New blog: Content-o-rama

Update 9/26/09: The new blog turned out to be a bad idea. It was time-consuming to edit and post my articles, and it hardly seemed worth it, given that I wasn't particularly interested in them in the first place.

I think that working on one blog at a time is more than enough for me, and the blog I most want to focus on, by a huge margin, is my LOST blog.

So I'm putting all my new blogs into a state of limbo, not deleting them, at least not right now, but not working on them either. As for this blog, I think I'll keep it as a kind of virtual scrapbook, where I can occasionally post videos, pictures, and notes that will help me remember some of the things that I've done.

This is almost a private diary anyway. The only reason people ever come here is to download the picture of the beautiful green dress Keira Knightley wore in the movie Atonement.

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Original post:

The other day, I was looking over my account at Helium.com, and I realized they had deleted about 30 of my articles because the articles now fell below the new minimum-word-length requirement. I'm also starting to accumulate articles from Demand Studios that I've pulled from the site because of problems during the editing process. So I started a new blog as a kind of content graveyard where I can put all of those articles, and maybe give them a second shot at life -->



Much of the content I've written is liable to induce a zombie-like stupor in the unwary reader, but I think some of it may be useful to some people.

Picture is a screenshot from Night of the Living Dead, via Wikipedia.

My new blog can be found at http://contentorama.blogspot.com.

Joan Baez at Stern Grove, July 12, 2009

Another beautiful day at Stern Grove.

Robert Flack at Stern Grove yesterday

Beautiful day, and I had a major nostalgia attack!

There's no video of yesterday's concert available, but here's Roberta Flack singing "Killing Me Softly With His Song" in a 1988 concert:

Editing to add -- now there is video!



Here's one shot from behind the trees:

Multiple online personalities

I'm continuing to consolidate more of my online writing under the name "Ms Terri" as part of an attempt to bring my multiple online personalities together in a big group hug (ha!):

Multiple personalities
do not always work and play well
with each other

(I love this photo, which I found on Flickr, by mnd.ctrl. Creative Commons license)

Botancal Gardens -- we won!

Got this email:

Dear Friends:

After a long and very lively conversation regarding fees for the San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park, we will be recommending that NO fee be charged for this special natural space. Instead, we will be instituting a "suggested fee" schedule and are looking to bring in a vendor to offer food and beverages.

We thank you for your input and look forward to working with you on our shared goal of keeping the Botanical Garden beautiful for present and future generations.


Thank you,

Jared Blumenfeld
General Manager
San Francisco Recreation and Park Department

Whew!

Purple flowers in the late afternoon sun, beside the path around the Arboretum's big lawn, June 2008.

Sunday in the park (and in the parking lot)

I'm getting lazy about taking pictures. I went to a couple of events yesterday and thought of taking my little camera with me, but then I thought that other people would be putting their photos on the web. It would be easier to just point to them, and the photos would probably be better than mine anyway.

Sure enough, someone took great pictures of the opening day of the Sunday morning Inner Sunset Farmer's Market in the 9th and Irving parking lot. The weather was beautiful and lots of people showed up. Most of the food was on the pricey end, but I bought a few items and also learned about things going on in the neighborhood. Very nice! I'll probably swing by there every week.

Then I went to the annual Israel in the Gardens event in Yerba Buena Park. The headliner act was Ivri Lider:





I had a falafel, which was okay, and some puff pastry things stuffed with spinach and potato, which I had never had before. They were incredibly good. I got a couple more, on the way out, to take home and had them for dinner.

Fee proposal for San Francisco Botancal Gardens (Arboretum) -- second public meeting

I went to the second meeting last night.

Someone videotaped the first ten minutes:



There are good photos and descriptions on the San Francisco Citizen blog.

I got there a few minutes late, and when I walked in, there was a lot of shouting going on. (This was at about the 1:00 minute point on the video above.) (Editing to add -- I found out later that what happened was that the TPTB originally tried to break the attendees up into smaller groups, in a "workshop" format. People who have been involved in SF politics for a while believe that "workshops" are a standard way for officials to give the appearance of allowing a public hearing without actually paying any attention to what the public has to say. Thus, the angry insistence on the attendees not being divided up.) Jim Lazarus, who is on the Parks Commission, took over as moderator, and did a great job of keeping the discussion on track.

But I don't think I came out of the meeting knowing much more than I did when I came in.

Botanical Gardens director Brent Dennis said that in a survey they did a couple of years ago, before the Academy of Sciences reopened (which presumably has increased the number of people visiting the Gardens), there were 400,000 visitors per year.

Half of those were San Francisco residents (a number that seems low to me).

If they implement the fee, then ticketing staff will cost about $148,000 per year (that also sounds low).

He said that would generate about $400,000 total, with $100,000 to $150,000 going to Park & Rec and the rest going to Arboretum improvements.

Several people asked what, exactly, the budget shortfall is for the Arboretum, and how much money would be needed to maintain the Gardens the way it is now. Those were key questions, IMO. Lazarus wasn't giving direct answers, and eventually he said that they couldn't answer those questions now, because it will depend on what the shortfall will be for parks budget overall, and what part of that budget will go to the Arboretum.

Apparently, it's not proportional. A decrease of X% for the parks overall wouldn't necessarily mean an X% decrease for the Arboretum. The Arboretum seems to have some sort of protected status, having far more gardeners for its size than other park sites, and being able to hold onto them longer.

This all seemed so vague. No one really knows how much money the Gardens needs to keep up the status quo for the long term or even for the short term -- the officials just say that what they have isn't enough. And there was still some mushing together, though less so than in the last meeting, of the ideas of maintaining the gardens as they are now versus building them into a world-class "museum."

It's not at all clear how much of the new funds would be going to one objective rather than the other, and I still think the timing of this raises questions. Are TPTB at the Gardens pointing to the budget crisis as a way not only to plug up any budgetary holes, but also as an opportunity to get extra funds to make some long-desired upgrades? (In a 2007 article, Director Dennis was quoted as saying that he wanted to give the Gardens "a higher profile.")

A woman from the public suggested having an open-air cafe inside the Gardens as a way of raising funds, which I thought was a great idea, and a quick vote by show of hands showed a lot of agreement. Someone else (Lazarus?) suggested having people (volunteers?) hand visitors maps as they walk in and ask them for voluntary payment -- but without having the gates, cashiers, ID cards, and mandatory fees. The vote on that was split.

Here's another three minutes of the meeting:



On June 18, there will be a public meeting of the Parks Commission at 4:00 on the 4th Floor of City Hall.

To get involved: http://keeparboretumfree.org/

Watching the Inauguration at Yerba Buena Gardens

It may have been cold in Washington,
but it was a beautiful day in San Francisco

Nice and sunny!

Aretha

Itzhak Perlman

Joe Biden

Can't see who is on the screen here,
but I liked this guy's cape

President Obama!

The screen went blank right in the middle of the speech. Oops!

The picture came back on a few mintues later.

The last "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" from the Letterman show

Bye-bye Bush.

M-m-m-m-m-m-My Menorah!

Quoth Sarah Palin, "I Want More"

(with apologies to Edgar Allan Poe)

Once upon a Tuesday dreary, while I waited, drained and weary,
Done with speeches, no more crowds to fill my ears with a mighty roar
On the TV, votes were mappin', suddenly there came a tappin'
As of some one gently rappin', rappin' at my hotel-suite door.
"'Tis my subconscious," I muttered, "remindin' me what I adore —
Oh, the limelight. I want more."

Ah, distinctly I remembered it was just this past September,
When Katie Couric's “gotcha!” questions I strove mightily to ignore
What would happen by tomorrow? – if I lost, would I have to go home and borrow
A cup of sugar from my Russian neighbors on the nearby shore?
I didn't want to go all the way back to my obscure Alaskan shore.
I wanted to be famous for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustlin' of each Florida votin' booth curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beatin' of my heart, I stood repeatin',
“'Tis only the bleatin' of the liberal media press corps
The Un-American socialist terror-lovin' press corps
This it is, and nothin' more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitatin' then no longer,
I called the hotel's front desk, and for a plumber to be sent up I did implore;
For I had a cravin' for some clappin', and when I heard the plumber's rappin'
Oh, so faintly he came tappin', tappin' at my deluxe penthouse hotel-suite door,
“I swear I will never raise your taxes,” I told him as I opened wide the door; --
He winked at me, and I wanted more.

And his plunger, red as a mitten, still is sittin', still is sittin'
On the entry table right inside my Wasalia home's front door;
And when I see it, my tears start streamin', for my heart is always dreamin'
Of the time the Joe Sixpacks were beamin' at me, and my life was not such a bore
And my soul from out of the plunger's shadow emerges and declares that bein' without power is such a bore
I miss the limelight – I want more!

Drill, baby, drill

Life imitates satire.

My satire, this time!

Last night at the Republican Convention, during Rudy Giuliani's speech, the crowd started chanting "Drill, baby, drill!"



Six weeks ago, I wrote an entry for a satire contest, which had John McCain trying to woo the youth vote by putting on a hoodie and awkwardly attempting to rap. It started like this:

Look around America, and what do you see?
A million phat sites where a fresh oil rig could be
Drill, baby, drill, baby, bring me that sweet oil
Bring it to me piping hot right out of the soil.

To hear the R's chanting it for real last night was a Twlight Zone moment for me.

Shakespeare in the Park

Went to see the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival on Labor Day in the Presidio. They're doing Pericles, which no one ever does. Wonderful production, done as if it were a Western movie, complete with twangy accents and Western-style music and dance. Great costumes that could easily have been on a Broadway stage.

Just went to their website to see if they had any pictures I could post, and saw that they had a YouTube video. The wonders of modern technology!

Jennifer Hudson and Will.I.Am -- last day of the Democratic covention

These are great. I missed seeing them on TV, because they came on before I started watching.

I snagged the videos off of Shakesville.

Jennifer Hudson:



Will.I.Am and John Legend:

New Yorker cartoon event

Went to a wonderful talk given by Robert Mankoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, held in conjunction with the William Steig exhibit at the new SF Contemporary Jewish Museum. He told funny anecdotes about how he got started (when he told his parents he wanted to be a cartoonist, his father said, "They already have people who do that"), and presented a lecture, with slides, on the history of cartoons and cover art in the magazine, along with a detailed analysis of how humor works, the latter appropriate from this editor who had come close to getting a PhD in experimental psychology before turning to cartoons.

The elephant in the room was the infamous Obama fist-bump cover. Mankoff mentioned it a few times in passing, but it wasn't until the audience question period in the end that the focus really turned to the topic. I was disappointed that so many in this audience (more than half, by a raised-hand estimate) agreed with the lefty blogosphere sentiment that the cover was a mistake that would reinforce the prejudices of a hypothetical irony-deficient person in Ohio. (When someone made that point, Mankoff replied, "Do you actually know such a person? Be honest!") I had expected a different reaction from people who would come out for this kind of event, who presumably were quite familiar with the magazine, its cartoons, and its covers. I thought Mankoff made a lot of sense when he said that having the flag burning in the fireplace and the picture of bin Laden on the wall made it obvious that the picture was meant to be over the top. Things started to get tense when a few people in the audience shouted their disagreement on this point, though, and everyone was relieved when the next questioner changed the subject.

Overall, Mankoff seemed a bit defensive on the subject, seeming to think the cover was a failure because so many people didn't get it, but defending failures as necessary for creative work. He also thought that David Remnick hadn't anticipated the reaction, and that if he had, he wouldn't have run the cover. Tina Brown enjoyed creating controversy, but Remnick, according to Mankoff, does not.

Also on the stage for part of the program was Owen Smith, an illustrator for the magazine. He's the one who did the wonderful covers in pulp-detective-novel style for the fiction issues. Those covers too, by the way, generated a stack of subscription cancellations. Just goes to show that you can never please everyone.

As for the current cover controversy, I think Jon Stewart got it right.

Starting the program was an eight-minute preview of a documentary film that's still in progress about the New Yorker cartoonists. It was fascinating to see the faces, and drawing hands, behind some of the magazine's most familiar cartoons. The film looked like it was very well done, and I think it could turn out to be the most entertaining documentary since Wordplay, which is saying a lot! The filmmaker is Leah Wolchok, the flim is called Laugh Lines, and there should be more info here at some point.

When someone asked how she could get a cartoon into the magazine, Mankoff answered, "the same way you get to Carnegie Hall." He himself submitted 2,000 cartoons before having one accepted.

I guess persistence pays off -- except when it doesn't.

Flower pictures

Yesterday, in the Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park:

The Contemporary Jewish Museum opened today

Very nice! Interesting architecture, with the new literally smashing into the old. There were two major exhibits, one a multi-artist show on various reactions to Genesis, and the other a retrospective of the work of William Steig, New Yorker cartoonist, cover illustrator, and children's book illustrator and author. He's best known as the creator of Shrek (which means "fear" in Yiddish). There was also a sound installation inside the "yud" space.


The blue structure on the left is the new part of the museum building. It contains the gift shop, visible through the diamond windows, and the "yud" gallery above. The red brick building on the right was originally a power station built in 1881. Daniel Libeskind was the museum's architect.


Inside of the "yud" gallery.

Eeek, I've gone digital!

I got a digital camera for a birthday present.  It's just a point-and-shooter, but I've been playing with it to see what it can do.  Love not having to buy film.  Hate not having more contol over the focus, aperture, and shutter speed.  Love, love, love that it's tiny and weighs almost nothing, and I can just throw it in my purse and take it with me anywhere.  

I won a contest!

After months of being among the runners-up (always a bridesmaid and never a bride) for this weekly satire-writing contest, this time I won! The assignment: write 400 words or less on the topic "Polygamy is made legal."

Update: Won again (6/24/08): Another former Bush adminstration official publishes a tell-all book, and this one tops all the others!

And again! (7/15/08): Cheney declared election winner after Haliburton wins electronic voting machine contract

And another (7/22/08): To attract young voters, John McCain raps

And I thought my landlord was bad ...

From yesterday's SF Chronicle:

Morrow fought his eviction and won ... That was when the trouble started....

One day, Morrow noticed the blade of a saw come through his living room floor, his attorney said. He and a friend managed to bend the blade, which had cut a 2-by-4-foot hole in the floor.

Yikes!

The other tenants in the building didn't fare much better:

The couple were also charged with terrorizing two other tenants in the building who began paying the Macys reduced rent after concluding that they were being overcharged under the city's rent control law.

Prosecutors said the Macys broke into the tenants' apartment last June and stole $2,000 in cash, a Gucci watch and a cell phone....

When Hernandez came home and confronted Kip Macy as the landlord was ransacking his apartment, Macy kicked him in the chest, the suit says...

In October, Nicole Macy broke into the apartment and poured ammonia on clothes, bedding and home electronics, prosecutors said.