Terrapin Crossroads Grate Room Gala --- Day 329

Walk: Mindful Body
Distance: 8 blocks and take yoga class

Wish I and my iphone camera had this man's skills:





Jay Blakesberg photographing Bob Weir

I try and try and try...getting blur, microphones, anything but a good shot of Bob and Phil tuning their instruments and together on stage.  Guess you had to be there as they say.  And I was, fulfilling my dream of seeing Phil and Bob together in a small venue.  I was maybe 10 feet at most away from Bob for the concert, and Phil, Jackie Greene and others were often just about as close.  Nice.



Bob Weir adjusting pedal



Phil Lesh finding the sound



Bob, Phil and Jackie Greene dueling guitars center stage.

MTT and The GD --- Day 328

Walk: Terrapin Crossroads
Distance: A Few Steps in a Huge Downpour(?)

Early today because don't know when I'll get back from concert tonight.  Enjoying reading the few old articles in The New Yorker re: The Dead.  Especially Bill Barich's October 11, 1993 one on Jerry Garcia (Still Truckin').  And here's a passage concerning the Dead in a November 17, 1997 article by Alex Ross on the initiation of MTT as director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra:

None of this quite prepared audiences for Tilson Thomas's raucous first season in San Franciso in 1995.  Outdoing even his contemporary-minded colleague at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen, he unloaded reams of twentieth-century music and turned again and again to American names.  The truly startling development was the two-week American Festival he held at season's end.  A marathon concert of avant-garde showpieces was capped by a dissonant jam session in which Tilson Thomas joined surviving members of the Grateful Dead.  No one who was there will forget the sight of Davies Hall overrun with Deadheads, or the sound of them cheering Varese's 'Ionisation" and Henry Cowell's "Quartet Euphometri." Most wonderfully, the festival lacked the condencension that so often poisons classical-pop crossover schemes.  It was an authentically festive day - topsy-turvy, at times sublime.

Wish I'd known to go to that!


L: Phil Lesh, Michael Tilson Thomas, Mickey Hart     R: Bob Weir   (1995, San Francisco Chronicle)

Twilight of the Year Continues --- Day 327

Walk: High-Tech Nails 
Distance: 8 blocks

Now that Melissa and Tony have won Season 14 of DWTS


and I've seen the good movies in town (some twice)
Argo (2), Searching for Sugar Man (2), Lincoln, Skyfall, A Royal Affair, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Sessions, etc...

the next trick for skirting around my mismatch with this stretch of the calendar will be



Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and many others together at Phil's Terrapin Crossroads Gala tomorrow night.

Kind of an ordeal for CIWT to go to these things, but, for old Grateful Dead's sake, I'd really like to see these two founding members together in a small, intimate venue.  These were the types of venues where The Dead began their 'long, strange trip' in the 1960's.  Long, strange and I might add indescribable.  A journalist recently tried for a description in The New Yorker of all magazines and came close in parts - the parts that related to his personal memories of listening to concert tapes while he was in college.  But, overall, especially at the end of the long article where he attempts to capture Phil, Bob, Furthur, the soul of The Dead's journey into the future, he is tone deaf at best and sensationalizing, shtick-seeking journalist at worst. I doubt even The Dead understand themselves or care to; never have, don't try.  They just keep searching for the sound and Heads keep showing up and history keeps forming.

And the Mirror Ball goes to... Day 326

Walk: Mindful Body
Distance: 8 Blocks and teach two yoga classes

My big decision for today is whether to actually watch the finals of this season's Dancing With The Stars to find out who the winners are.  Or whether to check online with East Coast sources who will know three hours ahead of San Francisco and not watch.  Probably I'll watch, but may be tired from teaching 2 classes in a row.  Hmmmm?

Meanwhile, my projected winners are: Shawn Johnson and Derek Hough.



But Wait, Surprise!!  The coveted Mirror Ball Trophy




went to....Melissa Rycroft and Tony Dovolani!

Good and Empty --- Day 325

Walk: Chiropractic, Yoga Tree Hayes
Distance: 2 miles

Just back from back adjustment (gawd, that neck part!) and yoga class with lots of advanced twists. 
Feeling kind of empty in a good way. Think I'll let it last...

Tosca --- Day 324

Walk: Opera Building (Tosca)
Distance: 1 mile

I get to 2-3 operas every year thanks in large part to the proximity of so many places and events in San Francisco.  Personal growth is right at your fingertips; you sort of just can't...

By now I've been to enough to think I can evaluate what I've seen.  At the beginning - especially when there were no supertitles - I felt like such a hick not understanding most of what I was looking at and completely unable to know good from whatever. Now I also buy good seats;  then I used to stand in back which is a life of its own.  Standing is more social in its relaxed way, but I find that at some point in my more expensive seats I begin talking with the person next to me, and usually have a very rich conversation.  People at operas are interesting I find.

So, what did I think of Tosca today?  Okay, Cavaradosi, the tenor, did not hold my interest particularly. The music is beautiful with gorgeous arias but, I hate to say it, to me kind of boring between arias.  My favorite singer today was the man who played the evil Scarpia, Robert Frontali.


Today's Tosca, Angela Gheorghiu, is beautiful, especially in black.  But I think I especially would have loved to have been able to see Maria Callas (below) as Tosca.  Wouldn't a Lot of people?!

Sh'ma/Listen, David Gelernter --- Day 323

Walk: Mindful Body, Office Depot, Laurel Village
Distance: 3 miles and teach yoga class

A friend sent a video on the artist, who painted the images below, David Gelernter.





http://vimeo.com/54038440

Whence Black Friday -- Day 322

Walk: Sacramento Street, Laurel Village, Trader Joe's, Big O tires
Distance: 5 miles

Day after Thanksgiving is:

-Black Friday, (on and off it turns out but since 2005) the busiest shopping day of the year.  If you wonder like I do what the name relates to, this is what Wikipedia has to say: The day's name originated in Philadelphia, where it originally was used to describe the heavy and disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic which would occur on the day after Thanksgiving.^[4][5] Use of the term started before 1961 and began to see broader use outside Philadelphia around 1975. Later an alternative explanation began to be offered: that "Black Friday" indicates the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, or are "in the black.

- The busiest day of the year for residential plumbers.

- Sadly possibly the busiest day of the year for  Emergency Rooms.

- The day KFOG starts playing Christmas Carols only.

- This year a day the Dow soared indicating (to me) that we are just fine with our present and future president.

- The day my car had its tires rotated and front end aligned.

- A beautiful, clear, calm, quietly productive - you might say Zen grey - day for Callie and me.