Author Archive for tmangan

A flashback

by  • October 11, 2003 • 0 Comments

I mentioned getting flashbacks in the post below, so here’s my recounting of the worst correction I ever caused.

It was a Friday on the Tampa Tribune’s County Desk, where we put out six zoned sections a day. Normally a layout person would do one section but if we were shorthanded somebody’d have to do two. This was one of those days, and the sections awarded to me were the first two deadlines of the day, meaning if I blew my deadlines, a daisy chain of blown deadlines could happen through the next dozen zones (after us, a whole bunch of regional State sections went to press). So, there was immense pressure to make deadline on the early sections.

There were 95 thousand complications having to do with shared color positions (this was before the Trib had pagination), 75 percent of the stories coming in late (final copy deadline was 4 p.m. and the first section — mine — was off the floor at 6), and the fact that the second of these sections would be delivered popping fresh to the executive editor’s door and he read every damn word.


So, anyway, I get my sections laid out at light speed and head to the backshop, where they’re pasting up both of my sections. Most of my energy goes into getting the first section cleared so I don’t keep a particularly close eye on the work of the rookie compositor pasting up the front page of the second section.


The first section clears about 15 minutes before the deadline on the second. I’m doing a hurried check of the jumps … so hurried that I fail to notice that our rookie compositor has mixed up the sticks of type from two stories.


Next morning the boss calls, having no doubt been wakened by a call from the Executive Editor, who wanted to know what the deal was with these two stories at the bottom of the front page of his local news section. I take a look at the section and realize what has happened. Bottom line: we had to re-run both stories.

In retrospect this seems hardly like the end of the world, but back then it felt like I had betrayed the Gods of Journalism and deserved to be smote with a rusty pica pole. Later I learned it happens to everybody, like the guy who’d been an editor for 30 years and still found a way to forget to include the jump from his centerpiece. (Got a real loud call from the boss over that one).

If you have similar horror stories, pass ’em along and I”ll post here.

Dateline: somewhere between the Blue and the Grass stages

by  • October 5, 2003 • 2 Comments

The stages are about 300 yards apart and I’m standing at this point where you hear one band playing into one ear, the other band playing into the other. And for some reason the brain is able to process both. I’ve come here here because it’s the one bunch of porta-potties without a 25-minute wait to do my business.


I’m at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, where the prohibition against alcohol is enthusiastically ignored by everybody but me, who has taken the regulations at their word and arrived dry. Some part of me thinks, well, at least I won’t spend the whole day in line to pee. That was before I bought the 24-ounce Pepsi that went through me faster than a six-pack of Bud Light. At least two trips to loo-land and no buzz to compensate. Alas.


So I’m at this giant festival surrounded by thousands of people who came for the same reason: fine music that’s free (some rich guy pays for it all; I want to meet him and introduce him to my sister). We heard country legend Ricky Skaggs with a mad banjo picker, Texas icon Joe Ely with a mad guitar picker, and reformed junkie Steve Earle looking mad. Lately Steve has shaved off his beard, lost a bunch of weight and taken on the appearance of a disturbing third cousin of Steven King. With nature’s disguises removed, it’s plain to see: Steve’s done some scary shit and it shows.

Steve cannot seem to get it into his head that we have come to see him to escape the grating realities of the times we live in. He and his band play wonderful bluegrass riffs, he even provides a couple OH YEAH moments, but before too long he’s singing against war, singing against the oppressors of working people, singing against The Man. My inner redneck is screaming, “Copperhead Road!” I know this urge is wrong, I know he brought his bluegrass band and not the Supersuckers, and he will not play that song about the hitchiker going to New York City. I want the rocking, hell-raising Steve Earle but on this afternoon I’ve got the rootsy, self-righteous one. After Anti-War Dirge No. 3, the urge to scram early to beat the crowds to the bus stop is impossible to overcome.

At the bus, something cool happens: the fare box is broke and we get to ride all the way back downtown for free. Behind me I hear some graybearded old leftist extolling the Virtues of Public Transportation. I’m thinking: a free ride is always virtuous, but at some point they throw you off the bus.

Ok, now that the Steve Earle report out of the way, I can get on to the rest of the day. Let’s see, what else. OK: We haul our sawed-off lawnchairs all the way from Dublin to the park, an hour and a half of Bart and the Muni bus to get to the festival about 12:30 in the afternoon. There’s already a thousand people between us and the Grass Stage … we set up camp here because we want to see Dave Alvin, Ricky Skaggs and Steve Earle; the other is the Blue Stage (blue+grass=Bluegrass, clever eh?), where I’d like to catch some of the sets of Gillian Welch, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely. The real superstars, Emmy Lou Harris and Willy Nelson, will be there Sunday but we have no use for superstars.

As we get settled in, I hear faint wailing coming from the Blue Stage. It’s Gillian Welch (that’s with a hard G, I always want to call her Gilligan Welch), who sang that “Sirens” song with Alison Krauss in “O Brother Where Art Thou.” Gillian is probably about the age of a daughter of Loretta Lynn but sounds like the person who might’ve taught Loretta to sing about coal mines. She is seriously hardcore country in a way no other country singer dares to sing it today. I walk over and hear her singing “White Freightliner” and it brings tears to my eyes .. she has this searing voice that gives me a visceral chill down the spine. I don’t even care for her music that much, but damn, that voice gets to me. You know how in the movies they show grown men crying when they’re listening to opera? It’s like that. I have to leave before I start getting all weepy.


I head back over to the Grass Stage, where Melissa is contentedly working on a baby quilt she’ll donate to Stanford Hospital’s neonatal unit (She’s the First Vice President for Good Deeds in our household). It’s what the womenfolk used to do at bluegrass gigs, I suppose. She’s listening to the same music her grandfather listened to while milking the cows back in the 1940s and ’50s. It probably doesn’t appear that she’s having all that much fun but she insists she’s where she wants to be: in the sunshine, sewing on something, listening to old-timey music.

Around 2 p.m. Dave Alvin takes the stage. Dave looks like a worn-out old white guy and his Band of Guilty Men appear much the same. The sound is country but the roots are rock ‘n’ roll. Dave was a punk rocker and a rockabilly guy back when those words meant something in the late ’70s, and his set is the rockingest one of the day. He sings in this baritone that seems to combine a Merle Haggard and a George Jones who listened to a lot more rhythm ‘n’ blues in their formative years. He sneaks a bit of politics into his set … one song’s lyrics went something along the lines of “when I get rich I’ll buy me a recall election,” and his last words were, “Don’t forget to vote.” Why Dave Alvin is not the richest, most famous musician in America is a mystery to me. His sets are simply stunning.

Ricky Skaggs is next. His band plays a blazing bluegrass set that has people up and dancing like lunatics. It’s a reminder that bluegrass isn’t all banjos and fiddles and murder ballads and stories about working in the coalmines. Sometimes it’s more like rock ‘n’ roll, vibrant, boisterous stuff that sets the toes to tapping.


Awhile later I stopped in on Jimmy Dale Gilmore’s set. He has this long gray hair flying wild in the wind and this rough, drawn face that reminded me of a skeleton with the hair still on it. He sings in a high-pitched drawl that takes some getting used to. I’m too impatient and head back to the other stage. I know Jimmie Dale is highly respected back in Texas and I’m sure I should’ve given him another chance. For now though I’m lacking the patience for acquired tastes.

The last guy I want to see before Steve Earle comes on is Joe Ely, a mainstay of Texas country-blues. I saw Joe perform for 60 minutes one evening back in about 1989 and it remains one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. He has humor, enthusiasm and a smoking band with a slide guitarist who can bring tears to your eyes. Joe’s a natural born performer and knows how to draw the audience in. I suspect he wants people to remember having seen him. I head back over to the Blue Stage and get there in time for Joe’s first song, an epic tune about a lost cotton farm. I’m thinking, hey, he’s off to a good start. So I find a place by the sound mixing board, plop down on the ground and wait to be amazed. Then reality sets in: I’ve got most of Joe’s albums and know all the songs so well that it’s not really important all the sudden to hear him perform them. After a couple songs I’m back over at the Grass Stage, resting up for Steve. Joe, meanwhile, has about another half-hour to warm up the crowd, and every few minutes the roars get a little bit louder. By the time his set’s over it sounds like the 49ers winning the Super Bowl over there. I’m thinking: Joe pulled off another of his dazzlers and I missed it. Damn.

Meanwhile some funny and cool stuff is happening right in front of us. Somebody brought these huge hula hoops to the show, and these little girls, ages about 4 to 8, are trying like hell to learn to keep them aloft. They never do but it’s hilarious watching them try.

Another hilarious moment: A woman has this cute little black dog on a leash. I’m watching the little guy sniffing along somebody’s backpack on the ground. Nobody’s watching him except me, apparently, and my gaze is frozen while he lifts his leg and takes a leak on the backpack. His minder notices when it’s too late do do any good.

Well, those are the highlights. Only regrets are all the other pee-and-backpack moments I missed because I couldn’t be everywhere at the same time.

Art car fest 2003

by  • September 27, 2003 • 2 Comments

Here’s where it all began.

The fun begins on this plaza next to th the San Jose Museum of Art. The weather is sunny, pleasant, blue skies to the horizon, like just about every other Saturday in recent memory.

It’s true: People die of anticipation in the months leading up to Artcarfest.

Some of the cars are lined up on Market Street across from a big hotel … the one you see reflected in the windows of this minivan, a conveyance so nerdly that it could be saved only by splaying these swirls down the side. It’s way cool now.

Police investigate the sudden disappearance of hundreds of license plates from cars parked in the downtown area. (Just kidding; as far as I know no crimes were committed in the acquisition of this car’s exterior. Except for the crimes against good taste, but we’d have all been in jail if that were an actionable offense on Saturday.

Melissa’s Mona Lisa smile — art cars bring that out in her. Either that or she’s kindly plotting how to make a certain digital camera disappear.

Of critters and kids

They go together like sun and sunburn.

My digital camera, being an early model, doesn’t have the circuits to convey precisely how orange this caterpillar/stretch-taxi is.

The celebrities inside were stuffed with the usual stuffing — as opposed to the ego stuffing you get with human celebs. Far preferable.

This happy creature is called Snorky, who looks like an embarrassing third cousin of Godzilla.

One of the hallmarks of Artcarfest is the perfectly useful but unremarkable vehicle made remarkable but useless (only in comparison to its previous incarnation, of course).

Another artcar hallmark is the clever use of everyday stuff. Here’s a car whose scaly hide is made of CD-Roms.

Sometimes they’re just plain clever, like this Radio Flyer for Paul Bunyan’s 3-year-old. Sometimes the photographer gets lucky and finds a dog in the frame, making the picture even cooler.

The fish and the lobster on this car break into song and rise and fall in time with the music. The funniest happening in an afternoon full of them.

Fender mosaics can be amazingly intricate like this shark on the attack.

Most of the cars reflect the personal wealth of their owners so you’re not apt to see many sporty British supercars. But if you did have a Jaguar you’d want to put a tail on it.

There is an artcar for every age.

One of the coolest feature of downtown San Jose (the only one, really) is this fountain that shoots jets of water straight up into the air.

The kids have a great time playing in the water. These two boys were having more fun than seemed humanly possible.

Beetle mania

People have been doing crazy, inventive things to their cars pretty much from the beginning, but the artcar movement really started picking up steam in the late ’60s, when people started painting their buses and Bugs.

Here’s one with a globe on the hood that serves as a token of goodwill for visiting alien species.

I was going to put “You Are Here” on this section of the globe but got too lazy.

Yet another hallmark: The car with way too much stuff attached.

Then again, if you had this goose taking up space in the garage, you’d want to put it to the best possible use.

Sum it up in a bumper sticker

Television is drugs. And it’s clear that many car artists watch LOTS of TV.

Advice for what to do when the Boss’s Son shows up.

The love of Jesus manifests itself in many ways.

A feminist twist on some old cartoon. Not nearly as funny as it thinks it is.

… because their agents are lurking about constantly.

“The more you disapprove, the more fun it is for me.” There is this mildy amusing pretension among the artists that they’re stretching the boundaries and freaking out the squares. This creates the counterurge to approve with mad abandon, depriving them of a precious source of angst.

Always good advice.

More evidence of hippies in the vicinity.

That license plate frame says “I’d Rather Be Topless.” The artwork above seems to be in agreement.

The surface of this car is entirely covered with keyboard keys. Thank God I’m just clever enough to figure out the subtle artistic statement of using keys to create a message. (They’re arranged to form the face of Homer Simpson on the front hood).

What’s on top

The naked expanse of a car roof cries out to the artist.

What is it about dolls that makes them so terrifying?

This guy has to drive fast through suburban neighborhoods to get away from the kids waving quarters at him and demanding a double dip cone.

Part of me objects to piling a bunch of junk on a car roof and calling it art. But the M&M guy melts my objections away.

While we were watching this rhythm & blues band trot out the old standards (whose lead singer did some scary Tom Jones covers), I looked over to my right and saw this wonderful statue of Janis Joplin stuck on the roof of a car.

A coven singing ’round the ol’ stew pot. Or a scene from a Disney movie.

An angel on the roof is always good for morale. We noticed later in the day that the breeze makes the wings rise and fall. Nice.

Cadillac, Cadillac

And now, to the tune of Bruce Springsteen’s “Cadillac Ranch”…

In the early ’60s the folks at Cadillac stopped equipping their cars with huge tailfins. At least one car artist has strived to correct this error.

Cow horns on the front make any Caddy more photogenic.

This guy’s Caddy was a rolling DJ booth, complete with tons of boxes with intriguing sliders and knobs. I’m a stereo guy so I really swoon at such things.

A Cadillac hearse turned into a rolling Gothic edifice. A stunning piece of work but notably gloomier than its rollicking neighbors.

Coming soon:

by  • September 27, 2003 • 0 Comments

Artcar mania. We’re going to San Jose today to checkout artcarfest2003, a gathering of people who have done funny, absurd and inventive things to their cars.

(It’s plain to see why artcats2003 has not been tried).

I’m planning on taking pictures and posting them here tomorrow.

The difference between scientists and artists…

by  • September 27, 2003 • 1 Comment

… according to Amy Fusselman:

Scientists I am not so crazy about. I think they are really overrated, especially by artists. Artists love scientists because artists think they are their opposites-they have this aura of coldness, of impartiality and rationality. But I think scientists are a lot like artists in that most of them are seeking spiritual experiences of one kind or another. It’s just that scientists won’t say they’re looking for God, they’ll say they’re looking for a new polymer or whatever. But scientists get more juice, culturally, than artists because they’re smart and organized (whereas everyone knows that artists are crazy slobs) and are supposedly working for the common good (whereas most people aren’t sure why artists are working). Artists love scientists and love to crib off them because they love that aura of respectability, an aura they’re not likely to get. The better an artist’s work is, the more likely people are to think he or she is a nutjob.

Read the rest at zulkey.com