RainyDay

I'm with BFrank. Yesterday was the first day we didn't have record breaking heat in SF or Oakland and it was just lovely. I hate hot weather. Today was a little warmer but still mild. I spent the afternoon in Berkeley wandering down Telegraph Avenue buying incense and looking for a Dennis Gonzalez record at Rasputin's and Amoeba record stores. This is why we put up with the earthquakes (she said hoping not to jinx the gods of 6.0+ earthquakes), the mild weather.

MTV was fun back when it was brand spanking new and the only videos they played were mostly from Britain. I had no idea Jackson was already middle-aged when he was a vee jay but then I never really thought about his age at all. I feel old too. Heck, I am old.

My co-worker lives in SF and he and his wife take BART over and back 'cos they don't own a car. They make the hike between the club and 12th St. BART. I supose you could grab cab up to BART after the set, it's only a mile away. Something to consider.

My favorite columnist writing about my favorite jazz club. ******************************************************************** JON CARROLL Jon Carroll Friday, March 19, 2004 ©2004 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback | FAQ URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/03/19/DDG3F5MKEP1.DTL So last week someone showed up at Yoshi's and said he was me. I'm almost certain it wasn't me because I would have remembered going to see Mose Allison. I would have shouted out, "Do 'Seventh Son'!," which would have embarrassed everyone. The guy from Yoshi's e-mailed me the next day. Apparently he had felt forced to give the guy a seat when the guy complained there'd been a mix-up about his free tickets. It's nice to know that I can get free tickets by claiming a mix-up. It just never occurred to me. I really should get more out of this being me thing than I have. The guy could have just asked. If I weren't being me that evening, he could have been me; one of us might as well have a good time. But being me without permission: That's really a breach of etiquette. Suppose he'd walked into a liquor store and said, "I'm Jon Carroll; give me all your money." They would have had to do it, of course -- such is the power of the press. But they would have complained later. "Dear Reader's Representative: Are columnists really allowed to hold up liquor stores by brandishing their names? My wife and I were outraged. What if my young daughter had been forced to watch that? Signed, Burned by the Liberal Media." Part of the problem is that I look like half the people in the East Bay. It's a wonder that concert halls aren't filled with me every night. (Actually, I went to Alvin Ailey last week at Zellerbach, and it was pretty much filled with me. Some of me were African American. It's my commitment to diversity.) If I were Spokane's oddest columnist, this kind of thing would not have happened. The only people who look like me in Spokane are squatters, survivalists and meth lab owners -- none of whom are in the Mose Allison demographic. But here, I'm a damn archetype. I should hire myself out to appear in police lineups. But then someone would pick me out, and the next thing I knew I'd be accused of shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. I'd be stuck in Folsom Prison. I'd walk the line. I seem to have entered a prose cul de sac here -- bear with me as I back slowly away from the verb. There. I grappled with the problem of what to do about all the maxi-me's showing up at venues. On the one hand, I could get a reputation for being a man-about-town. On the other hand, I might be victimized by frivolous paternity suits. So I gave the people at Yoshi's a special sekrit password so that they would know if I were I the next time I came there. So I say "beware" to the impostor of me. No more will you lay waste the countryside with your "mix-ups. " So I was talking to my garbage man last week. This is the real me now. He had a small broom and a dustpan, and he was sweeping the street. I bet you didn't know garbage men do that. There's a lot you don't know, little missy. "It's those Styrofoam peanuts," he said. "People just pour them into their trash cans, and when we empty them, the damn peanuts just fly all over the place. And we have to sweep them up." "You do?" "Can you imagine the complaints if we didn't? Whole street awash in these peanuts, and of course it would be our fault. It's always our fault. And I'm not getting overtime for this" -- he held out the broom -- "and it's not exactly fun." He suggested that I put my Styrofoam peanuts in a bag from now on, just as I would my other kinds of garbage. How he found out they were my peanuts I don't know. I said there'd been a mix-up, but apparently he'd heard that story before. He soothed me, though. "It's not just you," he said. "It's all you guys." I knew whom he meant: the legion of me, sneaking into concerts and spreading peanuts everywhere. I'm going to get a TRO preventing me from coming within a hundred yards of me. That'll show me. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you take one lesson away from this column, it should be this: Secure your Styrofoam peanuts inside tightly locked bags. Thank you. You think I make this stuff up? It's all true. It's a day in the life of jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

Okay, I grant you it's a little corny. The SF Chronicle column I am posting below made me think Yoshi's should have it's own thread. Maybe you can share your Yoshi's experience. Maybe it will be a running homage with me talking to myself. I'm not proud, I can do that.

I met Shoehorn. What a guy. He can play sax, too. Last time I saw him was at Ron's jam.

My cousin and her family just moved back to E. Lansing from SF. I'm sure she will be thrilled to hear about his. Glad they caught the bastards. Trophy killing is obscene.

Jazz De Opus closed, that's really sad. Spent many good times there. Last time I was in Portland, a place on Martin Luther King near Knott in NE Portland was about to open. Can't remember the name. Ron Steen used to have a great jam session on Monday nights at Produce Row. All the locals turned out for it. Don't know if he still has it. I saw Mel Brown at Jimmy Mak's and he rocked the house out. My cousin who doesn't even like jazz stayed for the last note. That was one bad band. People associate Tom Grant with smooth mostly but he plays straight ahead beautifully. I recommend you check out his website. One of my favorite pianists.

Drummer Ron Steen is always playing somewhere just about every night up there. He usually has assembled a great group of local musicians for his gigs. Haven't been there in a couple of years but the jazz scene up there is usually pretty active. Mel Brown, another fantastic drummer, is usually playing somewhere also. Check out the Oregonian online or the Willamette something or other for events. You might check Tom Grant's website because he and Ron play together occasionally.

This morning on the local rock shock jock show, they played "Bowel Move," and I believe he was in the studio when they did it. Funny as heck song and he was surprisingly good humored about it. I think they were broadcasting from back east.

Well, now that Luciano has retired from opera, maybe he can go back to rock.

Lord, deliver us from Goodspeak, for he knows not what he says...and he spells REALLY, REALLY, badly and tortures syntax until it screams in agony. How's it shaking, Goody? B)

Oh, yeah, there's a Borders further up Powell, near Sutter, I think. Usual Borders fare. The Rasputin's is kinda cool and funky. Rickety elevator up to the fourth floor. I'd start there.

Amoeba records in the Haight (and on Haight Street) is good. Didn't know they were dumping jazz. Not sure exactly where it is on Haight. Also, Rasputin's has a shop on Powell and Ellis, a block from the cable car turnaround. There's a Virgin on Stockton and Market (about two blocks from Rasputin's). Not cheap but sometimes they have good sales. If you belong to the SF Jazz Festival, you get a 10% discount. The weather is really great now. Have fun.

Report it to all three credit bureaus--although I think you only have to report to one now and it covers all three. What happens is that no one can open an account in your name for about three months without lots of ID. After that, do what I have failed to do, check your credit reports peridically to see what is on there that is bogus. Reporting it to the police is good. When it happened to me, I was extremely ill and it was the last thing I could deal with so I never got further than reporting it to credit bureaus. I received a couple of phone calls from businesses where this clown tried to buy stuff with my name. If you trust them, you can report it to the FBI online. I don't have the webiste but if you google on reporting consumer fraud, you should get something. I found the FBI through the state consumer fraud website here in California. I don't recall what it was, but I decided to take my chances with the criminals when I saw the FBI disclaimers attached to reporting incidents. I think it gave them access to all of your personal business. Good luck. It's an awful thing to happen. My co-worker had his checking account appropriated and he's been on the phone all week trying to clean up the mess. He caught it early.

What Martha did was equivilent to selling someone a used car at top dollar value, knowing full well that it is going to die within days. It is ignorant to say that her crime did not hurt anyone. Now you're going to say that she wasn't convicted of that crime - she was convicted of covering it up. That's true, and it is also not as unusual as you might think. Insider trading is notoriously difficult to prove, because it is a matter of proving intent, which is very, very difficult for prosecutors. It is much easier to prove that you impeded an investigation into an alleged crime, because that conviction relies on facts. It comes down to "did person A tell an investigator X when, beyond reasonable doubt, they knew Y to be true?" The reason that insider trading cases are rarely persued isn't *only* because the people most often guilty are well-connected. It is also just too difficult to prove. Martha knew that, so lying to the investigators appears to have been pretty dumb. I personally tend to believe it was more a matter of arrogance. Most folks around here know me as a scientist - I know a little about this subject because I briefly worked on Wall Street when I was early in grad school and desperate to make ends meet (which Wall Street does a damn good job of, I must say...) Then who did she hurt and how did she hurt them? I haven't read anything that ties her dumping the stock she owned to the decline in value of the stock. The stock declined in value because ImClone didn't get FDA approval for their, what was it, cancer drug? That had nothing to do with Martha Stewart. I've been listening to financial guys talk about this since last week. Even the folks who think she should get the gas chamber for lying admit that her stock sale had no effect on the stock's value.

Untrue. She had 5 counts she was being tried for. The first count, insider trading, was thrown out by the judge. She was tried and found guilty on the other 4 counts. What's untrue? She was not tried for insider trading. Was not tried for insider trading. She was convicted of lying about the insider trading she wasn't tried or convicted of. The insider trading charge was dropped. What part isn't true? Count 1: Conspiracy to obstruct justice, make false statements and commit perjury. Count 2 & 3: False statements Count 4: Obstruction of justice What did I get wrong?

I spent most of last night's show wondering when Tony or his goon was going to shoot the fish and game guy who was giving Tony's wife the eye. I like "Sopranos" but I don't love it and I don't know why. The show has great writing and acting, but there's something that just doesn't take it over the top for me. "Oz" was the show I watched with great anticipation. As much as I hate violence, that show reeled me in right away.

This issue as discussed here and elsewhere gives me some insight as to how perfectly innocent people (and I'm not saying that Stewart is perfectly innocent) wind up in jail for crimes they did not commit. It reminds me of people who honestly believe if police arrest a person, they must have done SOMETHING illegal or the police wouldn't have arrested them. Scary. I call it the "don't bore me with the facts" syndrome. She was not convicted of insider trading and yet eveyone keeps talking about her insider trading. Because she used to work as a broker, because she is wealthy, because she is successful, because she is a celebrity, because she knows famous people, because she has a reputation as a witch (this only works for women, however), she must be guilty of something. Let's just say that if this woman goes to jail for her "crimes," just imagine what the government can do to you.

Imclone stock didn't crash and burn because of Martha Stewart. If memory serves me well, a lot of stocks crashed and burned during the time period in question. How interesting that she was convicted for covering up a crime she wasn't convicted of committing.

This is very sad news. My condolences to friends and family. How very sad.

Martha Stewart was not convicted of insider trading. Those charges were thrown out by the judge. How many times does this little fact need to be restate?d. She was not convicted of insider trading. She was convicted of a crime that she was not ultimatly even tried for. Stewart should be slapped with a huge fine and given substantial community service. Based on the reporting I heard last night on NBC, it sounds to me like her smug attorney blew it. And for members of the jury to care one way or another about who showed up in court to support her is cause for concern. If OJ can get away with murder, surely Martha Stewart shouldn't go to prison for telling a lie that hurt NO ONE or NO INSTITUTION.

That's the one.

The one episode that sticks in my mind is the one about a power failure and a little boy who said he was from the third planet from the sun. Everyone was in a panic about an invasion from outer space and thought the kid was a space alien. This series aired during the cold war and civil right movement and it is filled with themes about fear of the "other." I was always the outsider everywhere I lived (there were never more than a couple of black kids in every public school I attended) so I really connected with what this show was about. Rod Serling was a brilliant writer and social critic.

It may have been a factor in regard to the jury's decison. Hartridge and the other 11 jurors -- four men and eight women -- deliberated over three days before reaching the verdict. Hartridge said the appearance at the trial of Stewart's celebrity pals like Rosie O'Donnell and Bill Cosby may have backfired. "If anything, we may have taken it a little as an insult," he said. "Is that supposed to sway our opinion?" Some of the testimony about the way she ran her business left the impression, at least on him, that she thought she was "above everyone." He also said her background as a stockbroker worked against her because the jury believed she should have known what she was doing was illegal. >full article< She wasn't prosecuted for insider trading so why was the jury even discussing her background in a brokerage firm? Is "being above eveyone" a federal crime? Jesus, someone better put Donald Trump (and 90% of the suits in Hollywood) in maximum security immediately! Too bad Mother Theresa is dead, they could have brought her into court to create more sympathy. Instead, she had a black guy and a lesbian stand up for her. Well, hell, she must be guilty!