This is the residence my mom listed as her address on my birth certificate. Assuming I can find a ride willing to take me there, my hope is that visceral contact with my early environment will broaden and deepen my sense of humility. It’s hard to be grandiose when confronted with irrefutable evidence that your scattered memories of life in a small corner of Southern California’s sprawl defined the shape of your subconscious.
Haven’t had time to post on Baghdad By the Bay Bites Back, my Frisco-centric Vox blog. But if you love you some Jackson, all three of you should check out some of the video coverage from my friends at GavinWatch. And because I’m a vain, vain person, here’s my interview.
Note: I posted this via YouTube two days ago — it just showed up now. Man are they slow to process requests and update their search index.
So I was sitting at 111 Minna chatting with my friend Liz, and she was talking up a movie. I happened to have my laptop out, and looked it up on IMDB to see if it was the same movie I was thinking of. Not having seen it, I quickly clicked over and searched Mininova, found a torrent and started downloading.
I type fast, so Liz got the impression that I had some cool hack to automagically locate torrents from IMDB listings. Which we both decided was something that should exist. And it does! So what started as a lazyweb request post just turned into a cool new tool post.
Think the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the greatest hope for lasting change the world has ever seen? Think again. But then, the whole nature of private philanthropy means that it gives, and receives money, on it’s own terms. Without any public accountability, there’s no reason the foundation can’t give bandages to one side and bullets to the other in the war zone of its choosing.
I would argue that private philanthropy is actual counter-productive, since it has a vested interest in the status quo of doing business. That it occassionally picks up the bodies broken under the wheel of commerce is a salve only to the conscience of the philanthropist.
Entering the comedy world as a black man means you always stand out, even during off hours, such as one Christmas evening in New York at my first holiday comedy mixer. All of Gotham’s comedic glitterati were there. I cornered a “Daily Show” writer, doing my best to get the inside track on a possible actor/writer gig. We broached the subject of black correspondents. He told me that they “tried a black guy once, but it didn’t work out.” I nearly threw my imported beer in his face. Tried it once and it didn’t work? You say that about Toyotas, not a whole race of people. But to date, comedy writing is pretty whitewashed. As of this season, “Saturday Night Live” has no black writers. “The Daily Show” also doesn’t have any, and neither does “The Colbert Report,” a show on which I’ve played Stephen Colbert’s black friend “Alan,” a member of the staff. That’s right. “The Colbert Report” had to hire an actor to play a black person who works on the show.
Now I can see how a comedian at the top of his game could feel uncomfortable enough to leave the network.
There is little in this world I love more than a roundup. It’s like the Whit Stillman ideal of reading literary criticism without having to read the actual literature. And since I’m down with that sort of post-modern sentiment, I present a meta-roundup of roundups from around the Jacksonsphere (TM, etc) this weekend.
This post marks a return to writing about San Francisco, which I’ll be doing over at the new incarnation of my original blog, “Baghdad by the Bay Bites Back.” The opinions expressed here do reflect the views held by Jackson West’s Obsessive Compulsion and its subsidiaries, but not necessarily anyone else.
On the way out the door to my friend Jane Kim’s swearing in ceremony at the Tenderloin Community School, I checked my mail and found a note from Liz Wolf-Spada, the mother of Jane’s and my mutual friend Josh Wolf. It hit me that one of my blogger friends is in prison for defending his rights, and another is the first Korean-American elected official in San Francisco. I won’t pretend to be made of such stuff, but I’m damn glad folks like Liz, Josh and Jane are.
Even I was surprised at the pomp and circumstance of the event. All of your famouse-for-San Francisco types were there. There was Gavin Newsom with some distinguished arm candy; Pat Murphy and Luke Thomas quietly avoiding each other; Tom Ammiano yukking it up with Kamala Harris (who I didn’t vote for, but who’s won me over); Bevan Dufty and Eric Mar carrying their daughers only a little like props; and of course Sarah Low’s husband Chris Daly. Assessor Phil Ting, Supervisor Ed Jew and Assemblywoman Fiona Ma stood together towards the back — Westside Mafia in the hizzy!
The School of the Arts Jazz Band swung (I see a bright future for stylish percussionist on timbales), and the kids in the Touch of Class Choir were probably the cutest thing ever. The SF JROTC corps presented colors, and had plenty of support in the room. Because it wouldn’t be a political event if there weren’t a few pawns on hand.
The most entertaining element by far was judging the jaw clench levels of Gavster and The Daly while the other was introducing the candidate they endorsed — Hydra Mendoza and Jane, respectively. Kim-Shree Maufas was the only one to break into waterworks, or at least to draw applause for it. But she was all smiles at the City Hall afterparty, where the Bul Go Gee was delicious. My friend Glenda broadcast the following text via Twitter: “Supervisor Daly just served us all liquor off his desk. That’s public service, right there.” Amen, sister.
I have avoided LA like the plague most of my life. Save for one stop in Hollywood on the way to Orange County many years ago with some family friends on an RV trip, I haven’t been anywhere near where I was born (Long Beach) and raised (Lynnwood) since the family left when I was three. Not that I can really remember any of it.
Looking to do some travelling after too many years of shuttling exclusively between Seattle and San Francisco, with occassional visits to Austin, I decided to take the plunge. And now it’s official: I’m arriving on the afternoon of Sunday the 28th and leaving the next Sunday, and will be staying at, in my mother’s words, the “shabby genteel” Mayfair — where she and my father once attended Teamster meetings, and a short walk from MacArthur Park, where they shouted at UFW rallies.
If you’re in LA, and would like me to pay a visit, drop me a line. I’m tentatively planning a Friday night meetup at the Roscoe’s on Sunset if you’re interested. I’ll be working my beat looking for online video stories and other web hipster goofiness.
I’ll also be checking out the public transit, the art districts, and how the fixie-ridin’ hipsters in Silverlake compare to ours here in the Mission. I promise not to come back with a spray tan, wearing aviators and sportin’ a fauxhawk. I do reserve the right to continue using “baby” as a genderless term of affection and consolation, however.
I'm a writer and web geek living in beautiful San Francisco, California. Here I occasionally post things that cross my mind. You can find my professional work at Valleywag... (more)
