OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT

I've been following the Presidential race, without feeling particularly inspired by any candidate. If I leaned any particular way, it was toward Hillary Clinton, because I wanted Bill back in the White House, and the Clinton's are politically savvy. And I believed they were in touch with the people at the same time. Whatever the criticisms of them may be, they're NOT George Bush, nor are they like McCain or Romney. That alone is worth the vote. However, as I listened more and more to Obama, in speeches, in the debates, I started getting this real sense of the possibility of a President who thought outside the box. I remember the same sentiment with John F. Kennedy, even as young as I was in 1963. Obama has brought extraordinary number of the young vote and the independent into his campaign, people whom I feel are the most disenchanted with the political process. The more I listened to him speak, the less enchanted I became with Hillary. And then when Bill started injecting "race" into the discussion by comparing Obama's win in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson's win in 1984, that pushed me over the edge. Obama has nothing to do in belief nor political thought to Jackson. The comment was out of line.

Please take a look at Obama's website. Donate $25 or $50. The Clinton's are a well-oiled, well-financed political machine. The Republicans WANT Hillary to run, because she's the most "beatable" candidate. They're going to raise the specter of Bill's administration to scare conservatives into voting Republican.

Think outside the box. Support Obama.

Old Friend Resurfaces

A few weekends ago, my longtime friend Hills came up from San Antonio with Caralyn, whom we've both known since high school. My family moved in next door to Hills when I was 5 and we've been friends ever since. Caralyn I met in 1968, and she introduced me to Donovan's music. Really, she was the first hippie I'd met. Anyway, Hills and I have always kept up over the years, but one of our very best friends in those formative years, Rob, we hadn't seen since then. Rob is the one who turned me on to Dylan. I was over at his house, and he had just bought "Another Side of Bob Dylan" and told me I had to listen to it. I remember when "Blonde On Blonde" came out, Rob and I went to U.V. Blake Records, and sat in one of those listening booths where they pipe in the LP of your choice. We were particularly awed by "Stuck Inside of Mobile (With the Memphis Blues Again)" and laughed at all the cymbal crashes at the end of the song, that wouldn't seem to end.

He's been living in Ft. Worth for the last 25 years, and is somewhat reclusive. But he came to see us that weekend, and it was almost like we hadn't skipped a beat in the last 35 years. He's had an interesting life. A few years ago, Rob quit his engineering job after an epiphany that he wasn't really enjoying his life. He is now making the most incredible clocks, which you can see at this website.

When Rob was an engineer, he had to get top security clearance from the Dept. of Energy to do some work for the government. He was told it took about 2 years to get clearance, but he got a call to come to Washington 2 weeks later! When he walked into the office, they handed him his clearance. Turns out, he was involved in a Viet Nam war protest at Texas Tech University in 1970, and the FBI had had a file on him ever since! Man, my own friend on Nixon's enemy list!

Trinity River Toll Road Post-Election Thoughts

A few words on the vote last Nov. 6th, when Dallas voters narrowly okayed the toll road in the park. A lot of my friends have called or emailed to say how sorry they were that the anti-toll road side lost, but I'm not worried, nor was I really that upset (I'm used to voters lacking the intelligence to look at an issue beyond what their politicians tell them). Just because the vote turned out that way, doesn't mean the toll road will be built. In fact, I don't think it will ever be built. The Army Corps of Engineers is not going to approve a highway in a flood plain just because voters okayed it. Nor will the NTTA (North Texas Tollway Authority) suddenly be able to come up with the engineering and environmental requirements necessary for approval What voters okayed, was that the city could proceed to try and build it. The vote didn't eliminate all the hurdles that have to be jumped to get the first highway ever to be built in a floodway in this country approved.

In any case, TrinityVote hasn't just thrown up their hands and walked away. About 30 of us showed up at the first City Council meeting after the vote--in your Yes! t-shirt--to make sure the rest of the council didn't try to beat up on Angela. And we'll continue to monitor the progress of the toll road. Check out the Trinity Vote blog to see how the false promises, deceipt and lies the Mayor, the Dallas Morning News, the NTTA and other city officials made during the campaign have slowly started to unravel. For one, the Morning News sat on information damaging to the Vote No side for a month prior to the election and only printed it after the election was over. James Ragland just wrote about a "private party" Leppert held for the all the councilmembers (except Angela Hunt!) as a thank you, and held at Ross Perot, Jr.'s condo at the W. Journalists were not allowed.

Once again, we have a greedy, self-interested Mayor and City Council, with the sole exception of Angela Hunt, of course. But our grassroots movement came close to defeating them. It was an historic vote. Despite the fact that the Vote No outspent us 20 to 1, and had on their side both U.S. Senators, a U.S. Congressman, State Representatives, 13 of 14 City Council members, the Mayor, two Dallas ex-mayors, every Chamber of Commerce and business organization in the city--they could only win by 6%. It was an extraordinary experience working on this issue, and, as I said, it ain't over yet.

Photo Shoot

I've been shooting music posters for 2 days. Some are so large, you can't show the scale with a digital image. I was trying to shoot a delayed image and stand by this one, so you could see how large it is. But, the delay was set for 2 seconds, and I couldn't get into position in time. So, why am I posting this? I haven't had time to blog lately, and I just kind of liked it.

A Message from Bob Dylan about The Trinity River Park: VOTE YES! on Nov. 6th

Mayor Leppert Would Force Feed Dallas Voters If He Could

Has anyone noticed how many visuals the toll road proponents keep rolling out? First, the one back in 1998 depicting a tranquil park scene with sailboats on a lake. Then recently the animated version which Brad Watson on Channel 8 showed was a fantasy by interviewing the Army Corps of Engineers, who in turn stated that nothing has been fixed. In other words, any pictures are pure imagination.

Now the latest version. Anyone attending the debate between Angela Hunt and Tom Leppert at Rosemont Primary was treated to a large rendering of the toll road and park sponsored by the North Texas Tollway Authority, the company that will build and own this toll road. It shows a section of road next to an expansive park with dozens of strollers and cyclists along park paths. On the toll road itself, I counted SIX CARS on their rendering! SIX CARS, folks, and these cars were probably just trying to find the exit into the park so they could enjoy the tranquil watercolor trees and pathways.

Furthermore, Mayor Leppert keeps touting that former Dallas mayors Ron Kirk and Laura Miller, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, former council member John Wiley Price and all the current council members, save the lone intelligent one (Angela Hunt), have joined together to support the toll road in the Trinity Park. Someone told me that when a bunch of politicians get together and tell you how to vote, hold on to your pocketbook.

Summer's Gone???

Wow. The summer's over and not one blog entry since June. Just way too busy.
Saw Wilco Friday night at the Palladium in Dallas. Better than ever. I think Sky Blue Sky is the best album yet. The sound was great, the band in top form. And great songwriting aside, their musicianship is awesome to hear. These guys are some extraordinary musicians.
The set list was almost like a Wilco's greatest hits:
Wilco
9/14/07
The Palladium Ballroom
Dallas, TX

Set 1:
Shake It Off
A Shot In The Arm
Side With The Seeds
You Are My Face
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
Pot Kettle Black
Handshake Drugs
Impossible Germany
It’s Just that Simple
Misunderstood
Jesus, Etc.
Too Far Apart
Walken
I’m The Man Who Loves You
Poor Places
Spiders (Kidsmoke)

Set 2:
Red-Eyed And Blue
I Got You (At the End of the Century)
Hesitating Beauty
Hate It Here
I’m Always In Love
Outtasite (Outta Mind)

encore:
Heavy Metal Drummer
Hummingbird
On And On And On

Was able to get a recording of this, too. Impossible Germany is my new fave.

How about a toll road here?

Coincidentally, today is the deadline to turn in the signed petitions ordering a referendum on the Trinity toll road. I got almost 1100 signatures myself, and kept a tally of those who knew about the issue and specifically did not want to sign. The tally ended up being 10% of the Dallas voters who were told about the issue said they would not sign. When we turn in the 50,000+ signatures, it will represent more people than voted for our current mayor Tom Leppert. How about them apples?

Check out the Trinity River today!

SiCKO

Everyone needs to see Michael Moore's new documentary on the health care industry (do those words even go together?), especially this opening weekend, if possible, when the movie industry values the statistics. It's going to be another painful exposition of how little this country cares for people, and how much it cares for profit. Check out the preview:

Richie Havens "License to Kill"

Just discovered this really beautiful version of Bob Dylan's LICENSE TO KILL by Richie Havens.

Precious Moments

My friend Kathryn and her daughter Erin (above) went to Kansas City recently. Erin's been accepted--with scholarship--to the Kansas City Art Institute! She totally deserves this because she's worked very hard for it, and is a very talented artist. On the way, they stopped at the Precious Moments Chapel in Carthage, MO. Awesome photos! Click on them to see a larger version with better detail.

Britt opens for Sonic Youth!

Between gathering petition signatures for Trinity Vote, and Anna being back from college--not to mention trying to make a living--there's been no time for blogging.
HOWEVER....just got off the phone with Britt (right, in the photo above), and it turns out that Thurston Moore has asked him to open for Sonic Youth on July 19th at the historic Berkeley Community Theatre, where the likes of Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, The Clash and Led Zeppelin have played. Now is that cool or what?
Thurston is a customer of Britt's label notnotfun records. He's apparently very much into experimental music, and when he has the opportunity to ask someone to open, he likes unknown highly experimental bands like Britt's ROBEDOOR. Britt will be doing a collaborative set with his wife Amanda's band POCAHAUNTED.

Dallas Trinity Parkway: Once More, It's All Business

In 1998, the citizens of Dallas voted for Propostion 11, which was to set aside $246 million to turn the Trinity River into a recreational area. Above is the illustration used in the official city brochure. Keep that image firmly in mind. There was no mention in the wording on the ballot of "toll" or "road", nothing about high-speed roadways with no exits into the park, and taking up 1/3 of the park space. But, typical, to Dallas and its usual suspect business interests, the park project got hijacked along the way, unbeknown to the voters, and now includes such a toll road, which has been engineered and re-engineered for the last 8 years, the cost estimate having risen to more than $1 billion. Add to that the the North Texas Tollway Authority, who will own the road (AND will be gifted the land by the City of Dallas), has asked to be exempted from the post-Katrina flood plain engineering requirements. Let me also mention, that Dallas would be the ONLY city in the United States with a highway in a levee.

In response to this, City Councilperson Angela Hunt started the Trinity Vote, a group of volunteers I am working with who are gathering the 50,000 petition signatures necessary to bring the referendum back to the voters, to let THEM decide whether they want a toll road or not. It's the only way that all the truth can come to light. With these signatures, neither the Mayor nor the City Council will have any authority to stop the referendum going back to the voters.

I gathered signatures yesterday at one of the early voting poll locations. You should know that the opposition has hired "blockers"--many of whom were brought in from outside the Dallas area and/or state--to dissuade people from signing our petitions. These are professionals who have been stationed at every polling location. They are getting paid $200/day (I found this out from "my" blocker). Doesn't that tell you something right there? On the one hand, you have volunteer Dallas citizens who are concerned about having their promised green space; on the other hand, you have "hired guns", because the fat cats are too busy making money and doing more deals to care about fair and open discussion.

On top of that, a second rate journalist for the Dallas Morning News, aptly named Steve Blow, wrote a lame "editorial" for the opposition in yesterday's paper. It did influence some people, who believe what they read in the Dallas Morning News (aka BELO Corporation which not only owns the city's only mainstream newspaper, but the ABC-TV affiliate station as well). Cozy, huh?

So, yesterday afternoon, when things slowed down, I suggested to "my" blocker that we call Steve. I was transferred to him right away. I identified myself, and that a representative from the opposition was also there with me, and we both wanted to ask some questions. After he got past the first five minutes of stammering, I questioned his statement that everyone knew the toll road was in the mix from day one. He responded that the issue was in the newspaper. I asked if he had read the actual wording of the Proposition. "No," was his reply. Can you believe it? He finally agreed that if you didn't read the Morning News, and had just gone to the polling place that day, you WOULD NOT have known a toll road was in the mix. How's that for an informed journalist?

In any case, I wrote a letter to the Editors of the News this morning, and was just informed that it will be printed in tomorrow's paper (Saturday, May 5th). It had to be brief to be published, so it's better than nothing, but check it out.

And, those of you who are registered Dallas voters, please email me and let's arrange to sign my petition!! We have 60 days from last Monday.

Maria's Parents

Maria has been a dear friend for more than 12 years, and has helped me keep my home clean all these years. She is originally from El Salvador, and is now working on her U.S. citizenship. Her parents, who live in El Salvador, are here currently visiting her. She brought them along for me to meet. It was so nice to meet them. Her father is a very sweet man, and helped her out while she worked.

Maria's parents live in a very small rural village in El Salvador. They have cows, chickens and a garden. This is how they live, with no jobs. Cold water, no air conditioning. I told Maria it actually sounds refreshing. They were fascinated by the eclectic things in my house. They told Maria they were seeing things they'd never seen before, and were amazed to see so many things from so many other countries.

I wanted to take their photo. Maria's father especially loved the handmade shrine (from India) underneath the Chinese checkerboards. That's where he wanted the photo taken. And this is the pose he chose as well. Awesome, no?

Japanese Character Mask Collection

Now that my photography skills have improved somewhat over the last few years, I decided it was time to re-vamp my ModernToys™ Museum collection. I re-shot all the toys, and added three more pages. The 4th and 5th pages are devoted to Japanese children's masks. Check them out if you feel like it HERE. Click on any of the thumbnails to see the full toy or mask. The link at the top is to the mask page.

I'll be adding another page of masks tomorrow!

Kurt Vonnegut: So It Goes*

There were a few books that I encountered in my late teens and early 20s that fleshed out my world by an exponential number. The most memorable of those books were J.D. Salinger's 9 Stories and Franny and Zooey, Ram Dass's Be Here Now, Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. Well, all of Vonnegut's books, really. Once I read Slaughterhouse Five, there was no stopping at that point. I then read Cat's Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and you know the rest of the stories.

There are always people from your own generation, and from previous ones, that light the way, for those of us who want to believe that there is more to the universe and to existence than our mainstream culture revealed to some of us during our childhood. My father owns a clothing store, and my memories of him going to work everyday, coming home in the evening still absorbed in this quotidian world, instilled in me the distinct impression that life as an adult was intrinsically uninteresting. Although very young, I just assumed that being an adult was boring, and that was reality.

Fortunately, when I was 12, The Beatles invaded, and I do mean, invaded. And that started the spark for me. It implanted, without me even knowing, the first seed that the universe was immense, and so were the possibilities. The next epiphany came when I was around 22. I was reading a Rolling Stone article about Paul McCartney. This was post-Beatles. The article was about Paul's new solo album. I know this will sound incredibly trite to you, but it was a huge epiphany for me suddenly--Paul didn't just slip into the business world after the Beatles. He continued creating music and carried this passion into the--and now for that phrase--"adult world". I was already primed to be a hippie at that point, but this gave me the necessary nudge. The direction of my life was for me to create. And it's been an adventure ever since.

So, it is with a really deep sense of sadness to learn of Kurt Vonnegut's passing. He was one of the people in my life, whom I had never met, but somehow known intimately. The normal metaphor would be to say that Vonnegut was a light of the world. And he was. But I like to think of him more as a medium of the universe. Like Lennon, like Dylan, like LSD, like Ram Dass, like Rimbaud. Some people seem to be more attuned to the universe. Vonnegut was one. He was brilliant and funny, and knew how to describe the human condition in a way that resonated with my sense of who I was. He taught me more about me.

He will be missed, but he won't be the last. So it goes.



*The title of this blog entry refers to the phrase Vonnegut uses in Slaughterhouse Five whenever a death occurs.

President & CEO George W. Bush: Nixon Nostalgia

I just watched the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon, which was moving, to say the least. Throughout my 37 years or so of political awareness, I NEVER thought I would be nostalgic for Richard Nixon. Nixon may have had his criminal side, but nothing as insidious and manipulative as CEO Bush. The Nixon White House perceived a real threat in John Lennon. In Lennon's FBI files is a letter from then Senator Strom Thurmond to the White House recommending deportation as a "strategic measure", and you know the rest of the story. (If not, you can read the actual FBI files here.)

What the Bush White House has done is far more insidious. They have established the Executive Office as sacrosanct, immune from the fundamental principles of Checks and Balances. Because of the privilege of having a Republican rubber-stamp Congress, they have been able to sustain the illusion. Bush and his co-CEO Cheney have run the office like a corporation--expecting the nation to run on their directives, unquestioned and unchallenged. They have curbed our Bill of Rights, and called it the "Patriot" Act. Wherever Bush appears, protesters are cordoned off a safe distance from his (and the news cameras') presence. In the wake of the current U.S. Attorney scandal, they have agreed to unrecorded questioning of certain White House officials, and they not be under oath. Dissent, one of our fundamental rights--and the reason, I might add, that we are no longer English--is repressed, discouraged and equated with disloyalty and lack of patriotism.

In short, CEO Bush has hijacked the office of President. He promised when he first became President that he would restore dignity to the office (an obvious dig at President Clinton). He has, in fact, degraded it. His anti-intellectual, Crusade-centric, shoot-from-the-hip attitude has hurt our image around the world in such a way that it may take 50 years to restore it. One wishes now that his transgressions could have been as simple as getting a blow job from an intern!

Yes, I would prefer Nixon. Next to Bush, he was a lightweight. And this brings one bit of sadness to the fore---I miss John Lennon. What has allowed the current state of affairs is indifference. I would go so far as to say that the Holocaust did not happen primarily because of Jew-hating Nazis; it happened because of the indifference of the German people, the American people as well as the rest of the world. Indifference is more powerful than hatred. Lennon cared deeply about war, and put himself on the line to help end it. You may not know that he did not perform for money one time after the Beatles broke up. He only performed for political causes, and for free.

Imagine.

TOP 5 ANTI-WAR POSTERS

Check out this website with some great anti-war posters.

Steven Guarnaccia

By the way, the friend I referred to in the last entry is a New York-based illustrator, whose work is quite extraordinary. He's been extensively published everywhere from the New York Times to the Italian design magazine Abitare. He's published a number of books, including an updated version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (see it on Amazon); a skeleton pop-up book (also on Amazon); a beautiful book on the theme of "Black + White"; and projects too numerous to mention here. Steven currently teaches Illustration at Parsons.

Check out some samples of his work here.

Cool Rock Poster Art

I sell music memorabilia, mostly from the 60's through the 80's, but recently my good friend Steven turned me on to a contemporary artist who has broken the mold of the Kozik-influenced poster style. Her name is Tara McPherson. She's not an unknown artist, by any means, but I haven't seen her music poster work until now. She has reconnected 60's psychedelic artwork with the 21st Century. Her posters are primarily about the graphics, and she diminishes the venue information. The venue is almost secondary. Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin and other iconic 60's artists did the same thing, only by incorporating the text into almost unreadable visuals (you almost had to be stoned to read them). Even though the poster was meant to advertise a concert, it became about the artwork itself. I think Tara has done the same thing updated. The venue information is secondary to the piece, which gives the poster as a whole more visual strength.

I've included a couple of samples of her artwork here. Go to her site for more HERE!