You know, I don’t quite know what to make of that hour and forty-five minutes with Mr. Unstable Musician. There were good jokes, bad jokes, wise anecdotes, preaching to the chorus, audience participation, music theory lessons, maps, and sometimes a little music. Out of nowhere, after a certain preamble — most went on for God knows how long — he said the word cool and played “Cool” from WEST SIDE STORY while Peter Erskine backed him up on drums. From the way he was tuning his flute, he was going into it, but here’s the good part: Jeff Ernstoff is a phenomenon. Do you know that song? Boy, boy, crazy bo-oy… he feathered through the introduction, the boo da BAT da boo da boo da boo DAT part, the scat element, the staccato stops and the melody like — well, it was like having your ears massaged by Jeffrey Ernstoff. Such fierce applause after his joke festivus that on the scale of mostly I’d give it a mostly worth the tongue-tied false starts, the indulgent self-referential monologues, the filler bullshit. Mostly. (They mostly come out at night mostly.)

Jeffrey Ernstoff comes to stage pushing a shopping cart and playing his Saxophone. But he is simultaneously the overhead projectionist, the therapist, his own biographer. Funny in the Ivy League way that funny is — do you know what I mean? Wrote a splendid piano ditty that got him into the WGA (worth it — I wish I had a copy). Plucks eight different horns from the shopping cart, tells this sort of knock-knock joke with the drums, jams with his peers, tells stories, does impersonations, teaches class. Lots of surprises.
»continue reading Jeffrey Ernstoff — Exactly One Hour with An Unstable American Musician

Jazz veteran Jeffrey Ernstoff will perform his opus “Exactly One Hour with an Unstable American Musician” at the Colburn School of Music, 200 S. Grand Ave., LA, on Tues 3/18, Thurs 3/20 & Fri 3/21. The program taps his repertoire from Lincoln Center, Radio City (and numerous universities), comedy venues and international settings. Ernstoff, who last toured in 1977, plays a variety of saxophones, flutes and percussion, against a brief video narrated by Sidney Poitier, and the music ranges from improvised and original inventions to Gershwin.

Alright, alright, alright. I had a pretty terrible experience at Star Trek:The Tour. I will spare you the beaming, the boldly going, the warping, the whatever. My bad experience begins by being warned against anything more powerful than an iPhone to snap up photo opportunities. So bring your own camera if you boldly go, because once you arrive, you are issued your very own USS Enterprise NCC-1701 Card to interact with various photo-ops. More about that.

Before I teabag these Ferengi, let me qualify one thing: the staff was nice. Although STAR TREK: THE TOUR is held until March 2nd, 2008, the hard-working red shirts in the exhibition hall treat it like it opened yesterday. Not sure how many staff members are going with the Tour when it wraps and travels the world, but it ain’t easy for a guy to suspend his disbelief. A more hirsute, knuckle-dragging bunch might have grown surly over the ubiquitous Vulcan salutes, the “Live Long and Prosper” shout-outs, the whole thing.

So let me walk you through the tour. I recommend $6 for “a thing with buttons on it that explains what you might encounter”, which you can rent upon arrival. It is the only money worth spending here.
»continue reading Star Trek: The Tour: The Review

The DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Urban Challenge was held Saturday at a military training facility (read: spooky post-apocalyptic “peopleless suburb”) near Victorville. A $2 mil purse went to “Boss”, Cargenie Mellon’s robotized 2007 Chevy Tahoe, a completely autonomous aka SKYNET BATTLE ROBOT AUTONOMOUS vehicle that was the first to complete the difficult sixty mile obstacle course of stop signs, turns, intersections and race helmet humans in rollbar-reinforced obstacle cars. The program used to be ARPA before the Defense contractors started upping the ante. (I’m betting the purse was somewhat less than $2 mil in the old ARPA days.)
»continue reading The Robots of Victorville

What Dutch death metal ubermensch at Adult Swim thought this shit up! Funny ha-ha! Not to be missed.

AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD opened and peaked and tapered off with a twenty minute set. Or was it forty minutes. I’m not knowing these guys from a hole in the wall, so take this with a grain of salt, but… eh.

Interim moments were about the Guitar Hero 3. MTV chestnuts like Living Color’s “Cult of Personality” are now party and parcel of the game. (Some GH3 god took obeisance from the crowd for getting up on stage and scoring three hundred unbroken perfect notes. Singular funny “booOOoo” from an irony-minded drunkard after the man left.) Virgin had two screens that posted text messages and photographs from crowd folk with cell access, and I think they were giving something away. Did anyone sign up for their non iPhone-having thing? Resentment at the fact that they sponsored is what I remember about their outfit.
»continue reading Dethklok National College Tour Stops at UCLA, 11/1/07

At the Fine Arts theater in Beverly Hills, George Takei (”Sulu”) and Walter Koenig (”Chekov”) joined their fan film counterparts (and hundreds of others) for the premiere of “World Enough and Time”, the best STAR TREK fan film ever made, downloadable here.

This is the story of warm and humble STAR TREK fans who quietly joined the STAR TREK universe with a bang-on homage to the first STAR TREK series. Using the original series blueprints, NEW VOYAGES rented space to build a scale model of the Enterprise NCC-1701 Bridge. James “Kirk” Cawley was a former NEXT GENERATION costumer, so he made uniforms. As for a mandate, let me quote his website: “Star Trek: New Voyages’ producers/crew feel that Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest should be treated as ‘classic’ characters like Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman, Gandalf from Lord of the Rings or even Hamlet, Othello or Romeo. Many actors have and can play the roles, each offering a different interpretation of said character.”

Boldly did they go. STAR TREK Fans all over the Internet volunteered what amounted to $1,000,000 of post production expenses. The results are so good, the real Sulu and Chekov beamed down to rekindle their roles.

It was an opportunity Tupac impersonator Josh Harraway could not pass up. Harraway arrived either before, with, or after the press, no doubt capitalizing on his Vulcan-sounding namesake, to secure a seat. A brief Q+A with the filmmakers and actors followed the screening of the film allowed him to ask a self-promotional question disguised as a STAR TREK question.

What follows next is a DRAMATIZATION of what happened:
»continue reading Tupac Impersonator Crashes Trek Film Festival

Hiromi comes from a school of fusion jazz and progressive rock that gets a retrofit through the power of her genius, and also through the novelty of her very existence.

First, the basics. Hiromi’s sound and style is reminiscent of eighties fusion rock bands like Weather Report, Spiro Gyra, Return to Forever, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and the Yellow Jackets, and falls outside the discography of modern noise. I was most impressed when she told me she’d been playing piano for twenty-two years and cut her teeth on King Crimson’s “Frame by Frame” — meaning she was only six years old when she did. Wasn’t I getting piss drunk at The Foundry, New Haven’s premiere jazz club, when I first syncopated 7/8? Hard to believe these kids are under thirty.

Technically, Hiromi is the best living pianist in the world. Prog Rock monster Keith Emerson went to see last Thursday’s performance and had his head buried in his hands the entire time. Look upon her chops ye mighty and despair!
»continue reading Hiromi, Jazz Bakery, 4/12/07

I was given the task of seeing The Joffrey Ballet through modern eyes. And I’m not going to lie, I intended to bag on it no matter how good it was, because I don’t usually go in for ballet.

But some IDIOT at the LA Times did that for me.

So let me come to Joffrey’s defense.

“Les Presages” was their first act, and to be honest, typical of a ballet about society and villainy and all that. Nice costumes and dancing, but for my money, they could have been ice skating — I wasn’t too interested. I was, however, interested in John Gluckman, a very limber and theatrical talent who played Aquaman’s Evil Brother. (I don’t know who he was supposed to be.) He ate up the floor with unpredictable karate kicking elegance and expert timing. And my girlfriend said he had a nice body.
»continue reading Joffrey Ballet, 3/22-24/07, Music Center

Costco Warehouse No. 479 is located on 13463 Washington Blvd., Lat: 33.99116 (N 33°59.470′) (N 33°59′28.2″) (WGS 84 datum) Lon:-118.44612 (W118°26.767′) (W118°26′46.0″). It boasts a large paddle inductive and Avcon conductive EV charging station three sizes too small to accommodate the West Side Prius population, and has a large fossil fuel pump station for members (ten cents off per gallon). You can find parking by driving into oncoming flows of traffic and honking (like a jerk, if possible).

Enjoy a delicious hot dog, polish sausage, chicken Caesar or slice of pizza before you ever become a member. And once you become a member, go inside or just loiter among the shopping carts. The secret? Options.

Costco Culver City is large and inviting, too large to be appreciated by anyone or anything. Like the girls at Spearmint Rhino, the high shelves clamor for your dollars by dancing and wriggling on poles set above the promenade. Behold, jewels and history books, three pound bags of Doritos, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN II: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. It’s all for the taking. One minute you’re hanging nose-to-nose with a pair of socks, and the next, there’s some dude jumping out at you with a toothpick of jalapeno sausage. I told you it was different. COSTCO BURBANK? Sausage guy sucked.

Now if you’re daring, here’s something you can do. Make your way cautiously past the entrance hucksters and their digital camera devices, avoiding eye contact at all times, to the appliances. You’ll catch yourself muttering, “If only I had that 50 inch Sony HDTV, I’d use it for a computer monitor!” Try it. If you run quickly into the mirror aisle, you can watch yourself subvocalize this statement before the buzz wears off.

Eventually, you will pour into a bigger defragmented retail-run-together chamber that defies analysis.

The COSTCO CULVER CITY security personnel traverse the parking lot in golf carts and are very friendly and well-traveled. I once offered my spare cigar to a cue ball headed SECURITAS worker and he gave me a hand-rolled Perdomo of chocolate-flavored tobacco grown in Nicaragua, which he produced from his security jacket. True!

PARTING GLANCE: Costco Culver City shepherds Hollywood Video, Subway, and Starbucks No. 665 like a big ram protecting its ewes.

STANDARD DISCLAIMER: a stern look or impassive wave of the hand may fool the doorman, but you need at least a Gold Member Card to buy anything.

Whelp. That’s Costco Culver City. See it from space. OO

I wasn’t thrilled with Tuesday’s book signing of Catching the Big Fish at the Borders, two blocks south of Wilshire on the southeast corner of Westwood and Rochester. Parking under the store was not available and hunting for safe parking harbors is a foul peeve. (Not that I mind a walk through Blue Velvet territory just east of the store. Walk Glendon Avenue south of Wilshire and you’ll see what I mean.) Frankly, the signing wasn’t weird enough. Borders wasn’t the de facto Black Lodge because he was in residence. And I thought the whole experience would be much more like being in a film with one of his characters. Lynch had no time for detailed questions about his films. I had such a weighty urge for a one-on-one with him that getting his cursory autograph in was all that prevented me from screaming, “Don’t talk to me about meditation! What the fuck is the significance of the Boy in the Mask! Look, if you do well, you will see me two more times, but if you don’t answer my questions, you will see me three more times.” And then I’m seen out the store window inconspicuously two or three more times, depending.

The event was on the second level in the record store. Some poor parakeet in a cage squawked that tickets were sold out, tickets were sold out. Eh — who knew there were tickets. In the far corner of Borders, a small stage and podium (sans Bob, dwarf) was dressed at the rear of the record section where Rufus Wainwright had performed a few years ago. I’d say about five hundred people squeezed in for a glimpse, a backwards-forming shockwave of soft, hopeful misanthropes ringed out past the Country Music section to the distant bin where Combustible Edison performed in a radiator.

Yes, smart misanthropes — folks in their twenties and thirties looking to channel their inner John Merrick.

After reading aloud the introduction to Catching the Big Fish, a kind of allegory for fishing the deeper waters of the Self for better ideas by using the transcendental technique, Lynch opened the room up for questions. Most of them went exactly like this: “Hello Mr. Lynch. I like to go to book stores and ask questions, and I was just wondering…” But then a woman asked him to talk about 9/11, to which he said a flat and resounding “No.” Someone else asked him what current movies he plans to see, which mutated into, “Are you planning to see every movie that comes out?”, to which he said a flat and resounding “No.” Folks then petitioned for his ideas on creativity, meditation, casting, lighting, eating, and breathing. And he was very kind, and answered every single one like a true gentlemen.

Then he signed books. I had hoped my 2006 receipt could be used as a bookmark to pole-position past lummoxes, so I could get to him while he was fresh. The idea came to me in the form of a lie told by a staff member at Borders.

I end this writing in the embrace of a woman with puffy cheeks who represents death.

KAN ZAMAN COMMUNITY ENSEMBLE
7.22.06
Barnsdall Arts Center/Hollywood

Not having, perhaps before Kan Zaman, an avenue to hear how Arabs kick it old school — and since every John Williams idol-snatching leitmotif should wither in caricature at the merest hint of authentic creativeness from the Middle East — let me put this into perspective. For July 22nd’s performance at the very plush Barnsdall Arts Center on Hollywood Boulevard, straws of passion broke every camel’s back for leagues in every direction. Egyptians kissed the cheeks of Lebanese and Syrians and Iraqis, and no one wore a goddamn fez. People clapped and wept in a language the enthusiastic expression of which makes most of you nervous. There was a welcome absence of jerks linking Arab tonality to bombs between the minarets. And at one point, when fifty-something Iraqi singer Saadoun al-Bayati took up the doumbek, some crazy Egyptian guy started screaming out “Aazama Aala Aazama!” at the top of his lungs — like, front row Metallic style, being all loud, shameless and into it. A nice man seated next to me translated: “You guys excel! You guys excel at all things! You are really awesome!” (No, it wasn’t “Death to America” or some shit on CNN, which is what I thought at first, not used to hearing Arabs go nuts over a drum solo — like it was even fucking possible. God, I am such an ignoramus.)
»continue reading The Kan Zaman Can

I was calling it a zoo-lag and now I am a card-carrying member of the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association (GLAZA) and I can experience wildlife with my loved one whenever I want until December 31, 2006.

I’ll tell you more. I don’t mean to sound sullen or mean-spirited about the LA Zoo. It bothers me no matter how well the animals are kept to see them living in exhibit areas. However, I also saw little kids discovering these creatures for the first time, putting a lot of priceless questions to perfectly enchanted zoo personnel about what the animals like to eat, and how soft they are and whatnot. To the Zoo’s credit, they introduce these animals to children as creatures worth fighting to preserve. It’s one thing to watch Animal Planet and another to see animals up close.

First, a little about where (I think) it is. I think it’s on or off the 5 which connects to the 405 via the 10. The sign that says “This Way to the Zoo” is clearly marked and demarcates a path around several corners leading to a humongous parking lot. You must park your car before entering the zoo.

Before the gates are two very distinct lines of scrimmage formed by people who think they will save money buying a day pass and people who want a year round membership that includes many free day passes for your loved ones, 10% discounts and private tours. I cannot imagine why anyone pays the regular entrance fee, so I cannot tell you the day rate. Incidentally, you can support GLAZA by adopting an animal species, naming animals, sponsoring an exhibit or capital product, or supporting an educational program. It’s on the leaflet.

Also on the leaflet: Losanjealous City Congressman Tom LaBonge advises you NOT to feed the animals and to protect and respect them. All of the zoo animals are on special diets and the wrong food can make them sick. City Congressman LaBonge wears a glove on which is perched a variant of eagle or falcon, and wears the uneasy smile of the falconer.

Once through the entry plaza, you can rent strollers and wheelchairs.

Now I will describe the animals I saw in order of their appearance:

• Sea Lions! Playful and territorial, these creatures will disembowel anything that goes near them.
• Meekrats! We tried like hell to see them, but they’re meek.
• Flamingoes! Lots and lots of pink ones standing on one foot. Very Fellini. Downwind is a bit strong in the nose.
• American Alligator! Poor guy… It says in the biggest font, “Do not throw pennies at the alligator,” and what do you think people are doing? I called this Hungarian tourist guy a piece of shit for doing that and he mumbled something pathetic about wanting to see it move. Alligators stay still for ten hours at a time and do not move until they’re good and goddamn ready. If you had alligators in Hungary, you’d be owned, bizatcha… CODA: The nice zookeeper told me the animal was not feeding at that time and that she would go in later and get the penny out.

• Kangaroo! Many varieties, most of them sad, none of them hopping around.
• Komodo Dragon! No fire breath. Fiercer to think about than to behold, much like the year 1975.
• Arabian Oryx! And I thought the babirusa was exotic…
• Elephant! Now here’s the thing that probably pissed off Bob Barker. The zookeepers have programmed robots to toss carrots at this creature in a way that makes it walk back and forth for exercise. It comes over here and eats three carrots and then it goes over there and eats three carrots. Elephants never forget. The perimeter fence is far from the creature. Hmmm…
• Lion! Both Leo and his mate were very lethargic for killer cats. I am told lions sleep twenty hours a day. But could it be the cage? Describing a Panther in a zoo, Rainer Maria Rilke said (in translation) “He has from the passing back and forth of bars become so tired/it is as if a great will stands numbed…” Well, right back atcha, Rilke.
• Masai Giraffe! Three of them prehistorically tall, eating leafs off of the trees on the other side of the fence, with children gathered nearby… These soft creatures remind me of my loved one. Actually, she’s more of a babirusa…
• Chimpanzees of Mahale Mountains! Everybody likes monkeys. The rock and waterfall set, very Kubrick, until they eat each other’s poo and throw sticks and do monkey things not seen on the discovery channel – although for Valentine’s Day, they offered an adults-only tour of the mating habits of various animal species. Lots of them, maybe a whole barrel of monkeys, might have volunteered for that. Incidentally, I don’t know who dissuades them from swinging out of that cage. It’s not that fucking hard.
• Safari Café! I ate here because I got ten percent off with my membership, and I would not recommend it. Nothing that is a vegetable can exist outside the churro carts.
• Many other animals! I was tired from walking so I didn’t take the road less traveled past the Zebras. I posed for a solitary picture next to a warthog with a pretty name, and I went out of my way to see the camels, as my loved one is from Lebanon, where they have camels in zoos also. I wandered past a great open range of bulldozed earth where officials want to bring gorillas, and just headed home when the voice over the intercom said the LA Zoo would be closing in twenty minutes.

Weekend zoo exodus is close to the freeway. Zoo to Venice, thirty minutes.

Salud.

DEAD CAN DANCE at the Hollywood Bowl, a Ticket Winner’s Perspective

I.

Let me tell you that I could just kill a man paying $25 to park on a grassy knoll four blocks from the amphitheater. Don’t get stuck on stupid. Park at the sick church and walk to the bowl if you must. Do NOT pay for easy access parking, even if your tickets are free and you are within inches of the Hollywood Bowl.

My Preamble: Although I have grown out of poet black, I am the demographic, and I have not aged well. (Neither has Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard, the artists behind the beautiful music, but more on that.) I eat too much fructose and stare at my shoes too often to look like Jesus Christ with a touch of Pan anymore. Although My Arabian Princess petitioned me to see this band and whirled at my side on her way in for having won the tickets from losanjealous.com — so few Westerners perform original music in that peculiar wailing wall style of the far east — my Indigo Girl-enhanced compassion was not with my late thirties brethren in their gypsy approximations of pre-Christian Europe, and their painted faces with the ankhs, smuggling in wine coolers. What chromosomal retreads are my fellow fans. Have they always been this way? I had such an incredibly valid reason for going. Who were these people again?

You see, I did enjoy “Serpent’s Egg” very much as a twenty-two year old lotus eater. I read stacks of Alan Moore’s “Swamp Thing” and played the Cocteau Twins over and over and lived by the passion of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”, and seduced beautiful women in bathtubs with the lion’s feet on them, and thought the world was going to be like “Dark Age of Camelot” once I got out of school.

End Preamble.

II.

We got our tickets at the Will Call desk. The line was serpentine, and most of those in line thought they were in line for something else, even though a comely man in a suit with a walkie talkie told them repeatedly to get a clue.

Arabian Princesses need bottled water at all times and will not drink from the public fountain, so appending the time for getting money from the machine and waiting for bottled water, I missed the opener.

The cool thing about the Hollywood Bowl is the innumerable ways you can access it. This time, we took two elevators to a secret level, triggered by a gigantic stone head upon which we exchanged a bag of sand for a golden monkey god statue. Our seats were in back, but the sound is gorgeous at the Hollywood Bowl no matter where you sit and we were not disappointed in this respect. We had a full view of the stage and the monitors, and seated about five minutes from show time.

Right as Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard came on with the impressive twenty-five piece orchestra, I heard the first idiot knock over his glass bottle. There would be no subtlety.

Brendan was very masculine in his Kojak incarnation with the silver whisker goatee. And Lisa was Hillary Clinton-like in her agedness, in a yellow frock that would have suited the Lady of Shallot. They began one of their meditative caravan numbers. Then they went into another one. And then there was another.

You know, I’m not going to remember the names of the damn songs. Not that they all sound alike, but the names are like esoteric poems of the nineteenth century. “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”, “Song of the Sybil”, “Severance”. They did the hits. They played well with the orchestra. There was ambiance and bad poetry on the LCD displays. People were screaming out for songs that no one knew. Brendan Perry was hip, introducing his stuff as having been number one in 1472. And Hillary Clinton has an incredible voice. No one missed notes. There were spikes of passion, more than old people can still sing and move than for these funeral dirges. Elijah Wood and other Hobbits moved among our numbers, whispering in a half-afraid way about a ring of power.

Two hours and three encores later, I took my Arabian Princess and made for the exit. I noticed how haunting, irradiated open cell phone illumination has replaced the cigarette lighter as a candlelit tribute to rock and roll or whatever this was. Who were these people again?

You know, I wept to Dead Can Dance and other 4AD bands when I was twenty.