Arutyunov v City of New York (2019 NY Slip Op 06582)

Arutyunov v City of New York

2019 NY Slip Op 06582

Decided on September 18, 2019

Appellate Division, Second Department

Published by New York State Law Reporting Bureau pursuant to Judiciary Law § 431.

This opinion is uncorrected and subject to revision before publication in the Official Reports.

Decided on September 18, 2019
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department

LEONARD B. AUSTIN, J.P.
JOHN M. LEVENTHAL
SHERI S. ROMAN
HECTOR D. LASALLE, JJ.

2018-03920
 (Index No. 14740/12)

[*1]Artur Arutyunov, et al., appellants,
vCity of New York, respondent.

Zimmerman Law, P.C., Huntington Station, NY (Gary R. Novins of counsel), for appellants.
Georgia M. Pestana, Acting Corporation Counsel, New York, NY (Fay Ng and Nwamaka Ejebe of counsel), for respondent.

DECISION & ORDER
In an action to recover damages for personalinjuries, etc., the plaintiffs appeal from an order of the Supreme Court, Kings County (Reginald A. Boddie, J.), dated January 12, 2017. The order denied the plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment on the issue of liability.
ORDERED that the order is affirmed, with costs.
On August 13, 2011, the plaintiff Artur Arutyunov (hereinafter the injured plaintiff) allegedly was walking on 19th Street between Avenue Y and Avenue X in Brooklyn when he tripped and fell on an uneven sidewalk condition. The injured plaintiff, and his wife suing derivatively, commenced this personal injury action against the defendant, the City of New York. The plaintiffs moved for summary judgment on the issue of liability. The Supreme Court denied the motion, and the plaintiffs appeal.
"Administrative Code of the City of New York §


520 So.2d 229 (1987)
James Floyd SMELCHER
v.
STATE.
7 Div. 815.
Court of Criminal Appeals of Alabama.
November 10, 1987.
Rehearing Denied December 8, 1987.
Certiorari Denied February 26, 1988.
*230 William H. Broome, Anniston, for appellant.
Don Siegelman, Atty. Gen., and Brenda Dunn Watson, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
Alabama Supreme Court 87-358.
TYSON, Judge.
James Floyd Smelcher was indicted for rape in the first degree and sodomy in the first degree. The jury found him guilty of the rape charge and not guilty of the sodomy charge. The trial judge sentenced the appellant to 120 years in the penitentiary, and fined him $1,000.
The victim in this case testified that she knew the appellant because he was a friend of two brothers that she was dating, Rodney and Edward Barksdale. On June 1, 1986, the victim was at herhouse studying for final exams when this appellant drove up in his van. When the victim went outside, the appellant asked her to go with him because someone named David had some things to tell her about Edward Barksdale. The appellant said they would be gone for just a few minutes. The victim asked her mother if she could go and her mother told her to be home in thirty minutes.
The victim got in the appellant's van and the two went to the appellant's apartment. The victim sat down on the appellant's bed and the appellant turned on the radio. The victim asked when David would arrive and the appellant replied he would be there in a few minutes.
The victim urged the appellant to tell her about Edward


and he told her to "just shut up about Edward." (R. 27.) The appellant then put his arms around the victim and starting kissing her. She told him to leave her alone and the appellant forced her on the bed. She told him he was bothering her.
The appellant then straddled the victim and held her arms back. He told her to shut up and stop crying. At one point, the victim turned her head because the appellant made a fist and she thought that he was going to hit her.
The appellant started taking the victim's clothes off and she told him she would do it. When he let her up, she attempted to run and he threw her back on the bed and ripped off her clothes. Whenthe victim tried to get up, the appellant squeezed his arms around her neck. The appellant forced the victim to have sexual intercourse with him three times, and perform oral sex on him. He told her that he was tired of the way people were treating her and he wanted to take her off and marry her. The victim told him that she had to go home and the appellant let her up and took her home.
On the way to the victim's house, the appellant said, "If you say anything ..." (R. 30-31.) and then shook his head. When the appellant got home, she ran inside and told her mother about the rape and her mother called the police.
A rape examination was performed on the victim. Sperm was


detected in her vaginal vault. However, there was no evidence of trauma to her pelvic area. Sperm was also present in the victim's vaginal smear. It was also detected in the crotch of her pantyhose and from dried secretions on her right leg. The appellant, as well as *231 half the Caucasion population, could have deposited the sperm found in the victim. One of the pubic hairs found in the victim's pubic combings matched the appellant's pubic hair.
Rodney Barksdale testified that the victim often went to the appellant's apartment by herself. He and his mother, Joyce Barksdale, both testified that they told the victim that the appellant had been in prison before for rape.
The appellant testified that the victim frequently came over to his apartment to smoke marijuana.The appellant would take the victim to places when she needed a ride.
On the afternoon in question, the appellant stated he went to the victim's house and asked her if she wanted to go smoke a joint. The victim said she needed a break and the two went to the appellant's apartment and smoked marijuana.
At some point, the appellant began kissing the victim and she responded. They took off their clothes and got in bed. The appellant said he could not get an erection because he was drunk. The victim said they had to hurry and performed oral sex on him. They then had sexual intercourse.
The victim then asked for a towel to clean up and the appellant took her home. He said she was worried about her


Last Friday, I wrote a short post about how I was disappointed with the first season of The Legend of Korra. I kept it pretty short and sweet, but enough people seemed interested in the subject that I thought I'd expand on why I felt the show's first season fell short.

As I mentioned last week, I'm a big fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's one of my favorite TV shows of all time, right up there with The Wire and Friday Night Lights. (I'll never get sick of the disbelieving looks I get when I say that to people who haven't watched the series.)

Avatar: The Last Airbender (which you can watch in its entirety on Netflix or for free on Nickelodeon's website) was a richly rewarding showit looked like Korra was going to explore the conflict in an interesting, honest way—Brash Korra had a few scenes in which she pushed around non-benders, and Big Bad Amon spent his first few scenes talking actual sense about the merits of the equalist movement.

Unfortunately, almost immediately after he was introduced, Amon hopped the bus to crazytown. He stopped sounding like a believable rabble rouser and became a straight-up evil cult leader. Worse, the eventual reveal—that he was a powerful waterbender who via retconned bloodbending could take away others' bending—only served to remove the whole thing even farther from the realm of non-benders. It became just another jedi-vs-jedi wank, without much of a thought for regular folk.

This was further exacerbated by the way the show chose to portray


bending: more as a magical power than as a spiritual martial art. In that way, it felt similar to the Star Wars prequels, which eschewed the meditative, spiritual aspects of The Force in favor of making it into a magical superpower.

I would have loved to see the tribulations of non-benders presented more interestingly than they were, and for The Legend of Korra to have explored bending and the conflict between benders and non-benders with more honesty and nuance.

2. Awkward Balance of Comedy and Drama

The original Avatar also sometimes had this problem—it was a kid's show, but it was also a story full of loss, heartache, danger and drama. The two things certainly aren't mutually exclusive, but it can be hard to make both work. The first season ofAvatar leaned a bit too hard on the easy jokes (Sokka's hungry! Aang is a goofball! Katara's a grump!) but later seasons hit an often sublime balance. By the time "The Ember Island Players" rolled around, the writers had were on an unstoppable roll, crafting a recap episode that hit a perfect balance of humor, drama, wistfulness and anticipation.

Korra failed to hit that balance, mostly because the show had simply evolved beyond children's programming. The adult aspects of the show were more weighty by design—the main characters aren't kids, they're teenagers, and the conflicts they're dealing with are even more complex than the conflicts in The Last Airbender. (Though the conflicts in Avatar were also plenty complex, even if they didn't seem it at first.)

I found that as


or 13 episodes these days. In fact, most of those shows manage to have two primary plot-threads: one that runs for the first half of the season, the other that runs during the second half, unified by an overarching story.

However, those shows all have hour-long episodes, and Korra was stuck with half-hour episodes. Considering that, it was an overextension to have the story revolve around both the pro bending arc and the equalist movement arc. Sure, the two overlapped, but a couple of early episodes focused almost entirely on pro bending with very little time spent on the Equalists or on Korra's training.

Pro bending wound up feeling a bit like Quidditch in Harry Potter—an enjoyable diversion at first, eventually set aside as the story ran out of roomattract the investors to invest in Indonesia.

With the commitment from PLN, and supported by accelerated development of electricity infrastructure, the growth of the national economy in recent years will faster, and become one of the best both in Asia and globally.

Every year, The Indonesian Electricity Exhibition had been made a positive contribution to the growth of electricity industry and simultaneously increasing the Domestic Component Level (DCL) in each component of domestic electrical products.

Indonesian Electricity Exhibition 2015 event, will be participated by all elements of stakeholders in the electricity sector including subsector electricity supporters, electrical organizations both from local and abroad, the authority of electricity sector in Indonesia. This also become one of the business meeting point, education, and also as an effective media information to the public about


remain in Israel, but the rabbi decamped to Hong Kong, where he launched a relief effort focused on the inundated northern city of Sendai, along with Chabad of Asia director Rabbi Mordechai Avtzon.

Sudakevich returned to Tokyo three weeks ago.

He expects a fraction of the usual crowd, or about 100 people, to attend each of the two Seders – the first night of the holiday begins April 18 – but feeding everyone will be a challenge in the upended country, he said.

With the Fukushima nuclear power plant still leaking radiation into the sea, air and surrounding countryside, many agricultural products are now viewed as health risks. The rabbi is avoiding local produce at all costs.

“There are things we can get, and other things that we are being advised toShowtime's "Billions" probably is 2016's most intriguing dramatic series precisely because its nastiest villain is Chuck Rhoades, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Played by actor Paul Giamatti, Rhoades is a ruthless bully who wants to bury hedge fund big shots, whether he has the goods on them or not. Rhoades is so righteous about upholding the law that he is willing to break it to destroy his prey.

A version of "Billions" played out at the federal courthouse in San Francisco this month as the Justice Department pursued a 2014 criminal indictment against FedEx that could have cost the overnight-delivery giant $1.6 billion in fines. Except, FedEx shocked the legal world by fighting back. Even better, FedEx won because, as U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer


observed, the corporation was "factually innocent" and had operated without criminal intent.

Prosecutors blamed FedEx for overdose deaths across the country caused by painkillers and other drugs prescribed recklessly and illegally. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Hemann likened FedEx employees to "part-time drug dealers who delivered drugs in large quantities." Federal prosecutors displayed the requisite indignation at the corporate greed that propelled a large corporation to making seedy deals.

The problem with that approach is, FedEx attorney Cristina Arguedas neatly explained, the Memphis carrier only delivered products sold by online pharmacies registered by states and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA actually continued to renew the rogue prescribers' registration during years when FedEx was supposed to refuse to deliver their pills.

The Cato Institute's Walter Olson described the case as thegovernment throwing the book at FedEx "for, in essence, refusing to snoop into its customers' packages and business." That is, I would add, for refusing to do the government's dirty work -- which the government also failed to do.

FedEx didn't reap extra revenue for delivering these products. FedEx security staff cooperated with state and federal law enforcement's efforts to close illicit pill mills. FedEx even asked the DEA to warn FedEx about illegal operators, but the DEA refused.

The government's case fell apart, and Hemann was prompted to ask the court to dismiss the remaining charges, after Breyer (to his credit) ordered prosecutors to call two former agents to the stand. The former agents were prepared to testify that FedEx had been a cooperating partner in their efforts.

So why


MUMBAI: The Sheena Bora murder case, in which her mother Indrani Mukerjea is an accused, is not an isolated incident involving a woman in a serious crime.Last year, as many as 579 women were arrested for murder in Maharashtra . Although way below the number of men arrested for the same crime in the same period (5,187), it is the highest for any state.The crime report for 2014 released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) last month also places Maharashtra second and third among all states and Union Territories for the number of women arrested for attempt to murder and culpable homicide not amounting to murder, respectively. Maharashtra also top 36 states and UTs for women arrested under all types of offences.In Maharashtra, 579 women were arrestedfor murder in 2014, followed by Uttar Pradesh (472), Karnataka (330), West Bengal (317) and Madhya Pradesh (316). The report said that the maximum number of crimes were committed by women in the 30-45 age group, followed by those between 18 and 30 years.According to the NCRB report, 1,94,867 women were arrested across 36 states and UTs, of which 30,568 were from Maharashtra. The latter figure is nearly double that of Uttar Pradesh (17,437). Rajasthan (16,187), Gujarat (14,152) and West Bengal (12,181) follow.In Maharashtra 95,174 women were arrested in the 2012-2014 period. The charges covered a wide spectrum: murder, attempt to murder, culpable homicide not amounting to murder, rape, attempt to commit rape, kidnapping & abduction, dacoity, dacoity with murder, preparation for dacoity, robbery, burglary, theft, unlawful assembly,


too small and too isolated. There was only one road, and much of the year it was sodden and rutted and virtually impassable by wagon or cart. Khyber always came on horseback, knowing that she could be assured of getting in and out again that way. Flying vessels in that part of the world were rare. Some of the Elves who lived in the village had never even seen one.

She followed Ahren down the road and through the village toward the sound of the shouting, joining the flow of the crowd and trying to make out the ship through the heavy canopy of limbs. She had no idea where it might find a place to land in woods as heavy as those surrounding Emberen, but she supposed thereher writing tools and went off to find her scissors.

They were told at the evening meal that, after dark, passengers were not allowed topside until morning. It was a rule of long standing aboard the _Skatelow_ and the Captain's express order. The reason given was concern for safety; a fall at night from the ship's sleek decking would almost certainly result in death. It was better if everyone but the crew stayed below. Ahren Elessedil assured the Rover that the order would be obeyed, and Pen went to bed with every intention of breaking it.

He woke sometime after midnight and slipped from his bed on cat's paws, brushing absently at his newly shorn hair, grimacing at the roughness of its feel. Hardly anything was left of it; Khyber


over him.

The room exploded with shouts, its occupants leaping to their feet in a whirl of sudden movement. Chairs and tables were overturned, and glassware went crashing to the floor. The Troll had his mace free and was swinging it at Terek Molt, who rolled out of the way just in time. But when he came to his feet to strike back, Ahren's Druid magic threw him across the room and against the wall, where he lay in a crumpled heap, screaming in fury. Gnome Hunters came at Khyber, but her hands were already lifted and weaving, and the Gnomes stumbled all over themselves in their efforts to stay upright.

"This way!" she shouted at Pen and Tagwen, and broke for the kitchen.

The boy and the Dwarf didn't stopwas in danger of breaking his legs. "Aren't you listening to me?" he screamed at her. "Don't you believe me? You can't go back there!"

She came to her feet, ready for another attack. "Are you coming with me or not? Make up your mind."

He hissed at her like a snake, his face twisted into a grotesque mask, and his fingers extended like claws. She was so astounded by the transformation that for a moment she thought she had better summon the magic and immobilize him before he lost all control. But then he seemed to get hold of himself, going so still that he was frozen in his bizarrely aggressive pose. He took a deep breath, blew it out, wrenched his fiery gaze away from her and directed


Anisitsiellidae
KOENIKE,
1909 (Acari: Hydrachnellae) from a rain forest stream in the province
of
Esmeraldas

13(3/4):
417-422

GOLOVATCH, S.I.
(1992):
Review of the Neotropical fauna of the millipede family
Fuhrmannodesmidae,
with the description of four new species from near Manaus, Central
Amazonia,
Brazil (Diplopoda, Polydesmida)

12(2):
207-226

GOLOVATCH, S.I.
(1992):
Review of the Neotropical millipede genus Onciurosoma
SILVESTRI,
1932, with the description of three new species from near Manaus,
Central
Amazonia, Brazil (Diplopoda, Polydesmida, Paradoxosomatidae)

12(2):
227-237

GOLOVATCH, S.I.
(1994):
Further new Fuhrmannodesmidae from the environs of Manaus, Central
Amazonia,
Brazil, with a revision of Cryptogonodesmus SILVESTRI, 1898
(Diplopoda,
Polydesmida)

13(2):
131-161

GOLOVATCH, S.I.
(1996):
Two new and one little-known species of the millipede family
Pyrgodesmidae
from near Manaus, Central Amazonia, Brazil (Diplopoda:
Polydesmida)

14(1/2):
109-120

GOLOVATCH, S.I.
(1996):
A new species of Cutervodesmus KRAUS, 1957, from the environs
of
Manaus, Central Amazonia, Brazil, with notes on the genus (Diplopoda:
Polydesmida:
Fuhrmannodesmidae)

14(1/2):
137-141

GOLOVATCH, S.I.
(1997):
On some further Neotropical Pyrgodesmidae, partly from the environs of
Manaus, Central Amazonia, Brazil (Diplopoda, Polydesmida)

14(3/4):
323-334

GOLOVATCH, S.I.
(1999):
On six new and some older Pyrgodesmidae from thea series of volunteer cleanups, he said.

"It's an overall good score, but there's always room for improvement," Gonzalez said. "That's why we want to continue to partner with the community to recruit Adopt-a-Block groups to help make next year's scores even better."

The city's Adopt-a-Block program has resulted in 62 block adoptions and thousands of volunteer hours, Gonzalez said.

Eleven years ago, Glendale became a Keep America Beautiful affiliate, a nonprofit dedicated to litter-prevent education, and the association requires the littering survey be conducted every year.

It also set up the survey's scoring system that ranges from 1, meaning absolutely no litter, to 4, which means an extreme amount of litter.

This year's survey was the first time Jane Viar, who is on the Committee for a Clean & Beautiful Glendale, volunteered


enriches the very few at the expense of the vast majority. This exploitation is organized through imperialism, war, and the social construction of race. It is vitally important to address the relationship between war, poverty and race in the context of the current global economic crisis. Western nations have plundered the rest of the world for centuries, and now the great empire is hitting home. What is done abroad comes home to roost.

The Social Construction of ‘Race’

500 years ago, the world was going through massive transformations, as the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and British colonized the ‘New World’ and in time, a new system of ‘Capitalism’ and ‘nation states’ began to emerge. The world was in a great period of transition and systemic change in which it was thenature of justifying white domination, as well as providing both a justification for and excuse to oppress black people, and in fact, people of all ‘races’. This was especially clear as in the late 1800s and early 1900s the European empires undertook the ‘Scramble for Africa’ in which they colonized the entire continent (save Ethiopia). It was largely justified as a ‘civilizing’ mission; yet, it was fundamentally about gaining access to Africa’s vast resources.

Following World War II, global power rested predominantly in America, the leading hegemon, expanding the economic interests of North America and Western Europe around the world. War, empire, and racism have been central features of this expansion. In large part, poverty has been the result. Now, the empire hits home.

Global Labour

The world has almost 6.8


regions lie in North America, Europe, and Pacific Asia respectively, the vast majority of the rest of the world lives in gross poverty. This disparity is ‘colour-coded’, too; as the top, the worlds wealthy, are white, while the world’s impoverished, the vast majority of the world’s people, are people of colour. This disparity is further polarized when gender is included, as the majority of the wealthy are men, while the majority of the impoverished are women. This disparity of a global scale is carried over to a national scale in the United States.

Race and Poverty in America

In the last months of Martin Luther King’s life, he focused his attention to the struggle against poverty. Today, “Sadly, as far as the country has come regarding civil rights, more Americansof the $18,000 for whites) while that of Hispanics [was] zero.” Further, “Household debt as a percentage of personal income rose from 58 percent in 1973 to an estimated 85 percent in 1997.”[24]

In 2000, a major university study revealed that the poor were more likely to be audited by the IRS than the rich.[25] In December of 2009, the Seattle Times ran an article in which they tell the story of Rachel Porcaro, a 32-year-old mother of two boys. She was summoned to the IRS back in 2008 where she was told she was being audited. When she asked why, she was told that, “You made eighteen thousand, and our data show a family of three needs at least thirty-six thousand to get by in Seattle.” Thus, “They


than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs.

Virtually all have incomes near or below the federal poverty line, but their eclectic ranks testify to the range of people struggling with basic needs. They include single mothers and married couples, the newly jobless and the chronically poor, longtime recipients of welfare checks and workers whose reduced hours or slender wages leave pantries bare.[30]

The food stamps program is growing at the pace of 20,000 people per day, as “There are 239 counties in the United States where at least a quarter of the population receives food stamps,” and “In more than 750 counties, the program helps feed one inthree blacks. In more than 800 counties, it helps feed one in three children.” Further, “food stamps reach about two-thirds of those eligible” nationwide.[31] Thus, there is potentially 18 million more Americans eligible to use food stamps, which would make the figure soar to 54 million.

In 2008, tent cities started popping up in and around cities all across the United States, as the homeless population rapidly expanded like never before.[32] The Guardian reported in March of 2009 that, “Tent cities reminiscent of the “Hoovervilles” of the Great Depression have been springing up in cities across the United States – from Reno in Nevada to Tampa in Florida – as foreclosures and redundancies force middle-class families from their homes.”[33]

An April 2009 article in the German newspaper Der Spiegel ran


The crisis in the lower third of society has turned into an existential threat for some Americans. Many soup kitchens are turning away the hungry, and even hastily constructed new facilities to house the homeless are often inadequate to satisfy the rising demand.

Many private corporations across America are withdrawing their funding for social welfare projects. Ironically, their generosity is ending just as mass poverty is returning to America.[34]

Crime was also reported to be on the rise at a dramatic rate. One criminologist explained that in the face of more Americans struggling in harsh economic times, “The American dream to them is a nightmare, and the land of opportunity is but a cruel joke.” Statistics were confirming his predictions of a rise in crisis-related crime, as April 2009 washopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize


such a monumental speech against war and empire, King was attacked by the national media; with Life Magazine calling the speech, “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,” and the Washington Post saying that, “King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”[51]

War is inextricably linked to the impoverishment of people around the world and at home. Inherent within the system of war, racial divides and exploitation are further exacerbated.

In the midst of the economic crisis, military recruitment went up, as the newly unemployed seek job security and an education. A Pentagon official said in October of 2008 that, “We do benefit when things look less positive in civil society,” as “185,000 men and women entered active-duty military service, the highest numbersince 2003, according to Pentagon statistics. Another 140,000 signed up for duty in the National Guard and reserve.”[52]

In November of 2008, the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) reported that recruitment into the military had increased by over 14% as a result of the economic crisis. Interestingly, “The north of England, where the credit crunch has hit hard, is among the areas where the MoD says recruitment is at its strongest.”[53]

In 2005, it was reported that the Pentagon had developed a database of teenagers 16-18 and all college students “to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment.” Further, according to the Washington Post, “The new database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects


the students are studying.”[54]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a report in 2008, which revealed that there is a dangerous trend in recruiting youth in the United States. Recruitment of youth 16 and younger is prohibited in the United States, however:

[T]he U.S. armed services regularly target children under 17 for military recruitment. The U.S. military heavily recruits on high school campuses, targeting students for recruitment as early as possible and generally without limits on the age of students they contact. Despite a lawsuit challenging its identification of eleventh-grade high school students for recruitment, the Department of Defense’s central recruitment database continues to collect information on 16-year-olds for recruitment purposes.[55]

Various Army programs and recruitment services target students as young as 11, which includes a video game used asmake up the majority of war casualties. War and poverty are inherently related in this example: the most impoverished suffer the most in war.

In 2007, it was further reported that more than 30,000 foreign troops are enlisted in the US Army, being recruited to join from foreign nations such as Mexico in return for being granted US citizenship.[58] In 2005, whites made up 80% of Army recruits, while blacks made up 15% of recruits. In 2008, whites made up 79%, while blacks made up 16.5% of Army recruits. However, an interesting statistic is that between 2007 and 2008, there was a 5% increase in the recruit of whites, while over the same period there was nearly a 96% increase in the recruitment of blacks. In 2008, 52% of


recruits were under the age of 21. For the fifth year in a row, as of 2008, “youth from low- to middle-income neighborhoods are over-represented among new Army recruits.”[59]

In March of 2008, The Nation published an article entitled “The War and the Working Class,” in which it explained that the American military operated under an “economic draft,” as “Members of the armed forces come mainly and disproportionately from the working class and from small-town and rural America, where opportunities are hard to come by.”[60] This was even before the economic crisis had really started to be noticed in the United States.

In January of 2009 it was reported that, “The Army and each of the other branches of the military are meeting or exceeding their goals for signing upthe United States spends almost as much on its military as the rest of the world combined, including seven times the amount as the next largest defense spender, China.[67]

In October of 2009, Obama signed the largest-ever bill for military spending, amounting to $680 billion. At the same time, he authorized a spending bill of $44 billion for the Department of Homeland Security. A sad irony was that, “Obama signed the record Pentagon budget less than three weeks after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.”[68]

In February of 2010, Obama asked Congress to approve a new record-setting defense budget, at $708 billion.[69] Interestingly, “the Pentagon budget increased for every year of the first decade of the 21st century, an unprecedented run that didn’t even happen in the World War II era,


are on food stamps, welfare, living in tent cities, going to soup kitchens, getting by on debt, and losing their jobs; America sends forces abroad, conducting multiple wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, expanding the war into Pakistan, funding military operations in Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, building massive new military bases in Pakistan and Colombia and providing military aid to governments around the world. As the empire expands, the people become more impoverished.

We cannot afford to ignore the relationship between war, poverty and race. The poor are made to fight the poor; both are often disproportionately people of colour. Yet war enriches the upper class, at least powerful sects of it in industry, the military, oil and banking. In a war economy, death is good for business, poverty is goodImage copyright Dinghua Yang Image caption Dinocephalosaurus was adapted for a fully aquatic lifestyle

Scientists have uncovered the first evidence of live births in the group of animals that includes dinosaurs, crocodiles and birds.

All examples of this group, known as the Archosauromorpha, lay eggs.

This led some scientists to wonder whether there was something in their biology that prevented live births.

But examination of the fossil remains of a very long-necked, 245 million-year-old marine reptile from China revealed it was carrying an embryo.

Jun Liu, first author of the new study in Nature Communications, told BBC News that the animal would have measured between three and four metres long, with a neck that was about 1.7m long.

The embryo may have been around half a metre long and is positioned inside the rib


cage of the adult Dinocephalosaurus fossil, which was discovered in 2008 in Luoping County, Yunnan Province in southern China.

Researchers had to consider whether the smaller animal might have been part of the adult's last meal. But it's facing forward, whereas swallowed prey generally face backwards because predators consume the animal head first to help it go down the throat.

Image copyright Jun Liu Image caption The fossil embryo appears to be facing forwards; ingested prey often end up facing backwards

Another line of evidence in favour of the live birth idea is that the small reptile inside the mother is clearly an example of the same species.

Co-author Prof Mike Benton, from the University of Bristol, told BBC News that the fossil was important because the Archosauromorpha form one of threelarge groupings of land-based vertebrates (backboned animals), each including about 10,000 species.

Since we now know that no fundamental biological barrier to live births exists in this group, palaeontologists would be "looking very closely" at other fossils. He suggested one target would be a group of aquatic crocodile relatives - whose mode of reproduction was not well known.

Prof Liu, from Hefei University of Technology in China, said the discovery pushes back evidence of reproductive biology in the archosauromorphs by 50 million years.

The mode of reproduction in Dinocephalosaurus also points to how the sex of its offspring was determined.

Image copyright Jun Liu Image caption The specimen was discovered at a site in Yunnan Province, southern China

Co-author Prof Chris Organ, from Montana State University, added: "Some reptiles today, such as crocodiles,


worked and waited next to the garbage receptables without reaping many rewards.

The old lady reaped a big harvest today and she held a container in each hand as she would not give up anything! Although she carried a heavy burden, it could not suppress her delight. When I saw how happy she was, I was happy too.

Since I saw that the load was too much for her, I offered to help her bring things home. On the way, the old lady told me that she has three sons. In order to help her oldest son to repay his gambling debts and the youngest son to pay for his wedding, she began to collect garbage. When I heard that, the garbage bag in my hand felt much more heavierspace under the bed was stuffed with "wealth". Yet I think that even the most avaracious miser could not sleep well in a house stuffed with wealth.

A lady that I met in the lane invited me to inspect her home. In a house full of garbage, she laughed proudly. According to the old lady, this is the wealthiest person in this area. Faced with these plain folks, I maintained my smile but inside I wanted to cry so badly ...

I went by a door in which a woman was sorting out the garbage. She asked the old lady how she did today.

Once the woman found out who I was, she felt close to me. Her child is attending university right now, and every RMB obtained from the garbage


neighborhood. When the friendly women saw our camera, they took us to visit one resident.

In a dark house, we saw the oldest woman in this area. The sight was hard for me to describe with words.

Like all the friendly homeowners here, this old lady got up to greet me. Since she had severe spinal curvature, she could not raise her head.

The old woman is more than 80 years old. One of her sons is physically handicapped, and the other abandoned her as soon as he got married. The handicapped son rides a tricycle to make money while the old lady picks garbage. As she is old and has trouble walking, she can ony pick up things like plastic bags in the neighboring areas. She makes only several dozenEdit This Favorite

Rear Admiral Robert Brutsche was one of the great leaders of the Commissioned Officers Association. Throughout his long and distinguished career, RADM Brutsche exhibited the finest qualities of service before self. He was a driving force behind the growth and strength of COA.

The Robert Brutsche Award is given to a COA member who exhibited exceptional commitment to the COA Board of Directors or COF Board of Trustees by leadership on projects and/or sustained contributions through committee work, liaison with outside organizations, special initiatives, and exemplary work with COA Local Branches.


their respective owners.

About Qualys

Qualys, Inc. (NASDAQ: QLYS), is a pioneer and leading provider of cloud security and compliance solutions with over 5,800 customers in more than 100 countries, including a majority of each of the Forbes Global 100 and Fortune 100. The QualysGuard Cloud Platform and integrated suite of solutions helps organizations simplify security operations and lower the cost of compliance by delivering critical security intelligence on demand and automating the full spectrum of auditing, compliance and protection for IT systems and web applications. Founded in 1999, Qualys has established strategic partnerships with leading managed service providers and consulting organizations including BT, Dell SecureWorks, Fujitsu, IBM, NTT, Symantec, Verizon, and Wipro. The company is also a founding member of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).Singer Jamala calls for ‘peace and love’ after beating rivals with ballad about deportation of Crimean Tatars, seen as criticism of Russia’s actions in 2014

Ukraine has won the 2016 Eurovision song contest with an entry whose politically charged lyrics have caused tensions with neighbouring Russia. Singer-songwriter Jamala was crowned the winner for her haunting rendition of the ballad 1944, which evoked the deportation of Crimean Tatars by Josef Stalin and has been interpreted as a criticism of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. As she collected her trophy, she pleaded for “peace and love”.

Before the final, which was held in Stockholm on Saturday evening and seen by many as the most politicised edition of the competition to date, Jamala had said her victory would show that Europeans were


third, Bulgaria in fourth and Sweden fifth. The UK’s act, Joe and Jake, finished 24th out of the 26 entries, despite drawing a favourable reaction from the Stockholm crowd for their peformance of You’re Not Alone.

Graham Norton, who guided UK viewers through the grand final on BBC One, led a toast to his predecessor, Sir Terry Wogan, during the ninth song, which this year was host country Sweden’s entry, If I Were Sorry, performed by Frans. Norton took over the job in 2009 and was narrating his first Eurovision since Sir Terry died in January.

Justin Timberlake provided the half-time entertainment, opening his performance with his hit Rock Your Body before moving on to his new single, Can’t Stop the Feeling.

Eurovision song contest 2016 – in pictures Read more

Thisyear’s competition used a new voting system, under which points were awarded partly by juries from member countries and partly by a public telephone vote. Australia had been in the lead at the end of the jury stage, but the phone voters ultimately swung things Ukraine’s way.

The show was broadcast live in Europe, China, Kazakhstan, Australia, New Zealand and, for the first time, the United States. The viewing figures for this year’s contest are not yet known, but they are expected to exceed the 200 million who tuned in last year.


Learn about this topic in these articles:

discussed in biography

...Quinn played the key role of van Gogh’s friend and mentor, Paul Gauguin.
Lust for Life earned critical accolades, but the picture did indifferent business.
Tea and Sympathy (1956) was adapted from the play by Robert Anderson, which was heavily rewritten by Anderson to comply with Production Code standards. The final result was a bowdlerized drama...well a PhD in Christian Counseling.

His ministry has quite a bit of interdenominational flavor, ministering in Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Charismatic, Pentecostal and as well a variety of Protestant churches. Reverend Vossen desires to minister the simplicity of the Word in proper Christian tradition and faith.

Reverend Vossen legally established CGMF Inc. in 2008 in North Platte, Nebraska.

Rev. Vossen holds credentials with the Full Gospel Restoration Ministers and Churches, as well other denominations, associations, etc., etc..

Currently Reverend Vossen holds office as President of Focus Bible College, Orlando, Florida. A ministry of Full Gospel Restoration Ministers and Churches.


Stroll the Flags Over St. Augustine boardwalk, each step a passage through the centuries beneath the very flags that have flown over this Ancient City for over 450 years—from the flag that likely flew on the mast of Juan Ponce de Leon's ship as he explored Florida's northeast coast to today's 50-star Stars & Stripes.

SEE A 16TH CENTURY SAILING VESSEL BEING CRAFTED

Visit our 16th Century Ship building project to see a handcrafted 50-foot caravel rising four stories into the sky! A caravel was used by the Spanish in the 16th century, including by Don Juan Ponce de Leon, who claimed Florida for Spain in 1513, and Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, who founded St. Augustine in 1565.

As Europe entered the Age of Exploration and began exploring new worlds,caravels were able to traverse unknown coastlines closer to shore than larger ships and travel deeper into bays and rivers.

Boatwrights like ours played an important role in exploration by designing and building new ships, and repairing those damaged by storms, reefs, sand bars, and attack by other ships.

EXPERIENCE HISTORY BENEATH YOUR FEET

Get hands-on with buried artifacts in our dig boxes. Get an intriguing glimpse into archaeological investigations that took place on the very ground you'll walk upon at the Colonial Quarter, real evidence that suggests it might have been the site of an early wooden fort burned in the late 1600s.

The Colonial Quarter is a partnership between Pat Croce & Company and the University of Florida Historic St. Augustine.


if a suitable aircraft could be developed for the Army. The first prototype—the Avrocar on display (serial number 58-7055)—was sent to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. There, wind tunnel tests proved that the aircraft had insufficient control for high speed flight and was aerodynamically unstable.

The second Avrocar prototype underwent flight tests that validated the wind tunnel tests. If it flew more than three feet above the ground, the Avrocar displayed uncontrollable pitch and roll motions, which the Avro engineers called "hubcapping." The Avrocar could only reach a maximum speed of 35 mph, and all attempts to end the hubcapping failed. The project was cancelled in December 1961.

It appears that Chinese builders have gone bigger than the Avrocar ever did;impact in their communities,” says Lindsey Frost Dodson, who directs Mozilla’s gigabit initiative. “This work — being led by school districts, nonprofits, and for-profits — can create more connected, open, and innovative U.S. cities.”

These 14 grants are part of the Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund, a partnership between Mozilla, the National Science Foundation, and U.S. Ignite. The Fund has granted more than $1.2 million to over 90 projects during its six-year history. Learn more about the Fund in the short film at the bottom of this post.

The Projects

Lafayette Gigabot Coding Initiative | Lafayette, LA This project trains elementary and middle school teachers in connected robotics and cloud-based programming. Teachers then integrate these topics into their curriculum. Led by Lafayette Parish Public Schools

Virtual Reality Ecoliteracy Curriculum | Lafayette, LA This


project uses virtual reality to show students the real-world impacts of climate change and coastal erosion. It spotlights the plight of “climate refugees” — a displaced Native American tribe in coastal Louisiana. Led by University of Louisiana at Lafayette

A Community In Motion | Lafayette, LA This project trains high school students in livestream, broadcast and 4K technology, positioning them as community journalists and storytellers. Led by Youth Literacy Foundation of Acadiana

New Hope STEM Club Gigabot Project | Lafayette, LA For this project, middle school students will receive cloud-based programming lessons from members of the Black Male Leadership project at University of Louisiana. Led by New Hope Community Development of Acadiana

Giga-Scapes | Eugene, OR Using internet-connected board games, this project allows people hundreds of miles apart to play together.and video game development for community members. Led by Eugene Public Library

Cross-Community Kvasir-VR | Lafayette, LA and Chattanooga, TN This project allows middle and high school students to take interactive virtual reality field trips to solar energy plants. Led by University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Networking the Classroom of the Future | Chattanooga, TN and Austin, TX This project uses 4K streaming to bring content from museums and research facilities into classrooms. Led by The Enterprise Center

Path to Python | Austin, TX and Eugene, OR This project provides an interactive Python curriculum to students in low-income schools. Led by Kiwi Compute, LLC

LOLA-Enabled Puppet Theaters | Chattanooga, TN and Kansas City This project uses internet-connected robotic puppets, 3D printing, and other emerging technologies to teach history in local classrooms. LOLA


there are other conferences where one
wonders why they still exist in the form and shape in which they are held. A
case in point is the International AIDS Conference. This biennial event was
held in 2014 for the 20th time, this time in Melbourne, Australia.
In the old days the location of this conference was considered to be an
important political decision, as its mere magnitude guaranteed the AIDS
community in the host country a high public profile for their cause. The good
and great would come to address the conference (Bob Geldof and Bill Clinton
offered the necessary glitz in Melbourne) and say nice things about people with
HIV/AIDS and – more recently - the need to provide affordable medicines to
people in developing countries. Well, that was after the advent of
life-preserving medication. Prior to thatdistricts and to new
reading programs for elementary students.

"This is an historic opportunity to take care of some of our more
glaring education problems," said Dick Wadhams, the Republican
governor's spokesman. "We think it's a sound plan."

Maryland, Michigan, and Oklahoma are a few of the other states
considering plans to put the tobacco money toward school programs.
Despite their proponents' good intentions, though, the proposals are
raising concerns in some states about the wisdom of shifting settlement
funding from health-related projects.

When Gov. Owens outlined his settlement-spending plan this month,
the first-term chief executive veered from a campaign pledge he signed
last October promising to direct any money the state received from the
settlement to public-health programs.

At the time he made the pledge, Mr. Owens thought states were
required to spend the settlement on such programs, Mr. Wadhams said.
Ultimately, however,


Thomas Vanek may soon find himself in hot water.

Tied to a federal gambling investigation back in the summer, the Minnesota Wild forward is now believed to be involved in a related money laundering scheme, according to the Democrat and Chronicle.

On Thursday, Mark Ruff - a New York-based bookmaker - pleaded guilty in federal court to illegal gambling and money laundering charges, while admitting that he helped manage a gambling operation in Rochester.

As part of the plea, Ruff's attorney - Joe Wolford - alleged his client's $230,000 gambling debt was covered by a paycheck signed by the New York Islanders.

The payment was made at the same time Vanek played for the Islanders.

Wolford did not confirm Vanek's involvement, but he did say he was surprised that Vanek's agent maintains hisof humanitarian assistance programs in the country. A large proportion of the population does not have access to health services, also due to security problems and unavailability of public transportation\[[@pone.0165270.ref003]\]\[[@pone.0165270.ref004]\]. Emergency health services, including trauma care, are limited and difficult to reach\[[@pone.0165270.ref005]\].

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been providing healthcare in Afghanistan since 1981\[[@pone.0165270.ref006]\] (with a 5-years gap between 2004 and 2009 after national and international staffs were killed\[[@pone.0165270.ref007]\]). Since 2009 MSF has been providing health services in Kunduz, Khost, Helmand, and Kabul provinces\[[@pone.0165270.ref006]\]\[[@pone.0165270.ref008]\]. In 2011, an 80-beds trauma center was opened in Kunduz, in the north of the country providing free health services to trauma patients \[[@pone.0165270.ref009]\]. On October 3^rd^, 2015, a US airstrike hit the trauma center in Afghanistan; 42 people, including 14 MSF staff, were killed


population of 1,204,400, administratively divided into seven districts. The province has a tribal lifestyle, which is historically how people in this region live. The government has no control on this entire province and even in urban centers, the level of insecurity is a major concern for civilians; kidnappings, armed robberies, random killings, targeted bomb blasts, roadside bomb blasts and suicide attacks, being rife. Due to security concerns and lack of accountability, humanitarian organizations are wary of providing aid in any form. Therefore, in the past, as well as currently, there is an extreme gap of healthcare service availability\[[@pone.0165270.ref004]\].

### Kunduz Trauma Center (KTC) {#sec010}

From 2011, MSF was providing specialized health services free of charge in the 80-bed KTC: the capacity was increased to 92 beds in 2015, since thedisabilities will occur in years to come, especially if the center does not become operational again soon. The re-opening of the center is therefore urgently required, however the strict enforcement of the International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions that regulates armed conflict and provide protection for civilians, the wounded and medical personnel is an essential precondition.

This research was conducted through the Structured Operational Research and Training Initiative (SORT IT), a global partnership led by the Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases at the World Health Organization (WHO/TDR). The model is based on a course developed jointly by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) and Medécins sans Frontières. The specific SORT IT program which resulted in this publication was jointly developed


Platte River

Assessing Sandhill Crane Roosting Distribution

Each spring approximately 500,000 sandhill cranes and some endangered whooping cranes use the Central Platte River Valley in Nebraska as a staging habitat during their migration north to breeding and nesting grounds in Canada, Alaska, and the Siberian Arctic. Over the last century changes in the flow of the river have altered the river channels and the distribution of roost sites. USGS researchers determined a direct linkage between crane roosting habitat and river flows in the Platte. The results are useful for estimating crane populations and for providing resource managers with techniques to understand crane habitats.

[Histogram showing the ranges of depths and velocities used by roosting cranes in the Rowe Sanctuary study reach.]

In the reach of the Platte River near the Rowe Sanctuary,to Sleep..." by Yuukawa Risa focuses on Haruka's thoughts about Michiru's sacrifice in the middle of the third season.Akasaka Arika's "Season of Endings" deals with Haruka and Michiru's regret that they can't be with Sailor Moon.In "Losing and Finding Things Everyday," by Etou Atsuki, Michiru and Haruka talk about their future.In Matsukaze Satori's "Sortilege," Michiru thinks about her dreams.Komedawara Gonzaeko's "How Many Times Must I......" is about a tender moment between Michiru and Haruka.In "Where the Wind Is," by Oowa Takumi, Haruka explains to Makoto and Ami how kindness can in fact be cruel.In "Messiah," by Ginga Natsuka, Haruka reflects on her own personal Messiah.In "Holiday," by Tenoh Saya, Haruka finds a motorcycle and decides to fix it up. (Note: The end of the story refers to a


offer a therapeutic alternative to the current standard treatment, which is intestinal transplantation, and could potentially solve its largest challenges -- donor shortage and the need for lifelong immunosuppression.

Tracy C. Grikscheit, MD, a principal investigator in The Saban Research Institute of CHLA and its Developmental Biology and Regenerative Medicine program, is also a pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and an assistant professor of surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

Grikscheit aims to help her most vulnerable young patients, including babies who are born prematurely and develop a devastating disease called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), where life-threatening intestinal damage requires removal of large portions of the small intestine. Without enough intestinal length, the babies are dependent on intravenous feeding, which is costlyRose Lavelle is still trying to regain some of the confidence that was shaken when she was injured.

Lavelle has been back to full strength for a while since battling a nagging hamstring injury, but it's the mental part that she's been working hard to overcome.

On Wednesday night she scored within the first two minutes and the U.S. women beat rival Canada 2-0 in the championship match of the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying tournament.

"It's a little weird because it's been a while since I've been back, I've been back for a couple of months now. I really didn't think it would take that long," said Lavelle, who at 23 is one of the team's young stars. "I think when I'm playing my best I'm not thinking, and things are


on Wednesday. Panama will still have a chance to qualify for France with a two-legged playoff against Argentina next month.

It will be Jamaica's first trip to the World Cup, and the island nation is the first team from the Caribbean to earn a spot.

The United States, the top-ranked team in the world, is the defending World Cup champion. The Americans beat Japan in the 2015 World Cup final in Canada.

'Canada made it hard for us'

Lavelle's left-footed goal from distance came less than two minutes into the match. It was the sixth of her career, and third of the tournament.

Lavelle, who played at Wisconsin, was the first pick of the National Women's Soccer League draft in 2017. She currently plays for the Washington Spirit. She's made 18 total appearancestournament with seven total goals. The United States did not concede a goal in the five matches.

"Canada made it hard for us at times tonight. I just think part of this, when you play your rivals in a tournament like this, it's sometimes very much about heart, and will. So I think to get the late goal was incredible rewarding for the mentality piece. It's something you can take away and lean on later."

Leaving everything out there

The match was played in steady rain and temperatures in the 50s. Attendance was announced a 6,986.

Canada, ranked fifth in the world, has seen its profile raised in recent years with back-to-back bronze medals at the Olympics. The two teams met in an epic semifinal match at the 2012 London Games, with


the United States coming out on top 4-3 in overtime.

The U.S. defeated Jamaica 6-0 on Sunday in the semifinals, with Morgan and Heath scoring two goals apiece. Christine Sinclair scored twice in Canada's 7-0 semifinal victory over Panama.

The two teams most recently met last year. They played to a 1-1 draw in Vancouver before a 3-1 U.S. win in San Jose, California, on the return leg. Overall, Canada and the United States have met 58 times, with the United States holding a 48-3-7 advantage.

Both teams dominated group play, and went into the final with 24 goals apiece, for an average of six goals per game. The teams also had the tournament's top scorers: Canada's Adriana Leon and Morgan each had six goals.

It was the first time Canada coachKenneth Heiner-Moller faced the United States in his new job. He took over the women's national team in January after coach John Herdman moved to the men's side.

"It was a final and you could see it," Heiner Moller said. "I think we left everything we could out there."


Government is determined to spy on the people

The promised reforms by the U.S. on its spying program which would acknowledge Americans’ right to privacy has cast the spotlight on the Nigeria’s spy program, with analysts calling for full disclosure.

The Nigerian spy program, recently installed by the Israeli Elbit Security, boasts of as much intrusion capability as the U.S’ National Security Agency prior to the recent restrictions announced by the president of the United States, Barack Obama.

Since Nigeria’s latest surveillance tool became public last year, the government has kept complete sealed lips about the scope of the program and how much privacy Nigerians and perhaps, citizens of other countries targeted would give up.

No limits

PREMIUM TIMES investigations revealed that the Elbit project is far reaching and has the capability tocollect massive amounts of electronic data – in all formats – from communications of private individuals in Nigeria and around the world.

The Nigerian spying system boasts of unlimited capability to intercept and retrieve any data transmitted over the internet and traditional telecom channels, analyse it, and predict the targeted individual. It has the ability to intercept phone calls, read text messages and hack into computers, mobile phones and any internet ready device.

The recently acquired surveillance technology by the Nigerian government is not its first, but an expansion of its long existing desire to be Africa’s surveillance giant.

In 2013, researchers from Citizen Lab, a research project based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, found evidence of the presence of the U.S.-based Blue Coat


from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

KANSAS CITY, Mo.— Under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Silver Jackets Program, the Kansas City District has begun a pilot project with the state of Missouri to improve flood mapping tools for the Missouri River.

Working through the State Risk Management Team which is led by the State Emergency Management Agency, the district’s Silver Jackets coordinator, Brian Rast, helped secure funding on the project.

“Many found the Missouri River flood maps created by the district in June of 2011 in advance of the record flow releases from upstream reservoirs beneficial for planning and response,” said Rast. “SEMA also found those maps to be useful in their flood response effort. Tools such as these helped the district communicate the severity of the coming floodRemembering Joe Simon

One of the last remaining creators of comic books’ Golden Age left us this past Wednesday. Joe Simon (born Hymie Simon) died at the age of 98 on December 14, 2011. Best known as the co-creator, with his partner Jack Kirby, of Captain America – Joe drew the very first sketch of the character – his career in comics contained many “firsts” and milestones that stretched throughout the Golden and Silver Ages of Comics.

Born in 1913 in Rochester, New York (his father, Harry Simon, was an immigrant tailor from England), Joe’s career in comics began in the late 1930s when he went to work as an artist for Funnies, Inc., one of the earliest packagers of comic books. Shortly thereafter, Martin Goodman, publisher of Timely Comics,


asked Joe to create a new superhero similar to Timely’s first hit character, the Human Torch; Joe’s first super-heroic creation was the Fiery Mask. Joe then became the first official editor of Timely Comics. Not long afterward, he met Jack Kirby, and the two formed an artistic partnership that would last until 1955, when political attacks on the comic book industry led Joe to turn his efforts to commercial art.

Joe’s and Jack’s most significant shared creation was Captain America, whom they portrayed punching Adolf Hitler in the kisser on the cover of his very first issue, released in December, 1940, a year prior to America’s entry into World War Two. Captain America was far from the only patriotic hero the artistic duo created, however. In 1942, they launchedthe Boy Commandos for National (later DC) Comics, which became the company’s third best-selling title, after Superman and Batman. They paired that success with another hit, the Newsboy Legion, a home front kid gang action team led by an adult costumed superhero named the Guardian, who wielded a bulletproof shield much like Captain America’s. During the Korean War, Simon and Kirby co-created the Fighting American to pick up where Captain America had (temporarily) left off.

In the late forties, Joe and Jack created the subgenre of romance comics with their Young Romance, which inspired dozens of imitators, and were pioneers in the subgenre of horror comics with Black Magic. In the late fifties, the pair briefly reunited to create a line of superhero comics for Archie Comics, and Joe


created the character the Fly, which some comics historians consider a precursor to Spider-Man. In 1960, Joe created a competitor to Mad Magazine, called Sick, which he drew and wrote material for and edited through the early 1970s. In 1966, Joe and Jack briefly reteamed again to create a line of superheroes for Harvey Comics. His final work in the comics realm came during the Silver Age, when he and Jack revamped for DC a Gardner Fox character they had first revamped in the 1940s, the Sandman. On his own, Joe created two unusual properties for DC – Brother Power, the Geek, about a living mannequin who joins the hippy movement, and Prez, about a teenaged president of the United States.

Joe’s name returned to the headlines of thecomic book news media in 1999 when, following a legal ruling that the heirs of Jerry Siegel were entitled to a share of the United States copyright of the character Superman, Joe sued Marvel Comics, the successor to Timely Comics, for copyright to Captain America. The two parties settled out of court in 2003. In recent years, a wealth of material about Joe’s career has been made available. His memoir of his career in the comics, The Comic Book Makers, was reissued, joined by a companion volume, Joe Simon: My Life in Comics: the Illustrated Autobiography of Joe Simon. Several coffee table books of his art have been released, including the very handsome The Best of Simon and Kirby, compiled by my friend Steve Saffel.

In my several decades


of following the comic book press, both fan and professional, I have never come across a single negative word said about Joe Simon. The comics press (and associated fan discussion) is often catty and backbiting; virtually no major figures in the industry have avoided being savaged from time to time by rumor, innuendo, or personal attacks. That Joe Simon is such a figure speaks volumes about him.

If there is one figure in American arts and letters who most strongly reminds me of Joe Simon, it is composer and lyricist Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Baline). Both lived very long lives; Berlin died in 1989 at the age of 101. Both came from Jewish immigrant families (Berlin’s from Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire) and spent the bulkof their working lives in New York City. Both achieved their most enduring successes during the World War Two era – Joe Simon with Captain America, the Newsboy Legion, and the Young Commandoes; Irving Berlin with his most beloved and ubiquitous songs, “God Bless America” (1938), “White Christmas” (1942), and “This is the Army” (1943). Both sought to create popular art for the average American. I think Joe would have enthusiastically nodded his head at this quote from Berlin: “My ambition is to reach the heart of the average American, not the highbrow nor the lowbrow but that vast intermediate crew which is the real soul of the country.”

Both men felt in their kiskas what it meant to be an American. Although it would not be fashionable for


them to do so now, not in this age of multiculturalism and widespread disdain among the artistic classes for the notion of a shared national identity, both men chose not to emphasize the particularities of their own ethnic and religious backgrounds in creating their greatest works. Rather, each tried to reflect what they saw as the finest characteristics of that broad group they considered “average Americans.” Irving Berlin often gave credit to his mother for inspiring the lyrics of his most famous song. During his growing up years on New York City’s Lower East Side, his mother would frequently say “God bless America,” her way of expressing gratitude to a country which had taken in her and her family and provided them refuge from the pograms which haddestroyed their home in Russia. Joe Simon would approve. In September, 2001, shortly after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, he recreated the iconic cover of Captain America Comics No. 1, substituting Osama bin Laden for Hitler as Captain America’s punching bag. His quote? “I did it out of anger. Adolf got his. Osama will too.”

Joe Simon lived long enough to see bin Laden get his. He also lived long enough to enjoy, at last, a successful and reverent big-screen adaptation of his most famous character, Captain America: the First Avenger, which he enthusiastically endorsed. Joe, may your red, white, and blue shield never lose its luster. I’ll miss you.


US troops fighting Ebola to leave Liberia by end of April Published duration 12 February 2015

image copyright Reuters image caption President Obama (left) said the pullout of the vast majority of US troops fighting Ebola in Liberia marked "the next phase of the fight"

US President Barack Obama says all but 100 of the US troops stationed in Liberia to fight the spread of Ebola will pull out by the end of April.

There were 2,800 US troops in West Africa at the height of the epidemic.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has told the BBC she is "very optimistic that Ebola can be beaten".

She warned, however, that "there is a danger of the disease coming back", and said Liberia needs "a health system that can work".

President Obama's announcement of anear-total withdrawal of US troops from Liberia follows the news that the number of new Ebola cases has risen for the second consecutive week, ending a period of encouraging declines.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says Sierra Leone has registered 76 of the 144 new cases, while Guinea has registered 65 and Liberia three.

'Saddened'

media caption Liberia's President Sirleaf on Ebola: "Our challenge is to make sure it does not come back"

President Sirleaf told BBC World Service's Newshour that although there had been a "delay" in other countries offering help to fight the virus, when assistance did arrive, "it came so fully and so effectively".

"We can say that success is also owed to the international community," she added.

"At one point I was saddened that the response was so slow and


just a handful of confirmed Ebola cases, down from about 300 a week in August and September 2014.

Announcing the pullout of US troops, in the presence of six of the eight US survivors of the deadly virus, Mr Obama said the move represented the transition into "the next phase of the fight".

Mr Obama said that as the military contingent in Liberia was reduced, his government was "expanding our civilian response".

The president said around 10,000 "civilian responders" would stay in West Africa to fight the virus.

"Every case is an ember that if not contained can light a new fire. So we're shifting our focus from fighting the epidemic to now extinguishing it," he said.

Around 1,500 US soldiers have already returned from the region, with all troops leaving West AfricaHarvard couple who paid housekeeper $4 a week for more than 13 YEARS are spared jail

Martha Smalanskas, 48, and Richard Smalanskas, 49, from Harvard, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty to violating the Fair Labor Standards Act at a federal court hearing in Boston on Wednesday

They originally met their victim in Bolivia when she was 16 and hired for as a nanny for their three children

Three years later they brought her to the U.S. illegally, claiming her to be a relative

For 13 years and four months she worked as their housekeeper and nanny, with the prosecution saying she made $2500 total

The family will pay her $150,000 restitution and serve 12 months probation, escaping prison time for a charge of harboring an illegal immigrant, which was subsequently dropped

A Boston couple with three


in restitution and serve a year of probation, under an agreement they reached with prosecutors, according to The Boston Globe.

Scene: The victim worked and lived in this house in Harvard, Massachusetts, for 13 years and four months, earning just $2500 the entire time. Her jobs including cleaning, cooking, caring for three children and even shoveling snow, the prosecution said

A charge of harboring an illegal immigrant, which carries a punishment of up to 10 years in prison, will be dismissed.

The pair will be sentenced on April 2 after pleading guilty to charges of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The case started when the couple hired the Bolivian woman as a nanny when she was 16.

The family were living in Bolivia at the time.

After three years, they brought her toa week and less than one cent an hour.

As part of her job she cooked, cleaned, cared for the children and even shoveled snow.

She had Sundays off and was occasionally allowed to early on Saturdays.

The victim was removed from the home for unknown reasons in May 2011.


shot. When moving forward, the bolt pushes a round of ammunition from the top of the magazine into the firing chamber. Then, as the bolt moves backward after firing, an extractor removes the spent casing of the fired round from the firing chamber. This process can be repeated until all rounds have been fired from the magazine. After all rounds are fired from the magazine, many rifles include a bolt catch mechanism that is activated by the empty magazine. The bolt catch mechanism is configured to lock the bolt to the rear of the rifle to allow for the loading of a new magazine. Once the new magazine is loaded, the bolt catch mechanism can be lowered by pressing a bolt catch release button on the firearm, thusbetween the Trump campaign and Russia, adopting a favorite line from the president and undercutting the reason Mueller was appointed. He also said in 2014 that the courts were intended to be the "inferior" branch of government.

He wrote an op-ed for The Hill in May 2017 criticizing the idea of appointing a special counsel for the DOJ’s investigation.

“Serious, bipartisan congressional investigations into the Russian allegations have been under way for weeks and they have made progress. Hollow calls for independent prosecutors are just craven attempts to score cheap political points and serve the public in no measurable way,” he wrote.

His past comments led several high-profile Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer Chuck SchumerPelosi slams Trump executive order on pre-existing conditions: It 'isn't worth the paper it's signed


her own undoing.

Osaka made 30 unforced errors, Gauff merely 17. This was a rematch from the third round at the U.S. Open last September; Osaka won that one in straight sets, then consoled a crying Gauff afterward and encouraged her to speak to the fans.

“Her serve is way better,” Osaka said. "I feel like I wasn't really swinging freely, and she was."

So, Naomi, could you have done something differently?

"Put the ball in the court," came the reply.

Gauff's game is growing so quickly.

Osaka, for her part, made her own rapid ascent to the top of tennis, claiming the trophies at the U.S. Open in 2018 and Australian Open in 2019 to rise to No. 1 in the WTA rankings. She is only 22 herself.

Seems old by comparison, of course.

SHARAPOVAwith a learner's permit.

Her play is far beyond her years. Her composure, on and off the court, is remarkable.

That all helped Gauff become the first American in 30 years to reach at least the third round in each of her first three major appearances.

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Her next opponent will be either No. 14 seed Sofia Kenin or Zhang Shuai, who were scheduled to meet later Friday night.

So late, in fact, that Gauff said she would have to pass on scouting their match because she would “probably be asleep.”


wrists are quicker than a snake's tongue. He drilled a 390-foot liner to dead center, caught by the outfielder.

Why swing at the first pitch in his first game back?

"I got a good fastball over the plate and I put a good swing on it," he said. "I'm not going to just work the count, I'm going to (approach) it like I would in the season."

In the fifth inning, there was the home run. He clubbed a towering fly ball to right field that had to carry at least 400 feet deep into the Arizona night.

He hit it off Justin Grimm, who had 1.99 ERA for the Cubs last season.

Pitching out of the bullpen, Grimm allowed only four homers in 62 innings. So Brantley connected against a legitimate bigleague pitcher, not some scared kid from Class AA getting a chance to show his stuff in March.

I asked Brantley if he knew he'd hit a homer.

"I never think anything I hit is going out," he said.

He was being truthful. Brantley has 35 homers in the last two seasons. But he doesn't dwell on home runs.

As Corey Kluber said: "He's got the same swing, no matter what. He's got a really short, simple swing. I think that's why he's able to repeat it so easily. I'm not a hitting coach, but if I could teach somebody a swing, I'd say swing like that."

Last season, Brantley made contact on 93 percent of his swings. That's the most in the Majors.

He is one of only three players with more walks


than strikeouts in 2015.

KLUBER & BRANTLEY

Kluber allowed only one run in five innings.

The Cubs loaded the bases in the third inning. Kris Byrant ripped a single to left. Brantley fielded it perfectly, came up throwing. One bounce to catcher Yan Gomes. He slapped the tag on the Cubs' Ben Zobrist, who was trying to score from second base.

OUT!

"He plays a great left field," said Kluber. "That was a big play in that inning right there. Bases loaded, nobody out, all of a sudden you can kind of sneak one out right there with him making a great throw and getting the guy at the plate."

Granted, the left-handed Brantley had surgery on the right shoulder. So his throwing arm is fine.

He played a few innings in a minor leaguegame on Thursday and also threw out a runner at the plate.

"You can do the outfield defensive drills every day, but there is nothing like game speed," said Brantley. "You can practice all you want, but when the adrenaline is flowing, there is nothing like it.

ALL-AROUND PLAYER

In the last four years, he has thrown out an average of 10 runners per season. The career .292 batter is so much more than just a good hitter.

Brantley is a good left-fielder. He's a clutch hitter, a career .329 batter with runners in scoring position.

In the last two years, he has stolen 38 bases and been thrown out only twice.

"He just wants to be with the team," said Kluber. "That's probably the most important thing for him, like it is for


Terrence Malick's 'To the Wonder' lost in a beautifully shot fog ★★★

In the spirit of a Terrence Malick screenplay, certain rhetorical questions to be spoken in hushed voice-over present themselves regarding Malick's latest, "To the Wonder."

Can we ever see enough sunsets as filmed by Malick and his mighty cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki? Is serious spiritual yearning even worth attempting to capture in a series of moving images? And will Malick ever tire of the look of tall grass in the wind, bending this way and that, much as his characters conform themselves to the dictates and gentle yet unmistakable hand of the filmmaker himself?

Shot in Bartlesville, Okla., and in France, "To the Wonder" finds Malick pursuing a form of visual storytelling that is closer to chamber music, or symphonicsampling soil for groundwater contamination in and around his hometown of Bartlesville, has met Marina (Kurylenko) in Paris. Romance has bloomed. "I'll go wherever you go," she whispers to us in voice-over, before they explore Mont St. Michel, on an island off the Normandy coast.

Where is "wherever"? Oklahoma. It's a strange new world to Marina and her 10-year-old daughter, no less so than the land Malick presented in his earlier film, "The New World." At one point in "To the Wonder," a classically Malickian transition glides from a shot of the shoreline off Normandy into a gliding frame of grasslands and power lines in the USA. The relationship soon sours. Marina, conceived as a twirly force of nature at odds with this land of big-box stores and cowboys,


retreats with her daughter to France. Neil takes up with an old flame, a rancher (McAdams) who likewise loves to twirl in the wheat, among the bison.

The relationships come and go; Marina drifts back into Neil's life. Since her voice-overs from the start favor the past tense, we sense impermanence throughout. The film is a reverie, a memory reactivated, in a land of beauty despite the Sonic drive-ins and drab suburban cul-de-sacs.

I admire the picture, though little of "To the Wonder" jells in the usual way. Bardem's priest interacts only briefly with the other major characters; he's a state of troubled mind more than a dimensional being. The women competing for Neil's conscience and heart are largely nonverbal sprites, endlessly photogenic. The film is completely insular yet utterly-- but also that they will see artistic value in the work.

The portly defendant, who sports a ponytail and goatee, produced and starred in one of the videos. He contends that the sex in the movie is incidental to the art. It’s merely a marketing tool to drive sales of the videos on the Internet, he said.

In a statistic that some may find every bit as shocking as his work, Isaacs said he was selling about 1,000 videos per month at $30 apiece before being raided by the FBI early last year. The number has since dropped to between 700 and 800 per month, but they still generate enough money to pay the rent on a house with a pool in the Hollywood Hills.

Isaacs predicted that many jurors


seven years, as well as stiff fines and forfeiture of proceeds.

At a time when even hard-core pornography is available in major hotels, through cable companies and on the Internet, prosecutors have focused their efforts on particularly outrageous material, often involving sex with animals and defecation.

Most of the cases were brought in relatively conservative areas of the country, five of them in Texas.

Whether jurors in Southern California have more lenient views on obscenity will be tested at Isaacs’ trial.

Federal agents raided Isaacs’ Koreatown office in January 2007. Isaacs said he was told by authorities that the investigation was initiated after a local person complained, and was eventually turned over to the task force in Washington.

He is now facing charges related to the importation, transportation and distribution of obscene materialBrazil. The virus is now actively spreading in 51 countries.

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In the United States, there have been at least six miscarriages, stillbirths or abortions due to birth defects that appeared to be related to the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in mid-August that 17 babies infected with the virus in utero had been born with microcephaly, a condition defined by an abnormally small head and often serious brain damage.

This post has been updated.

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Sunday, January 31, 2010

Recently we had been conducting archaeological digs into the little known San Francisco branch of West Hollywood's Whisky A Go Go. At the same time, I had commented in passing about a curious venue in suburban Sunnyvale (between San Jose and Palo Alto) called Wayne Manor. Wayne Manor was rock and soul dance club modeled on a Batman theme, with the club outfitted as the Bat Cave and the waitresses dressed like Bat Girl.

We were startled to receive email from the son of the Wayne Manor operator, the late Joe Lewis. Besides a treasure trove of information on the Wayne Manor itself, which had opened in February 1966. He startled us with the information that the venue had actually opened in Summer 1965 as aSunnyvale branch of the Whisky A Go Go, offering as proof an amazing photo of the Joel Scott Hill Trio (with Bob Mosley, Johnny Barbata and Joni Lyman) playing the club, right underneath the logo.

The younger Mr. Lewis was also kind enough to send along some other promotional photos, one of which I am publishing here. These photos appear to have been promotional photos taken during or right after the club was opened, probably between July and September 1965. While I think this photo was staged for the cameras, since the real club was much darker, its nonetheless the real band and the real physical setup. I have posted this not only to marvel at it, but to consider a few things about the 1965 rock era:

The group


is The Leaves, who were a popular Hollywood club band signed by Pat Boone. Their logo was a marijuana leaf, to the amusement of the few who recognized it. I assume the band members at this time were Jim Pons (bass), Bill Rhinehart (guitar), Robert Lee Reiner (guitar), John Beck (vocals) and Tom Ray (drums, not visible, possibly not even in the photo).

Note the tiny amount of equipment. There appear to be two amps for both guitars and the bass, and I don't see any drum mikes. I assume there was some sort of house PA for the vocals.

Note the dj booth. Whatever records were stacked up there would probably be an eBay goldmine now.

Check out the Go-Go girl fashions, a style originally made popular by the HollywoodWhisky. Both of the women are quite attractive, but neither the clothes nor the hairstyles look particularly flattering today

The Sunnyvale Whisky A Go Go was only open under that name until February 1966, when it became Wayne Manor.

Monday, January 18, 2010

San Francisco always prides itself on being cutting edge, and it favors The New over everything else. This was never truer than the psychedelic 60s, when the eagerness to see bands trying new things often exceeded the bands' ability to do anything new. As far as music went, however, 60s psychedelia was part of a change of interesting if not always memorable entertainment options in San Francisco.

San Francisco's principal entertainment district for white people had always been the North Beach area, the heart of which was on Broadway


and Columbus. The Beat Poets had found a home at City Lights bookstore in the 1950s, and cutting edge jazz was the order of the day. The jazz musicians themselves played (and often lived) in the Fillmore district, but North Beach had the best paying gigs. By the early 1960s, the happening music in North Beach was Latin jazz, where San Francisco was a critical outpost. While a very distant second to New York City, of course, San Francisco had played a surprisingly important role in Latin music, and a very important role in jazz as well. While the jazz scenes in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago (and probably Detroit) had more great players, San Francisco was a great incubator for new jazz talent. Throughout the 1950s,San Francisco had been a source of new entertainment for the country, with comedians, folk musicians, jazz and Latin musicians breaking out of the North Beach clubs.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, the early 1960s North Beach club scene came to be dominated by Topless dancers. The most prominent of these (haha) was Carol Doda, the first and for some time only Topless dancer to use silicon implants, who appeared nightly at The Condor. Soon almost all of North Beach had followed suit with topless revues of different types. By 1965, except for a few jazz clubs, almost all the North Beach establishments featured topless dancers.

Topless clubs were an evolution of the existing circuit of Burlesque clubs, which had existed on the West Coast but in


a sort of underground fashion for many years. In the 1960s, they came out into the mainstream as Topless clubs. While the attraction of a Topless club was women dancing with their tops off--just to be clear about it--they generally featured a floor show with some combination of musicians, comedians and costume to go with the dancers. Topless clubs were considerably less raunchy than today's Strip Clubs, although it was a somewhat more innocent time. By the 1960s, going to a Topless club was a racy thing for urban adults to do, like going to an R-Rated movie today (which did not in fact exist at that time), but still respectable.

When the Jefferson Airplane started The Matrix in 1965, some blocks away from North Beach, they were establishinga very different kind of entertainment than what was currently available (as I have discussed previously). By 1967, while Topless clubs still ruled North Beach, there were Topless clubs up and down the El Camino Real and San Pablo Avenue on both sides of the Bay, so suburbanites hardly needed to drive into the City for it. San Francisco is always looking for the next thing, and by 1967 what was happening was psychedelic rock. What had been an underground phenomenon in 1966 was wide out in the open by the next year, and the North Beach clubs immediately picked up on it.

The ad above is for a club at 807 Montgomery Street (one block from Columbus and two from Broadway) called The Roaring 20s. Their calling card


was a naked girl on a swing who, indeed, swung over the entire building. The club had briefly gone away from Topless in 1966, but had rapidly returned. From looking at the ad (in the May 6, 1967 San Francisco Chronicle) its clear that they have borrowed the iconography of the Fillmore posters, with the wobbly letters and the promise of a light show. Their house band at the time was a group called The New Salvation Army Banned, a Haight Street group who had been playing there almost every night since at least March.

On Sunday, May 14, The Roaring 20s had a special event, promoted in that day's Chronicle (above), The Artists And Models Bal Masque. The blurb helpfully points out that tickets will be available tothe public. Another listing says that the Jerry Hahn Trio (a jazz group) and Notes From The Underground (a Berkeley Folk-Rock group) would also be playing.

The New Salvation Army Banned eventually released two albums on ABC, under the name Salvation. For struggling rock bands, Topless clubs were fairly good gigs, if not exactly something to write home about. A band who wanted to work out on "Smokestack Lightning" with some modal jamming was free to do so as long as the drummer kept the beat going, and no one in North Beach cared if your hair was long or if you smoked pot (well, as long as you shared). In cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver (that I know of) many psychedelic rock acts got their


start keeping the beat behind topless dancers, and then cheerfully left that out of their resume when they got better known. I'm fairly certain that a band like NSAB, with a seven-nights-a-week gig, could skip out for a Fillmore gig when it was available, and show up later in the evening to finish out the night, so it didn't impede any progress.

Many tourists who came to San Francisco, whether from the suburbs or from out of town, were just looking for some fun, and probably merged the idea of Topless dancers and braless hippies anyway. A number of other North Beach clubs followed the lead of Roaring 20s. Most prominent in the Chronicle ads was a club called Goman's Gay 90s, which was run by an old showbizfamily who had run a Vaudeville-type review at the club for many years, although they had 2am weekend rock shows. In April 1967, they caved in and went modern.

Goman's Gay 60s invokes a whole series of images, all of which are in fact incorrect, since "Gay" as a metonymy for homosexuality was not in common usage (if at all). the club was purposely inverting the previous name, and borrowing the psychedelic motif with the light show. No doubt many light show operators got their starts at Topless joints like these as well, although the half-life of light shows was very brief. Goman's Gay 60s did not advertise bands, so whatever combos played there were probably pretty raw, but with musicians moving to San Francisco every day, it was


a paying gig. For the club, it gave visiting tourists a chance to get both of San Francisco's entertainment attractions with no cover charge.

Ironically, however, another effect of the Fillmore and Avalon was to reduce Broadway's role in the San Francisco entertainment spectrum. Up until the mid-1960s, entertainment in The City equaled Broadway, but afterwards it was spread all around downtown and the nearer neighborhoods. Broadway remains an important neighborhood for nightlife in San Francisco, but hardly the only one.

update: it appears that soon after the New Salvation Army Banned moved on from The Roaring 20s to greener pastures, their residency was taken up by a band called West Coast Natural Gas, newly arrived from Seattle. For a description of the experience, see here.

(807 Montgomery became the rockclub The Orphanage for awhile in the 1970s. Currently neither 807 Montgomery or 345 Broadway appear to feature entertainment venues)

Saturday, January 16, 2010

This paragraph from Perry Phillips's Night Sounds column in the August 13, 1965 Oakland Tribune may be the earliest listing of The Matrix in print--at the minimum it was one of the first. Phillips's column was a typical sort found in Daily newspapers at the time. On Tuesdays and Fridays, Phillips would survey the week's entertainment options, covering nightclubs, restaurants and special events. While the major focus was on Oakland and nearby towns, he also made some mention of goings on in San Francisco, Lake Tahoe and Reno. The coverage was generally positive and skewed heavily towards Tribune advertisers, but someone like Phillips clearly enjoyed going


there was a large amount of truth. The Matrix was founded by Marty Balin and his father Joe, and they intended the pizza-and-beer joint primarily as a place for Marty's new group The Jefferson Airplane to perform. As the first "long-hair" joint in San Francisco, it featured the San Francisco debuts and critical early performances of many great bands, like the Great Society, Quicksilver Messenger Service (under another name) and Big Brother and The Holding Company.

Although the rock market rapidly outgrew the Matrix, it was still a primary stop for new bands, and a hangout for established groups on weeknights. The list of performerances at The Matrix reads like a Who's Who of San Francisco rock bands of the time. While The Matrix was never the financial successthat Perry Phillips suggested, it was indeed "a place where something of value originates and develops," and its legendary status is assured. In the context of the page of advertisements where Perry Phillips column appeared so many years ago, I thought I would highlight some of the other establishments, to show how different the Matrix truly was at the time. All of these scans are from the same page as Phillips column in the August 13, 1965 Oakland Tribune.

Ann's New Mo, a club that has utterly mystified me for some time, was a few miles from downtown and seemed to feature Swing Dancing and Jazz. I cannot fathom what "New Mo" referred to, and the iconography only became stranger later in the 1960s.

The Ali Baba (at Grand and


Webster) and The Sands Ballroom (at 19th and Broadway, near what is now the BART Station) had persisted since the Swing Era. In fact, had any promoter been willing to put on rock shows at either venue, Bill Graham and Chet Helms would have had formidable competitors, but it was not to be. The Sands, at 1933 Broadway, had been known as McFadden's when Benny Goodman rolled into town in August 1935, and the club made his career.

Cal Silva's Hitchen Post, on the Northern edge of Oakland at San Pablo and 61st St (1850 San Pablo), had a sort of Western Swing motif (connected to his similar venue in Hayward), but at this time it featured Go Go dancers, apparently in bikinis. Performing were the rockin' Au GoGos. Although the place was probably a fun joint to go to, the iconography suggests a kind of rocked up Cowboy bar, with twanging Telecasters and a lot of honky tonk gals.

The It Club, much farther North on the other side of Berkeley in low-down El Cerrito (on San Pablo and Central Avenues, near the Bay), was presenting an "All Bosom Revue," with "Girls direct from the PLAYBOY CLUB in L.A." Song stylist David Thornton appears to have been providing the music.

If you were thinking of food, why not go to Zombie Village? "Lunches-Dinners, Cantonese and American Cuisine," per the ad. Mmm--Zombies! 6485 San Pablo was near San Pablo and Alcatraz, close to Emeryville and Aquatic Park (and the Hitchen Post). The place advertised in the Tribune for


years--no one has ever explained the appeal of a Chinese restaurant called "Zombie Village," but there are many things we don't understand about the 60s.

Ravazza's was an Italian restaurant that had been across from the old Oakland Oaks (Pacific Coast League) baseball park, at 41st and San Pablo in Emeryville. Alone among the advertisers listed here, it actually survived until the 1980s, and I actually ate there. It was mostly a pizza place by then, but it was like stepping into a time machine, with pictures of PCL players like Joe DiMaggio and Billy Martin on the walls, smiling in pictures from the very same tables (with the same decor) that you were sitting at. Ravazza's was torn down to provide a parking lot for the Card Clubacross the street (The Oaks Club, on the site of the old stadium), although the last three letters of its sign were used by Zza's Tratoria. Zza's opened in the mid-1980s, and it was a fine place--and no doubt still is--located at 552 Grand Avenue in Oakland (across from Lake Merritt), a final tenuous link to its predecessor.

This was the context of The Matrix, on August 13, 1965. To a Tribune reader, its competitors would have been The All Bosom Revue, a Cowboy Go Go joint, some old Swing Music, a Zombie Village, an ancient Italian restaurant across from a long-gone landmark. Knowing what we know now, the Matrix was far and away the best choice that week, a place where something of value would originate and develop.


Ironically enough, this was the only mention (to my knowledge) of The Matrix in the Tribune, as they did not advertise in the paper and were thus ignored in future columns, but Perry Phillips got it right the first time. Right across the bay, something of value was originating and developing, starting with the Jefferson Airplane and followed closely by the rest of the sixties.

Friday, January 8, 2010

The Cafe Au Go Go, at 152 Bleecker Street in New York City's Greenwich Village, was a critical venue for aspiring rock bands in the 1960s. Whatever the indisputable charms of the West Coast, the commercial and cultural capital of the United States has always been New York City, and bands had to make a good showing in New York ifSen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina introduced a resolution denouncing the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Congressional Republicans have so far lambasted the impeachment inquiry on process grounds, claiming it denies Trump "due process" and is mostly being conducted behind-closed-doors.

Trump has gone on the attack in defending himself from the ongoing inquiry.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina introduced a resolution denouncing the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. In a Thursday afternoon press briefing, Graham announced he had 41 Republican co-sponsors for his resolution.

He further called the current impeachment inquiry "very dangerous to the country," and recalled how during the impeachment process for former President Bill Clinton— in which Graham played a central role — the House held a vote to formally