a few crowns please

in prague there is a small replica of the eiffel tower atop a hill near the center of town. prague, it seems, likes to adorn the tops of hills with various large objects. there is the eiffel towerita, a metronome, two unidentified modern towers, a castle and a more modern missile.

after a long night drinking with some czechs who hated americans in an underground cellar, annie and i decided to take the funicular up to the eiffel tower. the surrounding gardens were supposedly beautiful and a nice way to walk off the burcak (young wine) from the night before.

while standing in the queue (too many brits) we realized that we were a few crowns short of the necessary toll. we had plenty of cash, but the machines at the funicular took only crowns. a nice dutch couple in front of us, whoe daughter had helped explain the situation to us, had plenty of coins and i asked if they would be nice enough to spare 4 crowns. this is the equivalent to a quarter, 25 cents. we weren't asking for much and the dutch man looked at his hand and at the 40 or so crowns he had in his hand, paused for a moment and slowly trinkled over 20 crowns into my hand.

as the crowns passed from holland to american hands annie and i received a little speech. this was, apparently, not solely a good will gesture on the part of the tank top wearing, balding and pot bellied father of 2 from amsterdam, but a political pay off. these crowns, he stated, were his small part to get rid of george bush.

i guess it was the least he could do, and i wish i had my wits about me and asked him for a much larger political donation. if a dollar was all it took, we would all be much more politically active.

fucking healthy

annie and i sat around a pub in budapest the other night with 4 hungarians. greg, a friend of gregs, a friend of a friend of gregs and a friend of a friend of a friend of gregs. it seemed that greg, the only hungarian we knew, wanted to make it clear that the other people were not his direct friends and therefore had not been vetted by him and did not represent his country.

aside from discussing communism and the tartar people, what continually entertained me the entire night was the frequent use of the word ´fucking.´ all of the matyars at our table spoke english quite well, but they preferred to punctuate many phrases with the above word. margaret island in budapest is fucking big, and the neighborhood annie and i unfortunately visited was fucking bad. and of course the baths in budapest, they are ´fucking healthy.´

my solitary bar exam post

DSC00635, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

i covered the walls of my, well annie's, apartment with every subject from the bar. it was an attempt to live with the madness, to soak in simply through existing and living with all the information. hopefully it will prove beneficial, but months will pass before the experiment will show its true value. the day after the exam i ripped every single sheet down and recycled them.

another view

DSC00659, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

taken on a sunny day... saturday... the 28th of july 2007.

don't forget the whale murals

DSC00660, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

here is a photo of the mitchell brother's whale mural. apparently it is $40 to get in nowadays. free condoms, however.

poetry reading

i attended a poetry reading last night. i think it was the first poetry reading since a horrible slam poetry event i grimaced through in college. anyways, last night was wonderful and full of european communists, syrian love poets and the most adorable swedish poet talking about his grandma. check out the guy below, and just look over the list of people from the festival, here.

Buy, Always Consume

Buy, buy more than you can
consume. Consume. Fuck over
any relationship.
Step on everything and always
buy everything up. Carry home
as much as you can.
Stuff, stuff yourself with greed.
Don't look anybody in
the eyes.
Surround yourself with high walls
so neither grass nor human
voices can reach you;
sink, sink into shit as deep
as you can go.
You must be on your guard;
buy away, carry it home
always consume.
Look around, make sure
they're not robbing you;
trample
any flower
any plant...
Buy, always buy
carry home
more than you can carry;
consume, consume
sink, sink into the shit,
shit shit shit.

-Ferruccio Brugnaro

start snitchin'

i'm going to make t shirts that say "start snitching." i know that it was all about not being a tattle tale when you were young, but when you see someone get shot it is probably a good idea to tell the police. this might save the next person. i know the audience reading this is probably not too concerned with such matters on a daily basis, but this bothers me.

and... why can't they make better looking stop snitchin' t shirts. i guess it is all about sending a message, but the stop signs are so damn big.

toto washlet... for pretty much everybody

i was reading a salon article about barry bonds and bud selig and racism and homeruns, when an ad caught my eye. the ad was a bunch of butts of different colors. i clicked through and came upon the toto washlet. interesting concept, but really worth checking out the website for the people that explain it to you. go to cleanishappy.com

here is the salon article on bonds. good discussion about the racial dynamics of bonds' breaking the home run record and some interesting info about hank aaron and the 929,000 hate letters he received when he passed ruth.

tortoise torturer

a 6 year old boy who seldom talked to humans had a special relationship with his african spotted tortoise, bob. unfortunately, someone stole his tortoise, tortured his tortoise and left the tortoise to die behind an apartment complex.

the police captured the villian, 18 year old Tony Mosqueda, and rescued the tortoise. bob is now being treated at Turtle Dreams, a montecito "turtle hospital," and a full recovery is expected. The parents of the autistic child, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan are "looking forward to their tortoise coming back to full health."

The story, here, is worth reading solely for the comments of the police officers.

madness in modesto

my mom grew up in modesto. but she didn't have a miniature horse living in her kitchen, 7 dogs in the backyard and two parents who didn't seem to care about the feces covering the kitchen floor. nor did she have to sleep in a tent in her bedroom to get away from flies. story here.

art buchwald

i have been reading a little, and i emphasize a little, art buchwald recently. he died in january of this year, but he is a new discovery for me. he wrote a lot about nixon and his humor translates well to the present day shortcomings of our current executive.

before nixon resigned, buchwald adapted a dr. suess poem urging the president to leave. (insert george w. bush)





Richard M. Nixon will you please go now!
The time has come.
The time has come.
The time is now.
Just go.
Go.
Go!
I don't care how.
You can go by foot.
You can go by cow.
Richard M. Nixon will you please go now!
You can go on skates.
You can go on skis.
You can go in a hat.
But
Please go.
Please!
I don't care.
You can go
By bike.
You can go
On a Zike-Bike
If you like.
If you like
You can go
In an old blue shoe.
Just go, go, GO!
Please do, do, do, DO!
Richard M. Nixon
I don't care how.
Richard M. Nixon
Will you please
GO NOW!
You can go on stilts.
You can go by fish.
You can go in a Crunk-Car
If you wish.
If you wish
You may go
By lion's tale.
Or stamp yourself
And go by mail.
Richard M. Nixon
Don't you know
The time has come
To go, go, GO!
Get on your way!
Please Richard M.!
You might like going in a Zumble-Zay.
You can go by balloon . . .
Or broomstick.
Or
You can go by camel
In a bureau drawer.
You can go by bumble-boat
. . . or jet.
I don't care how you go.
Just get!
Richard M. Nixon!
I don't care how.
Richard M. Nixon
Will you please
GO NOW!
I said
GO
And
GO
I meant . . .
The time had come
So . . .
Richard WENT.

originally published in the washington post.

come on baby and scratch my back

i'm still quite a novice about the blues. aside from the regulars, muddy waters and bb king, i don't know much. i was record shopping a few months ago and saw a lightnin' hopkins album. didn't know who he was, but ryan said that he was one of the greats.

ain't got no...

my parents once saw nina simone in new york. she apparently went on a rant during the show about "the man." my mom and dad were the only white poeple in the audience. my mom didn't find this very funny, but my dad laughs about it 40 years later. after i was born and had purchased a record player, my dad picked me up two nina simone albums. in 2002 i saw here in oakland at the paramount. it was after her stroke and a year before she died. she played the piano with one hand, could barely sing but every person there knew that it was more of a tour to say thank you rather than enjoy the music. she was born eunice kathleen waymon in tryon, north carolina in 1933. she changed here name so that her mom wouldn't know she was singing the devil's music. nina was a nickname from a boyfriend and simone was the name of a french actress she admired.

and now... whale sharks

i did a presentation on whale sharks in 2nd grade. i remember learning that they would let divers hang on as they roamed the ocean. i still dream that i will be able to dive with a whale shark. i i i.

the georgia aquarium in atlanta is home to 4 whale sharks (used to be 6 but ralph and norton died). the whale shark is the largest fish in the world, they eat plankton and are supposedly very gentle.

speaking of whale murals

on the broderick tower in downtown detroit there is a wonderful whale mural painted by an eccentric detroit artist named wyland. for various reasons locals don't like him or his whales very much. i have read stories that people used to thrown things at him while he was painting just out of spite.

during the run up to the super bowl and for about a year afterwards the whales were covered up by advertising. which was a shame, but made people realize that whales, however disliked, are better than t-mobile monthly specials.

one of the main complaints about the whales is that they have no relationship to detroit. admittedly, the closest whales to detroit are in the atlantic ocean which, considering detroit is solidly in the midwest, are not particularly close. most detroiters never think of whales but rather deer and other creatures which are hunted. here is one opinion from detroitblog

"The whales mural always struck me as California pothead art, the kind you find at the starving artists sales they periodically hold in places such as Eastland Mall, where you find paintings of majestic wolves and their cubs on a foresty snowscape, like you see airbrushed on the side of a van now and then. Now that’s art!" detroitblog

i always liked the whales (i am from california after all), they were strange and out of place on the side of an abandoned (hopefully not for long) office building. just the kind of juxtaposition that makes detroit wonderful.

jim mitchell died today and the whale mural

mitchell brothers theater, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

when i was a little boy i always enjoyed the whale mural on polk and o'farrell streets. what i found out years later was that the whales were on the side of the mitchell brother's adult theater. the mitchell brothers opened the theater in 1969 and shot and produced such classic movies as 'behind the green door.' i guess the reason it was such a popular porn film was because marilyn chambers was also an ivory soap model. i think i heard somewhere that in previous decades there was pretty much only kind of soap: ivory. hunter thompson was the night manager of the theater for 2 years to research a never published book. read more about jim shooting the other brother, artie. obituary

now both mitchell's brothers are dead but the whales, although a little faded and with some graffiti, are still there. they have moved to the back of the building so they are no longer on polk st. the jungle scene pictured above is now the offering on polk. it is sad, as the whales were much more at home on polk st.

al qaeda in mess-o-potamia

basic scenario is that bin laden and al qaeda orchestrate 9.11 and then we invade iraq. the invasion sends hundreds of thousands of prime patriotic targets to the middle east. a new terror network, 'al qaeda in mesopotamia,' grows. from the nytimes:

"Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia did not exist before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Sunni group thrived as a magnet for recruiting and a force for violence largely because of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, which brought an American occupying force of more than 100,000 troops to the heart of the Middle East, and led to a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad."

yet bush continues to draw connections between 'al qaeda in mesopotamia' and 9.11 to support his iraq policies. to read more about how bush distorts links between the terror organizations and learn about the scary nature of the iraq conflict: full nytimes article.

go watch 'talk to me'

nytimes review. this sure isn't the most glowing picture of mr. greene. but there aren't too many options flying around this web of the wide world. i wish he was smiling, or at least had on a better outfit. who wore such square suits in the 70s except for my dad and the rest of the square businessmen. if you look closely you can see his outrageous sideburn resting on his collar.

all star fireworks from the spot

all star fireworks from the spot, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

a view from the livingroom

windows and windows

windows and windows, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

a view from the bathroom

somewhat obsessed with this street light

somewhat obsessed with this street light, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

a view from the kitchen

michael moore gets wolfed

cnn throws up a some crap... and michael moore rants.

round two

more jazz

keith jarret solo in italy at the umbria jazz festival at perugia, 1974

i thought jaco pastorius was alive

but he actually died a few years ago, 1987 to be exact. but not many people come close to his madness on the bass. that's right, not even victor wooten. here's a little more on his death from wiki:

"After sneaking onstage at a Carlos Santana concert September 11, 1987, he was ejected from the premises, and he made his way to the Midnight Bottle Club in Wilton Manors, Florida. What then happened was clouded with discrepancy. After reportedly kicking in a glass door after being refused entrance to the club, he was engaged in a violent confrontation with the club bouncer, Luc Havan, who was trained in martial arts. Pastorius was hospitalized for multiple facial fractures and gruesome disfigurement to his face, including the probable loss of his right eye and sustained irreversible brain damage. He fell into a coma and was put on life support. His condition worsened and increasing signs pointed to brain death and so his family decided to remove him from life support. Pastorius died on September 21, 1987, aged 35, at Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale."

pat methany said that jaco was probably the last jazz musician of the 20th century.

check more of him out here

patience

is something that i have learned from listening to jazz. so spend 10 minutes and listen to one of the best things to come from 1978. joe zawinul and wayne shorter created weather report and most of us are too young to know about them. but they are wonderful.

he passed in 1999

the year that i graduated from high school.

7 years later

here is a 1972 clip of curtis mayfield singing "keep on keeping on." this is a track from his second solo album "roots."

curtis mayfield then and now

well i guess more like then and then. but here is the impressions before mayfield struck out on his social justice period for which he is quite well known.

i don't really want you...

i can't say that i am sad that the US army missed its recruiting goal for June, the second month in a row. i don't know how anyone would want to join the army right now, but that is an old old argument. what i found most interesting was this fact.

"Colonel Baggio said that — aside from those conflicts — recruiting had been hurt by the fact that 7 in 10 potential recruits in their late teens and early 20s do not meet Army standards, largely because they are too heavy or failed to graduate from high school."

70% is madness. And where do you go in life after you thought. "Well? I'm going to join the army." Then the army responds: "Sorry, you're to fat or uneducated." If we want the army to grow stop recruiting immigrants with promises of citizenship and stop granting exceptions for criminals - just promote teenage fitness. FULL ARTICLE

flags and generators

DSC00578, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

what else do you need on the 4th of july than a girl getting her hand blown off and an original street fighter 2 powered by a car battery.

FIXIES

well here is the answer to the brake question. ayla's brakes. i still don't quite understand. notice how ayla's answers to questions have absolutely nothing to do with braking. another interesting point is that fixies have competitions where they see who can skid the longest. so they compete on how far they can skid, but also claim that it is a legit braking system? For more info about fixies from a guy who claims to love them but also advocates front brakes: sheldon 'front brake' brown.

obrigado dilla

watermelon brakes

DSC00583, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

i, and many other people, are still trying to find out how people ride bikes without brakes in san francisco. some say it is a lifestyle. unless someone convinces me otherwise, i think it is dumb.

Scooter and Bullshit

I am not quite sure how to react to the Libby commutation. However, i do find it interesting how federal sentencing policy is affected by this whole mess. Bush, and crime fighting Republicans in general, have supported strict and harsh guideline sentences for federal crimes. Repeatedly supporting the position that guideline sentences are reasonable. However, Libby's guideline sentence was too harsh in the President's opinion. This is absurd. Compare the recent Supreme Court case of Rita which was supported by briefs filed by Bush's Justice Department. Rita was convicted of the same crime as Libby. He received a harsher sentence (by 3 months) and his sentence was reasonable. Libby's sentence, however, was excessive. Read on.

street fairs

DSC00528, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

in san francisco, and many cities, are a summer tradition. but newsom sobered up and i guess he decided that the rest of us should to. no drinking at the haight street fair, crazy.

hipsters and babies

read on

here is a washington post article about ralph 'petey' greene and 'talk to me.'

don cheadle's new movie, talk to me, is about this man. 8,000 people showed up in the middle of winter for his funeral in 1984.

found

DSC00536, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

and lost. who needs an iphone. on laguna around 1pm. last week of june 2007.

original beats

bravo bravo

felt penguins

DSC00454, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

ongoing series: bad megan

DSC00469, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

ongoing series: bad megan

DSC00471, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

sunday excitement

DSC00479, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

fires always draw crowds. i was watching fox news a couple of weeks ago and they were tracking a small plane with a landing gear malfunction. i watched for 10 minutes until the plane landed. national news, thousands of people, watching a small plane with two people and a dog landing without nose gear. why? why did all of us watch this plane? why did i leave my apartment to go take pictures of the fire? do i really want to see some burning corpse fly out of a window? did i want to see those people in the plane die? my intuition is that we all flock to such events to witness disaster, but never really want it to happen. Or do we secretly want such horrible things to happen so we can have a story to tell.

chance for survival

RenaRunningMan Tesconi

DSC00428, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

two times

watermelon

DSC00451, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

and cheap sunglasses

hi....

DSC00416, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

would you like me to rub this football on your tummy?

regal

DSC00013, originally uploaded by PourLeCorps.

detroit

i haven't seen a film in the theater since borat, and that was an amazing waste of time although it still stands as the only film which i have seen in the city limits of detroit. for a friday night date annie and i decided to see a movie and ended up after reading a few sentences about bestiality and a ruptured colon from the bay guardian at "zoo." i left seattle in 2004 and had i stayed another year, i guess had i stayed in the states for all of 2005, i would have known about the horse sex case in enumclaw. for those unaware of this, in 2005 a man named mr. hands, who was some top secret boeing employee, died after having sex with a stallion. he was divorced with a young son. he died of a ruptured colon and subsequent internal bleeding.