loveitallabove

...and painted for the first time in what feels like forever. Angus Young commission. She's gonna see AC/DC and is hoping to get it signed!

Y'know, I can't really say it's the new administration yet, and I guess I know that The Times only prints what its supposed to, but what a news day! ...according to The New York Times: There's dancing on the streets of Baghdad. Because "Pact, Approved in Iraq, Sets Time for U.S. Pullout" Karim Kadim/Associated Press Iraqi policemen danced with a United States Army soldier in Baghdad on Sunday, the day Iraq’s cabinet approved a security pact. Dan Rather "...has unearthed evidence that would seem to support his assertion that CBS intended its investigation, at least in part, to quell Republican criticism of the network." Germany’s Green Party Elects First Ethnic Turk as Leader Jens-Ulrich Koch/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Cem Ozdemir, whose parents immigrated from Turkey as guest workers, joined Claudia Roth on Saturday as party co-leader.

After 8 years of work- Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California comes out...officially...tomorrow!

After I posted the piece below " Facebookedness First Finale (part III): The 80s Punk Rock Made Me Do It ," I got "friended" by a David Mathison. His "Google Alert" went off, because I quoted Jello Biafra saying, "Don't hate the media, BE the media." Mathison's self publishing a book entitled Be the Media . David wrote, "Yeah I got a Google alert set for "Be The Media." Your tweet and blog came up, thought we should connect. I quote Jello in my book, www.BeTheMedia.com, of course ;-)" You gotta check out Mathison's photo gallery . It's him all runnin' around the country holding his book out in front of web-and-otherwise celebrities. Included are Slash of Guns & Roses (bring on the Chinese Democracy! and the free Dr. Pepper ...) and there's a great shot of Mathison and Bill Moyers pushing each others' book forward at what looks like a book buyers conference. Also on deck are Vint Cerf, Arian...

About a new book by Jed Perl concerning Watteau NY Times reviewer Richard B. Woodward writes, "Among his finds is a taped conversation about Watteau from 1956 in which Jean Cocteau tells Louis Aragon that “all that smoky beauty somehow predicts the storm to come. The people at those parties of Watteau’s are like people coming together as a result of a railway accident, or during a halt or bombardment when they have left their cars on the road.” Overall the review is harsh. I am not a fan of Jed Perl's. But I LOVE this quote above. (Click the pic to read the full review.)

The day after Rosh Hashanah I went to hear Jello Biafra and V. Vale speak at the all-ages, Berkeley, mainly punk venue called 924 Gilman . (When I was growing up in the eighties, Jello Biafra -- lead singer of one of the most important U.S. Punk Bands the Dead Kennedys -- was the biggest thing…at least amongst the “punks” in my progressive high school. I never got to see him or hear him in-person, though. None of us did back in Baltimore. The Dead Kennedys did not come to my town, so getting to hear him finally and see him twenty years later as an adult now living in the Bay Area meant a lot to me.) 924 Gilman was so intimate. The evening made me want to find old friends with whom I had lost touch. And the New Year made be circumspect. Like a lot of forty or almost-forty somethings, I sent pictures or “mobile blogged” what I had from my cell phone. I wrote in my blog: “This evening was some real lo-fi, D.I.Y. …that reminds me of the youthful energy that's got me to where I...

Maybe with the possible exceptions of Chuck Klosterman and Douglas Rushkoff , few writers have spoken for me. Maybe there ain't much to say. Or it's all been said before. What is now intriguing to witness is that history, with the tools at-hand, is being written "live," on-line and together. Soon we will all move to video almost completely, but till then there's still a lot of writing go on. Not just to focus too much on writing/typing, but it's a part. With these tools, we are scanning the analog and making it digital for us to share with each other. This is happening thanks to Amazon and in our living rooms. And on the other end, the Christian Science Monitor just announced this week that they are doing away with their print version entirely to continue on-line in perpetuity. There is certainly a movement afoot. While my story may be personal, the societal implications are huge. Think of it like the thesis of one age – 80’s grassroots alternative rock...

Right around Yom Kippur this year, I did something on-line that felt really good. I was “social networking.” Over the past several months social networking sites like Facebook have overtaken porn sites in popularity, according to Reuters and an article last week in the UK Guardian . The article has been posted a lot on Facebook profiles and received a lot of diggs at DIGG.com . Everybody’s doing it, or at least “three in four US online adults,” according to a recent report by Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. And that’s what is so amazing. The massive proliferation of Facebook and LinkedIn has brought it closer to the white pages than any earlier iteration of America On-line or other “services.” I been doing things on-line for years, right? But something was different this time. What did I do on Facebook? I atoned. I made recompense. And I reconnected with a group of old high school friends through Facebook about a stretch of time when we all defined ourselves together for a...

Angela Hill writes in today 's Oakland Tribune: Whenever my brain needs a good teasing, I turn faithfully to San Francisco conceptual artist and all-around cerebral confounder, Jonathon Keats, well known in Bay Area art circles for such works as punching a time clock whenever he had a thought, or producing "intergalactic art" from radio signals from outer space, or developing a prototype voting booth out of a Ouija board. Now he's done it again with his latest public art installation called, "The Atheon: A Temple of Science for Rational Belief," which will be up through February inside a two-story downtown Berkeley building at Harold Way and Kittredge Street. Right now, you can only see it from the outside as the building undergoes rehab to become the new Judah L. Magnes Museum. And to the naked eye, the Atheon appears merely as pretty blue stained-glass windows. But wait. There's more. The blue glow is actually an enlarged version of a cosmic microwave ...

In case you have not already read about it Andy Goldsworthy's got a major commission in Ess Eff and it's a spire . Ken Baker wrote about it in the Chronicle. (Sorry, but his piece sorta sucked...but its got some interesting details.) Today could not have been a prettier day to take the spire in, with the smog as thick as cream. The best view's gotten by pulling over at Inspiration Point, turning off Arguello in the Presidio. (Those are pretty words to type.)

Man, this guy's so grassroots, it is what we should all aspire to... Rock on, Jesse "D.J. Luscious" Townley! Rock on. JESSE TOWNLEY: I am a 19 year Berkeley tenant. I was Executive Director of the non-profit Easy Does It, which provides Emergency Services to people with Disabilities. With the non-profit venue 924 Gilman & the non-profit Independent Arts & Media I’ve expanded low-income access to arts. Councilmember Dona Spring appointed me to the Disaster & Fire Safety Commission in 2003, which prepares our community (and our pets) for hills fires, earthquakes and pandemics. Tenants and landlords need massive help in preparing for the next earthquake & wildfire, including Community Emergency Response Team training & emergency supply caches. As Chair I gave input to the Soft Story Ordinance that will retrofit many unsafe apartment buildings, & to new single family home standards called Plan Set A. I will protect tenants in apartments & houses f...