Quotable DM

[Greg]

Action Choreographer....

[Drunk Monk]

Yeahhhhh

When are they going to let me do a sword fight?

I actually choreographed Marko with the Wind Fire wheels on Man at Arms. It was a nice little sequence and I was honored that he asked for my help. He got injured in that but only after the director asked for an improv cut at the end in addition to my sequence. That was uncredited tho and it was 'reality' tv so no SAG card.

[Greg]

So close. SAG card would mean union dues.

[Drunk Monk]

So close. SAG card would mean union dues.

Oh right. 

Lotta poor man got to walk the line just to pay his union dues

I don't know now, I just don't know if I'm going back again

[Greg]

Then I got Mary pregnant
And man, that was all she wrote
And for my nineteenth birthday
I got a union card and a wedding coat

[King Bob]

There's power in a factory, power in the land
Power in the hand of the worker
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand
There is power in a union

Moving from Springsteen to Billy Bragg

[Drunk Monk]

Slightly OT

Behind the scenes with JahMed, the medical group providing on-site care at Cali Roots.

• Jesse Herwitz
   
  
• May 26, 2022
  

JahMed, the team providing first aid and medical assistance at Cali Roots, originated at another reggae festival and is staffed by volunteers who are also a part of this festival family.
c/o LEE LEER

[b]W[/b][b]HAT YOU MIGHT NOT THINK ABOUT AS YOU HEAD TO THIS YEAR’S CALI ROOTS FESTIVAL IS YOUR SAFETY.[/b] Who will have your back if something goes wrong? If you get dehydrated? If you get an injury or have a migraine? Or worse? The good news is that you will be in great hands. Lots of great hands. With a cadre of volunteer medical professionals who share a similar love of the music and atmosphere of Cali Roots, you will be treated by doctors and nurses who, as JahMed founder David Moss suggests, are “doing what they love to do: helping people.”
JahMed is a Humboldt County-based nonprofit that began in the mid-1990s, after Moss took on the task of handling the medical treatment at the annual Reggae on the River festival. Prior to that, the medical tents and care had been provided by the George Graham nonprofit group Rock Medicine which, in the early 1970s, innovated the idea of “free, non-judgmental care.” Moss, who had been a volunteer for Rock Med, quickly assembled a group of doctors, medical care professionals, and volunteers and went to work.
“At that point we didn’t have a name. We called ourselves ‘Dread Med’ because we had lots of doctors with dreads,” recalls Moss, who has led the nonprofit organization since 1996.
Since then, JahMed – or JMed, as the group later came to be known – has provided on-site medical care at concerts and festivals in Central and Northern California, including this year’s Cali Roots.
“It’s a small family in the realm of festivals, especially in Northern California,” notes Moss, who has worked with producer Dan Sheehan for all the preceding Cali Roots festivals. “JahMed provides top-notch medical care with rapid response. Without an organization like ours, the local hospitals and urgent care sites become inundated. We can treat as many as 300 people over a weekend.”
Some of the more memorable moments in JahMed’s 20-plus-year history include treating women in labor and an instance of people chaining themselves to generators claiming aliens were coming to take them away.
“We’ve seen all types of things,” Moss says.
In addition to the medically loaded tent that serves as their base of operations, JahMed hosts self-care stations that supply band-aids, aspirin, earplugs and sunscreen, as well as more than 100 volunteers including medical doctors, EMTs, and non-medical experts.
“Effectively anyone with a radio (including security guards) can call us in,” Moss adds. The average response time for medical assistance is under two minutes. Each of those with a radio also has direct access to EMS and, if need be, can contact 911.
There’s also a non-medical safety component to what JahMed does – the group has a special team of experts trained to deal with any situations that might turn violent. And they have some qualifications you might not expect – “they are (literal) Kung-Fu experts who specialize in soft takedowns,” says Moss, who stresses safety at large events is critical.
Safety measures also come from behind the scenes. Cali Roots is joining the trend of many large festivals and restricting bags to small and clear. “In light of the shooting that occurred in 2019 at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, and all the other recent shootings at events, we have decided it is now time to take further measures to ensure the safety of everyone participating in Cali Roots,” organizers write in the policy.
Of the 100 JahMed volunteers, a core group of team members, including Lee Leer – Moss’ own doctor in Humboldt County, later business partner and, according to Moss, one of the reasons the nonprofit exists today – will work 24/7 over the three-day festival. This will be JahMed’s first large music festival since the pandemic began. All volunteers are required to be vaccinated and boosted. Their protocols are aligned with CDC recommendations.
As an equal contribution to the treatments JahMed provides concert-goers, Moss also sees what his group does as a unique opportunity for the doctors and nurses who volunteer their time.
“The red tape is intense,” says Moss, referring to medical insurance practices doctors encounter in their day-to-day jobs. “And on some levels, this is the way medicine is supposed to be. When people need help, we help. All our doctors and nurses don’t look at it as work. This is a very cool thing.”

I know, I know, it's not me speaking, but the '(literal) kung-fu experts' well, you know where that comes from. Plus I'm in the photo, which is actually from SNWMF. Look at the dark figure towards the right of the photo, in the El Rey hat, near the back row. Yup, that's me.

[Drunk Monk]

Been way too long since I posted here...

https://berkeleyalembic.substack.com/p/t...weird-side

Lou Reed knew that. He said, “Change your energy; change your mind. You have more power than you know.” If a bunch of Berkeley “Dick-Heads” can consult PKD for guidance, then it’s not so weird that, across the Bay, sixty NPR addicts filled KALW’s downtown San Francisco pop-up for a panel and martial arts lesson inspired by Reed’s Tai Chi practice on January 25. Laurie Anderson and Bob Currie, editors of The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi by Lou Reed appeared via Zoom. Gene Ching, publisher of Kung Fu – Tai Chi magazine and self-described “psychedelic ranger” was there in person, alongside moderators Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, hosts of The Kitchen Sisters. A dancer fully clad in denim with a hot pink baseball cap, scarf, and KN95 mask spent the entire event skanking in the window outside the former copy shop, occasionally getting honks of support from the drive-time traffic. If this is what a doom loop looks like, I’m all about it.

For the record, I did not self describe as a 'psychedelic ranger'. I probably said 'hippie wrangler' which is what some Vegas production friends dubbed me at Life is Beautiful, and I always thought that was ... beautiful. 

The author did say 'doom loop' and just like he said, I'm all about that too.

[Drunk Monk]

Seabright resident Gene Ching was eagerly awaiting the clock to strike one so he could put his official cook-off tasting kit to good use. Ching said that the secret to an excellent chowder is in its “clamminess.”
“Sometimes there will be too much cream or too much salt that just overpowers the clams,” said Ching. “It’s really all about the clams. The chowder should accentuate the clams and not overpower them.”
Loren Alander, head chef of the West Sacramento Moose Lodge team, does not use bacon in their chowder for the vegetarians in the crowd. Like Ching, Alander said he felt that the secret to a good chowder is in the clams.

It's all about that clamminess.

https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2024/0...-cook-off/

[Greg]

Wait a second! The secret to a good clam chowder is......clams? Does anyone else know of this?

[Drunk Monk]

It's surprising how many don't know. 

One of the chowders I tasted failed the clamminess test. They weren't clammy enough. Unclammy.

[thatguy]

--tg

[Drunk Monk]

Note that I dropped some plugs for Stro & Victory. You can compensate my astute product placement with whiskey, cheese, or oysters.

[Greg]

I love you. I don't think I have an hour and sixteen for your shenanigans.

[Drunk Monk]

Wait… what? I thought you never liked me. Stop sending me these mixed messages. I’m so confuzzled. 

The Stro/Victory plug comes up early, like before the half hour mark, I think. There’s a section index but I disnt note what section it was in.