City Desk » Mark Jenkins

City Paper Now Owned by Jan Hammer

Andrew Beaujon — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:04:10 +0000

You have to go back to 2006 to find City Paper's last mention of Jan Hammer, in Tricia Olszewski's review of Cocaine Cowboys. That follows a 10-year drought for Hammerheads since Mark Jenkins' review of A Modern Affair, in which Jenkins says "the fate that [director Vern] Oakley and writer Paul Zimmerman have devised for them is as corny as the film’s Jan Hammer score."

This coming week, though, City Paper corrects this historic wrong.

In his review of British saxophonist John Surman's new album, Brent Burton compares the album favorably with~~Mahavishnu Orchestra~~ the trio his guitarist, John Abercrombie, ~~played~~led in the early '70s. With Jack DeJohnette and...JAN HAMMER.

And Ben Westhoff reviews Savoir Adore's In the Wooded Forest, reaching the review's halfway point before offhandedly mentioning that Savoire Adore's Paul Hammer is son of Jan and RECORDED IN HIS HOUSE.

Area prog enthusiast Erik Wemple suggests Jeff Beck's "Darkness, Earth in Search of the Sun" as an entry point for Hammer newbies, but I think it's best to start with non-deep cuts: the Miami Vice theme (album version!) and, for funnies, this particularly ill-advised collaboration with Journey guitarist Neil Schon:

Why is Jan Hammer in a box wound with string? Jan Hammer should be free!

Our Morning Roundup: Leave the John Alone!

Mike Riggs — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:00:59 +0000

After learning that someone had posted the transcript from last weekend's prostitution sting on City Desk and the Sexist, I had to ask myself: What the fuck is our problem? Aren't we the alternative weekly in town? Aren't finger-wagging and gotcha blog items the purview of the nannying prudes at the Post and the Examiner, for chrissakes? Instead of defending this man's right to pay someone for sex--why stop at shoplifters?--we paraded him out on our blog and suggested that he was unqualified to do his duties as a police officer. A few days later, we posted a conversation that he had in a hotel room which he did not know was wired. Is it news? Sure. But where was the critical eye? Big bonuses, prison pralines, the PCP scourge, crooked Yelp, and Mark Jenkins, after the jump.

Jesse Finfrock of Mother Jones recently interviewed Robert King, who was released after 29 years in solitary confinement when a judge reversed his conviction in 2001. An excerpt: "In 1972, King was assigned to solitary confinement (for allegedly plotting to kill a guard—a murder that occurred before he arrived at Angola), where he would ultimately spend 29 years. Ensconced 23 hours a day in a 6-by-9-foot cell, King kept himself busy reading, writing, studying law—and experimenting with pralines. He fashioned a cook pot out of segments of soda cans stacked together like a chimney. For fuel, he wrapped lengths of toilet paper into tight rings, tucked the ends in on themselves, and lit them under his makeshift stove. All of this took place on the edge of his toilet; he could easily knock the whole contraption into the bowl to avoid being busted for contraband. For the most part, the guards looked the other way."
Jack Shafer calls out WaPo for sensationalizing a recent story about PCP: "Although PCP has long been part of the area's drugscape, the Post has rarely done more than accept police department and prosecutor handouts in reporting on the topic. For instance, if the police declare a "street value" for a quantity of seized PCP, the Post automatically publishes it."
Recent reports from Time Out Chicago and East Bay Express suggest that Yelp.com, a site that features user-generated reviews of businesses, punishes companies that refuse to advertise on the Yelp site by deleting or misplacing positive reviews: "'Nicholas Paul, an instructor at an art studio in Chicago (which did not want to be named for fear of retribution) and who handles the studio’s advertising, said that Yelp approached him to advertise starting in July of 2008. After he turned them down, ‘then all of a sudden three of our positives disappeared and then we got two negative ones,’ he said. Of the original thirteen reviews they had, only eight now remain, four of which are negative. Paul says the sales rep told him he could control that. ‘We could basically adjust the way our reviews are read,’ Paul said the rep told him. ‘We could highlight the ones we wanted and put the ones we didn’t want on the backburner.’”
AIG isn't the only company giving out big bonuses in the midst of a recession: "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) is making its largest ever annual award to employees, handing out roughly $2 billion to its rank and file U.S. workers through measures including bonuses, profit sharing and discounts. The financial incentives for hourly workers include $933.6 million in bonuses that the retailer is handing out Thursday. There is another $788.8 million in profit sharing and 401(k) contributions, and hundreds of millions of dollars in merchandise discounts and contributions to the employees' stock purchase plan, said Chief Executive Mike Duke in a memo to employees Thursday....The bonus averages $933.60 for each qualified employee, ranging from cashiers to shelf stockers."[H/t Katherine Mangu-Ward]
Mark Jenkins, the mastermind behind D.C.'s stuffed-bear installations, made it on NY's Wooster Collective blog.

That's it for me, folks. Have yourselves a nice weekend.

Jenkins Explains Bear Stunt to BoingBoing

Mark Athitakis — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:42:20 +0000

With the help of Greenpeace, D.C. artist Mark Jenkins recently scared the bejesus out of authorities by staging some bear sculptures around town. The foofaraw has since died down, but today he tells BoingBoing's David Pescovitz what he was up to. He doesn't say too much more than what was in Greenpeace's press release, but the post is worth a look for links to some of BB's past coverage of the artist. About a year ago Jenkins told City Paper he was reconsidering his public sculptures; apparently he's changed his mind.

Sculptor Mark Jenkins Abandons Bodies in Garbage Cans, Moves On to Global Warming

Jule Banville — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:24:31 +0000

This photo posted today by the Chicago Tribune's national legal correspondent James Oliphant---who had to come pick up his 3-year-old becuase of a bomb scare that turned out to be a fake homeless polar bear---looked oddly familiar. It's all confirmed, of course. Sculptor Mark Jenkins, whose realistic tape sculptures we wrote about last October, has moved on from random women who appear to be sitting on buildings to Greenpeace. Four Jenkins-created homeless polar bears have been installed in D.C. causing the requisite stirs. We know about the one in Columbia Heights. Where are the other three?

While you're thinking it over, check the reaction to Jenkins' earlier piece, from the CP video archives: