Monday October 7th 2024 marks the one year anniversary of Hamas’ evil pogrom against Jews in Israel, cowardly murdering 1200 elderly and infants in their homes and young people dancing and out having fun, also kidnapping hundreds of innocents. I am appalled at the Left leaning youth in America demonstrating on college campuses for Hamas in anti semitic fashion. They are cowards also , IMHO , as most of them wear Covid type masks so as not to be ID’ed. A sickening situation of war casualties for sure in Gaza and Lebanon, but I support completely Israel’s right to exist as an independent Jewish state and righteously defend itself. October 7th today also marks the eighth day of a hellacious heat wave here in Nor Cal. It’s been 100 degrees or more daily ( but it’s a dry heat! … heh heh heh heh heh) and I’ve had to work out in the sun six different afternoons on my crossing guard gig. My mission was to survive it and not get heat stroke, which methinks is accomplished. I had to forego swimming for four days straight, not visit my pals Sam and Tom at Marin Joe’s, not go into The City to sit in with the Vince Lateano Trio in North Beach …the heat zapped and totally exhausted your truly ! …stayed in and recharged inside my cool shaded apartment with its creature comforts e.g. hi def TV, desktop computer with speakers, and stacks of books and music to listen to...for instance : streaming last weekend’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass music festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, which I enjoyed on my computer Saturday. In that case , technology was my good friend. About 25 years ago a very rich guy, the late Warren Hellman, who loved Bluegrass music ,decided to sponsor a free festival for fans in Golden Gate Park , paying the musicians, all expenses. He had a caveat however, he demanded the City build that towering parking garage monstrosity behind the DeYoung Museum on the Park Concourse and the City acquiesced to Hellman’s heavy handed wishes. He died in 2011, but the fest Hardly Strictly survives and thrives …some years ago I tried to go to see Alison Krause and Robert Plant on a Friday afternoon but after cruising the Richmond District for an hour and no parking spot I gave it up. As an SF cabbie, I worked the crowds for years, very nice folks mostly!… Saturday I watched several acts play fab music for the heat weary throngs at a handful of different stages …first up was Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands a traditional Bluegrass/Old Time quartet and they were very enjoyable, switched over to Country singer/writer Buddy Miller’s Cavalcade of Stars, with Carlene Carter, who is June Carter Cash’s daughter and Mother Maybelle Carter’s granddaughter ( Carter Family). She is a fireball with a sultry whiskey voice and Emmy Lou Harris sat in for a tune, and both ladies also sat in with Buddy Miller during his set. I got hip to Miller years ago listening to his radio show on Willie’s Roadhouse on Sirius Satellite in my pal Brent Johnson’s SF taxicab 1557 which I drove for him… Switched over to stream the great Chicago gospel/ soul singer Mavis Staples who was wilting but survived her nice rockin’ set, then cut to Moonalice , Roger McNamee’s hippie band that Big Steve Parish ( Jerry Garcia Band) managed for years. McNamee took his tech fortune and put it into learning to be a rock musician and band leader, schooled by GE Smith, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and others at my late pal Herbie Herbert’s China Basin Studio ( I hung out one day at Herbie’s with all those guys ), Moonalice now features Lester Chambers and his son Dylan, guitarist Barry Sless and bass player Pete Sears. They did Chambers Brothers tunes and even the Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit featuring three chick singers, all songs very well performed. Then viewed a little of the Jimmy Dale Gilmore ( bowler Smokey in The Big Lebowski) and Dave Alvin band but switched back to Steve Earle doing his set with the five piece bluegrass band Molly Tuttle and the Golden Highway, featuring three babe-o-licious young women and a couple hipster dudes all highly proficient on their instruments, guitar. banjo, fiddle, string bass and mandolin. 69 year old Earle, strumming his guitar and singing, is no fool to have that group back him and delivered an energetic and fabulous, perfectly played hour-plus set of music in the heat , with Emmy Lou sitting in for a tune, of course. When the sun went down the crowd became more energized and gave the musicians a hearty and well deserved encore. Earle came to my attention for his acting work on The Wire and Treme ,two David Simon series on HBO. In the The Wire, Earle played an NA sponsor quite well… As for the heat wave lasting 8 or 9 days in these climate change times, it could always be worse… witness Florida and the South being ravaged by killer hurricanes spawning deadly tornadoes . I recall the first week of October in San Francisco , almost annually, several days of unbearable heat and just when you couldn’t take any more, the fog would magically appear climbing over Mount Sutro and Twin Peaks to cool off the City naturally. Are those days over with ? When the fog partially enshrouds the TV tower on Mt. Sutro it looks like a landed spaceship to me.
Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff: Casa Manana on 4th Street San Rafael has folded after a couple years and it wasn’t for lack of support by me and sober pals Tim and Sean. Tasty Mex /Salvadorian comidas with attentive service and reasonable prices in a very clean space. What the fuck do people want ?…meanwhile the original Casa Manana is still going strong in a medical complex off the beaten path in San Rafael . It was a fave dining spot of my late sober pal Gregory Harning who was struck down by the Big C… Sports Shortz: The San Francisco 49ers after losing the last Super Bowl by a heartbreakingly narrow margin , playing a tough,gritty, hard fought football game are now 3-3 this season and riddled with injuries , such is the nature of NFL football. The Niners have plenty of talent left as they face a daunting schedule , so it will be a heroic season if they can make the playoffs once more… as for Major League baseball playoffs I am hoping for a Mets- Cleveland World Series, backing my noble kinsman, Stephen Vogt, the manager of The Guardians. Glad the Dodgers dispatched The SD Padres and their hideous dirty diaper uniforms, brown and yellow is just too ugly for high def color TV. Now hoping the NY Mets can take down LA, who are known to choke in October… Did anybody watch the Vice Prez debate ? ummm… “interesting”….60 Minutes had a two part story on Mezcal manufacture in the Oaxaca State of Mexico. It’s rags to riches story of of a couple impoverished brothers, experts in farming and distilling the alcoholic beverage, who latched on to the trendiness of the distilled cactus booze to young Yanks and scored a big $$$ payday from Bacardi. I think this exposure threatens the brothers’ “ Mexican Dream” with danger, as Mexico today is overrun with machine gun toting cartel gangsters who are prone to extortion and murder. When we drank Monte Alban Mezcal 45 years ago, it was a macho thing to drink the agave worm in the bottle. 60 Minutes did not even mention the worms… A stalled waymo robo-taxi recently disrupted Kamala Harris’ motorcade in San Francisco and had to be driven off by SFPD, meanwhile robot ocean divers discovered the sunken USS Stewart “Ghost Ship of the Pacific” , off the Marin coast… a destroyer used by USA and Japan in WWII, Japan had captured her as a prize and refitted the destroyer to use against us… What is it with Snoop Doggy Dog ? That motherfucker is everywhere on TV and media. I don’t get him , to me he’s just a weed smoking clown , unlike Shaquille O’Neal who is also ubiquitous these days on TV and media , but Shaq is tre cool in my book and a savvy entrepreneur !… Rest In Peace : The great singer/ songwriter Kris Kristofferson who made it to 86. in addition to his fab music , he did a nice acting job in Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, the Sam Peckinpah movie…also passing recently was Dikembe Mutombo, NBA basketball star and activist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. My friend and co-worker Richard Kanda at Greenblatt’s Hollywood knew Matombo well, as his brother was an official in the former Belgian Congo/Zaire ( home of Rumble In The Jungle: Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman) and Kanda’s brother did extensive relief work with the former basketball star.
Scorcher Views: Megalopolis (2024) Beating the heat at the cool Fairfax Theater with its recliner seats to see Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project/epic picture that he sunk over 130 million of his own dough into. The least I could do was invest six bucks into the bargain matinee, along with the two other audience members. I hope Francis got his money’s worth. To call this film “busy” is an understatement. Francis throws everything but the kitchen sink into this film… history, political commentary, romance, dire warnings, philosophies, statements on shallow materialism, sci-fi, special effects to beat the band, elaborate shots and ornate sets with hundreds if not thousands of extras. Megalopolis is one wild fucking extravaganza ! To say it is a work of genius, I think, must be evaluated in twenty, fifty or maybe a hundred years. . It is certainly ultra-ambitious, with a fictional New Rome, standing in for a NYC /Gotham City metropolis. You have ancient actors Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in with Adam Driver as the lead with Nathalie Emmanuel, who is appealing eye candy and very good. Giancarlo Esposito, Shia La Beauf and Laurence Fishburne are OK in unorthodox supporting roles. Driver as New Rome’s Design Commissioner is chauffeured about in Citroens, the unique French auto. My late mentor and theatre director John Henry Doyle had several Citroens in the 80’s, one to keep running and the other two for parts. John rarely had a Citroen in working order…Detour (1945) A B-movie Film Noir classic with Ann Savage playing the meanest bitch in cinematic history, a hitchhiking harpy from hell, as Noir expert Eddie Muller puts it. Tom Neal, a piano player, just wants to get to Hollywood from NYC via his thumb to marry his sweetheart who had starlet ambitions, but he runs into one devilish detour in Savage the ultimate Femme Fatale. Seen it about five times and it’s 66 minutes of Film Noir satisfaction from director Edgar G. Ulmer… Ladykiller (1933) Jimmy Cagney as a crook who turns into a Hollywood star in a highly entertaining picture with comic overtones…The Mayor of Hell ( 1933) James Cagney was busy in ‘33. In this one he is a reform school commissioner set to make a kindler gentler institution for wayward boys out of corrupted and cruel prison conditions. Cagney’s character is tough, savvy gangster from the Lower East side with strong political connections and a desire to help boys in trouble like he once was. Jimmy Cagney in his prime is dynamite… Other Side of the Wind(2018) hundreds of hours of Orson Welles footage edited together 48 years later to make an unwatchable satire. To see one of my SF State film profs ( not a fan) in a role as an annoying dipshit film writer (well cast !) was enough for me to quit it after 20 minutes, despite the presence of John Huston… Sicario (2015) The Taylor Sheridan revenge tale of US cops and various agencies versus Mexican drug cartels holds up very well . Benicio Del Toro stars as the super violent and resourceful avenger…The High Wall(1947) Robert Taylor and Audrey Totter in a Film Noir story of insane asylums, shrinks, and murder or innocence. Very good picture…The Badlanders(1958) Alan Ladd and and Ernie Borgnine in a Western remake of Asphalt Jungle that just doesn’t quite work , Delmer Daves directed… The Treasure Of Sierra Madre(1948) From the pen of mysterious B.Traven comes this classic of gold hunting in the wilds of Mexico. Directed by John Huston and starring his dad Walter Huston , who is absolutely superb as a grizzled, wise and philosophic gold mining expert ,featuring Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt as down on their luck drifters who put together a stake and go into the Mexican mountains to find gold. Bogart’s study of greed and insanity is almost a foreshadowing of his Captain Queeg character in Caine Mutiny. This is one excellent motion picture in black and white. Alphonse Bedoya as the Gold Hat bandito delivers his famous “badges” lines with eternal gusto. BTW I read another B. Traven novel Death Ship which was a very enjoyable read... A Serious Man (2009) Joel and Ethan Coen’s dark comedy based on their childhood in 60’s Minnesota. A very Jewish themed film with subtle gallows humor. Jefferson Airplane’s music is predominant. Herbie’s good pal the late Bill Thompson, Airplane/Starship manager, negotiated the Airplane’s musical rights for the picture. Seen it a handful of times and it is extremely amusing… Streaming : Bad Monkey(2024) A series based on Carl Hiaasen’s Florida novels, particularly Bad Monkey. Johnny Stallion turned me on to Hiaasen, a Florida writer who knows everything about his state , geographically, and all about the foibles and absurdities of many of its denizens which he rolls into very funny and engaging novels. In Bad Monkey , Vince Vaughn is well cast as a suspended homicide detective involved in a developing case after a human arm giving the finger is hauled up by a fisherman. Have only watched one episode of ten, but it is very well done. I don’t subscribe to Apple TV , but since I’m on the SAG Awards nominating committee I get it for free, as it should be. How many channels can one afford ? I already pay way too much for TV , don’t you ?
Songs of the Day:
Loving Her Was Easier- The Highwaymen (Kris Kristofferson)
99 and 1/2- Mavis Staples
Galway Girl -Steve Earle
Willin’ -Little Feat
Rich Woman - Alison Krause and Robert Plant
( All on You Tube)