Lee.org

Charlotte got me a Daisy Powerline 880s airgun that shoots BBs and pellets for my birthday. Wee!

Local copy of Powerline 880 Manual

I can now blow the heck out of any cardboard box within 200 yard radius! Those boxes don’t stand a chance!

I was throwing together dinner with stuff I had on hand, rice, some pignolia nuts and  spinach from the freezer. It needed something meaty but I didn’t have any meat in the freezer. I had lonza from Jessup  so I sliced some thin and chopped it so it looked like confetti. It was a culinary revelation! The salt, the texture against the rice, the chew! Wonderful!

In brief, 2 gun laws just passed, one specifically banning gun shows at a particular location by name, the Cow Palace just south of San Francisco. The other law makes it a big expensive hassle to sell handgun ammunition including “requir[ing] handgun ammunition vendors to obtain a thumbprint and other information from ammunition purchasers…” and “handgun ammunition may only occur in a face-to-face transaction, with the deliverer or transferor being provided bona fide evidence of identity of the purchaser or other transferee.” That makes handgun ammunition something of a controlled substance (but feel free to open up on your neighbors with a shotgun)

The governor can veto these laws up to 30 days after they passed. That’s October 9th or so. Please call the governor’s automated telephone voting system right now and request that he veto these laws. Here’s how:

FOR AB962 (Ban on Internet Ammo Sales) passed 9/11/09:
Step 1: Call 916-445-2841 (Governor)
Step 2: Press 1 for English
Step 3: Press 2 to comment on a bill
Step 4: Press 2 for AB962
Step 5: Press 2 for Oppose (VETO)

FOR SB585 (Ban on Cow Palace Gun Show) passed 9/9/09:
Step 1: Call 916-445-2841 (Governor)
Step 2: Press 1 for English
Step 3: Press 2 to comment on a bill
Step 4: Press 3 for SB585
Step 5: Press 2 for Oppose (VETO)

I’ve written 2 other posts about this:

• Letters to Governor Schwarzenegger about Gun Bills
• Gun Ownership Decreases Homicide Rates

This is fantastic. Teller (Penn &…) responded to a young Brian Brushwood’s letter with some excellent wisdom. Yes, I can tell you that Brian uses these bits of wisdom in his act every day. It’s really very simple.

You should read this on Brian’s site, but here is an archive of the discussion

From Brian (on Tuesday, Oct 17, 1995):

Date: Tuesday, Oct 17, 1995
From: “Brian Allen Brushwood”
Subject: Fury
To: “Teller”

All right. I have put it off long enough. I told myself I would wait to write you until I had something meaningful to say, but I have been sitting on your address (figuratively) for months now, and am fed up with waiting.
The fact is, Teller, I am furious at you.
Not for offending anyone, for being outrageous, or for being so inventive with your magic, but because you were there first. In Genii magazine, you make a brilliant point of explaining that regardless of the true origin of a trick, whoever is most famous performing it OWNS it (I believe you cited your new “ownership” the bullet catch). Unfortunately, I don’t believe you extended this idea far enough. This concept reaches all the way into the very attitudes and styles of performance. In short, because of Penn and Teller, I cannot be angry at magic, at least not on stage.
It seems to me, that just as you own the Bullet Catch, so do you own the ability to lash out at magic, to act as a vent for your audiences frustrations with the cruise-ship trickymen. Not to mention the use of blood and/or violence in a humorous way. Hell! You might even own the two-male duo! All this ownership has kept me from doing the kind of stage (and close-up, believe it or not) magic I want, for fear of being branded a copycat.
This summer, I attempted to tackle this problem by writing a couple of two male duo acts, trying my damnedest to keep the P&T out of my veins; it met with some success. One act, consisting of two comedy magic character peices (A drill instructor who performs the “coloring book”, A gibberish-speaking samurai who performs a card-trick that ends in Hara-kiri) won the Texas Association of Magicians Senior Comedy competition. However, I find it difficult to follow your advice of “letting hate, not love, be your driving force” (which is absolutely true) and at the same time keep from becoming a P&T wannabe.
If you could offer any advice on how you established your own character and style, I would greatly appreciate it.

Brian Allen Brushwood

Just writing the letter was cathartic… I mean after all, who was I to Teller? I would have been perfectly happy to get a five word courtesy response, but to my absolute astonishment, the next morning I found the following mind-blowing essay in my inbox:

Teller’s Response:

Date: Wed, 18 Oct 1995 3:40:27 -0500 (CDT)
From: “Teller”
Subject: Fury
To: “Brian Allen Brushwood”

My dear bastard son,

It is about time you wrote, my boy.

Now, calm down. Remind yourself of a few things.

I am 47. I have been earning my living in show business for twenty years. I have been doing magic since I was five, which makes it 42 years. And I had the good fortune to (a) meet Penn and (b) become an off-Broadway hit at the exact right moment in time.

When we started we HAD no style, no understanding of ourselves or what we were doing. We had feelings, vague ones, a sense of what we liked, maybe, but no unified point of view, not even a real way to express our partnership. We fought constantly and expected to break up every other week. But we did have a few things, things I think you might profit from knowing:

We loved what we did. More than anything. More than sex. Absolutely.

We always felt as if every show was the most important thing in the world, but knew if we bombed, we’d live.

We did not start as friends, but as people who respected and admired each other. Crucial, absolutely crucial for a partnership. As soon as we could afford it, we ceased sharing lodgings. Equally crucial.

We made a solemn vow not to take any job outside of show business. We
borrowed money from parents and friends, rather than take that lethal job waiting tables. This forced us to take any job offered to us. Anything. We once did a show in the middle of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia as part of a fashion show on a hot July night while all around our stage, a race-riot was fully underway. That’s how serious we were about our vow.

Get on stage. A lot. Try stuff. Make your best stab and keep stabbing. If it’s there in your heart, it will eventually find its way out. Or you will give up and have a prudent, contented life doing something else.

Penn sees things differently from the way I do. But I really feel as if the things we create together are not things we devised, but things we discovered, as if, in some sense, they were always there in us, waiting to be revealed, like the figure of Mercury waiting in a rough lump of marble.

Have heroes outside of magic. Mine are Hitchcock, Poe, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Bach. You’re welcome to borrow them, but you must learn to love them yourself for your own reasons. Then they’ll push you in the right direction.

Here’s a compositional secret. It’s so obvious and simple, you’ll say to yourself, “This man is bullshitting me.” I am not. This is one of the most fundamental things in all theatrical movie composition and yet magicians know nothing of it. Ready?

Surprise me.

That’s it. Place 2 and 2 right in front of my nose, but make me think I’m seeing 5. Then reveal the truth, 4!, and surprise me.

Now, don’t underestimate me, like the rest of the magicians of the world. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that I’ve never seen a set of linking rings before and I’ll be oh-so-stunned because you can “link” them. Bullshit.

Here’s how surprise works. While holding my attention, you withold basic plot information. Feed it to me little by little. Make me try and figure out what’s going on. Tease me in one direction. Throw in a false ending. Then turn it around and flip me over.

I do the old Needle trick. I get a guy up on stage, who examines the needles. I swallow them. He searches my mouth. They’re gone. I dismiss him and he leaves the stage. The audience thinks the trick is over. Then I take out the thread. “Haha! Floss!” they exclaim. I eat the floss. Then the wise ones start saying, “Not floss, thread. Thread. Needles. Needles and thread. Ohmygod he’s going to thread the need…” And by that time they’re out and sparkling in the sunshine.

Read Rouald Dahl. Watch the old Alfred Hitchcock episodes. Surprise. Withold information. Make them say, “What the hell’s he up to? Where’s this going to go?” and don’t give them a clue where it’s going. And when it finally gets there, let it land. An ending.

It took me eight years (are you listening?) EIGHT YEARS to come up with a way of delivering the Miser’s Dream that had surprises and and ENDING.

Love something besides magic, in the arts. Get inspired by a particular poet, film-maker, sculptor, composer. You will never be the first Brian Allen Brushwood of magic if you want to be Penn & Teller. But if you want to be, say, the Salvador Dali of magic, we’ll THERE’S an opening.

I should be a film editor. I’m a magician. And if I’m good, it’s because I should be a film editor. Bach should have written opera or plays. But instead, he worked in eighteenth-century counterpoint. That’s why his counterpoints have so much more point than other contrapuntalists. They have passion and plot. Shakespeare, on the other hand, should have been a musician, writing counterpoint. That’s why his plays stand out from the others through their plot and music.

I’m tired now. I’ve been writing to you, my dear bastard son, for 45 minutes merely because, tonight, I’m remembering that evening I first met your mother in Rio, during Carnival…ah!…and how we loved!

paternally,

TELLER

Without a doubt, reading these words set me on the path to where I am today. For anyone wanting to make a living doing something artistic, I hope his words are as helpful to you as they were to me.

Thanks again, Teller.

A friend, let’s call her Sally, commented on my Facebook post of 9-27-09. I didn’t have enough room to respond properly there so here we go. Sally writes “Statistically, countries that allow people to have guns have more gun violence and deaths than countries that don’t allow people to have guns.”

I disagree and have a lot of data to back up my assertion. Let’s discuss.

If you’ll allow me, let’s change that supposition to “I believe there is a strong correlation between a country’s gun ownership restriction policies and it’s homicide rate.”

I was trying to change your wording from “countries with more guns have more gun violence” to “countries with more guns have more violence in general” because, well, that’s what’s important, isn’t it? And by changing that wording, we are avoiding an easy trap, of course places with more guns will have more gun violence, but knives, clubs and rocks can kill you just the same. Sally, does that work for you?

Sally, if that works for you then we can’t use the two sites you quoted (1)(local archive), (2)(local archive) since they talk about “gun deaths” and not “homicides”. I welcome you to re-google some articles. Here’s an appropriate one  (local archive). (you’ll notice that the US is at the top of the “Firearms Death Rate” chart but way down in the middle of the “Intentional Homicide Rate” chart)

————————————————–

Let’s start with some statistics in America. How about we compare gun ownership levels in individual states with their homicide rates?

Gun Ownership rates can be found here  (local archive) and gun death rates can be found here  (local archive: choose “firearm” and select output group “state”)

Simply put those two together in a graph and note that there is somewhere between no correlation and a NEGATIVE correlation between gun ownership and violence in the United States! Here’s  an article  (local archive (sorry, the original source wasn’t available when I went to grab this archive)) on the subject. (there are many more, google for them) and some graphs on the subject 1, 2, 3  (sorry, I didn’t grab local archives of these before they went offline).

————————————————–

Ok, that was the warmup. Let’s try some European country statistics. I borrow this table from a Harvard University paper “WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE? : A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AND SOME DOMESTIC EVIDENCE DON B. KATES AND GARY MAUSER” (local archive). The paper is very well researched with lots of footnotes quoting many very reliable sources.

Nation		Murder Rate Rate of Gun Ownership
Russia		20.54 [2002] 4,000
Luxembourg	9.01 [2002] c. 0
Hungary		2.22 [2003] 2,000
Finland		1.98 [2004] 39,000
Sweden		1.87 [2001] 24,000
Poland		1.79 [2003] 1,500
France		1.65 [2003] 30,000
Denmark		1.21 [2003] 19,000
Greece		1.12 [2003] 11,000
Switzerland	0.99 [2003] 16,000
Germany		0.93 [2003] 30,000
Norway		0.81 [2001] 36,000
Austria		0.80 [2002] 17,000

“Hey wait!” you say, “If I squint at that data, it looks like there is a NEGATIVE correlation between gun ownership and the murder rate.” Yup. Read on.

The same pattern appears when comparisons of violence to gun ownership are made within nations. Indeed, “data on firearms ownership by constabulary area in England,” like data from the United States, show “a negative correlation,”

and…

A second misconception about the relationship between firearms
and violence attributes Europe’s generally low homicide rates to stringent gun control. That attribution cannot be accurate since murder in Europe was at an all‐time low before the gun controls were introduced.

and…

two recent studies are pertinent. In 2004, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released its evaluation from a review of 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some original empirical research. It failed to identify any gun control that had reduced violent crime, suicide, or gun accidents.15 The same conclusion was reached in 2003 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s review of thenextant studies

Again, this paper uses extensive footnotes. Don’t take their word for it, take the word of the more than 100 experts in the field they quote which include folks like the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, and fricking everybody. Read it for yourself and follow the footnotes.

————————————————–
Sally, you also wrote, “No one really needs an AK47 for example. I also don’t think the 2nd amendment meant for individuals to bear arms”

This is simple. Answer two questions for me.

• What is the general purpose of a militia? (to fight a war)
• Who is expected to supply the armaments in a militia, the government or the individual members? Since the express purpose of the Bill of Rights as stated in its preamble is to prevent the abuse of the powers of the government, the answer must be “the individual members”.

So, lets say that you are a militia member. Would you want to own a crappy gun or a good gun? Let’s take that one unnerving step further and say you are a government who’s people you want to abuse. Would you want militias to have crappy guns or good guns?

Sally says, “And the beautiful thing about this country, even though sometimes we all complain about it, is that we can all disagree. :)”

And if you want to keep your right to disagree as stated in the First Amendment, I suggest you support all the others with all your strength! Please support the second  amendment  by calling Governor Schwarzenegger today!

Mon 9-21 – Dinner with Charlotte in Alameda, Air Gun obtainment!

Tues 9-22 – Adventure dinner out to Glen Park, getting picnic supplies at Canyon Market, discovering  Eggettes, having a picnic on our living room floor, seeing lit candles outside our door and happy birthday song from Cindy!

Wed 9-23 – Dorkbot with Mark Pauline, getting beer for Schuyler at Dorkbot and telling someone “Yeah, Schuyler’s younger than he loo.. oops”, then drinks with Erik at Tempest!

Thurs 9-24 Noisebridge with Schuyler, discovering the  capacitive  properties of old keyboards

Fri 9-25 Brad Paisley and Dierks Bentley concert at Shoreline Amphitheater with Charlotte, Rick and 40,000 screaming hot chicks.

Sat 9-26 Greek Food Festival! Greek Food Coma!! Very fun Kinky Salon as John Bender! Dare I say that much of the evening was quite wholesome!

Sun 9-27 Rest! I DIDN’T go to the Hand Car Regatta, the Folsom Street Fair (I feel I should go at least ONCE in my life, oh well), or the Greek Food Festival (I was still in butter shock from yesterday!   But I did go to Noisebridge for a while to hack on some SWARMie stuff and some nice guy’s Arduino project.

A beautiful soothing amazing video of the aquairum
(view it in HD and full screen!)

local version:

Last night was good.

Dorkbot seeing lots of friends, drinking with Schuyler, Erik & Nate.
Good times!

Mark Pauline spoke about this fast scary spike thing be was working on in terms that I greatly apreciate. I met up with Schuyler, Erik, David Calkins, Simone, Emma Danger, Ken Murphy, Ani, Jesse, many others that their names I  perpetually  forget. We were “all” there.

Smoking is allowed at the Tempest bar. The owner/bartender is the only employee. That’s the loophole… he doesn’t have to subject any employees to smoke, so it’s allowed.

Two stupid gun bills recently passed in California. I urge you to call governor Schwarzenegger via  the automated voicemail system at the bottom of this post to suggest he veto this bill.

Read more about the  Ammo Ban (AB962) and the Gunshow Ban (SB585)

To find the full text of these two California bills, go to Legalinfo.ca.gov/billinfo.html and search for “ab 962” or “sb 585”. Yes, it’s written in boring legalese but you should read it!

I took the time to read the bills and yes, they really are bad legislation. I faxed the governor the letter below.

Governor Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: 916-558-3160
September 22, 2009

Governor Schwarzenegger,

Please do not allow AB962 or SB585 to pass.

First, SB585. Why the heck would a law be written specifically to deny lawful trade at a specific location? Criminals don’t buy firearms at the Cow Palace. Law abiding citizens buy and sell legal products, fully keeping with appropriate law. Do you remember Proposition H which tried to ban handguns in San Francisco? Even the San Francisco police took a strong stand against this proposition! It was a great bother and waste of resources to force the California Supreme Court to nullify that proposition.

AB962. Its goal is to make it more expensive and more of a pain in the ass for legitimate gun owners to buy and sell ammunition. Why? There is no problem in America with legal gun owners or their ammunition. Criminals don’t buy their guns at gun stores.

Guns are dangerous, it’s true. And they will always be “problematic” but these two laws do not help anyone. They might make law makers feel better, but they won’t protect anyone from gun violence.

Thank you for your time,
Lee Sonko

I urge YOU, yes you reading this right now to spend 5 minutes and call the governor right now.

(Call any time of the day or night. You’re calling a machine)

FOR AB962 (Ban on Internet Ammo Sales) passed 9/11/09:
Step 1: Call 916-445-2841 (Governor)
Step 2: Press 1 for English
Step 3: Press 2 to comment on a bill
Step 4: Press 2 for AB962
Step 5: Press 2 for Oppose (VETO)
Step 6: Make your voice heard- repeat as often as possible!!

FOR SB585 (Ban on Cow Palace Gun Show) passed 9/9/09:
Step 1: Call 916-445-2841 (Governor)
Step 2: Press 1 for English
Step 3: Press 2 to comment on a bill
Step 4: Press 3 for SB585
Step 5: Press 2 for Oppose (VETO)
Step 6: Make your voice heard- repeat as often as possible!!

Last night Charlotte took me out to get my birthday present, a BB Gun!

When I was a kid, my neighbor Anthony Bancala (spelling?) had a BB gun that he’d shoot occationally in his back yard. Actually, I can only remember seeing him shoot once. But that’s enough to implant it in my psyche.

And I remember shooting a pellet gun at a cub scout camp once. I really liked having to focus in. Apparently none of the other kids shot as well; my dad showed real astonishment at how accurately I shot.

Now I have a BB gun and nowhere to shoot it in the city. Who wants to go shooting?

————————————————–
Charlotte took me to dinner last night at Linguini’s in Alameda. It was a really terrific meal, partially because their Frutti De Mare was terrific and partially because she was there.

————————————————–
Before dinner and before the BB gun, we took the Alameda Oakland ferry from the Ferry Building. Wow, it’s like paying $5 to go on a floating dream that actually takes you someplace. I feel like I dozed in some Maxfield Parish painting for maybe an hour or possibly a year. Nice.

————————————————–
My niece called me today on my birthday.

Julia: Hi, where are you? (she always wants to play with me on the computer, I VNC to her computer)
Lee: More important than where am I is what today is…
Julia: Oh yeah, today is your birthday.
Lee: [excited] yeah!
Julia: Dont be too happy. You know Rhino, my hampster? He died… today… on your birthday.

I guess that puts things in perspective!