The Trumpet Kid

I've seen this kid in front of the Ferry Building on weekends. Personally I think he's a great entertainer. He tap dances, he spins his trumpet, and he plays fun tunes. Puts a big smile on my face every time.


He was first featured on SFGate a few months ago. Yesterday there was a followup blog post about him being invited onto the Ellen Degeneres Show. When I scrolled to the bottom, I was bit disappointed to find a lot of not-so-flattering reader comments about the Trumpet Kid.

A lot of people have a lot of unkind words for the 12-year-old. They think he's being exploited by his mom, they think he's not that talented, they think he's only trying to rake in tourist bucks, they think he should be in school.

I haven't seen him often enough to have a sense of how true any of those things are. I'm generally pretty cynical, but I can't deny that this kid's performances make me really happy. I actually gave him a couple bucks and a compliment once, and anyone who knows me knows how hard it is to squeeze even one crumply faded dollar bill from my hand. So that has to count for something.

Whatever else people say, I love him. I hope he dreams big, and I hope those dreams are filled with trumpet-playing. The dude's got his whole life ahead of him and none of the nay-saying accusations should hold him back from what he wants.

Watch him on Ellen and decide for yourself.

Hunky Jesus

I'm not sure how I've passed eight Easters in San Francisco without attending the annual Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence celebration in Dolores Park. Every year the "leading-edge order of queer nuns" hosts all-day events for kids and grownups including an Easter egg hunt, an Easter Bonnet Contest, a Bring Your Own Big Wheel contest where you try to fly down a hill on a plastic tricycle faster than everyone else on a plastic tricycle, and my favorite of course, the Hunky Jesus Contest.

And more photos here.

This year, like the last seven, I missed the whole event. I had already spent the week before pestering Amir to let me hitch a ride with him to visit those ghost towns on the Delta on Sunday, so when my friend reminded me the Dolores Park festivities were the same day, I decided I'd have to wait yet another year to be a Hunky Jesus spectator.

While I personally find the irreverent themes witty and fun, I don't imagine most serious fans of Jesus do. I don't care enough what the perma-frowners think to spend any time trying to "defend" Hunky Jesus or cross-dressing nuns though, as if either of those were somehow morally corrupt and needed defending.

What appeals to me about The Sisters and their Easter party is that it's a celebration of the freedom to be who you are, or to dress up as someone you're not just because you want to, a chance to have fun while rejecting the idea that everyone should be the same, that if you're somehow different from the statistical or social norm by choice or by birth, than you are also somehow inferior or wrong. These kinds of iconic San Francisco events (gay pride, Folsom Street Fair, How Weird Street Faire, Bay-to-Breakers, Halloween in the Castro to name a few past and present) also represent safe havens of accepting and diverse communities for those of us who have ever felt marginalized.

I find it difficult to believe that anyone -- even middle-class, white, straight, non-immigrant Christian men -- could have gone their entire lives without at some point feeling disregarded or persecuted, part of an outnumbered minority unfairly judged or discriminated against by those who simply belonged to a bigger group or who had more power or wealth or who embraced a set of values most easily palatable to the average majority.

Which is why I find it hard to understand that anyone wouldn't relate to the spirit of these kinds of events. I say that, but at the same time my own experience has proven repeatedly that those who are mostly never marginalized rarely seem to remember the few times when they have been, and therefore are rarely willing to acknowledge they have anything in common with people who've chosen to transform their oppression into something positively joyful and inclusive.

Penguin Cam

The Cal Academy has a South African penguin exhibit with a live penguin cam. Hands down insanely cute every time.

http://www.calacademy.org/webcams/penguins/

Stumbling Upon A Secret

So many places in this massive state that I didn't even know existed.

The California Delta? Apparently it's where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers flow together, creating a vast estuary that carves through Central Valley farmland.

Spent the afternoon poking around some of the ghost towns along the Delta waterways. Not sure if it was because of Easter Sunday or because of economic depression, but they were mostly deserted save for a few bars and restaurants.

We started out in Locke, a town built in 1915 by Chinese levee builders who wanted a place to call their own after their homes in nearby Walnut Grove burned down. Most of the original buildings still stand, giving it the look of an old Western movie.

After a beer at the famed Al the Wops, we wandered downstream looking for dinner and happened upon Isleton. You can still see remnants of the old Chinese communities in many of these towns, though most of the original residents have moved onto more happening locales (China being one of them, apparently).

The Best Minds of My Generation

Last night we were in a dark meadow in Golden Gate Park, a hundred or so bikes sprawled across the lawn with red and white blinking lights, someone blasting dance beats into the night, everyone dressed like animals. Bats, unicorns, pigs, owls, giant bunnies, horses, cats, bears and for some reason, lots of cows.

Someone got on a megaphone and said, "I'd like everyone to pause briefly and look at the moon." We all turned to look through a stand of eucalyptus trees. The moon was full and gigantic. "Now let's all take a moment to howl at it."

Now. Don't knock it until you've tried it. There was something very satisfying about howling at the moon. It made me laugh, but it also felt very primal, as if the human howl is some vestigial call that our ancestors used to navigate safely through the forest and back to the cave with the wild boar they killed for dinner.

Also, it just felt ridonkulous, and sometimes ridonkulous is exactly what you need.

Bike Party!

Awesomeness

SF Bike Party is tonight, the first Friday of the month. When people ask what it is I say, "It's like Critical Mass but awesome."

I sense that most people don't catch the commentary because they just hear Critical Mass and bristle. And I don't really blame them. The spirit of Critical Mass is more of a protest and a political statement, but it's often delivered in an inflammatory way -- people on bikes harassing, taunting and provoking drivers just because for once bikers have the numbers to do so with relative impunity. It never really felt good to identify with a community that unofficially condoned that kind of action.

Apparently lots of people agreed with me, and a much more peacin'-lovin'-dancin'-San-Francisco style community ride called SF Bike Party was born. We dress in costumes, we play loud music, we follow all the traffic rules and let cars pass. We're love-makin'-not-war-makin' on bikes.

Wallpapering and Some Grammar

When I started my job back in September, I went a-googling in search of wallpaper for my desktop at work. I came across a wonderful artist named David Lanham who creates magically brilliant and whimsical wallpaper images that you can download or purchase from his website. I have them shuffling on my desktop every 20 minutes.

Every once in awhile I'll flip to my desktop and be amazed by some new detail I never noticed before, like how the blob's belly is translucent so you can see the people he's already eaten, or that there are flies buzzing under the lamp, or that the dog and the bone cast shadows on the moon. Genius.

Download your own here.

Tea for Two by David Lanham

Blob Attack by David Lanham

Space Doggy by David Lanham

Grammars is a few of my favorite things. I was reading an article for work and this sentence caught my eye:

"Interventions included in this review were those that showed evidence of reducing HIV incidence or risk behaviours likely to effect horizontal and vertical HIV transmission."*

I had to reread it because they used the word "effect" as a verb. No one ever uses "effect" correctly as a verb...except these folks. Yes! They really did mean to say "risk behaviors likely to result in horizontal and vertical HIV transmission."

The difference between using "affect" and "effect" here is subtle, and "affect" would have been grammatically correct as well, though possibly not exactly what they meant to say.

If they had used "effect" incorrectly though, for example, if the sentence were "risk behaviors likely to [effect] an individual's chance of acquiring HIV," which is often the way "effect" is used, it just wouldn't make any sense:

"...risk behaviors likely to result in an individual's chance of acquiring HIV." Huh?

Correct use of somewhat obscure grammar rules is so satisfying.

* From Pattanaphesaj, J., & Teerawattananon, Y. (2010). Reviewing the evidence on effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of HIV prevention strategies in Thailand. BMC Public Health, 10, 401.

Old But Not Expired

Yue, Pearl "Guitar Solo" 12 x 16, $350

Old people are pretty great. I like being in the locker room at the gym listening to saggy old ladies chat with each other about their kids, their illnesses, their plans for yet another carefree day of retirement. Not that being old is particularly carefree. So it always makes me happy to see happy old people. And it sort of makes me laugh to see grumpy old people, even though I sense that underneath the crankypants, that person is wearing a lifetime of sadness.

This art exhibit is on display at my gym. The exhibit features 90 works by elderly students of Art for Elders, an art program offered to residents of long-term care facilities in the Bay Area, through the nonprofit Eldergivers.

Many of the pieces are quite spectacular. I can't locate any artist bios on the website -- I think you have to attend the exhibit to see those -- so it's not clear exactly how functional many of the artists are. But our world is so focused only on what we can see, on these deteriorating minds and bodies mumbling on MUNI, heaving through a crosswalk with a walker, staring off into space because they can't hear what people are saying around them, that most of the time we forget all the quiet, hidden away places where beauty and talent linger on, refusing to let go just yet.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Today is the start of something new-ish on this old, old blog. Starting today, the theme of my posts will be, "Oh boy, look what I saw that made me smile today."

I say this is new-ish because my old "Laff of the Day" posts used to serve that purpose. And anytime you're feeling wistful for vitriolic old Mama Kelele, just click through my old posts.

Anyway, the goal of all this is to notice one thing each day that makes me smile, feel grateful, or laugh inappropriately loudly, because our world is crammed full of joy. But if you're anything like me -- or at least if you're not a self-righteous know-it-all with no self-awareness -- you're too busy, too distracted, too self-absorbed, too anxious, too worried about the future, too obsessed with mistakes of the past, to even notice most of the time. Somehow, I woke up in the middle of the night last night in a panic, because I realized that a lifetime of failing to notice would be a tragedy.

So, once a day we do this, me and myself, with you watching (and leaving comments, please!), until I slow down and it becomes every few days, or every few weeks, or every few months. Let's face it, I know myself too well.

But the whole idea is that noticing takes practice. I'll try to make it a daily practice, the way more spiritually evolved people make meditation a daily practice. And like in meditation, the point is to shift my attention to things that bring me those elusive, fleeting moments of joy. With practice, the moments become less fleeting and more MO. And when my mind wanders, or in this case when my life wanders, and I miss a day of paying attention to the happy-worthy gifts I receive every day, I simply bring the focus back. Pick up again, no judgments, no self-flagellation.

And now, for the first happy on record:

Click through the entire wonderfully photographed duck drama here.

All Newts is Good News

So Northern California. There's a road in Berkeley's Tilden Park that my biking crew and I call Newt Road. Its real name is South Park Drive, and the park closes it to vehicles from November through April every year in observation of newt mating season. Pedestrians and bikers can still use the road, but there are signs urging everyone to keep an eye peeled downward, lest anyone stomp or roll over any amorous salamanders.

 In the old days, before the newt policy, countless newts would suffer death by Michelin as they ambled across South Park Drive on their way down to the creek to find a mate. I remember walking through Tilden Park over ten years ago and seeing flattened newt silouettes all over the road. Last weekend we didn't see any newts, dead or alive, on Newt Road, but I did see some newt roadkill on a park road that wasn't closed to cars.

The story of Newt Road always makes me smile, as if the Tilden Park folks are tipping their hats to our amphibious friends who tenaciously risk their lives in the name of love in a way that a species with more intelligence would never do.


And also, since you didn't ask. If I could be another animal, I'd be a dog at a beach with lots of plovers to chase. Or a mighty falcon or owl, so I could still eat meat. The flying part would be pretty cool, too.