Strange day
Among other things, April 18th marks the date of:
The Great San Francisco Earthquake in 1906
And in 1881 Billy the Kid escapes from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico. (the jail is now a tchotchke shop in Mesilla Plaza.)
Category: San Francisco
Saturday is rantacular!
An open letter to the Bay Area’s NBC-11 (KNTV) television station
Dear programming directors at my local television station, NBC-11:
I’d like to begin our conversation by thanking you for televising Friday night’s San Francisco Giants baseball game on your regular ol’ not-cable television station.
For people like me who have gone back to days of yore by using rabbit ears to tune in my television, it’s fun to actually get a chance to watch my home team instead of only being able to listen on the radio.
The Good Man and I celebrated by eating bratwurst for dinner to get in the mood.
Very cool.
That said…
I’d like to kindly remind you that your whole reason for being in Los Angeles Friday night was to video and broadcast the game on behalf of your home viewers.
You know, the residents of the Bay Area? The SAN FRANCISCO Bay Area?
See, here’s the funny thing, by and large, on Friday, your viewers in the San Francisco Bay Area were all actively watching your fine station in order to see the Giants play baseball.
You know, the SAN FRANCISCO Giants?
So when you spend large portions of the game focused solely on Matt Kemp, giddy about Matt Kemp, how wonderful is Matt Kemp, showing us Matt Kemp in the dugout, Matt Kemp in the on deck circle, Matt Kemp picking his nose, you might fail to understand why I might be rather upset?
Why would I be this upset? Because %$!&ing Matt Kemp is a sonova$%#@ing player for the Dodgers!
How do I know this? Well, you see, I was able to take a gander at the front of his jersey. You might try this trick. Focus your freaking camera on him in every idle second, and you might get a close up look at the letters on his chest. Can you see it? Can you see it says D…O…D…G….
….ARE YOU EVEN PAYING ATTENTION!?!?!?!?!?
You are broadcasting a Giants game to Giants fans! Screw the Dodgers fans in the Bay Area! Who cares about them? They are not your core demographic!
I do not want to see Manny Ramirez unless he’s batting. I do not want to see Casey Blake unless he’s fielding a ball. I do not give one miniscule rat’s ASS about Matt Kemp unless he is batting or actively making a play.
And I give even less than a miniscule rat’s ass about all of the repeated views of Matt’s Kemp’s adorable little girlfriend Rhianna sitting in the stands.
Yes, we’re all very excited that Matt Kemp is dating Rhianna. Yes, she’s very cute. Yes, I know all you big sport broadcasting boys are squeeing with glee about the chance to film Rhianna sitting there with a hoodie over her head looking all cool. I know she’s like, oh my god, whoa, isn’t that the coolest thing ever, double squee!
But for f*ck’s sakes! Let’s just let the LA station broadcast the gratuitous lingering camera shots of their own players and their own players girlfriends.
Hey, here’s a cost saving idea! Why don’t *you* just use LA’s KCAL television feed for the next Giants-Dodgers game? That way I can, at the very least, listen to the dulcet tones of Vin Scully call the game.
At least that would be something interesting!
Now.
That said.
Saturday’s game is nationally televised on Fox. You know that that means? That means Joe Buck.
I guran-frapping-tee you that your crappy Friday night television coverage will hold up well by comparison to Joe freakin’ Buck’s uninspired and wooden-like call. I plan on feeling nauseated. Buck’s voice usually inspires that in me..
Because, NBC-11, you suck, but Joe Buck sucks worse.
And that’s something to build on.
Baseballically yours,
Karen
P.S. These are my pants. They are cranky. That is all.
Image found here.
Did you get healed?
Recently, driving around in the Jeep looking for something good to listen to on the radio, I began to think about a CD I own.
By thinking, I mean, wondering where it is. When The Good Man and I moved in together several years ago, I boxed up a lot of stuff and stored it away.
Over the years, occasionally I’ll remember something that I want or need and it’s a hell of a rodeo to find it.
So I put the thought out of mind. Whatever. It’s just a CD. I can probably find it on iTunes or at the library or something.
I tried to dismiss it.
But this thought came with a long strip of Velcro, and wouldn’t let go.
A voice in my mind kept asking, “Where is that CD? You need to listen to it.”
When you get a voice that adamant, it’s kind of hard to ignore.
But I tried.
And tried.
And failed.
Resigned to satisfying that damn voice so it would shut up, I suited up. Our storage is under the place we rent, and that happened to be a very cold and very rainy day.
Determined, under the house I went, poking around in boxes and bags, knocking stuff over and getting lost on that long winding lane called Memory.
Finally, I did find a very heavy box that had a bunch of CD’s, and also most of my VHS movies, that I’d packed away.
I heaved, grunted and lurched the box upstairs and started picking through it.
A lot of heavy memory stuff burbled to the top, clamoring for my attention, which I gave.
But nothing quieted the voice. I kept digging and finally, yes, I found the CD I was looking for.
Yeah. A “best of” compilation. Forgive me ye Gods of the Blues.
I bought this CD back in 1997. I’d just moved to the Bay Area and some good friends (also New Mexico transplants) had introduced me to the thriving blues scene in San Francisco.
I only tangentially knew the music. I’d listened to some B.B. King, some Muddy Waters and some John Lee Hooker in my time. The popular stuff. The stuff everyone knows.
But back then, San Francisco was steeped in the old ways.
During the course of the next decade, I received what can only be called a Blues Education.
I watched some of the not only best blues musicians, but best musicians period, play in craptastic bars like the old Grant & Green (the remodel took the soul out of it) and of course The Saloon, the oldest continually operating bar in the beautiful City of San Francisco. It dates back to the 1861, which means it survived both the ‘quake of 1906 and Prohibition.
There were nights it was too cramped and too hot (and back then, too smoky) in The Saloon for my tastes, so I would step outside the front door. I was dating a musician at the time, so the dyspeptic doorman had to be nice to me. He would let me sit on his stool by the front door where he collected the cover charge.
I’d take his chivalrous gesture and lean back against the battered wood door. I could feel the driving beat in my spine, and I’d watch the fog roll over the tops of the buildings in North Beach.
I learned about the three Kings (B.B., Freddy and Albert).
I learned about Chicago blues, Delta blues and the just plain blues blues.
I heard a thousand different versions of “Matchbox” and “Shotgun” and I watched guys try to be both Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King. I began to understand why some songs grab you by the gut and sometimes a song that should grab your gut doesn’t (hint: it has a lot to do with the drummer).
Today, I’m a suburban girl with a quiet, happy life. No regrets here. But sometimes I miss the family I made back then who took me in, protected me and helped me learn the old ways.
You know, they call it stormy Monday…but Tuesday’s just as bad.
This one musician, a hell of guitar player, used to tear it up for four hours, and at the end of the night, he’d ask the frenzied crowd, “Did you get healed?”
And he’d get crazy, drunken, full-throated hollers in return. The music mattered. It got us on a cellular level. We got healed.
I may need to see about a Saturday in North Beach soon, because something feels amiss. It may be time to go back and find if it’s possible to get healed.
Until then, I’ll take the ministrations from that ol’ CD found at the bottom of a moving box.
Image of Ron Hacker, arguably the best slide guitar man in SF and maybe even the world, onstage at The Saloon. (No, he’s not the guy I dated, I’m just a massive fan.)
Photo by Scott Palmer
Ya Just Can’t Take a Bad Picture
There are certain places in the world where, seriously, other than utter camera failure (or utter user-of-the-camera failure) you just can’t take a bad photo.
Yosemite seems to be one of those places. I’ve not been myself, but I’ve seen plenty of friend’s shots and damn, each was gorgeous!
The Grand Canyon is the same. Here’s a link to shot that blogger friend NewMexiKen took on Friday with his iPhone. And it’s beautiful!!
I know that there are plenty of similar examples.
On Saturday, I visited one of those “can’t take a bad photograph” places. The Good Man and I needed to get out and enjoy the sun, so we took one of my favorite walks along the Marina Green, through Crissy Field and ending up at Fort Point, the Civil War era Army fort located right smack under the Golden Gate Bridge.
No matter how many years I live here, I still think the Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most awe inspiring man made items ever constructed. It’s truly breathtaking.
And so yes, I brought my new-to-me camera along for the walk so I could learn how it works, and I snapped away.
Here’s the thing…there have been millions upon millions of photographs taken of the bridge, professional and amateur alike. We’ve all seen it from all of its angles. It’s all been done, and so it’s damn near impossible to get a new and different shot.
But it doesn’t matter. The bridge is stunning, and the photos taken, regardless of photographer, are always worth seeing.
So here we go, this was taken from the pier outside of the Warming Hut at Crissy Field:
It’s not an especially different or unique view of the bridge…but it’s still cool!
So then I try to add some artistic and photographic flair!
Ooooh! The big boat tie-off thingy in the foreground! And a fishing rod! I’m so artistic!
But what does your eye naturally want to see? The glimmering bridge in the background. With the sailboats underneath, it really makes the shot.
And then there’s this one:
We’ve all seen that view. Doesn’t matter. It’s still stunning! And that clear blue sky! Whoa!
By the by, it turns out the bridge isn’t only pretty up on top with the art deco towers and the graceful support cables.
The bridge is even beautiful underneath:
A man made work of art!
And even this…a terribly composed photograph, but it’s still fascinating.
This is the tower on the San Francisco side. It seems to be showing some breakdown and rust. This worries me! I understand that the bridge is constantly being painted to keep it sealed and also looking good. So I’m hoping that cutbacks haven’t caused a lack of care of our beautiful landmark.
Anyhow, I adore our orange bridge. Completed in 1937 it still stands proud and useful. I wish those yahoolios who are over budget and failing miserably on the rebuild of the Bay Bridge would take some lessons!
All our modern knowledge and technology still can’t beat what they made 73 years ago!
The things that stick with you
Yesterday, in celebration of my mom-in-law’s fabulous birthday, the three of us (The mom-in-law, The Good Man and me), loaded up for a trip to a museum.
It’s become our tradition on birthdays. We have a day of culture in celebration. Memorable days are the best presents ever.
Yesterday’s destination was The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.
I was unsure what to expect when we got there. Would it be Jewish artifacts? Would it be art made by Jewish artists?
But I love museums, so I was totally in.
I was fully unprepared for what awaited me. There were just three main exhibits, as the museum itself isn’t that large.
The first exhibition we visited was called: “Our Struggle”: Responding to Mein Kampf
I’d read online how French painter and photographer, Linda Ellia, took on a project to have artists and non-artists alike transform the pages of Hitler’s nasty tome.
From the website:
“The book’s weight in her hands embodied the heaviness of the Holocaust; she felt compelled to respond. After personally altering a number of the pages to express her anger, she invited hundreds of people from all over the world to paint, draw, sculpt, and collage directly on the pages of the book.”
I could not have begun to imagine how tragic, and beautiful, and life affirming the exhibit would be.
There were over 600 altered pages on display, each one with a unique voice, a unique pain, a unique promise.
There were pages done by professional artists and pages done by random people that Linda met in coffee shops and on the street.
The works were sometimes simple and elegant, like the page where every word was carefully excised, leaving only a page of small rectangles. Or a page where every letter was made into a small figure of a person.
In some cases, the works were very extravagant, a train, in exquisite detail, done in watercolors, completely covering the page. Or an intricate felted and painted heart that was then sewed and stapled to the page.
Each page transformed the words of hate into a work of art. Truly, deeply, reclaiming those pages.
I don’t know if my description or the websites description even does the exhibit justice. It was one of the most profound things I have ever witnessed.
And this one will stick with me for a while.
(image of The Contemporary Jewish Museum, from their website)
