The World Explained by a Venn Diagram

This perfectly sums up the attitude of the stereotypical elitist music snob. And yes, I admit that sometimes I may be just a little bit of guilty of being one.

Control

You remember the band Joy Division, right? from the late 70's? Don't remember that far back? It's ok, I don't either.

In 1983, a friend turned me on to the band New Order, my first real taste of "alternative" music (as it was called back then - now they call it "indie rock"; today's "alternative" is bland and commercial). Shortly thereafter I learned that New Order formed out of the ashes of the band Joy Division after singer Ian Curtis hung himself. What little Joy Division I heard at that time sounded primitive and dark in comparison to New Order, so I wrote it off and put my interest in current bands.


Years later I had the chance to revisit Joy Division and found I really liked them, and have periodically gone back to their music ever since. And recently the film "Control" was released, a biopic on the life of Ian Curtis. I went to see it at the Shattuck Cinema in Berkeley. It really was a beautiful film. Shot in black & white, it really captured the industrial decay that defined Manchester, England at the time. It was the perfect backdrop to Ian Curtis's dark and often tortured lyrics. The film was based on the book "Touching From a Distance" by Ian's widow, Debbie Curtis. Ian Curtis was practically doomed from the start; very intelligent and insightful but moody and depressive, he married way too young while still in his teens. As the band became more popular he battled with increasingly frequent epileptic seizures, the pressures and demands from the band and feelings of being trapped in a loveless marriage with a child. After releasing only two albums, Ian Curtis hung himself in his kitchen in May of 1980. He was only 23.

What's amazing is that such a short life and burst of creativity could have such a profound and lasting impact. They essentially invented "post-punk" and created the template for almost all the alternative music of the 80's and beyond. The film does a fantastic job of capturing his life and what his art was about without romanticizing it in any way. I highly recommend seeing this film if you have even the slightest interest in Joy Division, New Order or alternative music.

Sunset at Indian Rock

These days the sun sets here around 4:50pm. At that point, I'm usually done with work and have some time to kill before picking Jeffrey up from the Kidz Club after school program, so lately I've been driving to Indian Rock to watch the sunset before getting Jeffrey. This evening I brought my camera and took some shots. Unfortunately, the top of a tree is visible in most of them. But this time of year the sun sets right behind the Golden Gate Bridge, which makes for a wonderful sunset. Just a few weeks ago it was setting above the hills of Marin; soon it will be setting behind the city.

Biking in Tilden

I finally made some time to take my mountain bike out to the trails in Tilden Regional Park in the hills above Berkeley. Yesterday I began work at 6:30am so I could take a long lunch (2.5 hours) and go biking. It was perfect weather - 65 degrees and sunny.

I started out at Inspiration Point, on the east side of the park, and rode on the Meadow Canyon trail, which was a gradual descent into the valley. You can view a details trail map here. When I hit the start of the Gorge Trail, I was in the lowest part of the park. The Gorge Trail is really beautiful and lush, running beside a winding stream that connects the two lakes in the park. This was probably my favorite part of the ride. Then I began the long ascent up Curran Trail, which was fairly difficult but had some incredible views of the valley and stream below. Soon I completed the loop and it was still early and I was hungry for more. So I decided it would be a good idea to head up the Seaview Trail to the East Bay Skyline National Trail. Big mistake. It was one long steep uphill. It nearly killed me. Less than halfway up I knew it was a mistake, but I decided that since I'd come this far I had to go all the way. I finally made it to the top but I was completely exhausted and thought I might die at any moment. At least I had an amazing view of the whole bay and the valley and Mt. Diablo to the east. All from one spot. Pretty incredible. Riding the crest of this trail was very nice, but too short. Then began the descent down the Big Springs trail, which was just too steep and rocky to be much fun. I then came to the Quarry Trail which led me back to my starting point. This trail would have been a good ride, but by this time I was so tired and sore I could barely peddle. The ride was just under 8 miles, but since near half of it was steep uphills, it really kicked my ass! It was a much more intense workout than the 3.5 to 4 miles I've been running regularly.

I actually can't wait to bring my bike back out there. I'll just avoid biking on the ridiculously steep trails next time.

Friday Night in the City

I'm generally not a huge fan of stand-up comedy, but years ago I stumbled upon Marc Maron (MySpace) on some TV special and was instantly won over by his sense of humor. He's intellectual, very left-wing, dark, angry, twisted and self-deprecating... my kind of guy. I don't quite know why his humor resonates with me so much. He can come off as kind of an asshole. But a highly entertaining asshole. The kind of guy I'd love to hang out and drink with. If he still drank. He did a weekend at the Punchline Comedy Club in San Francisco and I met up with Pamela and her friend from NYC on Friday night to go see him perform. He did not disappoint. I was one ear-to-ear grin the whole time. I even got to chat with him briefly after the show. Good fun!

After that, we hung out at Pamela's place in SF for a bit before she went off to some DJ thing and I went to the Rickshaw Stop (a small club in SF) to hear The American Music Club, a great indie rock band led by singer/guitarist/songwriter Mark Eitzel.


Eitzel recently moved from San Francisco to LA and subsequently put together a whole new version of the band with only the other guitarist remaining. The show was the first on a long tour, and one of only two shows in the US. It was quite good, but the band hadn't had a chance to learn much old material, so 90% of the setlist was new material from their upcoming album. I would have liked to hear a few more old tunes, but it was great to finally hear them live at all.

Muir Woods and Redwoods

This past weekend involved two wonderful days of outdoor activities. Saturday we went tromping around Tilden Park again, which is full of great hiking trails through the hills above Berkeley. Then on Sunday we headed over to Marin County to explore Muir Woods, which I had never been to. I had heard that it was pretty great, but it surpassed my expectations. Located in the valley and foothills just south of Mount Tamalpais, it's quite large and extremely beautiful. It doesn't have the huge old growth redwoods that exist further north in California, but there are a lot of quite huge and majestic redwoods. After a short hike on the shorter main (and touristy) trails, we hiked a longer trail up in the hills towards Mount Tamalpais. This trail was stunningly gorgeous, winding across streams, crossing over small gorges on footbridges and over huge fallen redwoods. After winding up and up and up, we ended up on a trail called "Ocean View", which we hoped would afford us a wonderful view of the ocean. Unfortunately, on the part of the trail we were on, we were not quite high enough to see the ocean beyond the ridge just before the ocean. Had we turned left on the Ocean View trail, away from our destination, I'm sure we would have had the great view. But alas, it was time to head back to our car as we had already pushed the hiking limits of a 7 year old boy. I'm already looking forward to our next visit so we can see more of the Ocean View Trail.

Did I mention that all our hiking this weekend was done under clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid 70s? In November? Yes, living in California does not suck.

Here are a few photos. They do not at all convey how amazing this place is.

Trial-By-Fire Emergency (Step)Parenthood

It happened at roughly 2:30 pm - the phone call from the after school program at Jeffrey's school. He had bumped his head by running into a pole and apparently there was a lot of blood and though it wasn't serious he wanted to come home. So I rush off to pick him up. He's not happy, but not terrible either. There's two blood soaked band aids on his head and it just appears that it's just a big bump underneath. After we get home I call Stella at work and tell her what happened. While I'm talking to her I take the bandages of Jeffrey's head and see that it's not really just a bump - it's gash large enough, and deep enough, to require stitches.

At this point Jeffrey is terribly, terribly unhappy and just wants his mommy. The last thing he wants is to spend Halloween in the ER getting stitches. He's crying, saying that this is the worst day ever and saying he refuses to go, clinging desperately to the curtain in his room. Finally I convince him that it won't be that bad, that it needs to be done, and if he hurry we can be back in time to go trick-or-treating. Armed with a Harry Potter book, we finally head off to the Emergency Room so they can sew up his forehead while Stella starts the almost 90 minute commute to Berkeley from her school.

After waiting an hour for the initial consultation (reading lots of Harry Potter to Jeffrey), Stella shows up just as the clinician is interviewing us and deciding what's required. As I thought, he definitely needed stitches. After another wait (and more Harry Potter) we get into a private room where the doctor does things to Jeffrey's head that make me a little squeamish, and I don't typically get affected by stuff like that. But Jeffrey takes it all really well, with no crying at all! The local anesthesia helped a lot for sure. Everyone was very impressed with how well he accepted five stitches to his forehead. If only we had planned a Frankenstein costume for him for Halloween.

We did finally make it back in time to go trick-or-treating, which was totally crazy in the particular neighborhood we went to. They take their Halloween very seriously out here in Berkeley, I must say.

I guess this was trial-by-fire parenthood. Fortunately, I think I passed. But it proved to Stella that she needs to work in the same city that Jeffrey lives and goes to school. So after our lease is up here at the end of June, we will almost surely be moving to San Francisco.

Return To Ann Arbor

I know, I know... it's been too long since I've been blogged. What can I say? I've been busy. I went back to Ann Arbor last week to see Edgefest and visit old friends. I was a great experience. I'll do a separate post about Edgefest shortly and focus now on what it was like to be back in Ann Arbor.

I lived in Ann Arbor for about 21 years, other than the (almost) year I lived in Vermont for most of 1992. Now I've been in Berkeley for 3 months and returned to Ann Arbor to visit. I feel like I'm still trying to sort out the experience. On one hand I felt like I was returning to my home; It was so familiar and full of friends and acquaintances. On the other hand I also felt like a visitor since I was a guest in someone's house and my life is now 2500 miles away. Overall, it was a strange feeling.

After flying all night tuesday night, then renting a car wednesday morning, I made my way to Eric & Anica's house, just a few houses away from my old house. In my slightly sleep-deprived state, I really had to focus to not just drive to my old house, park in the driveway and walk inside. After a few hours of sleep, I met up with Stella (who flew in earlier Wednesday) to have dinner at Pacific Rim, my favorite Ann Arbor restaurant. Their seared tuna is outstanding.

The next day I paid a visit to the people who bought my house. There is a group of five lesbians living there and they were quite receptive to me visiting. Of course I had a legitimate reason - I had some info on the house that they needed. I had left it on the counter when I moved, but somehow it got packed and moved to Berkeley. The women seemed like a great group of people and they loved what I had done with the garden and seemed genuinely interested in maintaining it. It was also nice to catch up with a couple of my old neighbors who happened to be out when I went by.

The rest of my stay was a crazy whirlwind of avant-garde improvised music and seeing old friends. It was fantastic to reconnect with old friends and I felt very at home while simultaneously being aware that I was just visiting. It was an odd sensation - part of me looked forward to being back home in Berkeley while part of me longed to be home again in Ann Arbor. One thing that really struck me, however, is how small Ann Arbor felt. It was all so familiar that it made me more aware of how much I loved living in a new place with so much to explore. The BayArea, and even just Berkeley, is so much larger than Ann Arbor. There is an endless amount of new things to discover here and I love being in such a radically different environment. If only I could just move all my Ann Arbor friends here too. Then I would REALLY love being here.

From The Onion: Report: Swelling Hippie Herds Pose Threat To Delicate Freakosystem

(Thanks to Warren who posted this on MySpace...)

Report: Swelling Hippie Herds Pose Threat To Delicate Freakosystem

WASHINGTON, DC-The indigenous North American hippie population has expanded to the point that its teeming herds are endangering the planet's fragile freakosystem, warned a Department of the Interior report released Monday.

Report: Swelling Hippie Herds Pose Threat To Delicate Freakosystem

December 9, 1998 | Issue 34•19

WASHINGTON, DC–The indigenous North American hippie population has expanded to the point that its teeming herds are endangering the planet's fragile freakosystem, warned a Department of the Interior report released Monday.

Enlarge Image

Earth In Crisis: An Onion Special Report

According to the report, over the past 20 years, the wide-ranging, largely migratory hippies have more than tripled in population, insidiously infiltrating nearly every other U.S. subculture while venturing far beyond their natural Vermont and Colorado habitats.

"Due to the species' lack of predators, willingness to live almost anywhere and rabbit-like breeding habits, the hippie has become the most prevalent feature on the American countercultural landscape," Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt said. "If we do not soon find a way to thin their herds, they will overwhelm every other subculture on the continent, potentially leading to freakological disaster on a mass global scale."

Enlarge Image

A herd of hippies grazes in a field near Burlington, VT.

Experts say the hippie-related environmental damage has largely been the result of their sheer numbers. Long regarded as a mere nuisance species, the hippies have grown over the past 10 years into one of the most populous in North America, numbering close to 20 million. Further, because of the hippie herds' normal daily cycle of waking, bongo-playing and large-scale grass consumption, followed by a brief period of torpor and then aggressive nutritive replenishment, their freakological impact is enormous.

"Each summer, the hippie herds migrate north to Boulder, wiping out 80 to 90 percent of the hummus supply of the regions through which they pass," National Park Service director Roger Kennedy said. "In certain parts of Colorado, by mid-August, the patchouli reservoirs are entirely drained."

The burgeoning herds–identifiable by their dreadlocked hair, hemp jewelry and distinctive tie-dyed markings–have greatly affected the quality of life of people living in these areas of high hippie concentration.

"They're everywhere," said Linda Hewson of Albany, NY. "Last night, when I went to take out the trash, I found one of them foraging through my garbage cans for Dead bootlegs. I shooed it away, but a bunch more came by later scavenging for discarded twirling sticks."

"My property is overrun with them," said Vallejo, CA, resident Patrick Davis, who said he is considering moving if the problem gets worse. "They even set up a bead-vending stand in my backyard."

First introduced into the cultural landscape in the early 1960s, the hippie, or homo habilis VWbus, was initially applauded by freakologists, who believed they would be beneficial in curbing the growth of the then-ubiquitous Establishment Type. When the crisis passed in the early 1970s, the hippie population was reduced to a fraction of its former size, creating room in the American freakosystem for numerous other subcultures, including punks, new-wavers and goths. Social developments of recent years, however, have caused the hippies' numbers to balloon once more.

A 1985 photo of an Olympia, WA, meadow sparsely populated with hippies. By 1996, the meadow was destroyed, its topsoil stripped clean by migratory hippie herds numbering in the thousands.

"For some time, it was believed that the extinction of Jerry Garcia and the dispersal of The Grateful Dead would have a suppressive effect on the size of the hippie population," Kennedy said. "Surprisingly, though, exactly the opposite has happened: The herds have grown, diversifying and spreading out. In the past, if the Dead were playing in Chicago, the entire hippie species would be singularly concentrated there. But today, you could have a herd of hippies at Red Rocks to see Phish while, at the very same moment, an equally large herd is massing in Ann Arbor for a Widespread Panic show."

Another reason for the hippie explosion, environmentalists say, lies in the differences between the current crop and the more mature, "old-growth" hippies of the 1960s. While old-growth hippies were a gentle species that was considered a mild annoyance at worst, the new breed, they say, is a hardier, more insidious creature which seems to thrive in virtually any environment.
"We're seeing these young hippies in the malls, in fraternities, on Madison Avenue–all kinds of places where hippies were once considered non-indigenous," said Alfred Meijer of the Nature Conservancy. "Years of cross-breeding and exposure to television have produced a hybridized, consumer-culture-bred hippie that can adapt to literally any environment, countercultural or mainstream. And unlike the old-growth hippies, which at least were anti-materialistic, the new ones are voracious consumers, swiftly depleting their habitat of all resources and purchasable goods."

Though most experts agree that the vast herds must be thinned, they are divided on how to go about it. Some are calling for the hippies to be spayed and neutered and then placed in designated preserve areas, where they would be free to roam peacefully and play hacky-sack. Others suggest more extreme measures, advocating the use of large, headshop-shaped traps to lure the hippies. Once inside the traps, the hippies would be poisoned with super-adhesive, cyanide-laced Guatemalan blankets and sweaters.

"Whatever we do, we must do it soon," Babbitt said. "If we don't, we are dooming our children to live in a world overrun with backless apron dresses and bare feet. And that is a fate we can ill afford."

and just for Andre...

some pictures of the Klingons at the Be As Berkeley As You Can Be Parade.

Be as Berkeley as you can be

On Sunday we all biked to downtown Berkeley to watch the Be As Berkeley As You Can Be Parade. It's an annual parade that celebrates the various eccentricities of Berkeley while also kind of making fun of itself. A few civic and non-profit groups marched, but it was mainly various Berkeley freaks being silly and a whole bunch of art cars. Art cars, as you may know, are just cars painted and/or covered with a whole lot of crazy crap. Oh, and there were also cupcake cars. Plus a few Klingons. What would a parade be without Klingons? The whole thing was very amusing, but photos tell the story much better than my words could.

more great jazz in San Francisco

One really positive aspect of moving to the bay area is getting to see one of my favorite musicians, Myra Melford, perform so often. On saturday she did a duo performance with saxophonist/clarinetist Marty Ehrlich at The Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco. Even though it took longer than driving, I took the BART there, which involved nearly two miles of walking to & from BART stops. But I really love public transporation, particularly the BART. While there are so many ways in which it could be improved (more destinations, more frequent trains, longer hours), and it pales in comparison to the New York subway, I still love it. I would much rather take the extra time and not worry about driving and parking and just enjoy the ride while people watching and/or reading. One of these days I will bring my bike on the BART and bike around San Francisco.

But I digress; this is a post about music, not public transportation. The Noe Valley Ministry is a church in the Noe Valley neighborhood (just west of the Mission) that has been hosting a jazz/new music series for ages. It's a beautiful sounding room with a really nice grand piano. I had seen this duo one other time, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in my last visit to New York just after 9/11. I enjoyed that show but left thinking that this duo didn't rank near the top of my list of favorite Myra Melford projects. Well, Saturday's show changed that opinion. It was a fantastic performance that surpassed my expectations with some wonderful new compositions from both musicians. After the show Myra offered me a ride back to Berkeley, so I rode back with her & Marty after we all stopped for gelato in SF. I had met Marty once before but never spent time with him; he's a really cool guy. I'll never forgot the story he told about Leroy Jenkins, the jazz violinist who passed away earlier this year:

Years, ago, probably in the 60's, Leroy Jenkins was staying with Ornette Coleman when Leroy was just starting out in the jazz world. But Ornette kept on calling him Leon and Leroy didn't say anything, thinking he didn't want to risk blowing this great deal of getting to stay with a legend like Ornette. Finally Leroy just couldn't take it anymore and after Ornette once again called him Leon, Leroy finally says "Ornette, you know my name is Leroy". Ornette pauses and says "I'm sorry Leon, I'll never call you Leroy again".

Phil at the Greek

On Sunday I revisited an aspect of my past by going to see Phil & Friends in concert at The Greek Theatre in Berkeley. Phil Lesh, as most readers here would probably know, was the bass player for The Grateful Dead and has been touring with his own ever-changing band since the demise of the Dead. Although once a huge part of my life, The Dead don't really occupy any part of my daily life anymore, other than the fact that I am still very much connected to many people I met when I was into the Dead.

The last time I went to a Dead related show was about 4 years ago, i think - another show by Phil & Friends. That show was amazing, probably better than most Grateful Dead shows I saw (and I saw between 65 and 70 of them!). The excellence of that show was largely due to the two amazing guitarists, Warren Haynes and Jimmy Herring, as well as the deep, intuitive musical bonds that had developed between the band. Phil's current version of the band has only one member from that older band - the drummer. On guitars he had Larry Campbell and Jackie Green. Jackie Green did most of the singing and was a very good singer, although he struck me as trying too hard to be Bob Dylan circa 1966. Even his original songs that the band played sounded like Dylan tunes from that era. Larry Campbell is a fine guitarist, but his strength is in straight-ahead rock & blues, not the extended, out-there jamming that the Dead excelled at.

Unfortunately, I have to say that I found the whole show rather disappointing. The first set was stuffed with mostly boring blues-based tunes and old rock covers ("Good Morning Little School Girl", "Good Lovin'", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road", "The Weight"). The highlight was a ripping version of the Dead's "Cumberland Blues", which normally doesn't excite me all that much but stood out rather starkly in an otherwise bland setlist.

After a set break that was just over a full hour(!), they hit the stage again and opened with "Playin' in the Band", usually a great showcase for what the Dead did best - extended, exploratory and exciting collective improvisation. This version was alright, but never seemed to really gel or go anywhere and there were none of those transcendental musical moments I look for in music like this. The rest of the set was mostly an exercise in unused potential. "St. Stephen" was nice, but not inspired. Instead of going into "The Eleven" like I hoped, they did another mediocre Jackie Green tune. "Fire on the Mountain" was pretty good, but I would have much rather heard the song it's usually paired with, "Scarlet Begonias". "The Wheel" was done in a tepid arrangement that lacked the life of the Dead's version. "Eyes of the World" was alright, but fizzled out when it should have just started to get really interesting. They closed the show with "Sugar Magnolia" and "Going Down the Road", two of the most boring, over-played Dead tunes to my ears.

Sorry if this review seems overly harsh, but I felt very disappointed by this show, particularly after being so impressed last time I saw them. I will not bother to see this incarnation of Phil & Friends again. Perhaps I'm just too jaded by Dead music now as well. Anyway, those "transcendental music moments" I look for abound in the jazz I now prefer. I'll take a show by Tim Berne or Myra Melford over this any day.

On the plus side, I did get to spend some time with Caroline, Lela and Kait, who came down from Arcata. And after the show, I saw Karen Garfinkle, a former housemate in Ann Arbor nearly 20 years ago. She was rather shocked to see me: "What are you doing here?" "Oh, I live here now... about a 10 minute walk from here, actually!". That was good fun. She's in Santa Cruz, so I'm sure I'll see more of her now.

The Cat in the Kayak

Ariel has found a new favorite spot to lounge about in the back yard.


He has many favorite little spots around the garden to do what he does best - lounge about. Why he likes the kayak is a mystery. I wonder how he would like it if it were actually floating on water.

The rain in the Bay falls mainly in my brain

Here in the Bay Area we are in the middle of the dry season. We've lived here for two months now and have not seen a single drop of rain yet. And we likely won't see any for the next two months or more. But lately I've been having a surprising number of dreams in which it is raining in my dream. I'll eventually wake up and think to myself "Oh, it rained last night." Then I remember that I am actually in California now, not Michigan, and that it is still bone-dry outside. It appears that my subconscious is attempting to compensate for this lack of rain by creating rain in my dreams.

All of this makes we wonder what my brain will do to compensate for the lack of friends in Berkeley. I'm probably too old for imaginary friends now. Although I've seen people walking the streets of Berkeley who seem to have very active social lives going on entirely in their minds. Hopefully I won't be reduced to wandering the streets muttering strange conversations with people who don't exist.

bands and animals

Last night at dinner, as Jeffrey was singing "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly" and inventing new verses with Stella about different animals to swallow, I thought it oddly appropriate that I was about to leave for San Francisco to see two bands with animal names - Band of Horses and Dinosaur Jr. I've been digging Band of Horses for the last year or so; they are a new band who's second album is due out next month. I quite like their first one and was quite excited to see them live. Dinosaur Jr is legendary in that kind of 80's alternative/90's grunge/stoner-slacker corner of the music world. I've been aware of them and have heard stuff by them since their first album in '85, but only really dived headlong into their discography earlier this year. Their new cd, Beyond, is easily my most played cd this year. And last night, i finally got a chance to see them live. I had tickets to see them at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor but has a 102 degree fever that day and couldn't go.

The show was at the Mezzanine in SF, which is a fairly intimate club near 5th & Mission. It took less than 20 minutes to get there by car, which was nice. The opening set by Band of Horses was great, a nice mix of familiar tunes and new stuff from their upcoming cd. The lead singer has a really great voice and i liked the way they orchestrated three guitars without any of them stepping on each other.

After a 45 minute set, then a half hour set break, Dinosaur Jr took the stage. J. Mascis, the guitarist, singer and principle song writer, has a reputation as somewhat of a guitar god, but also as the definitive stoner-slacker. With his long white hair and introverted demeanor, he hardly embodies the rock god. But he certainly is an amazing guitarist. No wonder Sonic Youth titled one of their songs "J. Mascis for President". I could have done without the slam dancing and occasional stage diving that began near the stage around halfway through the show (and by the looks of things, the band would have strongly preferred to do without it too), but overall it was an excellent show and I'm very glad I was finally able to see them live. The next rock show in SF I'm considering seeing is the Jesus and Mary Chain, although at $40 per ticket, I'm not sure I'll make it.

The whole experience got me thinking about bands with animal names, particularly current bands in the "indie" world. Just off the top of my head we have Eels, Sparklehorse, Deerhoof, Deer Hunter, Wolf Eyes, Wolf Parade, Wolfmother, The Fruit Bats, Grizzly Bear, Pedro the Lion, Modest Mouse, The Field Mice, The Arctic Monkeys, The Mountain Goats, Gorillaz, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, The Unicorns, Minus The Bear, Panda Bear, Caribou, and Le Tigre. Going beyond the indie world, you have the Eagles, Byrds, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Jayhawks, T. Rex, Phish, Fish, Swans, The Monkeys, Boomtown Rats, Buffalo Tom, Donna the Buffalo, Leftover Salmon, Counting Crows, Black Crowes, Yard Birds, Flock of Seagulls, Grant Lee Buffalo, The Roaches, Three Dog Night, The Turtles, The Stone Ponies, Eek-a-Mouse, Iron Butterfly, The Scorpions, The Stray Cats and Skinny Puppy. Then there's non-specific animal names - Animal Collective, The Animals, Super Furry Animals, Be Your Own Pet...

Obviously, I've been thinking about this way too much. I must stop now.

a weekend of live music

After two weekends of wonderful nature experiences, it was time to immerse myself in some live music. The weekend started out with a concert by Wilco at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. Wilco, in my opinion, is one of the best live bands out there right now. And the Greek Theatre is legendary, known as one of the best outdoor concert venues around. It certainly is a beautiful and intimate theatre, although i have to say that the concrete benches are rather uncomfortable to sit on without some sort of padding. I can't complain, though, that it is a mere 10 minute walk from our house. Since Stella was unable to attend, I went with my friend Myra Melford, the wonderful jazz pianist who moved from NYC to Berkeley a few years ago to teach at UC Berkeley. She's generally not one for rock concerts (she said this is probably the first rock show she's been to in about 30 years), but she had an interest in Wilco and has performed with Nels Cline, the newest guitarist in Wilco. The concert was pretty great. This was, i think, my seventh time seeing them, and they get better each time. I love the way they vary the arrangements of the pieces from the studio recordings, and particularly when they deconstruct a piece in the middle, swirl it into chaos, then bring it right back on queue.

The following day Stella, Jeffrey & I went to check out a couple of the free outdoor performances that were part of the annual Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival. The festival was almost exclusively area musicians, so I didn't know a lot about the various performers. But Saturday at noon was the band Disappear Incompletely doing jazz arrangements of songs by Radiohead, who I think are pretty great. They did a pretty interesting set, although I felt they may have been keeping things a little tame to appeal to a more general audience. The start of their set had some really interesting and adventurous arrangements of tunes like "Optimistic", "Kid A" and "Climbing Up the Walls", but the second half seemed to consist of more conventional arrangements featuring the bass player as a vocalist.

From there we wandered over to the Farmer's Market where mandolin great Mike Marshall, who lives in nearby Oakland, was playing with a Brazilian pianist. I've listened to Mike Marshall for over 20 years now, typically playing the style of "New Grass" that David Grisman pioneered. In fact, Marshall was in Grisman's quintet for a number of years. This set of Brazilian jazz, also with a clarinetist/soprano saxophonist & percussionist, was quite good, but didn't exactly blow me away. But it was a wonderful way to enjoy the California sunshine while enjoying some tasty crepes (both savory and sweet) from the Farmer's Market.

And finally, that night was the only non-free performance of the festival I attended - the Myra Melford/Ben Goldberg Quartet. This was held in the performance space of the Jazz School, an interesting music school in Berkeley dedicated to the study of jazz. It was a nice space with a cafe vibe. They did two sets with about 60% of the compositions by Myra and the rest by Ben. It was my first time seeing Ben play, although I have several recordings he plays on. It turns out he lives in Berkeley not too far from me. The concert was truly amazing and I thought everyone played exceptionally well. I am very lucky that one of my all-time favorite musicians lives in town and I'll get a chance to hear her perform so often now. She has two more gigs in the area in September that I can look forward to.

and speaking of spiders...

meet Spider Pig, from The Simpsons Movie.

so many spiders

There are SO many spiders in California. All over the place. Almost every night just before we go to bed, we have to remove at least one spider from the bedroom ceiling.

Walking around town, you see hundreds, if not thousands, of webs in the plants in people's front yards. Next time we take a vacation, I'll expect our house to be completely filled with spiders and webs when we get back.






Most of them are fairly small and non-threatening. But I've seen quite a few pretty scary ones. The only one to worry about is the black widow, which is fairly common in California, but bites from them are still very unlikely.


If bad old horror movies have taught me anything, it's that one must always be on guard... you never know when a giant spider might creep up behind you.

Adventures at Point Reyes

On Saturday, Stella, Jeffrey and I took a long day trip to Point Reyes National Seashore. This large and stunningly beautiful area is just a bit north of San Francisco, and an hour drive from us in Berkeley. We started our visit with a picnic at North Beach, just one of thirteen beaches in the park.


After lunch we headed south to see the lighthouse. Known as the windiest place on the pacific coast, we had an amazing view of the beach we were just at.


Then we headed for the northern most beach, McClure Beach. It was here that I proclaimed "This is my new favorite beach in California". There's a quarter-mile hike down from the parking lot to a beach surrounded by beautiful cliffs.


At the southern end of the beach, there was a passage that led to another small but beautiful beach, only accessible when the tide is low. This was my favorite part.


We barely scratched the surface; there is so much more to explore at Point Reyes. I look forward to spending more time there.

Michael Chabon on Berkeley

Michael Chabon, the wonderful author of the novels The Wonder Boys (also a great film), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Mysteries of Pittsburg, and The Yiddish Policeman's Union, is a fellow resident of Berkeley. Today I came across a great little essay he wrote about our fair city. Originally printed in the March 2002 issue of Gourmet magazine, here it is, reprinted without permission.

The Mysteries of Berkeley

by Michael Chabon

Berkeley.

Where passion is married to intelligence, you may find genius, neurosis, madness or rapture. None of these is really an unfamiliar presence in the tree-lined streets of Berkeley, California. For a city of one hundred thousand people-toss in another thirty thousand to account for the transient population of the University-we have more than our share of geniuses. The town, to be honest, is lousy with them. Folklorists, chefs, tattoo artists, yogis, guitarists, biologists of the housefly, GUI theorists, modern masters of algebra, Greil Marcus: we have geniuses in every field and discipline. As for neurosis, you can pretty much start at my house and work your way outward in any direction. Obsession, fixation, phobia, hypochondriasis, self-flagellation, compulsive confession of weakness and wrongdoing, repetition mania, chronic recrimination and second-guessing-from parents of toddlers, to fanatical collectors of wax recordings by Turkish klezmer bands of the 1920s, to non-eaters of anything white or which respires, to that august tribunal of collective neurosis, the Berkeley City Council: if neuroses were swimming pools one might, like Cheever's swimmer, steer a course from my house to the city limits and never touch dry land. Madness: a painful thing, which it does not do to romanticize. But it seems to me that among the many sad and homeless people who haunt Berkeley one finds an unusually high number of poets, sages, secret Napoleons and old-fashioned prophets of doom. The mentally ill citizens of Berkeley read, as they kill a winter afternoon in the warmth of the public library; they generate theories, which they will share; they sell their collected works out of a canvas tote bag. As for rapture, it is harder to observe firsthand, and is furthermore something that people, even people in Berkeley, do not necessarily care to discuss. But Berkeley is rich with good places to be rapt: at the eyepiece of an electron microscope or a cloud chamber, at a table at Chez Panisse, in a yoga room, under a pair of headphones at Amoeba Records, in Tilden Park, in the great disorderly labyrinth of Serendipity Books, on the dance floor at Ashkenaz while the ouds jangle and the pipes skirl, in a seat at the Pacific Film Archive watching Kwaidan (Japan, 1965). I'd be willing to bet that, pound for pound, Berkeley is the most enraptured city in America on a daily basis.

If that statement has the ring of boosterism, then permit me to clarify my feelings on the subject of my adopted home: this town drives me crazy. Nowhere else in America are so many people obliged to suffer more inconvenience for the common good. Nowhere else is the individual encumbered with a greater burden of shame and communal disapproval for having intruded, however innocently, on the sensibilities of another. Berkeley's streets, though a rational 19th century grid underlies them, are a speed-busting tangle of artificial dead ends, obligatory left turns, and deliberately tortuous obstacle-course barriers known as chicanes, put in place to protect children-who are never (God forbid!) sent to play outside. Municipal ordinances intended to protect the nobility of labor in Berkeley's attractive old industrial district steadfastly prevent new-economy businesses from taking over the aging brick-and-steel structures--leaving them empty cenotaphs to the vanished noble laborer of other days. People in the grocery store, meanwhile, have the full weight of Berkeley society behind them as they take it upon themselves to scold you for exposing your child to known allergens or imposing on her your own indisputably negative view of the universe. Passersby feel empowered-indeed, they feel duty-bound-to criticize your parking technique, your failure to sort your recycling into brown paper and white, your resource-hogging four-wheel-drive vehicle, your use of a pinch-collar to keep your dog from straining at the leash.

When Berkeley does not feel like some kind of vast exercise in collective dystopia-a kind of left-wing Plymouth Plantation in which a man may be pilloried for over-illuminating his house at Christmastime-then paradoxically it often feels like a place filled with people incapable of feeling or acting in concert with each other. It is a city of potterers and amateur divines, of people so intent on cultivating their own gardens, researching their own theories, following their own bliss, marching to their own drummers and dancing to the tinkling of their own finger-cymbals that they take no notice of one another at all, or would certainly prefer not to, if it could somehow be arranged. People keep chickens, in Berkeley-there are two very loud henhouses within a block of my house. There may be no act more essentially Berkeley than deciding that the rich flavor and healthfulness, the simple, forgotten pleasure, of fresh eggs in the morning outweighs the unreasonable attachment of one's immediate neighbors to getting a good night's sleep.

The result, perhaps inevitable, of this paralysis of good intentions, this ongoing, floating opera of public disapproval and the coming into conflict of competing visions of the path to personal bliss, is a populace inclined to kvetching and to the wearing of the default Berkeley facial expression, the suspicious frown. Bliss is, after all, so near at hand; the perfect egg, a good night's sleep, reconciliation with one's mother or the Palestinians, a theory to account for the surprising lack of dark matter in the universe, a radio station that does not merely parrot the lies of government flaks and corporate media outlets-such things can often feel so eminently possible here, given the intelligence and the passion of the citizens. And yet they continue to elude us. Who is responsible? Is it us? Is it you? What are you doing, there, anyway? Don't you know the recycling truck won't take aluminum foil?

So much for boosterism. And yet I declare, unreservedly and with all my heart, that I love Berkeley, California. I can't imagine living happily anywhere else. And all of the things that drive me crazy are the very things that make this town worth knowing, worth putting up with, worth loving and working to preserve.

Part of the charm of Berkeley lies in her setting: the shimmer and eucalyptus sting of the hills on a dusty summer afternoon, hills whose rocky bones jut through the skin of Berkeley in odd outcroppings like Indian Rock; the morning fogs of the flatlands along the bay, with their smell of mud and their magically vanishing glimpses of Alcatraz and towers of San Francisco. But I have lived in places, from the Puget Sound to the Hudson Valley, from Laguna Beach to Key West, that rivaled if not surpassed Berkeley in spectacular weather, thrilling vistas, and variety of terrain. Not, perhaps, all at the same time, but to greater extremes of beauty. And yet a city with a beautiful site is about as reliably interesting as a person with a beautiful face, and just about as likely to have been spoiled.

Laid atop her remarkable setting between hills and bay, less consistently fine but at its best no less charming, is the built environment of Berkeley. The town, though laid out in the 1880s, boomed in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire, when it was settled by refugees from San Francisco, fleeing hither under the mistaken impression that the jutting rock ribs of Berkeley's hills would be proof against temblors. The town grew explosively, to its borders, in the twenty years that followed, and as a result the architecture, especially that of her houses, has a pleasing uniformity of variation, with styles ranging from Prairie school to Craftsman to the various flavors of Spanish. There is even a local style-I live in an exemplar, built in 1907-called the Berkeley Brown Shingle, which combines elements of the Craftsman and the Stick: overhanging eaves, square-pillared porches, elaborate mullions and built-in cabinetry, the whole enveloped in a rustic skin of the eponymous cedar or redwood shakes. It's a sober style, at least in conception, boxy and grave and appropriately professorial, and yet after decades of benign neglect and dreaminess and the ministrations of an unstintingly benevolent climate, the houses tend to be wildly overgrown with rose vines, wisteria, jasmine, trumpetvine, and outfitted top and sides with unlikely modifications: Zen dormers, orgone porches, Lemurian observatories. Certain of her streets offer endless instruction in the rich and surprising expressiveness of brown, houses the color of brown beer, of brown bread, of tobacco, a dog's eyes, a fallen leaf, an old upright piano. The harmoniousness of Berkeley's streets and houses is far from perfect-there are tons of hideous concrete-and-aluminum dingbat monstrosities, in particular around the university, and downtown is a hodgepodge of doughty old California commercial structures, used car lots and a few truly lamentable late-sixties office towers. But even the most down-at-heel and ill-used streets offer a promise of green shade in the summertime, and many neighborhoods are densely populated by trees, grand old plantations of maple and oak, long rows of ornamental plums that blossom in the winter, persimmon trees, Meyer lemon trees, palm trees and fig trees, monkey puzzles and Norfolk island pines, redwoods and Monterey pines nearly a hundred years old. One of the remarkable things about Berkeley is that, in spite of its decided inferiority to its great neighbor across the Bay in clout, preeminence, population, notoriety and fame, it has never seemed to dwell in San Francisco's shadow (unlike poor old Oakland down the road). I believe that this may be in part due to the fact that when it comes to trees-a necessary component, in my view, of the greatness of a city-the Colossus of the West can't hold a candle to Berkeley.

But houses and tree plantations, like hills and foggy mudflats, are no reliable guarantors of the excellence of a place to live. That elusive quality always lies, ultimately, in the citizenry; in one's neighbors. And it is ultimately the people of Berkeley-those same irritating frowners and scolders, those very neurotic geniuses and rapt madwomen-who make this place, who ring an endless series of variations on its great theme of personal and communal exploration, and who, above all, fight tooth and nail to hang on to what they love about it.

If there were a hundred good small cities in America fifty years ago-towns built to suit the people who settled them, according to their tastes, aspirations, and the sovereign peculiarities of landscape and weather-today there are no more than twenty-five. In ten years, as the inexorable lattice of sprawl replicates and proliferates, and the downtowns become malls, and the malls downtowns, and the rich syllabary of mercantile America is reduced to a simple alphabet composed of a Blockbuster, a Target, a Starbucks, a Barnes and Noble, a Gap, and a T.G.I.Fridays, and California herself is drowned in a sea of red-tile roofs from San Ysidro to Yreka, there may be fewer than ten. When the end finally comes, I believe that Berkeley will be the last town in America with the ingrained perversity to hold onto its idea of itself. This is a town-on the edge of the country, on the edge of the twenty-first century, on the edge of subducting plates and racial divides and an immense sea of corporate homogeneity-where you can still sign for your groceries at the store around the corner. A Berkeley grocer is a man who preserves such an archaic custom not in spite of the fact but exactly because it's an outmoded and cumbersome way of running a business.

It's in the quirky, small businesses of Berkeley, in fact, places like the old soda fountain in the Elmwood Pharmacy, Alkebulalian Books (specializing in books on the African diaspora), d.b.a Brown Records (just on the Oakland side of the city limits), or the Sound Well (used and vintage hi-fi and stereo equipment) that the tensions of Berkeley living, the competing claims on the heart of a Berkeleyite to follow one's bliss but at the same time to reach a hand out into the void and feel another set of fingers taking hold of one's own, are resolved. These are not merely retail establishments, poor cousins of Rite-Aid, Borders, Sam Goody's and Circuit City. They are shrines to the classic Berkeley impulse to latch on to something tiny but crucial-the warm sound provided by vacuum tube amplifiers, the mid-sixties sides of Ornette Coleman, the African roots of Jesus Christ and his teachings, or a perfectly constructed Black-and-White (with an extra three inches in the steel blender cup)-and pursue it with a mounting sense of self-discovery. And yet they are also, accidentally but fundamentally, gathering places; they all have counters at which the lonely amateur of Coleman or Marantz, the student of Martin Bernal can pull up a stool and find him- or herself in the company of sympathetic minds. Berkeley is richer than any place I've ever lived in these non-alcoholic taverns of the soul, these unofficial clubhouses of the oddball and outr*. And it seems as if every year another one pops up, at the bottom of Solano Avenue, in a faded brick stretch of San Pablo Avenue, unfranchisable, inexplicable except as a doorway to fulfillment and fellowship. A business that would never thrive anywhere else, patronized by people who would never thrive anywhere else, in a city that lives and dies on the passion and intelligence, the madness and rapture, of its citizens.

Originally published in the March 2002 issue of Gourmet

(c)2002 Michael Chabon

Mount Diablo

This entry is really about a week late; we went to Mount Diablo just over a week ago. For me, it was a pilgrimage of sorts. When I was very young (2-5 years old in 1970-1973), my family lived in Lafayette, not terribly far from here. We used to have picnics at Mount Diablo, which we could see from our back yard in Lafayette. My memories of these trips are quite fuzzy at best, but my parents have assured me that wonderful times were had. So now, roughly 35 years later, we returned at last to Mount Diablo. The base of the mountain is only about 30-40 minutes away from us in Berkeley, which is nice. It's the tallest mountain in central California and on a clear day you can see as far away as Yosemite to the east. The weather was perfect - clear blue skies and warm, even hot, but not too hot. At some point during our ascent we stopped for a little picnic lunch.


At the top we took in the magnificent views and hiked the "fire trail" around the peak.


All in all, an outstanding day!

I've been Simpsonized!

I've been Simpsonized.