adrian is rad

This one’s on time! Holy crap! Unprecedented!

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008july playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one’s sort of all over the show, but I feel like it’s a good one. It’s got some oldies and soul and old indie favorites and stuff I just found out about.

Adrian’s July 2008 mixtape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

For some unknown reason, it was open yesterday on the the car I was on.

It’s been just over five years since the road trip. I still go back and read through the travel log every year or so. . .

Citibank, so far, has sent me two notices in the mail telling me when my paperless statement are ready to view online.

my favorite herb is basil. I’m a big fan. It’s a big reason I love san bei ji. It’s one of the reasons I love my salmon burgers with tomato, basil and feta.

Mark Twain didn’t say “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”.

I think the notion is quite silly. I think the coldest winter I ever spent was 1993ish in Pittsburgh when it hit -22 degrees F and with completely clear roads they canceled school simply because they didn’t want kids standing outside in those temperatures. (The only thing better than snow days is really freaking cold days…and typhoon days.)

But it is chilly here for summer. I leave the house in the morning with a light jacket and yesterday that wasn’t enough. As the sun set at the outdoor afternoon concert, I found myself thinking about the heat lamps that I’d thought were silly earlier.

I don’t know why I remember things like this sometimes.

One day when I was 10 or 12 my parents decided that I wasn’t getting enough protein with breakfast. I asked how I could get more protein. If they were so adamant about this, they should be able to come up with some things that were high in protein. Milk, yogurt, peanut butter, steak…

Wait…steak? I know it has plenty of protein, but breakfast?

And so my mom made me steak for breakfast everyday for a few weeks in 1992ish.

I had an odd childhood. I know: you’re surprised.

I live above a Peruvian restaurant. Not a lot of bad things about that (except the exhaust fan on Saturday mornings) and if I run out of food–hey, food downstairs.

A few weeks ago we went there to check the place out and say hi. I got pescado frito. You know, old school.

Anyway, we finished up and I’m at the register paying. There are these deserts with two soft, round, floury, sugary bits with a chocolate creme filling. Here’s the conversation:

Me: And could I get one of those.

Proprietress: sure

Me: And what are they called?

Her: Cookies.

Me: Oh…

I think I was swallowing my pride for much longer than I was swallowing the cookie.

If you haven’t seen the result, it’s pretty spectacular.

You can watch the video highlights here.

I only got a few things (out of many) done on my todo list today, but it did end up being a pretty good day:

• Swam in Aquatic Park
• Bought some walking-around bike shoes
• Went to a studio and hung out while a local band recorded
• grill a tuna steak and fried a plantain for dinner

I also just put away my laundry, so I only have about ten things to do tomorrow.

[I posted this on my music blog a while ago and was just wondering why I didn’t also post it here. It is, after all, pretty personal.

It’s not uncommon for Americans to go over to Europe and ride the rails all over but most haven’t ridden this nation’s rails extensively.

From September 7 to 10, 2003, for three and a half days I rode trains from Boston to Emeryville, changing trains once, in Chicago. I moved to California on those trains. I had known Boston as home for four years and Pittsburgh before that. Three thousand miles away, the Bay Area was almost a complete unknown. It was to be a time of new friends, new living arrangements, new streets, a new school, new supermarkets, and a new barber. I left half a day after a friend’s wedding and leaving that wedding was sort of like my farewell moment for most of the people I counted as friends there. I got on board with an ipod with only a few hours of battery life, my laptop with even less, two suitcases, a guitar and a backpack.

I didn’t have a cell phone and the train rarely stopped for long enough to have meaningful contact with people outside the train. I was very isolated for those few days.

I wrote down some thoughts at the time, when I was on the train. A few distinctive names and details have been changed to protect the innocent and I edited some small sections to make it easier to read. The rest appears as typed at the time.

–

Vernon L Sutphin - Lost Train Blues (mp3)

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9.7.03

Deer Tick - These Old Shoes (mp3)

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the Impressions - People Get Ready (mp3)

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(more…)

I saw the craigslist headquarters in the the Inner Sunset yesterday. I was pretty excited.

Here’s my photo through the bus window. The ladies on the bus looked at me very strange for taking this photo.

Disregarding living in a foreign country but otherwise in a stable place, I was traveling all or part of 97 different days last year. Basically I was a tourist for over a quarter of the year.

One of the odd abilities I picked up along the way was this sense I get of where the most likely place will be to have a publicly accessible restroom.

For instance, in touristy areas, your best bets are medium-sized mid range-to-upscale hotels. There’s almost always a bathroom off the lobby.

Today while out in the Inner Sunset (right near this beautiful structure actually), I had the urge and only a bunch of liquor stores, dry cleaners and a tutoring center close by. Then I saw an Albertson’s. Supermarkets, in America, for whatever reason, almost always have a restroom.

Relieved, I was able to take the long route home with a nice walk in there.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Steelers may change or restructure their management. The Steelers website confirms some talk of restructuring, but nothing about an outside buyer.

Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney, the eldest of the brothers, wants to consolidate his control through a 10-year plan to buy out most of their shares, but a well-funded prospective buyer has emerged after some of Mr. Rooney’s brothers and their children raised questions about his offer.

Stanley Druckenmiller, billionaire chairman of Pittsburgh’s Duquesne Capital Management, has expressed interest in acquiring the Steelers, people briefed on the negotiations said.

This isn’t something I ever thought I’d see. Hopefully it’ll work out for the best.

At some point someone told me that it was endearing that I never posted my mixtapes in the month they’re named after. I’m not sure I buy that…Anyway, enjoy.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2008june playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one is pretty soft and acousticy (Damien Jurado, Neil Halstead) but there are some nice soul (Sam Cooke, Al Green) and rock tunes (Centro-matic) in there too. Like many of the mixtapes it’s a mix between local, regional, national and international bands.

Adrian’s June 2008 mixtape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

My rental car this weekend seems[1] to have a feature where the radio gets louder when you go faster (and the engine/ car noise goes up). It works pretty well, but not perfectly.

But, really, how hard would it be to put a beat detector on the radio and sync the turn signals up with it? I’m pretty sure the turn signals are already run off of a microprocessor (through probably a FET) in modern cars, so it’d just be another sensor and a bit more code.

[1] I can’t find anything about the Chevy Cobalt doing this online but I’m pretty sure it does?

(Shipping Up to Boston makes me feel very nostalgic for the city even though it was recorded years after I left the town.)

That’s my celebration of the 4th, I guess.

I’m back in San Diego, this time I’m here to attend a friend’s wedding.

A main problem of traveling on holidays is that nothing is open. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade circa 1988. Couldn’t find a place open to use the bathroom for what seemed like hours.

This evening, I went to find dinner. The place I intended to go was closed, of course, so I went across the strip mall to look for something else. This is perhaps the longest strip mall ever made. I walked across perhaps half a mile of parking lot. This place was big enough to have a TGI Fridays, a Boston Market, a Marshall’s, a Mervins, a Shoe Pavillion, a Payless Shoes, a Barnes and Nobles, an In N Out, and probably 50 more establishments….I got brisket at Joey’s BBQ.

Then I saw Wall E. It was really good. Pretty interesting concept for a film–and impressive that they made a compelling film about robots virtually without dialog.

Watch out! Bad language!

Did you eat meat today? Preferably prepared on a fire?

That’s what an American would do…