Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 20

Ep 12 Major Mary Jennings “MJ” Hegar

“Disproving them by your actions:” Military hero/progressive Congressional candidate Major Mary Jennings “MJ” Hegar on her role in opening jobs for women in the military, her decision to run for office, and life as a Warrior Mom.

MJ’s campaign website, MJ For Texas
More on Texas District 31 from Wikipedia
MJ’s book, SHOOT LIKE A GIRL: One Woman’s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front

A list of places you can help victims of Hurricane Harvey compiled by Mom2.0, which is based in Texas #Texas Forever
UPDATED Another good list of organizations addressing the needs in Texas, compiled by Texas Conference for Women

Here’s Bob Schneider in residence at the Saxon Pub in Austin. Music starts at 2:25. I want to go to there.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

                  Related StoriesEp 11 NPR Music Critic Ann PowersEp 10 Filmmaker Jordan BradyEp 9: Artist Isabel Samaras 

Selective Vision

There are a lot of reasons that people go back to Family Camp year after year, decade after decade. The most obvious is its gorgeous Adirondack setting, nestled next to a deep, cold lake between East Mountain and Slide Off Mountain. Other Family Campers enjoy the unfettered access to outdoor activities that are a little harder to engage in during the rest of the year, like horseback trail riding and archery and trying to get your kayak back to shore with your nephew and thirteen of his friends hanging onto it in a paddleboard flotilla.  Still others look to the last week in August as a singular opportunity to have all the members of their family together in one place, wherever they may live for the rest of the year.

For me, it’s a little of all those things. But in 2017 one of the main draws of Family Camp was the lack of cell phone service.

In years past, the maddening inability to contact the outside world has been irksome, causing me to roam around the camp in search of those phantom spots that my brother told me that Billy told him that Annie mentioned that she saw someone talking on a phone, like at the end of the metal dock, balanced on one leg, their head turned south toward Eagle Bay.

But this year in particular, deluged by one roundhouse punch of #CheetohSatan bad news after the next for eight months, I not only didn’t seek a signal; on the rare moments I left camp to mosey to the donut shop, or for more ice for the coolers that hold our traditional 4 PM Porch Sit snacks, I shuddered when my phone started blowing up with notifications. After quickly scanning to make sure it wasn’t my husband or either daughter, who couldn’t come this year because of school schedules, I hit delete, delete, delete. Whatever 45 was doing to foment division, whatever the Nazis were doing in the streets, whatever the putative head of the EPA was doing to kill the environment: it could wait until I got home.

If you turn your phone off, after all, nothing seems too different inside the bubble that is camp, compared to any one of the 50 years prior that the Davis Family of Rochester has made this pilgrimage four hours to the north. Polar Bear Swim is still held every morning at 7, and the icy plunge still shocks anything out of your system that may have been consumed down the road at the Glenmore or Wayback Inn the night before. The post-meal announcements about upcoming activities go on for too long for 135 restless campers who just want to get going, already. By Wednesday lunch, there is generally a child sobbing in exhaustion near the carpet ball tables, who will be miraculously restored to good humor before dinner by dint of a forced nap in their sleeping bag. So it was, so it ever shall be. That’s very comforting.

My favorite example of this was a story I heard – we are great passers-on of tales, we longtime Family Campers – that concerned the grown daughter of one of the of oldest Family Campers. The mom, now in her late 80s, remains active and energetic and the undisputed Queen of Skit Night. She’s always organized her family into a singalong performance for that show; she never, ever fails to mention to me when she first sees me that the one year I was Skit Night emcee, I instituted a strict and, apparently, traumatic five-minute performance limit. (As one of the patriarchs said to me at the time, “Thank you. No one at this camp has more than five minutes of talent.”)

At any rate, the mom had big plans for the 2017 family song performance and began instructing her daughter about what her role would be. It was a job much more apt for a seven-year-old child, and the daughter didn’t want to sing it.

“I’ll find you a little child who will do it,” said the daughter. “There’s plenty of them around.”

“No you won’t,” said the mother. “You’re going to sing it.”

“I AM 64 YEARS OLD AND I SAID NO,” said the daughter. At Family Camp, even 64-year olds get cranky and overtired by Wednesday.

Which explains why, an hour before the big solar eclipse, a fellow Family Camper started his short lecture about the celestial event we were all about to observe with, “Hi, I’m Evan, and Fran is my mom.” Because up here, that’s what matters, Mister. I mean Doctor (in Astronomy.)

This director of a prestigious midwestern institute for Astrophysics gave us a vivid and informative talk, then handed out solar eclipse glasses to all. Campers fanned out over the property and spent the rest of the afternoon interrupting their basketball games and canoe trips to glance skyward at what was, in our part of the world, a partial and very cool eclipse. Here’s my mom getting in on the act.

I lay on my back on a towel by the lake, amidst a big clump of Family Campers who stared upward through the opaque lenses of the eclipse glasses all afternoon. Occasionally I’d sit up to chat without removing them first, noticing how the dark glasses rendered me essentially blind while looking at anything other than the sun.

Wouldn’t that be nice, to have a pair of glasses that let you block out anything that made you uncomfortable or sad? Like white supremacists on the march in Charlottesville, or a President who has yet to preside but is already back on the campaign trail, or coal plants being given the green light to engage in practices that threatened the Adirondack Mountains with acid rain back in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

But that’s not America 2017. We are living in a time that demands observation, witness, and more than anything else, action. I returned home to approximately 453 emails alerting me to various Bay Area counter protests to this weekend’s planned alt-right “Patriot Rally” in San Francisco, from big joyous dance parties to multi denominational faith gatherings to Stand Up for Racial Justice marches. I’m still deciding which one to attend (if you’re going to one, let me know in the comments!)

The glasses are here next to me at my desk. They’re going to remind me that there’s a place I can go to recharge and unplug for a few days every year. But now that I’m back on the grid, rested up from my sleeping bag naps: there’s a job to do.

And I haven’t really earned the peace of Family Camp unless I do it.

According to my daughter who worked as a counselor at this camp this year, this was THE song of the summer. Good luck shaking it out of your ear after you hit Play.

If you followed along on Instagram or Twitter earlier this week you’ll know that I was criss-crossing New York and Pennsylvania in a #KiaCadenza courtesy of the good people at Kia Motors. It made an arduous few days of driving from camp, to my daughter’s college campus, and back to camp much more fun! Super comfy, roomy, and – my real litmus test – great sound system. Thanks again Kia!

                   
CommentsI moved to Florida 23 yrs ago envisioning my future “beach” ... by Debbie StillingsI have an even better idea: COME BACK. C'mon, get it on the ... by Nancy Davis KhoLove it. You understand. (There is evidently a burrito song but ... by Nancy Davis KhoIt sure is catchy with the under 5' set. But it lacks the je ne ... by Nancy Davis KhoHi Nancy. Thanks so much for the Family Camp update and your ... by Diane HuotPlus 2 more...Related StoriesFamily Camp BoundMore Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Because #AgingNext Cat Club Dance Party: Sat Aug 12 

Family Camp Bound

Davis Plaque circa 1971

Since I started this blog back in 1914, I’ve always written an end-of-August post about Family Camp, the Adirondack Mountains vacation I’ve taken with my family every summer since I was two. It’s an off-the-grid hootenanny of retro, outdoorsy family bonding.

But life has gotten complicated in the past few years and I haven’t been able to go – mostly due to my children’s school schedules, and last year, if I’m honest, because I couldn’t stand to be at camp without my dad, who had passed away a few weeks earlier. That Family Camp could take place as scheduled without my dad as one of the pillars holding it up didn’t make sense to me in any way and in 2016, I was too tired to try to figure it out.

A year later, though, I’m longing to be back. The school schedules still conflict, which means I’ll be there sans my husband or daughters. But my mom and siblings and a universe of nephews and nieces and cousins and roommates, not to mention the same Family Camp families we reunite with every summer, will be. So will memories of my dad, for which I’m bracing in advance.

Getting away from the world for a few days has particular appeal as the wheels fall off 45’s bus and the country in general, although mostly what I’m thinking about is how having the option to do so is the definition of privilege. How being able to “take a break” from wretched social injustice in America is the clearest sign possible that you have a special duty to fight against it.

It’s possible I’ve already squeezed out every drop of writing inspiration that 1,500 acres of the Adirondacks and 17 of my closest family members can provide, in previous years’ posts, but I doubt it. Every year brings fresh material (and bruises.) If you’re new around here, you can get the gist in these old posts.

Camp Standards (2012)
Five Things I Learned at Family Camp (2013)
DIY Family Camp (2014)
You Might Be A Family Camper If (2015)

Maybe this year I’ll chronicle the hand-to-hand combat that is the annual Men’s Kayak Race, or the raging debate about whose job it is to make the traditional wooden plaque at the end of the week (“You’re the artist, you do it!” “Just because I have more Instagram followers than you it doesn’t make me an artist. Make Shelley do it.” “She’s at Archery.” “Perfect. She can’t say no.”) Maybe it will be an inventory of “Sports Injuries and How I Earned Them,” covering geography from the water ski dock to the rock climbing wall to the inflatable jumpy pillow. Or a photo essay of the various places I carry my book to read on the camp property, but ended up instead chatting with a fellow Family Camper whom I haven’t seen in three years who happened to stroll by.

Either way, rest assured I’ve packed my bathing suit, parka, and my most convincing excuse for not making the wooden plaque.

Family Camp: Super NOT like this

                   
CommentsIt looks lovely. My favorite thing about us starting blogging ... by LanceRelated StoriesMore Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Because #AgingDIY HealthcareHat Trick 

Ep 11 NPR Music Critic Ann Powers

photo Lucent Vignette Photography

“It’s always in the hips:” NPR music critic Ann Powers discusses her latest book, “Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Rock and Roll in American Music,” why we need women at the center of “Best of” music lists, and her ear plug hindsights.

Ann Powers bio on NPR
Win a copy of Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Rock and Roll in American Music! Leave a comment below to enter; I’ll pick a winner using random.org at 5 pm PT on Tuesday, August 29th!

Turning the Tables: The 150 Best Albums Made By Women

#5 on the above list but really, I’ll take any excuse to share a Missy Elliott video.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

                  Related StoriesEp 10 Filmmaker Jordan BradyEp 9: Artist Isabel SamarasEp 8: Happiness Expert Dr. Christine Carter 

Concert Review: Andreas Moe

The Band: Andreas Moe, August 8, 2017. This young Swedish singer/songwriter is making his maiden music voyage to the US but he’s already a big deal in Europe, where he’s headlined a few tours and opened for acts including Kodaline and John Mayer. This time through Moe is paying his dues by visiting radio stations to promote his new release, “Ocean,” but if Tuesday’s short showcase was any indication, next time you’ll be able to catch him in a much bigger venue. Think John Mayer without the arrogance, Vance Joy without the ukulele, James Bay without the contrived headgear. I didn’t know Moe’s music before the show, but when your best friend is Swedish you are trained to appreciate all Swedish performers, from Robyn to ABBA to Jens Lekmann. Hurra Sverige!

via GIPHY

 

The Venue: KFOG’s Levi’s Lounge. Can’t buy tickets to the intimate, short private concerts at this joint. You have to win them from this San Francisco radio institution. I pop by KFOG.com periodically to check under contests and enter what looks good – I’ve seen Mondo Cozmo and Frank Turner up close and personal in comfy chairs with maybe the best acoustics in the city. After the set, audience members get approximately 43 seconds to meet the performer and have a photo taken by the radio station before getting hustled back into daylight. Shout out to KFOG and local radio in general for making it possible to see performers like Moe – they’re the indie bookstores of the airwaves.

(PS Used to be you could take photos during the shows at Levi’s Lounge and at the Meet and Greet but no more, hence the dearth of photos in this post. Unless you were never allowed to do that, in which case forget I said anything.)

The Company: And the heavens beamed and pigs flew past in formation and my 16-year-old daughter said, “Ok, I’ll go to a concert with you.” You guys know that my older daughter is a concert stalwart, but I’m talking about my baby who NEVER wants to go to concerts, ever. When I forced her at age ten to go with me to see her then-favorite singer Teddy Thompson open up for k.d.lang, she made me leave when Teddy’s set was over: “I don’t know who this k.d.lang is, and I have school tomorrow.” So six years later, for her to actually want to be at a concert with me – suffice it to say I spent as much time enjoying her watch Andreas Moe as I did watching Andreas Moe.

Afterward we went to the Ferry Building for lunch and watched hordes of foreign tourists, including a French family thoroughly confused by dried peaches. I was ready to jump in with “C’est des pêches!” if they needed me, but they worked it out. Now more than ever we have to do our part to give foreign visitors a good impression of America. #CheetoSatan

The Crowd: Throw a concert on a Tuesday at lunchtime and here’s what you get: retirees and self-employed people (hands up for the W-9s!) Plus one teenager.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? You might not need to, dude, it was a daytime show.

Moe started off as a guitarist but at age 16, faced a crossroads with which I assume all Swedish performers must one day contend: hockey or music? Best decided over aquavit and gravlax.

He chose music and became a songwriter for hire but, as he told the tiny audience, he wanted to write more personal songs. So Moe released his debut EP in 2012 and hasn’t looked back. At 28 he’s clearly still in the early stages for global domination, but his lyrics and vocal range, not to mention his willingness to put in the grunt work of playing showcases and radio stages, bode well for bigger things. And KFOG has a stellar track record at choosing acts who are about to blow up for their tiny stage. So add Andreas Moe to your Songkick tracker, follow him on Facebook, and call up your local radio station to ask them to play “Ocean” (remember when we all used to do that?) Let’s give this nice young Swedish visitor a good impression of America, hej?

                   
CommentsThanks for the heads up about new talent from Sweden. The ... by Charlie CypherRelated StoriesConcert Review: BeckConcert Review: The BoDeansConcert Review: Frank Turner at the Warfield 

So Cheesy

My oldest daughter pulled the meanest trick on me when she came home from college in May. She got me to break my streak of never watching reality tv by convincing me that it wasn’t so much watching The Bachelorette for two mind-sucking hours every week as it was wisecracking together while snuggling under blankets on the couch for two beautiful hours of mother/daughter bonding.

Are you kidding me? Her college is 3,000 miles away. Like I wasn’t going to fall for THAT.

What she failed to tell me is that is that The Bachelorette is like terrible crack that you can’t break free from, once you’ve had the initial two-hour hit. And then, four episodes in, she had the temerity to leave for work as a summer camp counselor off the grid in the Adirondacks.

It wasn’t like our younger daughter was going to fill in for her big sister – she still lives at home and has gotten adept at dodging all my attempts at cuddling, which have approximately doubled since her sister left for school. She would in no way consent to regularly watch what a friend of mine in the TV industry calls “improv, only with terrible actors.”

Was I really going to watch this crap television show, about an extremely accomplished and beautiful lawyer who seemingly believes that selecting her future husband out of a group of 30 randos with good ab definition over a 9-week period is a rational idea? Even if Roxane Gay said it was ok, nay important, to watch because this season’s Bachelorette, Rachel, is African American and it’s an important step forward in representation, I felt uncomfortable contributing to the Reality TV Industrial Complex. Especially alone, with no one to laugh at my jokes about Miami Bryan’s cheekbone implants.

Thankfully, that’s when my daughter’s oldest friend stepped in. “I’ll come over and watch it with you, Nancy,” she said. I don’t like to reveal the business of minors in this blog without their consent, so for the rest of this I’m going to refer to her by a nickname I call her: Cheese Wound.

(And also because by doing that, I have an excuse to tell you the story behind the nickname. Cheese Wound loves cheese, see. No, I’m not sure you see. You THINK you love cheese, but you have NOTHING on Cheese Wound’s love of cheese. So she and her family are in Mexico, see, and she spots a roadside sign advertising “Queso.” And she uses all her persuasive powers to get her parents to pull up to a strange little house where some lady sells them some cheese she made in a hut. If all your alarm bells are going off right now, congratulations, though they’re probably going off for the wrong reasons. See, Cheese Wound is HUNGRY and that cheese looks good and the family’s vacation condo is still a ways away. So she asks her parents if she can have some of the cheese while in the car – remember, these are the same parents who consented to buy her roadside Mexican cheese, so their judgement isn’t always 100, as Rachel the Bachelorette might say – and they say yes. And she whips out a pocket knife, braces the questionable cheese against her inner thigh, and slices…through the cheese, and through the thigh, though mercifully not through an artery. A few hours later I’m getting pictures texted to me of Cheese Wound, who it must be said is a very tough girl, smiling as a Mexican doctor stitches up her inner thigh. Thereby making Cheese Wound the only person I know who was injured by cheese, and not in an artery-hardening kind of way. Hence the nickname.)

And that has been the constant of Summer 2017. Every Monday at 7:55 pm, there is a knock at the door, just as I am setting up the evening’s cheese tray for Cheese Wound to eat while we watch. She sits in my daughter’s spot on the couch and joins me in wondering aloud why Lee the racist even signed up for this jawn, whether Pete borrowed Dean’s pants from last week’s episode because how many pairs of elastic-ankle maroon burgundy men’s pants are there are in the world, and what is up with Rachel and her humongous rings that are as big as her actual fingers. Every time Rachel refers to the 9-week relentless hunt for an engagement ring as her “journey,” we mime throwing a shot back.

via GIPHY

We agree it is the worst show in the world. We understand that as smart as Rachel the lawyer is, she is exercising spectacularly bad judgment when she nags gap-tooth Peter for not being quite ready to propose after they have spent probably 10 hours together. I threaten to sign Cheese Wound up to audition for the next season when the producers come to the city where her university is located. We agree we will watch it again next week, and I ask if she prefers cheddar or manchego.

I miss my older daughter a ton. But watching this cheesy show with Cheese Wound has been a nice reminder that one of the greatest gifts your kids can share with you is the friendships they’ve made during their “journey.”

via GIPHY

Who else? May Rachel find her One and Only. (Hint: She chose Miami Bryan and his cheekbone implants, so I’m not optimistic.)

                   
CommentsCheese Wound wins EVERYTHING. Forever. by Nancy Davis KhoCheese Wound for the win! Love that story. by EllenMy college kid, Taylor, is pulling down a 3.7 GPA, about to ... by LanceRelated StoriesRed Head RealityCollege AdaptationEasy Halloween Costumes for Parents of College Kids 

Ep 10 Filmmaker Jordan Brady

“Rug burns on my character:” Filmmaker Jordan Brady on learning (and re-learning) humility, his new documentary “I Am Battle Comic,” which follows comedians who entertain US troops in the Middle East, and how to handle incriminating llama pix.

JordanBrady.com
Here’s a reel of Jordan’s commercials – I’m a particular fan of the Iced Coffee spot
Jordan’s 1999 country music mockumentary, “Dill Scallion,” is hard to find, but this gives you a taste…

Respect the Process podcast – it’s the Rosetta Stone of Filmmaking
Commercial Directing Bootcamp
NYTimes article on teaching college kids to fail – “On Campus, Failure Is On The Syllabus”
“I Am Battle Comic” – available August 8, 2017. Download from that link and Jordan will donate 50% of the price to the National Military Families Association

Download a PDF list of Veterans Service Organizations to find one near you to support.

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

                  Related StoriesEp 9: Artist Isabel SamarasEp 8: Happiness Expert Dr. Christine CarterEp 7: Pixar Storyteller Scott Morse 

Concert Review: Beck

The Band: Beck, July 15 2017. Multi-faceted, multi-award-winning Beck Hansen first landed on the music landscape in 1993 with his song “Loser” and has been tearing it up ever since. With a style that ranges from funk to hip hop to alt rock to folk, he’s hard to pigeonhole, and his audience is the better off for it. How do you describe someone who’s both made your favorite Simon and Garfunkel tribute-sounding album (Morning Phase) AND your favorite dance club song? (“Timebomb”)? One of the commenters on the video I posted from the show to the Midlife Mixtape Facebook page said it best: “My friend calls him the Amish David Bowie.”

The Venue: The Fox Theater, Oakland. It was an uncharacteristically steamy night in Oakland (climate change has come to kill us all) so I was a little worried about the heat meter inside the crowded theater. Luckily we stationed ourselves right over one of the circular air conditioning vents in the floor so we could approximate Marilyn Monroe in Seven Year Itch all night. More like the Fifty Year Kvetch, though.

The Company: My #1 concert girl Maria. Isn’t summer great, when you have so much extra time to catch up with your friends? Except because it’s summer your friends, like you, have no extra time because they are carting kids around and dealing with all manner of stuff so you have to physically remove yourself from your families and stand in a crowded theater over air vents to find out what’s really happening. We had so much to catch up on that we had to add on a bonus front-porch-at-midnight confab.

The Crowd: The crowd was definitely SPF-100 needing and baseball-cap loving. Everyone seemed super happy which is the appropriate and inevitable result of heavy exposure to Beck music.

Everyone but one rather diminutive lady. She was standing behind me, to the left, and before the show started she jabbed me in the shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, is there a reason you keep pushing me backward?” I had been telling a story to Maria that may have included some jazz hands, but if I had touched her at all it was inadvertent and brief. And we were in a concert on the General Admission floor where, it’s just a fact, you may get touched. And she was behind me, and there was plenty of space behind her. “No, of course not, I’m very sorry,” I said. “I really didn’t know I’d done that and I apologize.” She stared at me stonily. She was not having my apology.

Before I explain what happens next, I have to share a story. My husband and daughter just visited a liberal arts college on the East Coast that makes a big deal of safe spaces, and they came back a little cynical. “You’re not even allowed to be passive aggressive,” my daughter said, laughing. “They actually say that. I said to Dad, ‘Mom better not come to Parent’s Weekend.’”

So when the house lights fell, I leaned over to Maria and whispered, “No one out passive-aggressives a Davis,” took a half step to my left, and pulled myself up to my full 5’10-with-heels height. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Opening Band: A Comedian

That’s not a band name; Beck had a standup comic come out and do a set. I feel terrible that I didn’t catch his name and I can’t find it online either. I’ll revise this if I do. The point is, the guy came out and did a very funny 15-minute set (his rant about being a Millennial in the Bay Area and trying to find housing was particularly funny – “The housing shortage is so bad here, I live in an envelope with four other people. I hate older people in the Bay Area. They’re all like, ‘My house is worth $4 million now but back in 1963 I only paid 11 chickens for it!’”) From now on if the choice is between a one-man mopey folk band and a one-man funny comic as the opener, I’m choosing the comic.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? Like Wow.

Beck has hovered at the top of my list for must-see shows for years now, but when he’s played the Bay Area it’s often at a festival and Mama doesn’t do those anymore. I’d rather wait until I can pay for a dirt-free seat and a 90-120 minute set. So when Beck announced a midsummer show I was stoked…until I realized it was on my husband’s birthday. I could not abandon my husband on the one night of the year we let him eat his entire restaurant dessert himself, without him having to fend off our fork attacks.

And then the angel choirs sang and Beck announced a second show for the night after. See ya, honey, hope you had a good day yesterday, Maria and I are going to a show.

From the opening song (“Devil’s Haircut”) to the raucous close of the encore, (“E-Pro”) I was wowed, just like the song says. This guy’s song catalog is so vast and deep that you’ve probably forgotten half the Beck songs you know. And even the three or four songs I didn’t recognize were so immediately catchy that I ended up downloading a bunch of music the next day. He’s an artist whose breadth and depth are part of the magic.

It bums me out that he’s a Scientologist. I have to say that, even if he comes by it honestly since his parents raised him in that organization (I would never call it a religion.) I hope he watches the Leah Remini show and gets out. I’m choosing to believe that Beck is so physically frail (he’s the Amish David Bowie, after all) that he’s stuck, and signaling to us with his songs. Get me out! Like right now!

That aside, Beck was so good that I am left only with deep regret that it took me so long to see him play. And maybe a tinge of apology that the short lady behind me has to wait until the next time around.

                   
CommentsWhere was that show? I'd forgotten about the sheet music ... by Nancy Davis KhoThat description is just SO APT. You were kind to share it with ... by Nancy Davis KhoI was quoted on This most-revered blog; I can die a happy ... by valerieI didn't know he was a scientologist, bah. Glad to hear someone ... by Marianne LonsdaleIt really bums me out that he's a Scientologist too. And he's ... by EllenRelated StoriesThe Head and the Heart, As Reviewed By a MillennialConcert Review: The BoDeansConcert Review: Frank Turner at the Warfield 

Ep 9: Artist Isabel Samaras

“Wave a magic paintbrush:” Artist Isabel Samaras talks about applying Old World painting techniques to Gen X myths, what happens when you’re no longer “the new thing” in the art world, and how Samantha ended up naked inside Jeannie’s genie bottle.

More Than Words

NWA

Castaways (Mary Ann)

Isabel’s website
Snag some goodies: https://www.redbubble.com/people/isabelsamaras
Or here http://isabelsamaras.bigcartel.com/

Nuthatches With Attitude, Baby

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here!

                  Related StoriesEp 8: Happiness Expert Dr. Christine CarterEp 7: Pixar Storyteller Scott MorseEp 3: Comedian Karinda Dobbins 

Next Cat Club Dance Party: Sat Aug 12

It’s that time again…the Cat Club has invited me back to be guest DJ. Technically, it’s true,  I don’t know how to DJ and require the services of a trained professional in the booth with me, in this case the wonderful DJ Damon. But I DEFINITELY know how to create an ‘80s playlist to make you dance, and in fact the August 12 playlist-in-progress is one of my best. It’s kitchen-dance-tested.

Once again, we’re doing it for a wonderful cause – Bay Area food banks. A portion of your door cover charge, and any money we collect in the big buckets on the bar, will be split equally between the Alameda County Community Food Bank and the SF-Marin Food Bank.  So bring your dead presidents (name that song, which has come on and off the playlist twice) and plan to give generously, so some of the 840,000 Bay Area families who rely on local food banks each month can breathe just a little easier.

The two artists in the spotlight that night? Bowie and Iggy. How could it be anything but great?

FAQs

Do I have to wear a costume?

You do you, Scotty P. The Cat Club is welcoming whatever you wear. If you want to get up in your leg warmers and your Aquanet hair height, I will never stop you. Last time I was there, a quartet of Millennials dressed like Mozart, and the time before that was the infamous Duct Tape Pasties sighting. I however do not classify this as a costume party, because I find costume parties off-putting. Just, whatever you do, for the love of god: wear comfortable shoes. Your feet will thank you.

Is it just for the ladeez?

Nope. Bring husbands, boyfriends, brothers, bro-workers. They’ll light up when the Violent Femmes comes on and you know it. They may need this night on the dance floor even more than you do.

All the way in San Francisco?

Yes. I expect you, for one night of 2017, to get your big boy/girl pants into the actual city. The Cat Club is super easy to get to and there’s a lot of parking. Seriously, I’m not going to argue about this with you.

At 9 pm?

See above. (For purposes of your babysitting budgeting, I’m DJ’ing from 10-11 so I suppose you could leave at 11. I don’t know why you would.)

Is everyone invited?

Everyone is so invited. There’s an invite on FB that you can RSVP to and share, you can send this post along to your friends, but you can also decide at the last minute to just show up. We want you there. And you’re going to be helping Bay Area food banks in the process. Because you’re just that kind of a good person.

Saturday Aug 12


9pm –


Cat Club SF


1190 Folsom Street, San Francisco

I’ll never reveal my playlist ahead of time. I’ll only tell you that it’s so chock-full, I had to take this one off.  Honey baby, just you wait and see.

***And join me next Wednesday, July 19 at 7 pm in Oakland atGreat Good Place for Bookswhere I’ll be interviewing author Todd Stadtman on his debut Young Adult novel,Please Don’t Be Waiting for MeIt’s a murder mystery, a coming of age story, and a glimpse of life in the ’80s Bay Area punk scene. I loved this book and can’t wait to talk to Todd at his book launch party, so come join us!

                   
CommentsOh, MAN. I want to go to one of these!! XO A. by Anna LeflerOMG, Charlene, you HAVE to come. Leave the 17 year old with the ... by Nancy Davis KhoGAAA! You will not believe this, Nancy, but that is the day ... by Charlene RossRelated StoriesNext Cat Club Dance Party: Sat January 14We’re Having a PartySpring 2016 Events and Appearances