Category: Thoughts

I learned a simple lesson last week at Macworld. Hypercapitalism equals hooked on gadgets. When my two nieces got an iPod stereo/alarm clock on this past Christmas, I didn’t notice. They also separately got a cellphone and a camera from Santa Claus. Mr. Claus would probably give junk to a junky if that’s what was the hot seller that holiday season. I still didn’t bother to pick up the addicted message.

But with the new Apple iPhone, I got hooked right along with the school of consumer fish. As Wednesday’s audience oh’d and ah’d at Macworld’s iPhone presentation, I drooled as well. My friend Antonio texted me while I was there, “bow down and prey(sic) to ur new god.” He had taken photos of people oogling at the encased iPhone, but afterwards still ran over to the Apple Store and bought his girlfriend an iPod.
Continue reading “Hooked”

My, what a long period of nothingness from these yon HappyFt pages. No pics, no words, no strange deeds of Middle American yonders. What a fast and furious month I’ve stumbled through. Driving across the heartland one last time, lunching in Cleveland right before the November elections, and reading a great political cartoon about how to hack your voting machine.

Before Cleveland, I hot-tubbed on the 25th floor of my friend’s rental building inside Chicago’s Loop. Kimilee was in town working on the Broadway preview of the Pirate Queen as a swing for four of the fem parts. Saw the show, it needs work, but wished her well as I continued the drive east.

Nights in hotels blurred by clear across the Rust Belt, TV visions of election madness, pundit punditry, and the usual gang of idiots. I’d hop online and try to stay in touch with my peeps in NYC and SF. The trip to RI fell through, as did my grand dream of traveling over most of Canada. Iowa got too cold, and an SF friend called me mad for thinking of visiting our neighbors to the north in Nov.
Continue reading “Painting the Walls with Butter”

After the cops shut us down about 4 years ago, I had to take on the task of answering info@cellspace e-mail. At least once a week, people from around the world would contact CELLspace and ask how they could start their own arts center. I tried to answer their questions. This desire to make community space showed me how amazing of a concept CELLspace had become. Now, the term “multiuse arts facility” is used to describe spaces like CELL all over San Francisco and the world.

Here, unpublished since 2003, are a few of the answers I gave for the groups that e-mailed us asking about starting their own multiuse arts space. I tried to be as honest as possible, because I didn’t want them to make the mistakes that we made, and I saved these answers in info@cellspace’s account. Sadly, all of those old e-mails were deleted by the company that hosted our mail account. Of all the neat things I saved during that rocky time, these FAQs are the only bits that survived.

HAPPY 10TH CELLSPACE!!!

:~:~:~:

(From a personal file dated June, 2003. All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinions of CELL the collective and/or CELLspace the nonprofit.)

If things seem slow–i.e., few people around, summer’s here, let’s go drink, etc., do we just keep sticking it out?  Have there been ‘bad times’ at CELLspace, and how did you weather them?

Continue reading “CELLspace 2003 Multiuse Arts Facility FAQ”

Join CELLspace in celebrating its 10 year anniversary!
When: Saturday, October 14th 7pm-10pm
Where: 2050 Bryant Street (btwn 18th & 19th Streets)
Price: $20 (in advance) $25 (@ door)

Join us for a night of live entertainment, awards ceremony, silent auction, craft making, youth performances, special quest speakers, Hors’ Dourves, full bar, community and more…

Our longtime history and commitment to promoting the arts now embraces creative culturally relevant programs to address violence prevention, leadership development, and academic enrichment for young people in the Mission District.

In 1999, my good friend Leon Rosen went in and out of loving and hating CELLspace. He lived down the street in a Project Artaud studio, played amazing piano and accordion, but didn’t do to well at collective meetings. He and the Sound Coop crew, the original Sound Labbers, couldn’t manage paying rent that well either. Leon added flavor to CELLspace when I started volunteering there. You loved him and hated him too, but he’d always make you laugh or smile when he’d randomly play on the junky instruments that lived in the space.

This photo hung on the CELLspace office wall for a long time. The sticky note says something like “Lea Bo has a posse/5’6″/130 lbs” and stood the test of time in the office. I asked his permission to put it on my older version of Happy Feet Travels, and he didn’t care, so for a few years, Leon was one of the HappyFt characters that dressed the home page.

Continue reading “Ten Years of the CELL(space)”

Spent part of last night moshing to The Legendary Shack-Shakers, and once again, I forgot my ear plugs. This time, I have no excuse. I bought six pairs for Burning Man, gave away one, and had another on standby. Why did I forget them again tonight!?

So, once again, my ears ring the tune of tinnitus. Back in 1984, after going to a Van Halen concert, I remember thinking how cool it was that my ears rang the next day during school. Now, after many musicians have “come out” and shared their stories of becoming deaf due to playing in front of huge PA systems, I keep forgetting my damn earplugs!

Sigh.

Continue reading “OMG: 25 Years of Live Music”

Numbers represent powerful images for humans. Seven means good luck in some cultures, the number of God in others. Thirteen looms negative for many people while others attempt to connect this number to earth-based origins. In the Hebrew language, letters are also numbers, creating amazing possibilities and combinations to consider.

The numbers 911 will always stand for the horrors of that day in 2001 when the towers fell and two other jets crashed. What used to be the number to call for an emergency has now become a symbol of an image that most of the world watched through two letters – TV. 2,973 also has a new meaning for most American citizens: the number of people who died on 911 due to the jet-bombs that changed the world.

Now five years later, the letters TV once again show the images over and over for us to relive the moment and the grief that ensued. Radio covers the spectacle via news, music, and the ever present sound bites that we all easily swallow. Like a wound that never healed, we will not forget the day, and the Spectacle will not let us.

So many angles cover this day, so I won’t bother giving my story and $0.02 worth.

I keep asking myself “how am I supposed to feel” after five years of a postmodern, post-911 paradigm? Grief comes in stages and moves through each of us in different ways, so I can’t buy into the flag-waving, scab-pulling images and sounds that try to tell me what to feel about that day. I like dealing with my grief in small, personal ways, and in private or with friends.

Back to numbers. Since these symbols (Indian in origin and relayed to Europeans by Arabs in Baghdad) hold so much weight, I thought I’d spend this powerful date on our calendar reflecting on other numerical combinations.

1. Native Americans killed by European Americans: ~39,000,000
2. World War I deaths: 22,000,000
3. Deaths in USSR during Stalin regime: 13,000,000
4. Deaths due to German Nazi government: 12,000,000 (source, ibid)
5. Deaths in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia during US Vietnam War (1960-1975): 2,000,000 (source, ibid)
6. Iraqi deaths due to 1990 UN embargo: ~1,000,000
7. Filipinos killed by US Military (1898-1910): 600,000
8. Deaths in Darfur, Sudan (2003-present): ~400,000
9. Japanese deaths from US atomic bombs: ~210,000
10. US Civil War deaths: 191,963
11. Iraqi deaths since Operation Iraqi Freedom: ~41,650

Still decompressing from being at Black Rock City, and briefly visiting San Francisco. Woke up this morning and mentally screamed, “I’m in Iowa!” A bit disjointed from being ripped out of the hyperreality of BRC and not staying home in SF. Where is Iowa anyway?

A busy weekend starts tomorrow with the carnival games opening up for a whirlwind Jim Hightower tour. Then off to do two music festivals on Sat. Yep, that’s six gigs in three days.

Will post more on Burning Man later. For now enjoy this Stencil Archive I posted showing over 70 pics of 2006 stencil art on the playa. The DPW had their own graff wall going, a two-story structure out near the Man had walls representing, and the base of the Man himself got hit up by a few crafty taggers. I also ran into my old friend Chris Benfield working his stencil booth at Ill Ville.

“I have an international stencil web site, so will post your stencils there,” I told the unknown person behind a mask.

“I know,” Chris said, taking the mask off for a cheerful reunion, hello, and tagged T-Shirt!

My friend Mike Fordham died this week in Greenville, SC. After taking a few aspirin because he wasn’t feeling well, he got up to go to the bathroom and had a massive heart attack along the way. Carol his wife started CPR but he had already followed the bright light out of here.

Mike and Carol didn’t have any children, but he is survived by his community of artists, queers, freaks, geeks, and all in between. Guess that tells you something about who he was. The best thing about Mike was the fact that he busted stereotypes. Looking like Charles Manson, Mike actually had a big heart under that mean exterior.  How in the hell could a mean-looking guy be so damn nice? Why is little Mikey so easy to hug? Damn, I’d never want to get on your shit list!
Continue reading “Mike the Gentle Caveman”