loveitallabove

Not sure how and why they determined they should be the arbiters of our movie taste, but, my dear, sweet in-laws called this a.m. to say they were to babysit today to facilitate me an' K going to see Juno . Not sure how and why they determined they should be the arbiters of our movie taste, but, my dear, sweet in-laws are doing a pretty dern good job. Not having seen a movie in a theater for many, many moons...it was arguably one of the finest, sweetest and baddest bit of american movie makin' i've seen, ever... oh, we just cried and cried...Karen said she only started to cry when she first saw me convulse a bit, trying to suppress the sound of my first round of tears...ain't so much it's sad, but beautiful. And, yes, Michael Cera is America's finest actor in forty seven years.

My dear cousin David was on the cover of the local metro section of my Oakland Tribune this morning, and I was touched and thrilled. He lived the rest of the day as the splash image for insidebayarea.com . Leventhal said fun spurs production of dopamine, a chemical messenger between nerve cells that enables smooth, coordinated movement. People with Parkinson's have abnormally low dopamine levels. A videotaped dance class won rave reviews at the International Congress on Parkinson's Disease in Berlin in 2005. "People are having fun and chemically that is very important," one participant commented. In Oakland, a photographer asked the group's permission to shoot from inside their circle. "Sure, as long as you wear this nose," said a man brandishing a bright red rubber clown's nose. The group howled as he tucked it back into his pocket. While seated, the students rolled up onto the balls of their feet. They kicked, pointed and flexed. "This wakes...

Emil's latest thing is picking out family in photo albums.

Tom Carter's visiting SF from the NYC and sent us what he shot when we hit the beach and the Legion this weekend. He got this cool, new little quick shot, video handheld thing. It is not a quick shot, tho.

My dear friend Sacha's brother Amir Aal made this frickin' video and it is awesome.

MOST TIRELESS FUND-RAISER: SWEATING FOR A GOOD CAUSE (2007) Sparky George and Hats Off America 925-855-1950 When Sparky George says he runs a nonprofit, he means it: Rain or shine, ill or well, the Danville resident runs five miles five nights a week through the streets of downtown Danville and San Ramon to raise awareness for his Hats Off America foundation. Running shirtless with an American flag and a five-pound weight around his waist to show support for currently deployed troops, 57-year-old George "Sparky" Cave is just conspicuous enough to get people asking questions. He'll willingly spill the beans about the nonprofit organization he founded in 2002 to raise money for the families of soldiers who have lost their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. The former Marine decided after his service during Vietnam that the government's reparations for such families are inadequate. Hats Off America holds frequent fund-raisers — plays, runs, casino nights, and car shows — in...

O.K., so Kare's and my friend Tom Carter's still in town...and he wanted to know what's the best blog around for a good, chatty, on-going overview of the Bay Area whatever...like the "Gothamist" for nyc. It's cohort is the SFist out here, and I would really like to know if others got some other ones that turn 'em on around the greater Bay Area.

Check out the Best of the East Bay from the East Bay express by clickin' the logo or clickin' here .

His comments at the end of the letter read out on a daily current affairs program on television suggested Castro would not resume office but instead continue in the role of elder statesman advising the government on key issues. Castro holds the posts of president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers, and first secretary of the ruling Communist Party. Since March this year, Castro has remained present in Cuban political life by writing dozens of newspaper columns denouncing his ideological nemesis, the U.S. government, for the war in Iraq and its policies on climate change and the use of food crops as biofuels.

OMG, now magnes is onto something with nomi talisman ...i think the suitcased prosthetics was something they did at new langdon arts?!... i'll hafta ask nomi...let's just hope we can win her the commission.

I spent a great day today with Kare and my's dear friend Tom Carter . We met him at his hotel in the City around ten and headed for the de Young. Tom's freelancing for an agency out here in S.F. And it would be great to have him out here more, maybe even get him settled 'round these parts. I think the whole Bay Area scene'd be a real great place for Tom. His sister and her family live in the way-out Bay Area. If you buy a house in the community where they live -- The Lakes -- you get a free pool. She ain't got no pool. But there's a real big pond in the middle of everything. it was real pretty, especially at night, at the end of our day with the x-mas decorations competing and shimmering. And, man, the living is way out there. Every driveway has a minimum F-150 . Really, it was amazing to wake up in Oakland , drive through S.F., get the http://www.calacademy.org/geninfo/newsroom/releases/2006/Architecture_update.php">view of the whole, complex ...

TO VIEW THE recipe CLICK here .

Portrait of a Lost Town Through words and images, Mayer Kirshenblatt brings to life the Polish town he left in 1934 BY JULIE SUBRIN Mayer Kirshenblatt was an excitable kid. In the predominantly Jewish village of Apt in Poland where he was born in 1916, he was called Mayer tamez, or Mayer July, as July was the hottest month, the time of year that made everyone crazy. Other local characters included Zalman goy, who was as Jewish as the next Zalman; Yosele kliske (Yosl the Little Square Noodle) and Yankele kekl (Yankl the Little Penis)... To learn more about Yankele kekl or "Yankl the Little Penis" and other stories that transcend the usual Chelm fare .....click here .

Be a part of the Bev-O-Lution. Click here .

Hire who's best at raising money, not running shops The challenges facing art museums demand innovative solutions to chronic underfunding, careful management of new energy-draining expansions, nimble relations with myriad stakeholders outside the museum, and skill in getting the best out of staff.

DH: Well, I came into an art world of volunteers—six thousand heavily medicated, mysteriously employed human beings who were there because they wanted to be, you know? And all they wanted was to be right—not safe, not rich, not fair, but right! Now we have this vast bureaucratic structure of support. Everybody’s a poll watcher. Nobody’s a voter. We’ve got millions of people devoted to the whole idea that art’s supposed to be fair and good for you. But art’s not too fair, you know? to view more, please click here... here, I mean .

consigliere -- konsiʎ'ʎɛːɾe Here I is, dressed like Sonny and reminding myself that trying too hard's not a good thing. There is a time for action. BA-de-bip. BA-de-BANG. It's time to rock & roll. O.K.? It's time to be the wartime consigliere . Like Michael Corleone say "things are going to get rough..."

O.K., I mean... One more thing?! ... C'mon -- I mean, jeez. Saturday, November 3, 2007; Page B02 MONTGOMERY COUNTY Council Member Hospitalized After Hitting Deer "Montgomery County Council member George L. Leventhal (D-At Large) is recovering from injuries incurred late Thursday in a one-car accident on the Capital Beltway, County Council spokesman Neil Greenberger said yesterday...Leventhal was able to guide his car onto the shoulder near the Connecticut Avenue exit, avoiding other cars despite congested road conditions. He was taken by ambulance to Suburban Hospital, where he remained yesterday while his injuries were evaluated. Leventhal did not appear to have any internal injuries, Greenberger added." Here the author blogged about the incident and several folks have posted notes of support as comments. It's pretty sweet and amazing to see how many folks out there know and love my brother. Be well.

O.K., so Hillary had Elvis Costello at her very most recent birthday, which'd be swell. abc.com plays it here (following a promo by Emmitt Smith for the Arthur Murray Dance Studios). I would just love that. And if there's another band/person what'd make me feel complete from the eighties, my late adolescent street, to perform at MY next birthday as a fund raiser, it's XTC . Tho, I might wanna tip my hat to Echo and the Bunnymen and all they had to offer, as well. It's just that the VH1Classic that I watched on the DirectTV broadcast on my jetBlue cross-country return flight from Dulles to Oakland gave me back my XTC, and I was ever so thankful. As I jotted on my pad, seeking solace in crafting language, making marks, taking notes -- I wrote to myself, "I adore the sound of XTC, adventurous and bringing up a fine nostalgia." My next note said that there's a sweet urologist in Maryland that's about to have a baby. And that guy took care of my...

SCENE: Flying jetBlue; watching Blue Öyster Cult video on small screen with distinctive "aged" feel, maybe through cell phone camera. Man burning up inside car. He killed himself in an old America car. "Burning for you." I mean, his head even falls off as he burns inside the car...and the band plays on. This whole, little vignette plays out as I am getting back from Maryland, and after having witnessed some real serious human stuff. Now I am back to my normal reality. And it feels like my movie should be shot on cell-phone quality, and it feels like I should have a crush on the stewardess and it feels like I should be able to reel back every memory of my upbringin' and shove it into this short plane ride.

Austin Powers after the release from his cryostasis . I've been frozen for 30 years. I've gotta see if my bits and pieces are still working. Excuse me? My wedding tackle. I'm sorry-- My meat and two veg, my twig and berries. Hello, lads, you still awake? Thank you, Mr. Myers.

THE SCENE: Flying jetBlue; watching Match Game ; flying out to Maryland from Oakland to go take care of my dad, who has just had major surgery. My father's prognosis is a really good one. And I hope he will be at my son's Bar Mitzvah. Right now my son's only sixteen months old. I made a few notes to myself on the flight. "Who was Gene Rayburn, and what was his background?" was one of them. I classsfied this note under, "Things to blog about," as opposed to the "Emails to look for" categorized notes. As I looked around the innernetz, I found that Charles Nelson Reilly (b. Bronx 1931 - d. L.A., May 25, 2007) just died this year, and Brett Somers just passed away this past September. Further, as I poked around on the web, I was moved to read that Gene's wife of 56 years Helen died in October 1996, and Gene never recovered from the loss. He died of heart failure on November 11, 1999. A really sweet tribute (incl. detail above) is located...

Someone I really respect -- DJ Luscious -- just threw some props out to Lance Hahn, RIP. Jesse's Current mood: numb. "Lance Hahn, guitarist and vocalist for bands including J Church & Cringer, passed away this afternoon after spending a week in a coma from complications from kidney failure. My deepest condolences to Liberty and their families. We've lost one of the good guys today." Such tributes MUST be passed along. Another tribute's here . shoulda known this cat. love to all.

Football commentator Dennis Cometti back in his coaching days. I'd like to link to a specific post on my friend Billy Cometti's blog , but I cannot figger how to do it without a lot of copying what he's got and redoing the code. As far as I can see, his layin' out's so "sophisticated" that you cannot link to just one POST, and say -- go there. He is a producer at the BBC now. So I end up copyin' much of the whole dern thing, like the Rugby piece below. Couldn't it be easier, tho? For example, to link to this post, because I use "blogger," or whatever tool gooooOOOOoooogle's allowing. All you'se gotta do is go to: http://loveitallabove.blogspot.com/2007/10/id-like-to-link.html I encourage you ALL to keep up with Billy Smash , though. Billy and his wife Susan need support. The baby's due any day now. Billy, advertise! Post an ad on your site for plasters , or bonnets or whatever they call diapers over there....really.

O.K. , My friend Billy blogged the following: AMERICAN FOOTBALL: THE GIRLY SPORT The Rugby World Cup is approaching its finals, and one thing has been made perfectly clear to this American ex-pat: American football players are ballerina tutu wearing, Barbie-doll playing, crying little sissy girls playing a sport that is about as masculine as two cheerleaders air-slapping each other in a fight over who gets to use the last tampon in their hello kitty purse. I make no claim to be an expert on Rugby- but here is what should be obvious to even a casual observer. In Rugby, a match takes about 100 minutes from beginning to end. The game is in constant motion, and the players are on the run the entire time. The only break of any kind is for half time. American football games take around 4 hours (240 minutes.) There is a little bit of action every 3 or 4 minutes, if you are lucky. There are constant commercial interruptions, during which time, the NFL players give each other sponge baths and ...

My dad sent me this article about this museum in Russia. I did not get enough time to read the article, so I post it here so I can have a second look ...and share. The photo to the left is from the page entitled "Avdei Ter-Oganyan’s art studio. Berlin." The museums' web page is: http://www.art4.ru/index.php?lg=en The Stones in St. Petersburg DAVID TER-OGANYAN David Ter-Oganyan was born in Rostov-on-Don, 1981, lives and works in Moscow. He attended the Contemporary Art School set up by his father, Avdei Ter-Oganyan, which gave birth to a whole generation of Moscow artists who later created the well-known group Radek. This is not a bomb. The project �This is not a bomb� is a series of objects produced from everyday things, clockwork bits and wires. The project, which is located on the margin of �horrible and comical�, is aimed at a critical conceptualization of the problem of �terrorist threat as nonexistent�. This is not a bomb. Clearly Avdei's boy is really smart...

TO VIEW THE ARTICLE CLICK here .

...hosted a panel conversation today at the Western Museums Association Annual Meeting. The program was called Development Office as Incubator. And the panelists were: Lori Fogarty , Executive Director, Oakland Museum of California Lynne LaMarca Heinrich , Senior Consultant, Marts & Lundy, Inc. W. John “J” Mullineaux , Director of Development, SFMoMA The central theme was: Increased institutional acknowledgment and understanding for comprehensive Development work is a necessary component to sustain museums in the 21st century. it went great...

F*in' Fergie, that's who. WHO?! I gotta tell ya', I remember the first time I ever saw the Black Eyed Peas on T.V., I thought it was a joke, then I thought it was an insult , I mean DISGUSTING. then I thought'd be something that'd disappear before the kids got in from recess. Now,l instead the Black Eyed Peas have taken hold, and Fergie has become bigger than, well... In more important news , QUOTING "SHOUTMOUTH" -- Fergie has finally admitted that her song "Fergalicious" S-U-C-K-E-D. "London Bridge" and "Fergalicious" were definitely more surface songs. I have a very serious side as well, and it's completely different, and you don't know whether people are going to embrace that or not. She's right. Not just about those songs being garbage, but about the serious side. It's easy to forget this, considering her last four singles were "Glamorous," "Fergalicious," "London Bridge" ...

So I was at "Music & Me" class with Emil and Karen. Karen's my wife and Emil's our 15 1/2 month old son. And Terence Trent D'Arby was playing, on the cd player. thing is -- I mummbled every word and the teacher was all, "How do you know every word?" Well, Terence Trent D'Arby was really big for me. Freshman year of college. Saw him on Saturday Night Live, live at the studio -- thanks David Hantman. And at the Beacon Theater, or was it called s'em else?...I think it was the Beacon. Anyone who knows nyc of the late 80's remember the venue of 12th or 13th street, what was 'tween Fourth and Third? It was the same year I saw Dwight Yoakam and Mötörhead. I think I saw Hüsker Dü, for the second time there -- seein' HüDü for the first time in DC was one of my biggest High School experiences. Thing is that then the "Music and Me" teacher asked if I had any idea what happened to Terence Trent D'Arby. mmm. TTD was big ...

O.K. in a lot of ways the innernetz is jus' one big commercial, right?...'xcepting we all get to advertise our ideas and it's the biggest place for advocacy the world's ever seen. And, a music video is by-definition a commercial, right?...even if it is a real art-full piece...and a commercial for an iPod, is DEFINITELY a commercial, right? thing is, that the Feist iPod commercial is wonderful. it's campy, dated and out-of-touch, but there's something kinda infectious about the song and limitless about the video -- sorta RENT meets All That Jazz (an' sorta hate both of 'em I do; but each have this innate nostalgia that resonates), but with a deep understanding that Fosse died of major cigarette smoking heart related illness and that "saccharine" is, in fact, a killer -- a Live for the Now, balanced by a sadness that comes with loss. not sure i'll feel the same way two weeks or two years from now, but... If you want to see the entire video ...

to quote their site: The reactable is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving and rotating physical objects on a luminous round table surface. By moving and relating these objects, representing components of a classic modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sonic topologies, with generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.

Man, my good friend Billy's got a facebook page now and to look at HIS material I had to make a facebook page?! I got too many pages! ('xceptin' by the time I got all logged in, there were technical difficulties and I still couldn't see pictures from his fortieth birthday. bummer.) So, lemme see, now I got: myspaze (suckered in by my friend Gary ). now facebook , cuz of Billy . oh, and i got linkedin cuz you can't get around that these days...originally invited by Sam Salkin . oh, and did I mention just this blog itself, too...that, I think, I first off blamed on/credited to Frances Dinkelspiel . man, these networkz is hard to maintain.

GO AHEAD AND CLICK THE IMAGE and BUY THIS BOOK!! Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage from UCPress site: Destination Culture takes the reader on an eye-opening journey from ethnological artifacts to kitsch. Posing the question, "What does it mean to show?" Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett explores the agency of display in a variety of settings: museums, festivals, world's fairs, historical re-creations, memorials, and tourist attractions. She talks about how objects--and people--are made to "perform" their meaning for us by the very fact of being collected and exhibited, and about how specific techniques of display, not just the things shown, convey powerful messages. Her engaging analysis shows how museums compete with tourism in the production of "heritage." To make themselves profitable, museums are marketing themselves as tourist attractions. To make locations into destinations, tourism is staging the wor...

O.K. Here are two links about this new, important project that's finally coming together at MAGNES: UCPress Notice and Yahoo! Finance (my personal favorite, for now...) . Pleaz also see that my musuem's @ Target .

Please see below my dear friend Billy who is now a regular commentor, editor, etc. for the BBC about movies. He is living out his dreams. Thing is, on this one he's gotta talk about having a baby for "Knocked Up," and he and his wife Susan are indeed about to have a baby... And to prove he is my dear friend (and since he is all on the BBC these days, I want to prove he is my dear friend), herewith is a pitcher of him at my wedding ten years ago. Billy's second-from-right. And to for-real show he's my dear friend, I actually got the pitcher from my wedding from his facebook page. Go, Billy! My dear friend Billy.

O.M.G. I found Neva. She "left" the Chronicle, but here she is now: safe and sound on the innernetz. Thank you, Neva, for being so brave to be out (t)here, amongst (them)us. She wrote some time ago about giving up on too many blog addresses, but it looks like her myspace is the one for now... In her last words in the SF Chron she wrote: "I'll ponder these questions and more as they arise ... but not here. I do tend to exaggerate, but I wasn't kidding when I said this would be my final column. My feet are itching, which either means I've contracted fungus or it's time for me to move on. Latest plan: teaching Derrida to Sherpas on Mount Everest. I hear Kathmandu is the place to be. I'll leave a textual trail for those who care to follow it. In closing, I must point out that you're all very strange for spending years reading a column penned by a hideous cartoon..." To see sexy pitcher of Darth Vader, thanks to Neva's web snoofing clic...

View Culturally Specific Museums in the Bay Area on FORA.tv This may be more than you might ever need to know about culturally specific museums, or what I prefer to call "identity-based cultural institutions of universal significance..." Give 'er a listen, tho. Love me my fora.tv .

Reading Nothing Sacred ...

CLICK ME MY YOUTUBE HERE Is it just me who came across this thing now, or is it making the rounds? Is this the kinda crap that's killing the innernetz, or is it a beautiful, flatter world TV? Maybe this is from "Kidz Do the Craziest Thingz" c.1982, filmed from the T.V. and reposted from Nebraska -- a gang of noninformation...below on my blog is a pitcher of stiv bators, which links to another pitcher of him derelict and delirious downtown. This bucket of "Awwwww...," is intended to balance the below punkrock-ty dirty pictures from the '80s (click on the pic of Stiv Bators for more). ...though the up-to-date picture of Cap'n Sensible protesting WAR may be one of the sweetest, most important, most AWWWW-inspiring down-to-earth things I have seen in some time.

This post and the links below are for my reference, so I can pick 'em up again at work tomorrow, and forward along to a few folks to whom they're promised. From Ken Baker: Museums have boasted of expanding their education programs in recent years, a trend necessary to counter the dwindling of arts programs in public schools. But a museum sometimes teaches most when it intercedes least between artworks and their viewers ... Wall labels here and there explain the nonobvious historical significance of an object or easily overlooked aspects of its content or context. But in many cases, visitors find themselves confronting what they see with few or no extraneous promptings to respond. What a relief. Too much didactic material that appears in museums these days serves to protect visitors from the demands for close looking, the surprise and the occasional bafflement that visual artworks by their nature produce. To the extent that a museum puts itself forward as a mere diversionary des...

Opatów (Apt, in Yiddish) is the town where I was born. It is located near Kielce, the provincial seat. During the thirties, about 10,000 people lived in Apt: 6,500 Jews and 3,500 Christians. - Mayer Kirshenblatt (b. 1916) BUY THE BOOK

JUS' LOOK AT HOW ACTIVE the Cap'n IS!!! It's wunnerful. They're still traveling and I ain't neer seen 'em...saw the Dead Boys before Bators died...