Found Cartoon - She's Not A Christian

We live in the vicinity of a high school. The local litter has a certain sophomoric cast. I've learned to pick up odd bits of paper in hopes of finding some mind-blowingly perplexing works of ... uh, art.

Previous Mixed Meters found cartoons include Fink and It Looks At The Atom. I also recommend Graffiti Animals of California although those drawing come from a much wider geographic area.

Today's offering is "She's Not A Christian." The title text appears three times. A fourth line reads (possibly) "I'm not a Christian". Speaking as a non-Christian I'm so glad to see religious tolerance is alive in our public schools. Figure drawing, however, may not be part of the curriculum. (Click either picture for an enlargement.)



Media: unlined notebook paper 7.5" x 10" with unidentified brown and pink stains, black marker and blue ball point pen. There's a lot of bleed through from front to back.

P.S. Apparently the phrase "She's not a christian" originates with the TV Show, Wife Swap. See an excerpt here.

She's Not A Tagger Tags: cartoon. . . She's Not A Christian

Bird Brains of Pasadena 2

You can visit Bird Brains of Pasadena 1 which shows pigeons and a hawk and a poor lost finch and a dead something and the pelican in our kitchen. Later, this post shows the parrot in our kitchen.

Here's a Mockingbird which can be an inspiration to a composer, but it's not much to look at.


My little pocket point 'n shoot camera is not a bird watchers dream even with 10x optical. For a long time I've wanted pictures of the wild parrots and the large black crows. Recently I had a couple chances. I met with partial success.

The crows around here are BIG. They are very suspicious of people. They stay out of the sun. And their coloring is so dark that it's hard to distinguish details. That's all bad for taking pictures. This one was Photoshopped to bring out contrasts. The crow flew off a second later. (You can click any picture for an enlargement.)


Large flocks of Wild Parrots are noisy. They are descendants of escaped pets. Not unique to Pasadena, there is a movie about wild parrots in San Francisco. Read about the Feral Parakeets of Brooklyn in this WFMU blog post. There's a blog Brooklyn Parrots.




A large flock of wild parrots in flight, turning together, all gleaming green in the sun against our bright blue skies is an inspiring sight. These pictures don't do it justice.




Here's the promised picture of the parrot in our kitchen


And finally, action photos of hummers.



Brain Tags: birds. . . Pasadena CA. . . wild parrots. . . crow. . . hummingbird

Why J. Edgar Hoover is still important in 2008

This is the twenty-first Mixed Meters post about politics. It is a review of a book called Young J. Edgar: Hoover, The Red Scare and The Assault on Civil Liberties by Kenneth D. Ackerman, a book which tells an important bit of U.S. history with frightening parallels to recent events.

(Click the cover for larger image.)

The story begins with multiple co-ordinated terrorist attacks inside the United States, all on a single day. The public demands that culprits be caught. We, the public, demand that more attacks be prevented. So government officials target certain groups of people, mostly foreigners with unpopular political beliefs, unfamiliar ethnicity and strange religion.

Desperate to get results, U.S. officials, even the very highest ones, break our own laws. They ignore our Constitution. Their fervent, fanatical determination to catch anyone who might be planning more violence turns out to be a worse crime than the violence itself.
 
Of course Ackerman's book is about 1919, not September 11, 2001. The suspects are not Arabs or Muslims or members of Al Qaeda. They are Russians and Jews and Communists; Italians and anarchists and members of unions. Any "true" American assumed their guilt; it was just a matter of rounding them up.

Unlike the ongoing aftermath of 9/11, historians can tell us how the Red Scare story of 1919 turned out. The seditious groups were squashed and their remaining members intimidated. The fanatical officials who twisted the laws were eventually exposed and humiliated.

All except one. That person, J. Edgar Hoover, survived like Darth Vader escaping the Death Star. He went on to become America's most powerful secret policeman, head of the FBI. After his death we learned about his many evils.

Hoover was a mama's boy, a snappy dresser and (probably) a repressed homosexual. Above all he was a workaholic and a highly capable bureaucrat. He started out tracking alien Germans but was soon spying on Commies. With great success he introduced modern information technology (the card catalogue) and communications (long-distance telephone) into law enforcement. He would have loved facial recognition software.

He co-ordinated massive raids (the "Palmer Raids" named after his boss who wanted to be President). Thousands of people were rounded up for sedition. Without doing anything illegal, if you said the wrong things or belonged to the wrong group, you could get hauled away. (I think that's the really un-American part.)

Fortunately, right-minded people prevailed. I hope they prevail again in post-George II America. I hope that the evils perpetrated by our current government, which were intended to protect us but actually weakened us, will be corrected. Based on how little discussion this has gotten during our current election cycle, it's a faint hope.



No matter who becomes the next president, the George II era will continue to have its effects. Bush has appointed incompetent cronies to important jobs; they were picked for their adherence to right-wing dogmas.

Along with the bozos, however, there are sure to have been some highly capable fanatics who, with heads down and noses to the wind, will manage to keep their jobs. These people are the ones to watch out for. A future J. Edgar Hoover, who was hired to correct the problems he himself caused, might eventually find a way to restart the cycle of repression. We need to watch out for that person right now.

 
Postscript: Along with the sobering similarities of our recent history with events eighty years before, Young J. Edgar lets us glimpse how society and politics have changed. Here are a few random quotes from the book that made me laugh and/or shudder.

In Chicago, a crowd cheered when a sailor in uniform raised his rifle and shot a man at a victory loan pageant, wounding him for refusing to stand up and take off his hat during the nation anthem. (page 22)

At local theatres, crowds flocked to see Helen Keller, billed as "The Famous Blind, Deaf, and Formerly Dumb Girl," appearing onstage with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, in a musical cabaret called Vanity Fair. (page 320)

[Hoover] requested, ... from the State Department, twelve copies of the pamphlet "The Jewish Peril" or "Ten Protocols," versions of the discredited but still popular Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which Edgar devoured. Even knowing it was a hoax, he found the Protocols so fascinating that he asked the State Department to check on whether six particular Bolshevist leaders were in fact Jewish. (page 342)

---

An article about cronyism under George II
A Wall Street Journal article about litmus tests at the Department of Justice under George II
Someone else's review of Young J. Edgar
A previous MM post about J. Edgar oover
Read all Mixed Meters' posts labeled Politics, about one out of every twenty.(more to come)

Red Scare Tags: J Edgar Hoover. . . Palmer Raids. . . 9-11. . . civil liberties. . . red scare. . . terrorism. . . Kenneth D Ackerman

I Should Be Doing Spanish Homework Because It's Due Today, But I Don't Feel Like It

In classic 30 Second Spot fashion the long title of this short quarter-tone piano piece was a sentence spoken by a high school student to no one in particular while he was relaxing at Starbucks before class at the very same moment I was writing music at Starbucks because I did feel like it. He'd probably be mortified to discover that his disinterest had been frozen in time -- immortalized.

If you feel like it, listen to I Should Be Doing Spanish Homework Because It's Due Today, But I Don't Feel Like It by clicking on this sentence.

It's kind of a non-sequel to the previous 30 Second Spot called Live Chat.



45 Seconds - Copyright (c) 2008 David Ocker

If you don't feel like listening to this, maybe there's something you would feel like doing intead. Leave a message and tell me what you did instead of listening to "I Should Be Doing Spanish Homework Because It's Due Today, But I Don't Feel Like It"


Homework Tags: 30 Second Spots. . . David Ocker. . . Spanish Homework

Live Chat

I haven't composed anything in some time - several months at least. And I've been feeling bad about that. There are several nearly finished pieces on the laptop waiting patiently for me. And posting my pieces here was one of the main inspirations for creating Mixed Meters.

One day last week, trapped by the prospect of solving my computer-related technology problems by engaging in a "live chat session" (a horrendously imperfect form of communication the speed of which is dictated by the slowest typist involved) I decided to write a new 30 Second Spot, another horrendously imperfect form of communication.

Since I was writing at home not at Starbucks (so it can't be good), I modified the rules of writing 30 Second Spots slightly, as I often do. There were no conversations to overhear; instead, I picked the title Live Chat.

It's only a minute long. It's for a solo piano with one bad string. Part of the ending was inspired by the Stravinsky Octet. Listen to Live Chat now. Listening to it is the easiest way for you to waste the next minute; I know you've got nothing better to do because if you did you'd be doing that rather than reading my blog.

Copyright (c) 2008 David Ocker

Live Tags: David Ocker. . . 30 Second Spots. . . Live Chat

Art Night In The Daytime

Walking down Fair Oaks Avenue this morning I noticed an empty lot which looked like it was straight out of my days in graduate school. You see, there was an art school in the same building as the Herb Alpert School of Music. They did things like this. I stopped by to investigate. A nice man said I could take pictures.


The most affecting work I saw was a field covered with human skulls and piles of bones. Ceramics. At least I assume they aren't real remains. (UPDATE: The artist's name is Sierra Pecheur.)


This previous MM post contains pictures of piles of actual human skulls. (Scroll to the end past all the stuff about Nazis and Abu Gharib.) The pictures were taken by Kristina, the friendly barrista, while she was in Cambodia.


The nice man - whose name might have been Jon Lapointe - said that they were preparing for Art Night. And it is TONIGHT! (October 10). Who says Mixed Meters isn't on the ball?

Art Night is when many Pasadena arts organizations provide art for free all at exactly the same time - so people can wear themselves out deciding what to take in and what they must miss. Click here to see a previous MM notice of Art Night.

In addition, he said this particular empty lot was part of Side Street Projects (http://www.sidestreet.org/) which in turn is part of the Armory Center for the Arts (UPDATE: Wrong!! See Jon's comment at the end of this post.)


Furthermore, John said this particular exhibition was "off the grid". There were large solar panels. To make sure things would work properly all electrical devices were being turned on while I was there.


This included the fan for an inflatable sculpture called Butt Man. I wonder why it's called that.


Traffic is always a problem in Los Angeles. http://www.islandsofla.com/


Click any picture for an enlargement. Sorry, but I didn't find out the name of some of these pieces or the names of the artists. If you know, please consider leaving that information in a comment. Thanks.

Here's another recent MM post about an Armory Center art project in Pasadena. And about ice cream.

UPDATE: A Response from Jon LaPointe (whose title is Creative Director of Side Street Projects)

hey man, thanks so much for the kind words and great photos!

one detail clarification: we are NOT part of the armory, we're our own 501c3 nonprofit. the armory loaned us their airstream for artnight to house a video/audio installation by doug henry and joe potts. side street projects & the armory are simply good friends and we collaborate and share resources with one another quite often.

come on by & visit us anytime. thanks again!

Find this "empty" lot yourself:

730 North Fair Oaks Avenue, Pasadena, CA

(...the NE corner of Fair Oaks & Orange Grove,on the vacant Lot behind Church's Fried Chicken)

Art Day Tags: Art Night. . . Pasadena California. . . Armory Center. . . Side Street Projects. . . off the grid. . . islands of LA

Drummer Replaced By A Machine

Recognize this tune?.

Of course you do; even though this midi sequence is just the chord progression. But it represents my first encounter with a venerable, senior composer.

Back in my high school years I performed in my home town summer concert band, the Sioux City Municipal Band, Leo Kucinski, bandmaster. We played two Sunday concerts - one in Riverside Park (actually near a river) and the other in Grandview Park Bandshell (a tiny Hollywood Bowl clone).

Every year this guest artist would come and conduct his most famous work. His name was David Bennett (I can't find any web link about him personally). His was my first image of how a composer looked and acted. Can you say "stereotype"? Of course you can.

Much more recently - like last week - my friend Wildman (yes, that's what we call him) sent me a wonderful YouTube link of Sweet Georgia Brown.

Wildman is a drummer. We went to graduate school together and were housemates. He used to drive many miles every day through Los Angeles traffic to play in a Top 40 band at a hotel in the City of Industry. Or was it in Commerce?

Wildman knows that drummers can be replaced by machines. But usually not machines like this one. It even does some basic drum breaks.

What does this have to do with composer David Bennett and his hit tune Bye Bye Blues? Just watch the whole video.



Previous Mixed Meters Mentions of My Home Town.

This MM article about growing up listening to Mahler has a picture of the Grandview Park Bandshell and another of my father and me in our band uniforms holding our horns.

Update: Wildman confirms that his Top 40 Band gig was in City of Commerce. He wrote:

I still have the silvery white jumpsuit with rhinestones and matching jacket but lost the white patent leather shoes.

Remember, that was in 1976. Just imagine!

Bye Bye Tags: Sweet Georgia Brown. . . Bye Bye Blues. . . David Bennett. . . tractor. . . drum machine. . . composer

Blue Doodles

I scanned five of my old doodles and altered the background color using Photoshop to create a sequel to the earlier Mixed Meters post entitled Branches Before Blue. Pick your favorite.








Bloo Doo Tags: doodle. . . blue. . . sequel

Old Word Power

A link to this article: Collins dictionary asks public to rescue outdated words appeared in my email thanks to Scott, Mixed Meters' reader in Boston.

Apparently English lexicographers must jettison some old words from their fixed-length dictionary in order to make room for all the new, hip jargon you and I wince at every day. They're asking people if they might like to make use of those antique words before they're lost forever.


Here's a list of twenty words on the chopping block. You could adopt one or two if they strike your fancy.

Astergent - cleansing or scouring
Agrestic - rural, rustic, unpolished, uncouth
Apodeictic - unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration
Caducity - perishableness, senility
Calignosity - dimness, darkness
Compossible - possible in coexistence with something else
Embrangle - confuse or entangle
Exuviate - to shed (a skin or similar outer covering)
Fatidical - prophetic
Fusby - short, stout, squat
Griseous -streaked or mixed with grey
Malison - a curse
Manseutude -gentleness or kindness
Muliebrity - the condition of being a woman
Niddering - cowardly
Nitid -bright, glistening
Oppugnant - combative, antagonistic or contrary
Olid - foul-smelling
Periapt - combative, antagonistic or contrary
Recrement - waste matter, refuse dross
Roborant - tending to fortify or increase strength
Skirr - a whirring or grating sound as made by wings of birds in fligh
Vaticinate - to foretell, prophesy
Vilipend - to treat or regard with contempt

Yes, the article gave the same definition for oppugnant and periapt. Maybe the niddering, agrestic author vilipends the olid verbiage or embrangles it with recrement. He or she mispelled mansuetude.

These are exactly the sort of words about which I am most likely to consult a dictionary.


A comment to the article by Belinda Webb provides a few more gems:

Alabandical: stupefied from drink
Aquabib: water drinker
Auturgy: self-action
Barathrum: an abyss
Cancrizans: to move backwards
Farrago: confused mass of people
Gombeen: trader or moneylender who exploits the disadvantaged through unfair practices
Growlery: retreat for times of ill-humour
Gurrier: juvenile deliquent

Students of music history probably have heard the word cancrizans.

Old Word Tags: words. . . dictionary. . . language

Ice Cream Wishes

A lot of this post deals with Yoko Ono.

One night many years ago when I was a freshman in college I spent what seemed like hours, stoned out of my mind, standing in front of the menu board of the school's late-night snack bar, The Tea Room, trying hard to pick the perfect munchie-crunching taste treat.

Suddenly There It Was - Chocolate Marshmallow Ice Cream!! I knew instantly that it was my favorite flavor even though I can't remember ever having tasted it before that night.

And so it was - Chocolate Marshmallow was indeed my favorite flavor of ice cream for many years afterward. When I arrived in California I found that chocolate marshmallow ice cream was called Rocky Road and made with bits of real marshmallows. How bizarre. Yuchh. It had been the swirls of sweet marshmallow creme inside the chocolate which sealed my passion. Life went on and new flavors replaced chocolate marshmallow on top of my fave list.


Years later -- many years later -- at Tutti Gelato, a small ice cream spot hidden away in the corner of an off-street courtyard in Old Pasadena - I again studied the menu, completely straight this time, searching for the perfect after-dinner taste treat. Here's a picture of the menu. Click it to enlarge. What would you have picked?


My choice? A combination of mascarpone and sour cherry gelato in a cup. In my mind the smooth creamy cheesy mascarpone and the tart bright citrus sour cherry instantly became the perfect flavor combination - just as chocolate and marshmallow had years before. I decided that I must have it.

Alas, they were out of one flavor (or the other). I returned to Tutti Gelato many times over the years - okay it was about a half dozen times over two years - and either they were out of one flavor (or the other) or they were too busy or I was too stuffed after dinner or something.

But then, a couple weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, just at opening time, I scored the perfect cup of gelato: half mascarpone and half sour cherry. Here's a picture I took just before my first highly anticipated bite.


Disappointment. The mascarpone wasn't cheesy enough. The sour cherry wasn't terribly sour - more like a watered down cherry soda flavor. My taste bud imagination had let me down big time. I was highly dissatisfied. Plain old chocolate would have been so much better.

To be fair Tutti Gelato serves great ice cream and sorbet. I would not hesitate to suggest that you try it. The problem was that I had imagined such a high level of unobtainable perfection in the synthesis of flavors.

Disillusioned, I wandered around that off-street courtyard (click here for satellite view). In the courtyard there's a Crate and Barrel at one end, a trendient Italian restaurant at the other. There's a micro-brewery and a Johnny Rockets and a sushi bar. There's a movie multi-plex. There are a couple more even more trendient boutiques and a sculpture of plexiglass workmen digging a trench. Click on the next picture for a panorama shot of the whole courtyard.


What I found in the middle of the courtyard that Sunday was an ongoing interactive art project by Yoko Ono. It's called Wish Tree. Here are Yoko's old fashioned fluxian instructions:

Wish Piece by Yoko Ono (1996)
Make a wish
Write it down on a piece of paper
Fold it and tie it around a branch of a Wish Tree
Ask your friends to do the same
Keep wishing
Until the branches are covered with wishes

Each tree has a little set of steps so the top branches can be reached. Pencils and little tie-on cards are provided. From a distance the trees look like they are blooming a lot of white flowers. In my imagination the cards were provided in many different colors: chocolate, sour cherry and the like.


Here's some description of the project at Yoko's website. She tells of tying wishing papers to trees as a young child in temples in Japan. The notion of supplicating the higher powers with a words on a small piece of paper probably exists in many religions. Here it is, in action at the Western Wall, serving an important function in the religion of U.S. presidential politics. The ancient Jews didn't have many trees to tie their wishes to. But they had plenty of rocks.


I wandered around the courtyard reading peoples wishes. No one folded their cards as Yoko instructed. Most, as is predictable, ask for health or wealth for themselves or for loved ones. Peace for the world. Love. A few, however, were much less predictable. I snapped photos of my favorites.

I wish I had a rocket propelled corgi! Adorable.

I wish for my sunglasses to make me look sexy!

I wish to swirl forward

I wish I had another wish - Nathan

I wish I wans't dyselxic

I wish for the chance to make a difference with
my music and go to music school - Melinda

(Poor Melinda. Someday she'll find out how little effect music has on the real world.)

A lot of ice cream!
(I suggest you avoid combining mascarpone & sour cherry)

How to make marshmallow videos: here (yuchh) or here (yuchh yuchh yuchh)

Search for the phrase "chocolate marshmallow ice cream"

Mascarpone and Sour Cherry Tags: ice cream. . . gelato. . . Wish Tree. . . Yoko Ono. . . Pasadena CA

Herbert Hoover Jr. Worked Here

Here's a picture I took in October 2002 from the Hill Street Pasadena Starbucks looking east.


Not long afterwards this lovely building was torn down and replaced by a Tommy's Burgers. For those not from around these parts, Tommy's is an oft-imitated Southern California chili-smothered hamburger institution. My fave!

Here's another picture, taken from the same general direction, which appeared in the March 2006 pages of Mixed Meters.


It's dangerous for me to live too close to such marvelous chili-smothered burgers. I've limited myself to one Tommy's trip per year - usually around my birthday. And so it was this year.

As I left Tommy's to walk home I noticed a brick plinth in an otherwise empty cement planter in the outdoor courtyard and smoking section..


On top of this pedestal I discovered a brass plaque. I don't believe it was there last year. It certainly has been installed since Tommy's arose in Pasadena. You can see a satellite view in Google Maps here and the column is visible in the Google Street View here.


Click the picture to read the plaque yourself. Google's robo-trolls can't read it unless I type it in:

On This Site
170 N. Hill Ave., Pasadena
HERBERT HOOVER, JR.,
Son of the 31st President
of the U.S.A.,
Operated Consolidated
Electrodynamics
Corporation.
He made a discovery
which led to the use of
Mass Spectrometers
in soil analysis for the
oil industry; Circa 1937.

This struck me as strange. Apparently, seventy or so years ago the son of a president ran a company at this spot. That's where he made some unmentioned discovery which enabled the oil industry to analyze dirt in a way so important that it deserves a brass plaque. Heaven only knows how dreary and difficult our lives would be now without this ... er, thing - whatever it is.

I resolved to do some Internet research to slake my curiosity. Here's some basic info about Herbert Hoover Jr.

The best resource about the first son of the 31st President is the Time Magazine archive. Herbert Junior was Time Magazine's cover boy on July 14, 1930. This was during his Dad's only term in the White House.


This paragraph from July 10, 1939, Time is close to a biographical sketch:

It was natural for Herbert Jr., a graduate of Stanford and Harvard Business School and since then a radio engineer, to get into seismographic oil prospecting, not only because his father has prospected off & on all his life (and still does), but because the sound technique leans heavily on radio principles. Herbert Jr., at 35, is a prospector in a big way, employing 200 men in five laboratories. He lives with his wife and three children in a secluded whitewashed brick house behind Pasadena, rides and plays a little tennis, but has little time for social doings and no time for country clubs. Most of the time he works. Unlike Jimmy Roosevelt, son of another U. S. President, who lives only 20 miles away, Herbert Hoover Jr., has no interest whatever in politics.

He figures heavily in this July 14, 1930, Time article about aeronautical radio.

Wikipedia has this article about Consolidated Electrodynamics Corporation (although the name was different when Herbert Hoover Jr. owned it). It says CEC was bought up and eventually went out of business. However this company in Covina says different. Wikipedia has a copy of the patent diagram for a mass spectrometer. Possibly it employs the discovery on the brass plaque.

Later in life, H.H., Jr. became UnderSecretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles. This paragraph shows him over 50 years ago dealing with an international situation that has not been solved even today.

Demanded, in the face of two previous turndowns, that Syria cooperate to allow repair of the Iraq Petroleum Co.'s pipeline cut by saboteurs during the Egyptian hostilities. Declared Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr.: "Unless work begins immediately . . . the oil situation will be aggravated, which means in human terms cold and hunger not only in Europe but in Asia and South America." (from Time Magazine, 1956)

And this quote compares our hero unfavorably to his successor.

After the often grating brusqueness of Herbert Hoover Jr., his predecessor as Under Secretary, Herter's unflagging courtesy and willingness to listen boosted departmental morale. (from Time Magazine, 1959)

If anyone knows a story behind how this magnificent mysterious brass memorial came to be outside of a fast food joint, please leave a comment.

Here's a picture of the Hoover family: President Herb and Mrs. Hoover and their sons Herb Jr. (with his wife) and Allen.

Here you can buy a Herbert Hoover Jr. Hoodie.

Here, for $1000, you can buy a 1956 Washington Redskins souvenir Christmas booklet autographed by Under Secretary of State Herbert Hoover Jr. and Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

Richard Nixon comes up a lot on Mixed Meters.

Junior Tags: Herbert Hoover Junior. . . mass spectrometer. . . brass plaque. . . Pasadena CA. . . Tommy's Burgers