I’m in the Charlotte airport on the way to london. I have a few hours here. I’m going to a cousin’s wedding. I won’t be bloggong a lot. (hopefully).
I saw low and pedro the lion last night at great american music hall. good show. low was interesting. lots more distortion and stuff, keeping with their new album.
I got 2 hours of sleep last night. I didn’t remeber to bring the british money my dad gave me and I don’t have cuff links for my french cuff tux shirt.
Yesterday, while out running errands, Andyl and I were at BevMo just across from El Mercadito Latino in Redwood City. I decided to go in to see if they stock Coke in glass bottles made with sugar (instead of corn syrup). They do. I bought 6 @$1.19. I now have 3 left.
It’s so good. I like the glass bottle. I like the way it feels in my hand— the cold glass with condensation. I like the way it feels on my lips. I like the way it tastes; it’s crisper and less syrupy. I like how it reminds me of cokes I had in bottles in South Africa (and, to a lesser extent, Germany and Tanzania among other places).
An article about Mexican Coke vs. American Coke.
Other things that I like in glass bottles or with sugar instead of corn syrup:
yes, to answer your questions, I am apparently a total hippie.
some things people are scared of and have been exploited in recent politics:
I saw the premier of the american adaptation of the Office the other day. Quite good. I’ll have to check out the rest of the episodes.
Dis jaggoff on sa’urday night live jus did a picksburg accent n’ at! Dat is sumpin dat I nevr thought I’d see. Right der in one of dem sketches! Did yunz guys see dat?
Problem was, he was drinkin a bud, not an arn, and hes sez steeelers not stillers. But he did talk plenny bout Cowhr.
[Update: Check ‘is aht. An article in da Picksburg Post Garzette jus ’bout dat sketch!]
Last Friday, the 18th, I saw Paddy Keenan at the Plough and Stars in the City.
Here’s a nice bio/ interview of Paddy if you want to know more about him. He’s an uilleann piper, and one of the best. The guy who introduced him at the Plough and Stars called him the best piper that ever lived. I don’t know. Seamus Ennis was really good.
Uilleann pipes are the irish sorts of bagpipes. Much more social and less loud/ militaristic than the scottish sort. And more difficult to play. Wikipedia will tell you more about the uillean (pronounced ill’ ee-an or ill’ an) pipes.
The Plough and Stars is a great place to see irish music. Lots of Irish there and not a lot of the stupid people who go to see the Chieftans and start clapping at the slightest sign of a reel.
Paddy was there with Tommy O’Sullivan, his touring partner and guitarist. Tommy did a few songs but the bulk of the night was focused on Paddy.
Paddy is just amazing. He has such tremendous technical skill on the pipes. He can start a reel out fast and then speed up even for the last time through. He can do all this while playing the regulators as well. He can also improvise in a tasteful manner and play the low whistle like a champ.
Paddy had a few guests on for a couple songs. There was a guy playing lap steel (dobro), which was more interesting than good and a guy playing bodhran, which was nice to hear.
I got a practice set of uilleann pipes a few years back. I should break those out and see if I can do something with them. It’s a gorgeous sound.
I am just downright sexy!
I have one of my dad’s old navy blue V-neck sweaters, a light blue t-shirt peaking out in the V and at the waist. Khaki cords and some blue leather adidas kickers round it off. I feel like just looking in the mirror all day.
Watch out, world, here I come!
The title is me singing along to a Rachel’s song.
Because I’m on the radio, as I type this!
rock n roll.
I have been thinking about this for a while and I got reminded by Gwen Stefani’s appearance on Letterman backed by a marching band.
For those of you who don’t know, I did marching band for four years. I sort of hated it, but I was also damn good at it. I like indie rock. I have for years. Put those together, and boom! You got a promising concept here.
[Here’s a decent primer on marching bands if you’re unfamiliar with stuff.]
This is my idea: approximately a 30 piece ensemble, definitely a bass drum or two, and a snare or two. probably snare-mounted high hats. Maybe a quad or a quint. Definitely a glockenspiel. It’d probably be brass heavy. A couple trumpets and trombones. A tuba holding down the bassline would be cool. A sax or two. Flutes and clarinets could probably be skipped. Eh, maybe a clarinet or two would be cool.
All common instrumentation thus far. It’d be cool to have guitar with one of those wireless do-dads. A bass might also be cool, but if the tuba/ sousaphone can do it, that’d be better. Other things that could have pickups and a wireless do-dad: ukulele, banjo, 80s-style guitar pianos.
Singing: I think there’d have to be a lead singer, but also plenty of chorus/ backup parts by the people on the field. Thinking about this for the past few days, it might be cool to have the singer be the conductor on the platform out front. My most recent thought would be that there wouldn’t be a conductor (phasing shouldn’t be a problem with a <30 person band) and everyone would do formations. (I did mention that, right? that everyone would do formations. Probably not super complex ones, but it wouldn’t be one of those band that just walks on the field, plays and walks off. There’d be no pit.) The time could be led from within; this would make speeding up easier, I think. So maybe the guitarist is singing and playing and marching with everyone else. The problem with that is that people like looking at the singer/ lead man while the thing is going on. hmm.
Uniforms: there’d have to be uniforms. I don’t think just t-shirts and jeans, but also not normal marching band uniforms. maybe jump suits? there’d have to be some hat, too. Marching bands have hats.
Songs selection and styles: indie rock. I think a lot of it would be post-rock. It’d be important to do mostly original songs, but some covers would be alright. Imagine a nice build going on the field while they are all stationary, then the drums come in and the mass of people start coming toward you and changing formations and stuff. I think it’d be pretty sweet.
Excuses for not doing this right now: it’d take a lot of time to start up and there aren’t people in the area that are that interested in indie rock bands. I think if I lived in an area with a higher concentration of people of my interests, it’d be easier. Like Cambridge, MA.
I spent the weekend in Death Valley with Dylan, Andyl, and Dale. We’d heard that there was the best wildflower bloom in many years, some saying 50. When Andy originally suggested Death Valley, I thought it was about four hours away. Turns out that it’s about ten, maybe nine if you don’t stop for any breaks. California is quite large and there aren’t any direct routes there.
How do you fit twenty hours of driving and wildflower viewing and sleeping in a weekend? Well the last thing gets knocked a bit. We ended up leaving at 4:45am on Saturday; I’d gone to see Paddy Keenan on Friday night (to be blogged about later) and had ended up going to bed at about 1:30 and waking up at about 3:45 in the am.
We got to the park after stopping for breakfast and at the jerky guy previously mentioned on this here website at about 2pm or there abouts. We stopped in Stovepipe Wells, trying to figure out if we should camp there or go on–we didn’t get an answer from the rangers whether Sunset was already full so we decided to go on. We ended up finding a spot in the Sunset overflow tent campsite, which is basically a gravel parking lot. A flat parking lot with a nice view, but if you’re going, bring a mattress pad. Andy and Dale regretted they didn’t.
After registering for and claiming our tent site and setting up the tent, we headed off to some dunes that we’d driven by on the way from Stovepipe Wells to Sunset. Dylan has a bunch of photos online of our adventures climbing the dunes. We ended up making it to the top of a maybe 100 foot dune. It was quite a nice view over many dunes and into the mountains. We saw a muted sunset from up there and then made our way back to the car.
My big plan as soon as I saw the hills behind the Sunset campground was to get some PBR and go up into the hills a bit after dinner. Turns out the general store at Stovepipe Wells didn’t have any PBR, so we got giant cans of Foster’s.
Who could predict what would happen when we got into the hills and started in on the beers? I can. I will tell you what happened.
We invented a new sport. Competative rock stacking. The rules will be goverened by the IFRS (International Federation of Rock Stacking). The short of it: you must stack reasonably sized rocks as many high (serially, no parallel stacking) as you can. Dale won a tight contested match against Dylan 12 to 11 with a questionable rock 1.
We ended up going to sleep pretty early and waking up around 6:30. After breaking camp, we did a quick hike at Natural Bridge and a stop at Badwater Basin (lowest point in the US!) we hit the motherload. There are a couple areas between Badwater Basin and Salsbury Pass that are just spectacular, especially near the mill ruins and one right near Salsbury Pass. Fields entirely yellow, like velvet from afar.
I’ll develop my films in the next couple weeks and get them online.
just before the 190 on 395, there is a man named gus who advertises really good beef jerky for 75 miles before.
his claims stand up.
the apparently best wild flower bloom in 50 years in death valley is on now and I’m about 50 miles from it. I’ll be back in the bay area sunday night
I know I’ve been swimming enough when my lower back and back of my thighs are tanned. I checked out my backside in the mirror at the pool yesterday and sure enough: a light tan, but there’s a distinguishable lighter area where my swim suit sits.
I’ve been keeping up three times a week since early January. My old standard used to be five times a week but I hurt my elbow last year and decided in order to recover, I ought not to swim two days in a row. I’ve been swimming with a brace on that elbow.
It’s aching at the end of swims. This isn’t something new. That’s part of the reason I don’t swim on consecutive days. The other day I got some muscle aching in my right arm. That’s encouraging; I take it to mean that the muscle is the weakest link, not the ligament at the elbow.
Some people can run for days or bike up all the hills in the world. I can swim. I was never the fastest, but I could swim farther than you in four hours, especially if you’re Maggie. (ha!)
But, yeah, I’m swimming again. It’s nice. The water is so comfortable for me.
[note one: all of Stanford’s pools are outside and heated. Yes, we swim in them even during the “winter.”]
[note two: I mention maggie because she challenged me to a four hour swim-off a couple years ago. It never happened but she basically conceded after I swam 3.5 miles in two hours to see what I could do.]
I did a short show today entitled the above.
It was fun.
probably a leftover from my time at tep, I don’t really open my mail until it’s overflowing. Many of my bills are paid automatically or I periodically pay them online.
well, yesterday, it was time to go through my mail. here are some conclusions, harper’s style. There were probably about a hundred pieces of mail from mid-november until now:
*I should note that I’ll look through what appears to be new mail (the stuff at the top of the pile) and open things personally addressed to me or with a return address of someone I know. As such, I had already opened a wedding invitation. I also open netflix.
those things are fun!
I just blasted my car with high pressure soap, rinse and wax.
They played “California” like I thought they would.
They were good. But geez do they need to get a new sound person. Once again the vocals were totally wrong in the mix. They sounded very detached. In a band where the male and female vocals intertwining really make the sound, it’s pretty bad if it sounds like the two voices don’t know the other one is singing.
The same thing happened when Death Cab was on Carson.
but the playlist URL will build as my show goes (just keep hitting that ‘refresh’ button) and eventually it will show the entire playlist, for those of you who are not checking every few minutes.
For Pedro the Lion fans or just music fans, give a listen to the Headphones. There’s a downloadable song and some songs you can stream from the album.
The Headphones is the synth+drums+vocals band of David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), TW Walsh (solo, PtL), and Frank Lenz (Starflyer 59).
It’s pretty exciting. It’s pretty crazy. The vocal melodies are all Bazan, and sound so familiar, but then I stop and listen to what’s backing him for a second and it’s a shock. No guitars. no guitars.
The band Low, kings of slowcore, will appear on Carson Daly this coming Friday.
They will almost definitely play “California,” a pretty good song off their most recent album.
Ohboy!
The news is that Sufjan Stevens’ next album in his 50 States Project, Illinois, will be out July 5. This is the followup to Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State. (Seven Swans was in between, but it’s not part of the States Project.)
I really like Sufjan! He’s so good that his mp3s of Christmas songs are good enough to listen to in March.
I saw the Motorcycle Diaries tonight at Flicks. It’s a movie about the young Ernesto “Che” Guevera and his friend Alberto Granando taking a 12000km trip through South America, initially by motorcycle and later by foot, boat, hitch-hiking and whatever other means were necessary. It’s a very interesting movie. The two main characters are interesting and the story is subtle, but engrossing.
Thoughts, in three:
I really want to get this shirt, but, alas, I’ve given up buying stupid crap for lent.
Those crazy mormons!@
I had Friday Night Lights from Netflix for a while and got around to watching it last night. I liked it. The screenwriters did a few clever things to fit some things (quotes/ thoughts) into the movie that weren’t said in the main action. Some of it was sensationalized from the book (which Odessans said was sensationalized from the reality) and some details were left out, but that’s to be expected. It’s pretty hard to condense four months of detailed story and backstory into a two hour movie. Tim McGraw did a really good job for his first acting role and the kids and Billy Bob Throton were good as well.
The Explosions in the Sky soundtrack was pretty awesome. I’d heard many of the tracks already, but they fit in a lot better in the context of the movie.
The Kings of Convenience are the Norwegian indie pop band staring Erland Oye. The Kings of Leon are the southern rock band that have an autographed picture hanging in Little Stevie’s House of Pizza, saying it’s the best pizza place in town.
I always get those two confused.
dang! I’m tired!
this week’s playlist for my radio show.
if anyone was listening, the dead air and awkwardness in the later part of my show weren’t my fault. I had a dj trainee sitting in on my show.
hey andy, remember when we’d have mike glasser “sit in” with our band? and all he’d do would be to sit on a chair amongst the band? that was good stuff.
Non-German speaker Paul Pham, currently in Austria, in a recent email:
p.s. the guys around my lab speak English so I won’t feel left out. This includes cursing. Whenever anyone yells “Scheiß!” they have to remember to yell “Shit!” afterwards for my benefit. It is pretty awesome.
During all my years of high school, I played trumpet in the pit orchestra for the high school musical. Much of the time was boring and we were under-recognized for our tremendous skill. We were also some of the only people to see the musical in its entirety many times—many of the leads and chorus members only saw the scenes they were in—to the point where we knew all the lines and scenes in the musical, putting us in a unique position to make fun of it.
An that’s what we did. Jeff Miller and Colin Ashe, still friends of mine, started with a small-scale parody of Cinderella. The following year was the first real Pit Skit with Toilet Paper Man, a parody of Music Man, where a man comes to town to try to sell toilet paper to the people. The next years were Brig-a-Mart, a story of a Canadian convenience store that was stuck 10*pi years behind, a parody of Brigadoon and Joseph (or was Jorje) and his Amazing Techinocolor Pimpcoat, where I played the lead, a parody of, well you should figure that one out by now. The three that I did (Toilet Paper Man was the first) were a lot of fun. We wrote and rehearsed these two-act, 20-30 minute elaborate skits complete with props, a program, and plenty of sexual innuendo. They were performed over two nights at the pre-show meeting. We regularly would have to ask people to not laugh as much because we didn’t have that much time and they were missing our other funny lines.
What got me thinking about all this was a scene from Brig-a-Mart that still makes me smile. In Brigadoon, there was a scene in which the guy from the present is talking to one of the stuck-300-years-in-the-past Scottish ladies that goes something like this:
him: are you crazy?!
her: what is ‘crazy’?
him: insane.
And Brig-a-Mart, we had it like this:
him: are you nuts?
a guy-dressed-as-a-girl: what is ‘nuts’?
him [hands her a dictionary]: here’s a frickin’ dictionary. look it up!
a guy-dressed-as-a-girl [flips to page]: oh, I see, ‘testicles’.
The guy was played by Jimmy Cramer and the guy-dressed-as-a-girl by one of the best to ever play such a part, Pat Bird.
I should also mention that we didn’t rehearse with props. I would go around my house the night before and collect props. Sometimes we would forget about a prop and just fake it.
This all leads up to how the above scene played out during the perfomance. Pat and Jimmy were going along with the scene. I realized that the dictionary was still in the prop bag still. I reached into the bag and grabbed it. Jimmy’s facing me and Pat away from me. Let’s see how it turns out:
Jimmy: Are you nuts?
[I make eye contact with Jimmy and indicate the dictionary]
Pat: What is ‘nuts’?
[I toss the book. It makes a perfect parabolic arc over Pat’s head, clearing it by a couple inches. Jimmy snatches it out of the air just as he’s beginning to say:]
Jimmy: Here’s a frickin dictionary. Look it up!
…
I couldn’t have planned it better. I still smile thinking about it.
Any other USC HS people have fun Pit Skit memories?
So KZSU broadcasts PACC (Palo Alto City Council) and there’s an engineer at the Council and one at the station. These days, I’m the one at the station.
Usually PACC runs forever. Today it ran short of it’s alloted time, so I actually needed to fill some time with music.
my short playlist of some totally sweet Motown.
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