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SWEET DANGO

ANOTHER SET OF WORDS FOR YOU TO READ -/THEY QUALIFY AS LEAF AND BRANCH AND SEED...

Monday, March 15, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #35

Current low-energy state of mind continues –
got my little bi-weekly check today
for forty-eight-fifty…
minus a dollar ten to the check cashing place
on Eddy across from the Phoenix Hotel…
didn’t want to walk down to Bank of America
on Market, all that way…
maybe it’s the room they put me in
at the Jefferson until the fallen-in ceiling
is repaired in the room I was in…
could be somebody died in the room
I’m in and I’m being affected by that vibe…
Also, haven’t had the money for malt liquor
the past few days either,
so that could be part of it…
maybe it’s my hair – hasn’t been cut in months
and it’s looking really disreputable –
not, I suppose, that I have that much
of a reputation anyway…
have been of two minds about cutting my hair –
on the way to the Tenderloin Housing Clinic
to get the check I saw a guy with really long hair
that was looking good…so that made me think
I should just let it go the way it is…
but my hair isn’t that full
and is sticking out oddly at times, uncombed…
couple that with the air of a King Cobra drinker
and the demeanor isn’t of the most…
reputable…have been letting my note-taking go as well…
if I was a Buddhist I might think I was getting
too attached to that process…
but I am thinking I don’t have much of an ego…
the only note I took in the past
two or three days is about a call
confederate and cohort b made to me
near midnight from one of the Lori’s all-night diners
up in the Union Square area…
she was calling from a restroom there
and a Doors song was playing in the background –
“Riders on the Storm” – the instrumental part…
and she was riding on the storm
of being out and about with our mutual friend Diallo…
they had gone to the pop art exhibition
at the Martin Lawrence Gallery,
the opening reception…
the attraction were works by Warhol
and Keith Haring…I have got Haring’s diaries
out from the library…b says one of the art teachers
she works for sometimes lectured
on the fellow’s work recently…
and I went out about that time for soy milk
and a bag of salty junk food on my EBT card…
at the THC, picked up that check…
had to sign for it…one of the clerks wondered
what the origin of my name was –
he thought it was Hawaiian…
the other guy maybe thought I was Mexican –
he asked if I knew what my last name meant in Spanish –
I knew: “Healthy.”…then it was over
to the check cashing place…
really got an entire identification process
done on me, photo and the determining
of personal details, all that inputted into their computer…
guy there said there had already been
about three hundred people with THC checks
through there…then to the drop-in computer center…
acquaintance Bob was sitting out front waiting…
he was in a wheelchair even tho’ he’s able-bodied…
he told me he’s seen this guy at St. Anthony’s
without legs, cut off, both of ‘em, at the hip,
and he gets around on a skateboard…
not particularly much else…b sent an e-mail
about seeing this Dr. Seuss exhibit of art
near Fisherman’s Wharf – my suggestion,
when I was in more of a mood to go out and about…
also, had been good about getting
my library books back in time,
but I’ve got 40 cents in fines up to now…
Up To Now – a title for something…
renewed three books for another three weeks:
a Starhawk, a Ken Kesey, and a Krishnamurti –
and have got Fast Times at Ridgemont High for another week…
guess it’s haircut time…need some change in my life…

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 3:03 PM

Saturday, March 13, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #34

…got back from the Borders listening posts…
Edward was still dancing there at Powell and Market…
I was thinking stronger medicine
was needed for San Francisco,
like Albert’s Problem Child…
rode BART back one stop to Civic Center –
there was a USA Today left on a seat –
they found Spalding Gray’s body
in the East River off Manhattan…
talked about this briefly
to a stranger on the train, a woman…
then it was back to the hotel and
continued reading of The Rant Zone by Dennis Miller –
one of the few recent books
I actually read all the way through –
an easy read, and laugh-provoking…
at nine that evening, this being four days ago,
met b at Tommy’s Joynt on Van Ness…
she said Metallica used to hang out there
before they moved to Marin…
I told her that the Mitchell Brothers,
those porn kings, also used to go there, so I read…
the restaurant has historical value –
it was established in 1947…
the promotional material there said
Herb Caen and Dianne Feinstein had been visitors
in days gone long by…
b went over to get some food,
on her dime, as usual, and when the waitress
came by I ordered an Irish coffee…
I told her that the woman
I was with had the cash…
b came back with a little bit to eat –
she was looking through a hotel coupon guide
for some reason…I sought out the pages
detailing the Hollywood area…
there were some places listed for Sunset Boulevard,
but none seemed particularly cheap…
b was not particularly happy
with my demeanor that night…
didn’t like that I’d ordered that Irish coffee…
not a particularly agreeable time together…
she took the Muni back to the Mission
and I went back to the hotel
and listened to a library audio book:
one of the Kordas, Alex or Michael,
talking about the bestselling books
of the last hundred years…
then it was the next morning or afternoon…
I have very few actual appointments to keep,
so I’ve been staying more and more in bed –
the ol’ morale is low…no money for beer
until Monday morning, less then 48 hours from now…
the alcohol seems to elevate my mood…
b called about then, wondering
if I wanted to go out to North Beach,
to Juicy Lucy’s place on Columbus,
for some wheatgrass…and Walter,
the daytime front desk man at the Jefferson,
left a message about the Wednesday a.m.
coffee and doughnuts the hotel offers…
put on a Thomas Moore tape about “the original self”…
thought to myself that I’ve never been
to a marriage or a funeral…
kinda out of touch with that mainstream…
drank some Rockstar energy drink for breakfast…
noticed facial redness, inflammation,
from the malt liquors I’ve been continually drinking…
more Dennis Miller,
more of the Korda book on bestsellers, all day…
the Food Runner free food folks
delivered in the afternoon
and I had some scrambled eggs and potatoes,
a cookie, a loaf of bread, and another for b…
my worker from the Tenderloin Housing Clinic,
Krista, stopped in along with the food –
she said some of it came from
the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium,
leftovers from an event there…
and Korda was up from nineteen-hundred to the Fifties,
discussing the controversy around
D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover…
b called – we had planned to see each other…
she wants to move from where she’s living
in the Mission and had looked at a studio apartment
on Bush near the Chinatown Gate –
she liked the location enough
but it was too dark for her tastes, not enough light…
so b got to the hotel and she visited my room –
the ceiling in my actual room,
a quieter, brighter, warmer room,
still hadn’t been fixed, so I was still in one I didn’t care for…she had an article about the hallucinogenic plant Salvia divinorum for me from the free Vice magazine, and a photocopy of the book she really liked, Atlantis Revisited…then, no notes until the afternoon of the next day…have not been keeping such careful track of my activities…morale low, as I said…was at the drop-in computer center near the Jefferson to type out a blog…a nice French fellow, Yann, was holding down that fort…he says he had just started his own computer repair business – he was in San Francisco because his wife worked at some hospital in the city…then it was out of the drop-in place and over to the Zion free food place around the corner…nothing of real substance there, but I got some coffee and a bear claw and ate it in front of the Jefferson…manager Melissa and one of her lieutenants came out and walked east on Eddy…fellow resident and tenant representative Prince Bush came in – I told him I sure didn’t like the room they’d put me in until my ceiling was fixed…and later, was over at the New Princess corner market for two bottles of Evian, a can of Campbell’s Chunky Soup, and a Rockstar – didn’t check the exact total but the guy mighta ripped me off, ripped the EBT free food card off – but I coulda been wrong…I skipped Celia’s Thursday night gathering in the Mission…she made a “bring your own bottle” announcement and beer money’s non-existent…so I had the B-vitamin-plus-caffeine-and-herbal stimulation of the Rockstar and listened to the Graham Parker reading of Kerouac’s Visions of Cody…was feeling, am feeling, pretty beat myself of late…Parker’s British accent is unusual around the novel’s Americanism…it’s set around 1950, and describes, that part I listened to that evening, New York nightlife, stream of consciousness style…thought I’d get out to the library to return books by eight, but didn’t…just listened to audio books…b was working until midnight-ish…on the radio, about 7 that evening, the eleventh, there was an announcement for drivers to avoid the Civic Center area, right near the library, since there was a demonstration against a recent same-sex marriage ruling…and I read some Terence McKenna about how bad alcohol has been to the world…he figures beer and wine are bad enough, but, in particular, the distillation process has been so damaging to humanity…and on the radio, an interview with one Dick Waterman, who has a new book of photographs of blues greats…he told the tale of how he rediscovered the legendary Son House decades after his famed time in the early part of the century and got him back touring again…ironically, he hadn’t been practicing much on the guitar and Waterman had to get Canned Heat co-founder Al Wilson to sit knee-to-knee with Son House so that Wilson could show him how to play his own songs again! I like the title of the book: From Midnight to Day…and about then I was being bugged by the loudness of my neighbor’s television and I got out of the room to tell him to turn it down – he’s got just one leg, and apparently his hearing’s not too happening either, ‘cause I hadda shout at him several times to get across my message to turn the sound down…and not long after that, a lady from a floor above me knocked on the door – she had dropped a lighter out her window and wanted to get it…I opened the window and leaned out, out over the pigeon droppings on the sill, but there was quite a drop to the ground, down to the basement level, and there was no way short of a ladder or ropes she was gonna get there from my room…and then I read a bit in a collection of articles about psychedelia from the early Sixties, The Psychedelic Reader…there was a photo of a Mexican girl grinding up the aforementioned Salvia divinorum, an article by Tim Leary and Ralph Metzger on Hermann Hesse, his significance, one by R. Gordon Wasson on Mexican fungi, and one by “distinguished philosopher” Gerald Heard about LSD. His conclusion is that for the “truly creative person…LSD may be of some use…”. And additionally, from the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Library, a photo of an ayahuasca ritual in the Colombian Amazon, featuring bare-breasted women…and then it was over to the New Princess for coffee, fresh – available by use of the EBT card – and another energy drink, Go Fast!…notable there, something I’d not seen before, four-pound cans of Starkist tuna, suitable for the creation of the Mother of All Casseroles…back at the Jefferson, hung out briefly in the lobby, sipped coffee – night desk man Oscar was there and we exchanged a few pleasantries, then it was back to the room…big in the news lately, I hear on the radio, the Madrid train bombing…investigators aren’t sure if the culprits were Basque separatists called the ETA or Islamic militants…got back to the audio books…Visions of Cody was getting a bit tiresome, and for sleep I tuned into the Caroline W. Casey set of cassettes about the astrological language of the psyche…and then it was yesterday – nothing of note all yesterday, the same ol’ stuff…about 5pm I went out for food, if you can call a big bag of Ruffles and a pint of Jerry Garcia food…acquaintance Pao Lo called and said he had some sort of typing work for me…and b called, said she had a present for me and would be around later…so I ate the high-fat chips and the high-fat ice cream…wonder if Garcia actually ate any of the ice cream named after him? Seems like if I don’t drink beer I start in on the high-fat food…I am pretty slim on beer…I sure don’t wanna make a habit of pints of ice cream…masturbated around this time…the Starplane seeks some measure of all-inclusiveness in the revelation…my buddy Jack called about this time and he was calling on his cell phone on the walk home after work – he’d inherited his late father’s cell…sounded like he was getting over his Dad’s demise okay…we chatted a bit about non-consequentials, pretty much…I was not much in a communicative mood…then b got around to the Jefferson…was not in a proper mood…her gift was a pair of Japanese socks from Japantown, ones with a separated toe, apart from the rest of the four toes – old style…she had some sushi from this place called Sushi Pop on Van Ness…I was just not in any sort of mood to see her at all…she bought sake, which I wasn’t enjoying…they’ve got an offering called “The Van Ness Roll” – asparagus and mango…and there is where my notes end…[My time’s up here at the drop-in center or else I might expand on this non-expansiveness a bit more.]

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 5:04 PM
STARPLANE BLOG #33

Recommended in San Francisco:

Listen to some T. Rex or some Stones on the radio:
“Bang a Gong”, “Brown Sugar”, like that.

Visit the San Francisco Brewing Company
at Pacific and Columbus – Paddy pours there.

Spend quality time watching the rhythm tapping
of Edward Jackson at the Powell Street car turn.

Dial 911 by mistake, hang up before getting through,
and be a little comforted
when an emergency operator returns the cal.

Put on dark shades like a Black Panther
and think yourself somewhat somehow superheroic.

Get a book called Way Down
about Los Angeles.

Jump off a cable car before it stops
and have the grip man tell you:
“Hey, sir, don’t do that, OK?”

Joke to a counter guy at Borders Union Square
that you are holding him personally responsible
for removing the Steve Miller CD
from the listening posts there.

Consider the “progressive metal” of Dream Theater,
recently at the Warfield,
and consider the title of one of their songs:
“Stream of Consciousness”.

Maybe visit the King Jamaican restaurant on Fulton.

Enjoy the new Stevie Wonder tribute CD,
called Conception, free at Borders…
Clapton does “Higher Ground”,
and various Marleys perform “Master Blaster”.

Offer a pun on “desperate” to whoever will listen:
“Getting mighty disparate around here.”

Think about the value of “D” bands alone:
the Doobie Brothers, Donovan,
the Donnas, the Doors.

Ponder the Joel Selvin liner notes
for Bayou Country by Creedence.

Go to the “Speculation” section at Borders
and look into the work of David Icke.

Also look at magazines there:
a Black Belt article by a guy from Marina Del Rey
about Jeet Kune Do,
Pink on the cover of Q,
the acid issue of Mojo.

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 3:54 PM

Thursday, March 11, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #32 …taking care of SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY business before beginning this…renewed a lot of books but there are two I have to get back by tomorrow of face fines: THE PSYCHEDELIC READER, featuring articles by ALAN WATTS and TIM LEARY and similar Sixties luminaries, and FOOD OF THE GODS by TERENCE MCKENNA…generally it seems that no one is checking books out from the library, at least not the ones I am…guess someone’s doing some research into psychedelics…got an e-mail from DUSTIN WELLS, who is co-teaching a course in writing at NEW COLLEGE there on Valencia…it’s a list of suggestions for post-Master of Fine Arts graduates…guess he’s getting his degreee there in writing…one suggestion: “Write in secret. Don’t even tell yourself.”…got the latest e-mailed bullet from the NATURE’S FIRST LAW raw food people…since I am currently eating a bottle of orange juice and a bag of Frito’s corn chips, I am not the most ardent follower of their all-raw teachings…forwarded the bulletin to cohort and colleague b…and my former co-worker Bob e-mailed me – he says we’re on for a Sunday morning meeting at his China Basin Landing work location – he might have a tape of ten AMERICA songs for me – he’s been a radio deejay for many years…and b e-mailed me a quote from the ATLANTIS REVISTED book she read: “Telepathy and speech are not mutually exclusive.”…and Clark’s e-mail says his cell phone broke in a collision with a Muni bus – he musta loved that little device – he had even given it a name, Ringo…and he mentioned some meeting in the Mission tonight…he’s a cannabis crusader, so that’s probably what it’s about…also, another e-mail from hotel neighbor Mike – he’s into music and film and related arts…says I should come ‘round for tea…so now…if you haven’t been put to sleep my all of the above riveting material, I will be getting back to the details of the blog…have has LSD on my mind recently for some reason…not literally, but the virus of it, the word virus of it, to use the William Burroughs phrase…got an LSD psychotherapy book waiting for me at the library for pick-up, and another book, some novel, featuring it as part of the plot…ummm – the last blog was a particularly lengthy and dense one – I was typing it out for nearly three hours…not sure of the value of it to anyone…the same day I felt the urge to print out transcripts of the Winona Ryder appearance on Saturday Night Live…jokes made of her shoplifting case, and she satirizes Bjork in a Jeopardy parody (playing against her, Sean Connery and Dave Matthews)…I had just gone to the free computers at 170 Otis and was going back to my Tenderloin hotel…really noted the possible value of this crepe shack on South Van Ness for the first time – three buck hot dogs…unusual little building…and glanced going up Van Ness at a one-legged man literally face down on the sidewalk…and noted a laptop user comfy in a big chair at Starbucks near Fox Plaza…and felt like my music box around my shoulder, hung there on a scarf b gave me, a scarf from the now-defunct Psychic Eye in Hayes Valley, felt like it was sorta my AK 47, felt like that…but it’s really an AK Press 47, whose carrier is more a devotee of the work of Hakim Bey than Mao or Marx, at all…then it was past the Ananda Fuara recommended restaurant…guru Sri Chinmoy’s the man there…still had two or three bucks cash in my pocket, beer money…went into that Subway on Market and got a three buck sandwich on my EBT card – there was Al Green on the sound system in there, and a long line…the music and the King Cobra I was drinking helped with that wait…there was a really lean woman waiting ahead of me – figured she might be a ballet dancer with the local company – she kept pulling my focus, those lean upper-body limbs…got my food and walked up to the library…took a place on the Larkin Street side of the book building, ate my sandwich, played some Marley “Jamming” and some of Coolio’s “Fantastic Voyage”…a buncha little kids with their minders were passing by and I made sure that they heard some a’ the music…started walking into the Tenderloin – needed a piece of paper to write on and I went into the Asian Art Museum to find something – still haven’t been in there – there’s a free day on the 20th this month, so you might keep that in mind, a special birthday for the building or something…got a King Cobra forty ouncer for a quarter short of two bucks and a buck bag of Frito’s…was gonna watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High at the library in a coupla hours…drank my Cobra, re-read my blog, pleased enough at both…thought of a title for something: Flash Flows…read the Winona Ryder monologue…she’s not given much to say – the humor is all about the thievery in Beverly Hills…she’s called “Shorty”…in another sketch she jokes about Bjork – I know Winona loves her music, and I like that about her…then I put on my Caroline W. Casey astrology tape, called Inner and Outer Space: The Astrological Language of the Psyche…liked this line from that: “…prevailing social conditions…” – she analyzes the entire world and the cosmos in terms of astrology…and I washed my feet – been wearing my flip-flops without socks lately and the streets of San Francisco have precious little similarity to the emerald sands of a mystical and tropic isle…called my buddy Jack and left a message on his machine – maybe he felt like getting a pint of Guinness or Black & Tan at the Edinburgh Castle…and another line from Caroline Casey: “post-evolutionary nervous system”…glanced through a copy of an explicitly-sexual underground comic I have, called Alraune…called Jack to cancel…continued with the King Cobra and the Casey…remembered the lean woman there at Subway…called the library to skip my 4pm appointment to watch the video on their free machines…spent some short while with Gilchrist & Soames and the seven young women featured in a Maxim pictorial…and in the same magazine, a St. Louis roofer woman named Katina…have roofs on my mind, since part of the ceiling in my hotel room fell in a few days ago – have had to switch rooms and I am wanting to get back to the warmth and silence and sunniness in there…in that same Maxim, the only page I pulled out to keep was an interview with David Carradine – the photo shows him with his head on a platter – no doubt in the Kill Bill sequel he’ll be decapitated…and there was a sliver of blue sky visible in the room I’d been put in – it’s in the back of the hotel and on the first floor, not much sun, with noiser neighbors, and not as warm as the other room…and I thought to myself: the Rob Brezsny astrology column was gonna be out the next day, and the Food Runners free food people were also coming then – grounds for anticipation…buttoned up my shirt – have been even more casual lately than usual, what with the constant beer drinking, my shirt not tucked in or buttoned…was absorbing, continuing to, the King Cobra and the Caroline Casey…I was finding meaning in her words…b called and we chatted a bit – she said port wine gives her a kick…she said she drove down with an art teacher, Doug, down the coast to El Granada, had some fish…and she might be seeing another art teacher, August, later that evening…turned off the astrology tape, played a little music – the Dixie Chicks covering “Landslide” on the radio…got sick of turning the knob on my music player and put a tape on – some Eagles, “Hotel California”…there were also other songs I enjoyed then: “Burning Love” by Elvis, and Pink Floyd’s “Money”…at about 5pm I was on the street, waiting on Jack’s call…waited on the corner for a bus – was heading to the Virgin Megastore – there was some Patrice Rushen on my machine – sounded like a slightly different version of her “Forget Me Nots” song, and some Avril Lavigne, “Complicated”…b called about then and said she didn’t want me to mention her in my blog – since then she’s changed her mind…I told her I keep the mentions on the up-and-up – this isn’t about character assassination…guy I know named Robert passed by then as I stood on the corner at Eddy and Leavenworth – he lives at the Cadillac – he and I were part of a team that delivered Salvation Army meals up into hotels in the Tenderloin some while ago…he said he was hot in his room since the sun came directly in, and he hadda get out of there…he was on his way to the Zion Assemblies of God place to see if there was anything to eat…
that Chic song about the greatest dancer played about then –
two alternatively-sexual-looking guys
passed up Leavenworth about then
and commented about the song in passing –
maybe their theme song in the discos…
there’s an “outskirts of Frisco” reference in that one,
which I liked…
and other songs then:
Santana’s “Smooth” (“…Spanish Harlem Mona Lisa…”),
and Elton’s “Yellow Brick Road”…
folks were walking up Eddy, going west,
and there was plenty of eye-shading going
on to counteract the setting sun…
then some Sheryl Crow and Tina Turner…
the bus came for the ride to Virgin…
felt the Stones that came on then was appropriate –
Mick singing “I’m so hot for her/and she’s so cold…” –
was sipping on my malt liquor –
near me, facing backwards, was a woman in dark glasses,
reading a book, and I was feeling gregarious enough
to offer her some of my drink:
“Wanna hit?” – she declined…
off the bus on Market,
and it seemed like a science fiction novel
called The Chess Players of Mars
(by Edgar Rice, not William, Burroughs) –
all those intense guys hunched over their boards
as if the fate of the universe depended on victory…
Aretha Franklin came on then, demanding respect…
and there was spirit rhythm dancer Edward Jackson
at his usual location at the Powell Street cable car turn…
some guy with some kind of clacking rhythm instrument
was making his sound for Edward to respond to…
me, I set up my machine on BART exit stone not far away –
a respectable distance away from Edward –
and blasted some “Money for Nothing”,
nodding my head, enjoying my King Cobra…
Edward and I are on the same team…
so it was more folks of San Francisco
emerging from the underground
and I was greeting them with smiles and Dire Straits…
a bicycle cop passed by
and I hid my can in my jeans jacket…
and a seriously-African man in a white turban passed as well…
Edward was chatting with one of the silver-painted guys…
and Mick and Keith sing about brown sugar,
then it was some Creedence,
all of us down on that going,
getting down, like, and Edward was kneeling down
to write something on the wooden platform he dances on…

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 4:51 PM

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #31 …got an e-mail from b about a book she’s reading called ATLANTIS REVISITED, by some mathematician…very…spiritual and esoteric…like some of the SHIRLEY MACLAINE material, like THE CAMINO – it’s not fiction…the author talks about the three types of starship travel, the origins of humanity via extraterrestrial intervention, the five levels of density – of soul, I guess – and there are MU and LEMURIA to consider as well, ancient lost continents…ZECHARIA SITCHEN deals with similar topics…now…I’m interested in keeping this blog up-to-date….we will now consider the occurrences and thoughts from not much longer than twenty-four hours ago, yesterday morning, Monday…been getting up somewhat late these days, altho’ “late” is a relative term…I am cultivating a certain dreaminess, you might say…there were two messages from b from the previous night on my cell phone, to the tune of: 1) I should get another woman to support my beer habit, and 2) maybe I should seek this out from Tina, this woman who runs a Greek food place on Polk – we had been in that area recently and I knocked on the window at Tina as we passed…I used to work up there…well, these two messages didn’t seem entirely relevant…and later, when I saw b, she seemed to have gotten over these sentiments…I was out on the street and down to the library…an audio book of VISIONS OF CODY by Jack Kerouac and a biography of WALT DISNEY by MARC ELIOT, who also did a band biography of THE EAGLES, were waiting for me to pick up…the DAVID CARRADINE autobiography and a collection of CAMILLE PAGLIA essays were due back…I had already renewed them three times, the limit…I was able to renew a MARSHALL MCLUHAN, a book on AC/DC, and a collection of HERBERT HUNCKE pieces…as I was busying myself at the electronic catalog a guy walked up to another one singing MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS, the MARIA MULDAUR song, and I said to him: “Send your camels to bed…” – he smiled…then, since I’ve got WINONA RYDER on my mind again recently, I did a search for recent articles about her in the SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY system…there are thirty-one items related to her in the library’s system – mostly videos and DVDs – and there were hundreds of magazine hits, and nearly twenty-two-thousand newspaper references…I sought out the most recent: from People, this very week: seems she unloaded an 18-karat emerald bracelet, a similar ruby bracelet, and two other pieces at some jewelery place on Wilshire in Los Angeles to the tune of about four thousand bucks…and another article from December says a judge commended her for abiding by the rules of her probation related to the shoplifting case…and she’s making another movie, called THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS…so, and so, headed over from the library to 170 Otis, to type out my blog…on the way – I was skipping the free soup at Martin’s – stopped to buy a stamp at the Fox Plaza post office – wrote a letter to the mother of a good friend of mine – her husband had just died…not that anything I could say would mean all that much, but I thought I’d send a letter anyway…so I stood in front of the stamp machine as the woman in front of me was taking ten thousand years to make her purchase, coin by coin by coin…I was getting pretty annoyed at her slowness…so she gets her stamps, then begins the process again with more coins…she finally completes her interminable process and then, to add further aggravation, the machine sucks up my dollar and gives me nothing…spent another twenty minutes seeking reimbursement…in line to get my money back I met by sheer coincidence one of my city workers, Sharon…we chatted a bit…she’s my “Employment Specialist”, there to help me get gainfully employed…she says she has met so many people through her work that it’s nothing to her to meet people she knows on the street…then it was on the street again to Otis and the free computers…it was an exceptionally warm day, summer weather for sure…noticed on the way: two guys pulling shopping carts, a guy reading a book while walking, in addition to having headphones on – really into his own symbolic world there…so I got to the spot and did my thing…the blog space is free for anyone to do their thing on – there are Google ads there, but the least offensive: they are advertising GRATEFUL DEAD lyrics…then it was outta there – not sure what my plans were…I figure doing the blog is the main event of the day…probably going to get a drink, had I the cash…on the way out of 170 Otis I met a woman I’d worked with before, when I was delivering meals for the Salvation Army up to shut-ins in the Tenderloin…she was getting paid to give out information for some homeless pre-natal program – I had to answer questions and she gave me a brown paper bag with Neutrogena products and other beauty items…so, I got on a Muni Mission bus going back to the Tenderloin, and realized, to my chagrin, that I’d left my floppy disc back at Otis…hadda head back…oh, I remember now, was going to a free computer drop-in place on Eddy near the hotel I live in…this return trip back to Otis was throwing me off that schedule, and I eventually skipped that second computer session…somewhere along in there on a bus I gave most of the beauty items I’d been given to a guy who was trying to sell packages of Oreos – he was glad to get more things to sell…I kept just one thing: a Gilchrist & Soames bottle of lotion…’bout this time my buddy Joe-Albert Valdez called from New Mexico…he had left San Francisco for a while to save up money in a place he could more easily find work in…it was too loud to talk to him and told him to call me in an hour, but he didn’t…he’s getting back to Frisco soon – he misses the town…so, b called, having gotten over, as I said, her phone message comments from the previous night…she was coming back from a job in Walnut Creek and wanted to meet at FIELDS BOOKS…I figured time was too tight since she had to get going to another job quite soon, and told her we might meet some hours later…she agreed to that, but then she calls me again and says she’ll meet me at the library, which is where I was heading…so there I go – I am there every day…picked up the Disney biography – it’s called “The Dark Prince”, so you know it’s not picturing the man in a particularly favorable light – and the Kerouac audio…the Borrower Services desk at the Main Library is such an imposing slab of stone – felt like I was at some bar waiting on a drink: “Yeah, lemme have a Kerouac cocktail, and she’ll have a pint o’ Disney…” And also there, the video of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, one of my favorite movies of all time, most particularly for the dynamic between Sean Penn’s Jeff Spicoli surfer dude and Ray Walston’s Mr. Hand, his history teacher…and the face and form of Phoebe Cates is not un-noteworthy either…then it was out of the library and on to the Muni #19 stop at Hyde and Grove…b was on the next bus to arrive…met a guy I knew from when I lived on 16th Street, Myron…he was on some focused mission, he was, and he said to me as he passed quickly: “On the run, baby, on the run.” – and he surely was, too…so b got there, got off the bus, and we decided to eat at the Gyro King Mediterranean food place across Grove from the library…she selected a plate of warm bulgur wheat and a combo selection of various items, the usual fare…I showed disinterest at her suggestion of mentioning in this blog some art event at the Levi’s store on Union Square – it featured one of the teachers of art she worked for, some Korean guy…didn’t feel that was particularly noteworthy…I used to wear 501s all the time, but not any more…and b gave me a portion of some special Swiss chocolate bar, loaded with extra antioxidants…and she gave me some of her “hiOsilver” oxygen water, fashioned in Palo Alto…ten times the oxygen of regular water…hadda admit it tasted sweet…and she told me, among other things, that her daughter, Aimy, who’d just been to Beijing, or was still there, had nice online pictures from that trip…then b hadda get going, I went back up into the Tenderloin…got some Evian water on my EBT card and a Tecate quart for about two bucks and a half – in glass, and with a cap that required an opener – higher class suds than the King Cobra in a can I often imbibe…and I am wondering, how did I get the money for that? Had I saved it from a previous transaction using my EBT card with b? Must have…see, I use my card to buy something she wants – two bottles of kombucha, say…and she gives me the cash…she doesn’t like this arrangement, sometimes – see earlier in this blog, her comment that I should find some other woman to finance my beer habit…but she seems to change her mind about this…it’s fair enough…then it was back to the hotel – only mail I had was further solicitations from Comcast to buy into their cable service…would gladly do that, but I barely have the wherewithal to get beer…my room at the Jefferson is cable-ready…would not mind that at all…so I got back into my space, turned on the Graham Parker reading of the Kerouac…the box says it was his “most radical experiment in language and storytelling”…but, truth be told, I prefer the David Carradine reading of On the Road…but Visions of Cody has a fine jazzy soundtrack, which is appropriate, very, to the text…so I listened to the audio book, went over handwritten notes – am skipping a lot of events and people in this blog, I am telling you…perhaps the stuff of a later memoir – listened and went over notes, drank that quart of Tecate…at some point turned off the Kerouac, turned on AC/DC…and wondered if I had time to get to Fast Times…turned on a beeswax candle b had given me – she’d gotten it at a Greek Orthodox church on Van Ness…sweet smelling, but expensive…so it was the unorthodox music of AC/DC – like, “Shot Down in Flames” – and the orthodox candle flame…and I was grokking unorthodox in the Extreme Stream Double Scorpion Style…decided, after finishing the Tecate, to get back to the library to view the video…picked up two books to return because I’d already renewed them to the limit: the Camille Paglia, the David Carradine autobiography…and a third to return just because, the Boogie Nights screenplay…out the door, to the corner store for a Hamm’s for sixty cents…went down Leavenworth and was surprised to see the Zion Assemblies of God free food place open – went in, found nothing salty, which I was wanting…selected a blintz sort of thing and nibbled that on the way to the library…got there, turns out that it closed at six on Mondays…dropped off the books in the exterior box, drinking my beer, considering what to do…noted a Madonna live-in-Italy video that a guy was selling on the street…called friend Diallo to see if he was in the neighborhood and wanted to get together – he was back at his crib in the Bayview near 3rd Street, so seeing him was out – he was immersed in studying, both Chinese and Italian…told him he should get language tapes from the library, but he’s got twenty-six bucks in fines and that is out of the question, for now…so I went around the block – didn’t really wanna head back to the room…drank my Hamm’s…paused at another guy selling stuff on the street, eye caught by a shirt and a rap tape from Richmond in the early Nineties, from The Real Untouchables – Understanding the Criminal Mind…made a deal with the seller, who looked like he had just gotten out of prison – I’d use by EBT card to get a sandwich for him at the nearby Subway store – they take the card – and he’d take this for the shirt and the cassette…done deal…so it was back to the hotel, had a second Hamm’s…listened to the rap tape – featuring one “Master ‘P”, a name from that whole different world I’d heard of…the label was “No Limit Records”, and the first track was called “Niggas from Calli”…I liked the Marvin Gaye samples they used…”Let’s Get It On” on a song called “Let’s Do It”…these were underground gangsters with a touch of the romantic about them…and during the listening, began to transcribe notes by hand from my digital voice recorder, a task I’d been meaning to get to for a while…the rappers did a parody of “We Are the World” about selling crack, which was humorous…and there was a “Mercy, Mercy Me” sample on “Tell Them What’s Going On”…then I turned on another cassette I’d recently procured, Eminem’s The Slim Shady LP – traded another street seller a two-liter Diet Pepsi for it…got through “Brain Damage”, “Paul”, and “If I Had” before turning on some Eagles, “Hotel California”…geez, Eminem has sure had a rough life…guess he turned it into the pearl of his music and wealth…then I put on an American history tape, the days of Washington and the Founding Fathers, and noted down the phrase “Massachusetts mutineers of Morristown”…and then, and then…figured I’d get over to the Virgin Megastore and listen to some Robert Palmer…it wasn’t yet eight in the evening and I felt like getting out…before I got out I heard a country song that I liked – had to get ‘round to Googling on the lyrics: “…give a little love…”…then I was out on Eddy waiting on the Muni…b called then, said she was leaving Walnut Creek on BART and would be back in San Francisco shortly…told her that we could meet…so I was out on the street with my music box, playing some Santana – “Oye Como Va” – and some Doobie Brothers – “Long Train Runnin’”…then I got over to Virgin…they had removed the Robert Palmer as far as I could tell – there were other music listeners standing at the place I thought it had been…so I was at something of a loss…went ‘round and ‘round the store, checking out the listening stations and finding nothing I really wanted to sample…I paused to look at the CD from The Cult, called Love…that looked good – don’t know what it sounds like, but the band name and CD title both are promising, as are the song titles, like “Phoenix” and “Revolution” and “Sister Moon”…so I wandered about the store, wondering at the music merchandising, how the sounds and the visions are marketed…quite the sensory overloading…and I was just focusing on the free listening posts, letting alone all the books and CDs in their racks…finally zeroed in on some Doobie Brothers after seeing a Muze scanning device – customers can take any CD to the device and hear any song on any disc, albeit only a small portion of the song… selected Doobies Choice for “Neal’s Fandango”, a song in tribute to Kerouac hero Neal Cassaday…disappointed to get only thirty seconds, about, of the song…and there’s a tune called “Chinatown” which interested me, since this city has one of them…played the fandango a time or two and read the digital screen notes: Jeff “Skunk” Baxter is a guitarist on that one – he also did work with Steely Dan…and then it was around the store again…there are banks of videos on the Market Street side and I attempted the viewing of Jack Black in School of Rock simultaneously with an episode of Sex in the City and American Splendor – all this along with the “Hey Ya” by Outkast coming on through the store’s speakers…see what I mean about sensory overloading? Comments: Jack Black is fantastic in that movie, doing a Robert Plant “Valhalla I am coming” to the pre-teen rockers…Sarah Jessica Parker really looks really beautiful at frequent intervals in her cable show…liked the exterior of the comic book store, and the interiors, in the Harvey Pekar movie…met b after the Virgin experience…deciding where to eat…we walked up Powell, then turned west into the Tenderloin, decided on the Indian place at Eddy and Leavenworth – got there about half-past nine…b had brought me a gift, some toy FBI paraphernalia…she had gotten it free at one of her work places…had no use for plastic handcuffs, or any sort of handcuffs, for that matter…so we ate…friend Jack called…he sounded okay – his father had just died a week ago…they were cremating him, as per instructions from the man himself…maybe he’d give me a call tomorrow and we’d get together for a drink…b had her copy of Atlantis Revisited and I glanced through it…she’d actually read it all, which she rarely does with any book…she told me that the author, one Zelator, said there was a difference between Beelzebub and Lucifer…and she told me about the density differences among beings…rocks are of the first density, plants one level up from that…and I was attending to the spicy Indian food and glancing at times over to the big screen TV the restaurant had on…Suzanne Somers was on CNN for some reason, being interviewed by Larry King…b made a Thighmaster joke…and she told me, b did, about problems, continuing problems, she was having with a neighbor at the 16th Street hotel she lived in – an ex-Navy guy named Gene who was prone to fits of weird behavior…I figured I might hafta walk her back to the Mission and get her into her room, but she called the front desk guy who told her that Gene had been taken away the previous night for his own good – it was figured that he was not only a threat to others but to himself…so we finished up eating and headed over to the hotel…I went to my room and got her the shirt and rap cassette I’d traded the Subway sandwich for, a gift for her…later she called and told me she didn’t like the shirt – thought it was “a pimp shirt”…and she didn’t care for rap music…so I got her onto a #49 bus on Van Ness and headed back to the hotel…got a Guinness pint and settled in to the thoughts preceding sleep…listened to the Founding Fathers tape…it uses tales of Washington and contemporaries as examples of how present-day business operators can be more effective leaders…the names “Gates” and “Clinton” come up, people who lived back then, two-hundred-and-fifty years ago, so guys like them, in their lineage, have been up to their activities for a long time…what can be done about it? Then, then, then…am heck bent on getting my notes up to the present, despite the hurried nature of this blog…it was sleep and then awakening this morning…didn’t get to that Guinness pint the previous night, last night, and I started in on that for breakfast…first note of this day, back at the library, figuring I’d finally watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High…there was VCR available at 4pm, which is three-and-a-half hours from now as of this typing…is this writing or typing, as Truman Capote commented about the work of Kerouac? So, so, so…where was I? At the library…looked into requesting a Winona Ryder video…seems that Lost Souls is missing – the screen said the tape is “lost”, so that’s appropriate…requested Autumn in New York instead…still waiting on Bowfinger, which I will enjoy more than the early death theme of Autumn in New York…so then it was on the way to blog at 170 Otis…didn’t mention I bought a King Cobra pint after leaving the hotel…so I made my way across Market to the free computer…I was thinking to change the purple athletic shirt I had on – visible since I haven’t been buttoning or tucking in my shirt…might be sending out a gay vibe – nothing wrong with that, I guess, unless one isn’t gay and doesn’t wanna send that signal…don’t have the cash to buy a new one of a different color…my tax return of about three hundred clameroonies is due soon…plus my SSI might go through…that means a slight but significant increase of cash flow.

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 10:38 AM

Monday, March 08, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #30: …e-mail from LO-FI CUSTOMS GALLERY at 1776 Mission – opening reception on March 11th from six to nine in the evening…DELIRIUM connection: deejay FASHION HOOKER from there to spin at the reception, and there’s an afterparty with BUILT FOR SPEED deejaying at Delirium…also, cryptic e-mail from b…not sure what she means…but now, the Starplane travels back in time to catch up on these notes: b and I a few days ago at HUNTINGTON PARK – a very recommended spot to sit and contemplate whatever is on yer plate…I told her that VAN MORRISON was to be performing at the nearby MASONIC AUDITORIUM…POETIC CHAMPIONS COMPOSE is another recommendation, fine songs from “Van the Man”…ALAN WATTS BLUES from that CD is lovely…so b went over to ride on the swings and I sat there near the central fountain and enjoyed watching the several dogs playing…b had to get to work on New Montgomery at one of the ACADEMY OF ART COLLEGE campuses, so we headed down from Nob Hill on Powell…there was a sign on an apartment building awning that said “Six Thirty” but I thought it said “Sex Therapy”…and later b was attracted to a new Parisian chocolate store – the patterns on the little goodies were unusual and geometric – in she went to get a free sample, but these puppies weren’t going for free – two bucks each, no samples – she passed…then to COMP USA – b’s in the market for a laptop computer and willing to pay about a grand…I’ve got free access at a place or three and wouldn’t get a laptop, probably, even had I the means…I spent quality time with the new mini IPOD…BOHEMIA AFTER DARK by Cannonball Adderly was the number featured when I picked it up…love that title, since the Starplane is all about Bohemia, especially its poetic aspects…it’s a stripped-down version of the larger iPod, which I played with briefly a while ago – an acquaintance took his entire collection of thousands of songs with him on a trip through Asia on that little device…again, for me, another electronic gadget I can live without…after that first song, I enjoyed CAT STEVENS, his KATMANDU, on the music machine…then it was to New Montgomery…had been drinking beer throughout the day, and after one of the Academy of Art College bus drivers nearly hit b I tossed the can at the bus…some guy, probably an art student, got irate at me for doing that until I explained what had happened…he still figured I shoulda just spoken with civility to the driver, but I was in no mood for that courtesy…b still had time until she hadda work so we went into a Starbucks and she bought me an espresso with hot chocolate, whatever that’s called…too much fluid…shoulda just had an espresso – tho’ that’s kinda on the acidic side…and while she was getting the coffee drinks I pulled out Examiner articles I’d selected: Barry Bonds had no comment on his steroid issues…Governor Arnold happy that Propositions 57 and 58 won…Mayor Newsom unhappy that Prop. J didn’t win…columnist BRUCE BELLINGHAM was still on vacation – he’s often good for references to people I find interesting…and BILL PICTURE, in his celebrity column, mentioned Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, and Sting, all at the Oscars with either their kids or mothers…and finally, from the local freebie paper, I found please in GET FUZZY, one of the best comic strips of all time…the comments of that Siamese cat Bucky usually make my day…some STEVIE WONDER was on the Starbucks sound system…got to get more of his wonderful joy into my head…then it was dropping b off at the art school, and me on the way to the Martin’s free soup place at 16th&Potrero…passed a sign for the SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, an ANDY WARHOL Campbell’s soup can on it…some POP ART show is happening their until September 19th, so there’s plenty of time to get there – there’s probably one free day in the month…and speaking of free museum days, the ASIAN ART MUSEUM’s is on the first Tuesday of the month…coulda gone there earlier this month, March of two-thousand-four, but just couldn’t generate the interest to do it…would much rather see and think about Warhol…FACTORY MADE is a new book about “Andy’s” scene, and it looks, by the size of it, utterly definitive…also, in local Warhol news, the MARTIN LAWRENCE GALLERY in the Union Square area is soon gonna feature work by the man, plus related material – KEITH HARING canvases, for instance…THE SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY has the Haring diaries for free as well…the Starplane likes free stuff because it is interested in saving money for beer and a new bottle of Aramis, not necessarily in that order, or perhaps necessarily…I could substitute King Cobra for Aramis, I suppose, but there are some things one should never do…caught the Muni to get further on toward the free soup…it paused for a red in front of the Metreon – Loews movie sign: Matrix sequel in the IMAX format, and the new ASHLEY JUDD movie…then another bus pause at GUITAR CENTER, and I communed briefly with the NEIL YOUNG image out front, most particularly his hair…my own locks are verging on public nuisance-hood these days, and I took some comfort in the unruly tresses of my Scorpio brother…got the #9 at 11th and headed south to Martin’s – called my former co-worker MIKE CROMWELL on my cell and chatted with him briefly – he’s studying English lit in the East Bay and told me just then he was immersing himself in Kerouac…this prompted me to get a copy from the library of DAVID CARRRADINE’s reading of On the Road – a severely abridged version, but still conveying a good sense of the essence…got to Martin’s – satisfyingly-thick bean soup that day…sat with an acquaintance who calls himself “The Russian” for I know not what reason…he’s led quite an eventful life and kicks down quite a monologue…he’s deeply into the growing of marijuana…he once invested less than a thousand bucks in some system of growing and got nearly twenty thousand back…we also tossed around Bruce Lee’s ganja use…the Russian said Bruce had quite the fondness for “temple balls”, a sweet and sticky cannabis concoction…I had heard of this – Bruce, an ultimate health nut, wouldn’t smoke the stuff…and I was done with my soup out onto Potrero…caught a 22 up to Mission, had some SULTANS OF SWING on my music box…headed to 170 Otis to type out a blog…paused at a head shop on Mission to consider the posters: the Abbey Road cover, a wave by Hokusai, a Dali, an Ali – and I thought, in that letter sequence, the next should be someone without the “A” in “Ali” – that is, Jet Li, right? – and there was also a Cheech & Chong poster…got to the Otis free computer location – full house, so I had time to pause and gather my so-called wits…I had ROB BREZSNY’s astrology column with me, from the SF Weekly, and for my Scorpio tribe, he suggested that we identify our sacred desires “and pursue them with your wild heart unleashed”…sacred desires being, he says, the ones that liberate…in time I got to a computer…I satisfied my curiosity by Googling on “Hamilton Starplane”, my Hotmail handle, and oddly enough there was a reference from last year – the guy was a STEELY DAN fan and had paraphrased the song DR. WU in a comment about Fagen & Becker…then I set up my usual five windows: Hotmail, the blog, Google, the site for the public library, and Microsoft Word – sorry, Clark, my man, but that’s the only software they are offering…Clark just despises Microsoft…so I did my thing at Otis and was out of there, on the street again, having sent my message out…’bout this time Aerosmith was singing about a dude looking like a lady…paused at the Goodwill outlet on Van Ness – former supervisor TY JOHNSON was on vacation…as you are now, since this extreme stream’s done 4 now.

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 1:05 PM

Saturday, March 06, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #29: …back to where we once belonged, as some band put it sometime in the distant past…tho’ not too distant…so I was out the door not long ago…BAND ON THE RUN on my music box, on KFRC, a noble radio station here in SAN FRANCISCO…PAUL MCCARTNEY, his band after the Beatles, in case you didn’t know there was such a thing…recently found a picture of the man, the good man, even maybe a great man, in a copy of THE NEW YORK TIMES I found discarded at a BART station…and also recently heard that silly love songs number he did with Wings…so the guy has been on my mind a bit…and in a recent EXAMINER, pulled out four articles, to wit: BARRY BONDS – his steroid issues…and governor ARNOLD, some political whatever…and BUCKY, the Siamese cat in GET FUZZY…and GAVIN, the governor- I mean, mayor, of this city…whatever…and in other news…positioned myself at EDDY&LEAVENWORTH with my music box and played some songs, whatever the local FM had to offer…was having my second HAMM’S o’ th’ day…sixty cents a can if you buy two of ‘em…sixty-five per otherwise…was waiting on b, her call…first song was SOAK UP THE SUN by SHERYL CROW…then AEROSMITH – WHAT IT TAKES…GOOGLE on the lyrics, y’all…respect to STEVEN TYLER and his daughter…now…at this point, a LAS VEGAS high roller – I mean that term in somewhat somewhat manner…he comes up to me, standing there on the corner…he says he’s out for a beer at that early hour of the morning, but he may be joking…I had that Hamm’s in my hand, of course, and I joked about, like, what kind of person would be out so well before noon with the drink in his hand…and he was kinda groovin’ along with my humor…and on the radio, there’s some good music, JANIS JOPLIN…the KRIS KRISTOFFERSON song, ME AND BOBBIE MCGEE…turned that one up, to be sure…recalled then a passing acquaintance of b’s and mine, one “Pirate” – that’s what he called himself…he wondered, when we were together in the park in front of the JOHN COLTRANE CHURCH there at EDDY&LAGUNA – he wondered what was the song that mentioned BOLINAS, that Joplin song…this took me by surprise, ‘til I realized he meant “Salinas”, the Kris Kristofferson song aforementioned…so I set him somewhat straight on that topic…then it was some Elton on the San Francisco FM, there on that corner…”Little Jeanie”…b called about that time, me down on the corner…she was going to the WHOLE FOODS market there on Van Ness at California for some KOMBUCHA…the Vegas high roller came back about then from whatever he’d been doing…I think he was commenting on my public beer drinking when he mentioned the free taxis available in this our fair city…the ones with two lights on top…free room and board as well, offered by the thin blue line officers…I shrugged it off…the police weren’t bothering me – he seemed to be a user of some very illegal drugs…the fine men and women in uniform weren’t gonna bother a simple suds drinker playing music harmlessly on the corner…at least not then…and must mention at this point KFOG…I’m a BONE fan, but KFOG sure does play some righteous music that the Bone doesn’t…there was a Budweiser commercial on then from the non-Bone frequency…the slogan was “Your Music, Your Beer”…gotta salute that a bit…where are the KING COBRA commercials on San Francisco FM, I am askin’ ya…and fellow Jefferson Hotel dweller John was seen about then on Eddy, going on some sacred mission, shirt tucked out but looking quite fanciful anyway…a Shaolin vibe on John, for sure…he’s got long-standing connections up in Chinatown and North Beach, going back thirty years and more…and appropriately, AC/DC came on the radio then…talking about some girl with back seat rhythm…and at that point, began walking up Leavenworth to the tune of CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL – a bad moon was on the rise…not my favorite CCR number, frankly…got up to Van Ness, walking north towards the Whole Foods…my man Tom works there…worked with both him and his brother Bob not long ago, in this millennium…and on the radio, solo DONALD FAGEN, “IGY”…check it out, Google on that…alright, the font is getting quite small on this, Starplane passengers and crew, but I am heck bent on getting the last few notes down…selected the ROB BREZSNY astrology column from the SF WEEKLY on Van Ness, a box there, a street box there…met b, and we began walking…at the fine and dandy FIELDS BOOKS on Polk near Pine I paused at the window and took notes on books in the window: TIM LEARY’s THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE and ALEISTER CROWLEY’s ILLUSTRATED GOETHIA, from NEW FALCON, a superlative publisher…Google on all of these…and b and I walked up California to catch a CABLE CAR, halfway to the stars and beyond…at THE LUMIERE, a marvelous INDEPENDENT MOVIE THEATER, BERTOLUCCI’s THE DREAMERS was happening…so b and I got on the cable car…one of the operators figured, must have, that we were potheads…started talking about his recent visit to Jamaica and the selection of herbal offerings there…mentioned to him, I did, that recently a guy at VALENCIA&16TH offered b and myself some green and sticky and skunky and blueberry bud from down TRINIDAD way, up there ‘round ARCATA…didn’t buy then, but b figured she shoulda…and we get off the cable car at the top of NOB HILL, me heading, navigating, over to GRACE CATHEDRAL, the labyrinth there outside the structure – there’s one inside as well, but I had my sights set on the exterior one…a guy running made his way fast up the church steps and I yelled “Yo, Rocky!”, and I do believe he said something about “Adrienne” or however Rocky’s woman’s name is spelled…quick response…so I set about, and b as well, into the maze…had my music box on me to set up a groove for the endeavour…”Crossfire” by Stevie Ray Vaughn was the song, and we both got in and out of the circuitous course, me with beer can in hand…then it was over across the street to Huntington Park, sushi b brought, and the dogs and babies and running water there…

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 4:26 PM

Friday, March 05, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #28

Various items of interest, found noteworthy by the Starplane…

Me buying beer at a Tenderloin corner market,
in front of me, three Hispanic guys,
all shorter than me, all looking pretty much alike,
all in baseball caps.

NEW RADICALS song YOU GET WHAT YOU GIVE…
lyrics: “…Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson/
you’re all fakes/run to your mansions/
come around/we’ll kick your ass in!”…
not DON HENLEY, but I like it.

P.J. O’ROURKE, audio book of some of his articles,
from the SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY…
uses the phrase “a la WARHOL”…quotes
from ALEXANDER POPE and FINNEGANS WAKE,
does the former hippie turned conservative.

Idea for the Starplane: great jukeboxes of San Francisco…
would rather think of this than consider the implications
of John Kerry winning on “Super Tuesday”.

Crony and collaborator and crazy colleague b –
and those are just the C-words…
went to the PRESIDIO recently to get her mail…
the GEORGE LUCAS facility,
I hear from her, is just about built –
some kind of fully-functional Death Star, sheesh…
gimme STAR TREK…beam George up
and send him back to Modesto.

Am re-reading a WINONA RYDER biography,
an unauthorized one…she spoke of
“communicating on a more real level”…
a character does…
this about one of her period pieces…
I mean, one of her costumed epics
set a hundred years ago…I like that…
hope she is getting her head together.

Accompanying a first Hamm’s of the day recently,
three songs not approved by Alcoholics Anonymous:
SHERYL CROW’s ALL I WANNA DO
(mentions getting a “beer buzz early in the morning”),
ROADHOUSE BLUES by THE DOORS
(“I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer…”)
and GEORGE THOROGOOD’s I DRINK ALONE
(he goes way beyond beer in that one)…

Also been reading a HERB CAEN column collection
from the Sixties and Seventies…
some of the San Francisco people and places
mentioned are still around.

Applied ARAMIS to myself, what’s left,
what little is left, of a bottle…
this to the tune of
“Evil Ways”, by Santana…
Macy’s Union Square is the source for this…
my tax return is due soon…it’s going in part for fragrance…

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 11:45 AM

Thursday, March 04, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #27

….in the interest of keeping this blog current
and not dealing with the ancient history of a week ago,
the Starplane will be working off fresher notes,
events and places referenced without such a time lag
between occurrence and chronicling…
but I feel I must mention a few items
from less than forty-eight hours ago, to wit: b and I –
b being an affiliate and associate and ally –
and those are just the A-words…
as well as one I am at frequent loggerheads with…
so b and I are at Pancho Villa on 16th&Valencia…
it’s on her dime, as usual…that situation
will be changing shortly…she’s made the dining selections,
this about eleven at night…
a red snapper taco plate,
a guacamole side,
avocado slices, rice, beans, tortillas,
chips, and all the free salsa one wants…
but the Starplane admits that it actually recommends
LA CUMBRE around the corner on Valencia more,
as well as MARIACHI’S across from La Cumbre…
even El Toro at the corner of 17th,
which is absolutely affiliated with Pancho Villa –
same food, but different and more pleasant location…
but at eleven until the witching hour thereabouts,
Pancho Villa is about the only game in that part of town
as far as dining is concerned…there’s Cable Car Pizza,
also around the corner, it should be mentioned…
they’ve got it happening til three in the morning…
but we are talking about a bit finer sort of dining here…
so b and I are enjoying the Mexican food…
she was telling me about one of the teachers
in an art class she worked at –
b wasn’t happy with how the teacher focused
on her Asian-esque eyes…some sort of racism
at work there, b figured…she gets that a lot,
from what she tells me…we finished our meal,
I walked her back to her place,
then I headed to the BART station
for the ride back to the Tenderloin…
a guy who won’t be winning Mr. San Francisco Civic Pride
was urinating on a building…he could’ve
at least walked around the corner for some privacy,
but no, there he was, doing it right in plain view…
hadda step over the rivulet as it made its way to the gutter…
must’ve been down from Pacific Heights, this guy…
got off BART at Civic Center, turned on my radio…
surprised at a commercial for
the SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE, where b often works…
appropriate song by STEELY DAN about then:
“My Old School”, for all those former Institute
and Academy of Art students
not working in their field after graduation…
then there was some Chrissie Hynde,
showing us the meaning of the word,
as I bought two cans of beer at a corner market –
tomorrow’s breakfast.
[There’d be more now, Starplane passengers,
but this joint’s closing sooner than I thought…
will have to skip all sorts of details
in the interests of keeping this absolutely now…

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 3:58 PM

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #26

…and now, back to my notes, which are accumulating…
good thing the Starplane has plenty of memory and time,
and operates, like the Low Rider in the song by WAR,
without the need of gasoline…back to a few days ago,
the end of February, two-thousand-and-four…
was entertaining sexual fantasies
about a photograph of a woman in a Taschen –
that is, the German publisher’s – catalog…
found that publication on the street somewhere,
caught my eye…mostly the material
wasn’t of that exciteful nature…
there were a beautiful two pages of pictures
from BLADERUNNER…and simultaneously on my mind,
the DIANE DI PRIMA poetry event
mentioned in the previous blog…
friends and students of the Beat poet
were gathering at a local bookstore…
about ten that morning, cohort b,
often at loggerheads with me,
visited the hotel in the Tenderloin I’m living in now…
had some soy milk with her to share with me,
and five bucks for a GOOGLE search I did for her –
the synopsis of Madame Butterfly –
she had some interest in that for some reason…
she related some anecdote
about our mutual acquaintance Pao…
don’t recall exactly what it was, but knowing him,
how he behaves toward b,
it was probably of some salacious nature…
b on the way to a job on Powell,
and I walked her part of the way there
through the Tenderloin…on the way back
to the hotel I bought a pint of King Cobra
for the Tenderloin price of eighty cents…
in the Mission, at Randa’s Market there on 16th,
for example, it goes for a full buck…
noteworthy: ASHLEY JUDD featured in poster
for the new movie Twisted…of interest to SAN FRANCISCO
for the local scenes depicted therein…
much filmed in NORTH BEACH, for example…
the flick was to be called Blackout, I read,
but that name was already used for something else
and the filmmakers had to change it…
and, and, and other random-ish pop cultural thoughts
occurring to me about that time,
which is pretty much like this time here, and coming up:
Stanley Kubrick and his use of classical music,
the slow motion effects in the Madonna bullfighter video
for the song “Take a Bow”…
a Gore Vidal essay I am reading about Tennessee Williams.
My face was flushing hot and red from the King Cobra…
had some DOOBIE BROTHERS on my music box,
their song about Jesus just being alright…
the song from them I really would love to hear again
is NEAL’S FANDANGO, about NEAL CASSADY…
there’s the album version, and a fine live version
from the Nineties by this great band…lyrically, it starts like this:
“Well, a travelin’ man’s affliction makes it hard to settle down/
but I’m stuck here in the flatlands
while my heart is homeward bound…”
[Enough pop cultural references for you, dear Starplane passengers?]

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 2:30 PM
STARPLANE BLOG #25

The Starplane has achieved cruising altitude,
and we now time travel back, for your entertainment,
to where we left off last episode,
back at Celia’s weekly food ‘n’ fun ‘n’ music event
in SAN FRANCISCO…so at some point in the proceedings
I am banging away with the tambourine
from her basket of instruments and Celia comes up to me and says
that I should try to keep time with the drums.
I really thought I was doing alright in that department,
but apparently the hostess thought otherwise…
I didn’t feel too bad about this,
since if someone came up to me and asked,
like in the Dylan song, for me to play a song for them
since they weren’t sleepy
and there was no place they’re going to,
I would just turn on my Radio Shack music box
and make an FM selection…there’s usually
something decent enough on the airwaves.
Later on, I asked someone else
about this putative musical lapse on my part, one of the musicians,
I think, and they figured I was doing okay
with the tambourine…Celia was just playing
with my mind, maybe…so, okay, then,
there’s always some point when Celia gets up
in the middle of the musicians and makes announcements…
the one that stuck with me from then:
she wants us to bring our own bottles of drink…
wonder how strictly she will enforce this…
money’s so tight for me and for sure
I have been imbibing from the wine
and even the Scotch there without reciprocation –
except for my presence there, my participation in the scene…
and it’s questionable how much
of the cold and hard that’s worth, ha ha ha…
so, and so…to wrap this up…drummer Randy
announced something about people
coming in early next time to learn
how to operate some sound board or other…
Jorge, who’s been around San Francisco since the Sixties,
mentioned some show he was involved with…
and there was a flyer for a local event
featuring students and friends of Beat poet Diane di Prima…
at about half-past ten, was chatting with Carson,
hitting Celia’s Scotch, on top of the wine
I’d been sampling earlier…and noteworthy, very,
was Jorge’s anecdote about JERRY GARCIA…
something about the Dead guitarist not picking him up
at some roadside in Marin even tho’ he was going
the same was Jorge was…so now Jerry
is no longer looked upon with much favor by Jorge…
then it was out on the street again
after hanging around til nearly midnight –
there’s conversation when the music’s over at Celia’s…
noted some Guns ‘n’ Roses played on my box
on the ride back to the Tenderloin, and that Beach Boys
tune used on the Boogie Nights soundtrack,
the next to last song, as I remember –
the last being “Livin’ Thing”
by THE ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA –
that Beach Boys tune going, like – cue the music –
“…God only knows what I’d be without you…”

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 1:42 PM

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #24

The Starplane has decided, in the interests
of not constantly merely considering the merits of rock and roll,
to describe a weekly event in the life:
namely, the Thursday night soiree
held by one Celia at her space where Mission and Cesar Chavez intersect…
big warehouse sort of building there,
and she and her friends have gathered there,
or someplace like it if not there,
every week for over twenty years,
to eat the great soup she cooks up,
and partake of the assortment of bread and cheese
and fruit and other goodies, perhaps imbibe some wine,
enjoy elevated conversation, and make music…
an entirely amazing scene of SAN FRANCISCO conviviality,
and this here is the Starplane tribute
to Celia and her friends…so not long ago
I was on my way there from my hotel
in the Tenderloin…waiting on the Hyde Street bus,
music box cradled…cue up the Tom Petty, freefalling…
made a cell call (courtesy of associate/ally/friend b)
to acquaintance Pao, who was offering
GANODERMA LUCIDUM for sale, eighths…magical –
you know the kind…didn’t quite have the dinero
for the purchase, not yet…tho’ he’s offering me
typing work in exchange for the aforementioned eighth…
so it’s the Muni ride to the BART station
in front of THE SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY…
observed the Daktronics sign waiting for the train
on the platform…the Berkeley Repertory
was advertising a show there across the Bay…
then it was the quick ride to 24th Street,
the short walk to Celia’s…the scene was already
quite in progress, the musicians were on,
really grooving,
and the folks had gathered there, about a coupla dozen strong…
Randy was there doing his fine rhythm thing on his drum,
my man Carson and I did our usual chatting
about things pop cultural,
Aaron was Coltraning his saxophone,
poet and world traveler Donna and I shared the good word…
and Celia’s soup was as happening as ever…
hard to convey the merriment in mere words, really…
laughed at Celia’s note on one of the soup pots
about how it contained just the “vivid memory”
of last week’s sausage, the meat having been surgically selected out…
around the table someone shared a memory of SF Weekly
astrology columnist Rob Breszny that I can’t quite
remember the details of…Breszny was at some rally at the time
of the Dan White murders and burned paper money
as a protest against capitalism, I think it was…I was all ears…
so I enjoyed my soup, grooved to the music, sipped wine,
maybe even got up to slam a tambourine against my thigh…
and for sure I selected a book from Celia’s collection,
a biographical survey of poets by one Louis Untermeyer…
the drummers were trancing into their trans-African beats,
entraining all within earshot,
and I read that with Chaucer,
thought Louis, literature took a dramatic and important turn…
I conjured a line of iambic pentameter:
“Excitement, wonder, power – art endures.”
My notes, which begin to get a bit wavery here at intervals,
say that at quarter past nine that evening
I was offered and took a hit off a guy’s “reefer”…
continued reading in the Untermeyer, about Lord Byron,
and with the poetry of that worthy this flight of the Starplane
will come to a close:
“The quest of hidden knowledge,
and a mind/
to comprehend the universe…”

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 8:16 PM
STARPLANE BLOG #23

Faithful passengers of the Starplane
will have noted how much rock
is rolling around in my consciousness…
and of a particularly vintage variety as well…
not much I can do about that…
and do I really want to do something about it?
That is the question,
and a more relevant one than Hamlet’s,
to my way of thinking…now, I am going back a few days
in these notes of mine…a day when
a second “Beast of Burden” by the Stones was enjoyed by me…
then some unusual Dead for the local FM dial,
a live “Hell in a Bucket”…I am having
sort of a love-hate relationship with beer and malt liquor
these days, and am not sure if I should head
to the corner saloon near my hotel, the Brown Jug,
for a two-buck serving of suds
and a two-buck serving of the Dead from their juke box,
a fine one by the cursory inspection I did…
well, y’know, I am not only just listening to music,
not just enjoying it, but am also
downloading lyrics from Google and studying ‘em, by golly…
in terms of recent music, HELL YEAH
by one MONTGOMERY GENTRY is a fine one…
one that’d be perfect on that diner table juke box
on that DOOBIE BROTHERS album…
but, lord, should not the Starplane have more meaning to offer
than sitting around enjoying music and drinking beer?
There’s the poetry in life to consider,
and knowledge…there are the over forty books
I have out from
THE SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY as well…
future flights will be devoted to these texts, believe you me…
and in personal news, I have been informed
by the CALIFORNIA government
that I will have to send in reports
about my food stamp card status every three months now
instead of the monthly reporting schedule…
this is a good thing –
the less contact with the government the better,
especially if they continue sending the money…I get
about a hundred-ten on that card per month, and it’s welcome…
the Starplane is freeloading off the city and state,
I guess, and there are some who would never accept the help –
but I am not to be in that number,
when the Starplane saints go marchin’ in…
and now, cue the music, players –
it’s King Harvest, doing that timeless classic,
“Dancing in the Moonlight”…
I don’t care what state-of-the art house music
the BBC is piping in
to San Francisco via the Internet –
that is just one moving song, okay?
That case is closed…please enjoy your flight…

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 6:13 PM

Monday, March 01, 2004

STARPLANE BLOG #22

Lucky you, Starplane passengers…
a second communiqué today…so back we go
to the corner of EDDY&LEAVENWORTH
here in SAN FRANCISCO…I’ve had something to drink then –
been drinking my share of alcohol these days –
and I’ve got my music box out and on,
sharing the sound with the Tenderloin passers-by…
down on the corner,
like CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL sings about…
some PRINCE was on, his little red Corvette song –
now is the time to cue that up on your players,
to get more of a multimedia feel to these written words…
he was just playing in town at the Fillmore…
I don’t go to many shows, didn’t go to that one…
THE DEAD were also at THE WARFIELD
not too long ago…they are close to my heart,
for some reason…and at the same venue,
not a week ago, there was a JIMI HENDRIX tribute
with various luminaries, including CARLOS SANTANA…
I woulda enjoyed that, and the Warfield
is so close to my crib…and in other neighborhood news,
out there as I was with the music and the drink,
changes have already happened
at the former Taj Mahal Indian restaurant
at the corner of which I speak…
the price for their all-you-can-eat buffet
has gone up a dollar to a nickel short of six,
which is still a good bargain,
and the name has changed to CURRY, NAAN & KABAB…
and the San Francisco radio played a rare item –
Hendrix live at Winterland…jeez, am I living in the past?
My man Clark would think so…
he’s got British house piped in on his computer
at his office there on Geary, live from the BBC…
still, decades old or not, this rock music still moves me…
damn, there at DELIRIUM at 16TH&ALBION,
the twenty-something deejays are still playing
Sixties and Seventies rock…isn’t a lot of it timeless?
Other songs from that time on the Tenderloin street corner:
“My Sweet Lord”, “Killing Me Softly”,
“Play That Funky Music”…”Good Times” by Chic…
now, were there to be a party at, like,
“Studio 52” (my name) at 52 Mason –
HARRIS ROSENBLOOM’s place…
or another party simultaneously at THE PHOENIX HOTEL
at EDDY&LARKIN – owned by CHIP CONLEY…
well, I’d be playing all of the above, and more…
EARTH, WIND & FIRE, like…STEVIE WONDER, too…
if it’s good enough for Delirium…
and Stevie will take us out of this blog with his poetry –
cue the music: “…I love you more today than yesterday,
but not as much as tomorrow…”
[“This stuff is seamless – Frisco’s stylin’ now,/
including music being made tonight…”]

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 3:15 PM
STARPLANE BLOG #21

…now, to continue where we left off last time,
or at least somewhere in the immediate vicinity,
namely, somewhere under the rainbow
in the pot of gold,
or pot of something that we call
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA…
was seeking free computer time
at the Christian-operated drop-in center
at EDDY&LEAVENWORTH…
really kinduv a godsend, the place is…
eleven terminals, free Internet access
and free word processing software…
signed up, and with time to spare til a station was open,
took my small but powerful music box
out onto the Tenderloin street and,
fortified with some beverage of a mildly-alcoholic nature,
leaned up against a mail box or something
and TURNED ON the machine, TUNED IN, and…
waited to DROP IN to the center…the first song was GOOD LOVIN’…
musta been THE GRATEFUL DEAD…
should know the sound by now…
BOB “KOMBUCHA DRINKER” WEIR vocals,
and the JERRY GARCIA guitar…
the area in question there in the Tenderloin is fairly,
I must say, non-white…if it was a turkey,
you’d be having the dark meat on your plate there…
so when I’m tuning in the FM there I might
tend that spectrum of the musical canon…
second song was MIDNIGHT CONFESSION
by I’m not sure…then DANCING IN THE STREETS…
guess that’s Martha and the Vandellas,
not the Bowie & Jagger version…
this would be better if you had all these songs
cued up on your CD player…and following these selections,
there was some “Curtis” getting ready,
and George Michael whispering carelessly…
’bout this time, my drop-in was nearing…
it had begun to rain and I took shelter in the center’s doorway,
and lo and behold, it even began to hail
in a virtually Biblical fashion onto San Francisco…
two little girls came out of the center
to view the heavenly spectacle with amazed smiles…
and one of my sonic prayers was answered
by the FM Signal Goddess as well –
GORDON LIGHTFOOT came on,
singing a song I’d wanted to hear for a long while –
“…if you could read his mind, Lord,
what a tale his thoughts could tell,
just like a paperback novel,
the kind the drugstore sells…”
Thus inspired, I went in, dropped in, that is,
after having turned on the machine and tuned it in,
and set about my playful work, for your enjoyment,
all you good folks of San Francisco, and Greater San Francisco…

[HamiltonStarplane@Hotmail.com & http://starplane.blogspot.com]

posted by Velcro  # 12:10 PM

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