April Fool’s Day Birthdays

Birthday Greetings to My Dad and D. Boon

Mike Watt and D. Boon jamming in 1979, San Pedro, Calif.

Just a quick Happy Birthday greeting to friends, family and loved ones lost…

• My Dad: Born 1934 is 73 years old today
• The inimitable Jenn Harrison: Born March 31
• Christopher from the Beat Garden!
• Sexy Venus, too!

Happy Birthday to you ! May your wildest fantasies visit you often!

Today is also the birthday of the one and only D. Boon, who was tragically snatched away from us far too early in life. I miss him… and I know that I’m not alone. Give D. Boon a thought and a smile. He deserves at least that much. The man was a god. An unlikely messiah… Tune in to some Minutemen music today! Double Nickels on the Dime, baby! Tune in… and remember…

Best regards,

Twan

Step It Up to the Hollywood Sign

OrganicFoodee hosts a fun event against climate change

Step It Up 2007 at The Hollywood Sign

April 14, 2007 01:00PM to 03:00PM

Event Description:

• Take a hike to the Hollywood Sign!

Location:

• Hike up there through Bronson Canyon, from Canyon Drive in Hollywood.

Directions:

• Drive north up Bronson Avenue until it bcomes Canyon Drive.
• Continue up Canyon Drive until it becomes Brush Canyon Trail.
• At the end, the road enters the gates to the park which is at the bottom of Bronson Canyon.
• Either park up here, or
• keep driving on Brush Canyon Trail until you reach the car parks on the right or later on the left.
• Now it???s time to take a hike up the dirt trail until we???re all under the Hollywood Sign.

Key Facts about Step It Up 2007:

1. This is the largest day of action against global warming in the history of America.
2. It???s a nationwide campaign, with 1100 actions in 50 states, ranging from a rally of thousands in New York City to a community of senior citizens in Ohio holding a global warming awareness day. Go to StepItUp2007.org to find out more.
3. We have one unified message:

• For Congress to cut America???s carbon emissions 80% by 2050???
• (less than 2% reduction per year, something easy for us to do!)

Ysanne Spevack, Editor of OrganicFoodee.com says:

???Let???s have fun while raising awareness about climate change??? And what could be more fun than a hike to the Hollywood Sign? We???re hoping OrganicFoodee.com readers and their friends will bring delicious organic goodies to share under the Sign, and that the whole hike will have a fun party vibe. The press will be watching, so let’s make sure there’s a whole bunch of people out having a good time and making their views about climate change known to the world.???

Ysanne

Scott Huckabay in Concert! A Benefit in Santa Monica

Friend, musician and fellow adventurer Scott Huckabay was in Hawaii giving his mother’s ashes a final parting. A hot water pipe broke in his place while he was gone and it basically destroyed everything.

Like many folks who are musicians and artists whose crafts, skills, and talents bring joy to our lives, Scott was not insured.

Lyra writes:

Conditions were perfect for mold and it had about a month to do its thing throughout his home and its contents including several of his guitars, master tapes, and computer. Good news is that he is seeing this as an opportunity to ascend to an even higher plane, fresh.

I work at an eco-friendly lifestyle store in Santa Monica, which has done art shows and things in the past, and I thought, what better place to hold a benefit for him? There will be organic wine and other refreshments as well. Come and hear this amazing shamanic guitarist!

I look forward to seeing all of our Southern California friends! I’ll be putting out event invitations soon. Tell all your friends!!

Blessings and love,
Lyra

• Suggested donation: $10
• 10% of in-store sales will go directly to Scott!
• Fine art raffle!
• Proceeds to Scott!

Sunday, April 1st, 7-9pm

• Earth Accents
• 2665 Main St Suite D.
• Santa Monica, CA 90405

message me for the phone number of the store.

I’ll be looking for volunteers to help out with the door, refreshments, and security (it’s a store with small items, after all) so all help would be appreciated!

Scott’s site, if you haven’t heard him

“F.o.R.” (Friends of Richie) Benefit

Richie Hass is an amazing multi-instrumentalist musician.

Alumnus of Zoogz Rift’s band, he is best known these days for playing in Saccharine Trust and also with Joe Baiza’s universal congress – probably the top vibraphonist in southern California.

Richie was recently diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow, and since he is a self employed musician, he has no health insurance.

The L.A. music community was rocked back on their heels by this news. Everybody loves Richie. So we musicians, together with the IMF, are putting together a benefit in Richie’s honor. And while the benefit is being held in Richie’s honor, he has opted to donate the proceeds to the international Myeloma Foundation for much-needed research to find the cure for this disease.

The F.o.R. Benefit (Friends of Richie) is taking place at:

• Safari Sam’s in Hollywood
• on Saturday March 31st
• starting around 4:00 pm in the afternoon
• and going all night

A few of the many bands that are scheduled to play are:

Schedule:

• 4:00-4:20 Potion Box
• 4:30-4:50 Present Tense
• 5:00-5:20 Freda Rente’ Band
• 5:30-5:50 The Adz
• 6:00-6:20 Backbiter
• 6:30-6:50 The Amadans
• 7:00-7:20 Freehead
• 7:30-7:50 Vinny Golia
• 8:00-8:40 The Bellrays
• 8:50-9:30 Mike Watt + The Missingmen
• 9:40-10:00 Marc Mylar Mob
• 10:10-10:30 Puttanesca
• 10:40-11:00 Saccharine Trust
• 11:10-11:30 Not in the House
• 11:40-12:00 The Atomic Sherpas
• 12:10-12:30 Fatso Jetson

Also featuring:

• Jaz Kaner, MC
• Marcel’s Cinnamon Roll Gang Puppet Show
• Brick Wahl will be the stage manager

$10 cover charge.

march 31, 2007

• Safari Sam’s
• 5214 W. Sunset Blvd.
• Hollywood, CA 90027
• (323) 666-7267

Everyone is welcome to this celebration. Come and join us. Have a good time for a good cause.

• http://www.myspace.com/forbenefit

For any questions or information email:

• Scott Heustis

Please consider making a donation

International Myeloma Foundation

John Perry Barlow “Interviewed” by Steven Colbert (The Colbert Report)

(Update: You can now view a 5 minute video of John Perry Barlow’s “interview” on the Steven Colbert show.)

I just got notice that a fine freakish friend of mine will be on the dumb television tonight. Fellow Burner John Perry Barlow has worn many hats. Most likely best known as one of the chief songwriters for the Grateful Dead for over two decades, he’s also one of the founders of the vital, important, and necessary EFF, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is effectively a watchdog against government incursions into the internet in regards to censorship, privacy, and 1st Ammendment issues. Rather than explain, just visit the EFF website…. and donate money! I do as much and as often as I can (being an internet addict and all…)

Here’s a picture of Barlow and I in July 2006 at a Barlowfrendzie in Malibu, photgraphed by the lovely and talented Shiho, baby!:

Tonight, as is detailed below, Barlow will be on the Colbert Report facing off with Steven Colbert. This should prove to be a bit of fun.

TWO WHITE GUYS SITTING AROUND TALKIN’

JP Barlow wrote:

Since I don’t watch television – not even the “good” stuff – I’d never heard of Steven Colbert until he soared into my consciousness with what I think was the bravest act of humor since Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal.” (In this essay, Swift, a compassionate Englishman, suggested that the Irish might address this famine bother they were experiencing by eating a few of their own children, of which most of them had in rather greater abundance than potatoes.)

I refer to Mr. Colbert’s astonishing address to the White House Press Corps (most of them too scared to laugh) during their annual dinner last April 29. If Congress conferred medals for courage in the service of dark laughter – which, although it’s a good idea, the current Democrat-controlled Congress is even *less* likely to do – they’d have no choice but to give Steven Colbert the Congressional Medal of Humor with oak leaves and clusters.

I mean this guy eats dinner seated between George and Laura Bush and then gets up to the podium and compares the Bush administration to the Hindenberg! (If you haven’t seen it before, I strongly recommend that you watch this video. If you do, observe the weird displacement of The Decider’s head in relation to his body over the course of the address. I didn’t know cervical vertebrae could do that.)

Anyway, this speech made me a devout Steven Colbert fan. He didn’t convince me to start watching television, but he did convince me that if I were to watch television, it would be mostly so I could watch him and his kind (if he has one).

Turns out my next opportunity to watch him will be at close range. He is interviewing me on his show tonight.

I think it will air at around 11:30 pm in a lot of places, but I really have no idea when it might be on in your area. Those of you who still navigate The Vast Wasteland probably know how to find it. If you don’t watch enough television to have developed such tracking skills, don’t start now on my account. It’s not worth the risk. You can maybe catch it later on YouTube.

With any luck, it will be worth catching. I don’t know what he wants to talk with me about. (Though I kind of doubt that he wants to talk about EFF’s recent legal intervention when The Colbert Report was trying to get a MoveOn parody of the show stricken from YouTube.)

When I asked about the topic, the staffer said, “everything.” Ah, television. An environment where they think you can cover EVERYTHING inside of six minutes. Describe the Universe. Give two examples. Break for a commercial.

We won’t accomplish such a feat as that, but it could be pretty good anyway. For one thing, you ironists ought to enjoy the sight of someone who looks, talks, and behaves like a Republican, but isn’t, interviewing someone who fits none of the contemporary Republican stereotypes, but is.

I tried being a Democrat for a year. Hated it. I traded my sense of humor for sanctimony and gutless indignation. I was nearly overcome with impulses to save people from themselves, using force if necessary. I found myself becoming hysterical, brittle, and cowardly.

I am not a comfortable Republican – and I’m no Republican at all if George W. Bush is to be the measure of the GOP’s beliefs from this point forward, but I do have balls. So I ended up switching back. I may be the last Republican who believes that the party stands for limited government, personal freedom, prudent fiscal policies, genuinely free markets, and a deep wariness of foreign military adventures. Just as I didn’t flee my country when I saw it being taken over by religious zealots, plutocrats, fratboy incompetents and make-believe soldiers, I won’t flee my party on the same grounds either. (Though I’m starting to think that there is a grand new party waiting to be born in the space vacated by these latter-day Republicans.)

I strongly suspect that when Mr. Colbert is just kicking around the house, his ideology and cultural style differs from what his persona projects on-screen. Nevertheless, I have decided to take him at face value and contest him as I would his “mentor” Bill O’Reilly. In fact, I will take him on as the very sort of pious, closeted gay fascist who decided to become active in the GOP when he learned that poor people and weirdos could actually vote and that the Episcopalian church didn’t field political candidates. I have even prepared a defense of wild, marauding bears. So it should be fun.

Anyway, I probably won’t see you tonight, but you stand a good chance of seeing me.

Yippie-ti-yo,

Barlow

Blanket Drive and Homeless Outreach

Blanket Drive for the Homeless

Poverty Matters is in the process of collecting blankets for the homeless. We deliver them directly to those living on the streets in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles.

If you can donate a blanket, please bring it to one of the donation centers listed below.

Thanks.

Los Angeles:

• Westside Jewish Center
• 5870 W. Olympic Blvd. (Between Fairfax and LaBrea)
• Los Angeles
• (Please ring the bell for entrance to the lobby area)
• Drop off 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ring the front door bell for entrance

• Bill Brady Classic Car Collection
• 17514 Ventura Blvd. Encino 91316
• Drop off 24 hours/day through Outer Gate.

South Bay:

• The Comic Bug
• 1015 Aviation Blvd.
• Manhattan Beach (1 blk south of Manhattan Beach Blvd.)
• Tues . Sun 10:00 am . 7:00 pm (closed Mon.)

And, join us Saturday March 10th for our next Homeless Outreach in the Skid Row Area of Los Angeles. Starting at 5 pm.

If you would like to join us on Saturday, please contact Poverty Matters.

Warm Regards,

Susie Shannon
Executive Director
Poverty Matters
(323) 939-5475