Watching City Hall #303, (7-17-04) “You say everyone says this can’t work? You just described every great success.” (Lloyd Cutler) You find out who Lloyd was. Another hint … he also said: “I don’t want to sell anything. I don’t want to buy anything. I don’t want to process anything. … And, I don’t want to process anything bought or sold or …” You get the idea. Nader vs Nielsen I just missed seeing Ralph Nader last night. It was either wait for him to show up at Mission High or head down to the Tenderloin to smoke great pot, swill cheap bourbon and listen to classic rock and roll with my friend, Jens. … It was a no brainer. Let me ‘Mollyverse’ the evening I really wanted to see what Renee Saucedo looked like in person cause I’d seen her on the television and she looked real pretty and I know that shouldn’t make any differnce but it does and if it didn’t, even I would probably be able to get a date some day but that’s no matter but she was kicking off her campaign in an art gallery on Valencia which I really wanted to see but probably wouldn’t have if Gonzalez hadn’t been hosting Nader and Camejo down the street at Mission High, so I looked at the schedule that Nader had going with Gonzalez and I wrote a column spending all afternoon attacking lots of people and Nader was one and I still wanted to see at least the crowd that would come to see him and so I shaved and soaked and scrubbed and put on clean raggedy clothes and my ID’s around my neck and I took the bus down to see Renee first and ran into Charles Kalish and I saw Renee and she really is very pretty and she writes well and speaks well and she had a nice buffet of assorted cheeses and the like and a single bottle of two buck Chuck chardonnay and I poured a deep glass of it and looked over the art and Renee seemed anxious which was understandable but she still filled the little gallery with 20 to 30 people or so and I kept thinking of how she was fighting an Ammiano type campaign against Ammiano himself and how now Tom has become the guy on the hill hanging onto the power despite the fact that the people below have changed language and color and I thought that she really could beat him and I hit the street and walked the few blocks from Valencia to the Gonzo/Nader event at Mission High. I stopped and got a slice of pizza and they really give you 2 slices at this place on 16th just a block or so east of Delores but it took forever but only cost $2.45 and I was anxious cause I thought the event was starting even though I’d heard that Nader would be signing books on Van Ness and figured he’d be late and it was already 7pm and I’d told Jens I’d be there by 8:30pm and you don’t wanna keep him waiting cause he’s real serious about that kind of thing so I came up to the place and found Carlos Petroni and Chris Finn of ‘Front Lines’ handing out their rag which actually is better than the Bay Guardian now but only comes out when Carlos and Chris damned well feel like putting it out and we bull shitted each other and there were 3 or 4 other way Lefty papers being handed out by pretty girls I was sure had raggedy underwear and I went out to the street to talk to all of the people gathering signatures for petitions to put Nader on the ballot in California and I asked each of them if they worked for the Republican party and most said they didn’t know who they worked for and a couple were trying to hire people to circulate more petitions and they were willing to pay well but got mad when I asked who paid them and so I went up to where there were a dozen or so counter pickets dueling good naturedly and some had Nader/Camejo signs and others had ‘honk if you want Nader to drop out’ signs and the people who honked were mostly in SUV’s and across the street people played tennis at the foot of the Delores Park and I walked over there and caught the view from the hill and the school looked better now than it did in the pictures from 70 years ago so I went back across the street and talked to Eric Young who is Joefire and we talked to Starchild who is running for the School Board and ran in 8 last time and is still all buffed and ready for public service and he’s a good guy and so San Francisco that he glows. And then Eric Young, he says that I really went over the top in saying that Heather Hiles was a ‘token’ because she had ability and courage and resolve and she was over educated if anything and that I had no idea how hard it must have been for her and I said that I agreed with him that Hiles was all of those things and that I’d toss in the caveat that she was also a great advocate and speaker but that I stood by my conviction that Gavin Newsom’s people didn’t hire her for any of those reasons but that they hired her strictly because she was black and lesbian and that I had nothing against her but that my target was people like Warren Hellman who rides into the treasure vaults of public institutions under the Trojan Horse cover of people like Heather and that I wish she were on my side and that further that I thought that Newsom used a squad of black Narc detectives to guard him at big public events for the same racist reason and that was the way I thought and then Eric he tells me that I am confusing Scott Weenie with David Weenie and that David is the Weenie running for School Board and that Scott is the Weenie who works for the District Attorney’s office and kind of like passes it off but I remember that this Scott Weenie whom I’ve been confusing with David Weenie was the sausage who sent out the fake e-mail during the mayoral race last year that was supposed to be from Greens to cause trouble at Al Gore’s rally for Newsom but they traced it back to him and so now I’m hoping I have my weenies straight I tell Eric that I will apologize for mixing up my weenies but that City Hall is a regular sausage factory and it should be understandable. So a whole bunch of speakers started speaking in the auditorium and I wandered around the halls and looked at pictures of classes going all the way back to 1925 and was looking at the expressions of the graduating classes and remembering what I used to think when I looked at the old class photos at my school like trying to figure out from their photos which ones put out and that most of them would be like a hundred years old now and stuff like that and just minding my own business and this guy kept trying to get me to sign his petition to get Nader on the ballot and Gonzalez stops by and says Hi and goes on and it occurs to me that Matt said that the first important thing was that third party people be allowed to participate and I remember him talking about the difference in endorsing someone and voting for them and I remembered the guy standing in his driveway in the Marina unloading his car and mocking my candidacy when I ran against Newsom in 2002 and then saying he was going to sign to get me on the ballot just so Gavin could beat my ass which is just what happened but I thought about that and I signed the petition to get Nader on the ballot but I will never vote for him. Bulletin …Bulletin, (7-18-04) Dono Hampton joins the gang! Adriel and Suki Hampton announce the birth of their first child this morning (6-18-04) just after 7am. The 7lb 4oz bouncing boy caught his parents by surprise: h.: “What’s his name?” Adriel: “I don’t know.” h.: “Dono? Is that Japanese?” Adriel: “No, I said I don’t know. We were expecting a girl and had a girl’s name all picked out.” h.: “Why don’t you call him ‘Dono’? It sounds like a combination of Japanese and American.” Adriel: “I dunno.” Congrats and best wishes from us all. Closing out on Nader I went to Mission High wondering what Rader’s ‘faithful remnant’ and their opposition would look like. The opposition looks like the young Democrats club. The supporters were harder to place. They weren’t really hippie. Neckties? Til Nader arrived, Gonzalez had the only one in the building. … Yet, the crowd felt familiar. They fit so well into the 100 year old auditorium of the ancient school. There were many pushing my age (60) but most of the crowd was 20’s & 30’s. Then, it hit me. Alaska! That was it. This crowd with unkempt beards and wool shirts and shawls and moccasins looked pioneer. … Weird, huh? Communists and pioneers. What a demographic. You’ll never win an election with that kind of demographics but, you know what? As best I recall, the sex is a lot better. David Cobb for President I’m voting for Green Party nominee, David Cobb for POTUS. … Unless, CA becomes a swing state in which case, as I’ve done for 40 years, I’ll hold my nose and vote for the Democrat while mumbling stuff about ‘Supreme Court nominations’ and stuff like that to my friends. ‘Immigrant’ voting Hey assholes, the Mexicans are not illegal immigrants in California any more than the Irish are illegal immigrants in Northern Ireland. I was reading Debra Saunders’ more odious than usual stool … in the morning Chronicle and realized that no one has put an international or historical perspective to the Gonzalez proposal to allow essentially, for Mexicans to gain a partial voting franchise inside occupied Mexico. Oh yeah. Just because the British didn’t allow the Irish to vote for 900 years in their own homeland does not mean that it was a good idea to deny Irishmen the franchise in Ireland. Wasn’t a good idea in South Africa. Wasn’t a good idea in Zimbabwe. Wasn’t a good idea in India. … None of these peoples asked to be invaded by white Europeans. They didn’t ask for their land and resources to be stolen. They didn’t ask to be evicted and disenfranchised. … Oh nooooo. It took the point of a cannon to make that happen. No Debra, there is no statute of limitations on ‘theft of country’. These chickens will come home to roost. You know why? … Well, from watching tv, I can only conclude two things. First, would be that immigrants obviously are virile. They already outnumber the white occupiers of our fair state and in a few years, Latinos alone will outnumber us. And Two … Two, is that the reason for #1 is that white Americans can’t get it up! I mean, how else can you account for all of the media ads for Viagra? Angela says ‘Hi’ The Alioto girl is on her yearly pilgrimage to her own motherland. I sent her a quote Arthur Evans sent me from Juvenal (something like: “If you write about politics, it’s hard NOT to write satire”) … I should publish the entire quotation. … Anyway, Angela promises to send some serious Latin verse, plus a running account of her Italian travels. I’ll edit the racy parts and pass it on to you. Closing shot: “Lock a Green up alone in an empty room and they’ll be in an argument inside of 5 minutes.” (Eileen Left) Do something you have to keep secret tonight. rhymes with ‘obfuscate’: