See My Gold Caddy. Touch My Walking Stick.

A couple of friends to pimp today:

When I was growing up, I was friends with a kid named Tom Shimura. We used to bike around the neighborhood and watch cartoons and do normal kid stuff. As we got a little older, we started buying 12" hip hop records and listening to them in my room. There was a radio station in neighboring El Cerrito at the high school that played all hip hop and we'd lie on my floor and call the show, requesting "Bite It" or "Veronica Veronica."

Flash forward a decade and a half. Tom Shimura has, for a while now, been at the forefront of Bay Area hip hop -- and I've been quietly watching from the sidelines. As half of Latryx, Lyrics Born (Tom) has created a laid-back, experimental, no-bitches-and-hos style that, along with his label, Quannum Projects, has helped to spurn a revolution in California hip hop, running parallel to, and hopefully soon to pass, the "Throw Your Guns In The Air" bullshit.

Tom has recently come out with a solo album that is quietly becoming one of the most heralded of the year. So if you like good hip hop, if you like Jurassic 5 and Outkast, if you like dancing or trying to figure out a complex rhyme scheme, wondering, "Goddamn, how does homeboy swing like a fucking saxaphone?", you must buy Later That Day, by Lyrics Born. Word.

Secondly,

My good friend Shana Carroll, daughter of columnist Jon, has been a trapezist with Cirque Du Soleil for about ten years. Recently, she and her new husband, along with 5 friends, have "graduated" from the Cirque and are striking out on their own, forming a new company, and they will soon be playing SAN FRANCISCO. They're called... Well, I'm just going to let her say it:

"As i think most of you know, i have spent the last fifteen years of my life doing this zany circus thing, cavorting around the globe and flying through the air and all that, and, as I think only some of you know, settled down a little less than two years ago in montreal and formed my very own circus company with a group of friends. we are very proud of it; it is the only one of its kind, a collective, seven founders who serve as performers and creators of the show as well as directors of the company, a multi-media melange of circus dance and theatre, intimate and quirky and sensuous and clever and human yet world class circus skills etc etc (i'm quoting from our press release here). ANYWAY, we will be making our U.S. premiere this december and are doing so in san francisco! i am thrilled to bring this brand new show to my (nearly) home town, especially since, in my career as a trapeze artist, i have not been able to perform in the bay area since my pickle days (13 years ago).

the company is called Les 7 Doigts de la Main, but in the states we will be going under the title the 7 Fingers. you can check out our web site. we are performing at the palace of fine arts from december 17th to january 3rd. tickets are on sale at cityboxoffice.com. excellent group rates available for groups of ten or more. the tickets are reasonably priced! no religious ambiguity or boring sugar plum scenes! equipped with DJ, bathtub, refrigerator, video projections, and lots of stuff off the ground and upside down!

so i invite you to come check us out and tell several hundred friends. this is the first letter of this kind i have ever written (cirque du soleil doesn't exactly need guerilla publicity), but i promise you it will be worth your ticket price, bridge toll and airfare combined."