Down The Memory Hole

Here's something I've been puzzling about: in the course of going through my old writings, I've found some very interesting things, some very boring things, and some extremely embarrassing things. The question is: when I encounter something I wrote many years ago (or yesterday, for that matter) that is just plain painful to look at, do I just toss it out? Or should I hang onto it for one or more of the following reasons: a) as a reminder of just how wrong I can be; b) because maybe I'm wrong now and will eventually come to appreciate the value of the currently loathed piece of writing; c) for its possible historical value; d) so that people will have the opportunity to know the whole me rather than just the (hopefully) flattering bits I choose to show them?

As it happens, I've already thrown away quite a bit of junk writing, and I don't use the word "junk" loosely. Would you, for example, want people finding evidence that as a callow teen or 20-something, you were guilty of poetry? Love poetry in particular? I didn't think so. The same goes for some of my airy-fairy, hippie-dippie musings from the dawning of the New Age/Me Decade, some of which, unfortunately, I continued developing, albeit with a more substantive vocabulary, well into the 1990s.

Most of my earliest and worst excrescences were never published, so no one will be the wiser if they end up in the shredder or the dumpster. But what about some of my more flamingly ridiculous rhetoric that appeared in Lookout or MRR? When I retype those articles to keep for myself or to display on my website (yes, still coming one of these days), do I have the right to make corrections, or edit out the stupidest bits? Well, of course I have the right, but is it fair? Is it more important to display a true picture of how at least one rabble rouser was thinking in the 1980s or 90s, or to put out something containing at least a modicum of common sense?

It's probably a bit late to be asking this; I've already made some corrections to my old MRR columns, mostly along the lines of fixing typos or misspellings (yes, believe it or not, there were one or two), but in a few instances, I removed whole sentences or paragraphs where I seemed to banging on ad nauseam about the blindingly obvious. I tried not to change the sense of the piece, not always easy when it sometimes made little or no sense to begin with, and I think in most cases I succeeded in making it more readable. But is it honest to label it as "MRR column from January 1988" if it's a bit different from what actually appeared in MRR in January of '88?

Thinking about MRR reminded me of Tim Yohannan, who as first among equals (editor/publisher by any other name, but he refused to acknowledge himself as such), used to comb through columns and scene reports looking for items that ran counter to MRR dogma. It didn't happen all that often, but occasionally I'd be reading my own column only to discover that I'd said something rather different to what I thought I had. For instance, I might have mentioned such-and-such band from DC as exemplifying an especially pernicious brand of suckitude, only to find that in the published version, I'd praised them as being important contributors to the scene. Or if I'd carelessly used the name of one of those individuals ("unpersons," I believe they were called in 1984), it would have neatly and seamlessly disappeared. A couple of times I mentioned this to Tim, stating that it seemed a bit reminiscent of the Orwellian device of the "memory hole," into which all inconvenient facts and realities could be made to disappear, but he professed not to know what I was talking about. "I figured you'd appreciate me correcting your mistakes before they got into print," he'd say in not quite those exact words.

So I don't feel so bad about polishing up those MRR pieces a bit, knowing as I do that if Tim were still alive and had the ability to do so, he'd be doing everything he could to rewrite them his way. But what about this one: I just found a handwritten letter from 1967. It's one of the oldest examples of my writing apart from some articles published in my high school newspaper in the early 60s. It's a love letter of sorts, and speaking of which, it's curious how so many of these old love letters ended up back in my possession. Though considering how mawkish and tawdry they tend to be, I'm glad to know they're not in someone else's hands.

This particular one is fairly pedestrian; what I found shocking, and the reason that I'm inclined to destroy it, is how terribly dishonest it is. Not the sentiments themselves; I actually did care for the person involved, or at least believed I did. But what I wrote about myself was just plain embarrassing. It was as though I was writing a novel about myself, and not an especially plausible one at that. I portrayed myself as some sort of Dead End Kid who "had to fight his way to school" every day, so brutalized and shell-shocked by my harsh life that it was simply a miracle I could experience feelings at all, let alone nurture a budding love.

While it's true that I did run around with a pretty thuggish gang in my teenage years, my neighborhood was not exactly the South Bronx. In fact, it was completely ordinary, and tediously quiet lower middle class/working class suburb, where the chief danger to be found in walking the streets was terminal ennui. There was trouble to be found if someone was, like myself, determined enough to look for it, but that was almost entirely a matter of choice. I imagine most of the kids who grew up around me would not even begin to recognize the picture I painted of my allegedly deprived and brutal youth.

That was the most glaring instance, but the letter was replete with other examples of my bigging myself up in a most egregious (and I would think transparent, since the object of my affections grew up in an almost identical suburb on the other side of 8 Mile) fashion. Anyway, on reading these tackily constructed lies, my first impulse was to crumple up these seven pages of self-serving verbiage and deposit them in the trash. Something stayed my hand, though, just as I was about to let them fall: would I regret no longer having this reminder of what, after all, had been my first love? Perhaps one day my biographers would struggle in vain for evidence of what I was up to between 1966 and and 1968? Did I need a reminder of why it was better to be scrupulously truthful in any future declarations of my affections? Or would I be better simply noting the lesson and discarding the sordid evidence?

Well, there the question sits, and so does the offending letter, on the counter next to the garbage, gradually accumulating food and coffee stains and crying out for action of some sort. Sooner or later it will go either into the files or down the memory hole, and it probably barely matters which. Unless, of course, somebody apart from myself ever happens to read it, in which case my embarrassment and humiliation will be only slightly lessened by having confessed to my crime in advance.

Falling Down On The Job

I'm much chagrined every time I check in over at 327 Words - which is pretty much every day - and discover that Dave 327 has put up yet another 327 words, thereby passing another milestone in his noble/quixotic (you choose) quest to create and post a 327-word essay on 327 consecutive days.

Not the snappiest of lead sentences there, and entirely overburdened with the number 327, but hopefully it conveys a bit of the burden I feel when first a day, then a week or more slithers by without my having posted anything here. Not that I'm comparing myself with Dave; after all, the man is a consummate professional (and professor) accustomed to keeping to schedules and deadlines, his steely intellect tempered by the constant and rigorous study of philosophy, his creativity channeled by careful cultivation of his responsibilities to family, friends and colleagues.

In other words, a faithful man, good and true, even if he does insist on careening about the late night streets of Seattle on an unlit bike, stoned and sloshed to the gills. The man works hard; he's certainly entitled to his recreation, regardless of what bizarre form it might take. But though, as I say, I'm not comparing myself with him, I still reckon he has a bit of nerve being so damned reliable and all.

Perhaps I should have set myself the goal of writing something here every day. I probably would have kept to for quite a while, if not for 327 days (and if I were to use the same formula as Dave has for setting his goal, I'd have to come up with a post of 1,028 words every day for 1,028 days). I'm pretty sure I've never done anything that faithfully in my entire life. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, there'd come a day when I just didn't feel like it. That would probably be on the second or third day, if not sooner. I'd force myself to do it anyway, reminding myself of how healthy is is to acquire the steady discipline of a regular writer, but eventually would come a day when I'd say, "I don't care how healthy it is, I'm going to the beach/movies/cafe/back to bed."

Which more or less sums up what I've been doing this past week, if you subtract "going to the beach" and replace it with "looking at pointless things on the internet for hours on end." And add an occasional dollop of "cleaning my room" (still). One of the things I unearthed (and promptly deposited in the rubbish) was a 10-page essay I composed (under considerable duress) during my Berkeley undergraduate days. It was called "Why They Wrote" and was supposed to explain the reasons a variety of characters, including Sartre, Virginia Woolf, Orwell, and similar suspects, felt compelled to put pen or typewriter to paper.

My own deeply felt conviction was that I didn't particularly care, but that wasn't going to bring home the grade I desired, so I unleashed a whole lot of pretentious and high-faluting nonsense of the sort that usually pleases college professors, and I noted with satisfaction that many of my points had been circled and labeled "good point!" I was not so satisfied when I reached the end and found that I had only been awarded an A- for my efforts. The reason: well, according to the professor's notes, "I'm not accusing you of plagiarism, but I would have much preferred it if you'd provided citations for some of your otherwise excellent quotes."

Nigh on 20 years had elapsed, but my teeth gnashed all over again at the indignity and injustice of it all: the source of the "quotes" she was asking me to provide references for was none other than myself. I had already plowed through that damnable Sartre once; I wasn't about to do it again when I was perfectly capable of making up my own pompous rhetoric about the nature and necessity of writing. And before I get sidetracked, let me reiterate here: Jean-Paul Sartre is a plonker and a nuisance whose writing gave me a severe headache. And I hear he smoked far too much and was beastly to Simone de Beauvoir in the bargain.

Having torn off on that particular tangent, I think I'll stop short of musing over why I myself feel the necessity to write here (or anywhere). Besides, Dave already touched on that subject as well, and I'm sure has said more succinctly whatever I would have said. On to other subjects, however briefly: today is the birthday of my good friend, the journalist and author Danny Penman. It's one of those milestone birthdays, too, but out of deference to any possible sensitivity on Danny's part, I'll refrain from mentioning specific numbers here. He's still a good bit younger than me at any rate.

Elections: turned out about as I would have expected, though I was disappointed that boatloads of corporate cash managed to dissuade voters from approving the oil and cigarette taxes. I stated my view here last week that as long as teenagers and unemployed college students can afford to take up smoking, cigarettes are too cheap, and I'll add here that as long as people can afford to squander energy the way they do, oil is also too cheap. Sooner or later we're going to have to made radical adjustments to our lifestyle, particularly in the areas of transportation and suburban sprawl. The longer we keep oil prices artificially low, the more painful that transition is going to be when it's finally forced upon us. And the longer we're going to be dependent upon/embroiled in the charnel house of Middle Eastern geopolitics.

Most of my records and tapes and about half my CDs went bye-bye last week, and are in the process of being sold and/or added to a nearby landfill by a helpful friend. Watch for some of them to crop up on eBay in the coming weeks. The same friend has also helped me by making digital copies of many of my old records and cassettes, including most of my old Lookouts stuff, most of which I haven't been able to listen to for years because of the lack of a functioning record player. Next step is to get my long-awaited website up and functioning so I can post mp3s of those songs for the many (well, 10 or 20, anyway) of you who've requested them. And just when I was rejoicing over having finished typing up all my old MRR columns (all the ones I had access to, anyway; no doubt one of you helpful souls will soon unload a whole new bundle on me), I discovered a pile of Anderson Valley Advertisers from the 1980s, all of which contained lengthy articles by yours truly. A month's worth of typing, at least.

And my time in Berkeley is fast running out. Right after Thanksgiving I'm back to England for what may be the last time, at least as a resident. My flat is going on the market, and may be sold before Christmas. It's something I've considered for a long time, but it's kind of shocking that it's actually happening. London has been a part-time home for over 30 years, and a full-time one for the past 10. Leaving it is likely to be as wrenching as when I left Spy Rock for the last time, but it seems as though that's what's happening. I'll only be there two and a half weeks, barely time to pack up my remaining things, let alone get round to see everyone and say my goodbyes. In the end I'll probably slip away almost as unobtrusively as I arrived.

It's not the end of my love affair with London, though the ardor has cooled somewhat in recent years. It's just that another city - or two - has caught my eye. I wish I were rich enough - some people seem to be under the impression that I am - to live in both London and New York, but unfortunately that's not the case. Speaking of which: I need a job. Ideally some freelance writing work, but I'd be happy doing some copy editing as well, or related media-type stuff. If going to/hanging about in offices is involved, it should ideally be in New York City. Anybody with any leads, please let me know.

More Junkpiling

I must admit I'm surprised at the reaction I got from so many of you regarding my piles of junk/relics of the Lookout era. At least a dozen people have volunteered to come haul it all away, and while it's tempting to take them up on it, it's not quite that simple. Well, maybe it is, but I'm not quite ready to accept it.

While it would be tempting to shovel the whole mess into the back of someone's pickup truck, I feel as though I have a responsibility to at least try and sort out the wheat, if any, from the chaff. This was brought home to me the other night during a conversation with one of Pat and Erika's friends who works as an archivist for a major museum.

That's not to say I think any of my stuff necessarily belongs in a museum, but when you consider the kinds of things that do end up being treasured by scholars of a future era, it's not always easy to know what might have lasting importance. She was talking about having to wade through the scribbled notes and shopping lists of Beat-era poets, many of whom were regarded in their day - understandably enough, considering their behavior - as garden-variety drunks and crackpots. Could the same prove to be true of some of the bands or writers or artists who inhabited the East Bay/Gilman scene in the late 80s/early 90s? It's not so far out of the realm of possibility.

But the thing is, I'm a lousy archivist or curator. I tend to toss things in a box or a milk crate and shove them into a corner. Every few years I'll dust them off, sort through them and think, "What am I saving this for? But, oh, I can't throw this out because it reminds me of ___" and back it goes into the corner or closet. Except for the stuff I actually did throw out, which will probably be the exact kind of thing the scholars will be desperately searching for 50 years from now. So I'm thinking that it's best being passed on to the hands of people who know and care more about these things than I do.

That includes sound recordings, of course, and last night I tackled some of the discouraging pile of cassettes I've accumulated. Most of them, of course, barely if at all labeled. I doubt any of it is unique to me, since whoever gave me the tapes must have kept a copy for themself, but at the same time you don't casually toss out a recording of Op Ivy live at Gilman. Trouble is, I've at least a dozen tapes marked "Operation Ivy" in some form or another. I'm willing to bet many of them are duplicates, or consist of stuff that's already been bootlegged and/or otherwise made available to the masses. But do I dare throw any of them away without listening to each first? Probably not.

The problem is compounded when it comes to my own bands. Not that I suspect that there's going to a vast amount of historical curiosity about the Lookouts or the Potatomen (though one can always dream), but just for my own sake I'd like to be able occasionally to listen to what I was up to musically as a young(er) man. And in the unlikely event that I ever end up with any children or grandchildren, they might be interested, too. If only to have something to laugh at the old man about...

Anyway, today I uncovered a tape of the Lookouts playing at Gilman. Based on the song selection - lots of stuff from our second album - it must have been somewhere in 1989. There were also songs that I had totally forgotten we ever did, and a few that I certainly wish we hadn't. The latter category included a punked-up version of The Booger Song, a little ditty I composed for my niece and nephew when they were 5 and 7 and which they seemed to find amusing enough at the time. Sample lyric: "Boogers for breakfast, boogers for lunch, and on Sunday morning, it's boogers for brunch. It's boogers for you and boogers for me, and when Mom and Dad come, we'll put boogers in their tea."

Repertoire aside, the tape made for interesting enough listening, or would have had the sound engineer - who I won't name since I'm sure he meant well - not twiddled the knobs in such a way that about all you could hear was my very raw and strained singing and a smattering of drumbeats. I only know for sure that a band was playing because when we came to instrumental breaks he turned the guitar and bass back up. At those points it didn't sound bad at all, but the minute I came back in singing, all the music would drop out and be replaced by - and I'm being as kind to myself as possible here - what sounded like a very painful (for audience and singer alike) vocal ordeal.

You know how most guitarists seem to have one primary remedy for any faults or weaknesses in their guitar playing? I.e., turn it up louder? Well, I seem to have been using the same approach to singing. All attempts at following the melody or even the rhythm of the song seeme to have been abandoned in my attempts to outshout the Marshall amps and Tre Cool's manic drumming. And I used to wonder why I could never get through half a set without losing my voice! Ah well, live and learn. I'm trusting that the audience heard a very different mix than what the engineer taped off the soundboard, and that they probably heard little more than me bellowing and yelping like a wounded seal, which was pretty much par for the course in those days anyway.

Then I came across the Potatomen's all-acoustic demo tape, which we recorded in (I think) 1992, in the days when we used to perform almost exclusively on the sidewalk outside of Gilman. It was softer and - let's be blunt - wimpier than I recalled, but at least I was (mostly) in tune. Unfortunately, many of the backing vocals weren't, but you can't have everything. Paul Curran's banjo accompaniment on "Drown In My Beer" was by itself worth the price of admission ($2, if I recall correctly). So yeah, I think I'll hang onto that. As for the 30 other cassettes labeled "Potatomen something-or-other", I'm not so sure. Most are just outtakes from the studio, and at least one is an unnerving 30 minutes of me practicing vocals that somehow got recorded backward, i.e., satanic incantation-style. I almost flung that one out the window in a spasm of horror, but luckily didn't, as the window was closed at the time. And now I'm procrastinating via blog instead of tackling the task at hand, so I believe I'll say so long for now. If I'm back on here again before tomorrow, it probably means that I ran into something even more unlistenable.

The Old Man And The Shoe

The combination of another birthday and having been a semi-cripple for the past month has left me feeling considerably more than my age, though hopefully this is only a temporary condition. And today a giant, if you'll pardon the expression, step has been taken in my hoped-for return to normality: my operated-upon foot is once more encased in a shoe.

Not a special post-op shoe (looks kind of like an especially lame hippie sandal with velcro straps) and toe splint, which has been my required footwear ever since they took the bandages off, but a regular, old-fashioned shoe. In fact, it's one of my internet shoes that you may have read about here a few months back. Today's visit to the doctor produced approval not only to start wearing my shoe again (though only for an hour or two a day to start), but also to attempt some unaided walking. Pretty exciting stuff, this walking business. It's almost been worth going through the business of not being able to for the sake of acquiring this new appreciation.

Of course I can't go out for any long hikes just yet. In fact a one-block trek to the nearest mailbox is about as much as I have on the horizon for right now. There's a whole process of rehabilitation, including numerous toe-flexing exercises, that I still have to go through. But - and, before I forget, thanks for all your messages of encouragement and support - it looks like I'm on my way.

I Voted

And so it says on the red, white and blue, stars-and-stripes-bedecked sticker now adorning my breast pocket. Why I am wearing it, and why anyone who should happen to notice it as they pass me on the street would care, is a matter of some mystery to me. It's just that they were handing them out for free at the polling place, and I like free things.

Voting in Berkeley is always going to be a bit surreal. The very patriotically American-looking "I voted" sticker itself seems an odd thing to encounter in a city that for the most part refuses to acknowledge that we are affiliated in any way with George Bush's Evil Empire (for those of you not up to speed on the Berkeley Weltanschauung, the EE=the USA, not those misunderstood People of Multicultural Diversity who, true, might want to blow us up, but only because George Bush drove them to it with his imperial machinations). That's not to say that Berkeley takes no interest in American politics; in fact, one of this year's ballot propositions is a recommendation from the City of Berkeley to Congress, advising it that George Bush should immediately be impeached. Advice from the City of Berkeley on how to run a country, a company, or, for that matter, a lunatic asylum, is about as useful or welcome as advice from North Korea on how to create a free and open society, but I expect that will have escaped the notice of local electors, who will probably approve it.

Because the polling place has been moved this year to a nearby firehouse, there was actually an American flag flying outside, the firefighters being among the few Berkeleyans with the temerity to fly the national flag within city limits. But inside, apart from one voter loudly explaining to his girlfriend why one of the mayoral candidates is clinically insane (he's probably right), it could have been Anytown, USA.

There's something deeply comforting and assuring about participating in the democratic ritual, even when you're dubious that anything of great importance will come of it. This was the first time since - oh, I don't know, 1992, maybe - that I voted in person. Since then I've either used absentee ballots or, in recent years, not voted at all because I wasn't really living here. I wasn't sure I was going to vote this year, either, but now that I expect to be living in the United States again, it seems as though I should have something to say about who's running the place. I felt less certain about whether I should vote on issues specifically related to Berkeley, since I hope to be out of here as soon as possible. But in light of all the griping I've done about this town, and all the years I've spent in it, I figured I might as well have my say one last time. It's not like anything or anyone I voted for is going to win anyway.

The main reason it felt important to vote this year - helping the Democrats to take back control of Congress so as to put a brake on Bush's excesses - doesn't really apply in Berkeley. The idea of anyone other than a left-wing Democrat representing this area in Congress is about as plausible as the Ku Klux Klan choosing an African-American to be its next Grand Dragon. The Berkeley continuum of political acceptability runs from Clinton Democrats on the far right and moves steadily leftward from there. Our Congresswoman, Barbara Lee, cast the only vote against the 2001 attack on Afghanistan; she'd be classed as a moderate, as would Mayor Tom Bates, who in a previous incarnation was one of the most liberal members ever to sit in the California State Assembly.

Bates has got quite a few people angry with him, primarily because he allowed developers to build a few new apartment buildings downtown (prior to the late 90s, almost no new housing had been built in Berkeley since the 1970s, during which time the city's population dropped by more than 10%). To preservation-minded Berkeleyans, who have been known to riot if a homeless encampment (aka People's Park) is ever so slightly disrupted, this is tantamount to treason, so it was to be expected that Bates would face some stiff opposition. But silly me thought that at least one of his opponents might run from the right (e.g., as a centrist Democrat).

Obviously I've lost touch from being away from Berkeley so long, because of the three candidates vying with Bates, one is considerably to the left, one is a hippie-dippie "Native American" by the name of Running Wolf, and the third is a stark, staring bonkers member of the tinfoil hat/9/11 was a hoax brigade.

Our local city councilperson is no prize, either. You don't generally hear a word said against her because she's disabled (confined to a wheelchair), which runs neck-and-neck with being a Person of Color when it comes to conferring sainthood, Berkeley-style. She's also a bit of a dingbat, and a huge proponent of keeping Berkeley the Way It Is, i.e., an open-air refuge for dysfunctional street people and highly paid social services bureaucrats. She'll probably be re-elected in a landslide.

One of the issues I had to struggle with most is about extending a property tax surcharge for "schools." As usual with these things, it's being sold as "for the kids," though in reality the prime beneficiaries will be administrators and political appointees. The trouble with voting no is that any spending cuts made as a result will certainly indeed be taken from "the kids" and not through laying off superfluous curriculum advisers and self-appointed facilitators. Whereas a "yes" might mean that some of the extra money would eventually trickle down to those for whom it was intended, though considering he voracity of Berkeley's edu-apparatus, this is by no means certain. A further problem with voting yes is that it gives both tacit and concrete approval to a system that has been nothing short of disastrous for minority students; Berkeley sends a high proportion of its white and Asian students to the best universities in the country, but its black students might as well be attending school in 1950s Alabama. A disproportionate number of them graduates only to unemployment and/or penal institutions, largely because - at least in my opinion - anyone who dared attempt imposing minimal academic or behavioral standards would be swiftly smeared as a racist and cultural imperialist.

So I ended up voting no on the school tax, not because I'm against schools, but because I'm very much against leaving them in the hands of the dingbats who've been running them in Berkeley for the past few decades. I feel a bit churlish about it, but I don't know any other way of sending a message. Voting for a new school board alone won't do it, as candidates tend to inhabit the same spectrum generally found in Berkeley, i.e., moderately leftist to complete loony tunes.

I voted for Angelides for governor, but only because I don't think he has a prayer of winning. If it were a close race, I might give more serious consideration to Schwarzenegger, who despite getting off to a very bad start, hasn't turned out that badly. But Angelides is closer to my own views on things like the minimum wage and the environment; the main reason I wouldn't want him to win (apart from the fact that he seems to be utterly hopeless as a politician) is his forthright support for affirmative action, which I just as forthrightly oppose. I couldn't bring myself to vote for Jerry Brown for Attorney General; he's been such a disaster when it comes to law enforcement in Oakland that I can't imagine putting him charge of it for the whole state. At the same time, I couldn't vote for his right-wing opponent, either, so someone else is going to have to decide that race.

Only a few hours now before we find out whether the Democrats will be successful. While I'd prefer to see them control at least one house of Congress, I don't want it to be by that big a majority, because I don't want them thinking they've got a mandate for what ultimately isn't much of a program beyond "We hate Bush" and "Republicans are evil." If I thought there was a chance in hell of seeing progress toward national health care or a Manhattan Project-style push for energy self-sufficiency, I'd be considerably more enthusiastic, but I honestly don't expect much out of them beyond arrogant sniping and moral posturing. John Kerry's hamhanded blunder, with which he may have succeeded in costing the Democrats an election he's not even running in, serves as the archetypal example.

I found voting harder than usual this time, probably because I no longer have a firmly defined political party or ideology to dictate for me. Well, I'll confess to reacting viscerally on a couple issues: I voted yes on the oil tax primarily because I was so sick of the oil company ads against it (and in spite of being equally tired of hearing Bill Clinton blabber in favor), and yes on the cigarette tax because a) I hate smoking; and b) as long as teenagers and young 20-somethings can afford cigarettes, they're too cheap. I skipped over more races and issues than I have in the past because I simply didn't know who or what was best. But I tried my best, did my duty and all that, so don't come complaining to me if it all goes tits up. Especially if you didn't bother to vote yourself.

The Calm Before The Storm

I'm listening to a battered, dust-covered old cassette tape that must have been stuffed away somewhere for the last 13 years and has recently re-emerged during the ongoing process of weeding out my accumulated junk. It's marked "Larry's messages - 1993," which is not quite accurate; it's a cassette from my old answering machine all right, but by 1993 I no longer had a private phone, or life for that matter. Lookout Records was still being run out of my little room on Berkeley Way, but had grown to the point where it occupied a lot more space than I did, and phone calls were as likely to be for one of the two Lookout employees or many Lookout bands as they were for me personally.

So, intermingled with my mother's plaintive, "Larry, this is your mother and I'm still trying to get hold of you" and an estranged boyfriend calling to say, "This is ____ , it's Tuesday," but maddeningly leaving no message or phone number, were calls from the likes of Ben Weasel wanting to know if we'd gotten the tape of the Queers LP and planning the Screeching Weasel/Queers tour, Tre Cool wanting God know what, but "it's important," Al Sobrante thanking the Potatomen for playing in Arcata, Jeff Ott (he seemed dubious about the whole concept of answering machines and called repeatedly, saying "Hello? Hello? Hello?" while tapping impatiently on the receiver as though he assumed we were being willfully obtuse by not answering him), Chris from Brent's TV planning the reunion show that would also mark Green Day's last Gilman show before departing for major label land, some booking agent out in Texas frantic because some other booking agent had secured the rights to the next Green Day tour, Chuck from Monsula wondering about that royalty check he'd heard was waiting for him, Molly Neuman looking for her future husband Chris Appelgren, half a dozen printers and graphic designers rattling off color numbers and film prices, Pat Hynes calling to find out if Chris and I were coming to Potatomen practice, and a couple dozen random people calling to whistle, sing, make scary noises, or otherwise try to call attention to themselves.

Because it was an antique answering machine and didn't leave a date stamp, there's no way of telling for sure how many days or weeks the messages stretched over, but it's clear that there were frequent periods when the Lookout office, aka my room, was left completely unmanned, something that would become unthinkable a year or two later when Green Day-mania would prompt a quadrupling of our staff and office space and a ten-tupling (if you know what the right word for that is, please tell me) of our sales. It was all so relaxed, like a bunch of kids trying out their "My First Record Label" role-playing game. We were only months away from the release of Green Day's Dookie, but were dithering and doddering along our merry way, completely unaware that everything was about to change forever.

Listening to this tape - which just ended without coming to any dramatic conclusion or resolution - is like a window into another time and place, one that I'd almost forgotten, I time when running a reasonably successful record label sounds like it was almost fun, probably because none of us was taking it anywhere near as seriously as we would soon have to when the big bucks started rolling in. People used to laugh at our "office," which was really just my shabby bedsit in an old hippie house (I didn't even have a bed for much of the time, just a mat and some blankets wadded up in the corner) but looking, or rather listening back now, it sounds like a much more fun place to work than most offices I've ever been in.

I'm actually typing these words from the house next door to the old Lookout office, which is now an upmarket bedsit, erm, studio "apartment" renting for 10 times what we paid for it. This street, which used to see a constant procession of bands and individual punk rockers tossing pennies at our upstairs window because there was no doorbell, is a lot quieter these days, apart from the ghetto house across the street and the college kid house two doors down. Not too many bands or musicians or artists or scenesters live in Berkeley anymore; it's too expensive, too dull, and - at least in my opinion - too crime-ridden and depressing. But on a warm, sunny day like today, with the air crystal clear and the scent of still-blooming flowers wafting through the windows, it's easy to collapse time and imagine that any second now Claude or Janelle or Eggplant or Aaron Cometbus is going to come strolling around the corner and say, "Let's go hang out, you can do your work some other time."

Probably not going to happen, though, and in the meantime, I have to decide what to do with this old cassette (and about 400 other old cassettes full of music, demos, and I'll never know what unless I sit down and take a couple months to listen to all of them. I thought briefly of auctioning the message tape off on eBay, but I think the trash is a more likely receptacle. Honestly, it's really not that interesting if you weren't there, and even if you were, it's kind of like, "Oh yeah, that's the way we were, but so what? This is now, and what are you gonna do about that?"

When Saturday Comes

Up before the crack of dawn today to watch the match between Fulham and Everton, something which, were I still in London, I'd be doing in person and at a much more sensible time of day. I was going to watch it with Kendra K, which I reckoned should be interesting, as she - for reasons inexplicable apart from a possible Northern fetish - is an Everton supporter. Since Everton have been riding high in the Premiership this season - I fully expected Fulham to lose (an essential part of being a Fulham supporter is always expecting to lose), so I was a little iffy about sitting next to Kendra, especially at such an ungodly hour, while she racously exulted over another Toffee triumph. But since she has the technology hookup (something about hijacking Chinese ESPN over the internet) and I don't, I figured we'd have to make the best of it.

A bit reticent about knocking on someone's door at 7 am - especially since the Kendrak household showed no signs of life - I decided I'd better call first. I hate waking people up from a sound sleep, don't you? Which is, of course, exactly what I proceeded to do. I wasn't clear whether she had just overslept or had forgotten about the whole business, but after a moment of stunned silence, she mumbled, "Can I call you back?"

I sat down to wait, figuring I'd give it about 15 more minutes before concluding that she'd gone back to sleep, which I was about 95% sure she was about to do. But, miraculously enough, no more than five minutes later my phone rang, and there she was, wide awake and perky as ever. Which was even more surprising, considering the message she had to deliver: "Congratulations on your three points." Turns out that the Fulham-Everton match had been a lunchtime kickoff, i.e., at 12:45 UK time, or 4:45 am on the West Coast.

Kendra was taking the Everton defeat a lot better than I would have been had the situation been reversed. I know, you're asking why hearing that Fulham had lost would bother me if I had been expecting it anyway? Well, that's just the way it works. Anticipating, even savoring the misery in advance does nothing to diminish its sting. Considering Kendra's seemingly effervescent spirits, I reckoned it would be safe to come in and watch the Liverpool-Reading match with her. It turned out to be a not-too-exceptional 2-0 win for the Scousers. I had mixed feelings, on one hand wanting Liverpool to lose because I always want the big teams to lose, and on the other, wanting Reading to lose because they've been inhabiting more or less the same area of the standings as Fulham. Sadly - and I hope this doesn't mark me out as a bad sport - I watch all too many matches in which the ideal result would be for both teams to lose. Despite all the tinkerings and adjustments the Football Association keeps coming up with, so far nobody seems to have devised a way to make this possible.

The match being rather uneventful, we had plenty of time to chat. I learned about the previous night's art opening for Bella Bigsby, to which nobody had invited me, and what might have been Thee Kendrak Attack's penultimate show, to which I was similarly uninvited, though in the latter case, given my delicate foot-type situation, it might have been for the best. Aparently there was a bout of fairly uproarious candy throwing, something I tend not to appreciate even at the best of times. I also learned - and apologies in advance to Kendra if she gets in trouble for passing this tidbit on - about fomer vegan Pepito Pea devouring a 49-ounce steak (at just over 3 pounds or 1.4 kilos, I reckon that at about 2.5% of Pepito's entire body mass) as part of the bizarre initiation process to some highly exclusive internet message board. Which, I no doubt superfluously point out, I have also not been invited to join.

When football was over, we spent some time watching Robojoe play a computer game - I think it was called Bully, but this is not an area where I have a lot - I mean any - expertise, and drifted into a conversation, sparked by news of Rancid losing their drummer, about the whole idea of making a living from music. I was surprised to hear both Kendra and Robojoe defending the old school punk principle that there was something dubious or at least less than desirable of making a job or career out of playing music. It reminded me of arguments I used to have 20 years ago with MRR co-founder Tim Yohannan and which similarly never reached a satisfactory conclusion. I contended that a musician playing large venues or signing to a major label was the same as a baseball player leaving his hometown team to play for the Yankees. In both cases, his original fans would be disappointed and his hometown scene/team would lose a vital component, but was this sufficient reason for the musician/athlete to deliberately place limits on his potential audience or income?

Robojoe argued that music was "different," that because it was an art form, it occupied a special position and couldn't be evaluated on the same terms as baseball or, for that matter, nuclear physics. I argued back that an athlete who had devoted his life to mastering the art of baseball, the distinction would be nebulous at best, but it was clear there was going to be no meeting of the minds here. Tim Yohannan had the same idea. You could - and should - do any old thing for a living (he himself worked for the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, an odd choice considering his radical leftism and anti-militarism) but the minute you started earning money from music, you became suspect, and were very likely in danger of being kicked out of the scene.

Fair disclosure: there was a time when I was every bit as unyielding on the subject as Yohannan, something I've been awkwardly reminded of by this week's re-reading of my old MRR columns. The alacrity with which I denounced people for being "sellouts" or betrayers of the scene could at times have put Joe McCarthy to shame. A band need do nothing more than have their new record reviewed in the "wrong" sort of magazine before I was on my soapbox demanding an inquiry about this "dangerous" undermining of our precious little cynosure.

Frankly, I'm surprised that I didn't get beaten up on a regular basis, especially since some of those I denounced most rabidly were noted tough guys from East Coast hardcore bands, or the rather burly and athletic Henry Rollins. I think I harbored the delusion that the targets of my criticism would not see it, since I preferred to believe that only right-thinking individuals like myself read my MRR column. Considering, however, what a punk scene focal point MRR was in those days, I realize now that it's very likely my insult-barrages were read and noted. I can only guess that Rollins and others I attacked had a much better sense of humor than I gave them credit for. Either that or they recognized that I was clearly off my trolley and hardly worth the effort of squashing like the irritating insect I must have seemed to them.

That being said, and though it's many years ago, I feel an apology is in order, to Henry Rollins in particular, but to any number of other musicians, writers and scenesters who I used to excoriate as if they were Nazi war criminals for doing nothing more than espousing a style of music or a line of thinking that didn't quite agree with my own. What can I say? I was a jerk. Still can be at times. If I can bring myself to trawl through the last year or so of blog posts, I'll probably have a whole new set of apologies to make. But that will have to wait for at least another day or two. Right now I'm off to bed.

Words And Pictures

The task du jour - of the last several jours, actually - has been typing up my remaining Maximum Rocknroll columns. Lo and behold, it's finally done, and not a moment too soon, either. I'm not sure I could have faced another page of naive, ill-informed opinions sententiously expounded by the late-80s/early 90s Larry Livermore. Fortunately, I won't have to, as all my remaining copies of the mag have now been boxed up - thanks to Erika over at Little Type - and will soon be winging there way to JoeIII in New Jersey, who was the first to lay claim to them. At one point I thought about trying to sell them on eBay, but it seemed more important to get them to a good home, ideally one where I'll never have to look at them again. Though seeing pictures of Aaron Cometbus and Lenny Filth as callow teenagers did bring back some happy Gilman Street memories.

Speaking of which, Gilman's 20th anniversary is coming up soon, on Dec. 31 to be specific, and I just realized that I won't be here for it. I'm slightly annoyed by that, and will be more annoyed if they repeat the offer made during the 10th anniversary (which I also missed): show up with your original Gilman membership card from 1986 and get in free! Frankly, since the original membership card states very clearly that it was a LIFETIME membership, a provision not honored by the new collective that took over Gilman in 1988, and since as a result I've probably had to buy at least 15 annual memberships at $2 a pop since then, I figure they owe me two or three shows at least.

But never mind; in honor of Gilman's multifarious contributions to the community and what it has meant to a couple generations of young people, I guess I can let it slide. And for the same reason, I don't need to be here for the New Year's Eve celebration. To me the real celebration is the simple ongoing miracle of what was from the start and has continued to be ever since the most amazing punk rock club in the world.

More news about ratty old magazines: I also uncovered a box of Lookout zines, dating all the way back to the very first four-page xeroxed issue from 1984, and have consigned them to the fine folks at - where else? - Little Type, who I believe have already put them up for sale. You can look here if for some reason you feel compelled to own a complete set of all 40.5 issue, the .5 being a digest-sized issue that I did around 1998 and never got circulated much beyond immediate family and friends. The writing is nothing spectacular; its main collector value now might stem from its cover, which features an original drawing by fast-rising comics star Gabrielle Bell. And if you're a fan of Ms. Bell's work, you might like to know that Lucky, her newest book, is out this month on Drawn And Quarterly, and is already available for pre-orders at Amazon. Yes, she's my niece, but don't hold that against her. She didn't ask to be related to me, and so far it doesn't seem to have stopped her being a genius.

If You Come To San Francisco...

The groovy little city of love is in a tiz over last night's Halloween shootings in the Castro. And, judging from these comments on the San Francisco Chronicle's website, it's also deep in denial. At least half of the respondents were banging on about the problem being "outsiders," "East Bay trash, "bridge and tunnel people" and the like. Their solution to the violence that has plagued the Castro's Halloween party for years was "ban people who aren't from San Francisco."

Because, of course, anyone dwelling within the 49 square miles enclosing God's crown of creation, that jewel-like city that is a model to the world of civility, sophistication, and racial and cultural harmony, is pretty much incapable of being mildly unpleasant, let alone robbing, assaulting, or randomly shooting down people in the streets. Ergo, all of last night's unpleasantness, of which there was plenty, had to have been the fault of loathsome out-of-towners.

I lived in or near the Castro for a few years during the 70s, but the last time I attended one of these Halloween shindigs was 1983, when a gang of about 50 teenagers came swarming through the crowd attacking and robbing people. They seemed to have come from the projects on Lower Haight Street, and that's definitely where they headed when they made their retreat. They were also, without exception, black, as were those being blamed for last night's fiasco. But this being San Francisco, you're not really supposed to point that out, hence the resorting to code words like "East Bay trash." Apparently the flustered Frisco-ites are under the misapprehension that there are no longer any black people in their city, that they have all moved to Richmond or Oakland. One suspects that some of those doing the loudest bleating have not left the Castro in the past decade and may be assuming that the entire city of San Francisco is, like their own neighborhood, composed of white, upper middle class gay men with large disposable incomes.

A few more astute observers pointed out - as, ahem, I've been doing for years - that last night's events were not an aberration, that San Francisco has been growing steadily more violent and unpleasant for a long time now. This quickly drew the following rebuttal:

Are you joking? This city is the safest big city in the country (possibly 2nd to NYC). Statistics are meaningless. 99% of the "shootings" you see reported are gangsters shooting each other. You have a next to zero chance of being a victim of crime in SF with two exceptions: 1) Bike and car theft, which is appallingly problematic and 2) During a bridge and tunnel event such as halloween in the Castro - mark my words - it is not SF residents who caused this problem.

Since, as this person assures us, "statistics are meaningless," I suppose we're left with no choice but to accept his assertion that San Francisco is "the safest big city in the country." Whether it's even fair to consider little Frisco, which is considerably smaller than San Jose, a "big city" is a question I'll leave open for now, but let's just, for the sake of argument, suppose statistics aren't "meaningless. In that case, according to last week's Morgan Quitno report, the safest "big city" in the country actually is San Jose. Frisco's not even in the running; in fact of all 371 cities measured, it comes in at a dismal #270, which puts it nearly twice as dangerous as New York, at #145.

San Franciscans can still console themselves with the notion that they're not as bad as Oakland (#364) or Richmond (#361), both of which are wallowing pretty near the bottom of the barrel in the murder-and-mayhem sweepstakes. Berkeley, sandwiched in between the crime capitals, comes in at #226, which might not look so bad until you consider that it's a podunk college town of barely 100,000, yet is saddled with a much higher crime rate than 8 million-strong New York City.

Bay Area liberals don't like to talk about this stuff, not only because it calls into serious question their caring, sharing social policies which over the past 40 years or so have produced a steadily declining quality of life and a huge rise in violent crime, but also because any honest discussion soon has to spill over into the explosive realm of racial politics. It's difficult to point it out without being branded as a bigot and reactionary, but the Bay Area's current crime problem - especially the soaring murder rate - is largely a black problem. But even that's not quite accurate; more precisely, it's a problem with young black men. Eliminate violent crimes committed by African-American men aged 15-35 (more or less), and the Bay Area's crime rate would more closely resemble South Dakota's.

I'm not that comfortable pointing this out myself, not because I'm afraid of being called a racist (it wouldn't be the first time), but because this past year or so I've found myself spending a good deal more of my time with black people, nearly all of whom have been wonderful, warm, funny and insightful companions. Most of them, of course, have not been part of the young male demographic responsible for so much violent crime, but they have in many cases been their parents or grandparents. And in my volunteer work last summer, I did come in contact with many ex-cons and street people who freely admitted to having committed murders, muggings and rapes when they were out on the streets.

Even this latter group, taken as individuals, could be great guys, often capable of inspiring me with the courage and tenacity they'd shown in surviving lives harsher than most of us can imagine. But this was in a hospital setting, where they were free - often for the first time in years - from drugs and booze. I'm not so sure I'd want to encounter some of them on the streets wired up on crack or crank again.

The more I deal with black people on an individual basis, the harder it is to think in terms of a "black problem," even if I'm just referring to a specific subset of young black males. But it would be naive in the extreme to pretend that such a thing doesn't exist, and even more naive to keep on acting as though current social policies weren't completely bankrupt. If it's awkward for me as white male to say such things, let's hear from a black female, also posting on the Chronicle blog:

As a Black woman, I am tired, discouraged and outraged at the behavior that accompanies the appearance of these shameful, disrespectful and DANGEROUS hoodlums. Alternate event, you betcha. Respect?? Why should I have even a modicum of respect for people who can't even respect themselves? Please. Stop it with the liberal bleeding heart PC, boo hoo hoo, poor poor black people. Can we at least be real here? You want so badly for everything to be equal and non-racist that you can't even see that your refusal to identify the problem perpetuates it. We all know what that headline said even when it didn't. And yeah, I am black and proud, but not of the baggy pants, cap wearing, gun toting silly dangerous fools. Them, you can keep them. Preferably in a cell with no chance for parole.

I don't have anything to add to that, so I think I'll shut up and leave it there.

Bono ≠ Billie Joe

An excerpt from Marc Spitz's new Green Day biography appears in today's Chronicle, and it looks pretty good. I met Marc a couple months ago at a Rancid show in New York, and was impressed with his enthusiasm not just for the band, but for the East Bay scene they came out of. Although Marc wasn't around during those days, he seems to have taken good advice and talked to a lot of the right people; among those quoted, in addition to family members, are Operation Ivy's Jesse Michaels, Jello Biafra, Tim Armstrong, and (Dr.) Frank Portman. About the only factual error I noted was the now almost ubiquitous misspelling of MRR honcho and Gilman Street co-founder Tim Yohannan's name. People, it's NOT "Yohannon," no matter how many times you've seen it written that way. But apparently that's how it's going to go down in history.

But I would have to take issue with Marc on one thing, admittedly one that's just a matter of differing opinions. In the Chronicle excerpt, he hangs his narrative on Green Day's recent collaboration with U2. Identifying Green Day as part of his own 30-something Gen X demographic, Marc claims this made him "proud," and cemented Green Day's position as "a similarly important band."

Well, far be it from me to deny him his generational pride, or to quarrel with him about the merits of U2. I can't stand them, but I'm well aware that millions of people think they're great. Like them or not, though, they're a band from another era and another ethos who had absolutely nothing to do with the scene that Green Day comes from. The idea that appearing on stage or U2 confers any kind of validation rubs me the wrong way. If anything, I'd say the opposite was true.

Okay, it was for a good cause, and I don't mean to criticize that aspect. But to suggest that Green Day have "arrived" because they're now deemed "worthy" of appearing as equals with yesteryear's rock heroes obscures the point: Green Day are far and away the biggest and most important rock and roll band on the planet. They don't need U2. If anything, the opposite is true.

Maybe Green Day took a studied, ego-free decision to work with U2 because they knew it would help raise more money for the cause than if the two bands had done something separately. In that case, I take my hat off to them, and withdraw my criticism. But it kind of reminded of a time at the beginning of the 90s when Green Day were beginning to break out of the Gilman ghetto and were offered a spot opening for Bad Religion on an upcoming tour.

I argued against it. "You don't need those guys," I said (bear in mind that Bad Religion were one of my favorite bands). "You're big enough to be headlining shows on your own now. Bad Religion should be opening for you, at least in Northern California, anyway."

I was probably being a little hasty and/or chauvinistic; at the time Bad Religion were still selling way more records than Green Day. But as much as I liked Bad Religion, there was no doubt in my mind that Green Day were a far better band. I didn't like the image that was being conveyed, that Green Day were somehow acquiring legitimacy by opening for them.

If it were a co-headlining tour, where Green Day and Bad Religion were treated as equals, I wouldn't have had a problem with it, but there was a distinct attitude coming from the Bad Religion camp of "We're doing you guys a favor." I thought this could have been my imagination until I came across an account in Ben Myers' unauthorized Green Day biography that has Bad Religion's Jay Bentley grousing about how "we took you guys out on the road all the time" and how it was "horse shit" that Green Day, now that they were massive, wouldn't offer them an opening spot.

You know, now that I think about it, having Bad Religion for an opening act on a current Green Day tour wouldn't be such a bad idea. It would certainly be an improvement over most if not all of the opening acts they've had in recent years. But it should be because Bad Religion are a great punk rock band, not because of any favors - real or imagined - from 15 years ago. And - a dark thought just crossed my mind - please, PLEASE don't let Green Day ever stoop to touring with U2. I wouldn't even care which band opened; it's just too awful a concept to contemplate.

Progress Report

The radio (BBC, anyway, and maybe NPR) has lately been reminiscing about the Suez crisis and the Hungarian uprising, both of which happened 50 years ago this autumn. The rather sobering fact is that I remember both of these events.

The Suez business, it's true, made little sense to my 8, almost 9 year-old self, but I was intrigued enough by the headlines to ask my dad what it was about. The images of Hungarian rebels being routed by Soviet tanks came through loud and clear, however, and though the story was undoubtedly pumped up by the resolutely anti-communist nuns at my school, I burned with indignation and outrage, demanding that my parents explain why President Eisenhower hadn't sent our army to the rescue. 1956 was my year for finding out that life was often unfair, and that it was not at all unheard of for the good guys to lose badly.

I've always tended to trace my bad attitude about society, authority and life in general to that year, though I realize now that it had much earlier origins, probably dating back to age 3 or 4. I know that by the time I started kindergarten in 1952, I was already pretty much convinced that I was getting a bum deal; the only difference was that I hadn't yet got it into my head that there was anything I could do about it.

But I'll spare you the child psychology lesson; the real point of bringing up my recollections of 1956 was that I have such recollections at all. It seems like only yesterday that I was marveling that 40 years had passed since major events like the Vietnam War or (okay, not of quite the same magnitude, I know) my high school graduation. Now I'm starting to remember things that happened half a bloody century ago!

In case you hadn't already known or guessed, yesterday was my birthday, and being still confined to my little room by a non-functioning foot, it served as a perfect day for plowing through boxes of old photos, journals, books and memories. I wasn't exactly wallowing in the past, though I know I leave myself open to such accusations. But as I'm sure I've mentioned a couple times, I'm in the midst of winnowing out whatever is worthwhile from about 40 years worth of keepsakes and memorabilia and dumping the rest.

The first thing that popped up this morning was an old passport, issued around this time of year in 1977. I was immediately startled to see that in my photo I didn't look remotely punk, even though this would have been taken at a time when I was becoming a leather-clad, dyed and spiked-hair, coke-snorting regular at the Mabuhay Gardens. On the contrary, the picture looking back at me was that of a very normal looking fellow with a conservative, slightly floppy haircut in its natural color, wearing a hippie-cum-lumberjack flannel shirt and a slightly knowing smile.

Not a bad looking guy, either, I would have thought, if I hadn't known it was me, and that at the time that picture was taken, I was at one of the lowest points of my life, at least emotionally. This was confirmed moments later when the next item I unearthed turned out to be the set of journals I'd kept from 1976 to 1979. I more or less recognized the handwriting, but apart from that, I had a hard time identifying with them, as they seemed to have been written by The Most Miserable Man Alive. If not the most miserable, certainly someone whose primary activity in life was feeling sorry for himself. When, that is, he wasn't busy blaming everything and everyone else in the world for his never-ending troubles.

I keep saying "he" because it really is hard to accept that this pathetic creature really could have been me. Or so I say now, but really, as I was reading, I was well aware who was being talked about, because my eyes kept tearing up at the pain this guy so clearly felt. When, that is, they weren't watering with laughter at the sheer bombast and self-importance intermingled with the self-pity and self-loathing. "You were on drugs and/or booze pretty much the entire time," I kept reminding myself when wondering how someone, anyone - let alone me - could be so thoroughly oblivious and obnoxious, but even still, I was a complete and utter lunatic. It's a wonder anyone could have spent ten minutes in the same room with me, let alone attempt to conduct a serious relationship, which several people were unwise enough to do.

From the complexity of my love life - real or attempted, it wasn't always clear - it might almost seem as though I possessed a certain charisma, but then so does a train wreck, which is what my life mostly closely resembled. People came and went - mostly went, true - with dizzying rapidity, and most of the time I barely noticed, so caught up was I in endless self-regard. On one hand, I was obsessed with love and falling in love, and even more obsessed with persuading some supremely desirable but absolutely unattainable (apparently I was unable to see that the two went hand in hand) person to give me their unquestioning and total devotion (at which point, of course, I would lose all interest in them). On the other hand, I spent at least half my time lamenting about how hideously old and ugly and deformed I was, and urging myself to accept the obvious fact that I was washed up, over the hill, doomed to a lonely and ascetic old decrepitude. I had, after all, been feeling this way ever since I was 25, and now I was nearly 30! The idea that I was still alive was almost indecent in itself.

I would go on feeling much the same way for many years afterward, and, if I'm perfectly honest, I'd have to acknowledge that such doubts and self-hatred haven't completely left me even now. For instance, a couple times in recent years I've been filmed for VH1 specials about Green Day, and in both cases, I've refused to watch the shows because I was afraid of what I'd look like on TV. Ironically, just last night, someone on the Pop Punk Mesage Board posted a Youtube link to one of the shows, and I decided to have a look at it. Apart from being surprised that so much of it was about Green Day and so little about me, I have to admit it wasn't bad at all. I mean, it was a good story, well presented, and made me feel good about Green Day all over again, but like any true narcissist, of course, I was mostly interested in how I would look in it.

And the answer was, not bad, not bad at all. Okay, definitely not a kid anymore, but who wants to look at a 59 year-old kid anyway? To me the amazing thing was that I could look at myself not only without cringing, but with even a bit of self-approval and appreciation. Something I could never have done 30 years ago, when I was only half this age. Interesting. Well, to me, anyway, but as we've already seen, I'm completely self-obsessed. So I won't blame the rest of you if you've skipped over this whole section.

As for the progress referred to in the header, I originally meant to tell you about my foot, which might be marginally less interesting to you than my old photos or neurosis-steeped journals. Nevertheless, after quite a rough week, with a fair bit of pain, yesterday marked a turn for the better. For the first time I was able to move my toe around without pain, and could also walk around the room with only minor discomfort. I haven't been outside in a couple days, which is frustrating, because yesterday and today have seen some absolutely fabulous weather, maybe some of the last we'll see in this corner of the Northern Hemisphere until spring. But lying around with my feet up, as recommended by the doctor, seems to be doing the trick. I'm beginning to believe I may walk again after all!

Apart from that, thanks to all of you for the phone calls, emails, myspace messages, etc. wishing me a happy birthday. For a while there they were coming through so thick and fast that I was worried I wouldn't have sufficient time to do my usual birthday brooding.

But never fear, I got done just about everything I'd hoped to, and what I thought might be brooding turned out to be something a good deal more positive. In fact, the header for this article originally read "(Lack Of) Progress Report" but I had to go back and correct it, because for once I could unhesitatingly say yes, you know, I actually have made a little progress. Maybe even more than a little. The fact that that miserable wretch from the 1970s now seems like a tragicomic stranger is a pretty big deal in itself. And my foot's getting better, too? Excellent birthday all round, I'd say.

Reflections

I thought that being confined to bed and/or this tiny room for a few weeks while my foot recovered would give me a great opportunity to do some serious blogging.

After all, there's not a whole lot else to do here. No TV, no stereo, no DVDs, though I finally borrowed the original Star Wars trilogy that I had given to my nephew for Christmas last year and watched it on my laptop. It was sensational, even better than I remembered from decades ago. But that was about it. I had three P.G. Wodehouse novels, an AM-FM radio, and an internet connection. Considering the ridiculous amount of time I normally spend on the internet anyway, I figured, now that I didn't need to make excuses or feel guilty about wasting time that I could be using more productively, I'd stay online about 20 hours a day and produce the blog equivalent of a three-volume novel.

Well, I was on the internet a lot, though not as much as I expected, because it was too uncomfortable to sit up, and trying to type while lying down, I discovered, can be downright painful. But not a word of blogworthy content found its way onto my screen. I did a fair bit of posting on the Pop Punk Message Board, read newspapers from around the globe, checked all my friends's blogs several times a day for new entries, and thought of a thousand and one things I really needed to tell the world about here, but it was as though my typing fingers had gone mute. Even now it's taking a supreme effort of the will to stay up writing instead of going to bed.

It's the longest I've gone without posting anything here since I started this blog, and I guess - no, I don't guess, I know - that I feel guilty about it. Why, I don't know. It's not as if any of you out there have paid me to do this, and I haven't had any anguished letters or calls from people distraught over the lack of news or opinions from chez Livermore. I guess I just have the inbuilt tendency to set myself tasks and then torment myself if I don't religiously carry them out regardless of whether or not they have a point. A legacy of Catholic school, I suspect.

But before I digress further, a progress report: yesterday - day 12 of the post-surgery process - was my first day walking without crutches, which rather surprised me, since I'd been expecting to be laid up a lot longer than that. I thought I'd be mostly confined to bed for about four weeks, but by last Thursday, day 9, I made my first venture out on my own, hobbling three arduous blocks on crutches up to Shattuck and University for a much longed-for burrito. I had to stop every hundred feet or so to rest - using crutches gives your arms a serious workout, for those of you who haven't had the experience - and had to move very slowly and carefully so as not to be trampled or knocked over by rowdy groups of high school students to whom I might as well have been invisible.

It was a crash course in being old and infirm. Before she died, I used to take Olivia out to do shopping or to the doctor, and I'd learned to be patient with how slowly she moved, how cautious she was about crossing streets, refusing to start out unless the light had only just turned green. But now I could see what it must have been like to be her, and maybe what it will be like for me someday, though hopefully when I'm a lot older than I am now.

But for now I'm very optimistic about making a full recovery and being able to run around again at least as well and as quickly as I used to. It might be a while yet - today, withoug my crutches, it was all I could manage to half walk/half shuffle to the end of my block and back. Any further than that and I've got to drive - something else I wasn't supposed to be able to do for a few weeks, but which has been no trouble at all for a few days now.

Tomorrow is the day I get my stitches out, and hopefully some advice from the doctor about just how far I can push myself without risk of damaging my new big toe. I've even - no doubt in a fit of delirious optimism - considered flying out to Gainesville this weekend for the amazing punk rock fest. Saturday happens to be my birthday, and I can't think of many better ways to celebrate, especially since many of my East Coast friends will be there as well.

But practically speaking, the idea is probably sheer madness. Getting there would be no problem - BART to the airport, and a rental car to get me around Gainesville - but so far I'm not able even to wear a shoe on my bad foot. Can you imagine being in a jampacked punk rock club and trying - hoping against hope, really - to make sure nobody will step on it? So unless the doctor tells me tomorrow that I can start wearing a normal shoe again this week, the trip is out of the question. But just in case, I've got a room reserved in G-ville...

What else? I've been devoting much of my time here to sorting out and throwing out much of the cultural detritus that's been accumulating in this room for the past 12 years. It's my intention to sever my last remaining ties to Berkeley as soon as my foot's back to normal, and that means getting rid of, or finding a good home for, hundreds of records, CDs, zines and other assorted memorabilia. Some of it's probably eBay-able, like a test pressing for the Operation Ivy LP or the first pressing of Jawbreaker's Unfun LP on blue vinyl, but so much more of my stuff falls into the t00-good-to-thr0w-away-too-useless-to-keep category that I despair at the thought of sitting here for weeks or months running several hundred online auctions.

I've already found someone who wants my old copies of Maximum Rocknroll, but even that's not simple: the reason I've hung onto them as long as I have is that they contain columns I wrote back in the late 80s and early 90s that I don't have computerized copies of. Eventuallly I want to put some or all of my old columns up on my long-delayed website, so I've been typing them into the computer. An interesting experience, and a slightly traumatic one.

It's not just the tedium and the risk of repetitive strain injury (how data entry clerks do this eight hours a day for years on end, I'll never know), but the unsettling realization that the Lawrence Livermore who wrote those late-80s columns was precisely the kind of left-wing hippie wackjob I'm constantly inveighing against these days. At one point I considered just dumping all the magazines and forgetting I'd ever written those columns. Ben Weasel said he'd had a similar experience, and ended up deciding that, "Out of five years I had maybe 4 columns worth reprinting." But, he added, "What the heck, it was cheaper than a writing class and probably more instructive."

Which is kind of how I feel about it now. Tonight I typed a copy of something from the spring of 1988 where I was threatening to single-handedly bring down the government because Ronald Reagan was supposedly leading us into a new Vietnam in Central America. Apparently I'd just come back from one of those impromptu marches down Market Street and was mightily fired up. What Reagan had done on this particular occasion was to order some US troops into Honduras, something which today I honestly have no memory of. I think I'm pretty safe in saying that it didn't lead to the wholesale machine-gunning and napalming of Honduran peasants that I was predicting at the time.

But having this kind of political/ideological argument with myself is considerably more troubling than having it with the woolly-minded troglodytes or teenage anarchists I usually find it so much fun to ridicule. For one thing, it's me saying all those wacky things, and despite all evidence that it's not wise to do so, I still have a certain regrettable tendency to take seriously what I think and say. But even more disturbing is the thought that popped into my head last night while arguing with my brother, who still subscribes to pretty much the same ideas he and I both had in 1987. Or, for that matter, 1967.

If I had been so spectacularly wrong back then, I thought, who's to say I couldn't be just as spectacularly wrong today? Will I be reading old blogs in the year 2027 and rolling my eyes at what a hopeless nutcase I was back in the oughties? Entirely possible, maybe even likely, given my past track record.

At that point I quickly resolved to give up writing about politics, and maybe to stop having opinions altogether. Don't know how interesting that would be, but at the same time, how interesting can it be for me to go banging on about the same old themes for decade after decade, even if it's from completely opposite sides of the issue? That's another thing I learned from going through my old columns - not just the MRR ones, but also Punk Planet and Hit List - that much of the stuff I write about today, thinking it's a pressing, urgent issue that needs to be brought to the attention of the public immediately, is stuff that I've already been saying, often repeatedly, for 25 years or more now.

Ah well, who I am kidding? I'm probably not going to shut up, even if I should, but at least maybe I'll change the subject a little. Or maybe by reading enough of my old columns, I'll even be converted back in the direction of my bleeding heart pinko former self. I know at one point, where the 1988 L. Livermore was denouncing the cynical sellouts of his generation who no longer cared enough to get out into the streets and protest injustice, I found myself saying "Ouch, this guy has got my number all right." Naff as he was, he was so damned sincere that I didn't even feel like traveling back in time to punch him in the nose.

Anyway, that's what's been going on lately. Thanks for all your kind wishes and even more so for the tangible help, in the form of rides and food, etc., that some of you have offered. A few weeks more and I should be back to my ten-toed, tap-dancing, street-fighting self, but in the meantime, as you can no doubt tell from the foregoing, I've got a fair bit of time on my hands.

Under The Knife

Today I had to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and take the BART to Oakland to get my foot operated on. Just as I was leaving for the train, I remembered either writing or telling someone about my long-standing belief that "something bad happens every time you go to Oakland" that I adhered to through from the 1960s well into the 1980s. And actually, I never completely abandoned that philosophy; it's just that by the 80s I'd been to Oakland a sufficient number of times without something bad happening that I was able to overlook the many other times when it had.

Still, I found myself wishing that my operation had been scheduled for Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley than a storefront "Surgery Center" backing on to the parking lot at Macarthur BART. If nothing else, the odds on my being mugged on the way to being surgically sliced and diced would have been considerably lowered. Though given Berkeley's strict affirmative action policies, I might have been wheeled into an operating room staffed by a multicultural array of homeless people wielding scalpels plucked from dumpsters and stored in stolen shopping carts.

Perhaps I'm being unfair to the "Surgery Center" when I refer to it as a "storefront;" for one thing it was considerably bigger, and now that I think of it, could have had a previous incarnation as a funeral parlor. Which causes me to wonder why they didn't reserve one wing for its original purpose, since I presume any surgery center produces its fair share of potential clients. Probably a bit demoralizing for the patients, though.

My theory that the Macarthur BART parking lot and environs would be relatively mugger-free at 5:45 in the morning proved correct. I don't like stereotyping, but it does seem as though muggers are not big on the early-bird-catches-the-worm ethos (or, if you're not keen on worms, the German variant, Morgenstunde hat Gold im Mund, "The morning hour has gold in its mouth"). So I made it safely to the waiting room where I did a lot of, erm, waiting. They'd told me to be there at 6 am for a 7:30 am operation, which allowed me time to read most of a three-month-old Time magazine purporting to explain why the Israelis and Arabs were mad at each other and leaf through a copy of Sunset offering guidance on "Fall Getaways," none of which I'm likely to be making, as I'll be in a supine position with my foot up in the air for the next month or two.

Apart from filling out a few forms and being giving a copy of the Surgery Center's "Privacy Statement" (yeah, as you can see, I'm so bothered about my medical privacy issues that I'm posting all about them on the internet), there was little else to do apart from submit to the real mugging: forking over the $1699 (surprised, as Patrick later observed, that they didn't make it $1699.95) that wasn't covered by my insurance. "We don't accept personal checks," I'd been told in advance, which made sense, I guess, since what are you going to do to a guy who bounces a check, take back his operation? But when they asked for not just my insurance card, but a photo ID, I wondered, "What? How likely is it that someone is going to sneak in here and get someone else's operation for him? I mean, it's not exactly like taking someone's exam for them in college..." But then I realized - slowly, as I obviously don't have the mind of a criminal - that it would be a fairly easy matter to borrow or purloin someone's insurance card for the purposes of free medical treatment. Say, for example, that mugger had been lurking outside of Macarthur BART. After robbing me and rifling through my possessions, he could have said, "Say, this fellow was due for a foot operation just over there; why don't I impersonate him and get my own foot operated on instead?"

After forking over the old credit card, things swung rather rapidly into action. I had to drink some bitter liquid to limit "gastric secretions," which I presume meant they didn't want me belching or farting while they were cutting me up, and then had a needle inserted into my hand, through which some fluid poured that first made my arm cold and then put me completely to sleep for the next three hours. None of this "count to 10" business, even; I was just out like that. I woke up with a big bandage on my foot, they fed me cranberry juice, crackers and Vicodin, and turned me over to the wonderful and famous Patrick Hynes, who interrupted his duties at Little Type long enough to come collect me and bring me back to El Cerrito where I am now safely holed up at my mother's house until I'm recovered sufficiently to be let loose on my own again. Thanks for all your (as yet unreceived) expressions of concern, but I'll be fine, really.

In Which Larry Goes To Golden Gate Park And Is Captured By Deadheads

I caught the 1 California bus at the bottom of Nob Hill and found myself sandwiched in among a standing room only crowd of Chinese ladies carting their shopping home, 30-something moms with extraordinarily bulky and expensive strollers (some containing kids; others, inexplicably, not), and a smattering of the usual disgruntled types talking either to the air or themselves. My nearest neighbors, though, were a fresh-faced teenage trio having an earnest discussion about - no, not the scandalous price of illegal drugs these days or the best place to obtain a quick abortion without parental notification - the meaning of the Book of Genesis.

Specifically they were trying to decide whether God had created human beings as intrinsically flawed, therefore predestined to rebel and cock up the program, 0r if the serpent in the garden and the subsequent unleashing of sin upon the world had caught God unawares, therefore - possibly, anyway - calling into question his Godability, as one might put it. I was all set to butt in with my own thesis, something about rebellion being the soul's means of individuating itself and acquiring a personality, but realized I couldn't put it into words any more articulate than those already being used by the kids, and that I would no doubt come off as merely another San Francisco bus weirdo talking to the air and/or myself.

But it put me in a Biblical mood, and I wound up musing on the story of Lot and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not so much the Sodom and Gomorrah bit; it's well known that San Francisco fancies itself as a modern-day S&G, and I don't want to encourage any vainglorious musings of that sort. Fact is, there's nothing notably "wicked" or "evil" about Podunk-By-The-Bay apart from it being a rather singularly smug and boring little place that might best be described by inverting Hannah Arendt's phrase, to wit, the evil of banality.

But yes, I digress again; I was thinking more about this poor fellow Lot, who was told by God that if he wanted to save Sodom and Gomorrah and all their inhabitants from a divine incineration, he need only find ten decent people living therein. As all you Biblical scholars will be aware, he failed to find even one, and down came the fire and brimstone. Well, I was fancying myself a modern-day Lot, challenged to find a reason or reasons why San Francisco should not be destroyed, and in pursuit of that quest, devoted most of my weekend and a small fortune in BART and Muni fares to prowling the streets of Frisco in search of an angry... no, wait, wrong poem... Let's just say, as would Rod Stewart, that I was looking for a reason to believe.

I started out with great optimism. After a week of miserably dank and cold weather, the sun had burst out all over, temperatures were in the mid to high 70s, the air was crystalline, visibility practically limitless, and the bay, the ocean, the hills with their carpetings of rich yellow grass, deep green forests, white and pastel houses, all practically shimmered in the soft October light. At least it looked that way as long as I stayed isolated on a hilltop overlooking the panorama; as soon as I descended into town, it was a clear case of every prospect pleasing and only man being vile, if you know what I mean.

Let's just put it this way: the California temperament, the Northern California, Bay Area temperament, anyway, clashes rather harshly with my own. But there I go straying off into negative territory again, when all I wanted to point out was that this weekend offered, in addition to fabulous weather and scenery (and, let us not forget, several excellent, impossible-to-obtain-anywhere-else burritos), a host of events. There were parades, on land (Columbus Day/Italian Heritage) sea (battleships et al. in conjunction with Fleet Week), and air (the Blue Angels, a US Navy airborne daredevil act, also Fleet Week-related). There was a Cal football game, an Oakland A's playoff game, about half a dozen concerts and festivals, and most of all, there was Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, three days of absolutely free shows on five stages in Golden Gate Park.

Apparently this was the 6th annual HSB, and I'd never even heard of it before. In fact I only found out about it because I was perusing The List, which mostly covers punk and ska-type stuff. I came across one item with about 300 names followed by "free," and when I saw that those names included the likes of Elvis Costello, Billy Bragg, Steve Earle, Earl Scruggs, Ricky Skaggs, I thought, "Well, I probably wouldn't pay to see any of those guys, but who can argue with free? And besides, I love bluegrass and hillbilly music.

So I moseyed on out there for two days running. Granted, I took my time, and both days didn't get there till near the end, but then I wasn't going to see anyone in particular; I was just going to wander around from stage to stage seeing what was on offer. Much as I like the stuff, I have to admit that most bluegrass tends to sound pretty much the same - kind of like one of my other favorite kinds of music, pop-punk - so I figured it would all be pretty good.

One of the first things I stumbled across was Billy Bragg, in a cowboy hat, talking like Tony Blair in a ridiculous cockney-cum-cowboy accent. When I say that, I don't mean to imply that Tony Blair talks in a cockney-cum-cowboy accent (though it wouldn't surprise me one bit if he did), but that BB was doing that same hokey, folksy man-of-the-people thing that Tony does when he yanks out all the glottal stops and launches into a full-estuary attempt to get down with "you guys."

Well, that's what Billy B was doing, only in a more-socialist-hence-even-more-boring manner than Our Tone. "You guys" were walking away in droves as it became clear that Billy was out to shatter even the Jello Biafra blabbermouth standard, but eventually he did sing a song or two, one about the Diggers (the 17th century English variety, not the 1960s Haight-Ashbury kind, though I think in his long, convoluted discourse Billy may have been trying to establish a linkage between the two). There was another one about sleeping under the California stars that was kind of touching and reminded me of how much I used to love this state before another 20 million people moved here, but not having been born here myself, I guess I can't complain too much about that.

Some skinny girl called Gillian Welch, who I guess is a big deal in some circles, just not mine, was singing on the next stage, and she was all right, although I'd been listening to her for about 20 minutes before I realized she wasn't Emmy Lou Harris (I was standing way at the back of a very large crowd). I'd had a headache all day, not the fault of any of the singers/bands, but it wasn't being helped any by the crowds of morons puffing up great clouds of marijuana smoke all around me. You'd think this was some hippie love-in rather than a hillbilly music festival, until it dawned on me that it actually was a hippie love-in, so long as you define "love-in" as a massive crowd of badly dressed stoned and drunk people wallowing and rutting in a vast muddy field. Yes sir, it was just like old times; I'd been to free concerts in this very same location - Speedway Meadows - some 35 or more years ago, and no doubt some of these very same people had been there, too, and had remained stoned ever since.

It's not necessarily pleasant to find yourself suddenly surrounded by the human wreckage of your past, and not just because it makes you think, "Oh my, did I really look that bad when I was cavorting around fields high on pot and acid and talking utter nonsense about, well, about anything that came up, actually?" No, there's also the creeping suspicion that these people, who are basically the same age as me, might come closer than I'd like to think to representing how I too appear to the world these days.

Then there's the young hippies, who I find even more disconcerting in a way. They hadn't even been born in the 60s or 70s when we were committing our moral, ethical and fashion faux pas, yet they have the look, the language, the costumes and the drug abuse down pat, so much so that I'm constantly confusing them with people I used to see in Provo Park or spare changing on St. Mark's Place some three or four decades ago. Which causes me to have a momentary lapse of reason, to think I'm still the same age I was when I was first surrounded by hippies, and simultaneously wonder why all those ridiculous old people are hanging around our groovy young scene.

The usual unsightly bits were on copious display: acres of tie-dye, children watching in slack-jawed boredom as their somewhat feral parents got blotto on bong hits, voluminous hindquarters stuffed (barely) into Indian bedspread dresses, but I also spied a long-haired and bearded fellow passing a joint back and forth with a whole passel of like-minded and coiffed individuals while wearing a NOFX "Never Trust A Hippy" hoodie. Unless I'm missing something here, this may be the first irony-enabled hippie I've come across in 40 years of observing the species.

Anyway, that was all yesterday; today I came back sans headache and with a slightly better attitude. Caught a bit of Richard Thompson, who I've never liked, and had to admit that even though I still don't care much for his singing or songwriting, he is one astounding guitarist. Noted from the sign nearby that I'd missed Elvis Costello for the second day running and wasn't that bothered. Then wandered over into the next meadow and heard something that sounded remarkably like the Grateful Dead, made doubly eerie by the fact that I've seen the Grateful Dead before playing in that very meadow, albeit some 35 years ago. But the closer I got the more they sounded like the Grateful Dead, and the more the crowd looked like a Grateful Dead crowd, complete with gaping, grinning girls doing the twirl and flycatcher dance and swaying drunks with mustaches singing, or rather shouting out the lyrics so badly out of tune that you wonder how much and how often they have to drink and smoke in order such a high order of obliviousness.

It finally dawned on me that a) the band was indeed playing a Grateful Dead song; b) that at least one member of the Grateful Dead, Bob Weir (the one who used to be the baby-faced cutie of the group, but who now sports grizzled mutton chops and looks like the Old Prospector just down from the mountains) was on stage with them; and c) that I was completely and utterly surrounded by Deadheads.

That's where I should have gone screaming for the exits, were there any, but despite the clouds of marijuana smoke wafting at me from all directions, despite the beer belches and other unpleasant eructations of hippies both old and young, despite the youthful Phish fans who danced like Francis the Talking Mule on a diet of Mexican jumping beans, I stuck around because I was actually enjoying the music. They played semi-acoustic versions of about half a dozen Dead songs, including "Dire Wolf" from the one GD album I'll unabashedly admit to liking, Workingman's Dead, and also from that album, "Casey Jones" (the one about driving the train high on cocaine), and an even older Dead chestnut, "St. Stephen," which I first heard at Winterland in 1971, high on about 19 hits of acid. Much to my amazement, I found that I liked the music much better now that I wasn't stoned (contravening the old joke about what one Deadhead said to the other when they realized they'd run out of dope: "Hey man, this music sucks").

In fact I found myself feeling sorry for the near-catatonic crowd around me, who were witnessing a display of musicianship that was simply stunning and yet would probably remember little more than how high or drunk they'd been. But then I also started noticing that there were many others who were enjoying the music every bit as much as me, everything from 70 year-old whitebeards to 14 year-old Bob Dylan fans who went mental when the band launched into an inspired cover of "Like A Rolling Stone" (joined by the aforementioned Gillian Welch on backing vocals and guitar). There were a couple of Rolling Stones covers, too, "19th Nervous Breakdown" and "The Last Time," and, so ludicrous that it was actually kind of cool, Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir."

These were all songs that I'd heard played by the original artists many, many years ago, and yet, thanks to the treatment they were given - a bit of country, a bit of Dead-type jamming, a bit of just hanging out and playing some great old songs - they sounded, if not brand new, still fresh and, well, evergreen. It's painful, at least a little, for me to admit that I went in among the Deadheads and not only survived, but actually enjoyed myself, but there you go. I'm even tempted to suggest that perhaps my generation wasn't entirely worthless after all, though I'm not sure I'm prepared to go quite that far just yet.

But the upshot of it is that by the end of the concert, followed by a walk out to Ocean Beach where I met a group of friends for a bonfire, I was prepared to give San Francisco a pass, at least for now. Can't vouch for how God feels on the subject, but I personally am willing to hold off on the fire and brimstone for a while yet.

Which is just as well, because I've just learned I may be stuck here for as long as two to three months. As some of you know, I'm having surgery on my foot to correct the consequences of the fat stage diver who landed on me at Gilman Street in 1988, and I'm going to be essentially crippled for much of that time, and confined pretty much to bed or near it for the first two or three weeks. So I don't know how much blogging I'll be able to do; maybe a lot, maybe none at all, depending how I feel. But if all goes well, by December my foot should be better than new (they're putting in an artificial joint, so I'm assuming that will be an improvement over this decrepit natural one I've got) and I'll be back in action, hopefully on the far more sane East Coast. I might be posting here one more time before the operation (which is Tuesday), but if not, please wish me well (or not, depending on your inclination).

P.S. The whole Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival is funded by one of SF's local billionaires (there are quite a few, apparently), one Warren Hellman, who I don't think has anything to do with the mayonnaise, but you never know. I imagine he must drop a few million on it every year, at least, but he seems to be enjoying it. To tell the truth, if I'd realized you could do that sort of thing with your money rather than just sit around your mansion being grumpy, I might have been more motivated to become a billionaire myself. But you know what, I didn't, and it's a bit late in life to start now, so good for Mr. Hellman and other billionaires who like to give their money away. But knowing that all this music and fun (not to mention all the performers' paychecks) had been underwritten by one very successful investment banker lent a special piquancy to Billy Bragg's rants about the bloody capitalists. He would have been better advised to shut up and sing, which, I forgot to mention, is mostly what Steve Earle did over on the main stage. I was expecting a whole lot of Dixie Chicks-type "Bush sucks" rhetoric from Mr. Earle (a cheap way to wow any Frisco crowd), but apart from urging people to give the finger to the Blue Angels if they should fly over, he mostly stuck to his music which is pretty decent. Okay, a little bland, but decent. Not that I stuck around for the end, but that was Saturday, when I had a headache. Anyway, I'm babbling now; think maybe it's time for bed.