adrian is rad

You may have noticed that this site was down earlier today. That’s because the registration on adrianbischoff.com expired and I’d forgotten to renew it. OOPS!

All taken care of now, though.

But seriously, did you miss me?

I generally avoid writing about religion or politics, though I have a half-written post from months ago on exactly this topic. What brought it up this time is Barak Obama’s keynote speach at the “Call to Renewal” conference. It’s the sort of topic that could alienate people on both sides, but the speach is well-written and I think it walks the line pretty well. I admire someone that’s willing to put his thoughts out there like that, though. I’d recommend reading it all the way through.

(Incidentally, Call to Renewal is run by Jim Wallis, who wrote this book, which looks like it might be interesting.)

Now to go back to being apathetic about politics.

I like Neutral Milk Hotel a lot, but this might be a little rediculous.

There was a post on an Elephant 6 message board, apparently from Jeff Mangum, in which he talks about having new songs and thinking about recording them.

You Ain’t No Picasso picked it up, followed by Brooklyn Vegan, followed by Pitchfork and the previously reputable Billboard. No one actually knows if it’s even him, but everyone’s aflutter!

[Update: and Billboard retracts]

My friend Andy emailed me today:

You probably already knew this, but Ken Jennings blogs? And he’s a good writer!@

I know that you’re obsessively weird about him, but I thought I’d let
you know, in the off-chance you didn’t.

[links added by me]

Thanks, I didn’t know, Andy! Agreed on the good writing part. I like the post about the giant foam version of his head that he got. Good stuff.

I ran across this amusing spanish-language world cup coke commercial. Basically, it’s a bunch of adversaries whose boundaries are broken down when their common team scores a goal. My favorite part is when the hippie and the soap hug.

Walter pointed me to Matthew’s Celebrity Pixies Tribute. It’s a bunch of Pixies recorded in the style of, and with imitated production values of, various famous singers and bands.

It’s pretty interesting stuff and it’s a very impressive effort by whoever this Matthew guy is.

My favorite is:

Monkey Gone to Heaven as prefrormed by Frank Sinatra

also:

Levitate Me as preformed by the Beach Boys

me - old glasses - beard + new glasses + stubble + 1940 Pirates Road Hat =

[Update: for reference, this is the previously bearded, new glasses me:

]

Along with my new computer, I also got a new Ipod, the 60GB video version. The old one was on its last legs battery wise and was lacking in capacity big-time.

I got a case along with it: the Contour Design Showcase. It’s pretty fantastic. Comolded rubber and a clear plastic, probably acryllic keep it looking pretty slick and it’s not too big. It also looks like it’ll absorb a shock too.

[yup, Contour has better pics than I do]

[The new ipod’s name is The Proud Tenant of Brand New Manitoba]

My new bedside companion:

Specs: 2.0GHz Macbook 13″ with 2GB RAM, 120 GB hard drive, DVD-r/CD-r.

I saw Syriana the other night.

It’s a complex, multi-threaded plot about oil and the Middle East. You can read more at the wikipedia article linked above.

It’s got an ensemble cast and some great performances, including, of course, George Clooney as a CIA agent. It’s interesting.

But before we get to far, I’m just going to put this out there: complex doesn’t necessarily mean good. There are complex, multi-threaded movies that are good, amazing even, like Magnolia. But let’s not get confused with what makes a movie good. Engaging and compelling movies are good or great movies.

That said, this movie is good. It’s entertaining but I never found it fully engaging.

The other day I was surprised to find out that no only has Rick Sebak put some of his programs on DVD, but that Netflix carries some of them. Rick has made documentaries for many years. Originally they were all for WQED, one of Pittsburgh’s PBS affiliates (now it’s only PBS affiliate) and they were about Pittsburgh. A program about downtown Pittsburgh; another about the churches and places of worship in Pittsburgh (just about always shown on Christmas and Easter), another about the renowned Kennywood; a couple about things that used to be around and one specifically about things that are still there. I watched all of them, taped most of them off of TV during one of their pledge drives. When I first moved to the city they were a way to get into the culture pretty quickly. Later I just loved watching them. I remember when I first heard that he was going to do national programs and I was happy. Now I pop on the TV occasionally to see “Sandwhiches that you will Love” or the one about roadside attractions. They’re infectious. I want to go to the places that Rick shows and talk to the people he talks to.

I haven’t seen some of the newer programs, both the national ones and the Pittsburgh ones. I put Things We’ve Made into my queue and watched it on Friday.

This movie is probably mostly of interest to Pittsburghers or ex-Pittsburghs, but there is quite a lot of manufacturing processes shown, so geeky mechanical engineers or the like might also like it. One of the coolest parts is when they’re showing the Glenshaw Glass Company plant in which they made millions (billions) of beer bottles and how the machines cut up the molten glass into measured blobs and then pushed it into molds and out popped a bottle.

There’s still steel made in the Pittsburgh area—they visited the Clairton US Steel plant. I’d love to go there and take photographs. There’s this one shot in the movie where they’re in a semi-open area and there are these two giant cauldrons of molten steel being poured out and in the background there are the machine operators and a sign saying “House of Pain.” My goodness that could be an amazing photograph.

There were also quirky little things in there, like when they’re talking about All-Clad which is made in Canonsburg, really close to where I grew up and they’re talking about taking some of the new products to this restaurant and this chef to test. Well, that place, the Classroom in McMurray, is where I took my first girlfriend before the Homecoming dance and where my family at dinner on New Year’s Eve, 1999. I realize it’s just a local Pittsburgh movie, but given that it’s a movie out on DVD and that I got from Netflix it has enough separation that it seems weird to see this place on the screen.

6:58am: roll out of bed. crickeys, it’s early. some days I really think I’m crazy.

7:00am: game starts

7:01am: I don’t understand just about anything these announcers are saying. Oh they just said “Estados Unidos.” That’s “United States.”

7:02am: The TV/Cable signal is choppy. I hope this doesn’t continue. A header gets the ball in the air right in front of the Ghana goal but nothing happens.

7:05am: One of the Ghana guys just got a yellow card for a tackle-from-behind of Reyna.

7:07am: Lewis on the Estados Unidos team just got a yellow card for what appears to be an unintentional handball. Man, I wish I understood what they’re saying.

7:09am: Oh man, they’re giving this Ghana guy a free kick after he totally took a dive. The replay is of him running flat into a US player and then falling over. Kasey Keller’s looks like a champ in goal. Luckily the ball goes wide and he doesn’t need to be a champ.

7:11am: Ghana drives toward the goal but get called for an offsides. I think I finally understand the offsides rule in football.

7:14am: During a free kick stoppage they show the crowd and there’s a guy wearing a fez and playing a lute.

7:16am: Lewis is bleeding. I’m not sure what from because it sure looked like he was faking whatever grievous penalty just happened to him.

7:17am: USA corner kick! header!…right to the goalie.

7:19am: Onyewu just got a yellow card for some friendly pushing.(Both players were pushing, but the Ghanan took the dive first).

7:20am: USA guy has a nice header to block a Ghanan goal. Now there’s a corner kick. Ghana fouls; USA free kick.

7:22am: some sloppy play on the US side results in a breakaway and a Ghana goal. crap. Now the announcer’s going “gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!”

7:24am: It appears that Reyna got hurt on that last play. He’s getting carried off the field.

7:25am: USA corner kick….goalie makes a nice stop.

7:26am: The Ghana goalie’s writhing around on the ground. I guess on that stop he dove into a US player.

7:28am: They switched over to the Italia v Republica Checha game to show that Italian goal. They’re up, which is what we need.

7:29am: Ghanan breakaway. No goal, but we seriously need to pick it up here.

7:30am: I seriously don’t understand how these goalies can kick the ball this far. The Ghana goalie just kicked it almost to the other 18 yard line.

7:33am: This Ghana player just put his forearm into an American player’s neck. Yellow card.

7:35am: The USA just set up Landon Donovan pretty nicely but he put it high and wide.

7:36am: A tackle-from-behind results in a free kick fo the USA just outside of the 18 yard box. I wish Kingson wasn’t so good. Another good stop.

7:37am: Donovan on a corner kick…nothing.

7:39am: USA driving down the side. He centers it! to no one!

7:42am: Free kick on a dumb dumb foul. The US player barely touched him! Luckily it goes wide.

7:43am: BEAUTIFUL! Beasly centers it and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL. Demsey! I love this guy right now.

7:47am: Two guys jockeying for position and the Ghana guy takes a dive. Penalty kick for Ghana. Come on Kasey…Goal. I seriously think these announces are judged by their ability to hold out “gooooool” for the longest.

7:50am: Alright, that’s half. I’m going to shower and grab some cereal.

8:06am: Showered, lunch made and cereal and milk poured. I’m ready for the second half. The players are just coming onto the field now.

8:14am: Alright, done with my cereal. Dangerous kick by a Ghanan, so we’re looking at a free kick from just outside of the 18 yard box. No Americans got to the ball when it was in front of the goal. It’ll be a corner kick.

8:16am: Corner kick…come on, guys.

8:19am: Italy’s still winning 1-0. 12 minutes into the second half, so there’s plenty of time, left, but I’m not feeling good about this. Oh! good stop by the Ghana goalie.

8:23am: These guys are pretty good at this.

8:24am: I’m glad there’s instant reply. It makes it easy to tell who’s totally taking a dive and who’s not. One of the Ghana players just took the funniest dive. He just jumped up, bumped into a US player in the air and then fell down, holding his foot.

8:25am: I have to go! someone tell me what happens. It’ll be a pretty exciting game if the US can pull it off.

[post-blogged]
8:36am: I found the game on the radio in my car. At least I think it was that game. It was in Spanish. It was on 1170AM.

yeah, so they lost. that’s sad. there’s always 2010, America!

A couple weeks ago, Dylan IMs me:

Dylan: what’s the girl that plays harp and sings like a cat in a blender?
Me: Joanna Newsom?
Dylan: yeah, that’s the one.

Today, there was a pretty well-wrtten post by Long Winters front man John Roderick covers Bonnaroo for CMJ. In part he talks about Cat Power:

I thought, “Great. I’ve been suckered in. Chan Marshall is backstage having kittens and we’re going to sit out here with building anticipation only to have her never leave her trailer.”

I’m keeping track of the World Cup scores on my handy pull out sheet from a Spanish-language newspaper out here:

I was somewhat ambivalent towards it until this weekend’s USA-Italy game, now I want to watch Thursday’s USA-Ghana game to see if the boys can get into the second round. (Italy also needs to beat the Czechs.) I was pretty sad to discover the game would be on ESPN, not ABC, like Saturday’s game, and I didn’t really want to go out at 6:30am looking for a bar or something that was showing the game. Well I was looking through the TV listings today and saw that one of the Spanish-language chanels was showing one of today’s Copa Mundial games. I investigated further and—what do you know!—I can watch Ghana vs. Estados Unidos on Thursday morning on broadcast TV!

Shove off ESPN! Viva Copa Mundial!

Dave Eggers writes about the World Cup. Very entertaining as alwasy.

The Baseball Card Blog for those of us who spent too much time and money on baseball cards as a kid. They’re currently on #5 on their best baseball card sets ever. I have a few packs of #5: 1989 Upper Deck. It was the year my family went on a New England road trip and we went through Cooperstown and saw the Baseball Hall of Fame. I picked up some of the new Upper Deck cards there. I hope #1 is 1987 Topps, the one with the wood grain. I loved those cards.

On Monday I saw the Mountain Goats at the Bottom of the Hill.

We got there a few minutes after the posted start time and there was a line around the block. It was a sold out show, but they held 50 tickets at the door for day-of and they hadn’t yet sold those out so there were a lot of people in line that wouldn’t get in.

When we finally got inside, Barbara Morgenstern was just starting her set. Her first song was promising: it was a sort of electro-pop song with nintendo-like stylings, sort of like b. fleischmann’s work and his work with Duo 505, but with female German vocals. After that first song, she continued with this electro-pop, but the rest of her songs didn’t really have the catchy melodic arts of her first song.

Before JD (John Darnielle) came on, I went to check out the merch table and who was there but John Vanderslice. I’m like “Hey JV!” He then goes to say that he loves KZSU and listens online all the time. And that the interview I did with him was the first and best he did after Pixel Revolt and that all the interviews he did later were framed in light of that one. Wow, didn’t I feel pretty good about myself.

JD and Peter Hughes (the MGs) came on to thunderous applause. I hadn’t seen them in probably three or four years. At the time I was familiar with approximately three or five of their songs, none of which were played at that show. At this point, I know three MG’s albums and I am familiar with about another three. Mountain Goats fans tend to be intense, slightly obsessive completists. I felt like I was in the minority in not knowing just about every song that they played. People were singing along to pretty obscure songs.

JD had the audience in the palm of his hand the entire show. It probably helped that everyone was an obsessive fan, but his stage banter and sometimes meandering talking drew people in.

Among the songs he played were “Your Belgian Things” and “Palmcorder Yajna” from We Shall All Be Healed (the latter of which had lead vox by JV who JD called onto the stage), “Broom Broom”, “Love Love Love” and “Dance Music” from the Sunset Tree, some new songs and some covers, most notably “The Sign,” originally by Ace of Base, which had the entire audience singing along.

They kept up a high energy show. I liked it a lot.

Update: They did two nights in SF. This wasn’t from the night I went to, but the second night the whole audience sang “No Children” (mp3) because JD needed to rest his voice. It’s pretty amazing.

Is this labelling really necessary?

3 songs or albums that I like whose titles include a state name and a cardinal direction:

1. All Hail West Texas by the Mountain Goats
2. “East Virginia”, version by Damien Jurado
3. “Sodom, South Georgia” by Iron & Wine

Any “North”-state songs or albums? North Carolina or Dakota don’t count. Any other examples for the other (already given) cardinal directions?

Today I finished Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane. I blanked out part of the name above because K- is an offensive racial slur equivalent to the N-word in America (when said by non-blacks at least). Basically it’s best to only say it in context of the title of this book.

This is the latest in my series of South African books (Cry the Beloved Country, Country of My Skull, Tsotsi and Karoo Boy were among the SA books I read in the last year), this was possibly the hardest to get through, though Country of My Skull is up there too. As with Country of My Skull, it’s not hard to get through because it’s poorly written—both are well-written, in fact— but this is just some heavy heavy shit here. I picked it up in early April, read the first bit and then put it down for a few weeks before I could pick it up again.

This books is a memoir of Johannes’ (aka Mark’s) youth in the Alexandra township (”ghetto”) outside of Johannesburg. There are graphic descriptions of things he saw and went through in everyday life: violence, disease, malnutrition, and prostitution. I would be reading this during lunch at work and find myself nauseated by it and have to stop reading so that I wouldn’t lose my stomach; or I’d have to close my eyes for a few minutes.

The book is divided into three parts: Road to Alexandra, Road to Knowledge and Road to Freedom. The first part is the heaviest and the one that brings about this feeling of dispair. The second and third parts are more optomistic. The book, in the end, is, in part, a story about overcoming adversity, but it’s also about the system that lead to this adversity and the anger and frustration and hatred bred by it.

As I said, it’s well-written, though I actually found it a bit on the overly descriptive and heavy handed side of things at a few points. A lot of questions are raised in the book, many of them thought-provoking. The book is written, of course from one perspective and it has its biases, biases that history (the book, incidentally was completed and published years before apartheid was abolished) has shown to be on the right side of things. However, as with some other books on apartheid, whites are painted in one of two clear camps: revolutionaries/ those that actively help blacks and racist biggots who fear blacks and want to hold them down. As much as Mark defends himself in the book for having friendships with sympathetic whites and for not being a revolutionary himself, so too are there whites that would defend themselves for not being revolutionaries and yet would still put themselves in oppisition to apartheid.

It’s a worthwhile read, though. Like many things, even after the main conflict is over, the ideas are still true and for many years yet, no doubt, there will be other peoples in human rights struggles and in similar situations.

As much as I’ve been enjoying this literay tour through South Africa, I need a break for a while. I think I’m going to read Chronicles, Vol 1, Bob Dylan’s autobiography, which will go along well with my recent Bob Dylan kick.

I had some backup in the blogworks so I’m doing a somewhat abbreviated and consolidated post here.

A few weeks ago now, I saw Mogwai play at the Fillmore. Mogwai is a Scottish guitar-based post rock band. Honestly this is a bit long ago at this point so I’ll do the executive summary. First trip to the Fillmore (I think): it’s good, better than the Warfield by a lot. Mogwai’s set: super loud and apocalyptic stuff->softer more minimalistic poppier stuff->loud stuff->20 noise fade-out from their encore. They played some of my favorites especially those from Rock Action like “2 Wrongs Make 1 Right” and “Take Me Somewhere Nice”. I mostly liked the softer more mininmalistic stuff.

Mogwai - 2 Wrongs Make 1 Right (ATP Version)

A week ago Friday I saw Danielson at the Bottom of the Hill. Danielson is sort of a quirky indie pop folk band with epileptic fits of craziness in the middle of their songs. The first openers were a band called Pants Pants Pants. They had a fun electro indie rock thing going. At one point their drummer came out from behind the drums and just started dancing crazy. The second opener, Young People, were just so bad that I’m not going to talk about them further. Danielson came on close to midnight in light-blue-with-navy-accents Salvation Army-style uniforms, each with a patch of the player’s name on the breast.

This band is just crazy. Quirky is probably a better term. They have these softer or sweeter parts to their songs interspersed with these intense, high-energy parts with often high-pitched vocals. It’s almost disorienting to see them play. Daniel Smith, the leader of the group, has this way of singing that’s half in falsetto, but the parts of his mouth and throat that he uses to sing aren’t normally used by people unless they’re imitating a cat meowing. His two sister and the keyboard player, Evan, all sing with such energy that it seems like they’re yelling into the mics. There were a couple probably unintentional funny bits where Daniel asked the crowd to clap along to the songs and then proceeded to show us incredibly complicated and rather long clapping rhythms that no one could follow. It’s the sort of music that you probably either hate or it puts a smile on your face. One guy whose face had a giant grin on it was John Ringhofer of Half Handed Cloud who was standing a few feet over to my left.

Already 1am by the time they were going back on stage for their encore, I took off. The next morning I was waking early for my Tahoe Century bike ride. It was fun while it lasted though.

Danielson - Did I Step On Your Trumpet

This past Friday I saw The One AM Radio at Fort Oregon, a house in Berkeley. The One AM Radio is an electro indie singer songwriter. I arrive just in time to see the last song by a kid called Hank May. When I say a kid, I don’t just me a “guy,” I literally mean, a kid. He was probably 15 or 16 years old. Turns out he’s the touring guitarist for the One AM Radio (and apparently a cousin of a friend of Hrishi’s) right now but he had a solo set to start out the night. The one song I caught, I was actually pretty impressed with. He wrote a song with skill beyond his years. I’m going to check him out further and probably keep an eye on him.

The next act, Earthen Sea, was a improvised guitar/ loops group/ guy. It was good and pretty relaxing and he played a multi-parted piece with smooth transitions and some nice parts. Michael Zapruder’s Rain of Frogs was next. They were an alt-country sort of group with cello and violin (and wurlitzer 140B!) in addition to the usual suspects. They had their more rock-based numbers, which I think they crowd liked the best, and the more folksy numbers, which I liked better.

Somewhere in there, I went back to the merch table and picked up a shirt and his split EP with Ted Leo. I mentioned that I’d gotten something in the mail designed by him, which was a wedding invitation for my best friend’s wedding. We chatted about the wedding for a bit and Hrishi said he wished he could go.

I said the “crowd” up there, but this was a concert in a basement about the size of my livingroom (which is a decent sized living room, but it’s no rock club). By the time the One AM Radio was on, I’d say about 40 people were there. I was sitting on the floor (like most people) about 3 feet from Hrishi’s (tOAMR’s main guy) mic.

The One AM Radio went on next. They warmed with “Drowsy Haze” and Hrishi asked the audience to sing a repeated back up part on it. First rule of winning over Adrian when he’s in your audience: ask him to sing or clap (rhythmically, not just on the back beats) along to your song. Just a FYI on that one.

They—Hrishi on guitar and vocals and manning the laptop, Hank May on guitar, a guy on stand up bass and two guys on french horn—continued with a set filled with mostly old songs but a handful of songs that I hadn’t heard before. I liked the old stuff, of course, and I liked most of the new stuff. I was a little tired and the One AM Radio isn’t dance music or high energy at all and I was sitting so I caught a couple winks here and there, unfortunately. Their last song was “All I Can Recall is the Haunting” where Hrishi once again asked us to sing along to a part, a part that went “The sea swallowed up the sky.” It’s a gorgeous song and it was the same song they closed with last time I saw them— that time with jdawg werberg in a basement at BU. Just like that time, I left the concert singing that phrase over and over again. This time the trip home was a bit longer so I didn’t sing it all the way home.

An Interview w/ The One AM Radio

The One AM Radio - Flicker

I went to the Pirates at Giants game this afternoon with dug.

We got tickets in the Arcade section (147 to be specific) which is an odd section in front of the pathway out in right field that’s only a few rows (4-7) rows deep. We were in row four which put us pretty close to the field. It was Moises Alou Bobblehead Night and I was looking forward to having a bobblehead to put in my space at work.

The Pirates squeezed out a couple of runs and were ahead 2-1 until the Giants took the lead in the 6th. In the top of the 8th when they loaded the bases. A hit to the 2nd baseman followed by a where-do-I-throw-this bit of confusion lead to the bases still being loaded and another run in. Then Bautista, who had doubled earlier in the game, came up and hit a grandslam on a 1-1 pitch. Final score: 7-5.

Here’s a decent recap.

It took me a long time to like Bob Dylan. A lot of his famous stuff just isn’t that good—or rather, it’s good, I just don’t like them much. The first of his stuff that I really liked was off of the excellent first disc of the Bootleg Series, Vol 1-3. Here he was singing sparse acoustic songs that have ties to folk music (and when I say folk music, I mean the traditional type: songs have unknown authors and multiple versions) or actual traditional songs (like ‘House Carpenter’ and other ballads of the Child type). Here’s music I could get behind.

Over the next few years, in digging around for studio versions of music off of that Bootleg disc, I found myself going to a few of his early albums, particularly The Times, They Are a Changin’ and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Earlier this year, I made The Times my first Bob Dylan album.

The instrumentation is constant throughout: Dylan, his guitar and harmonica (usually recapitulating the melody). The guitar parts are low in the mix, so these songs are sustained by their lyrics and melodies.

The quality of the songs ranges from good to amazing. Among my favorites are: “the Times they Are a Changin’”, “With God on our Side”, “Boots of Spanish Leather”, “When the Ships Come in” and “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.”

“The Times” is overused and misused (including a Kaiser Permanente commercial—that I actually like a lot—about an overweight guy getting in shape), but it’s still an amazing song if you step back and listen to it. Imagine hearing this song for the first time, how bowled over you would have been.

I first hear “With God on our Side” on Bootleg Series, Vol. 6 in a duet with Joan Baez (who I don’t like alone, but I love when harmonizing with Dylan). It’s a song with some immense gravity to it and a timelessness to it, despite the anachronism of the lyrics at this time.

“Boots of Spanish Leather” is a ballad, in the Child sense. It’s a pretty and fairly simple story about a lover leaving and possibly not returning. I love the melody, which is really similar to another Dylan favorite of mine, “Girl from North Country” (which is possibly even better in its this-is-a-really-old-song-that-I-wrote-ness) and apparently both draw melodic inspiration to Martin Carthy’s version of Scarborough Fair (which is Child #2 for those that are counting). It also has such longing in it.

“When the Ships Come in” is possibly my favorite Dylan song. I think it’s something about the combination of melodic and lyrical strength in the song. It’s another in the “The Times They are a Changin’” camp of the-world-is-changing songs; however I like this one better. I’m totally blown away that Dylan apparently wrote this one one quick angry stint in a hotel room after the clerk didn’t recognize him and treated him poorly for his unkempt appearance.

“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol” is a modern narrative ballad about a society man accidentally killing a servant in a Baltimore hotel and the aftermath. I find in narrative songwriting, the true gift comes in which details to include and how all the details return back together at the end of the song to bring it to a conclusion. In this sense, Dylan triumphs on both accounts: the details are enought to develop the story and the characters without bogging it down and the conclusion hangs largely on the sentence from the judge.

So yeah, if you don’t know: The Times They Are a Changin’ is good.

I just saw a commercial for America’s Got Talent, some Simon Cowell reality TV talent show. Whatever, right?

Well, I noticed that one of the judges is—you guessed it—David Hasselhoff. So let me get this straight: they’ve having David Hasselhoff judge people as to whether they have talent or not?

Uh, is he going to be kicking himself off of the show?

I love bridges for the fanciful and deceiving things they make me feel like. The Lake Pontchartrain bridge made me feel like I was driving across the ocean. The San Mateo Bridge makes me feel like I’ll drive right up to the sky.

Seriously, do you know how happy this movie makes me?

Here’s a contest that can send you to Austin City Limits for three days to blog about the festival. I’m probably going to enter a spruced up version of this post. Wally, you should do this.

And this is a songwriting blog with some tips and whatnot on various aspects of songwriting. I’m not sure I’m picking up all that they’re putting down, but it gets the mind going.

Both of these, I think, I got from largeheartedboy.

So, I’ve talked a few times about doing the Tahoe Century and now I’m done, so here it is.

On Saturday morning, my friend Dave (not Franusich) and piled our bikes and our gear into the back of my car (gotta love hatchbacks) and we headed up to the Lake Tahoe area, just outside of Stateline*. The other people in our group included my coworker Dan and a former coworker of his, Scott. Scott had gotten us this pretty nice house for the weekend about six miles from Stateline, just off of the route.

Saturday afternoon we registered for the race; ate some no-guilt burgers, steaks and pasta (when you’re riding 100 miles the next day, there’s no guilt in pounding some serious calories); and going to bed fairly early.

Sunday started early with the alarm going off at about 5:30am. The bed gravity seemed awfully strong. We all had some breakfast, got in our embarrassingly tight-fitting clothes, did some last minute tune-ups to our bikes and headed out at about 6:30am. Because we were staying along the bike route, about 6 miles from the beginning, we just started on the route and after we hit the finish line, we’d have 6 miles more to go at the end.

It was pretty cool to start with, probably around 40 degrees. Once we started going, I wasn’t too cold, though I actually kept my arm and knee warmers on until lunch. The first of the two major climbs is pretty early in the ride—even earlier for us because we were starting 6 miles in—and all of us just seemed to gun up the hill. I think it was mostly adrenaline.

At the top of the hill, there was the first of the rest stops. They were spaced out about every 13-23 miles along the route and had water, fruit and protein bars and the like (and bathrooms). They were definitely nice places to refuel, rehydrate and just take a couple minutes off of the bike.

After that there was a nice fast descent with some sweeping curves where I got to about 45mph before we hit the flats and some rolling hills. Up until about mile 40 I was keeping up a pretty fast pace. Once we got to Truckee, CA, I realized I should probably hold back a bit so as to not blow my legs out. Truckee isn’t on the loop around Lake Tahoe, but they add a loop out and back from Truckee in order to make it 100 miles in total. Coming back from Truckee there was a pretty good head-wind and a slight ascent that required some work (though drafting off of the stronger riders in our group certainly helped). After that was just a few miles and a couple minor hills to the lunch stop.

It was around this point why I realized they call this “America’s Most Beautiful Ride.” Lake Tahoe is really gorgeous and I hadn’t been up there before.

After lunch we had about 20 miles to the next rest stop at Spooner Junction, the second half of which was up the longest, and biggest of the climbs of the day. It’s actually a pretty gentle grade for most of it and probably wouldn’t have been a big deal at all, but after 75 miles, it was something. I just put the bike in the lowest gear and kept my legs moving fast and got up to the top.

After that it was just 12 miles to the finish. The first part was a descent that should have been a lot of fun, but there was a strong head/ cross-wind (but it was still pretty good) and then some rolling hills to the end. We hit the finish and then the 6 bonus miles (from the finish back our place) were rough, mostly because of a head-wind.

Overall, I think I prepared pretty well and besides the climbs, I didn’t hurt too much; I definitely hurt more during some of my rides to get prepared for the century than during the century. Today my muscles were tired but they didn’t hurt. Timing-wise, I think the overall time was about 8.5 hours with 6-6.25 hours of actual ride time.

*My friend Andy wrote this great song with the first line “crossing the state line/ the bridge across the bay.” Because of the start line of the race being in Stateline, NV, I had this song in my head for most of the race. Unfortunately, I only remembered little bits of the lyrics. After the race the group talked about it and it seems that all of us had songs that were in our heads for large portions of the race.

first line “My name is x and…”

Yes I know, your name is in the “from:” line and probably at the bottom as well. Why don’t you just say “My name is x and I’m 12 years old” so you sound completely like a child.

[This is mainly from emails I get in my position at the radio station.]

The Subway in Redwood City has in it’s soda fountain both Dr Pepper and Mr. Pibb.

This is not common, people! This might be the only soda fountain ever to do such a thing!

I found this a bit interesting.

I’m going to Philly then NYC and then Pittsburgh late July, early August. I booked a ticket into PHL and a ticket out of PIT (separately, on two different airlines).

Originally I was going to rent a car on Sunday night or Monday morning, drive to NYC (google says 2hr 19 min) and then drive to Pittsburgh on Thursday (google says 7hr 47 min). Then I investigated options:

1. Renting a car for the four days: $264, travel time close to 10 hours.
2. Train to NYC: $42, travel time 1.5 hours; rent a car on Thursday to drive to Pittsburgh: $105, travel time 7.75 hr.
3. Train to NYC: $42, travel time 1.5 hours; fly to Pittsburgh: $84, travel and wait time at the airport: 3.5 hours-ish.

Option 3 is half as long and $138 less than option 1. Neat!