adrian is rad

I’m going to one or two Pirates games a year so I figured I should be able to outfit myself for the event. I was looking at getting the old 70s Pirates high top hat (below) but found a bunch of great throwback caps. I particularly like 1901-06, 1915-19, 1940-41, 1947, and the 70s high top. I think the winner may be the 1940-41. It’s just so classy.

Update: 1940-41 Road Cap ordered. I’ll consider picking up the 70s high top cap in Pittsburgh on the cheap.

CNN/ AP reports there’s a real-life fight club in my town.

I’ll be on tomorrow morning from 6-9am PDT as a fill-in for Matt. Listen live if you’re so inclined.

I plan on saying, repeatedly, “People of the morning rush hour, I have returned! Rally to me!”

Update: here’s the playlist.

So I’ve been trying to get ready for my 100-mile Lake Tahoe century bike ride which is in just over a week now. This week so far:

• Monday: Portola Valley loop (~15 miles, ~700 feet elevation gain) with my 20 lb. shoulder bag
• Wednesday: Old La Honda (3 miles, 1200 feet elevation gain) + Portola Valley (total ~22 miles + 2000 ft elevation gain)
• Thursday: Portola Valley loop

The rest of my rides before the century will probably be:

• Saturday: King’s Mountain + Canada (36 miles, 2800 ft) Update: I ended up doing Old La Honda, circling back down and then doing King’s Mountain + Canada. Total was something like 43 miles, 4000ft elevation gain
• Monday: Canada + Crystal Spring + (perhaps) Portola Valley (~32 or ~46 miles, mostly rolling hills)
• Wednesday: (double) Portola Valley loop
• Thursday: something hard, maybe Old La Honda plus double Portola Valley loop, or Kings Mountain + Canada
• Saturday: light spin up in Tahoe
• Sunday: ride around Lake Tahoe!

I hurt; I’m starting to regret signing up for this thing.

While on the subject of sports, my friend’s ipod excercise idea got patented (by him/ Apple).

I saw the Apostle tonight. I’m not sure why I put it in my Netflix queue, but I did.

It’s a film about a southern preacher who puts his wife’s lover into a coma and then flees to rural Louisiana. Robert Duval wrote, directed and starred in it.

There are few performances where there is no explanation for the transformation from the actor to the character. Which is to say, Robert Duval does an absolutely amazing job as the preacher. He has all the stylistic elements down and acts this complex character very well.

I have a soft spot for the charasmatic southern preaching style and good southern gospel and it’s nice to see it done right in this movie.

Anyway, a well made and well-acted movie. Also, the DVD has a good “making of” feature, but it basically has spoilers in it, so only watch it after watching the movie.

I did a pretty good show tonight. Here’s the playlist.

I’ll be making a return to the Lunch Special as the host on Monday, Memorial Day. The guest will be Ed Carryer, an old prof of mine. It starts at noon PDT.

The other week when Nedelle was on my show, she had a guy named Chris playing some additional guitars. At one point she said to me “He plays in the Curtains and he just quite—well, I shouldn’t say.” And then, I saw this and it all came together. That was Chris from Deerhoof. Not only am I hosting Nedelle, I’m schmoozing with rock stars here people!

• I should go to more risk concerts, fewer good concerts by bands I’ve seen before. For instance, I should see Danielson in a couple weeks and I probably shouldn’t be sad that I missed the Mates of State a couple weeks ago (I’ve seen them 8ish times)
• I’m trying to decide if songwriting taking into account all or almost all of my musical influences is possible. I like a lot of music. I like indie rock, post-rock, old-timey/ early american field recordings, celtic, african, other world music, motown (and other early R&B/ soul), oldies, some hip hop and the list goes on. In the past, I’ve managed to combine some influences together in my songwriting: the Greetings from Johannesburg stuff was largely an experiment in fitting world music ideas into indie pop (”Thaw” is based on the Balinese Ketjak rhythm, “Bitter” has Senagalese sabar drumming, “Nashville” cops a brazilian drumming line, “Drunken” has a 15 beat long beat-cycle). I also combined—in my opinion successfully—motown, indie rock, african drums and a banjo (which I couldn’t really call “old-timey” or country either) on one of the covers contest songs. But really, there’s a ton more stuff out there and floating around in my head. I always thought music had to be segmented a bit. Like Where’s Luke? was the folksy mostly-acoustic group, the Grievance Committee was going to be my post rock band. But many great bands aren’t like that: many of them combine a lot of disparate influences to make their music. I don’t know if I have the ability to do that.
• I’m thinking of trying to write some hip hop instrumental/ base tracks. I’ve been listening to a little bit of hip hop recently. I don’t like a lot of hip hop because a lot of it is a) musically crap and b) lyrically stupid (sometimes well-written but still stupid). Personally, I think a lot of the hip hop paradigms are stupid: songs about smoking pot and being misogynistic toward women aren’t for me. There is some hip hop out there that has good music and that tackles complex issues in the lyrics. I’m getting off on a tangent here. My point here is that a lot of hip hop has crap music and so I’m thinking of writing some hip hop music. I don’t think I could MC well, so I’ll either leave that for someone else or leave them as instrumentals. Any aspiring MCs out there?
• At a certain point I stopped really getting jazz. Most music has tension and release. Often in jazz the tension comes from dissonance in the harmonic structure and progressions. I don’t always find the way this is done in jazz satisfying. (On the other hand, I’ve really come to appreciate some “new” jazz, like Magali Souriau’s “Dersu Usala” which is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard.)
• I mostly don’t like this dance indie rock that is all the buzz (and has been for a year or so). It doesn’t get me going.
• I’m thinking of spinning of my music stuff into a separate blog and turn that into more of an mp3 blog. It’s probably be over at the new me. It probably me mostly indie rock mp3s, but I’d love it be a place where I could equally post Sacred Harp field recordings and rare Motown tracks. I don’t know what would be left here, though, as half of what I post here is music stuff and I’ve already moved most of my photo stuff over the godhatesmath.

It’s bike to work day out here in the Bay Area.

I think they’re overlooking an important aspect, here, though: biking from work! I mean all those people have to get home somehow. Perhaps it should be called Bike to and from Work Day.

Am I right or am I right?

it’s back.

I’m working on it a bit more—I’m going to have a link to jump to the results page and/ or a time-based IP restriction (eg you can vote once per IP per day).

I fudged the totals–I remember the percentages and approximate total votes from the last time it was up, so I just make the votes reflect that. I’m wondering if that’s the right approach or if I should start anew.

I’m getting ready to ride around Lake Tahoe and I’m woefully underprepared, I’m finding. I’m also coming out of a period of 7 flats in three weeks, which I thought was resolved on Thursday with my tune-up/ inspection but should definitely be resolved now with my new tires.

So anyway, from Friday through Sunday, I pushed it a bit (not as much as pat, but still), doing 80 miles and about 5000 feet of gross elevation gain. The breakdown was one of these which has some rediculously beautiful parts going down 35 there, and three Portola Valley loops. I ate at In n Out without shame last night. I’m going to take a break until Wednesday.

So I saw John Vanderslice at the Independent again on Friday with Dylan and Gumbeaux. Opening were Laura Veirs and Division Day. The latter was supposed to be Nedelle but she had to cancel, unfortunately.

I only saw about a song and a half of Division Day after I got there, so I’ll just skip to the next bit.

We got there well into the first band and JV (as those of us that are his pals call him) draws a lot of people in his home town of SF, so I was surprised that we could get right up against the stage before Laura Veirs. I haven’t been right up against the stage in forever. I felt like a school boy.

Laura Veirs put out a solid album in 2005 called Year of Meteors. While we had in in rotation at KZSU I played it every week. I sort of didn’t think about it much since then, listening to it occasionally. Laura came on and it was just her; she sometimes tours with a band but I think this part of this tour was just her. It was just her and a guitar and a bunch of pedals. Oh and she had a really sweet drum machine. I should find out what it was. Anyway, she played through her set using a sampling pedal to great effect (much like my friend Jeff Miller does), sampling her guitar, drum machine and vocals and looping. Overall a very solid set. I’ll have to listen to more Veirs.

Incidentally, Laura Veirs is not only talented but she’s very attractive. Basically, I want to marry her.

JV came on after a bit of a break. Once again, he seemed overjoyed to be home after a long tour. He joked around with his band mates and the crowd. He’s touring with the same band two tours in a row for the first time in forever and they sounded pretty tight. They put together a marathon set (25-ish songs) that lasted almost two hours, but it was a good time.

Overall a good time. It would have been cool if Nedelle had been on the bill as well, but you can’t win them all. The only downside of going to this concert was missing Jason Molina across town at the Great American Music Hall and Elf Power over at the Cafe du Nord. Seriously, couldn’t they have scheduled all those bands a couple days apart?

So not only is this a sweet german indie rock blog, but it has a bunch of mp3s of a good band, Beirut, who I previously posted about.

Nedelle played on my radio show last night. It went pretty well. One minor problem: it seems I had some mic distortion here and there—mainly on ’s’ sounds. Any thoughts on that one? Just a mic placement? Popper stopper? I was pretty pleased with out it sounded otherwise—the guitars and the mix both sounded good to me.

The mp3’s online:
Nedelle - Live at KZSU

Her setlist:

• The Last Thing I Do
• I Hate a Mountain
• Spell the Night Right
• Heatstroke
• Blueberry Mineshaft

The rest of my playlist.

Conan’s in Chicago this week. Guests include Dave Chapelle, Common, Wilco and others.

So the other day Andyl was talking how if it was possible to eat a food bar that had all the nutrition he needed, he’d switch over and eat only that. First we thought of Clif Bars or Balance Bars. As you can see, though, you’d have to eat a lot of those and you’d end up getting too much of some things and not enough of others. I then searched for “food bars” and what do you know? Mayday food bars! They’re approved by the US Coast Guard! If you eat five four-hundred calorie servings a day, you’re pretty much set on most of the things your body needs. Andy ordered some and they arrived yesterday. Before I’d gotten home he cracked them open and eaten two servings as his dinner. I decided to try one. They come in these blocks that look like little chunks of coffee cake. They even have an apple-cinnamon sort of taste. The thing is, they are dense. Imagine saw dust that’d been compacted by a 10-ton press. They also have no moisture in them at all. They don’t have a lot of sodium so they’re advertised as “non-thirst provoking” but I was glad I had some water (and soda) to go along with my chunk. I ate this piece and about 3/4 the way though BAM! it just hit me. It’s deceiving because of it’s small size, but this is a LOT of food and it just slams into your stomach. I was full for hours afterwards.

I offered Andy $20 and the cost of the mayday food bars if he’d only eat those for a week. Dylan made the same offer.

In the distant future, I don’t think I’ll necessarily be a good father, but I am pretty sure I’ll be pretty great at the pet names* for my son**: ace, champ, chief, pal, big guy. I’m just getting started here.

**I don’t mention a daughter here, because: a) pet names just work so much better with sons and b) I’m screwed if I have a daughter.

*When my dad turned 60, I told him that I was now going to call him “Pops” and “Old Man.” He did not take kindly to the latter.

I’ve been pretty slow on the posts recently, large because I’ve been busy doing stuff that is sort of not-interesting-in-the-blog-way.

So I decided I’d turn all this stuff into a post.

One time things and whatnot:

• Nedelle’s pretty rad. She’s going to be playing on my radio show this Wednesday at about 10:15pm PDT. I’m pretty excited. I’ll see if I can get a copy of the show up for you east coast people to listen to.
• I’m getting ready for the Tahoe Century ride in about a month. I’ve been trying to ride a lot in preparation. I rode today and yesterday, but I’ve also been having problems with getting an inordinate number of flats, so I need to resolve that. But my goal over the next three weeks is 3 rides/ week: 2 x 30 miles and 1 x 15 miles, including at least one trip up Old La Honda or King’s Mountain per week. At this point, I alternatingly feel I’m screwed and that I’m doing fine.
• I’m going to be in Philadelphia/ DC, NYC and Pittsburgh for about 10 days total in late July for a couple weddings. It’s pretty exciting. I’m thinking about Rye Playland and Kennywood among so many other things. I might also try to catch a taping of Conan, try to catch a Buc’s game and, of course, see some fantastic friends and take lots of pictures with too many cameras.
• I just now found a weird and kind of interesting acoustic cover of Sigur Ros. I never considered that someone could cover Sigur Ros. They’re no Sigur Ros, but it’s cool.
• I’m going to South Africa again next February. February 2007, that is for my mom’s birthday. I’m going to spend a week in Cape Town, but I’m also going to try to spend 1-2 weeks on the road driving around South Africa. I’m looking forward to going back to South Africa.
• It looks like my laptop (Proud Owner of Brand New Canada) is near its end. Unless something changes about the situation, I’ll probably be getting a new one in the next few weeks/ couple of months.

Everyday stuff:

• I’m still taking spanish at the Palo Alto Adult School. It’s about 2 hours a week and the pace is slow, but I’m learning stuff so, yeah, it’s good.
• Lots of KZSU stuff. I’m doing my indie show. I’m not longer hosting the the Lunch Special but I’m still acting as the producer. Lots of interesting guests bringing their music. A schedule is on that page I linked up there. I’m also the Promotions Director, so I try to organize tickets for concerts for on-air giveaways. As the promotions guy, I’m also writing a custom PHP web app. This stuff is not obvious and not easy, at least not for me, the mech e. I’m getting the hang of it, but I’m also pretty much sick of writing this app.
• I’ve been challenged by lawn bowling and recently applied for membership at the place I’ve been bowling, the Palo Alto Lawn Bowling Club. The green is closed until the end of May, though, so no bowling for now.
• The BoSox are tied for lead in their division. The Pirates are a couple steps away from the bottom of the league. The Steelers got what look like a couple good WRs in the draft.

The other day, Stereogum had some mp3s by a artist called Lily Allen. I listened. This is interesting stuff. It’s a bit hard to describe. It’s sort of rap, sort of pop, but it also has a pretty great sample, probably taken from an old field recording or a 78. It’s definitely not what I usually listen to and it has grown on me to a guilty-pleasure extent.

Lily Allen - LDN

Interestingly, there’s another track by a different band that has a very similar base musical feel but ends up being entirely different. Starting with an upbeat ukulele part (note: the uke’s name is ukulele, not ukelele), Beirut’s Postcards from Italy ends up being something a lot more akin to Andrew Bird. It apparently has a middle-eastern feel to it, but personally, I think it’s got mostly a songwriter sort of feel: it’s much closer to Andrew Bird, than, say, Oum Kulthum.

Beirut - Postcards from Italy

Thoughts on either track?

I’m all fists for punching!

My computadora is sad (again). The CD drive is giving it problems (again). I am sad.

I’ve said before that I’m a fan of Going Tribal on the Discovery Channel. It’s a documentary series where a guy, Bruce Perry, goes to live with a tribe somewhere around the world for about a month and they edit it down to an hour. Definitely more “reality” than “show.”

Here’s the current schedule. Discovery Channel tends to air each episodes multiple times.

I’m thinking about getting an analog drum machine, partly inspired by how awesome will oldham sounds with his Maya Tone one on some of his recordings. Any suggestions as far as models?

In the meantime, I found a pretty awesome virtual analog drum machine playground. I like a few in there. The Yamaha MR-10 has a nice set of features and sounds pretty good.

My crazy Saturday actually started Friday when a pair of pretty decent tickets to the next day’s ball game were up for grabs, and grab I did. After some calls dug and I were going to see the Giants vs. the Diamondbacks.

We started at the 21st Amendment a brewpub a few blocks from the ballpark. The burgers were decent and their watermelon wheat was suprisingly subtle and good.

Then we headed over to the ballgame. We were situated at the end of the right foul line, still in the lower boxes. For a game where I wasn’t rooting for either team, it ended up being pretty entertaining. It ended with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth, which is pretty sweet. This was immediately preceeded in the top of the ninth by some tremendous play in left field by not-Barry Bonds, including a game-saving catch of an otherwise-sure-to-be home run. Bonds wasn’t playing because, as far as I can tell, he’s weak and has had too many steroids. Honestly, I didn’t miss him too much.

I also took the opportunity, since I got my new new lens on Thursday to try my hand at baseball photography. Not surprisingly, even a 200mm lens from decent seats doesn’t get you close-up shots of much stuff, but it was definitely a new viewpoint on things. I definitely missed a couple great shots, including a tremendous Moises Alou diving catch basically right in front of us. It’s yet to be seen whether I did get any good shots.

After the game, I headed up to Aquatic Park to swim there for the first time since last July. Man, it was cold, probably close to 55. I’d forgotten how cold that is. A quick primer on cold water swimming (try this at your own risk): get yourself some silicone ear plugs and a Barracuda Hot Head. When you get in the water, you’ll probably go into panic breathing. This is normal. The best way to overcome it is to just start swimming. Put your fast in the water and swim, even though this the opposite of what your body wants to do; your lungs want to expel all air from them.

After that, I headed to gumbeaux’s place, only to walk back to Fort Mason (right next to Aquatic Park) for the SF International Beer Festival, which, get this!, is a fundraiser for a nursery school. Gums and I had a nice walk all the way down Fillmore, catching some awesome views of the city and the bay on the way. The beer fest was, well interesting. There was a lot of beer there, all of it measured out in 2-3oz tasting cups. Good news: there was a lot of good beer there. Bad news: most of the beers I liked, I knew already. It was still a good time. I don’t know why I thought differently, but it ended up that a lot of the patrons of this event were slightly grown-up fratboyz and sorority girlz. Given this, it wasn’t too surprising that I got about ten “go bosox!”s on my sox hat.

Definitely note-worthy was our experience on our way back from the beer fest. Gums and I didn’t want to walk the three-ish miles back to his place, so we decided to take the bus, the number 22 Fillmore, to be specific. We saw it circle around at the end of its route but we could figure out where it would actually stop given that there weren’t any bus stop signs nearby. We started to walk quickly and gums stuck out his arm to flag down the bus and it actually stopped for us. Then, realizing that it was $1.50, I said aloud to gumbeaux ‘I don’t think we have enough change’ (we thought it’d be $1.25) to which the bus driver responded ‘$1 is fine! Just $1.’ That’s right, we flagged down a bus and then managed to knock the price down 50%. The bus ride had its interesting characters as they always do, the least of which was the absolutely amazonian woman in the short skirt who showed no evidence of wearing underwear.

Wooo. Good times.