San Celebrities Jam

You sort of expect it but you are still surprised at how many famous people stop by San Francisco (if they do not already live here). Since I arrived in mid-August I know of politicians Ralph Nader (see the previous post), Sarah Palin and Arnold Schwarzenegger being in town.

The Governator used to be an actor and there are others of those as well. Indeed, Sean Pean and fellow liberals love to hang out in the city, and in November a new movie about Harvey Milk (see also post from August 29th) will open starring – you guessed it – Sean Penn as Harvey Milk.

But what there is most of in this city the size of Copenhagen is – thankfully – top quality music artists. Since I arrived the has been concerts by Radiohead, Ben Harper, Ziggy Marley, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Sigur Rós and probably others that I have missed. And soon The Killers are playing, too.

Tonight, however, I had the profound pleasure of attending the best jazz concert of my life: Dave Brubeck Quartet in Davies Symphony Hall. See a little of it here:

They were there for the San Francisco Jazz Festival and played for two and a half hours. This is truly amazing with front man Dave Brubeck being 87 and the quartet having an average age of around 70. Besides the Brubeck superhit “Take Five”, the concert had the best piano solo, the best bass solo and the best drum solo of any concert I have attended.

Not the best seats - but the best concert

It was brilliant, just beautiful, I lack adjectives in this language. My father should have been here, he would have loved it. Also, the music was extremely diverse and entertaining. And even though old Brubeck had to use sax player Bobby Militello as a cane when he left the stage (as you can see in the video above), he was a real showman, throwing anectodes about life on the road and playing in the mud every now and then.

The hall

Jazz – you gotta love jazz!

Looking forward to my next celebrity meeting…

This is not democracy

As Ralph Nader stopped by last week, I was reminded of the hugely injust electoral system in the US.

Democracy is Greek and means the people rules. In most countries this is brought about by a government governing for the people and elected by a majority of the people. But not in America. Or at least it does not have to be – a person can win the presidency without winning the popular vote, as it happened in 2000 when Al Gore got 500.000 more votes than George Bush and Bush, alas, became president.

This is because of the electoral system in America which is a ‘winner takes all’ for each state. Because of this it is also close to impossible for other parties to gain any kind of influence. There are other parties though – like Ralph Nader‘s Peace and Freedom Party which visited San Francisco State University on Thursday.

When you use an old computer box for a poster your campaign is far from wealthy.

Nader was in a bad mood, speaking in a low and hopeless voice in the beginning, then raising a roar as he awoke his own anger against the system.

- People have the votes but the politicians don’t obey them. They obey corporations. That’s not democracy! he said to several hundred people gathered in the university’s McKenna Theatre adding that this was obvious in all parts of politics from health care over war to the bail out and the presidential debate.

- The debate was steril and ridiculous. It was won by state terrorism, big business and military budget, he said.

As you can gather from the quotes, Nader is a leftie with his major issues being to double the minimum wage, tax the rich, end nuclear power and discrimination, abolish the death penalty, make education and health care free, legalize marijuana, protect the environment and develop public transportation.

With all this one would think that he would be more angry with the GOP’s than the Democrats but that did not seem to be the case Thursday. On the contrary:

- Obama is a snivelling coward who will walk over anybody just to be the president – including his own people, Nader almost yelled out in the theatre.

Nader was not happy

Whether this is because Nader is envious of Obama might actually becoming president or he feels that the Dems have betrayed their voters is hard to say – probably a bit of both. The Dems do not like Nader either. Back in 2000 he was accused of costing Al Gore the presidency by attracting liberal votes which could have won the election for the Democrats (as it were, the difference between Gore and Bush in the deciding state of Florida was only 537 votes and Nader’s party got 97,421 votes in Florida so Nader’s votes really could have won it for Gore). Nader argued that Gore could have just done a better job.

Viewed with European eyes the whole thing is a farce. Had it been in Denmark, Al Gore would have won the election and Ralph Nader would have been represented in parlament with seats according to the 2.7% who voted for his party.

The crowd agreed loudly when Nader urged them to "vote for the person you really agree with - not just the lesser of two evils!"

Still, there are some advantages to the American way in America. Many states, like California, are either red or blue to an extent that discourages any competetion. This saves millions in campaigning and leaves the candidates free to concentrate on the deciding toss-up states.

The injustices easily outweigh the advantages though and if the American people were offered the choice a large majority would most likely vote for deciding elections by the popular vote. Well, they probably will not be for many years to come.