Chewing Fat: 1: Why Fuddrucker's Sucks

So let's begin here: Fuddruckers at lunch today.

It's the first time i've eaten there in months. It's a shame in some ways too, because the food is really good. But the service sucks with a capital S. Sucks enough that i will likely never eat there again. I am not the first to eschew the joint either. Rumors have been around for months (as in within months of it opening) that they're going under. And today's lunchtime 'crowd' of about 20 attests to something being quite wrong.

So how did my lunch today go?

Here's the naughty bits with a little background to begin. I have not eaten there since spring because i got tired of two things: my order being constantly wrong, and perfectly obnoxious overservice masquerading as good service.

It should be obvious, i think, that if they get your order wrong that that right there amounts to bad service.

So check this scenario from my last visit before today: i'm at the counter ordering -- it's frustrating already because of the way they train their cashiers to take an order, but back to that later -- and an adult woman, who i was dismayed to see still working there today, is so distracted by something that i have to repeat my order three times, practically spelling things out for her. I was stupid and should have walked out then. Instead i proceed with my order because my lunchtime, like yours, is limited. I order a burger with their three-topping 'deal' on it. I ask for cheese, mushrooms and guacamole. Okay, it was a lot more painful than that, but i'll discuss it more when i return to the inanity of their 'procedure'.

I go to my table. The buzzing flying saucer contraption goes off. I go to get my order at the counter. It's not right. On my burger is a heaping pile of guacamole, mushrooms and grilled onions.

I'm not one to complain much about food (haha you say, what am i doing now? well, true, but this goes to show you how perturbing the whole series of events has been there), and i love onions, in fact i would have put red onions from their fixings bar anyway, but grilled onions sometimes do abdominally distending things to me and it felt like one of those days.

So, i says to the guy at the counter (a manager i have come to loathe because of his routine condescension) nicely, "Look this isn't right, i ordered cheese, not onions, on here". He smiles, says, "I'm sorry sir, i'll take care of that right away."

Nice.

So i am back at my table waiting, and he walks up with one of those gold star managerial springs to his gait and lays the tray on the table in front of me and slides it in front of me with a flourish like 'voila, your wish is my command'. I can see immediately that he went to the trouble to cook up a completely new burger for me, new bun, the works . . . with, right there, i can see it, it's piled on my fresh new burger, guacamole, cheese, and . . . grilled onions. No mushrooms. And i look up at him, and of course he senses something's not right again, and says "Is that right?" "No," i say, "it's the grilled onions i didn't want."

He turns a shade approaching magenta with a hint of chartreuse. "What is it you wanted then?" he says. "Mushrooms, guacamole, and cheese," i say. He grabs the tray and leaves.

While he's doing whatever he's going to do to my burger i dig in my pocket for the receipt to show him how she took my order in case he comes back with either an attitude or the wrong combo again. And sure enough there on my receipt it says 'mushrooms, guacamole, and cheese.' Twice. Yep, twice . . . along with the price twice . . . i had been double charged for it.

Here he comes again. His demeanor is such that other patrons turn and watch him come to my table. He drops the tray in front of me, which jumps the burger off the tray scattering mushrooms, and then he turns and walks away without a word or a look. I look at my burger . . . no fresh new burger this time, shards of grilled onions remain where they were scraped off and covered with a few crumbs of cheese. At least he got the combo right.

Well, after that i didn't go back. There had been lots of other issues at other visits, but that kinda stripped the last red off the candycane, and i had no desire to ever go back. Until today, when i thought maybe he and distractolady were gone and maybe in the panic of the business going downhill, maybe things had improved. Not to mention, as i said before, the food is good . . . i like the food.

So, in i go. I am one of those people (are we that rare?) who knows what i am going to order before i step up to the counter. Yup, folks who waste my time, and that of the cashier, by standing around looking at overhead menus for ten minutes while everyone else languishes in an ever-expanding line are on my list of people whose greed/selfishness should make them friendly with Dante Alighieri.

I step up to place my order, the infamous burger with cheese, mushrooms and guacamole, only instead of being able to just place an order, i have to meander the incomprehensible labyrinth of Fuddrucker's service (see notes above about the sheer pain of ordering) and the inflexible training of their waitbots.

Me: I'd like a half-pound burger with . . .

Her: Would you like the combo meal deal?

Me: No, i'd just like the burger with . . .

Her: Would you like a side with that?

Me: No, I'd like three-topping combo thing . . .

Her: Is that a side?

Me: No, it goes on the burger.

Her: So, no side?

Me: Well, I do want an order of chips and salsa.

Her: As a side?

Me: Sure.

Her: Or as an appetizer?

Me: I'll take it as an appetizer.

Her: Any sides?

Me: NO. I want cheese, guacamole and mushrooms on the burger.

Her: How would you like your burger?

Me: [it's too late, but i should've said 'with cheese, guacamole and mushrooms' . . .] Medium.

Her: And would you like anything on your burger?

Me: Sure. I . . . would . . . like . . . the . . . three . . . topping . . . combo . . .

Her: Okay. And what will you have?

Me: gucmle, mshrms n' chz.

Her: Okay, that's guacamole, mushrooms and cheese?

Me: Yes!

Her: What kind of cheese?

Me: Bleu.

Her: Would you like something to drink?

By now six or seven people, also likely on short lunch breaks, have piled up behind me.

Me: Water.

Her: Water? Really?

Me: Yzzzzzzz, wtttrrrrrrr.

Okay, a couple of short digressions here: first, i always drink water with my meals. It's not about cheapness -- the dang burger costs $10, or about shorting a waitress, since there are none here, but back to 'that' conceptanother time -- but because i like to savor the food and water is better for that, and in desperately trying to keep from buying a new belt i'm pretending to do healthy things.

Digression two. At this point she is about to ask for my name. Ostensibly to either a) use it to get me my order, and/or b) to somehow personalize this whole process of going dental on me. Only, a) i forget they do this, and b) i never give out my real name. I know . . . i'm a privacy freak, but i also somehow feel much better when people like distractolady and slimy-gold-star-manager guy not only can't pretend to be buds with me by mispronouncing my name, but i get some weird deep satisfaction in having them call me something stupid when my friends are around.

Top that off with the sheer nonsense of giving my name anyway when they're just going to hand me that buzzy UFO thingie to alert me to my meal being ready, and we have a perfect storm of bad service on the immediate horizon.

Her: Your name sir?

Me: Uh . . . uh . . . okay . . . Bob . . .

Her: Well OOOkAY Mr. Bob, here's your cup, and Mr. Bob [wink] here's your receipt, and Mr. Bob don't forget this [the buzzy contraption]. Somehow i don't think your name is really Bob. [to those right behind me] Do you all think his name is really Bob? [livid, i turn to go] Well, goodbye Mr. Bob, have a wonderful meal. [giggles]

I almost want to go back just so i can wait to be asked my name and say 'you can't have it', just to see how it messes up their protocol [coming soon -- how my refusal to give a phone number causes earthquakes at Pier One]. And if, as i suspect, they say they have to have a name, i'll say 'goodbye, i'll spend my money somewhere else.'

To pretend to be fair, part of the fault is with boilerplate software on the cash register, but simple intuitive training, and some short term memory would make you guys a much better serviced place, and then maybe, different than today, you'd have a lunch crowd larger than 20 . . . if you truly are foundering here, i suspect your crap service is why.

I've now let three other people read this before posting it on the blog, and all three said they no longer eat at Fuddrucker's . . . various reasons, but all come back to it being an unpleasant experience.

I'll be back all week with a lot more thoughts on why Fudd's sucks, and experiences with other restaurants in Kerrville.

tg



"Chewing Fat" is an irregular discourse on the things and folks that make my world a less friendly, less nice, less safe, less livable place -- especially greed, selfishness, rudeness, unsafe drivers, authority figures with an authority/superiority complex, bigots, haters, sexists, xenophobes, homophobes, fringe conservatives and demagogues, liberals who do fringe conservative and demagoguish things, and certain raw shellfish. That's right, you can expect me to be mr. irony as i get nasty about the nasty things i see around me. Feel free to disagree with me, but, fair warning, hater and troll posts get zapped before they ever hit the internets (although i do get a little buzz from thinking about haters spending so much time vomiting out some long vile rant, only to see it vanish into cybervapor -- muah!).


Tags: blogs, culture, milkriverblog

ATH: The Catch

http://ping.fm/SJdkz

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COM: Livestrong Foundation Grants

From the Lance Armstrong Foundation

This year we’re providing up to 65 grants to recreate and implement three community programs across the country. The programs; SuperSib’s STAR Program, Cancer Transitions, and the Creative Center’s Artist in Residence Program, help people affected by cancer deal with the emotional, physical and practical aspects of cancer.

SuperSibs:
Uniquely positioned as the only national organization that provides ongoing, targeted support to an underserved and often unrecognized cancer survivor population: siblings of children with cancer. SuperSibs! ensures that these children, the “shadow survivors,” do not feel alone, insignificant or forgotten, and can face the future with strength, courage and hope.

Cancer Transitions:
Designed to support, educate and empower people with cancer in the transitional period after treatment is over. This program addresses the long-term effects of cancer treatment, as well as survivors’ psychosocial needs during their transition to life after treatment. People that have taken part in this program worry less about the negative impacts of cancer, have better physical and social functioning, more commitment to physical activity, improvements dietary habits. The program is 2.5 hours a week for 6 weeks.

The Creative Center
Selected as a “best practice” model by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Creative Center’s Artists-in-Residence program will work bedside and in small group settings with men, women, and children − in oncology units, bone marrow transplant units, intensive care/respiratory units, hospice and palliative care programs. The program offers their patients the opportunity to learn about and become absorbed in their own creative resources as they meet the challenges of diagnosis, treatment and survivorship.

This year’s award process will consist of two phases. Interested organizations will complete the application form for one of the model programs. All completed applications will be reviewed by LIVESTRONG staff for eligibility and fit with the program. Those selected will move on to the community voting campaign. Through this campaign, constituents can select which community they would like to receive funding to implement the program; this process will help determine where there is a large level of community support and a demonstrated need for these programs. Voting will begin October 4th and will last for two weeks. Voting totals will be visible throughout the voting process and will close at 5pm on October 19th where the top programs in each of the three areas will be awarded. LIVESTRONG will fund up to twenty sites for the SuperSibs! and Artist in Residence programs and up to twenty-five sites for the Cancer Transitions program.

If you know of an organization that would benefit from having one of these programs in-house, please encourage them to apply.

Tags: blogs, culture, science, milkriverblog

COM: Stieg Larsson not what he's thought to be

Stieg Larsson Silent as Real-Life Lisbeth Raped
Swedish Author Wrote 'Girl With Dragon Tattoo' Out of Guilt; Victim Never Forgave Him

By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES, Aug. 5, 2010

The scene toward the close of Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Played With Fire" is gut-wrenching: Two men tie up and take turns raping a 16-year-old prostitute who has been lured to Sweden in a sex trafficking ring.

The wildly popular author of the "Millennium" trilogy, which also includes, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest," is graphic in his descriptions of violence against women, and now his closest friend reveals why.

Larsson had his own dark secret. At the age of 15 he witnessed a gang rape and never intervened, according to longtime friend Kurdo Baksi. Days later, ridden with guilt, Larsson asked the victim for her forgiveness, but she refused.

That girl was Lisbeth, the name later given to the tattooed, Asperger's-afflicted Lisbeth Salander -- heroine of Larsson's three novels.
The guilt over failing to act haunted Larsson his entire life and fueled the subject of his crime novels, according to Baksi, who wrote "Stieg Larsson: Our Days in Stockholm," a soon-to-be published memoir devoted to setting the record straight about Larsson's real-life commitment to social justice.

story continued here


Tags: blogs, culture, literature, milkriverblog

TCR: Dr. Drew on Sanity

Dr. Drew: Prop 8 Tramples on Basic Civil Rights
By Dr. Drew Pinsky, Larry King Live Guest Blogger, August 4, 2010, Posted: 06:50 PM ET

I am certainly by no means a legal scholar. Nor do I have any special understanding of American History. I am an American citizen with a deep appreciation of the brilliantly balanced system our founding fathers created.

There was a reason they set up our system as a republic and not a direct democracy. The Jacksonian Revolution started us in a direction whereby direct appeal to the people and direct democracy gained a distinct priority in our value system.

But never did the founding generations expect that we might see the advent of a system where a simple appeal to a majority could result in any whim the majority might decide to assert.

read the rest here

Tags: blogs, culture, rights, milkriverblog

TCR: What folks can do when allowed

Immigrants Defied the Odds in Ivy League
Untold Number of Undocumented Students Seek Higher Education in U.S. Despite Costs

By DEVIN DWYER, Aug. 5, 2010

The full story here

Cinthya Felix and Tam Tran are undocumented immigrants who rose from the ranks of America's public education system to attend graduate schools in the Ivy League.

But perhaps more remarkable than their matriculation to two of the nation's finest private schools is that they pursued their expensive, self-financed degrees without any guarantee they'd lead to jobs in the country they called home.

Felix and Tran died in a tragic car accident in May, shortly after their interview with ABC News. But friends say the duo's desire to defy the odds lingers as an example of the immigrant spirit they say has gone largely unnoticed in American society.

"Their courage, their determination, their spirit were an inspiration to us all," said UCLA professor Kent Wong, who taught the two students as undergraduates.

Tran, an aspiring filmmaker, pursued a Ph.D. in American civilization at Brown University. Felix, who dreamed of being a doctor in her East Los Angeles community, was studying at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

continued


Tags: blogs, culture, milkriverblog

TCR: The Ruling Complete

http://ping.fm/jcDjW


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COM: More Prop 8

My Rep, Lamar Smith, once walked into my office for a little chat . . . not my style of politician for sure, but i had thought he was an honorable man . . . until now . . . here's his voice, followed by the loss of my telling people that i respected him despite his conservatism . . .

U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, House Judiciary Committee: "When Congress returns from recess, I plan to introduce a resolution condemning today's decision and urging an immediate appeal. The voters of California are not the only ones who lost today. This decision defies the voice of all citizens who have sought to define marriage in their states as the union between one man and one woman. Judge Walker's actions should be opposed and the decision should be swiftly overturned."


Tags: blogs, culture, milkriverblog

TCR: Prop8 upended . . .

and for damn good reason . . . until we get to the point of granting truly equal rights to everyone we have no claim to calling ourselves leaders of the free world . . .

best wishes to all my friends were/are still hindered by our selective rights, here's hoping this means a step in your direction once and for all . . .

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/08/04/prop8ruling.pdf?hpt=T1

http://www.noh8campaign.com/article/prop8ruling

http://www.hrc.org/14679.htm

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/04/california.same.sex.ruling/index.html

https://secure3.convio.net/hrc/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=900


Tags: blogs, rights, culture, milkriverblog

ATH: Little League Replay

Little League World Series expands use of Instant Replay http://ping.fm/StndY

The Daily Soccer

http://ping.fm/didEl

ATH: Big Oops . . .

http://ping.fm/QM35N

World Music News Wire #17

The Sexiest Star of Slovenia: Magnificant Magnifico's Hot-Button Pop

Dressed to the nines in a retro-chic suit, Slovenia's Magnifico (Robert Peut) gyrates with Euro irony and sultry smoothness,backed by a burst of Balkan brass and a chorus of go-go dancers. The bad boy cum hit maker glories in the pleasures of pan-European English, pop culture, and the sillier side of porn, all with a distinctly Slavic wink.

But the inveterate showman and former folk dancer's wry exploration of sex and post-socialist society carries echoes of the dissolution of his erstwhile homeland, Yugoslavia. An "emotional emigrant" who fled the chaos of war and moral collapse by retreating into his own creativity, Magnifico sought asylum in music, a love he discovered decades ago as a young man, when his father bought him his first guitar.

His songs, while raising the roof, raise eyebrows and spark debate about everything from xenophobia to homophobia, dominating charts in the former Yugoslavia and Italy. He has crafted songs that unabashedly chant "Magnifico is queer" and parody Slovenes' insults for Southern Slavs, tracks meant to shock, critique, and amuse.

Several generations of fans frequent the singer and actor's flamboyant shows, where they sing along to the provocative lyrics and savor the furious Balkan beats, part of a new culture tempered by conflict and buzzing with vitality. Slovene teens scream at a Magnifico sighting, while local intellectuals chew on his post-modern shape-shifting significance. This is all part of the tongue-in-cheek fun for the actor and songwriter, whose surprisingly grounded life offstage includes a beloved wife and family, and a down-to-earth perspective on his party-hearty repertoire.

Now Magnifico is being unleashed on the world at large with Magnification, in a blast of Balkan- and Roma-scented funk, r&b, and soul... and even a flirtation with cowboys and Mexican-style horns. Tracks hail from Magnifico's latest limited edition Slovenian release, along with several freshly minted songs from the songwriter's ever fertile mind.



Tags: blogs, culture, music, milkriverblog

ENV: Jumbo Squid

http://ping.fm/fVG0y

"The first released jumbo squid had red LED lights attached to its camera. When the squid dove deeper, other squid attacked it, perhaps because "squid appear to be able see red LED lights, and it may really piss them off," according to jumbo squid expert William Gilly, who participated in the Cannibal Squid expedition. Torn off by the attackers, the Crittercam surfaced prematurely."

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COM: ABC News Professional Misspellers at work

ABC strikes again -- in a slide show of photos from Chelsea Clinton's wedding were a host of misspellings, including these gems:

Spectators try to see wedding guests as they load a shuddle bus before the wedding of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky on July 31, 2010, in Rhinebeck, N.Y.

Fashion designer Wera Wang, left, is crowded by the press as she leaves a restaurant in the town of Rhinebeck, N.Y., where Chelsea Clinton's multimillion-dollar wedding will take place July 31,2010.


Tags: blogs, culture, milkriverblog

MSC: A Piano Savant

http://ping.fm/No7bR

COM: FLEENER!!!

Congrats to Chris Fleener who won 1st at Best of the South at Southside Skatepark . . . http://ping.fm/jQwoa

THE: Two Left Feet run is over

last night of the run for Two Left Feet -- Cailloux Theatre 7:30 pm. tonight!

COM: The Big Mixup

http://ping.fm/MUfDp

ATH: US 20s win Milk Cup!

20s! http://ping.fm/BM0hQ

COM: Funny pt 2

oops . . . here's Squeek's post http://ping.fm/5mnuj

COM: Funny pt 1

thank you thank you thank you @Squirrellove for the only laugh i've had all week . . . you so rock

COM: I am Speechless

oh my . . . http://ping.fm/SIWxJ

The Daily Soccer

http://ping.fm/SXoyH

THE: Inception!

inception infographic via @aplusk http://ping.fm/EX5nH

World Music News Wire #16

Saintly Seducers and Iconic Iconoclasts: Pierre de Gaillande Spreads the Good Word(s) about France’s Unlikely Pop Idol Georges Brassens on Bad Reputation

Jailbait princesses and phonograph pornographers. Anarchists, atheists, and amputees. Humble farmhands who dig their own graves, and holy womanizers out to save the unlovable. Welcome to the wild world of Georges Brassens, as translated on the new album Bad Reputation and channeled by Pierre de Gaillande.

The Paris-born, California-raised singer, musician, composer, and translator found a kindred spirit in the pioneering pop star, ubiquitous in France but sadly neglected in America. Keenly in tune with Brassens’ timeless eloquence and timely grit, de Gaillande embarked on an epic two-year mission to translate Brassens’ work and evoke the legendary singer-songwriter for Anglophone audiences. The hard part: to keep Brassens’ melodies intact, de Gaillande had to keep the same syllable count, rhyme scheme, and other poetic parts in English.

De Gaillande spent his teenage years in California immersed in rock, laying out wacky punk anthems on his four-track and using guitar licks to woo girls at Sunday school. He later took these skills to New York, where he rocked with indie and folk-rock bands like the Morning Glories.

But he had a dark secret: He was French. His father, a teacher, made sure he never forgot it. “He likes to impart his wisdom,” de Gaillande muses. “My dad would make my sister and me sit down with a George Brassens song, asking us if we understood what it was about. He would bore us to death. We couldn’t enjoy the music because it was like school.”

The obsession that became Bad Reputation started when the senior de Gaillande sent his son the lyrics to “Le Mecreant,” a Brassens song calling for morality without the crutch of religious authority, a graceful statement of atheist philosophy. It struck de Gaillande and sparked a conversation with his dad that turned into a serious translating habit. “Over the years I had tried to translate the poetry of writers like Baudelaire, so I thought it would be interesting to try my hand at this song, which I loved,” recalls de Gaillande with a smile. “Then I went back to all these other cool ones with great melodies, and boom, it totally avalanched from there.”

Yet this nonchalance belies the task de Gaillande had set for himself: to adapt one of the biggest figures in French music and poetry without completely and utterly betraying Brassens in all his complexity: the iconic iconoclast. A dreamer who dominated the pop scene for decades. A highly individualistic man of powerful convictions—yet no patience with politics or intellectual fads. A proto-punk who worshiped 17th-century poetry, whose banned songs became national treasures, and whose moustache sparked a fashion craze.

It’s nearly impossible to explain Brassens’ significance in French culture—and nearly impossible to underplay it. He’s a teller of tales like Bob Dylan, if Dylan had come from a centuries-long line of satirical tunesmiths and bards. He sounds like Django Reinhardt swinging with an apolitical Woodie Guthrie. A voice like Leonard Cohen’s dominates sparse arrangements that managed to blast French pop apart the way the Beatles did Anglophone rock.

Yet de Gaillande has succeeded in invoking Brassens’ essence by painstakingly, playfully rendering his exquisite, unusual lyrics into English. Lyrics borrowing from the golden age of French poetry, the 17th century, chock full of colorful profanity and medieval references.

Brassens, in his meditation on the vagaries of celebrity “Trumpets of Fortune and Fame,” asks wryly, “I wonder, holy cow, who do I have to f*ck / To make the goddess of a hundred mouths speak up?” Yet he’s just as likely to reference the Old Testament (“Bad Reputation” speaks of the prophet Jeremiah) or 16th-century religious violence (the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of the Hugenots comes up in “Don Juan”) as to drop an “F” bomb.

De Gaillande relished the challenge. “I found that I was really well suited to it; I’ve been a songwriter preoccupied with lyrics, poetry, and melody for a long time,” de Gaillande reflects. “It was amazing to have this music that’s been in my head for so long come to life.”

A self-taught songwriter, the poetry-mad Brassens made music to fit the words. “He would write lyrics with rhyme and rhythm, and then cobbled the music together to fit,” de Gaillande explains. ”The music feels unpremeditated, fluid, and personal. Sometimes it makes no sense rhythmically, because it’s in service to the lyrics.” To do justice to the music, de Gaillande kept all the rhythms intact, finding the right number of English syllables, and maintaining the original rhyme schemes.

He also found, as he began working with New York-based musicians unfamiliar with Brassens’ songs, that these rhythmic subtleties had eluded most people who played songs like “Bad Reputation.” That is, until bassist Christian Bongers noticed something: Everyone was getting it wrong.

“That was the first Brassens song I ever learned, and I used to play it on guitar. Christian realized that I was playing it wrong, that there is this wild rhythm that’s hard to pin down,” de Gaillande notes. “It has a 5/4 moment that’s bizarre. It took someone with fresh ears to really get it.”

This peculiar sense of rhythm entwines with a quiet interplay between melodies, with little licks and flourishes in the originals provided by a second guitar. De Gaillande, while wanting to respect Brassens’ sonic sensibilities, used a broader, richer musical palette to bring out the many melodies: vibes, clarinet, dobro, another voice thanks to singer Keren Ann (“To Die for Your Ideas”).

But one thing was off the table: drums. “I’ve made a conscious decision to not have a lot of drums, even though I come from a folk rock or punk background,” de Gaillande says. “I didn’t want too many drums or any other instrument with rock connotations because Brassens ignored rock altogether.” Even though hints of rock sometimes shine through on songs like “Penelope,” Brassens seemed to have had little interest in the music taking Europe’s youth by storm.

That was typical for Brassens, a man who lived in a cold-water, no-frills Paris flat even at the height of his illustrious career, a place that had harbored him after he ran away from a German work camp and that he said taught him to appreciate discomfort. Living in his run-down apartment and his own dream world, the only rules he acknowledged were those of poetry. He ignored contemporary culture, politics, and even the bans on his songs, and instead mocked the scandal surrounding his off-color language with songs like “The Pornographer.”

“He uses all this dirty imagery, and then says, ‘See what you made me do?’” de Gaillande laughs. “I went full on with the obscenity.” He turned to the last remaining bastion of obscenity, the last dirty word standing: “Don’t ask me to compose a poem/ If it would upset you to know / That I sit and watch every day / The c*nts on parade / I’m the pornographer of the phonograph, sir / The perverted son of the sing-along.”

Brassens had no interest in being fashionable or cool, and yet defined coolness in a way that resonates for de Gaillande in our day and age. For de Gaillande, it boils down to language: “Using proper grammar, good spelling, and eloquent language is subversive and even sexy in this era of Tea-Party talk,” de Gaillande smiles. “That’s part of the mission of this project: to bring back that kind of sexy.”

“This project has been a real departure for me; it’s very adult and almost square,” de Gaillande laughs. “But I think it’s the hippest thing I’ve ever done. I draw inspiration from Brassens’ attitude: He didn’t care what people thought. He just got the poetry out there.”

Tags: blogs, culture, music, milkriverblog

REV: Two Left Feet

“Two Left Feet” Terrific

CURRENT REVIEW by Jacquie Bovée
The world premiere of the witty comedy-drama "Two Left Feet," directed by Heather Cunningham, opened at the Cailloux Theater last week. The sophisticated, yet extremely humorous plot, is as tightly crafted as many Broadway productions . . . and the cast is sensational. A must see ticket!

Playwright Jeff Cunningham’s entertaining comedy-drama is centered around Nancy Skelton, an exceptionally successful, but ever-so-clumsy, corporate accountant who dreams of being a ballerina. When Nancy finds herself in Southern California on business - in the same town as the renown Le Fleur Dance Academy - she enrolls and discovers the truth behind her Grandmother’s advice “Let your passion drive the bus, but let God steer you home.”

What better way to describe the plot than quoting Neil Simon, who once revealed, “My view is ‘how sad and funny life is.’ I can’t think of a humorous situation that does not involve some pain. I used to ask, ‘What is a funny situation?’ Now I ask, ‘What is a sad situation and how can I tell it humorously?” Cunningham adds a hearty dose of solid integrity and some good old fashioned “goodness.”

When Nancy auditions for admittance to the prestigious dance academy she encounters Rachel, a hostile instructor with secrets of her own. Both Nancy and Rachel are superbly portrayed by Amy Goodyear and Heather Cunningham.

The Le Fleur is run (after a fashion) by a bumbling businessman and his eccentric European dancer wife . . . Dexter Nixon (perfectly played by Brian Bondy) and Bridget (marvelously portrayed by Ahita Ardalan).

The somewhat goofy husband and wife team are assisted by Ned, a well-meaning nephew who falls for Stephanie, a charming ballet student. Ned a gentle sober soul and Stephanie a clever ingenue are wonderfully portrayed by Dale Green and Sloan Frierson.

The shows includes a delightful bunch of Play2K Academy students playing ballerinas. Rachel Jordan as Mean, Megan Simon as Pretty, Shirley Dixon as Blonde Girl, Amanda Radkiewicz as Dumb, Erin Bondy as Tiny and Natalie Tonner as Goth Girl who performs a lovely ballet solo. Guest performer and educator Ardalan worked with the Academy girls, teaching them ballet, movement and body awareness.

Tony Gallucci's appearance, in a cameo performance as the IRS Chief Auditor, is hysterical. And Jane Angelus (Auditor), Pam Frierson (Auditor 1), Judy Jordan (Auditor 2) and Rachel Stone Boland (UPS Girl) round out the talented cast.

Jeff Cunningham's scenic design is, as always, a feast for the eyes. The brick work is amazing, and Nick Boland's clever lighting design moves the action seamlessly.

Do yourself a favor and find out how Nancy, and some w friends, learn the valuable lessons behind, “Let your passion drive the bus, but let God steerfar-out ne you home.” Maybe you will agree with this reviewer - that "Two Left Feet" is not just a very well written comedy-drama - it is truly a mystic experience.

See you at the theatre!

********

The show runs thru July 31, with evening performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm. There will be a Sunday matinée on the July 25 at 2pm. For reservations and information call Cailloux Theater Box Office at 896-9393 ext 223.

From the left: Ned (Dale Green), Stephanie (Sloan Frierson), Heather Cunningham (Rachel), Nancy (Amy Goodyear), Bridget (Ahita Ardalan), Dexter (Brian Bondy) and IRS Auditor (Tony Gallucci) - Photo by Jacquie Bovée


Tags: blogs, culture, theatre, milkriverblog

COM: What Love Does

http://ping.fm/IK9ZP

COM: CBS' turn to be ignorant

Besides the silliness of the story behind this, the typo in the headline makes it even funnier . . . gotta love edit-free CBS!

Dog Mistaken for Coyote, Released into Wild

Kentucky Police Helping Owner Search for American Kennel Club-Registered Dog that Human Society Staffer Thought was Coyote

Tags: blogs, culture, milkriverblog

The Daily Silliness

two days, back to back, Justin Bieber fans crashed systems at Facebook and Forbes.com resulting in software accommodations and Twitterpanic

The Daily SIlliness

http://ping.fm/h3ZtM

The Daily Silliness

http://ping.fm/OQRNN

The Daily SIlliness

Tom Vilsack v Tony Hayward in a cage match for CEO you'd least want running your business . . .

COM: What Love Can Do!

http://ping.fm/DMLDy

World Music News Wire #15

San Francisco’s Musical Sweet Spot: The Admission-Free Stern Grove Festival Unites Art, Nature, and Bay-Area Music Lovers for Over 70 Years

A soul diva tosses aside her mic and lets her passionate voice roll over the audience as a hawk looks on. A stray sunbeam breaks through looming clouds and dashes across a renowned Indian master’s tablas as he strikes up the beat. A jubilant crowd of thousands dances to electronica-laced tango, swaying as one and leaping joyfully on stage. Butterflies and dragonflies flit past acclaimed symphonies, opera companies, and ballet dancers.

Magical moments happen regularly at Stern Grove Festival, San Francisco’s premier admission-free outdoor performing arts festival, a gem at the city’s heart. The 73rd Stern Grove Festival takes place Sundays at 2:00 p.m., June 20-August 22, 2010 (Sigmund Stern Grove, 19th Ave. & Sloat Blvd., San Francisco; www.sterngrove.org).

I loved playing Stern Grove. It’s a beautiful wooded enclave in the middle of a big city, with a great laid-back atmosphere. — Aimee Mann

Majestic yet intimate, Stern Grove Festival’s eclectic renowned performers are encircled by its unmatched outdoor venue: a resonant natural amphitheater among century-old redwoods and eucalyptus. Here, urban and pastoral, cosmopolitan and communal, nature and art, mingle.

I looked out there at those trees…you almost think you’re in heaven. It’s like hugging me, this venue is hugging me. I’ve never seen a place like this and I’ve been singing for a long time. — Mavis Staples

Though minutes away from central San Francisco sights, Stern Grove feels like a world apart and attracts world-class artists and hosts annual performances by the acclaimed San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Symphony, and San Francisco Ballet. Its verdant performance meadow, surrounded by towering trees, may sound like other major outdoor concert venues, but don’t be fooled. Stern Grove revels in the openness of the great outdoors while retaining a singular sense of intimacy.

Part of Stern Grove’s secret lies in its acoustics, as Rosalie Stern, founder and first benefactor of the Festival and its striking site, discovered in the 1930s. Mrs. Stern placed the stage with help from opera tenor Lawrence Strauss: The two wandered around the Grove arm in arm, in search of a sweet spot. They found it, as any Stern Grove Festival regulars can tell you (and decades later, laser acoustic analysis confirmed it).

Some places you just feel good. This is one of those places. — Femi Kuti

Regulars abound, from all generations and backgrounds, and they know just how to enjoy Stern Grove Festival. “People often come first thing in the morning and stake out their favorite spot. They’ll hang out all day until the show is done, with picnics and their families,” smiles Director of Marketing Monica Ware, who first experienced the festival as a young child accompanying grandma and grandpa to the Symphony. ”You meet people sitting next to you, and you get to know them. You share food and talk and dance together and experience these incredible performances.”

Performances by artists ranging from Los Lobos, Lucinda Williams and Arrested Development to Diana Krall, Carlos Santana, and Hugh Masekela to Isaac Stern, Denyce Graves, and Joan Baez in years past, and this year, from They Might Be Giants to the San Francisco Symphony, from Afro-pop chanteuse Angélique Kidjo to folk-rock icon Rickie Lee Jones.

The vibe is incredible. And I can’t believe we’re in the middle of the city. — Bela Fleck

“We often think in terms of accessibility. The Festival is admission-free and outdoors, so it breaks down many barriers,” Executive Director Steven Haines notes. “Stern Grove Festival, because it is so accessible, can offer world-class performances but still be a tastemaker, introducing people to music and dance they haven’t experienced before.”

This mixture of family-friendly yet adventurous, of high-quality yet open to all, reflects the special spirit of San Francisco itself, a city known for embracing diversity, eccentricity, and creativity. “Stern Grove Festival concerts cut across a wide variety of genres. That resonates with people in the Bay Area,” explains Judy Tsang, Stern Grove’s Director of Programming. “Our audiences are open-minded and trust us to put on a great show at Stern Grove Festival.”

San Francisco is a cosmopolitan place, but it also has the great natural beauty of Northern California and you get to experience that here in a setting that’s in the city, but like in a rainforest. It’s a magical place. — Michael Franti

Visitors can dive into this San Francisco experience and get a chance to unwind, party, and savor the arts the way locals do. “Stern Grove Festival audience members intermingle, and it creates a virtual kind of community in that moment,” Ware reflects. “You don’t normally get that shared experience at most venues, when you just show up, watch a concert, and leave. It’s really unusual in that regard.”

Planning a Perfect Stern Grove Day

Most important is to get there early; the park opens at sunrise and occasionally, a few hearty souls are already there with sleeping bags and thermoses of coffee, staking out their favorite spots.

Bring plenty of provisions–your favorite picnic fare, water, sunscreen, board games, books, and blankets. Regulars try to outdo each other with everything from linen napkins, flowers and wine glasses to platters of the Bay Area’s finest culinary treats; goat cheese from Cowgirl Creamery, sourdough from Acme Bakery, and cupcakes from Miette. And don’t forget a Napa Valley Chardonnay to round out the afternoon. There is also a food vendor on-site, but alcohol is not sold at the Festival.

Wear layers–Unpredictable is the best way to describe the micro-climate of Stern Grove. It can be cool in the morning and blazing hot by show time.

Take public transportation. There is no parking at Stern Grove, so do yourself and the environment a favor and don’t drive to the Festival!

Tags: blogs, culture, music, milkriverblog

COM: Outgoing-nos - Who's teaching our children?

Apparently no one . . . this from a professional photographer's blog . . . there is so much wrong here that it'd be nearly impossible to blame spell check . . .

"We all have shared an awkward silence with perfect strangers on an elevator. We’d just assume stair at our feet then initiate a conversation. There’s some unwritten elevator law that says no eye contact or talking is allowed.

"I’m the wacky person, who actually says, “Hey there, how you doin’?”! I suppose it’s my outgoing-no holds barred style, that helps break the ice."


Tags: blogs, culture, milkriverblog

FAM: ZsaZsa's Hip

Publicist: Zsa Zsa Gabor's surgery went well

By Alan Duke, CNN

July 19, 2010 3:17 p.m. EDT

Zsa Zsa Gabor underwent successful hip replacement surgery Monday to repair damage from a recent fall.

Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor underwent successful hip replacement surgery Monday morning to repair damage suffered when she fell out of her bed Saturday night, her spokesman said.

"We're all very relieved," publicist John Blanchette said.

Gabor, 93, is likely to remain hospitalized at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center at least four more days, Blanchette said.

The surgery lasted more than three hours, he said. "Her doctors are happy with the results."

Gabor was sitting in bed and fell reaching to answer the phone, he said. She was watching the television game show "Jeopardy" at the time of the fall, he said.

Blanchette said Gabor has been frail and "pretty much confined to a wheelchair" since a 2002 car accident. The crash occurred when the car in which she was riding with her hairdresser slammed into a light pole on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Gabor's husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, has been caring for her at the couple's Bel Air, California, home, Blanchette said.

"She has an active mind. She's very bright. She's funny. She always makes me laugh whenever I talk to her," Blanchette said. "Her body's failing her."

The glamorous Hungarian-born actress, the second of the three celebrated Gabor sisters, is most famous for her eight marriages. Among her husbands were hotel millionaire Conrad Hilton and Oscar-winning actor George Sanders.

Her more prominent films include John Huston's 1952 Toulouse-Lautrec biopic, "Moulin Rouge;" "The Story of Three Loves," 1953; "The Girl in the Kremlin," 1957; and Orson Welles' classic "Touch of Evil," 1958.

In 1989, Gabor was sentenced to 72 hours in jail for slapping a Beverly Hills police officer after a traffic stop. She also had to perform community service at a battered women's shelter.

The other Gabor sisters were Magda, the oldest, who died in 1997 five days shy of 83, and Eva, the youngest, who died in 1995 at 76.

Magda, an occasional stage actress, also was married to George Sanders at one time. [tg note: and to the uncle for whom i am his namesake]

Eva is probably best remembered for her role as a socialite turned farmer's wife on the 1960s TV sitcom "Green Acres."

Tags: blogs, culture, theatre, film, milkriverblog

MRF: Inception numbing

my head is still swimming from Inception . . . thanks you guys for the brilliant torture

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COM:: Living History Day on the Horizon!

UPDATE: Texas Heritage Music Day (formerly Texas Heritage Living History Day) on September 24th honors September as Hispanic Heritage Month and as the birthday of the Father of Country Music, Jimmie Rodgers!

KERRVILLE, Texas—The Texas Heritage Music Foundation is proud to announce that the 14th annual Texas Heritage Music Day (formerly the Texas Heritage Living History Day) will be presented on Friday, September 24 at the Robbins-Lewis Pavilion on Schreiner University campus in Kerrville from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event, billed as “Another Way of Learning Using Stories and Songs,” will be open to the public and admission will be free. From 4-6 p.m. in the historical Union Church on the festival grounds the Texas Folklore Society and THMF will co-host a panel on the songs of Texas. All events are free and open to the public.

For Heritage Music Day, more than 50 performers and presenters will be spread throughout the park surrounding the pavilion to both entertain and educate, including Aztec Dancing, chuck wagons, Native American exhibits and stories, Texas singers and songwriters and more. Central to the event will be the annual noon tribute to former Kerrville resident and “Father of Country Music” Jimmie Rodgers. Food and drinks will be available for sale at the event. A take home educator’s packet will be available to all teachers.


The Texas Heritage Music Day is part of the new Texas Song Series, beginning August 5-7 with a songwriter’s festival in Con-Can and September 1 Texas Music Coffeehouse. All three events feature Adam Carroll and Owen Temple.

For more information about Texas Heritage Music Day, go to the foundation website at www.texasheritagemusic.org. This event is co-sponsored by THMF and Center for Innovative Learning at Schreiner University.


Tags: blogs, culture, music, literature, milkriverblog

COM: You would think, in the 21st Century . . .

Liberian elephant rages against timber company

Animal airs rural Liberians' frustrations with country's timber industry

by JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH,

MONROVIA, Liberia — The unlikeliest of activists — a rampaging elephant that locals claimed was supernaturally possessed — has aired rural Liberians' frustrations with the country's profitable timber industry.

The elephant killed a logging worker in June when it charged onto the local company's property, and had also been known to menace other employees and local farmers in previous weeks.

This unlikely confluence of superstition, corporate activity and a big, mad, male elephant ended last week in a macabre draw, when logging officials killed the elephant after it killed the logging company employee.

But the dead elephant - which officials said Thursday was killed by sandwiching it between two industrial logging machines - trumpeted a growing unease between nature and industry in rural Liberia, a tiny West African country still struggling to recover from a 14-year civil war.

Locals said the elephant was possessed by human spirits and had channeled their frustrations into its rampages.

A local advocacy group says the logging industry decimates their forests while leaving no social development behind. Timber is one of Liberia's main exports and draws millions of dollars in foreign investment.

Elephants are endangered and protected in Liberia, but a forestry official said the animal had to be killed for residents' safety. In what appeared to be an attempt at reconciliation, officials have distributed elephant meat to locals. It was unclear whether residents ate the meat or not.

"We regret the two incidents: the killing of a person by the elephant and the killing of the elephant, which means we have lost an endangered species," said Theophilus Freeman, a deputy chief of Liberia's forest management agency. "We don't want to lose any of our endangered animals, but the law says if any of them becomes destructive and deadly, we get rid of it fast."

He added that authorities in Rivercess became convinced, through powers of deduction, that the elephant was not possessed by humans.

"Some people said there was a human being or two working in the elephant, but it's been two days since the killing of the elephant," he said last week. "If this was true, one or two persons would have died by now."

He said he now believes that locals claimed the elephant was possessed "to make all sorts of demands" to the logging company.

But local advocacy group leader Hilary Mentoe reacted indignantly to these assertions and threatened legal action over the suggestion that locals would use supernatural tactics to make their case against the logging industry.

"We are proud and decent people; how could we transform ourselves into an elephant to destroy lives and properties?" he told a local newspaper.

The timber industry in Liberia was placed under a United Nations embargo in 2007, when ex-president Charles Taylor was accused of looting the forests and using proceeds to fuel wars. Taylor denied the claims.

The ban was lifted in 2007 when a postwar election followed the stepping down of Charles Taylor and the election as president of an ex-World Bank executive Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

Tags: blogs, culture, environment, milkriverblog

MSC: Bieber!

The new most viewed video of all time on YouTube is Justin Bieber's "Baby".

COM: Blog Wars

when the food hits the scientific fan http://ping.fm/RGhoS

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THE: Two Left Feet!

Two Left Feet -- Cailloux Theatre -- just sayin'

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MRF: Inception!

And Inception!!

THE: Jacquie Bovée CATS Review

The "Cats" Meow at The Point

A CURRENT REVIEW
by Jacquie Bovée

The Point’s Smith-Ritch Outdoor Theatre has been magically transformed into a cosmic rubbish heap and T.S. Eliot’s Practical Cats appropriated the dump for their Jellicle Jubilee. And why not? Every conceivable, self respecting cat loves to roll in grubby newsprint, rummage in debris, toy with trash cans, fiddle old bicycle wheels, and just plain amuse themselves playing in and out of old car carcasses.

As the music swells and a moonlit night falls, cats’ eyes shine and dozens upon dozens of leaping, whirling and slinking shapes strut their stuff on director Jim Weisman’s brilliantly designed scenic wasteland. Sit back and let the outrageously amazing costumes of Linda Koehler Messina, the delicious makeup illusions of Emily Houghton and the superb musical direction of Luke Cummings catapult you on a psychedelic fantasy flight into the mad, mad world of “Cats.”

London’s award winning musical "Cats," with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and story line loosely based on “Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats” by T.S. Eliot, opened on Broadway in 1982. New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich predicted that the production would run for a long time. This was, he noted, not because it's a brilliant musical, but because it "transports the audience into a complete fantasy world that could only exist in theatre.” His vision came true, with a run of 21 years in London and 18 years on Broadway.

Supervising the once-a-year nocturnal jam-session is Old Deuteronomy (talented Jim Wooten), the ancient vicarage cat who buried nine wives and will, after it’s over, choose one cat for redemption. He listens as Gus the Theatre Cat (sensational T.J. Ashabranner), whose real name is Asparagus, weaves his stories of days past. And as Muckustrap and Jellylorum (musical veterans Graydon Vaught and Nancy Regan), conduct the festivities, musically inviting us to enter a world that only “see-in-the-dark” creatures can see.

There’s Bustopher Jones the Cat About Town in white spats (marvelous Kirk Logan) who is not skin and bones. In fact he’s remarkably fat. And Rum Tum Tugger the Curious Cat (delightful Corey Weaver) who wears rhinestones and leather together.

And there’s a host other of talented Cats: Demeter (Deanna Brandt), Cassandra (Shayna Architect), Jennyanydots (Tyla Stephens), Skimbleshanks (Ian Banchs), Bombalurina (Reilly Downes), Coricopat (Jesslen Clark), Tantomile (Brandi Neely), Jemina (Nicole Moody), Mistoffelees (McKinsey Lowrance), Mungojerrie (Trevor Stewart), Rumpleteazer (Hannah McDonald),

And plenty of Kittens, too: Alexandria Architect, Elise Architect, Tiffany Ayala, Page Bacon, Gabi Banchs, Hannah Johle, Rianna Mathews, Jacob Mizell and Casey Weaver.

Plus some great outcast Cats, Macavity the Mystery Cat (Taylor Spelvin) and Grizabella the Glamour Cat (Joan Bryson) who could even be the one who ascends into feline paradise.

Kudos to Weisman and choreographer Lynn Wickham Bacon for wondrously arranging and rearranging the multitude of cats that never seem to leave the stage. And to Lorenzo Nichols for lighting it all so perfectly.

The show runs thru July 24 with evening performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8:30pm. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for youths 17 and younger. For reservations and information call the HCAF box office at 830-367-5121



T. J. Ashabranner (center) as Gus The Theater Cat. From the left (clockwise): Jellylorum (Nancy Regan), Kittens (Hannah Johle & Casey Weaver), Jemina (Nicloe Moody) and Electra (Gabi Banchs) - Photo by Jacquie Bovée


Tags: blogs, culture, theatre, milkriverblog

EDU: Another knock on NCLB

NCLB Seen Impeding Indigenous-Language Preservation
By Mary Ann Zehr, Washington

Native American leaders pressed members of Congress and federal education officials this week to provide relief from provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act that they see as obstacles to running the language-immersion schools they need to keep their languages from disappearing.

As part of a two-day national summit here on revitalizing native languages, three founders of immersion schools that are teaching children Cherokee, Ojibwe, and Native Hawaiian contended that some No Child Left Behind provisions present huge hurdles for language-immersion programs or schools and conflict with schooling rights spelled out in another federal law, the Native American Languages Act. That 1990 law says it is U.S. policy to “encourage and support the use of Native American languages as a medium of instruction.”

In a face-to-face interaction at the summit, the founders of immersion schools petitioned Charles P. Rose, the general counsel of the U.S. Department of Education, to give them a legal interpretation that exempts their schools from having to meet provisions of the NCLB law that require them to test their students in English, particularly in the early grades, and ensure that teachers are “highly qualified.”

Since the immersion schools typically don’t introduce English until the 5th grade, their founders argued that it’s unfair that those schools can be penalized if their students don’t test well in English in the early grades. They added that the federal law—the most recent version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—makes it hard for them to expand their schools beyond the elementary grades because to do so they must hire teachers who are both fluent in an indigenous language and “highly qualified” to teach math, science, or another content area.
Dwindling Numbers

The language advocates are also asking Congress to target more of the money authorized by the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act of 2006 to immersion schools rather than to less intensive efforts to teach the language. And they are preparing to ask President Barack Obama to issue an executive order that supports the revitalization of Native American languages, which is being backed by the National Congress of American Indians, a Washington-based organization for leaders of tribal governments.

A coalition called the National Alliance to Save Native Languages, founded in 2006 and based in Washington, hosted the July 13-14 summit. Sponsors of the meeting included the National Congress of American Indians, the National Indian Education Association, the National Indian Gaming Association, and Cultural Survival.

The United States has from 139 to 155 indigenous languages that still have fluent speakers, but for about half those languages, only a handful of elderly speakers remain, said Jennifer Weston, a program officer for Endangered Languages for Cultural Survival, a Cambridge, Mass.-based organization that aims to preserve the cultures and languages of indigenous peoples worldwide.

“About 70 indigenous languages in the United States have only about five to seven years with their elders,” Ms. Weston said in a presentation at the summit.

Donna Starr, an indigenous-language teacher at a school run by the Muckleshoot tribe in Washington state and the Bureau of Indian Education, an arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior, said that time is running out for her to learn from the only person in her tribe who is fluent in her tribal language—Whulshootseed. Ms. Starr said that person is a woman in her late 80s. Ms. Starr teaches an hour of Whulshootseed lessons each day to middle and high school students.

But for tribes that have a critical mass of fluent speakers, launching an immersion school is the best educational approach to prevent the disappearance of languages, language advocates said.

Leslie Harper, the director of an Ojibwe immersion school in Leech Lake, Minn., said that only about 200 of the 100,000 Ojibwe living in the United States and Canada are fluent in their tribal language. She said her extended family lost its only fluent speaker of Ojibwe with the recent death of her grandfather.

“My parents just had remnants of the language,” she said, “It’s a common tale.”

But Ms. Harper helped to start an Ojibwe immersion school that now has 25 children in grades 1-6, some of whom are highly proficient in the language, she said. The school provides a place on the reservation where everyone speaks Ojibwe.

At the same time, Ms. Harper, who is in her 30s, and some others in her generation have worked hard to acquire proficiency in the language. She said that with the help of the immersion school, she’s raised her 10-year-old son to speak Ojibwe.

A Bureau of Indian Education school hosts the immersion school and requires it to adhere to all the provisions of the No Child Left Behind law, she said.
Cherokee School

Gloria Sly, the director of the cultural-resource center for the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, spoke at the summit about her tribe’s funding of a private immersion school, started three years ago, to teach Cherokee.

“The parents of our children are not speakers,” she said. The school now has 80 children in preschool through 4th grade who receive all instruction in Cherokee.

Immersion schools to revitalize the Native Hawaiian language have an even longer record than the schools aimed at saving the Ojibwe and Cherokee languages.

William H. “Pila” Wilson, the head of the academic-programs division for the University of Hawaii’s College of Hawaiian Language, in Hilo, helped start the first Native Hawaiian immersion school since public schools were barred from teaching the language in 1896. He said the school graduated its first high school class in 1999.

Mr. Wilson, who is not Native Hawaiian, and his wife, who is, both learned the indigenous Hawaiian language as a second language and speak it with their two children.

The College of Hawaiian Language creates curricula and certifies teachers for immersion schools in Native Hawaiian. Mr. Wilson said Hawaii now has Native Hawaiian immersion strands in 22 public schools.

But he said it can be hard to convince even Native Hawaiians that Native Hawaiian students have better academic prospects in the immersion schools than in regular public schools because parents are worried their children won’t learn English.

Mr. Wilson said he tells parents that their children are so surrounded by English in their lives outside school that they will succeed in learning English even though they are taught all their subjects in Native Hawaiian.

He maintains that intensive immersion is needed for youngsters to truly become fluent in an indigenous language and combat the powerful forces around them to speak only in English. Mr. Wilson noted that the immersion school his children attended had a 10-year record of having every student graduate up until this past school year, when one student dropped out to work in construction. Typically about 80 percent of students graduating from that school go on to college, he said.
Problem With NCLB

In a question-and-answer session at the summit, Mr. Wilson explained to Mr. Rose of the Education Department, a panelist, how provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act create obstacles for language-immersion schools.

He said students of such schools test well in English in the upper grades, after they’ve acquired literacy in English, but not in the lower grades, because at that point they’re receiving all their instruction in an indigenous language.

Mr. Wilson said parents at some of the immersion schools in Hawaii are refusing to let their children be tested in English because they believe the required testing in English is unfair.

The state, however, has not permitted the immersion schools to use tests in the Native Hawaiian language for accountability purposes under the federal law, according to Mr. Wilson, and when educators complain, the state officials say they’re just following the direction of federal officials.

On another point of contention, Mr. Wilson asked Mr. Rose for flexibility for immersion schools not to have to comply with the provision of the law on hiring “highly qualified” teachers because it’s hard to find such teachers at the middle and high school levels who are also fluent in Native Hawaiian.

Mr. Rose promised he would research Mr. Wilson’s observation that provisions of No Child Left Behind Act, which was signed into law in 2002, are in conflict with those in the Native American Languages Act. He said he would schedule an opportunity for more discussion about how the Education Department can address the issue.

Mr. Rose said he’s heard the message from tribal leaders across the country that the pending reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act needs to be more supportive of helping Native Americans preserve their languages and cultures than the NCLB version is.

Across the United States, Mr. Wilson said, about 5,000 children are attending schools where they are fully immersed in instruction in indigenous languages. More than 2,000 of those children are learning Native Hawaiian, he said.

The immersion-school opportunity “is very rare and precious,” Mr. Wilson said, “and we need to support it.”


Tags: blogs, culture, milkriverblog

The Daily Silliness

http://ping.fm/Axqsw

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ATH: Post-Cup Rankings

FIFA has announced the post-tournament rankings, with the United States in 12th after winning their group and exiting in the knockout round. England finished 13th and Mexico finished 14th. 2006 winners Italy are 26th, with '06 runners-up France in 29th.

FIFA World Cup Finishes
1. Spain
2. Holland
3. Germany
4. Uruguay
5. Argentina
6. Brazil
7. Ghana
8. Paraguay
9. Japan
10. Chile
11. Portugal
12. USA
13. England
14. Mexico
15. South Korea
16 Slovakia
17 Ivory Coast
18 Slovenia
19 Switzerland
20 South Africa
21 Australia
22 New Zealand
23 Serbia
24 Denmark
25 Greece
26 Italy
27 Nigeria
28 Algeria
29 France
30 Honduras
31 Cameroon
32 North Korea

Tags: blogs, culture, soccer, milkriverblog

World Music News Wire #14

Sanctuary on the Dance Floor: Skirball Cultural Center’s Sunset Concerts Series Revels in Global Sounds and Bringing People Together

July/August 2010 Thursday night concerts feature Parno Graszt (7/22), Natacha Atlas (7/29), Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys (8/5), La Excelencia (8/12), the Jews on Vinyl Revue (8/19), and Kenge Kenge (8/26).

The open expanse of the Skirball Cultural Center’s courtyard looks peaceful nestled under the Santa Monica Mountains, but in summer, it bursts with the raucous and joyful noise of the best of the world’s musicians: Hungarian gypsies bang milk cans and Kenyan bards wield handmade fiddles, while nonagenarian Yiddish-singing piano bar veterans and soulful Cajuns, hip salsa activists, and trans-cultural divas rub shoulders with dancing neighbors of all generations, backgrounds, and lifestyles.

This fun-loving, open-hearted haven is the Skirball Cultural Center’s Sunset Concerts Series, one of Los Angeles’ rare opportunities to embrace local, community, and global possibilities in a welcoming outdoor setting designed for dancing, celebration, and engagement. In its fourteenth year, this free Thursday evening series (July 22–August 26) aims to connect people to one another by embracing a panoply of sound that spans the planet, with emphasis on L.A. and California debut performances.

“We’re always looking for the perfect outdoor concert,” says Sunset Concerts curator Yatrika Shah-Rais, the Skirball’s music director. “People like to be outdoors and move. So we offer something that people can get involved in and really dance to. It’s festive and boisterous.”

The vibrant community spirit of Sunset Concerts, which includes a lively dance floor and, for many, a family picnic, is habit-forming, with concertgoers marking their calendars months in advance and stopping Shah-Rais on the street and asking for the line-up. It is yet another harmonious facet of the Skirball’s welcoming, community-minded mission.

“Though many think of the Skirball as a primarily Jewish organization, our mission is about inclusion,” explains Skirball Director of Programs Jordan Peimer. “World music celebrates people’s cultural heritage, the history and ideas they bring with them when they encounter new communities, the universal values that transcend time and place. We want people of all backgrounds to invest in their ethnic and cultural identities and to celebrate them within a society where all of us can feel at home.”

The series kicks off with Hungary’s Parno Graszt (July 22; L.A. premiere), known not just for finding the source of the traditions they relish; they are the source. With the distinct Roma scat-singing rhythms of their native land and their magical ability to turn everyday objects into the source for irrepressible percussive beats, the group can fill a dance floor in a heart beat—and will often come out to join their dancing fans even after their concert is supposedly over.

The Skirball’s mission runs through all the Sunset Concerts, but shines through with performers like Natacha Atlas (July 29). Her work moves from edgy Arabic-flavored electronica to poignant acoustic ballads that capture the full breadth of the singer’s multicultural heritage: Belgian-born to an English mother and a father with diverse Arabic and Sephardic roots. “In her music and in her role as UN Goodwill Ambassador against racism, she embraces the fact that diversity gives us strength and that our differences should be celebrated rather than feared,” Shah-Rais explains.

With a similar ear for reimagining their roots, the rowdy mastery of Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys (August 5) rethinks the Cajun and Creole sounds of Southern Louisiana, creating rollicking music that dares listeners to keep from trying the two-step. “Even at their most traditional,” Shah-Rais notes, “they have such a diversity of harmony and rhythms, with a rock feel.”

New York-based salsa crew La Excelencia (August 12; L.A. premiere) also gets crowds moving with their hard-hitting dance-or-bust vibe—and gets them thinking at the same time. Committed to social justice in the barrio as well as intense beats, the 13 young members of this rising salsa dura band stay true to their roots while engaging both salsa tradition and their audiences with their unflagging energy and stellar musicianship.

Unexpected musical connections will be showcased at the Jews on Vinyl Revue (August 19; L.A. premiere), a unique chance to catch some of Jewish music’s most revered veterans playing alongside up-and-coming musicians. Tying into an exhibition at the Skirball curated by music researchers and writers Josh Kun and Roger Bennett, audiences will have a rare chance to catch performers like maverick nonagenarian Yiddish songwriter Irving Fields, known for his Bagels and Bongos records; Fred Katz, who introduced solo cello into jazz and was so committed to the music that he taught jazz to nuns at a Benedictine convent; and Yemenite-Israeli diva Hedva Amrani, whose velvet voice has scored major hits from Cairo to Tokyo.

“There will also be multi-media presentations and two outdoor listening parties connected to this exhibition,” Shah-Rais relates. “It’s about bringing Jewish American pop history to life in sound and images.”

Kenya’s Kenge Kenge, the group behind the YouTube video phenomenon “Obama for Change,” (August 26; California premiere) bring an entirely different viewpoint to vibrant, exuberant life. The group transforms the traditional instruments of the Luo people, even building some instruments like orotu fiddles themselves. Fans of the Congolese musical group Konono No. 1 will instantly fall for the raw, hypnotic, and exhilarating sounds of Kenge Kenge as they combine the immediacy of an old-school field recording with the hardcore funk of the best dance tracks.

The liveliness of the music and dancing characteristic of the series is beautifully augmented by the Skirball’s spectacular setting. Concertgoers can come early and enjoy a picnic supper or make reservations for the delicious buffet dinner at Zeidler’s Café. Fans have been known to bring their own instruments for an impromptu jam session as dancers move and groove and kids play. It’s a space designed to welcome and embrace people from all walks of life, while making room for artists to push the musical envelope.

“When I’m considering who to invite to perform, there is no limit,” Shah-Rais reflects. “The more diverse we are, and the more exposure we have to other cultures, the richer we become. I’d like to share that with other people and to encourage people from totally different backgrounds and places to start enjoying each other’s culture.”

All shows begin at 8:00 p.m. General info: (310) 440-4500 or www.skirball.org. Parking is $5 for cars containing three or more people, $10 per car otherwise.

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THE: Two Left Feet Opens Thursday!!!

Hope to see everyone during the run of the show . . . (click on the poster for more detail)






Tags: blogs, culture, theatre, milkriverblog