Powerhouse Flowerhouse, Oakland
Having been on my block for a full year now, it’s fun to see certain things coming back into bloom in the same places where they first impressed me last year. The giant magnolia flowers mid-block are back. And so is my favorite perennial delight–a house down the block covered with what Brad has identified as bougainvillea. The over-the-topness of this… thing… the road-hazardous distraction of it in all its glory… reminds me of the famous annual Christmas displays in the suburbs of New Jersey. If I ever own a house in a climate conducive to bougainvillea, I’m going to baste the building’s facade with the seeds of this plant like it’s a Chia Pet and set the timer for the first day of summer.
The following is from Wikipedia:
Bougainvillea (pronounced /ˌbuːɡɨnˈvɪliə/)[1] is a genus of flowering plants native to South America from Brazil west to Peru and south to southern Argentina (Chubut Province). Different authors accept between four and 18 species in the genus. The plant was classified by Europeans in Brazil in 1768, by Philibert Commerçon, French Botanist accompanying French Navy admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville during his voyage of circumnavigation.
Beeing Healthy in Oakland
On Wednesday of last week, a week that was already super shitty, I came home to an infestation of bees coming in and out of a small gap in the siding of my building, directly above my door. I called my landlord who said she’d drop by with some spray. When my upstairs neighbor came home a couple hours later and had 30 or so bees in her kitchen, the problem seemed like it might be getting worse. Things subsided in the early evening without having to use the spray, but because there were a dozen or so bees lingering, we thought it’d be best to call a bee pro to come by for a look.
Khaled Almaghafi visited early Thursday morning. When my landlord, upstairs neighbor and I met just outside my door at 9am, Almaghafi told us that it appeared that the queen had (literallly) left the building and that the five or so bees that were left coming in and out were lost stragglers. When we thought he was about to pull away in his pick-up truck, Almaghafi came back to the front steps with a five-gallon bucket filled with a busted hive (and some dead and dying bees) he’d just removed from a clients house. 
He invited us to try some fresh natural honey by wiping our fingers over the waxy honeycomb. Man was that stuff good. Sensing our delight, he continued to break off chunks for us to eat whole. My landlord totally got down and seemed to ignore the inevitable sticky aftermath.
Almaghafi, a Yemeni immigrant who’s been in the area since 1986, was a really interesting guy. He studied business administration at UC Davis in the 80s and seems to have a great gig going–when he’s not answers emergency calls to remove bee hives and infestations, Almaghafi is managing his own bees and harvesting their honey to sell at his shop, Bee Healthy Honey Shop. Bee Healthy is on the outskirts of Tastyville at 3622 Telegraph Ave., and Almaghafi sells his goods at the Temescal Farmers Market on Sundays.
Top 10 Viral Videos of 2009 from Earshot Presents
Welcome to the Top 10 YouTubes of 2009 from Earshot Presents, as compiled on one Saturday afternoon late in December. The following videos are in no particular order.
LSD No NO
Robbie Maddison’s Incredible Arc Jump
36 Skaters Make Downhill Neon Video Game w/ Freeboards
Senator Al Franken draws map of USA
Stop Motion with Wolf and Pig
Phish play Exile on Maine Street’s Loving Cup in Indio
Eclectic Method Goes Phish
CULTURAL FUNKIN OVERLOAD
David After Dentist
Web Site Story
You can share this Top 10 Viral Videos post by clicking the Share This button below. Are there some videos EP overlooked? Share links to your favorites or share your thoughts via the comments area below.
If you have some more time to kill, you may also be interested in checking out the Top 10 Songs of 2009 from Earshot Presents.
UPDATED
There were bound to be some oversights. Here are a few:
We Don’t Pump Our Gas, We Pump Our Fists
Inspired Bicycles
DEADLINE
Happy Thanksgiving 2009 from Earshot Presents
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. It’s time for the 2009 Thanksgiving slideshow from Earshot Presents. If you enjoy the video, please share it with your social media networks by using the “ShareThis” button on the bottom of the page.
The tune I chose for the video, “Be Thankful for What You’ve Got”, was an obvious choice. It’s been on very heavy rotation this year (one cover version at a time, each for months on end). For a lot of the country going through some hard times, the song’s message has never been so important to keep in mind:
Though you may not drive a great big Cadillac
Gangsta whitewalls, TV antennas in the back
You may not have a car at all
But remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tall
Just be thankful for what you’ve got.
Have a great holiday.
Fluid: a must-have app for Mac users
Fluid is a great app for Mac users who rely heavily on web-based softwares like Google Docs, Basecamp, and Pandora. Fluid.app creates working applications out of these online tools (referred to as site-specific browsers) so that they can be launched from the Mac OSX dock, be kept in their own windows, and controled with Preferences similarly to how other regular applications can be.
You can download Fluid for free at http://fluidapp.com. Once you do, you’ll probably want to find some cool icons so that your new apps look good in your dock. You can find dock icons for over 100 popular web-based softwares in the Fluid group pool on Flickr. To get you started using the app, Scraster Professional Screencasting created a great demonstration video that you can view by clicking here or on the linked image below. If you come to enjoy Fluid, please forward the link to this video to your friends via the “share” tool on the player or tweet this URL: http://scraster.com/fluid . Thanks a lot and enjoy!
Old Jews Telling Jokes
What do you think you’ll find at OldJewsTellingJokes.com? That’s right. Older Jewish people telling some real zingers.
Clutter
Clutter is a great music listening application and the only app that comes close to re-creating the tactile enjoyment one used to get from browsing and picking through a pile of CDs, ordered in your own special way (strewn everywhere).
The developer doesn’t work on it anymore, and most of the download links don’t work. However, it does still work on the latest version of OSX. You can download Clutter here.
Bring Your Own Big Wheel, 2009
Hundreds of festively clad Big Wheel enthusiasts (and thousands of spectators) came out for San Francisco’s annual Bring Your Own Big Wheel downhill, which this year took place on Vermont Street on Potrero Hill. It was like the NYC Halloween parade, but on a 30 degree pitch with big wheels. Enjoy the video, but you really had to be there.
Top 10s of 2008 from Earshot Presents
Please check out the new Top 10s of 2008 from Earshot Presents.
Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen
by O. Henry
There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives it to us. We hear some talk of the Puritans, but don’t just remember who they were. Bet we can lick ‘em, anyhow, if they try to land again. Plymouth Rocks? Well, that sounds more familiar. Lots of us have had to come down to hens since the Turkey Trust got its work in. But somebody in Washington is leaking out advance information to ‘em about these Thanksgiving proclamations.
The big city east of the cranberry bogs has made Thanksgiving Day an institution. The last Thursday in November is the only day in the year on which it recognizes the part of America lying across the ferries. It is the one day that is purely American. Yes, a day of celebration, exclusively American.
And now for the story which is to prove to you that we have traditions on this side of the ocean that are becoming older at a much rapider rate than those of England are–thanks to our git-up and enterprise.
Stuffy Pete took his seat on the third bench to the right as you enter Union Square from the east, at the walk opposite the fountain. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had taken his seat there promptly at 1 o’clock. For every time he had done so things had happened to him–Charles Dickensy things that swelled his waistcoat above his heart, and equally on the other side.
But to-day Stuffy Pete’s appearance at the annual trysting place seemed to have been rather the result of habit than of the yearly hunger which, as the philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the poor at such extended intervals.
Certainly Pete was not hungry. He had just come from a feast that had left him of his powers barely those of respiration and locomotion. His eyes were like two pale gooseberries firmly imbedded in a swollen and gravy-smeared mask of putty. His breath came in short wheezes; a senatorial roll of adipose tissue denied a fashionable set to his upturned coat collar. Buttons that had been sewed upon his clothes by kind Salvation fingers a week before flew like popcorn, strewing the earth around him. Ragged he was, with a split shirt front open to the wishbone; but the November breeze, carrying fine snowflakes, brought him only a grateful coolness. For Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the caloric produced by a super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and ending with plum pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast turkey and baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice cream in the world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the world with after-dinner contempt.
The meal had been an unexpected one. He was passing a red brick mansion near the beginning of Fifth avenue, in which lived two old ladies of ancient family and a reverence for traditions. They even denied the existence of New York, and believed that Thanksgiving Day was declared solely for Washington Square. One of their traditional habits was to station a servant at the postern gate with orders to admit the first hungry wayfarer that came along after the hour of noon had struck, and banquet him to a finish. Stuffy Pete happened to pass by on his way to the park, and the seneschals gathered him in and upheld the custom of the castle.
After Stuffy Pete had gazed straight before him for ten minutes he was conscious of a desire for a more varied field of vision. With a tremendous effort he moved his head slowly to the left. And then his eyes bulged out fearfully, and his breath ceased, and the rough-shod ends of his short legs wriggled and rustled on the gravel.
For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth avenue toward his bench.
Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come there and found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the Old Gentleman was trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had found Stuffy there, and had led him to a restaurant and watched him eat a big dinner. They do those things in England unconsciously. But this is a young country, and nine years is not so bad. The Old Gentleman was a staunch American patriot, and considered himself a pioneer in American tradition. In order to become picturesque we must keep on doing one thing for a long time without ever letting it get away from us. Something like collecting the weekly dimes in industrial insurance. Or cleaning the streets.
The Old Gentleman moved, straight and stately, toward the Institution that he was rearing. Truly, the annual feeding of Stuffy Pete was nothing national in its character, such as the Magna Charta or jam for breakfast was in England. But it was a step. It was almost feudal. It showed, at least, that a Custom was not impossible to New Y–ahem!–America.
The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won’t stay on your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last year, and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane with the crooked handle.
As his established benefactor came up Stuffy wheezed and shuddered like some woman’s over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him. He would have flown, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not have separated him from his bench. Well had the myrmidons of the two old ladies done their work.
“Good morning,” said the Old Gentleman. “I am glad to perceive that the vicissitudes of another year have spared you to move in health about the beautiful world. For that blessing alone this day of thanksgiving is well proclaimed to each of us. If you will come with me, my man, I will provide you with a dinner that should make your physical being accord with the mental.”
That is what the old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an Institution. Nothing could be compared with them except the Declaration of Independence. Always before they had been music in Stuffy’s ears. But now he looked up at the Old Gentleman’s face with tearful agony in his own. The fine snow almost sizzled when it fell upon his perspiring brow. But the Old Gentleman shivered a little and turned his back to the wind.
Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech rather sadly. He did not know that it was because he was wishing every time that he had a son to succeed him. A son who would come there after he was gone–a son who would stand proud and strong before some subsequent Stuffy, and say: “In memory of my father.” Then it would be an Institution.
But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms in one of the decayed old family brownstone mansions in one of the quiet streets east of the park. In the winter he raised fuchsias in a little conservatory the size of a steamer trunk. In the spring he walked in the Easter parade. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse in the New Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, speaking of a butterfly, the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find some day. In the autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old Gentleman’s occupations.
Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing and helpless in his own self-pity. The Old Gentleman’s eyes were bright with the giving-pleasure. His face was getting more lined each year, but his little black necktie was in as jaunty a bow as ever, and the linen was beautiful and white, and his gray mustache was curled carefully at the ends. And then Stuffy made a noise that sounded like peas bubbling in a pot. Speech was intended; and as the Old Gentleman had heard the sounds nine times before, he rightly construed them into Stuffy’s old formula of acceptance.
“Thankee, sir. I’ll go with ye, and much obliged. I’m very hungry, sir.”
The coma of repletion had not prevented from entering Stuffy’s mind the conviction that he was the basis of an Institution. His Thanksgiving appetite was not his own; it belonged by all the sacred rights of established custom, if not, by the actual Statute of Limitations, to this kind old gentleman who bad preempted it. True, America is free; but in order to establish tradition some one must be a repetend–a repeating decimal. The heroes are not all heroes of steel and gold. See one here that wielded only weapons of iron, badly silvered, and tin.
The Old Gentleman led his annual protege southward to the restaurant, and to the table where the feast had always occurred. They were recognized.
“Here comes de old guy,” said a waiter, “dat blows dat same bum to a meal every Thanksgiving.”
The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl at his corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped the table with holiday food–and Stuffy, with a sigh that was
mistaken for hunger’s expression, raised knife and fork and carved for himself a crown of imperishable bay.
No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an enemy. Turkey, chops, soups, vegetables, pies, disappeared before him as fast as they could be served. Gorged nearly to the uttermost when he entered the restaurant, the smell of food had almost caused him to lose his honor as a gentleman, but he rallied like a true knight. He saw the look of beneficent happiness on the Old Gentleman’s face–a happier look than even the fuchsias and the ornithoptera amphrisius had ever brought to it–and he had not the heart to see it wane.
In an hour Stuffy leaned back with a battle won. “Thankee kindly, sir,” he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; “thankee kindly for a hearty meal.” Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started toward the kitchen. A waiter turned him about like a top, and pointed him toward the door. The Old Gentleman carefully counted out $1.30 in silver change, leaving three nickels for the waiter.
They parted as they did each year at the door, the Old Gentleman going south, Stuffy north.
Around the first corner Stuffy turned, and stood for one minute. Then he seemed to puff out his rags as an owl puffs out his feathers, and fell to the sidewalk like a sunstricken horse.
When the ambulance came the young surgeon and the driver cursed softly at his weight. There was no smell of whiskey to justify a transfer to the patrol wagon, so Stuffy and his two dinners went to the hospital. There they stretched him on a bed and began to test him for strange diseases, with the hope of getting a chance at some problem with the bare steel.
And lo! an hour later another ambulance brought the Old Gentleman. And they laid him on another bed and spoke of appendicitis, for he looked good for the bill.
But pretty soon one of the young doctors met one of the young nurses whose eyes he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases.
“That nice old gentleman over there, now,” he said, “you wouldn’t think that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I guess. He told me he hadn’t eaten a thing for three days.”
Happy Thanksgiving 2008 from Earshot Presents
This is the 2008 Thanksgiving slideshow. If you enjoy it, please forward it by using the “ShareThis” button on the bottom of the page. Thanks, and have a great holiday.
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