jakit

Mix-Master

A few years ago my good friend (and Oakland's Best Bartender) decided that he needed to take his career to the next level and, so, Alex Smith left a rather cush bar-manager job at Catos Alehouse in Oakland to begin working for various hipster bars in the City. Besides simply offering a much-needed change of location, these San Francisco gigs also exposed him to the cool new scene of cocktail-mixing; a scene at which he soon found himself to be quite adept.

Alex has been so successful with the mixology, in fact, that he recently won a trip to France based upon one of his original recipes. Now, another creation of his, the Hibiscus Tequila Fizz, is being featured in the current issue of Sunset magazine.

Cato's hasn't been the same since Alex left. Nevertheless, I wish him well in his new endeavours.

Congrats, Alex!

Nanny Company

For all of my adult life I've heard people bemoan the existence of our "nanny state;" a government that treats its citizens much like a child-care worker treats her client's offspring.

For the most part, I tend to agree with this criticism. We, as a free people, should be allowed to fail just as much as we should be allowed to succeed.

But I wonder if the bigger problem (one that the libertarians seem to be blind to) is that we're far more susceptible to regression when it comes to the corporations in our lives than to the government.

After all, we go to work all day for these huge businesses that spend most of their time bossing us around. Then, when we finally come home, exhausted and worn, we simply use the money that we earned to pay another corporation in the hope that they'll entertain our boredom away.

We don't cook at home anymore and, instead, we hand our money over to fast food restaurants which feed us complete crap. As a result, we naturally get sick. Then, paradoxically, we turn around and pay the drug pushers to make us healthy again.

Perhaps worst of all, most of our communication and socializing is now done through corporations like phone companies and social-networking sites.

We can't even hang out on our own anymore.

These giant telecommunications behemoths actually require us to pay a monthly bill. Far better, it seems, to spend our money at the pub where we can, at least, chat in person.

So, as far as I see it, the bigger concern is not that we desire for the public sphere to take care of us; it's that we've secretly become dependent upon the private sphere instead. However, either way, it seems that we should aspire not to be suckled at all.

Children are not self-sufficient; that's why they have nannies. Adults, however, are supposed to be able to look after themselves.

Yet, I don't even really know what that means. It seems like true adults are a thing of the romantic past.

I bought a shirt the other day and, as I was pulling off the tag, I tore a tiny little hole. I had to take the damaged article to a tailor in order to get it fixed.

How pathetic is that?

The fact that I am unable to patch the holes in my own clothing is sad. I need to learn to sew. Since I haven't yet gotten off the ground with my gourmet hot-dog cart, I think I'll put this at the top of my list of new priorities.

Being There

On occasion, I find myself sitting at a table in an outdoor cafe someplace. It's a sunny day and I'm having a glass of wine with a good friend and enjoying interesting, yet casual, conversation in the middle of a weekday.

Invariably, when this happens, the person sitting across from me will point out that this delightful, yet rare, experience that we're currently having is akin to being in Italy.

Which has me thinking; I wonder if Italians ever find themselves plopped in front of the television, eating junk food and feeling exhausted after participating in a six-hour video game binge.

If so, do they then turn to the person sitting next to them on the couch and comment that it's like being in America?

Rage Against the Machine

I just moved a washing machine.

I had never moved a washing machine before. I don't think most people have because I had never heard anyone talk about it. It seems to me, now, to be something that people who have moved a washing machine should probably talk about with people who have not moved a washing machine.

My lack of experience is not due to any type of laziness or work-aversion. I have, for instance, moved my belongings in and out of various apartments and houses for years and, yet, I have never had the need to move a washing machine.

I have also, many times, helped transport my friends' possessions from place to place and, again, a washing machine has always failed to appear in these situations.

Basically, I had never really thought about it before but I now realize that the washing machine is usually not moved along with one's other belongings because it is generally considered to be part of the house. There is a reason for this.

IT'S AS HEAVY AS A GOD-DAMN HOUSE.

Never again.

Never again will I move a washing machine. I swear to you, with the Pizza Gods as my witness, never again.

This just adds to my hatred of all things machine.

Imagine, If You Will

I blame most of our societal ills on lack of imagination.

I'm not simply referring to television or Facebook. The Iraq War, for instance, never would have happened had the public been able to imagine a scenario that was different than the "official" story that we were told.

It is this belief in the official, the factual, the scientific, that is the whole root of the problem. We, the modern people, believe that we have it all figured out and we laugh at those who don't. We chuckle at our ancestors who once believed that the world was flat, when we know it to actually be quite round instead.

Or do we?

Or, more importantly, who knows it to be round? Perhaps a few scientists that have studied the stars can actually say that they know, for absolute certainty, that the world is round. The rest of us, it turns out, just have to take their word for it.

Which is fine. It makes sense. They have a plausible argument. So, why not? Let's go for it.

Nevertheless, we are still exercising faith by doing so. The exact same faith that the backward religious folks of the world today are mocked for possessing.

It's a very humorous experience to see a modern person get upset when he learns that some idiot doesn't believe that dinosaurs once existed; as if this modern fellow had seen the beasts walk the Earth with his own two eyes.

What happens if, someday, the scientists discover that they were wrong, that dinosaurs did not, after all, once inhabit our planet?

This, in fact, happens quite often. Once upon a time scientists told us that DDT was safe, that mothers should switch to formula for their babies, that heavier objects fall faster and, even, believe it not (snicker, snicker) that the atom was the smallest particle in existence. We now know that the actual smalled particle is a quark.

Or do we?

Are we honestly so arrogant as to think that we have it figured out, this time?

Perhaps, we are. Our world is obsessed with absolutes. Everything must be determined to be right or wrong, black or white. Sometimes we argue until we're red in the face over just who is right and who is wrong. Yet, still, it had to be one or the other. Something has to be correct.

Is there a God? Is there not a God?

It is, I believe, not enough to merely accept the grey and wait until the truth is finally revealed. This is still the same disease; a constant belief that there actually is a truth. What is needed is a ceasing of our reliance on the absolute.

Yet, instead, we suffer from a mentality poisoned by a worship of science, by computers altering our process of thinking, by popular entertainment replacing our own creative spirits and, most disturbingly, by the abdication of our critical thinking to "experts."

Did the people of old suffer because they believed that the world was flat? Of course not. Instead, for all intents and purposes, their world truly was flat. Did it matter?

This is not an abandonment of free thought. It is much the opposite. After all, it is our own mind, to do with as we please. It's our imagination. We should take it back.

Is the ultimate concern what is or what is not true? Or is this trumped in importance by what we wish to be true.

Once we embrace our imaginations, we can stop worrying about discovering how the world is supposed to be and we can start working towards creating the world as we desire it to be.

Personally, I don't believe that there is a God. I don't believe that there is no God. I believe that there are many Gods. A God of love, a God of sex, a God of wine, a God of baseball.

Go ahead, prove me wrong.

Hippies vs. Communists

Over on The Scavenger (an SFGate blog) there is an entry on John Yoo and how he hates Berkeley, his home town. In an interview with the L.A. Times he stated:

"There are probably more Communists in Berkeley than any other town in America, but I think of them more as lovers of Birkenstocks than Marx."

And...

"It's like looking at the panoramic displays of troglodytes sitting around the campfire with their clubs. Here, it's tie-dye and marijuana. It's just like the 1960s, with the Vietnam War still to protest."

I'm not going to go into John Yoo's political beliefs, nor am I going to argue the relative merits of communism or hippiedom. I merely want to address a very common misconception that he appears to have: the popular fallacy that hippies and Communists (or Socialists) are somehow congruous, when they are, in fact, quite opposite in their beliefs.

Socialists, for instance, believe in government ownership of industry, as opposed to the private ownership of industry that is favored by Capitalists. Communists and Marxists are essentially Socialists who support their government operating in a dictatorial manner instead of a democratic one.

Hippies, on the other hand, are Anarchists. They don't accept any type of government, at least not any large one.

Like most Anarchists, they would probably favor a small, village-type system, which would, most likely, have democratic principles and socialist-leanings. Yet, just about every human-being on Earth supports democracy and socialism on a local level (whether they are aware of it or not.)

The raging societal debate that we are constantly engaged in occurs over how our state and national governments should operate. Hippies are not even a part of this debate because they have rejected the overly complex industrial world (and all its different political systems) and decided to move backwards, towards smaller and more natural communities and an overall simpler way of life.

Being a life-long East Bay resident, having worked at Whole Foods and having resided in an old craftsman house on Vine Street whose occupants included a stripper putting herself through law-school, an elderly cross-dressing man running for mayor of Walnut Creek and a junkie who lived with a cat in the attic, I feel as if I'm entitled to write authoritatively on hippie culture.

Peace.

Lucia Marin Horvath

Little Luce was born on Tuesday, February 9th; three weeks early and two days after her mother's birthday.

Weighing 6.7 pounds, she entered the world quickly, but intensely, and has since wisely decided to just snooze her days away.

Unlike Julian, who came crashing-in on the heels of a fortuitously-timed bender, Lucia's birth brings with it no crazy story. Instead, she's generously provided me with an opportunity to reflect upon what Erika and I have been through in our quest to form a family.

To be honest, there were many moments over the last few years in which I wondered if we would ever get to this point.

It was back in 2006 when I received the test-results that felt, upon first impression, worse than a death sentence; a big goose egg on the sperm count. It appeared as if I would never be able to have children of my own.

Eventually, further tests would reveal the cause of this deficiency. It turns out that I carried a single cystic-fibrosis gene; not enough to give me the disease to such an extent that I would succumb to it, but enough to give me several of its nasty conditions. Primarily, in this context, I was born without a vas deferens.

This meant that my boys could swim; they just couldn't get out of the damn pool.

Thankfully, due to mega-super-hyper-advanced technology (and a lot of money, mostly provided by fabulous relatives,) we were able to do what would have been impossible only fifteen years ago.

Having become rather Luddite-ish lately, this has presented me with a sort-of existentialist conundrum. Still, I'll trade esoteric ideals for awesome little kids any day of the week.

And so, I will always be eternally grateful to the brilliant scientists and doctors who gave me what I was, apparently, not supposed to have- a beautiful, precious and most-fantastic little family.

Kudos, of course, to my heroic wife for doing her share of the family-creation, as well ;)

Green Police

I didn't watch the superbowl and I haven't seen any of the ads except this one, which I happened to come across on the internets.

I find it rather clever.

It manages to make fun of the extreme moralizing that occurs in the green movement while, at the same time, still acknowledging the movement's overall wisdom.

For people who believe that it is smart to live sustainably, this ad is a gentle poke in the ribs and a humorous reminder that it is still possible for one to have fun in life, even while trying to do the right thing.

The nutcase teabaggers, on the other hand, see this ad as an accurate forecasting of our future, when the American populace will be tyrannically ruled by a big-brother-style government forcing us all to behave like good liberals.

Which is bizarre, really, because the green movement has occurred thus far, and for the most part, outside of government power; despite the dominant authorities, not because of them.

The American government has never pushed people into buying organic, buying local, living sustainably, etc... quite to the contrary. Our farm bill, for instance, still helps enormous agribusinesses producing unhealthy food while, simultaneously, hurting the local farmers.

No, the green movement has grown because of word-of-mouth and other grass-roots methods of communication. The power it has is only the power of knowledge and the ability, at the worst, to make something taboo and/or shameful.

It is a possibility, however, that corporations and their government stooges could learn to hijack the green movement in their favor (much like they manipulate the desire to be safe in order to justify wars fought for resources) while still subverting it, but since the movement is, by definition, anti-corporation and pro-small and local government, I'd be very surprised to see this happen.

In other words, although this Audi ad is clever and fun, it's still just corporate bullshit.

So the bears are packed with cocaine?

The saga of the missing bears just keeps getting bigger.

Amazingly.

We're talking front page of the Oakland Tribune and three television news stories bigger.

Yeah.

Fer real.

I won't provide all the relevant links here, since they're already on the missing bears page, but I will connect you to the comments from a blog entry about the bears on SFist because they perfectly capture the story's appeal.

However, even though it's fun to watch all this happen, it is also slightly disturbing.

Last night, as I stood in front of Catos Alehouse and watched my buddy Chris get interviewed by Channel 7 News, I couldn't help but ponder our strange society. I mean, this is a guy who has composed music for, and acted in, several local independent films (all done brilliantly, I might add) and, yet, his first significant press is coming because he lost a couple of toys?

Yeeesh.

Perhaps, out of all this, more people will come to appreciate his music.

And, on that note, if these bears do get found, the story will only get bigger still.

C'mon bears! Come home!

U.S. Out of Oakland Lives on

U.S. Out Of Oakland
Originally uploaded by michal migurski

The truth is still out there.

The Bearz Are Missing!

Ferreira and Atsuko's beloved bearz have been lost. Alas, this has happened right on the eve of the release of their latest music video.

Click here to find out more.

Letter to George Lucas

While perusing some old emails I came across this little witticism from 1999. It was written shortly after a day spent waiting in line to see the premiere of Episode One:

Dear George,

I just saw your movie and I'm having a difficult time understanding what happened. I was hoping you could take a few minutes out of your busy day to answer the following questions for me:

• If the two Jedi Knights could, fearlessly and with great ease, manage to rescue a captured Queen from the clutches of an invading army, how come they couldn't steal some cheesy ship parts from an old blue bug?
• If it was so important that the Naboo Queen be kept safe at any cost that a human decoy was used to protect her, how come later she was running through the palace shooting a blaster and dodging lasers for no apparent benefit? But then again, you did get to show a "strong" female character.
• How do you democratically elect a Queen?
• The Jedi's mission to bring the Queen to the Senate was of utmost importance, right? So why the hell do they bring along this bungling idiot Jar Jar? Wasn't it because he was going to help them navigate through the planet's core? But, if I recall, they were using the Force to direct them through the core. But that's okay, he sure was a funny character (Ha ha).
• What did you call those things that live inside us and carry the force? Wow... that was deep.
• If young Anikin Skywalker and his mom were so poor and helpless that they became slaves, how did the boy manage to get enough stuff together to build a robot and a pod cruiser? How about selling the robot and hopping in the pod and racing the hell away?
• Wasn't it cute how young Anikin "accidentally" destroyed the robot control ship?
• Why didn't C3PO ever make the connection between his new master, Luke Skywalker from Tatooine, and his original master, Anikin Skywalker from Tatooine?
• How come the robot's weapons couldn't get through the force field, but the robots themselves could? Come to think of it, how come water couldn't get through, but people could? Don't people have water in them?
• Yoda admits Anikin is the chosen one but doesn't want to train him to be a Jedi. So what the hell is he "chosen" for then?
• How come every lightsaber duel happens to take place on the ledge of some gigantic chute and the loser always ends up falling to his questionable doom?
• A virgin birth? Okay... George...

Please respond at your earliest convenience. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Star Wars Sucker

P.S. I'd like my $7.50 back.

Still no response. Go figure.

However, I do remember all my friends being annoyed by the email (Why can't you just enjoy the movie for what it is!?")

The Film of Tomorrow

From a 1957 article in Art magazine written by Francois Truffaut:

The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary.

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.

The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has.

The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.

Pete Swears a Lot

This cracks me up.

From my Final Draft screenplay program:

PROFANITY REPORT FOR "LEISURE"
This profanity report should be used as a general guide to the profanity content of your script. Some of the items in this report may not be actual profanity and other real instances in your script may have been missed.

"Ass"  (13 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
6, 12, 13, 19, 23, 54, 55, 61, 68, 70, 93, 112, 115
It is spoken by the following characters:
BARNEY, FRANKLIN, JAKE, LEILA, PETE, TOM

"Asshole"  (2 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
59, 66
It is spoken by the following characters:
MARK, PETE

"Bitch"  (5 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
2, 3, 70, 96
It is spoken by the following characters:
JAKE, PETE

"Bullshit"  (8 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
23, 40, 55, 56, 81, 103
It is spoken by the following characters:
FRANKLIN, JAKE, PETE

"Crap"  (2 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
68, 72
It is spoken by the following characters:
FRANKLIN

"Damn"  (6 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
7, 21, 50, 59, 74, 87
It is spoken by the following characters:
ED, JAKE, MARK, PETE

"Dick"  (1 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
41
It is spoken by the following characters:
PETE

"Fuck"  (33 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 27, 54, 63, 65, 73, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80, 81, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94, 110, 111
It is spoken by the following characters:
ALT GIRL 2, BARNEY, FRANKLIN, JAKE, LARS, NED, PETE, TOM

"Fucked"  (1 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
9
It is spoken by the following characters:
BARNEY

"Fucker"  (3 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
3, 37, 41
It is spoken by the following characters:
JAKE, PETE

"Fucking"  (39 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 16, 22, 26, 31, 41, 54, 55, 56,
59, 61, 65, 74, 81, 86, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 103, 107, 111
It is spoken by the following characters:
ALT GUY, BARNEY, BOB, FRANKLIN, GEORGE, HANK, JAKE, LANCE, LARS, LEILA, MARK, NED, PETE, RALPH, TOM

"Pissed"  (1 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
7
It is spoken by the following characters:
JAKE

"Pussy"  (3 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
60, 77, 78
It is spoken by the following characters:
BARNEY, LEILA, PETE

"Shit"  (22 occurrences)
It appears on the following pages:
2, 9, 11, 19, 23, 25, 36, 53, 63, 65, 77, 79, 81, 93, 98
It is spoken by the following characters:
BARNEY, JAKE, PETE, RALPH, TOM, WALLY

And this list is from the screenplay. It doesn't take into account all the swearing that the actors added themselves. For instance, while editing once I counted 14 motherfuckers from Chris Ferreria in a single 90 second sequence.

It's stuff like this that is leading to the corruption of today's youth.

Worst Decade Ever

My sister just texted me, reminding me of the best party of all time: 1999, 3907, #10.

Good memories (someday soon I'll post the pictures.)

Next, she wished me a happy new decade. I then realized, surprisingly, that it'd been ten whole years since our infamous bash and I, naturally, took a moment to reflect upon the time that had passed. Sadly, I could only conclude that it was, for the world at large, the Worst Decade Ever.

Seriously.

WDE

At least the depression-ridden 30's and World War Two 40's built character. This decade has been nothing but an overwhelmingly relentless display of bad character.

Beginning with the bursting of the dot-com bubble (an immediate sign that the roaring 90's were now, officially, over) the last ten years spawned one needless disaster after another; the California energy crisis, the attack on the World Trade Center, the invasion of Iraq, the steroid scandal, and on and on.

All of it, in my humble opinion, due to especially loud displays of extremely bad character.

Yeah, well, I hear all the time, character doesn't matter anymore. That's some naive Chivalric mentality from the Middle Ages. Thank God, we've moved on. Today, we wisely let the market determine what's right and what's wrong.

And where is the market for character? There simply isn't any. Just ask the kid stuck in Triple A with 12 homers and a curious absence of acne.

There is, on the other hand, a market for greed. There always has been, of course, but in this decade it seems to have been brought out of the basement, dusted off and hung on the wall over the mantel.

And now, no surprise, we end the decade how we came in, with another bursting. This time, the housing bubble, made manifest by people with pointless jobs causing their corrupt companies to implode in on their own hollow core.

Maybe this final disaster of the decade, however, will be the proverbial last straw as it has caused folks to look within themselves and re-evaluate their lives.

People are growing gardens. I love that! This is happening even though garden-grown veggies are not a traded commodity. Unless, of course, you're swapping for a bottle of your neighbor's homemade kombucha.

We appear to be going out in humble fashion; quite the opposite of the last decade. Appropriately, instead of throwing the greatest party of all time, Erika and I stayed in for New Years Eve. She was asleep when midnight hit and I was watching a movie.

Happy new decade.

Vocation/Avocation

No one should spend more than twenty hours a week doing any one thing.

This is my new creed.

Whatever makes one money, they should spend no more than twenty hours a week at it. This is a vocation.

One should spend the rest of their time doing things that they love. Working in the garden. Carving wooden toys. Making sauerkraut. Reading books. These are avocations.

If one can make money from one's avocations, well, then, that person is doing something right. But even if one can't, twenty hours a week is not too much of a burden.

I love the idea of having several of both, with constant overlapping and shifting places. Right now I have pizza delivery as my twenty-hour-a-week vocation; writing as my twenty-hour-a-week avocation that occasionally shifts into vocation; and I'm searching for some craft/food gig to pursue for pleasure that may one day provide a little bit of income.

One idea is to start my own gourmet hot-dog cart. But it would only be for two days a week. We'll see.

This is my alternative to the concept of career. It's much more fun.

Movies Lame

I pulled to a stop in front of the Piedmont Theater and glanced up at the marquee. The title of the current movie was "Pirate Rad."

How cool is that? I might actually go see that film.

Then I drove forward and saw that it was actually "Pirate Radio."

Movies sure do suck nowadays.

This Is the One

I'd like to leave the country
For a month of sundays
Burn the town where I was born

- This Is the One, Stone Roses

Living Up to the Name

Am I the only one who now finds Tiger Woods incredibly more interesting?

Obama Lame

Here's a question concerning Afghanistan that's not currently being asked:

Why do terrorists need a failed state to train in? Are their operations so enormous that they require an entire nation?

I don't get it.

Terrorists can train anywhere. In fact, they already do. Terrorists train in Palestine, Syria and Iran. Those may all be crappy states, but they haven't failed.

They used to train in Ireland and, as Oklahoma City can attest, they've even trained in the United States.

Once a person gets it into their mind that they want to be a terrorist, all they need is the internet and a warehouse, somewhere. Consequently, if one wants to prevent the spread of terrorism, they should try to keep that nasty idea from getting into people's minds.

There is absolutely no point in placing any troops in Afghanistan since preventing the state from failing will have no effect on the ability of terrorists to train and, therefore, play no role in our nation's safety.

The only failure here is Obama's.