brandon williamscraig

Slasher movies are bad children's fiction compared to this. Real horror. Worse because it is funny. Even worse because you know the movie will have a Disney ending. Comedians who can act are our greatest treasure. Had to put this somewhere so I can more easily remember one of the most perfect scenes in American cinema history.

The football, fans, participating in the wave without changing expression or pace, ...

Labels: Americanism, cinema, depression, divorce, video

| posted by Unknown @ 6/02/2009 10:14:00 AM

It is ALL about the Land Fish. Yum!

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Tip/Wag - Monkey on the Lam

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Labels: humor, video

| posted by Unknown @ 1/18/2009 08:50:00 PM

http://www.betweenframes.com/dollface.htm

Labels: animation, diss, industrial, mechanism, postmodern, video

| posted by Unknown @ 12/30/2008 10:51:00 AM

SmartMeme goes video

Prop8 - the musical response, finally

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Aikido getting some exposure

end

Labels: Aikido, comedy, homosexuality, meme, politics, video

| posted by Unknown @ 12/04/2008 06:01:00 PM

For my Mom, of whom this reminds me not at all.
A video from http://www.hulu.com/watch/36608/talkshow-with-spike-feresten-cable-psa

Labels: technology, video

| posted by Unknown @ 10/15/2008 04:12:00 PM

Makes you think.

Labels: politics, video

| posted by Unknown @ 10/14/2008 12:30:00 PM

If I ever figure out something to say about this, once I rise again from the floor and manage to catch my breath and get medical help, I'll post it here.

For now, I'll just say...wow, Dude.

And now a bit of remedial, back to sanity reporting from my favorite non-corpopate news source - toddlers.

and for Meghan and Lisa (Montessori reference) ...

Labels: video

| posted by Unknown @ 3/31/2008 09:12:00 AM

I miss my people!
Lovely snow. Most excellent Nephew.

Labels: family, kin, video

| posted by Unknown @ 12/25/2007 01:44:00 PM

Selections on religion.

Christianity as a "Way". Marcus (not "The") Borg. Then Huston Smith. Then Borg again on the Bible. Then Krishnamurti.

end

Labels: Christianity, spiritualigion, theology, video

| posted by Unknown @ 12/17/2007 07:33:00 PM

Beyond amazing.

I was fortunate to hear Rubalcaba and then Herbie Hancock live at the SF Jazz Festival.
For a recording please check out my live tracks player (not podcasts but further down) in the menu to the right.

Labels: daily, jazz, music, video

| posted by Unknown @ 11/10/2007 11:59:00 PM

Two years ago today, Sept 23rd, 2005 Aidan was born.
I miss him more than I can quite grasp, much less express.
Whenever I put more media here I'll simply move this post to the top of the cue.

Labels: Aidan, video

| posted by Unknown @ 9/24/2007 05:33:00 PM

The Big Easy

Every time I've been to and through New Orleans I've had to keep my hand on my wallet, extend and harden the outer boundary of my personal-space, and simply deal with the incredible crush of stereotypical tourists. Certainly due in part to post-Katrina realities, Bourbon Street was marvelously relaxed of a Sunday afternoon. We walked around a bit, had a bite to eat, and enjoyed the Quarter in repose, but didn't feel the infamous Big Easy musky sweetness until we escaped the stretch of pervasive porn purveyors and were drawn in to listen to some fabulous guitar trio blues (ala Stevie Ray) delivered on a venerable and ornately tarnished metaphorical platter by Mark Penton and the Pentones (an excellent sax player showed up and sat in) at the Funky Pirate bar. Besides the bartender, our only companions in the virtually sacramental blues extravaganza were a very drunk, very social, and marvelously Queer middle-aged man and his very straight but loving Great Nephew, who were in town for a funeral. The Uncle and Lisa danced a bit, fun was had by all, and I shall remember them fondly as part of the experience.

Afterward we returned to my classmate Victoria Hippard's lovely Uptown home just off Magazine. She lives in the high-ground "Footprint" and her house didn't sustain any storm damage. It is, as I suspected, a lovely place and very cozy, mirroring the graciousness of our hostess. Her son Daniel is in a performance of Red Sneaks by Liz Swados at the moment and loves to "Pump" (dance creatively guided by a video/scoring machine). His mostly Asian and Latino dancing buddies have given him the competition moniker "The Great White Hope" (aka Great White or GWH). Check out his YouTube appearance below.

I write this between work on my dissertation sitting in the Rue De La Course Coffee House on Magazine (free wi-fi) while Lisa and Victoria have gone to Wholefoods nearby. Tomorrow we head for Florida and a visit with Lisa's Dad.

Labels: daily, recommendation, travel, video, walkabout

| posted by Unknown @ 7/23/2007 09:02:00 AM

Peaceful Dilemmas

My earlier post dwelt mostly on the politically motivated demagoguery during the Women's Peace Conference that put me in mind of the contemporary devaluing of authentic criticism. This post attempts to range more widely and tell more of my experience of the event as a whole.

The event began with a ritual in which dozens of women (and men) carried a flag from each of the entities with U.N. recognized sovereignty and led the group antiphonally intoning "May Peace prevail in _______" for each. My mother represented the Maldives and was a bit mortified at not knowing how the country's name is pronounced. Everyone followed her lead loyally, however, wishing that Peace might prevail in Mald~..*_s. Despite the conspicuous absence of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, the whole thing was rather moving.

Dr. Nia MacKay buslted about being a most effective Director of Communications for the Conference, and took care of everyone in grand style. At one point I had the pleasure of saving the day for an Israeli delegate named Hagit who had not brought her laptop and could therefore not show her presentation. I overheard an advocate for her telling the story of her dilemma and finally offered to provide my laptop for the length of her presentation. Later she came by and graciously thanked me, after which we entered a conversation about the Conference and it's worth, during which she insisted on teaching me that there is no need for teachers. This oft repeated lesson is almost always appreciated.

Dr. Patricia Dodd from Brookhaven Community College found herself hanging out at the CRS table and blowing off steam on the first day. She had submitted a paper for consideration to present and had been sandbagged, she believes, because it made no bones about the ethnic cleansing in progress in Palestine. The Conference organizers decided in advance that they would exclude and discourage talk about the war against the people of Iraq and the current activities of Israel. This they couched in terms of being "non-partisan" which, of course, makes her irate, as she spend time in the middle east on a semi-regular basis and feels pretty alone among folks who talk about peace and then stay home.

After Betty Williams expressed her ire (see previous post) several women in the power structure stomped around as though they had received a personal affront. I suggest that nobody involved is stupid. A significant quantity of the middle aged, white, wealthy women at the helm (it is Dallas after all, and that is how moderately "progressive" things most often get done) are more and less aware of strategy and tactics, and more and less identified as activists. They knew, as they chose to be "non-partisan" and quash certain voices that every laureate would speak against the atrocities the U.S. is committing under the banner of the agenda abbreviated as "BUSH." Betty Williams was followed by Jody Williams who beat that drum as well, not till the skin was peeling back but sufficiently to let everyone know where she stands. I don't agree with where they drew their line but I'm certain it was consciously scribed.

One of the highlights in my experience of the conference was my interview with Sharon Welch, who outlined several of the more vital points of my dissertation during her keynote. If you'd like to hear it click "POSTS" on the Gcast player on the right and chose "In the Midst with Integrity"
Here is a list of authors mentioned:
The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace by John Paul Lederach
The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (Indigenous Americas) by Thomas King
Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance by Gerald Vizenor

Also my mother introduced me to Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, from the South African Peace and Reconciliation process. Lovely woman with whom I'd love to speak more about her take on the psychologies of conflict currently in vogue.

Peace laureate and candidate for the Presidency of Guatemala, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, was a pleasure to hear, if done a profound disservice by mistranslation during her keynote.

Local guitarist, Christopher McGuire, presented an amazingly virtuosic classical guitar concert, in beautiful counterpoint with the next evening's performance by Sara Hickman who has always been a favorite of mine. In the "Blast From The Past" category, I ran into two regional theater actors from my past at the Dallas Theater Center, including Pam Hoffman who directed Tall Texas Tales and was one of my children's theater instructors even before that adolescent success.

Finally, it was my pleasure to speak with and videotape Lucy Mashua. A Kenyan who "has worked for African women throughout her life on the issues of female genital mutilation, early childhood marriage, forced abortions, human rights abuses, and the abuse of women...has worked with the International Somalia Rehabilitation Association and is a member of the United Nations Association Dallas. I will post the video to YouTube and here as well so she can use it to appeal for greater attention for her work and the women and men she wants to reach. I'll bring this post back to the top of the blog when that happens.

This post took some time to complete and is out of chronological order as a result. After the time it needs to be the lead post I will return it to it's original place in the vicinity of 7/17/07

Labels: acting, activism, audio, conference, CRS, Dallas, peace, video, walkabout

| posted by Unknown @ 7/22/2007 10:25:00 PM

Still Life, or,
this must still be life.

Again, I'm not sure what to make of this. It may drag on, as there are many voices to be heard.

For the seventeen years I have been training, since the current California Aikido Association was called the Aikido Association of Northern California, the third degree black belt (sandan) is the last level of advancement for which a test is required. I took that test exactly four years ago and, though I thought I did a sub-par job, was congratulated and promoted. People offer sublime and less deserving demonstrations from time to time, get promoted regardless, and training moves on unhindered by the vagaries of human potential and realization.

There are the same number of years of training required between tests as corresponds to the advanced belt level. For fourth degree black belt (yondan) the student is expected to train over 800 days over four years. When you are ready your 6th degree black belt instructor, in my case Kayla Feder Sensei, recommends you for promotion, you give a demonstration, and begin training for your godan, or fifth degree black belt. There are a wide range of skill levels in all advancement processes but, as no one is asked to test before they are ready, any outcome but congratulations is an extreme rarity. Of late Japan seems to be desiring more than the minimum duration to pass before promotions and some others are also receiving promotion but having to wait for it to go through Hombu Dojo. Usually no big deal.

Many moons ago Kayla Sensei asked me to begin preparing in earnest for my demo and let all the powers that be know our dojo would be appearing en masse at this years group training (Gasshuku) which traditionally happens in San Diego on Memorial Day Weekend. I began preparing, making lists of techniques, writing my essay, recruiting partners, etc.

Then Aidan died.
Then we chose to leave everything and wander and go see family and finish the dissertation and...

Sensei asked if I still intended to demonstrate. I decided to forge ahead and, in addition, restructured the demo at Sensei's very wise request. I had certainly made it too complex and rehearsal intensive and she wanted our most dynamic lower ranked folks with beautiful ukemi (taking falls) to participate more centrally. I scheduled days of demo training and a week of living at the dojo and training with Sensei to prepare before driving to San Diego. When Sensei accepted a wonderful invitation to go to New York with her mother for precisely that week I agreed to teach every class and act as sensei in her absence. One of our good friends checked herself in to emergency psychiatric care and I visited her every day before we left as she was prevented from attempting suicide by a 27x7 guard. At the same time Lisa and I were completely moving out of our home of almost a decade, into three storage areas, I was preparing the final modifications to Serenity (our van) and Lisa lead the charge to completely re-paint our new apartment so it can be sublet.

WE all live in a yellow submarine. Get ready to come as your favorite provocative Beatles song to our "dig our digs" party in the Fall.

Moving was a crazy-busy and extremely stress and tearful couple of weeks. I am ashamed to admit I made Lisa and Iris wait through HOURS of my agonizing over which books to take and how to store them in the van. As always we had lots of wonderful help from friends, family, and community without which we could not have survived.

When Sensei returned we who had been hard at work in her absence performed the demo for all to see and received enthusiastic approval. The next day Lisa and I drove southward, not to return until Fall, and spent over twelve hours the second day alone sitting in Memorial Day Weekend traffic trying to get to San Diego. Pat Sensei spoke eloquently about there being no "right" Aikido but many entirely valid paths in this Way. If it works, it works - no matter what it looks like outside. Three of Bernice Sensei's students took beautiful, solid, more or less identical sandan tests.

On Saturday May 26th, 2007, Larry Bardach and I both skipped a class I would very much rather have enjoyed in order to nap and be ready for our respective yondan demos. After lunch I gave what by most accounts was a wonderful demo. It wasn't as good at it had been in Berkeley but, against common practice, I actually felt pretty satisfied. I had successfully avoided breaking or burying anybody, illustrated advanced technique with an appropriate level of subtlety, and Aikido of the required level was had by all.

The board didn't seem to think so and chose not to accept Kayla Sensei's recommendation for my promotion. apparently they wanted to see the more exaggerated extension and visible hip movement and spacious pauses associated with Iwama Style, rather than the more advanced movement I had presented. After over an hour and a half of closed door deliberations they promoted every other candidate that day, asked me to do it again next year, and closed the issue. Profoundly conflicted, Kayla Sensei presented the board's decision to me as I sat before them, and through later tears realized she had missed the moment to insist on the outcome she preferred and new was Right. Courageously she returned, insisted on reconvening the group during the evening party, watched the footage of the demo, and the decision has upheld. It became clear to her that many of the group continued to cling to and labor under persistent misunderstandings that she agreed with the decision. There were many tears of remorse and anger. Needless to say, the deshi who had all come in support from Aikido of Berkeley did not party as we had intended that night. I haven't actually seen the video footage yet. When I do I'll probably YouTube it and post it on my blog. I'll decide that later, I guess.

A few things that would need to be said if this system were not a traditional hierarchy designed to consolidate power and privilege:

During a particularly hard time in her life, Pat Sensei decided all kinds of things about me many years ago which led her to praise excessively my two years of service as her apprentice and then banish me from Aikido of San Leandro and state that "the universe requires it". I returned twice thereafter to investigate her state of mind and attempt to return to training and was rejected. Inexplicably, she began treating me like a long lost friend a few years after. During these more recent proceedings in San Diego she suggested that she thought I was near a psychotic break. After hearing the various fantasies circling me I realized how truly I don't want to carry these particular heavy projections for this group and these people any more. I also realized they don't strike me to the heart as did Pat Sensei's cutting me off from my family at Aikido of San Leandro. Their behavior is so bizarre that interest in what is going on under the surface at first easily trumped personal affront and feelings of injury. To the unanimously furious assembly of those who sought me out to offer congratulations I recommended the adoption of a martially neutral, wait-and-see position and enjoyment of training unless they knew something I didn't and could think of a way everyone could get what was needed.

I decided not to return the following morning and to consider if returning next year was of interest when it presented itself. Rankless training groups (including the Guardians of Peace idea) seem very attractive at the moment, but these kind of dynamics simply come up in different guises. People do ridiculous things to each other and cause great quantities of needless suffering. The question is how to create systems that expect and deal well with that. There are times for just smashing what doesn't work but, in the end, what's the point? I guess I've just never seen that come out well after the Revolution. I resolved to include it in my dissertation and went to bed.

I began to reflect as I awoke on Sunday morning. I knew when I began following Kayla Sensei that we would add to each others' burdens of being a bit marginalized due to insufficiently resembling narrow ideas of what "Iwama Style" means. We freely exhibit variations of flowing movement, light humor and joy while training (as written by O'Sensei), and depth of relational and community process which is regularly and traditionally discouraged in the ranks not having attained the heights in our division. I also reflected on the various ways to interact with a closed hierarchy and considered more direct forms of activism like the petition already begun by our apprentices and the sheaves of resignation letters already offered unsolicited by over a dozen deshi. Finally I reflected on what opportunities I would want if I were on that board and had participated in an injustice, and resolved to be the deshi I would respect most. Also because there was Aikido to be had with teachers I love to throw and be thrown by, after all, and that can hardly ever be a thing to miss, I went back.

On our final morning together I brought my best energy, methodically trained with each member of the board, released as much expectation as possible that anything would change, and informally reviewed the demo on the open mat between classes, emphasizing basic movement, extension, and solid stillness between techniques, silently making abundantly clear to everyone in the dojo that the qualities the board had missed were consistently in play as they have been throughout my black belt years. They are, after all, the reasons Kayla Sensei has me teach every Beginners' Class at Aikido of Berkeley as well as every Wednesday morning and every other Saturday. The morning training was a pleasure, I wore all the skin off the top of my toes, Louis Sensei called me up to take ukemi and mentioned later how strong I seem to him. Pat Sensei squinted and asked how I was. Bernice Sensei suggested I extend my fingers more so I left off being super-careful with her and gave her fragile frame another 10% after which she allowed "I knew you have it in you - we just didn't see it yesterday." All in all, as everyone grabbed and threw me around, tried and failed to resist me or disturb my balance, etc. it was extremely weird. And, of course, nothing changed.

Power systems can be so pathetic. I'm glad no more was at stake than the good feeling of everyone in our dojo toward the organization, income during our travels (a 4th dan makes more for demos and workshops than a 3rd dan), the integrity of a leadership who occasionally lay claim to being process-savvy, and the relationships of everybody involved. Under other circumstances the consequences of singling someone out who is struggling to recover from major tragedy and a huge project and transition to make an example of them for not conforming utterly could have been risky.

As is usual at public events, members of Aikido of Berkeley received various deshi from other places saying the equivalent of "with no disrespect intended to our teacher, we'd love to come train with you guys."

Then we left.

I am a bizarre and confusing mix of anger (blends into existential/targetless grief-anger) and sarcasm, as you no doubt have noticed, and exhausted, and proud to have been promoted to Yondan by Kayla Sensei, and determined to write a ton, and whelmed by the prospect before me, and powerless, and powerful, and good grief....

What do you do with a wealth of experiences all in one time frame which give the lie to the idea of Justice, cause a great deal of pain, and about which you can effectively do nothing? I'm getting to the point of just not wanting to talk about these things as they pile up, so I get uncharacteristically close to clamming up and hoping for the next hit to be a bit farther away.

Today I am in Oxnard writing with a professional research and writing coach. Tomorrow I will be too. I'm exhausted and demoralized and looking forward to some glimmer at the end of this pervasive dark I am hoping is at least as structured as a tunnel, even if the light is an oncoming train.

This scrap of prose is in the vein of what I am learning from Karen Koepp as we go through two days of intensive dissertation writing. Just write it down. Do something with it no matter what you feel like at the moment. Edit later.

Back to pounding away at the keys and then to bed.
The latter is that flat, rectangular, puffy thing without the To-do list.

Labels: Aikido, CAA, conflict, daily, injustice, video

| posted by Unknown @ 5/28/2007 08:35:00 PM

In this video Guardians of Peace from Aikido of Berkeley, Kayla Feder Sensei and Brandon WilliamsCraig join with and Eric Winters to demonstrate fluid responses to physical attack during the Aiki Expo 2002 in front of an international audience of professional martial artists.

Labels: audio, bdwc, demo, video

| posted by Unknown @ 2/01/2002 08:36:00 AM