. Welcome to life during the War on Terror, I guess.  And, on top of cool and scary, it's also infuriating: how much money gets spent on freaking jets when there are starving kids in Africa, et cetera?  You know the drill.  I won't do the whole thing here.  Plus it's a lot of macho BS posturing, a little weenie shaking for a nation that keeps screaming it's the best but feels, well, woefully inadequate.  I'm going to go watch Top Gun, stare at some gentlemen in uniform (they're EVERYWHERE), and see how I feel.

Hardly Strictly

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass was last weekend.  The festival, which is free, started in 2001 and has expanded over the years to include more than just bluegrass acts (the "Hardly" was added later).  Over 600,000 people thronged to Golden Gate Park on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  It was one of those special events where, despite the terrible crowds, everyone was relatively calm, relaxed, and happy.  No, it's not pleasant to feel like you live in a tube of toothpaste.  But it was worth that crushing feeling to hear incredible music.  I spent most of the time wandering on my own, though I did manage to meet up with some friends, which was nearly impossible given the circumstances.  You'll be able to suss that out on your own in the following photos.

 People had wonderful outfits, like this gentleman in a rose and pistol shirt.  I saw him at Robert Plant & the Band of Joy's set and the next day, in the exact same outfit, at Gillian Welch & David Rawlings. 

One woman helped a friend with her dreads at Band of Heathens.

 I loved this guy's hat.  And he loved Robert Plant. 

This woman had a great patchwork Earth Mother dress.  She was selling headbands, like the one she's wearing, to festival goers.  And making a tidy profit, I think.  Woodstock for the Consumer Generation.  Not everyone appreciated the hippies, but others marveled at the festival, which felt like a throwback to the Summer of Love.  With more dogs and fewer people tripping on acid (I think).  One guy looked around and smiled, saying "People are drinking PBR and listening to Robert Plant...It could be forty years ago."

The Gaia-Hawker had a stranger hold her parasol as she made a sale.  He looked pretty pleased (seriously).

Of course, no concert in SF is complete without matching tie-dye.

Or massive numbers of bikes.

The weather threatened to be wet and cold, as it was the previous year, but it was beautiful out.  Just enough cloud cover so you didn't roast.

Did I mention that it was crowded?

 Without much of a plan for the earlier shows on Saturday, I checked out Band of Heathens, mostly because I liked their name.  They turned out to be a sick, old-school rock n roll n blues band from Austin.  They ushered in (and greeted) the sunshine, though they had to break for a quick guitar re-tune as the weather warmed.  They ended with a slow, more countrified version of Grateful Dead's "Brokedown Palace" in homage to that San Francisco sound.  Pretty brave, if you ask me, but they pulled it off.

 Then I fought my way over to see Hugh Laurie, otherwise known as Dr. Gregory House.  Although I'm often dubious of actors who try to be musicians (I'm looking at you, Scarlett Johansson), Mr. Laurie is a serious and legitimately good musician.  He did old blues, gospel, spirituals, and Southern standards, from "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" to "Swanee River" (of the latter, he said he plays it to "exorcise the demons"--I'm not sure what that means, but perhaps he just wanted to acknowledge the racist history of the song...or I could be way off-base).  Apart from being hilarious, he killed it.  It helped that he had a great band, of which he said: "They are the Rolls Royce, and I'm the Spirit of Ecstasy on the hood."  You could tell he was stoked to be doing this--when opening his set, he exclaimed (if Hugh Laurie can exclaim), "This is the most exciting day of my life."  He also continually referred to the audience as "Bob" and ended by saying, "I'm starting to like you, Bob.  I'm going away from here with a firm message: Bob is great."  Mr. Laurie, so are you.

 At this point, I managed to find one of my childhood friends (hey Melissa!) and her crew.  A few of us fought our way back over to see Patty Griffin, one of my all-time favorite singers.  We didn't end up in a great spot--it was too crowded and I needed garlic fries--but her voice sort of floated out over the crowd, like a ghost, ethereal.  She brought out Robert Plant for a number (she sings with him for the Band of Joy).  She's just wonderful.

My final concert was Gillian Welch & David Rawlings.  They mostly did stuff from their new album, The Harrow & the Harvest, and all of it was great.  There's nothing really more to say--they're two of the best bluegrass/folk/Americana/etc. musicians working today.  I thought of a dear friend during "Look at Miss Ohio" (hey Mel-Mel!), one of my favorite songs ("I wanna do right / But not right now").  Ms. Welch promised to "learn a fancy dance step for next time," and attempted a kick-step she hadn't quite mastered.  Before singing "The Way the Whole Thing Ends," she said, "I have this fixation.  I can't seem to get the word 'cornbread' out of my head," hence the lyrics: "That's the way the cornbread crumbles / That's the way the whole thing ends."  To end, in another nod to San Francisco's musical contributions, they covered Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit."  Grace Slick was one of the queens (the "Acid Queen," to be precise) of late 60s rock (we will ignore the Jefferson Starship "We Built This City" abomination...ugh), and to cover one of her songs is courageous, especially given her unique voice.  But it was a triumphant gamble, and I left the festival buoyant and smiling.  

To close, I'd like to talk about my first set, Robert Plant & the Band of Joy, who played on Friday night.  I went to HSB on Friday specifically to hear the former lead singer of Led Zeppelin.  I've seen a few (once) great rock acts over the years: Bob Dylan (three times, all wonderful), the Rolling Stones (once, still good but a shadow of former times), the Who (I don't think that energy can be captured anymore...and if they're not smashing guitars, what's the point?), and Simon & Garfunkel (still LOVE them).  So I thought knew what to expect with Mr. Plant: a crowd-pleasing set with little innovation (Stones, Who) and/or an unrecognizable voice who can't capture that former glory (MAYBE Dylan if he weren't still putting out awesome records...but I'll concede he's very froggy).  At the start, it was a combination of both: he opened with "Black Dog," which was risky: it requires pitch-perfect vocals and a face-melting guitar that's just impossible to replicate without Jimmy Page.  He then went into a number of covers and allowed his talented band--including Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin--to take over here and there, which was a smart move.  Mr. Plant was also genius in using Ms. Griffin to hit the notes he no longer can and in shifting to slower, more bluegrassy/Americana Led Zeppelin standards (i.e., less rock guitar heavy songs), like "Misty Mountain Hop" and "Ramble On."  They ended with rollicking versions of "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" and "Gallows Pole" as a waxing crescent moon sunk low in the West.  The perfect way to start a weekend of exceptional music.