Kam Fong has passed away after a bout with cancer.
who was he? he was detective Chin Ho on Hawaii Five-O, the credits read "Kam Fong as Chin Ho" and in addition to that he quite nearly, although nearly doesn't count, was NOT six degrees from kevin bacon.
i was working behind the bar at Il Fornaio in old towne pasadena when the boyfriend of one of the servers and his buddy were having a drink and playing the damn kevin bacon game that was going around. it was a slow night and the bar staff were trying to stump these guys who, to there credit, sure had an extensive catalog of hollywood actors in their brains, sheesh.
anyway, i finally said, "Kam Fong". to which everyone went, "Who?"
I explained who it was and they immediately went running with Jack Lord, but to no avail.
the next evening in came the boyfriend with a note typed out to me. the server said he had stayed up late in the eve and wanted to call me at some un-godly hour when he cracked the code. it was true, Kam Fong was six degrees away, but the bitch had to work at it!
R.I.P.

jam master jay was killed earlier today. yahoo has this cheery list up.

another goddamn grey morning!
stazz picked up some of the belle and sebastians, so they are playing to chase away the clouds.
the camping trip was wonderful - the spot was on some bluffs right up by the sea about three hours + from l.a. saw some mule deer, raccoons and some kind of pheasants (partridges?), the funnly little birds with three antenna on their heads.
it was quiet and cool during the nights as low sea-clouds would roll into the gullys between the hills, where the camping spots were, 'natch. during the day, the state park sees plenty of visitors including a couple school buses of kids running back and forth between tide-pools and ladies attending a pleine-aire painting class. spooner's cove is the only real 'beach' and it is nearly english in nature, heavy sand that is more like small rocks than some white sand dream vacation spot. that said, it was beautiful, the sea crashing into stubborn rocks just offshore and bluffs to hike on and various spots to scramble down to hollows in the bluff where the waters had worn the rock away a bit.
at night there were stars and stars, the second night actually, which may have contributed to the fact that the second night was noticably colder than the first night. but the salmon that i cooked up was much better than the tuna the night before, so we'll call it a draw. read a fair amount, took some pictures and made some field recordings.
the drive home was enjoyable until i hit ventura - from there until glendale the traffic was nearly reason enough to turn around and go back. but what would be the point? you take yer troubles with you as we end up learning as we get older. i reckon my mind was a bit heavy which lead to thinking about going away for a few, so i did. i aired out my hang-ups with the universe who had decided to send four raccoons by to take note and report back. no answers were forth-coming as far as i could tell, just a shying away from the flashlight and a freeze when a sound was made by a clumsy foot on the few twigs that hadn't been used for kindling. still, we've all seen the wizard of oz enough times to know that if the universe has anything to say, it'll show up sooner or later, and probably not out in the dirt while the trojan records dub boxed set plays through yer headphones.
last night i found out that my jay ryan commisioned poster is finished! welcome home indeed.

i'm off for a few days. for some idea (that didn't seem as cold at the time) i've planned a few nights sleeping on the out-side, welp, in a tent at least.
gonna run up the coast to los oso and camp.
until then, here is left-leaning election news.
here is some lit news.
there is also jay babcock's daily update.

how much room is there in a shipping container?

i started the day with this cd, i played it through the evening and now its just after 1am and here it is again. the streets performed this evening at doug weston's joint and the evening was enjoyable enough to warrant an not so early morning breakfast at swingers and yet another listen to 'original pirate recording'.
i ran into allison and bobbi at the show and we both had the same question on our minds; how did the other end up here? how did they know of the streets?
bobbi had picked up on it when she was in nyc, i think i have the story straight, and anyway, has been into UK garage for a bit. i told 'em of my summer trip and how it was basically the soundtrack of my UK stay. who knew?
what we didn't really know was, who were all these people showing up at the troub? lots of dudes, of course, but also lots of chicks. some talk went 'round that it was a vice magazine/industry crowd - some wasted dude in the audience yapped out-loud that "all the famous people" would be here - there really wasn't any indication one way or the other as far as i could tell.
strange for a cd that, at least a month ago, was listed at amazon as an IMPORT only - 32 dollars.
apparently there is now domestic.
there was one opening act that started promptly at 9:15 - mr. planktonman or some such. i think he was italian or spanish, and it was a dj with a laptop and a box full of effects or a mixer, couldn't tell. which is what i wonder with this kind of set-up.
the poor bastard had to go on at the early part of the evening - no-one is really drunk yet, and he stands in front of the crowd and seems to twiddle with knobs or type on the keyboard, allegedly, while passable dance music blasts through the joint.
what is supposed to happen? why not just burn a cd?
seems like a tough spot for a "dj" to be in.
the place was packed and primed for mike skinner and his crew; a bass player, drummer, keyboard player and additional singer.
there was not the overpowering sound one expects from shows at the troubador. instead the sound was actually a bit thin, or if not thin, the various instruments as well as backing tracks seemed discern-able, in an inviting way - same with skinners mannerisms, very much just a dude - the production levels attainable, in some kind of imaginary way, to any of us in the crowd.
the instrumentalists did, however, give a kind of cause and effect to the sound making that the laptop/pre-recording based dj/acts just don't have, and thus have a different relationship to the idea of a stage and an audience. people seemed to move much more, at least i did.
the regular geezer seemed to enjoy the crowd and likewise, with cheering contests, some hand shakes and a level of enthusiasm that still seemed based in a good natured self-consciousness. not a cynical show. for the most part, there were faithful representations of 'original pirate material' with some of the vocal stylings re-arranged since they could no longer sound like a young man sitting in his bedroom through a PA. the group performed for an hour with an encore.
it was the feel-good show of this beginning of the school year.

new song up.

got the latest drawn and quarterly email newsletter today, and in it is a link to an interview with adrian tomine over at booksense. ain't had a chance to read it yet, so yer on yer own.
been reading for the last couple of days, virginia woolf's mrs. dalloway, a really direct, modern novel from 1925. it is set in london.

a spot over at 'the looking glass' on enron, martha stewart and the SEC, just so we don't forget about corporate/government malfeasance - which is just what buffoons like Pitt and George II would like us to do.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again."—Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002
yer president.

a few projects that have languished and gathered dust are on their way off my plate. the posters i got from jay ryan, at least two of 'em - a shellac and a flaming lips - are finally framed, as is my drawing of hopey that i got from xaime hernandez TEN years ago when they came to The Great Escape in Louisville.
the second half-baked plan was to tear out the rottenated old ferns that were growning in my back porch area. the ferns were gone months ago, and so was the big ass milkweed, or whatever the hell it was, along with a laundry pole and warped free standing wall of wood and fiberglass. what never happened was something appearing to take the place of the ferns.
today i bought a flat of mondo grass, threw some planting soil in the dirt to shore up its liveability and laid the green sprouts out. good luck to 'em.

one other note: i have a shared iCal calendar available at the link on the left.

via boingboing:

"I will trade fifteen minutes of my ass in exchange for two tickets to the World Series. For fifteen minutes, you may do whatever you wish to my ass--you may kick my ass, kiss my ass, beat my ass, or place my ass and some whoop in a can for subsequent opening. Perhaps you'd like to hear me talk out of my ass, or watch as I get up off my ass, blow it out my ass, get drunk off my ass, and then sit on my ass. You can fire my ass, dump my ass, or spank my ass 'till it shines like the hood of a Volkswagen. For fifteen minutes, my ass is yours, grass or otherwise. No reasonable request will be refused."

more guests in town.
the curator from brisbane australia, down under-neath, is in town for the long weekend. so there will probably be less blogging than the recent tail-dragging levels.

that said, there is always this site for yer foxy ladies needs.
and for our friends like mattdatt who are spoiling for a war while not really wondering where public enemy #osama is, there is this, from retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of Central Command for U.S. forces in the Middle East, who has worked recently as the State Department's envoy to the region with a mission to encourage talks between Palestinians and Israelis.

He also took issue with hawks in and around the administration who downplay the importance of Arab sentiment in the region. "I'm not sure which planet they live on," Zinni said, "because it isn't the one that I travel." And he challenged their suggestion that installing a new Iraqi government will not be especially difficult. "God help us," he said, "if we think this transition will occur easily."

and then, if you use OSX (hi pearl), there is this site, have i mentioned this already? its run by a senior member at apple, each update is a feature of jaguar.

wow! while i was back in louisville i watched my fair share of the 'tube'. at one point i saw footage taken from a small camera that had been attached to the space shuttle as it took the f off. the camera, which was pointed back at the earth, was descibed as the same kind as they put in football helmets or on the heads of race car drivers. or maybe its like the monkey cam.
regardless, on boing-boing's guest blog there is a link to a site with footage from these lil cameras in action.

the kakapo a very large flightless parrot that lives in new zealand. well, a few survivors still live.
it booms.

i have not mentioned george II so much, i suppose i've become complacent. the entire administration seems like such a complete sham of ass-kissing corporate thieves, power-hungry buffoons and fools with complete disregard for anyone who is not them, that it often appears to be happening in some kind of alternate universe. it's gotten to the point where they don't even agree with nancy reagan, because she sees stem-cell research as useful to alzheimer's research. so much for believing in god - guess it comes around to biting you on yer ass.
anyway.
i'm looking forward to all our friends who voted for george II sending their children off to war, or perhaps signing up for the military themselves! they tend to talk about how heroic it is - i anticipate alot of wonderful stories of adventure.
in the meantime, here is a speech, a no vote for giving george II is tonkin gulf resolution. its a good read, i suggest it.
in fact, i'll just post it. it is from California Rep. Pete Stark:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution.

I am deeply troubled that lives may be lost without a meaningful attempt to bring Iraq into compliance with UN resolutions through careful and cautious diplomacy.

The bottom line is I don’t trust this President and his advisors.

Make no mistake, we are voting on a resolution that grants total authority to the President who wants to invade a sovereign nation without any specific act of provocation. This would authorize the United States to act as the aggressor for the first time in our history.

It sets a precedent for our nation - or any nation - to exercise brute force anywhere in the world without regard to international law or international consensus.

Congress must not walk in lockstep behind a President who has been so callous to proceed without reservation, as if war was of no real consequence.

You know, three years ago in December, Molly Ivins, an observer of Texas politics, wrote: ‘For an upper-class white boy, Bush comes on way too hard. At a guess, to make up for being an upper-class white boy.”

’Somebody,’ she said, ‘should be worrying about how all this could affect his handling of future encounters with some Saddam Hussein.’ How prophetic, Ms. Ivins.

Let us not forget that our President -- our Commander in Chief – has no experience with, or knowledge of, war. In fact, he admits that he was at best ambivalent about the Vietnam War. He skirted his own military service and then failed to serve out his time in the National Guard. And, he reported years later that at the height of that conflict in 1968 he didn’t notice ‘any heavy stuff going on.’

So we have a President who thinks foreign territory is the opponent’s dugout and Kashmir is a sweater.

What is most unconscionable is that there is not a shred of evidence to justify the certain loss of life. Do the generalized threats and half-truths of this Administration give any one of us in Congress the confidence to tell a mother or father or family that the loss of their child or loved one was in the name of a just cause?

Is the President’s need for revenge for the threat once posed to his father enough to justify the death of any American?

I submit the answer to these questions is no.

Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination.

The Administration admits to a cost of around 200 Billion Dollars!

Now, wealthy individuals won’t pay. They’ve got big tax cuts already.

Corporations won’t pay. They’ll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans.

Rich kids won’t pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W.

Well then, who will pay?

School kids will pay. There’ll be no money to keep them from being left behind - way behind.

Seniors will pay. They’ll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war.

Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won’t be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war.

Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights.

Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality.

And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women’s rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.

The questions before the Members of this House and to all Americans are immense, but there are clear answers. America is not currently confronted by a genuine, proven, imminent threat from Iraq. The call for war is wrong.

And what greatly saddens me at this point in our history is my fear that this entire spectacle has not been planned for the well being of the world, but for the short-term political interest of our President.

Now, I am also greatly disturbed that many Democratic leaders have also put political calculation ahead of the President’s accountability to truth and reason by supporting this resolution.

But, I conclude that the only answer is to vote no on the resolution before us.

i have not mentioned george II so much, i suppose i've become complacent. the entire administration seems like such a complete sham of ass-kissing corporate thieves, power-hungry buffoons and fools with complete disregard for anyone who is not them, that it often appears to be happening in some kind of alternate universe. it's gotten to the point where they don't even agree with nancy reagan, because she sees stem-cell research as useful to alzhimers research. so much for believing in god - guess it comes around to biting you on yer ass.
anyway.
i'm looking forward to all our friends who voted for george II sending their children off to war, or perhaps signing up for the military themselves! they tend to talk about how heroic it is - i anticipate alot of wonderful stories of adventure.
in the meantime, here is a speech, a no vote for giving george II is tonkin gulf resolution. its a good read, i suggest it.
in fact, i'll just post it. it is from California Rep. Pete Stark:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution.

I am deeply troubled that lives may be lost without a meaningful attempt to bring Iraq into compliance with UN resolutions through careful and cautious diplomacy.

The bottom line is I don’t trust this President and his advisors.

Make no mistake, we are voting on a resolution that grants total authority to the President who wants to invade a sovereign nation without any specific act of provocation. This would authorize the United States to act as the aggressor for the first time in our history.

It sets a precedent for our nation - or any nation - to exercise brute force anywhere in the world without regard to international law or international consensus.

Congress must not walk in lockstep behind a President who has been so callous to proceed without reservation, as if war was of no real consequence.

You know, three years ago in December, Molly Ivins, an observer of Texas politics, wrote: ‘For an upper-class white boy, Bush comes on way too hard. At a guess, to make up for being an upper-class white boy.”

’Somebody,’ she said, ‘should be worrying about how all this could affect his handling of future encounters with some Saddam Hussein.’ How prophetic, Ms. Ivins.

Let us not forget that our President -- our Commander in Chief – has no experience with, or knowledge of, war. In fact, he admits that he was at best ambivalent about the Vietnam War. He skirted his own military service and then failed to serve out his time in the National Guard. And, he reported years later that at the height of that conflict in 1968 he didn’t notice ‘any heavy stuff going on.’

So we have a President who thinks foreign territory is the opponent’s dugout and Kashmir is a sweater.

What is most unconscionable is that there is not a shred of evidence to justify the certain loss of life. Do the generalized threats and half-truths of this Administration give any one of us in Congress the confidence to tell a mother or father or family that the loss of their child or loved one was in the name of a just cause?

Is the President’s need for revenge for the threat once posed to his father enough to justify the death of any American?

I submit the answer to these questions is no.

Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination.

The Administration admits to a cost of around 200 Billion Dollars!

Now, wealthy individuals won’t pay. They’ve got big tax cuts already.

Corporations won’t pay. They’ll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans.

Rich kids won’t pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W.

Well then, who will pay?

School kids will pay. There’ll be no money to keep them from being left behind - way behind.

Seniors will pay. They’ll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war.

Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won’t be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war.

Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights.

Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality.

And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women’s rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.

The questions before the Members of this House and to all Americans are immense, but there are clear answers. America is not currently confronted by a genuine, proven, imminent threat from Iraq. The call for war is wrong.

And what greatly saddens me at this point in our history is my fear that this entire spectacle has not been planned for the well being of the world, but for the short-term political interest of our President.

Now, I am also greatly disturbed that many Democratic leaders have also put political calculation ahead of the President’s accountability to truth and reason by supporting this resolution.

But, I conclude that the only answer is to vote no on the resolution before us.

new song for you.

a wonderful thing, brought to you via the power of the internet.
today, while looking through boingboing i found a link to something i had never heard of before, the practice of annotating comics.
the original link is here, but is at geocities, so is hard to get too as they shut down access to it when traffic gets above a certain limit (wak), but as i wandered around a bit more i discovered that the work at geocities is mirrored here.
then, i discovered that jay babcock, a local writer who deals mostly with thoughts on music, concert ruminations and the like-minded, has some comic book annotations on his site as well.
i arrived at his annotations through a back door, so to speak, and when i realized who it was cruised on over to the homepage. once there, i couldn't quickly find a link to his annotations page.
but, i did see some links to articles/interviews with alan moore.

fuck.
it is looking like i left my camden joy book on one of the mufuggin' flights i took last week.

i ceased being a sports fan a few years ago, when the university of kentucky lost to the universtity of arizona in the finals of the college basketball tourney. college sports are HUGE in kentucky, as they have no major league pro teams. on that night, years ago, my heart was broken by a team of people who i probably would have nothing to do with for hopefully the last time.
now i listen to sports talk radio in my car since i only have an AM radio and i don't speak spanish.
my interest is mostly passing, but sometimes anthropological (in my mind at least).
all this brings me to last night over at peter's, watching his beloved gigantes maintain a distance on los cardinales de santa louis. a few beers, too much pizza and not much defense.

for those who ain't seen it yet, the trailer for the two towers is available. lots of different resolutions to choose from. i didn't spend much time frame-by-framing it, but i couldn't get a good read on the balrog, wings or no. that is to say, there is a brief flash of gandalf and the flame of udun plummeting. other highlights, a glimpse of an ent and the gollum.

jumpin' cats! a friend has an auction up on the electronic bay, 100's of photos of "his friend jimmy". bid it up!

cooked. via slord 66.

who'd a thought anyone would notice if i went away for a few days.
i just got back, last night actually, from a long weekend in louisville kentucky where i visited for a friends wedding.
seeing those close to me, friends and their parents who are practically my second sets of parents, rehersal dinner, tornado and rains, chapel wedding, champagne at the reception, the chicken dance, sipping beer out of a keg until 4:30 at "the cinderblock", lots of pictures of the ibiza/england trip to show mom and my sis, record shopping, tv watching and good food eating.

its laundry day for stazza, here at the house, and that means he's digging through his closets, looking at blazers and what-not as he is making room for his newly cleaned clothes.
which means that i am digging through my closets to compare blazers.
it turns out that i have three, count 'em, blue blazers.
one is a traditional two-button (brooks)
one is a more contemporary three-button (jcrew)
and one...
double breasted. (brooks)
ah one. ah two-hooo. ah three.

i am, as they say, unemployed.
i am unrepentent. i have paid money into the unemployment insurance fund, gladly, and am now collecting some of what was set aside. i know a great deal of people who are out of work, more than i ever have in my lifetime, and i am old enough to have lived through the boom nineties in such a way that i can recognize how different life is under George II. everybody who has a job wants out and everybody who is out wants one. this last bit has to do, i'm sure, with the average age of me and my crew more than the boring, business suck up president.
i know one person who enjoys her job, really enjoys the job, the particular job (not just the trade) and her coworkers. but jennifer is slightly ;-) younger than me. (to be fair, the job is cool and so are the peeps - its me who is hung up on age)
today i had to call EDD. after i came back from europe i sent in a claim form late, which triggers a fone interview appointment. unfortunately my appointment is scheduled for when i will be in the center of the universe for a friends wedding, so if you can't answer the fone at the appointed time, you need to deal with the EDD fone answering service, which is so packed it is hit or miss whether they will even take you on hold.
but today i actually got through and spoke to a super helpful woman named "georgia".
i was str8 up with these folks, much like my good friends at the kentucky higher education studend loan corporation, and she totally hooked me.
at least it appears that way.
amazingly helpful, patient and not, seemingly, worn out by the deluge of work-less.
praise odin.

here's a cheery one: Father dies after shooting himself in the head during gun safety lesson. dad excuses himself from society, kid scarred for life. you'd think that if gun owners would be half as paranoid about shooting themselves as they are about the world, or black helicoptors, attacking them, they wouldn't be f'ing themselves so damn much.