Curse the local economy, whose latest cultural victim is Oakland's Fruitvale district bash for Cinco de Mayo. On the other hand, San Jose's Cinco de Mayo fiesta is still on for Sunday.
What this really gets me thinking about, though, is Carnaval. San Francisco's usual blowout is set for May 23 and 24 in my beloved former home base, the Mission District.
To whet your appetite, enjoy these pics I shot of the proceedings from a couple years back. Dare I say, they stand the test of time.
Giovanni Goodman, a.k.a. the Chemo Kid, is about to get mad props from the media, I bet. The Vacaville rapper popped up in my "hyphy" Google alert as an up-and-comer who's been battling cancer for about a half-decade.
The 20-something rhymer, who grew up in Queens listening to such old-school flavors as Public Enemy and De La Soul, is set to drop his debut disc, "The Chemical Chronicles," next month.
For the full story on my San Jose Culture Examiner page, CLICK HERE.
Celebrate alluring Asian traditions that predate ascetic Muslim extremism at the upcoming Festival of the Silk Road, set May 2 in San Jose at the Mexican Heritage Plaza Theater, multiculturally enough.
For the full story on my San Jose Culture Examiner page, CLICK HERE.
As you know by now, Navy SEALs cut down three seafaring rogues who kidnapped a U.S. freighter captain, ending a five-day standoff along the Somali coast between pirates and America's armed forces. Reports say the snipers busted just three caps.
I'm a pirate lore fan and found a way to explore the fascinating bygone era of anarchist seafaring societies thanks to a dearly departed East Bay pirate wares seller.
A few times, I wrote about the shop and interviewed owner Don Hatcher for the Oakland Tribune:
Despite their fierce reputation, pirates created one of the first true democracies aboard their ships, where Don said "every man got an equal say and an equal vote," and crew members were guaranteed their freedom after a certain time or a certain amount of loot had been pillaged.
The annual NorCal Pirate Festival is coming up in June at the Vallejo waterfront; get details here.
For more tidbits about pirates, the now shuttered store named SeaWolf Trading Co. and so on, CLICK HERE.
Google is a lot of fun for many things, but searching for rants about Obama being like Hitler has to be the greatest query of all.
Watching foam-at-the-mouth Fox News man Glenn Beck compare America's president with the scourge of 20th century Europe, obliquely, inspired me to see just how popular the rhetorical scare tactic is, now that we know Obama -- thanks to his early missteps -- is not quite Jesus.
What I learned is that he apparently has more in common with the Antichrist, according to some "critics" on the interwebz.
No sooner had the season begun than leadoff Cubs hitter Alfonso Soriano clobbered the second pitch he saw into the Astros' stands.
Whether you're an expat Chicago fan like me or just a root-root-rooter for the underdog, you gotta have faith that the early homer is a good omen for the all-time also-rans of Major League Baseball.
Just in case you haven't the faintest interest in non-Bay Area hardball lore, the Cubbies have failed to make it to World Series since 1945 and haven't won it all since 1908.
That's two years after the great San Francisco earthquake and six years before the start of World War I.
Legend has it that the curse of the Billy Goat is responsible for the Cubs' continuing slide into ignominy. Even the Boston Red Sox have a less pathetic losing streak.
Completely Used up By September, indeed.
Here's one telling of the curse and subsequent setbacks such as a black cat in the dugout and, of course, that unsavory Steve Bartman incident, courtesy of writer James Lincoln Ray.
In my fantasy, poetic justice holds that when the Cubs finally do return to glory and win the World Series, it will be at the disgrace of the Yankees, the most unlovable team in all of baseball.
So what if they have a fancy new stadium? Nothing tops the heart and soul of the time-honored bricks and ivy of Wrigley Field -- even if that blabbermouth pitcher Zambrano recently gave comfort to the enemy:
“You come into a ballpark like this and you see great things,” the Cubs ace told The Associated Press on Saturday before his team’s 10-1 exhibition loss at the sparkling ballpark in the Bronx. “You wish that Chicago’d build a new stadium for the Cubs."
Cub fans are used to getting smacked around, but by their own pitcher? Sigh.
Speaking of building new stadiums, it looks like Fremont is out for a new A's home, while San Jose is picking up steam as the hot spot for the team to relocate to, even if it currently is Giants territory.
For more info: Check out Examiner.com domination of opening day. Make sure if you ever visit Chicago, you pay respects at the Billy Goat Tavern. Cheezborger!
The most sinister and one of the most enjoyable chracters on E.R. was brought to life by Paul McCrane, who also directed some episodes. Photo by NBC.
Did you get excited about the finale of E.R., or are you one of those "I stopped watching long ago" naysayers?
Regardless of whether the show jumped the shark with the helicopter-crash killing of brilliant bad guy Dr. Romano, it was always about character development and emotional resonance first, not just slam-bang rating grabs.
It took me a while to get into E.R., but when this Chicago native caught the bug, he fell hard.
It was while I was living alone in a chilly, remote locale to work a so-so job and feeling utterly unsure of the future that I saw some back-to-back reruns late at night.
That let me follow the evolution of the characters and their myriad subplots in a way I likely never would have if I just happened to see occasional weekly episodes.
On the other hand, that first helicopter accident involving Romano -- really a secret weapon for the show, someone the audience could root against in a satisfying way and thereby sympathize with everyone else, his victims -- that fixed my attention on the series for good.
Parminder Nagra helped bring alive the stories on E.R. with her cerebral portrayal of Dr. Neela Rasgotra, who wasn't shy about workplace love. Photo by NBC.
After I discovered the minor miracle of the DVR, I managed to catch up on the entire series and really became a devotee.
Nevermind that the reruns appeared on a women's lifestyle-marketed network. Lots of Joy dishwashing liquid commercials and such, for sure.
If I had to pick a character I empathize with the most, I'd say it was Neela (played by Parminder Nagra), whose ambivalence about her life -- and love -- choices and "stuck in her head" struggle felt very familiar.
We even both were exiled to Michigan for a while. And we're drawn to Louisiana, for different reasons.
If I had to pick one episode that encapsulated the believable subtlety of the actors in a wildly entertaining storyline that showed the range of the writers and producers, I'd say it was when Drs. Carter and Kovac worked in Africa:
If I had to pick one weakness of the series, it was the patients. Their portrayal never was up to par with the regular cast's ability, and it was the hospital staffers who carried the emotional weight of the show anyway. How distracting they had to heal all those complaining sickies.
I had the pleasure of interviewing a local actress who landed a minor role on the show several years ago, although I never got around to interviewing Redwood City native Linda Cardellini, who played nurse Samantha Taggart for a surprising run, given how the chicas seemed to come and go in a revolving-door fashion.
Anyway, the one I did get on the phone, Giovannie Espiritu (a.k.a. Pico), was a blip on the radar of E.R. in the long run, but she lent her brief starpower to the cause of domestic-violence prevention, as recorded in this snippet of a San Mateo County Times article about a 2007 relationship seminar at a South City church:
Giovannie Pico, a TV actor who lives in San Bruno with her 6-year-old son and other relatives, will host Saturday's event. The Filipina said the religious setting is important to her because of her own experience dealing with an abusive partner.
"I was told by church members that I needed to pray harder," she said, "or that I was supposed to submit to my husband. It's really like a change in tide in the way that the church is talking about domestic violence."
Pico, 28, has appeared on "ER" and "Bones" and has an upcoming role in "Gilmore Girls," is directing a Tagalog version of "The Vagina Monologues" on March 24 at the Herbst Theatre. The 28-year- old said focusing on the Filipino community is part of a broader effort to educate people about abuse.
"There's a lot of shame that's surrounding it," Pico said. "I was in a relationship that was domestically violent, and I didn't even know. I didn't know what a healthy relationship looked like."
It may not be a healthy relationship to fall in love with a TV show either. E.R. eventually led to crushes on The Shield and Lost and Mad Men, and so it goes. Yet I will always have a soft spot for County General Hospital and its nuanced, lifelike, downright literary cast of characters.
Thanks for that respite from the worries of real life, if only for an hour a week.
For more info: Finally, the official NBC site for E.R. has full episodes you can watch online and avoid the Joy dishwashing liquid interruptions. Chuck Barney at the Contra Costa Times wrote a nice send-off to the series, noting the litany of character hookups that kept us wondering whom Neela would neck with next.
A challenging book I started reading 20 years ago and still haven't finished or come to terms with. A lot of its philosophic vitriol felt personal as a somewhat anti-intellectual intellectual youth. And I came to sympathize significantly wi...
So what does decoherence mean? I latched onto the term several years ago when I was reading about quantum theory and started this blog.
Decoherence is akin to entropy, where physical disturbances sort of wash out in the overall scheme of things, an averaging of unique particle interactions in an inevitably cooling universe.
Metaphorically, creating an intellectual levee to halt that trend in our culture is one way to preserve what is special and unique amid the middling herd.
A more succinct, non-technical summary of the theory that I recently came across is by this Vancouver physics prof:
"Decoherence is the process by which quantum becomes classical; the process by which the determinism of the macroscopic world arises out of the superpositions and entanglements that describe the microscopic one."
