The O Dot Co Stadium
19 Wednesday Sep 2012
19 Wednesday Sep 2012
18 Tuesday Sep 2012
Posted in North Oakland, vehicles
17 Monday Sep 2012
Posted in mural, North Oakland
16 Sunday Sep 2012
Posted in baseball, North Oakland
16 Sunday Sep 2012
Posted in baseball, North Oakland
15 Saturday Sep 2012
Posted in flora, North Oakland
10 Monday Sep 2012
09 Sunday Sep 2012
Posted in etiquette
If you are at the game, be at the game.
Here in San Francisco we’re struggling to win baseball games at home down the stretch and I’m convinced it’s because our fans, led by Comcast, are far too distracted by things that have nothing to do with the game – even while the game is being played!
We’re distracted and our team needs us to be focused.
This was never true at Candlestick, where it was cold, windy and miserable most of the time. You were there because you loved the Giants and watched every pitch.
If we want to win home games, fans have to focus on every pitch. It’s called watching the live action and all long-time fans do it. You chat between pitches, but when the pitcher sets, you do too and you turn to face the plate.
These days, because of the incredible number of distractions from the scoreboard and overtly non-baseball production of the media, I see fans bringing children under six or seven who have no interest in the game, who are there solely because a parent is making them be there.
These parents bring their kids as an entertainment for the children, which would be cool if they kept them abreast of what was happening, taught them to score the game and etc. But they don’t spend the requisite time making them watch, and indeed focus intently on, the action when it is live.
I saw two young girls facing each other in the seats in front of me talking to each other for an entire inning in the Lower Box. Their Dad was sitting beside them on his cel-phone the entire game, just chatting away and looking all around the park! They could’ve been beaned so easily by a foul ball.
I also see lots of tourists in our crowd – people here for our fabulous Indian Summer – it’s the high season after all. But these fans are hardly as loud or supportive as our own home-grown fans, which is why we have to lead them.
I watch Comcast spend more time following people goofing around or wearing funny hats or the Delorean hovercraft in McCovey Cove than the game itself; listen to Kruk and Kuip (normally solid baseball analysts) making inane social commentary about Gamer babes and Amy G pushing soccer Mom culture and I think all of this is creating social media fans not baseball fans and it’s definitely created the distracted attitude at the game.
ENOUGH. Fans have to get involved.
Two examples:
Mat Latos was on the mound for the Reds earlier this year and he was tearing us apart. It was the bottom of the third at AT&T Park, midweek, daygame. It felt like a morgue. As soon as Latos strode to the mound I yelled, loudly, “Hey Mat! Oh My God! You have a no-hitter going! … Woah! Don’t think about it man!”
It freaked out my whole section and some tittered nervously.
On the next pitch Angel Pagan singled to right.
This was calculated. Watch the action, see what would help, plan your comment, wait for a quiet moment and throw it out into the field of play.
Second example was against the Nats when Timmy faced the Phenom and Melky was suspended – crazy game. But we were within striking distance at the end when Pablo popped up to the infield and ran hard for first. The crowd above the first base line shouted and screamed and went nuts forcing the second baseman to drop the pop-up, an error that allowed Panda to get on. It was awesome. Fruitless, but awesome.
The guys need you. Get involved in every play. If you brought kids, teach them to do the same. Pay attention and root for our guys. They can hear you.
You need to pump Zeets up. You need to encourage Pence and Blanco to be more patient at the plate. You need to push the Dodgers into mistakes.
When you are at the park, BE AT THE PARK.
TOGETHER WE’RE GIANT.
09 Sunday Sep 2012
Tags
A.P. Ferrara, apf, Karthik, m.t., mtk, san francisco, zeitgeist
06 Thursday Sep 2012
Posted in North Oakland, photography, vehicles
03 Monday Sep 2012
Posted in games, North Oakland
03 Monday Sep 2012
Tags
2011, campaign, Karthik, m.t., m.t. karthik, progressive values, rajan, san francisco, videos
I added these to the Looks Tab and thought I’d just post them here as well for kicks. This was my project to inject progressive values into the SF Mayor’s Race.
31 Friday Aug 2012
Posted in S.F., social media
Tags
1000th, 1st, @mtksf, Board of Supervisors, Ed, Interim, Karthik, Lee, m.t., Mayor, mtk, san francisco, tax-break, tweet, Twitter
Recently I posted my 1000th Tweet:
“1000th Tweet: Twitter’s useful but cluttered. You have to tweet a lot to get good at it unless you’ve a weird knack. Reading others is best.”
As a critique thus far, I think those 140 characters do it. I won’t recommend Twitter, but I do find some value in it. I will continue to read and post there, which is a huge surprise to me given how I began:
A little less than a year and a half ago, amidst the San Francisco Mayor’s Race, but before Interim Mayor Ed Lee was allowed to run, SF Board of Supervisors Chair David Chiu (himself a Candidate for Mayor) led the Board and the Interim Mayor to The Great Twitter Giveaway of 2011, which ended the strictest controls on corporate investment in public space in the country: SF’s city tax on companies wanting to do business here.
They shattered our City’s progressive history functionally to create a tax-break to entice Twitter to make its base in San Francisco. That was when I started my first and only Twitter account @mtksf and posted my first tweet:
“Twitter doesn’t deserve the tax break on stock options. They stand to make tens of millions at IPO!”
I stand by that first tweet, there was no reason to give Twitter the taxbreak, which is being extended now to other social media and tech companies. They all want to be in SF.
The Board and Interim Mayor Lee failed to represent our city’s values and changed our city fundamentally.
Those Mayoral candidates used the tax-break to gain money and support for their campaigns from corporate interests, railroaded the Board and City into giving up millions of dollars that could have gone in the General Fund and, far worse, shat on long time businesses that have stayed in SF choosing to contribute to our bottom line when it would’ve been cheaper to leave.
I started using Twitter as a part of my Campaign for Mayor in an attempt to bring light to these and other issues I have with contemporary SF politicians – a wholly bought-out crew of pawns for special interests.
But I continue even now to use, read and post to Twitter, which has grown on me. I use it primarily to read others and to find important links sent by intellectuals, writers, news and sports reporters,actors, producers, comedians and athletes.
30 Thursday Aug 2012
Posted in North Oakland, photography, S.F.
28 Tuesday Aug 2012
19 Sunday Aug 2012
Posted in games, North Oakland, our son, underwater
19 Sunday Aug 2012
Posted in flora, North Oakland, photography
18 Saturday Aug 2012
Posted in flora, North Oakland, photography
17 Friday Aug 2012
Tags
1080, AT&T, August 15, cabrera, dc, drug, Francisco, giants, hd, Karthik, Lincecum, melky, milan, mlb, mtk, Nationals, omm, park, policy, San, sf, sfg, Stephen, Strasburg, suspended, testosterone, Tim, violation, washington
This past Wednesday was a crazy day at the park.
My son and I had been excited for weeks because we figured with both teams in the hunt for the pennant and young, premiere pitchers on the mound, it’d be a defensive battle. The Freak vs. The Phenom
Then SHOCK! – we find out at the ballpark moments before the game starts, that Melky Cabrera, who leads the Giants and the National League in hits and is second in batting average only to the Pirates’ Andrew McCutcheon, had been suspended for 50 games for violating MLB’s substance abuse policy.
Numb, speechlessness … and the game began:
12 Sunday Aug 2012
Posted in flora, North Oakland, photography
07 Tuesday Aug 2012
Posted in installations, S.F.
Tags
Bay, california, China Basin, deep, engineers, Karthik, mtk, pipes, san francisco, steel
We were on our way to the SF Giants game last week and saw these immense pilings going deep underwater and into the soil for impending building. This is the very beginning of the huge new public space planned for these unused piers – project approved last year by the Interim Mayor and Board.
Incredible to see the specificity with which these long pipes were being placed – two men on a raft floating near the top of the deeply placed piles, as a surveyor takes readings for their placement and an operator swings the long boom of the crane.
07 Tuesday Aug 2012
07 Tuesday Aug 2012
07 Tuesday Aug 2012
Posted in games, North Oakland, short film
04 Saturday Aug 2012
this is really gorgeous in 1080pHD – choose that option when playing
I’m one of the guys who has been rough on Barry Zito, culminating in my calling him “our own beloved, expensive, Prince of Inability, Barry Zito.” in a story about a game from the Championship Season, Eleven to Eleven in the Bottom of Eleventh [aka The Greatest Comeback in SF Giants History].
Worse, I was verbally and casually at the bar rather abusively mean to Barry Zito throughout the winter. I apologize. I was way out of line.
I feel bad now, because Zeets’ effort and focus (and wins) are back and I have no idea what it must be like to work in his field,I feel bad about it.
but anyway, one of those mean jibes I used to make was:
“Lou Seal works harder than Barry Zito – we ought to make him go out there and wear the Lou Seal costume for as much as we’re paying him …” (and worse) I mean, if he can’t do what we’re paying him to do!”
Ohhhhh snap. that was mean … and I didn’t mean it. I was frustrated and just wanted to defend our World Series Championship. Barry Zito, I am sorry. I really feel bad about that.
Then hilariously on Thursday before the game I had both of them in focus, by chance! This was August 2nd at AT&T Park before the Giants vs. Mets.
I mean the footage as an apology to Barry Zito and an appreciation of Lou Seal. Hector Sanchez, whom the program says the guys call Baby Panda, catches. Watch clip to very end and you’ll catch a glimpse of his eyes. His eyes are incredible. Check out Baby Panda’s eyes from the centerfield camera calling a game. It’s rad.
Unfortunately, just minutes later, Zeets had two outs in the first and all of a sudden lost it: a walk, a walk and a third batter hit by pitch! then a double and another double, spotting the Mets four runs in an exhausting 36-pitch top of the first. ugh.
03 Friday Aug 2012
Posted in conceptual art, journal entries, North Oakland, Uncategorized
Tags
Over the past 200 days, I’ve populated this blog with 200 posts.
Many are backdated – material collected over the past thirty years – but I’ve also posted three to five times a week in 2012, with mostly photographs of baseball games, flora, fauna and landscapes.
There’s a distinct and deliberate difference in the work of these last five years from the work before. In my 40’s, my work is decidedly less political, more image-oriented and produced with and for the plastic, digital fluidity of the inter-webbed world. This is by design.
I do not wish to be known as a political artist.
I promised myself decades ago I would work socially on political matters until I turned 40, when I hoped to turn the mantle of activism over to a younger generation. I have helped this happen and documented its occurrence.
When I was 15 I wrote that I’d make these changes to process when I turned 40, including the addition of filmmaking – which I waited decades to take seriously.
At 15, watching the first of the Macintosh computers come out, I also knew that new media would arise over the years. My generation was the very first to own a personal computer or send an e-mail.
I have tried to be judicious about studying and using tech. I do not play games.
Of new media, Youtube has been the most interesting to me. I started my first Youtube account at 40 and have several now which I use to embed videos to this site.
Continuing my methods over the past year, at 45, I joined Facebook and Twitter during seminal years for both companies. I observed closely as Twitter was given tax-breaks to move to San Francisco and FB created its massive IPO.
I’ve deactivated my account on FB and will not post there again.
I will continue to use Twitter in concert with this blog. I’ve come around on Twitter. I still decry the tax break created and approved by Ed Lee, David Chiu and the SF Board of Supervisors, but I am a Twitterer and will remain so.
The work until I turned 40 is represented here by posts of work I produced between 1981 and 2007. It’s detailed and requires time to sift through. I’ll continue over the years to add work from the past and to edit the contemporaneously written material describing work from my 20’s and 30’s.
I hope to leave behind a sound record of what I consider my work via this blog.
I dream of a reader willing to consider the continuity of thought here as a kind of single expression of a humanistic free radical living in the latter half of the 20th century and the dawn of the 21st. I am lonesome because of my work.
I like blogging and after some years of experimentation, I believe in WordPress as the best free way to do it.
Thanks to any visitors in advance; I love comments, likes and interactions. I am blessed that my site gets visits from many many different countries around the world. You are welcome here.
I remain, M.T. Karthik, author, artist, producer and director in pursuit of art, culture and change.
27 Friday Jul 2012
Posted in flora, North Oakland, photography, San Antonio
Tags
Berkeley, flower, Japan, Karthik, m.t., mtk, north oakland, passion, passionflower, rockridge, san antonio, texas
23 Monday Jul 2012
Posted in flora, San Antonio
Grown by Dr. B. Thyagarajan
In the flora tab there are other species of these in my neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area and opposite the Pacific in Kamakura, Japan, but this one in San Antonio, Texas seems to open only once, and at midday at that, and then closes and starts the fruiting – unique. Feedback welcomed.
20 Friday Jul 2012
Posted in fauna
20 Friday Jul 2012
Posted in fauna, San Antonio