Musical Entertainment at McCabe's Guitar Shop

I’ve been living in or near LA now for 20 years. This is a great city for entertainment, especially for music - but I always forget to check the venues I like for acts that I like.

Recently I subscribed to the email announcement list for McCabe’s Guitar Shop, an institution in Santa Monica that’s been around for 50 years. I’ve seen bands like The Cowboy Junkies (acoustic) and Al Stewart.

Last night I finally got to see an outstanding guitar player that I’ve wanted to see for decades (literally), David Lindley. And I was not disappointed. I’m not literate enough in musicology to be able to adequately describe what a virtuoso he is on stringed instruments, or how funny he is both in song and spoken word. His repertoire extends from LA folk-rock (or rock-folk) to bluegrass, to blues (John Lee Hooker style, and he does a mean imitation of JLH) to Pakistani traditional and even to atonal classical. I’m sure much it’s broader than that too. He played for us for only 90 minutes - enough for one show but probably not enough to show his various styles and influences. He played guitars, an oudh (sp?), a bazuki (sp?), a mandolin, and a long-necked mandolin-looking instrument that might have been a sitar. The room was full (about 150 people) and we all had a great time.

Restart

I've been working on reorganizing and reducing distractions so I can start writing again, both here and items as yet unpublished. Consider this the first in the restart.

Adventures - Then and Now

Bruce Sterling has a post at his blog on Wired about an upcoming Long Now event "Mechanicrawl" celebrating “steampunk”. Now, I’m not too into steampunk - it’s fun to examine for its ingenuity and mechanical complexity, but I’ve worked around enough old machinery that I’m not infatuated or fascinated by such things* - but I am into Long Now events. I may go up for this for another reason too.

This event is going to be centered on and around the rebuilding of the torpedo targeting computer on the WW2-era diesel-electric submarine USS Pampanito. The computer is in the sail, also known as the conning tower, which is where the Combat Information Center (CIC) is located. Apparently the event is going to allow people into the conn to see the computer and the other things in the CIC. This is rare because normally access to the conn and the CIC is extremely limited.

Heh.

One day at least 25 years ago, not long after I’d graduated from college and was living with a friend in South San Francisco and was still into doing wild and crazy things, we went down to the Pampanito late one weekday when it was late dusk. We bought our tickets and went onto the boat, down into the crew spaces on the main deck. We looked around there and then came up. We looked at the person in the booth, and took a chance and shot up onto the sail and down into the CIC. It was much more interesting in there, and not only because it was forbidden and we had beaten the rules. It’s also the most interesting part of the boat, because that is where all the important business took place. After all, this was a weapon in a shooting war, and that space was where the shooting was planned and took place. (It would have been cool to get into the torpedo room too, but we didn’t get there.) We spent a few minutes there, and I can still remember a big red (lit) plotting board. We also looked through the telescope, but I don’t remember if we were in the main compartment or in the CIC on the conn when we did that. I’m pretty certain we looked through the scope while in the CIC, because I was concerned that turning the periscope would be seen by the ticket-taker/authority and thought we better escape soon. One more thing - the view of San Francisco from the periscope was really great - it was bright and clear with great optics!

Anyway, Long Now is having an event and maybe I’ll go up for that.

*Okay, I’m into machinery just like any guy and this stuff will be cool!

Celebrity Spotting

Some people at work sponsored a workshop (or conference) that brought together artists and media people from the Middle East to get them to discuss how to solve the problems in that region.

Near the end, one of the attendees (an entertainment celebrity in Damascus) wanted to buy a Macintosh to take home to her sister who owns an advertising agency in Damascus. At the same time one of the organizers also wanted advice on what new Mac she - as a life-long Windows user - should buy. I volunteered to go with them to the Apple store and help them decide.

The next day, as a way of thanking me for helping her with entertaining some of her guests and helping on the Macintosh decision she invited me along to a dinner with another of her guests, the Syrian film and TV writer/director/producer Najdat Anzour.He looks rather like a Middle Eastern John Huston, in his 50s, and has at least as much urbaneness. Najdat is well known in the Middle East as the director of some famous tv soap operas which air during Ramadan, the time of the year when the biggest tv audiences occur (due to the fasting during the day and eating after sunset).

He was here in LA to go to the conference, but also to pitch a movie project to Hollywood. He's got a story, a script, a budget ($50M) and even a big name star, but he couldn't get mainstream Hollywood interested. We spent a good part of the evening talking about the culture of Hollywood, and simply talking about movies. His english was very good, and he has a huge knowledge of film. It's obvious he is well traveled in Europe, and I advised him that getting it into the US might require that he first get it well played in Europe, and get some recognition for it there (e.g. Cannes, Berlin, London, Rome, etc.)

Near the end of the evening we participated in the ritual Exchanging of the Business Cards, and he promised he would send me the script for reading and analysis. And so very unlike Hollywood, he held to his promise. He sent me the script that very evening.

I was supposed to read it this weekend, but was so busy reading other things that I didn't do it. Will have to do it tonight, tomorrow (day) and tomorrow night.

All in all though it was a very interesting event.

Wes Anderson retrospective at the Aero

There is a Wes Anderson retrospective at American Cinematheque's Aero theatre this week. I went to see The Royal Tenenbaums this evening. It's a quirky (Hollywood technical term) story of a dysfunctional family, and boy could I relate to it. I'm sorry I didn't see it before my dad died, but I'm glad I didn't see it when it came out. That is, I don't think I could have handled seeing it before last Thanksgiving, but I wish I'd seen it between then and when he died.

EOL

One of these days I will write about my father's death.

I feel safer already

Two weeks ago I flew to San Francisco to undergo* training on the new Microsoft SharePoint 2007 (MOSS). I got into SFO, collected my luggage and took a shuttle to the hotel. When I opened my bag, I instantly noticed that things were amiss. And the "Items may shift during flight..." warning was not to blame.

As I slowly took things out of the suitcase I noticed more and more amiss, for instance the toiletries bag is a small internal bag that snaps into the top of the case, and it was detached and buried in the other stuff.

I wasn't worried about anything being stolen as I hadn't taken anything valuable. Though I was genuinely puzzled it occurred to me that maybe the cargo monkeys had chosen my bag to rifle in a search for valuables to steal.

But finally at the bottom of all the stuff, and apparently tossed in after the stuff had been extracted but before it was replaced, was this charming little card from My Government.


*If it seems like I'm unhappy about this Microsoft bundle of bits, it's because I am. Learning a Microsoft program is like getting brain surgery to rewire one's neurons so as to not think so logically or brilliantly.

the toll to date

Another month has passed since last post. Three weeks after that post (on 30 March) I got word that Tom, a good friend of nearly 35 years, died on 21 March. And I'd also been deeply concerned over another friend who I'd learned in January had had unprecedented brain surgery to remove a cyst. She survived, but barely. The first three months of 2007 have been challenging, thus the dearth of posts.

a terribly bad and sad day

No posts in a long time. On February 18 my father died. I was with him in the hospital room. I miss him a lot.