Martha Graham: We learn by practice

Martha Graham:


 "I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing, or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated, precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which come shape of achievement, the sense of one’s being, the satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an athlete of God. Practice means to perform over and over again, in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired."


Martha Graham:

Open Microphone Nights in Los Angeles

Open Microphone Nights in Los Angeles

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/top-lists/best-open-mic-venues-in-los-angeles/

http://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=Comedy+Open+Mic+Nights&find_loc=Los+Angeles%2C+CA

http://voices.yahoo.com/the-top-open-mics-los-angeles-california-2507181.html

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Open-Mic-Night-LA/229059510484571

Falcon Inn 
Rosecrans Boulevard
Hawthorne

http://www.openmicla.net/

http://www.laweekly.com/events/music/genre:[537680]/




Open Microphone Nights in Los Angeles

Boycott NBC nightly news until 01/28/2013

Boycott NBC nightly news until 01/28/2013.

The NBC nightly news is often my choice for TV news at 6pm here in Los Angeles, but I object strongly to something I just saw and this is my response.

What I saw -- heard, actually -- was reporter Whit ______ introducing the fiscal cliff story with this phrase : "...the financial future of all Americans hangs in the balance."

I think this is hyperbole and over dramatization and I do not want to support this.

I for a long time have advocated this action, and this is my current version.

I encourage anyone to do as I am doing here and stop shaking their heads and take a little action. Should this become a popular way to interact with the stations, I believe we can get more news that we want and less bullshit to scare us and fill us with political stories of doom and images of fires, car-crashes, and shootings.

Much more later.

Douglas Douglas out

Life of Pi, Yann Martel. When you look up,

When you look up, you sometimes wonder if at the center of a solar storm, if in the middle of the Sea of Tranquility, there isn't another one like you also looking up, also trapped by geometry, also struggling with fear, rage, madness, hopelessness, apathy.

When God Was a Woman

Tales with a Point of View

Though we live amid high-rise steel buildings, formica countertops and electronic television screens, there is something in all of us, women and men alike, that makes us feel deeply connected with the past. Perhaps the sudden dampness of a beach cave or the lines of sunlight piercing through the intricate lace patterns of the leaves in a darkened grove of tall trees will awaken us from the hidden recesses of our minds the distant echoes of a remote and ancient time, taking us back to the early stirrings of human life on the planet. For people raised and programmed on the patriarchal religions of today, religions that affect us in even the most secular aspects of our society, perhaps there remains a lingering, almost innate memory of sacred shrines and temples tended by priestesses who served in the religion of the original supreme deity. In the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life, the Mistress of Heaven. At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman. Do you remember?

"When God Was a Woman," Stone, Merlin. Harcourt Brace, NY, NY, 1976.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_God_Was_a_Woman

Change your life! Uncle Ruthie, change your underwear!

Right now (Saturday morning, greater Los Angeles greatness area, 8am PST, August 11, 2012) Ruthie is on the air for an hour, telling stories and singing songs with friends while she begs for your support.

Listen over the air on 90.7 FM KPFK, or on your computer on KPFK.org.

Just do it!

Douglas Douglas out




Change your life! Uncle Ruthie, change your underwear!

Next Last of Shiela

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7KB9GodejAE

The Last of Shiela is a fantastically fun and engaging mystery film starring James Coburn, Raquel Welch, and James Mason. An ensemble cast surrounds them. It is shot almost exclusively on location in West Asia and, well, you can't get much better. Small stunt budget, but I think they were hoping for a stage production.

So you know what happens, right?

Of course.

Thirty years go by and the studios won't push new ideas, so it's time for PREQUEL!

No?

Okay, SEQUEL!

Oh, shit. Remake? Okay, hands up for victims for the writing team. We've got till Monday for a treatment, and seven weeks for a completed first draft. Scale plus .01% of the net net plus food.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7KB9GodejAE

My Own Private Space Race

Space X capsule is splashing down as we post into the warm ocean off of Western Mexico. Woo Hoo! Too bad we couldn't pay for NASA anymore, but great that we can produce private firms to take up the slack.

Next launch by the Virgin guy, or the Amazon guy, or some other backyard engineer privateer later this summer.

Much more later. DD out

Journal 20120425

I add eggs to my oatmeal breakfast and feel not a twang of pain. I patrol the grounds in my hack-trimmed wife beater and cartoon pajama pants, heavy chain wrapped around my shoulders like gangster jewelry. The birds scream profanity at me and I whistle back to call them the motherfucking nest-robbers that they are. Ow! Shit! I really shouldn't walk around here barefoot. I think that is a nail from 1912 sticking stubby from my foot. Do I crazy glue it in? Or out? WTF is Richard texting me? "Oh, yeah, everything is great, sir!" Nothing to see here. 

I wonder if I can work the hedge trimmers with one foot and one hand. Can't wait to see how this works out. The mockingbird takes a small crap on me to voice his approval.

Life in the Big Valley!

Pax ethnica optimism

Pax ethnica optimism

First time scanning just brought me across the wavelength of Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC. consecutive upbeat and inspiring segments today were Pax Ethnica which emphasized areas on earth (including Queens, NY) where ethnic differences among occupants are included and embraced. This was followed by Daily Rant contributor Krystal Clear who went on a soliloquy of cautious optimism that sent me right to her FB page for a pat on the back and then here to you.

DD out
3/21/2012

The Cuckoo Clock

THE CUCKOO CLOCK  

The other night I was invited out for a night with the girls. I told
my husband that I would be home by midnight, "I promise!"

  Well, the hours passed and the margaritas went down way too easily.
  Around 3 am, a bit loaded, I headed for home.

  Just as I got in the door, the cuckoo clock in the hallway started up
  and cuckooed 3 times.

  Quickly, realizing my husband would probably wake up, I cuckooed
  another 9 times. I was really proud of myself for coming up with such
  a quick-witted solution, in order to escape a possible conflict with
  him.

  (Even when totally smashed... I knew that 3 cuckoos plus 9 cuckoos
  totals = 12 cuckoos or MIDNIGHT!).

  The next morning my husband asked me what time I got in, I told him,
  "Midnight, honey. Just like I promised."

  He didn't seem pissed off in the least.

  Smugly, I told myself that I had gotten away with that one!

  Then he said "We need a new cuckoo clock."

  When I asked him why, he said, "Well, last night our clock cuckooed
  three times, then it said: 'Oh, shit!', then it cuckooed 4 more times,
  cleared it's throat, cuckooed another three times, giggled, cuckooed
  twice more, and then tripped over the coffee table and farted."

India no longer polio endemic

According to Rotary International, India is no longer suffering in a polio endemic. Now we -- or, they -- just have to keep up with the vaccinations. Are you feeling me, Jenny McCarthy?



http://www.rotary.org/en/MediaAndNews/News/Pages/120227_news_indiapolio.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rotary%2FPBqj+%28Rotary+International%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher


Up until 2009, India accounted for 50% of the world's polio cases. With strong action from Rotary International and other sources the flow has been stemmed and the last case reported was in January of 2011. 


Litzlberg am Attersee

Cacophonous Christmas 2011

We paraded through the city yesternight, spearheading and spreading cheer and spilled liquor over a narrow and winding path.

Cacophony Christmas lives!

But not because of you, probably, dumbass. Where The Fuck were you last night? Surely not clinging to your new best friends and drunken neighbors as were the ragtag bunch that briefly occupied Safeway on Market around 8 pm. Songs of merriment and cries of confusion were abounding as upwards of a hundred revelers paraded through the produce aisle and check stands, snake-like bellowing Deck the Halls and wearing the latest Xmas fashions.

Check me, where you there? Were you not entertained? Ah well, just as well. We didn't need you anyway.

The parade returned, like the swallows to the Capistrano-adjacent area, and the merriment resumed.

Some guy wearing a kimono strummed a uke and a lot of nice people peppered with drunks strung along the Lower Haight, then up Market to Castro, where shit really started to get weird: I mean, people actually starting JOINING IN with us. Singing and laughing and everything. It was epic. So we left.

The parade of mayhem continued through a bar on 14th, and a halfway house of recently sober youths (PERFECT place to put a bunch of slobbering drunks, right?). We knew we had reached our Zenith, so we stumbled, apologized and  ---chagrined --  everybody pissed off and planned for how to make NEXT year's CC the REAL last one. Go baby Jesus!

Piggyback cars

Volvo is almost ready to roll out this new system of public transportation. You ready for this?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/19/tech/main7261375.shtml

Anna Benassi - Grateful Heart Therapy

Anna Bennasi is a Therapist Intern with Grateful Heart Holistic Therapy Center in San Francisco.

I have met and worked with several therapists over the last thirty years.

That may not do much for my credibility and then again, it may. You decide.

But all I have is my opinions. And in my opinion, Anna is a fine therapist.

She demonstrates all the skills and practices that are needed in therapy. She is highly intelligent without arrogance, a wonderful listener without being passive, and a highly trained -- yet humble -- expert in the field of psychotherapy. She is a caring and compassionate healer.

In the six months since I have met Anna, she has helped me with my wife, my marriage, and my life.

If you are looking for a therapist anywhere near Castro, you would be wise to consider her.

Douglas Whiting

No Gas Day today! March 31, 2011

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=158856697501684

Facebook has done some pretty amazing things. Anything from reuniting lost loves and old friends to creating a revolution in oppressed countries. I want to see if we can organize an event to reach as many people as possible to have a day designated to boycott all gas stations across the planet.

I know this has been tried before, but not since Facebook has become the phenomenon that it has. So, send this event to everyone on your ...friends list, and let's see if we can start our own revolution, by letting these oil companies know we aren't going to stand for these prices!

Simply avoid all gas stations on March 31, 2011. And if you can go one step further, don't even drive that day. Why not let Facebook help us spread the word? However, don't forget your local mom and pop shop. Go IN and buy something that day. Make a point of it!

We're mad as hell, and are tired of watching the big oil companies laugh all the way to the bank while we all suffer. Let's do this!

Side note:
And since there seems to be so much confusion about what we are trying to do here, let me clarify now. This is NOT about thinking we are going to send gas prices plummeting downward because of this one day. This is about taking a stand, together, against greedy people whose commodity happens to affect ALL OTHER commodity's prices. What other commodity does that? Let's be the nation of innovators that we are and come up with something better!

And if you can, people that belong to organized groups, be it churches, bikers, or even a group of your friends, go and rally at one of your local government offices that day. Let your officials know enough is enough!

And while you are at it... Reduce, reuse, and recycle. :)

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=158856697501684

Thank you, Tim Burton, for my mother. And for Big Fish.

Thank you Tim Burton, for making Big Fish. I am just watching it now for the first time in a few years and it has struck me quite powerfully. I am getting back to the film soon, but I had to pause it and send off a letter to my mother, who I haven't spoken to in years.

It was your boot in my butt that got me to write.

Gratefully,

Douglas Whiting
San Francisco

Oh, here is the letter if you want: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19tStrRaAKQq6JIr-LlzNDDSKOWZ8VP6hSRexq8xFtZ8/edit?hl=en&authkey=CPP--lg

The view from here is great with all the storms rolling through. There are a lot more on my Picasa web page if you want. What I want now is a better camera and a tripod. I think you'll see what I mean.

If I do ever get to a camera upgrade, I can share a new realization: if I just slow down and stare, there is magic in the air. The movement of the clouds is hypnotic and enthralling. The tough thing is down-shifting enough to notice.

Kah-Peesh?

The East Wing

The East Wing is empty once again.

You who are about to rock
filled this little room
for a time

with bags of shoes and socks, 
dances, stories, sneezes
laughter and smiles, 
a hundred thoughts 
we will never know, 
and the promise of a new day


You filled this little room and then 
you took it

You let us show off our city that we love.
And gave us a thousand memories 
Good ones
Strong and FUNNY


We will miss having you here to feed and torment in the morning. 
It was fun dragging you out of bed,
calling to Carmen to bring the cold water


Take this little room with you. 
It is yours. 
Sitting full in your heart and your head
It is Bursting with Art, Music, Dance, Poetry, Games, Athletics
Good Energy of every kind


Just like it did for you 
and with you
when you were here in it


Now it lives both


full in your heart, and 
empty and still 
on the 11th floor
of a city that you now know

The East Wing is empty.

Sort of.

For Alexis and Alondra,