Monthly Archives: August 2005

A jazz Saturday

by  • August 15, 2005 • 2 Comments

I had all day Saturday to kill so I dropped in on the San Jose Jazz Festival.
There’s no admission to the fest, so to some extent you get what you pay for.
So much attention goes into fundraising and cajoling bands to come to San Jose,
I suppose, that such things as program guides or maps of the festival are things
which you have to get along without. Well, if you’re too lazy and unmotivated
to ask somebody where such things might be found, which describes me to a T.
I had no idea, for instance, that there were at least three indoor venues
featuring interesting and wonderful jazz artists. Of course, sitting on the
couch back home in my Friday edition of the San Jose Mercury News was a complete
guide to the festival with maps and arrows and advice on the must-see acts.
Heck, anybody can find cool stuff that way.

So anyway, if you Googled San Jose Jazz Festival and happened upon this page,
be assured it is not representative of the mind-boggling range of talent that
appears at the festival every year. It’s just some stuff I saw on a Saturday
in the summer of 2005.

The first cool thing I saw was this cop on horseback riding his horse right
into a tent where they were selling beer. He only jokingly ordered a draft from
the tap.

I wandered down to the blues stage, where Lara Price and her band were belting
it out.

The Salsa Stage drew big crowds all afternoon.

Vission Latina keeps the crowd grooving. I seem to recall the lead singer mentioning
he was from Cuba.

The crowd endorses the Salsa sound.

Over at the Big Band Stage, a bunch of people who’s great-grandparents were
into Benny Goodman keep the swing, well, swinging.

Dancers with long hair often produced the coolest photos.

I got these pix sitting on the sidewalk about eight feet from the stage, which
is one of the great things about checking out the less-popular venues: you can
always sit up front and see the expressions on the faces of the performers as
they perform.

The Main Stage is roped off down at the front and you have to have a special
wristband to get in. I have no idea where to get the wristband, no motivation
to find out. The grounds nearby are full of people with blankets and lawnchairs
… it’s a nightmare to navigate so I end up avoiding the Main Stage. This is
Soul Live on stage; I’m sure I’d have loved ’em if I could’ve gotten a seat
up front.

Back at the Salsa Stage, Eric Rangel y su Orquestra America have taken the
stage. One of Eric’s bandmates was doing one of those silly things bandmates
do because the lead singer is too busy singing to do what comes naturally, which
is to say, elbow him in the ribs or perhaps bop him in the jaw. He’s up there
singing and one of his cohorts is behind him running his hands all over him
with mock-homosexual ardor. It’s pretty funny until somebody takes a picture
of him doing it.

Back to the blues stage. Graying white guy wearing strange shirt: this is perhaps
the modern blues audience personified.

That’s the De Azna Hotel down at the end of the street. It’s where I spent
my first night in San Jose — quite a swanky joint, provided somebody else is
paying for your hotel room.

More Salsa Stage grooviness. I don’t recall seeing a flute in a jazz band before.

I’m not sure who these guys are, but they belt it out in Spanish with impressive
gusto.

A man and his trombone at the Latin Stage.

Back at the Big Band Stage, all the big bands had gone home but a Spanish/gypsy/mambo
flavored band called Alma Melodiosa got everybody moving for a segment called
Jazz After Dark.

Alma Melodiosa is a great combo with pleasing eye candy in the form of this
backup singer who had these castanet-thingies draped over her nether regions,
providing backing rhythms as she grinds out fetching belly-dancer moves. I sorta
felt sorry for the lead singer, who had a powerful, haunting voice, because
obviously all the attention will be drawn to the gyrating babe to her left (who
was a fine singer in her own right, but I don’t think many people were paying
attention to her voice. Well, a least not the guys).

Low light, moving musicians and an unsteady photographer’s hand provide novel
visual effects.

I’m sure there was more to see but at this point I’m jazzed out.

Another day among the comma quibblers

by  • August 8, 2005 • 1 Comment

The organization of copy editors of which I’m a member has flattered my ego three times in the past two years by inviting me to give presentations at training events the organization, well, organized. Curiously, all these invitations have been sight-unseen — that is, they don’t much know what I look like, nor have they seen me give a speech. They are bold, risk-taking people, which is to say, anybody who doesn’t have a speaking fee has a chance.

My latest presentation happened yesterday in Sacramento, where the summers are so hot that it’s easy to see why precious few sane people lived there for the 10,000 years before the white folks started showing up for the Gold Rush. Now I understand why they were so avid to find gold: to buy boat tickets back to a cool climate.

Anyway, ACES, the aforementioned organization, has a new chapter for Northern California, and the chapter brass asked me to speak at its first all-day conference. My topic was the ever-popular Banned for Life list, which I’ve maintained off and on for the past eight years. Got some good laughs, because Banned for Life readers are brimming with amusing vitriol regarding the most annoying media cliches. Note to would-be standup comics: when all else fails, go for the enema joke.

My favorite part of the presentation (apart from the applause), was something I called An Annoying Narrative, a story built completely from cliches submitted to the Banned for Life list. It goes like this (annoyances in bold):

I want to tell you about a special man, a man we all know as John Q. Public.


Mr. Public is an endangered species these days, a man determined not to re-invent the wheel.
 Mr. Public has drawn a line in the sand with his rivals, determined to go the extra mile and take no prisoners.

These traits allowed Mr. Public to succeed beyond his wildest dreams.“

But alas, his dreams turned to a nightmare … it turned he’d been on a slippery slope all along, that he had failed to develop a worst-case scenario.

Mr. Public was a disaster waiting to happen. In the end, he fell on his sword, after which, of course, authorities found him in a pool of blood.

This bit got great laughs, I swear, but you really had to be there.

The event drew about 80 people from papers around the region. A couple of my co-workers from the Mercury News also gave presentations, but we couldn’t coax any more Merc folks to come up for the conference. The Chronicle, in San Francisco, also had a couple people giving talks but apparently their staff, as well, couldn’t be troubled to drive a couple hours on a Sunday.

I’m a bit shame-faced to see that the two largest employers of copy editors in Northern California, the Merc and the Chron, having so few copy editors interested in getting involved with others of their own kind (though, admittedly, if you knew us you’d understand the qualms. We’re like people who’d never join clubs that’d have us as a member).

I had dinner with my buddy Will from the Fresno Bee. His boss had a great idea: she promised a free meal and transportation to Bee copy-deskers who wanted to come along. A couple carloads of Fresno Bee deskers came up, many of whom had like two hours of sleep because they worked saturday night and had to leave Fresno at 5 a.m. to get to Sacramento in time for the first sessions.

My presentation was my abiding obsession for the summer, but with that out of the way I guess you’d call me obsessionless. But never fret; something always turns up.