My surfmobile

Milk Toast?

Some woman wrote about me, "After looking at his blog and myspace all I can think of is milk toast." Wow! That's kinda funny.

Just built myself a new Surfboard:

SF Messenger Art Show

My piece, MessengerNation, will be exhibited along with art by past and present bike messengers at the Velocity SF Messenger Art Show, February 22-26, 2007, Balazo Gallery, 2183 Mission Street.

Instant City

Read my story in Instant City, Issue 4.

Godspeed and me.

Godspeed, the film. Here is a picture behind the scenes, as we set up for another shot. The only bike messenger extras were me and my friend Mary Maroon. She is on the right with the red cap. I am left of her, sitting on my bike, back toward the camera, with a black cap. Lynn Breedlove, the author of Godspeed, and star of the film, is at bottom right, blond hair.

When Stupidity Stumbles into New York

I pulled over the the side of the road. I had just spent four days on the road, driving from Los Angeles to New York in a beat up Fiat Spider my sister had given me so I could drive to Fordham law school in Manhattan. The car had no radio. There comes a time, after driving by yourself to a place you've never been, when loneliness shrouds you and you break out in song. "Country road, take me home, to the place I belong. West Virginia. Mountain momma. Take me home. Country road." I'm not proud of it. But John Denver had been burned into my brain in my youth when my mother spun that record over and over and over again.

As I drove across country, death followed me. My first night, I drove to my friend Ami Solomon's place in Provo, Utah. She was a dead-head, with her dead-head husband. Unfortunately, the day I arrived, Jerry Garica died, and I had to attend a dead-head mourning is some park in Utah. A lot of beating drums and gnashing of teeth. I left Ami, and continued on to Omaha, Nebraska, where a college friend of mine was recovering with his parents from a deep depression that caused him to drop out of Berkeley. From there, it was two more days until I arrived in New York at about 10:00 p.m. I arrived in New York on the day Micky Mantle died.

I crossed the George Washington Bridge in heavy traffic. With the convertable top down, I looked over the edge of the bridge to the New York City skyline, which I'd never seen before. I'd never been to New York. I knew nothing about it. Once over the bridge, I found an off-ramp called "Fordham Road." I couldn't believe my luck. Here I am, going to Fordham Law School, and here is a road that will take me right there. That was my first mistaken assumption. Well, Fordham University is in the Bronx, and Fordham Law School is in midtown Manhattan. I pulled off the highway onto Fordham Road, and got lost in the Bronx. I knew it was a bad situation when I looked back and saw a kid on roller blades hanging off the luggage rack of my car, as I pulled him along. I remember throngs of people out on the hot summer night. I was aghast as I watched people, including small kids...toddlers running up and down the street at 10:30 p.m. I turned onto a side street, and pulled to the side of the road. I pulled out my large map. Two black kids approached me, an adolecent boy and girl. The boy turned to me and said, "I wouldn't park here if I were you. You'd better get on a main street. It's not safe."

I found Broadway, and followed it south, out of the Bronx and into Manhattan. I drove south on Broadway. I was dressed in rags. I smelled. So I decided it was the right time for a drink. I stopped at a bar. I figure that the bar was somewhere around 82nd Street or so (years later I tried to find that bar, but never did see it again) It was a nice place. Not like a sports bar or an Irish bar, but a place where you'd find attractive, yuppie women. I ordered a Martini. I've always regretted that. What the hell was I thinking? A fucking Martini. Why didn't I order a Manhattan. I don't know what I was thinking. I drank the martini, realized that I was out-classed, and headed back to my car. By this time, it must have been about midnight. I was dehydrated, so the drink went right to my head. I was having trouble driving the car. I stopped the car near a west side hotel that was right off of Central Park West. I tried to sleep in the car, but the lights from the hotel entrance were to bright, and the activity was to intense. I started up again and stopped near a deli. I bought a sliced turkey sandwich and an orange juice. It was one of the worst meals I've ever had. It made me naughteous. I got back into my car, drove south on Broadway, until I came to 60th Street, where Fordham Law is. I drove past the school, and down to West End Avenue, right behind some projects. At about 62 Street and West End, I found a parking space and tried to sleep in the car. Some cab driver was parked right in front of me, doing the same thing. I didn't know anybody in New York. I had no place to go. I had a few hundred dollars on me. I wanted to save that and try to get a room somewhere. So I had no place to live.

The next day, I wandered around New York, trying get my bearings and find a room. Of course, I hadn't realized how high the cost of living was there. The only rooms in my price range were owned by people with funny accents, who demanded to know if I had a job. Well, I didn't. The next day school started its orientation. I had to get cleaned up. I asked someone if they knew where a cheap motel was. Someone pointed me in the direction of the Liberty Inn in the meat packing district. It cost me something like $75 dollars for my love motel room, with no bathroom and shared shower and toilet accommodations. The television spilled out porn. I can still remember the look of a white girl, sucking some black guys cock, and looking up at his face, pearing down from up there was the camera. I looked out my window over the Hudson River to New Jersey. I could see "The Vault," which I did not know at the time was a Sex Club/Fetish Venue (it's now gone, since they put a road over the block where it once stood). I knew something was amiss because of the seedy dudes hanging out the front, waiting to get in. I cleaned up and went to bed.

The next morning I went to check out. A young couple...kids really, were tying to negotiate a room past the noon hour with the limited funds they had. The guy behind the window was apprehensive about taking my American Express Traveller's check. He didn't really have a choice. It was take it or don't get paid. Your choice, dude.

Stay tuned for "2L" - my vinnettes about being a homeless law student.

Emigrant Wilderness

Emigrant Wilderness. September 29 - October 1, 2006.
(Photos by Hade and Sal)

Time to go Camping!

Camp/surf mobile....ready soon.

War Story

...So I get out of bed to go move my car from the commercial zone I parked it in yesterday, before I get a ticket. That's when I witness my first Iraq War amputee (June 19, 2006 @ apprx. 7:30 a.m.) I only saw him from the back, but I got the sense he was Asian. He was young, wearing a forest green camaflage backpack, and a military haircut. He also sported a pinkish, rod/tub with a brown shoe at the end, where his leg would have been. Crazy.

I Rebuilt This 1984 Peugeot.

From This...
To This!

It took a lot of work; stripping the paint, grinding down the shifter brackets, fabricating an attachment for the derailleur cable and rebuilding the bike.

Too Much American Chopper

Here it is, with the floor almost fully ripped out. I can actually drive it like this. The yellow twine is tied to the accelerator cable. I hold the end of it, and pull the twine with my foot. Its kind cool driving around with no floor.

Where have you gone "Tip" O'Neil? We need you.

It was after the beginning of the Dark Time, as the American people slipped irresponsibly rightward with the onset of the Reagan Revolution, that those of us on the political left, while watching the Senate fall to the Republicans, the disenfranchised thrown onto our streets, social services being slashed, and public employees slandered, that we took some comfort seeing that grand old man of democratic liberalism from Boston sitting behind the affiable grin of the Evil Emperor who stood in the shadow of the dark side of the force. During the State of the Union Addresses of the Reagan presidency, O'Neil sat behind Reagan, and represented the thin line between sanity, and our a devolution into the wickedness of unbridled conservativism.

Where are you Tip? We need you now. Hope fades with this new, more evil, and infinately less capable second assault from the ideo-con right. Who will sit and watch over us...sit their with a working class majesty, and thwart the Republican evil doers?

VW Bus Comes To Life.

After working in the rain the entire day, the VW Bus that has frustrated me with its various symptoms finally came to life. I've replaced the fuel pump, fuel filter, spark plugs, the coil, the thermo-time switch, the double relay, the distibutor cables, the battery and the tires. I had to take out the air intake distrubtor, and the throttle valve housing to work on the thermo-time switch. I stripped the inside of almost everything. When I fired up that engine, I almost cried. The engine runs strong and smooth. When I got it ready to drive it out of the rain and into the barn (it had been sitting outside, exposed to the elements for years), I had to put it in gear (its an automatic - believe it or not), go back to the rear of the bus to the engine bay to rev the engine to make it move, then run to the driver seat and steer it. I did this about four times.

When I first got the thing it had for flat tires, was filled with rust, water and composting leaves that had blown in through the open window. I vacuumed out the engine, where some kind of rodent had build a nest and resided. I cleaned the outside, which was covered in moss, mold and lichen.

Now all I have to do is weld in the floor pan. I practiced welding today with a MIG welder. I haven't welded since H.S. when I took metal shop with Mr. Lester in or around 1983. Then I used a Oxyacetylene (gas) torch. This new MIG welder is much, much easier.

There is still some major stuff to do. But it will be ready by summer.

Straight Eye for the Straight Guy

Or, why I love shopping at thrift stores.

Us straight guys get a bad rap in the fashion department. Why? Let's fact it, fashion is a waste of time. Not only that, but shopping is one of life's most painful experiences, and its a waste of money that could be put to better uses.

When I shop for clothes, pretty much I just want to be left alone. I don't want someone asking me if I need help. If I needed help, sales person, you'll be the first to know.

This is why shopping at thrift stores rocks. Go to any of them, on Howard, or Valencia or where ever. No one will bother you, and you can fashionably dress in something other than khaki's and button down shirts because all the more fashionable people sell their very expensive hand-me-downs so that they can go pay exorbitant amounts of money on the latest fashion "must haves." Even with a half assed effort, you are head and shoulders above your average dude in the "stylin' and profilin'" category.

Take it from me, you don't need Queer Eye for the Straight Guy to do a wardrobe make over. Just buy their used clothes.

The Soon To Be Surf Mobile is Shaping Up.

When I transfered from Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, to Franklin High School, back in the day, I was registered for a class that I would never have picked myself, metal shop. Thank God. My beloved VW Combi has a major rust issue on the driver's side floor pan. After I installed a new fuel pump and double relay, I attempted to start up the bus. I pushed on the gas pedal. It broke. I crawled under the bus to find the floor pan rusted through. I did a survey of the van, and and this was the only real rust issue. So, I'm going to have to either weld in a new floor pan, or make patch and weld it in. Besides that, I have a vacuum leak somewhere within the tubing of the engine. As soon as these issues are taken care of, I'll be ready to go.

Certified Whore

"Whore College" is a series of educational and entertaining evenings by long time sex worker, activist, artist and Dean of Whores, Carol Leigh AKA Scarlot Harlot. This series includes multi-media song, dance, schtick and Power Point presentations in collaboration with local artists and educators. Attend all four evenings and earn your continuing education degree in "Sex Worker Arts and Politics."

Don't Shoot.

There are just some things you never want to hear. Today was one of those situations. So there I am, riding my bicycle home from Safeway, toward the corner of Townsend and Third. It's 9:20 p.m. I see a mess of police cars. As I approach the corner, I see a big, bald, black police officer pointing a shotgun from the east side of the street toward the west side. A red car parks and a camera man jumps out. I cross Third to get a better look, hiding behind a brick pillar, and peaking north up Townsend. Across the street I see another cop, this one in plain clothes hunkered down with a handgun behind the trash receptical near McDonalds on the corner.

As I'm standing there, this attractive, thin gal, of southasian extraction, approaches me. "What's going on?" she asks.

"I don't know."

"I live down there," she says.

The weather is windy and chilly. She's underdressed, wearing only an orange business suit. She looks plenty cold.

"I wouldn't go down there now," I say.

"I know, that guys got a big gun," she says, pointing to the black cop.

Another cop from across the street yells over to us. "Move across." I pretend not to understand him. I raise my hand to my ear. "What?" Then he says something profound.

"You're in the line of fire."

Surf-Mobile in the Making.

Here it is ladies and gentleman, my 1977 VW Bus. Soon, it will be a beautiful surf mobile.

Whore College

January 21, I attend the first of four presentations entitled: Whore College Presents Scarlot Harlot: A Performance and Lecture Series. I bought Ms. Harlot's book, "Unrepentant Whore." A little camp goes a long way.

During last nights presentation I heard for the first time the phrase, "Jilling-off" which substitutes for "Jacking-off" to describe a woman...er...eh....shall we say, self gratifying. Annie Sprinkle and her lover/partner read a number of poems, including Ms. Sprinkle's forward to Scarlot Harlot's book, Unrepentant Whore. They also read a excerpt from Gertrude Stein's 62 page poem, Lifting Belly. "[T]he title phrase, “lifting belly,” repeated consistently throughout, represents both that which escapes traditional verbal definition and yet calls forth, in its various contexts, a joyous web of homosexual eroticism, creation, domesticity, celebration, and social and intellectual defiance (Tyke O’Brien "'We Like a Fire and We Don’t Mind if it Smokes': Gertrude Stein’s Transgressive World of Words in Lifting Belly")

I recommend you attend one of the others shows if your interested in issues surrounding prostitution (in this case legalization and other issues), or just for the show.

LiquidTwist

Surfing the O.B. (Ocean Beach, San Francisco)

Wow! I'm a Wealthy Miser.

With the 48 cents I made today, I broke five bucks. I'm up to $5.05 from blogging. Being that the first 55 cents I earned was back on January 1st, seems a tad unimpressive.

"Truthiness" - Word of the Year

"In its 16th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted truthiness as the word of the year. First heard on the Colbert Report, a satirical mock news show on the Comedy Channel, truthiness refers to the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true. As Stephen Colbert put it, 'I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart.'" - Adam Green (quoting the American Dialect Society's website; www.americandialect.org/) [press the title to go to the full article]

Nor*Cal Surf Life.

I lowered this 1959 bug by replacing the torsion assembly in front with an adjustble assembly. The surf rack is made of wood. I built the rack, and shaped the fittings to fit the gutters. On the right is my 6'1" thruster. This pic was taken after I shaped it, during the glassing process. No fins yet. I later installed FCS plugs. You can make professional looking laminates with a color ink jet printer and rice paper -thin paper, much like tracing paper, but without the stiff wax- available in any decent art store in sheets or rolls). On this board, my laminate is close to the nose (too close) and reads "California Thruster". I've toyed with many board names on past surf boards, like "Rockaway Corkboard" (named after Far Rockaway in Queens, NY, not Rockaway Beach in Pacifica, CA), and "Timothy-Scott Surf Company" (named after my son). I decided it was impractical to become a professional shaper.

www.freepress.net

This my second unsolicted book plug for "Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sells Wars, Spins Elections, and Destroy Democracy" (The New Press, November, 2005). It is coauthored by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. They discuss the abysmal performance of America's corporate media in dealing with such issues as the Iraq war and the presidential election of 2004.

Good Quotes from Book:

"It is difficult not to regard the conservative campaign against the 'liberal' media as anything but a brazenly opportunistic and unprincipled exercised in propaganda." - pg. 34

"We consider the coverage of the Iraq war one of the darkest moments in the history of U.S. jouralism. And we consider the deplorable war coverage one of the main factors constributing to the dismal 2004 election coverage." - pg. 38

"The word occupation....was never mentioned in the run-up to the war. It was liberation. This was [talked about in Washington as] a war of liberation, not a war of occupation. So as a consequence, those of us is journalism never even looked at the issue of occupation." - pg. 63 (quoting Jim Lehrer)

If you want to read my untrained perspective of the American corporate media and its failures, see me entries of 12/5/05, 11/10/05 and 10/27/05.

nascar vicioustwist

The Strange Cesspool of Dissembled, Orwellian Ramblings from the Ideo-Cons

By now, we all should be aware that His Royal Majesty, King George, and his Mayberry Machiavellian court of chickenhawk Washington insiders have been spying on the citizenry of this land of the free, home of the brave. How a bunch of royalist cowards got to occupy a place where this could take place is disconcerning. But in no small part, it has been helped along by the "sub-media", that is the ideo-con machine of right wing-nut bloggers and talk radio broadcasts.

It would be nice if we could dismiss HRM and his Court as a Don Quixotesque band of bafoons, charging the windmills of Iraq as the terrorists spectate from a distance, and then, having been invited in, setting up shop on how to fight and export terror. Cervantes could not have dreamed up such a collection of fools. Spoken in the Kings English, "I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome." —George W. Bush defending Vice President Dick Cheney's pre-war assertion that the United States would be welcomed in Iraq as liberators (http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushisms.html)

Having imagined, with the help of his ideo-con court, that Iraq was a terrorist haven before our arrival, HRM illegal invaded a soverein nation based on either a pack of lies, or on irresponsible conjecture. HRM didn't stop there. To HRM G.W. Bush, every nation, apparantly, is a terrorist state, including our own. So, he felt free to circumvent the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and thereby illegally spied on the people he would have theoretically worked for, had he not been Coronated.

All this would be fiction, if it were not for the corporate media's abdication of its responsibilities --- to the fourth estate ---, and the Orwellian world and rantings of the ideo-con wing-nut apologists, like Michelle Malkin (http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004090.htm). These inhabitants of the cesspool of disinformational scum, lash out at truth with self-righteous indignation. But all the indiginity in their cesspool world will not perfume the fact that they are surrounded by, and ultimately, full of shit.

-----

On another note, I earned my first 55 cents from blogging.

Cali Cool

Open Letter to William Kristol

In regards to William Kristol's opinion piece, "The Paranoid Style In American Liberalism" (The Weekly Standard, 12/28/05), it is good to see the ideo-cons continued utilization of the dirty political tools crafted by Arthur J. Finkelstein to libel prominent Democrats. How dare the Democrats do their job by calling out the Administration on its illegal spying on American citizens.

The hypocrisy is stunning, especially coming from Mr. Kristol, this most prominent ideo-con. Kristol helped divert the United States and its citizenry, resources and lives away from the legitimate fight against terrorism, and into this stupidly executed, illegal and immoral folly in Iraq. Said action has helped destabilize the region, endangered our allies (especially Israel), and turned Iraq over to the terrorists, who have made it a terrorist training ground.

Such polemics coming from Mr. Kristol are always amusing. He didn't bother to serve himself, and his prominence in Washington circles among the corporate media and other venues of disinformation results only from his riding the nepotistic coat-tails of his prominent father. Now he is among the mostly irrelevant chattering classes, spewing polemics and diatribe, backed by sloppy political theories, which are supported by abhorrently poor scholarship.

You go Willie!

Regifting Pejoratives (Don't Be Conned By The "Ideo-Cons")

My gift to the Republican party, to be used repetetively by all thinking people everywhere, is to propose that the word "Conservative" be preplaced with a new, improved and, more accurate descriptive term, "Ideological Conservatives," and utilized through it's contraction, "Ideo-Con's." To be effective, progressives, independents, liberals, and realists who are not conned by the faithbased fiction of ideo-con ideology should use the term not only to describe the ideo-cons, but as a pejorative term to deride their ideas, philosphy and lies. By way of example, "Don't be ideo-conned by the ideo-cons who hide their tax cuts for the wealth behind the fig leaf of 'class warfare." My inspiration?

"Arthur J. Finkelstein (born 1946) is a United States Republican Party political operative. He has directed a series of campaigns, considered to be quite successful, to elect conservatives in the United States and Israel in the past 25 years...[Arthur J.] Finkelstein is known for his hard-edged political campaigns, which often focus on repeating a single message with great repetition. He is occasionally credited with making "liberal" a dirty word in the late 1980s and 1990s." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_J._Finkelstein)

Happy Holidays

What? Me, Run For Supervisor?

San Francisco Sentinel
December 19, 2005, 7:30 p.m.

District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly will run for re-election, Daly disclosed last week in a televised interview.

"Daly also said he expects the race to get 'ugly,' but says he's going to run a 100% positive campaign," SFist reported. The interview appeared on The Bruce Petit Report.

The San Francisco Elections Departments lists seven other District 6 contenders on the department's potential candidate list for the November 2006 election.

They include Nadia S. Cabezas, Matthew Drake, Rodney Hauge, Manuel Jimenez, Bobby Jordan, Andrew Rucker, and William Stewart...

[For entire story, click on link above]

Tragedy and Farce <-- Read this book

This is an unsolicted book plug for "Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sells Wars, Spins Elections, and Destroy Democracy" (The New Press, November, 2005). It is coauthored by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. They discuss the abysmal performance of America's corporate media in dealing with such issues as the Iraq war and the presidential election of 2004. I'm only half way through the read, and can already recommend it.

Good Quotes from Book:

"It is difficult not to regard the conservative campaign against the 'liberal' media as anything but a brazenly opportunistic and unprincipled exercised in propaganda." - pg. 34

"We consider the coverage of the Iraq war one of the darkest moments in the history of U.S. jouralism. And we consider the deplorable war coverage one of the main factors constributing to the dismal 2004 election coverage." - pg. 38

"The word occupation....was never mentioned in the run-up to the war. It was liberation. This was [talked about in Washington as] a war of liberation, not a war of occupation. So as a consequence, those of us is journalism never even looked at the issue of occupation." - pg. 63 (quoting Jim Lehrer)

If you want to read my untrained perspective of the American corporate media and its failures, see me entries of 12/5/05, 11/10/05 and 10/27/05.