allaboutgeorge's vox(elgänger)

Closer than clothes

nobody@vox.com(allaboutgeorge) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:25:58 -0700

I went to the laundromat last night after work. They've got Wi-Fi now (good!); you have to hunt down an attendant for the password (bad!); there are no power outlets so you can always be chargin' (ugly!).

A guy waiting for his clothes to dry had an Ovation acoustic guitar with him. I saw him patting his pockets down in search of a pick. I remembered seeing one at the bottom of my laundry basket, so I rooted around, found it and handed it to him. He thanked me and began to play.

I had a shaker/thunderstick in my car's trunk (because that's where all my percussion instruments have been hiding out since this summer's CampCamps), so I went and got it and played along. He was kind enough to pass the guitar off after a little while.

We made 40 cents. That would've covered seven minutes' worth of dryer time. We gave it to a man who'd walked in and was asking people for change.

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Booka'sto trippin'

nobody@vox.com(allaboutgeorge) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:43:59 -0700

African American fiction

Reading what RPM wrote the other day reminded me.

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First and foremost as a way of using language

nobody@vox.com(allaboutgeorge) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:10:46 -0700

Weird Al Yankovic - White and Nerdy Live

Mary Bucholtz, a linguist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been working on the question for the last 12 years. She has gone to high schools and colleges, mainly in California, and asked students from different crowds to think about the idea of nerdiness and who among their peers should be considered a nerd; students have also “reported” themselves. Nerdiness, she has concluded, is largely a matter of racially tinged behavior. People who are considered nerds tend to act in ways that are, as she puts it, “hyperwhite.” [...]

That's how Benjamin Nugent's New York Times essay "Whos [sic] A Nerd?" begins.

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Vox Hunt: Cityscape

nobody@vox.com(allaboutgeorge) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:57:32 -0700

Show us a cityscape.

IMG_1241.JPG

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IM IN UR HALL LISTNIN TO UR CLASIX

nobody@vox.com(allaboutgeorge) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:26:42 -0700

Symphony for the Bloggers

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SFIFF 50: "Look at Mr. Lee" (ii)

nobody@vox.com(allaboutgeorge) — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:39:26 -0700

Back to front

It had been a minute since I'd been on any parts of Muni, let alone something as nice as the F Market. I leaned back in my back-row seat and lolled like a pasha, taking pictures of passing bicyclists, the Orpheum Theatre all Conan'd up, intersections teeming with people and cars and litter and neon not yet ready for nighttime. Taking those pictures was a pleasant reminder of riding down International Boulevard in Oakland to the San Leandro line and back last year. I need to take my road bike to Missing Link and get wider tires, or maybe even think about going mountain instead.

I got off the trolley at about 6:35 p.m. and walked over to a long line of folks waiting to get into the Castro. The line stretched around the corner to Nice Cuts. The whole time I kept saying to myself "I've had my fun if I don't get inside, I've had my fun if they don't recognize my credentials, I've had my fun if I can't find a seat." And then I was in and getting my large popcorn, soda, frozen Junior Mints and planting my happy behind about midway up the left side, two seats in from the left-center aisle.

After half an hour or so, the festival present came out and talked up the evening and showed off a clip show of most of Spike Lee's movies. Then out came Wesley Morris, probably the only reason I used to check out the old San Francisco Examiner. Spike followed a few moments later. It was not an even match. Spike was prickly, speaking slowly and deliberately, not trying to be light or witty, but clearly feeling his way through his feelings.

Spike Lee and Wesley Morris

Wesley, I thought, wanted to draw Spike out, to have him Explain things. What made his reviews and occasional essays such fun was probably not just his voice, but time. Live and on stage is no place to try to draw someone out who won't be Drawn. I don't make a point of watching late-night talk shows these days, but I don't think Spike does the rounds on them. Nor, I suspect, does he play nice when he does. I think a little nice would've gotten everybody through the hour and change a little better than we got, which only lightened up toward the end.

Still, cranky as he came off in that setting, unwilling as he was to give Wesley more than an inch, he took his audience very seriously. He accepted thanks graciously and considered questions about almost all issues with equanimity, with the exception of a woman who asked about a bill wending its way through Congress.

And then parts two and three of "When the Levees Broke" played on the screen. I know there's a good reason that horror movies have made a comeback in recent years, but this was something else. What happened in -- to -- New Orleans and the Gulf Coast -- was an abomination. The other word that came to mind about midway through the third part was "affront." Add it to the list of solid Bush-administration indictments: "Fahrenheit 911," "Control Room" and so on.

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SFIFF 50: "Look at Mr. Lee" (i)

nobody@vox.com(allaboutgeorge) — Thu, 03 May 2007 21:47:01 -0700

Until last night, I'd never been in a room with Spike Lee. The list of people I have to thank for making that happen will only get shorter if I start mentioning names now.

First would be Kevin Smokler, who took a chance on me and heads-upped me last year when the San Francisco International Film Festival gave a few local bloggers press credentials. Smokler's giving tends to acquire a momentum of its own. It feels like a continuous no-look pass on a basketball court that expands from moment to moment. I had a lot of fun last year.

Second would be Hillary Hart and Cindy Lang, whose persistence, kindness and aplomb over the last two months are not to be believed. They wanted me to participate, and it felt good to be able to show up and take them up on their offer. How much of success is that showing-up thing again?

I got home, turned around and bid A. goodbye, walking south and west. I slipped past the Oakland Unified School District complex, the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center and Laney College campus to Lake Merritt BART station. The wait there for the next thing smoking into San Francisco felt strange. I'd just heard that BART had just had their biggest day ever. (By their lights, Wednesday was still about 10 percent above normal weekday numbers, passenger-wise.) There did seem to be more people around than I was used to seeing at that hour, not that I did a lot of going into the city this way.

The train came. I got on and we rode across West Oakland and down through the Transbay Tube and slid into Embarcadero BART. I didn't really know where I was going, even with the directions describing the afternoon's event -- 132 The Embarcadero, between Mission and Howard -- but I felt lucky about stepping up and out of the station, among milling office workers and businesspeople, getting my bearings from a MUNI driver who'd parked her bus and was feeding pigeons from her seat behind the wheel, and wandering over to the Bay along the very perimeter of the city. Set foot beyond that fence and you'll find nothing solid to put your foot on until you get to the island with the tunnel, part of the bridge, running through it.

Chaya Brasserie is glass panes and a fancy sign and a hush once you step off the street and through the door. The tall well-dressed white guy behind the booth was talking all friendly to a colleague, but he politely asked if he could help me. I mumbled something about the film festival. He smiled, waving me on and back and to the right.

In there I smiled politely at a small phalanx of poised and efficient young women, who didn't have to do much but watch as Hillary introduced herself and took my event pass and my riding-the-late-freight press application off my hands. I found a corner of the room, had an hors d'oeuvre and a glass of beer and listened in on three men -- Ivan Jaigirdar of 3rd I, a brother named Carlos who wrote for the Oakland Post (which I didn't know has some woes of its own) and a local indie television producer. We talked about Brazil, ultimate fighting, places to live in the United States, Manchester United and (courtesy of a tangent introduced by another gentleman passing by) black animation.

Then I looked down at my watch and realized I needed to get over to the Castro Theater. I excused myself and ran over to Market Street, barely catching a F trolley car.

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No There There #1

nobody@vox.com(allaboutgeorge) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 13:28:30 -0700

Oakland Meets Obama

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The gig that got away (2006 edition)

nobody@vox.com(allaboutgeorge) — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 23:52:54 -0800

I saw a few last year but I didn't see this one until now, so DJ Rotten Robbie, G-d bless your soul and keep livin'.

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King's other dream

nobody@vox.com(allaboutgeorge) — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 13:16:25 -0800

Flags for MLK in Civic Park

"[...] There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. [...]"

"Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" (background)

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