SiliconAlleys

Previous Metro cover stories

I’ve done several others, but here are some of the best ones.

Mind Over Metal, a rocking story where I infiltrate a psychic spoonbending party. James Randi himself makes an appearance.

Bidet, Mate Hysterical cover story about $5000 Japanese toilets with bidets built in.

Tour the Obscure. My anti-travel guide to the back alleys and urban decay of San Jose. I’m actually ON the cover this time.

Art on the Edge, The first and definitive story about the ZeroOne Global Festival of Art on the Edge in San Jose. Ignore the copycats.

Silicon Valley’s chapter of the Slow Food movment. The first cover story for Metro I ever did. Decadence as politics.

Rudy Rucker. The cyberpunk science fiction pioneer and yours truly tour the streets of San Jose and Los Gatos, exploring the locales in his novels, and using Conway’s Game of Life to ridicule San Jose’s redevelopment strategy for downtown.

South Bay Riot. An oral history of San Jose skate punk in the early 1980s.

Earth to San Jose How a group of diehard soccer fans saved the San Jose Earthquakes soccer franchise for one more season.

Hit Man Yakking with local author Barry Eisler about his thriller series that is now taking over the world.

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San Jose’s favorite daughter

About a year ago, Adrienne Barbeau came back to San Jose to fill in for George Romero at a horror convention. I just had to ask her about Del Mar High School, since that’s where she went. Well, it turns out that a copy of the 1963 yearbook exists in the California Room at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. I’m going to go rent Swamp Thing immediately.

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Oops, never mind!

They caved. They finally caved.

Or did they?

Today, mayor Chuck Reed and Councilmember Madison Nguyen caved in to the protestors and released a memo saying that they want this Little Saigon mess on the ballot in November. So now everyone in San Jose will get to vote on whether a stretch of Story Road should be renamed Little Saigon instead of Saigon Business District. And they now want to reallocate the funds that were to be used for the Saigon Business District signage and use that money to help pay for this ballot measure.

Now, is this really caving in to the pressure, or is it just a sly political move in order to make sure the two of them are finally seen as “democratic?” In either case, this is a dangerous move that could seriously backfire right in their face. A good portion of San Joseans, right or wrong, are just plain sick of this whole issue. What next? 30 years from now, when thousands of Iraqis takeover Willow Glen and insist on renaming it Little Fallujah, should the city pay for an election to vote on it?

Anyway, the fact that it’s come this far proves the whole thing is political theater of the absurd in its purest form. It more than screams for absurdist quotes, so here we go. These quotes perfectly describe the entire situation. Feel free to leave your own quotes.

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
–Oscar Wilde

In order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd.
–Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.
–Eleanor Roosevelt

My turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then.
–Lord Byron

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Bad Planning, No Donut

This was my travel tale about Auzerais Avenue, one of San Jose’s oldest streets. I got phone calls and letters from the widest cross section of the social spectrum on this one.

Bad Planning, No Donut

A STRIP OF ROAD that adequately represents a microcosm of all things San Jose is the entire length of Auzerais Avenue, from the Children’s Discovery Museum straight over to Meridian. My local travelogue began right there on Auzerais underneath Highway 87, just a stone’s throw west of the light rail tracks at the Discovery Museum. I eagerly inspected the fenced-off construction area and all its wonders: Piles of unused steel girders, pallets of wooden planks, heaps of gravel, knocked-over stacks of cones, discarded pieces of rebar, a lone pickup truck and one portable bathroom. What a sight, and the chain-link fence was erected by Thompson & Thompson Fence Company in San Lorenzo. I don’t know who the Thompsons are, but I like ‘em already. Read the rest of this entry »

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Hail Trapezoid

For this one, I used Anton La Vey’s Law of the Trapezoid and applied it to the suburban wasteland of Stevens Creek Blvd & Kiely in San Jose. In all the writing classes, they always tell you to “write what you know”…

Hail Trapezoid

DESPITE the maneuverings of developers to slaughter everything original in this town, there still exist local occult centers of primal activity that continue to radiate their hidden powers. So for this week’s sermon, allow me to proselytize about yet one more: A hallowed area that I will now christen as “The Saratoga/Kiely/Stevens Creek Trapezoid.” Strip mall aficionados have always worshipped the seven deadly sins that emanate from this locale.

You see, even a casual glance at a road map shows that the area bounded by Saratoga Avenue, Stevens Creek Boulevard, Kiely Boulevard and Northlake Drive forms a trapezoid, and those schooled in the occult arts and sciences know that trapezoidal symbology pops up in many hidden philosophies. We’ll get back to that in a second. But for now we shall begin by summoning the occult powers of the legendary San Jose establishments that inhabit this trapezoid. Read the rest of this entry »

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Too Far Gong

A while back, former San Jose mayor Ron Gonzales was indicted for several things and although he was later completely exonerated, the initial city council meeting was straight out of the Gong Show. That’s what I wrote.

Too Far Gong

LAST WEEK, media everywhere reported on the “historic” San Jose City Council meeting where most of the council emotionally asked Mayor Ron Gonzales to throw in the towel. Following Gonzo’s recent indictment on several charges including bribery and conspiracy, the councilmembers unleashed a last-minute agenda to thrash out the details of what they should do in case he doesn’t resign. More than the usual amount of television cameras, reporters and security guards filled City Hall for this “special meeting.” Every possible emotion—joy, sorrow and disgust—was thrown right in your face. Read the rest of this entry »

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Political Theater of the Absurd

A column from 11/28/2007 to kick off this category. In my humble opionion, the only good thing written about the Little Saigon debate. I laughed out loud while writing this.

Political Theater Of the Absurd

THIS WEEK, an acid rain shower of absurdities for y’all. The Anti-Man-About-Town (AMAT) infiltrated San Jose City Hall once again last Tuesday to witness the spectacle surrounding the council’s decision to rename part of Story Road “Saigon Business District.”

Usually AMAT has no difficulty entering City Hall and overseeing the circus, no matter what issues are being thrashed out, what bones of contention lay on the table or who isn’t allowed to wear roller skates. For example, if William Garbett is at the podium addressing the council, I can usually weave and bob my way through the snoring audience and find a seat to collapse into.

But not this time. Read the rest of this entry »

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Belated birthday advertisements for myself

Many a raconteur besides myself can claim January 31st as a birthday, and I definitely have some pretty good company, including Norman Mailer, Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols and Carol Channing.

In 2005 I wrote a column on Mailer which received a few wonderful hate letters from folks who just didn’t get the humor. If I had it over again, I could have written it much, much better, but hey, the spirit was definitely there.

My obituary of Mailer just last year was also quite a hoot. There really is something to this birthday concept. I don’t condone everything he did in life, but you’ll just have to read it. The quote from Gore Vidal at the end frighteningly sounds like he’s describing yours truly. Ugh.

January 31st also happens to be National Gorilla Suit Day, which was started by Mad Magazine’s Don Martin decades ago.

May both Mailer and Martin rest in peace. Their memories will always be with me.

–Gary

Posted in Self-aggrandizement as performance art | 11 Comments »

Madison Avenue

A recent column to kick off this category.

THE CIRCUS that is the Little Saigon debate isn’t going away, and people are still congregating in front of City Hall every Tuesday to protest San Jose City Councilmember Madison Nguyen because she and others voted to rename a part of Story Road “Saigon Business District” instead of “Little Saigon.”

Since the entire scenario is bordering on surreal, I have to suggest a solution that will satisfy everyone: just rename the street Madison Avenue.

We’re talking about the stretch of Story Road that runs from Highway 101 all the way to Senter Road, which is a grand esplanade if ever there was one, and since this area has a baffling tradition of naming streets after politicians who are still alive, it shouldn’t be a problem.

But in order to reassure myself that such a progressive idea makes sense, I conjured up the urban blight exploration junkie once again and walked the entire length of the area in question, beginning at Story and Via Ferrari, which is just west of 101. Read the rest of this entry »

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