September 29, 2005

Green Day
Went to the Green Day world stadium tour 2005 last night. Wow. What a strange and wonderful show. Billie Joe is the human Energizer bunny and the band knows how to dominate a sold-out stadium. Punk rock in the 2005 is a heavyset older women wearing a muumuu standing next to you, completely losing her shit while three shaggy haired kids looking like they just walked off the set of Dogtown and Z-boys (who couldn't have been more than 10 years old) rocked out with total abandon. I was prepared for a younger crowd but I wasn't prepared for the parade of children. Hoards of 'em. Like it was a third grade field trip. Hundreds of seven and eight year girls, wearing pink Green Day t-shirts, shouting along to the the call and response of 'F*** George Bush!' Aggression without violence was the name of the game last night. It was weird to think that a lot of the crowd wasn't even alive when Green Day's 'Dookie' album came out.

One of the highlights was when the band kicked into a cover Operation Ivy's 'Knowledge' and then about halfway though the song they pulled three people out of the crowd to play drums, bass, and guitar. Each person quickly learned their part on their instrument and the song continued with the newly formed band. The girl who got to play bass was awesome. And after the song Billie Joe let the guitarist keep the guitar. The kid collapsed right there on stage. The rock and roll moment was just too much for him to comprehend.

Being a big fan of the new record, I have to say I would have been content if they would have just played that record from beginning to end. But just for the record: one song off Kerplunk (2000 Light Years Away) and then of course 'Knowledge' from 1039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours.

September 27, 2005

How Many?
I find it odd that without question the single most frequently asked questions I get asked when someone learns: a) what I do for a living (graphic design) and, b) where I do it from (the comfort of my home office) is, "how many monitors do you use and how big are they?"

The conversation usually goes something like this:

"Awe, that's a cool job. So do you like have a whole bunch of monitors on your desk all going at the same time?".

"Umm nope. I just use one" I reply, noting the disappointment on the face of my inquisitor.

"That's too bad, cuz if I was you I would have at least three. One big one in the middle and two smaller ones on either side of the big one".

"Hmm, and what would you use 'em all for?", I ask.

"Nothing really, maybe have a television going on one...I don't know...but it would look pretty sweet".

"Indeed. Bee's knees for sure. I'm going to have to think about that one".

The question of 'how many' fascinates me. You can bet the farm that when 'how many' drops by his little brother 'how much' isn't far behind (but first he had to stop at the AM/PM for a six-pack of Blitz). Being the new home owner that I am, I get asked the big three all the time. How many square feet? How many garages? How much did it cost? Frankly, this line of questioning bores me to tears. Yet, I find it extremely interesting that this has become the primary cultural currency.

"Hey man, cool ipod. How many songs do you have on it?"

It's normal now for complete strangers to meet, have a few 'how many' conversations, and walk away - still total strangers but with a sense of how they stack up - like dogs sniffing each others assholes. I assume this is pretty much an all male thing and goes back to some kind of hunter-gatherer instinct.

Man, if only people would ask me about table lamps instead of computer monitors, then I'd be back in the game. Also pendant lamps. I want four of these IQlights. Mostly cause the guy who designed 'em has a great look going. And I also want a handful of these Tom Dixon lamps. And shit, while I'm at it I'll take this Moonwalk carpet.

September 25, 2005

The Giant John: a Trend for the Future
I've never been completely at ease with the fact that my given birth name is a synonym for that special place we all deposit our daily load. Don't get me wrong, if it wasn't for Queen Elizabeth I's 'saucy Godson', Sir John Harington and his invention of the first British flushing toilet, then we might all still be crapping in wooden holes in the backyard (probably not), but why couldn't the inventor have been named Sir Bob or Sir Tom. Having to visit the 'Bob' is way more linguistically poetic than having to visit the 'John'.

Oh well, what's done is done. I'm not about to change 500 years of sound British etymology. Although, now that I think about it, I will continue to take issue with the 'Port-A-John'. Technically a free standing Port-A-John latrine is not a flushing toilet and therefor it is nothing more than a glorified outhouse - the very thing Sir John Harington was working to make history.

With that said, I wonder how the right and honorable Sir Harington would feel about this new product available at George Morlan Plumbing, aptly titled - the Giant John. I've been quite obsessed with the Giant John over the last few weeks. When out-of-town guests arrive at the Skelton Ranch, sure Powells Books and other Portland standbys are put on the sight-seeing tour but really the trip to George Morlan to witness the Giant John is the only thing I want to show people. When you first gawk the Giant John your head fills up with hundreds of questions, questions you're not sure you really want answers too. It is utterly captivating.

Yesterday the misses and I stopped in at the Portland Home Show of which Georgie Morlan had a booth set up. And wouldn't you know it but the Giant John was out on full display. Onlookers stared in amazement. Some actually gave it a test ride. I was content to just sit back and watch people's faces as they did double and triple takes, their eyes slowly giving clues that their brain was attempting to unravel the dark mysteries of the Giant John. Everyone had a joke on the tip of their tongue but folks were careful to scan the waistlines of those in close proximity so the possibly offensive joke would not fall on possibly offended ears.

The Giant John was the highlight of the Portland Home Show. Also Yolo is a cool paint company that makes environmentally responsible paint in some pretty nifty colors. They are nice folks too.

The two trends that I noticed at the Home Show were; 1) everyone wants giant things (stoves, refrigerators, windows, sinks, etc) - if it's good enough for a restaurant that feed's 200 people a night, then it's good enough to feed my small family of four and, 2) why buy it real when you can buy it fake - wood, metal, stone, anything natural should be replaced by the ugliest plastic composite you can find.

September 24, 2005

Grounded
Blogging slowdown this last week as the Skelton Ranch entertained its first family visitor. Stepfather arrived from California bearing gifts of solid oak table legs that were constructed and designed by famed wood worker Larry Golden. Legs were placed on a Golden table-top that I had acquired over a year ago. Now we have a full functioning dining room table. We no longer eat our meals sitting on the floor like grade school students.

Stepfather arrived at the house with hammer in hand and an appetite for home improvement. We spent the better part of the week wiring up the garage, which strangely enough had only one little outlet from which the automatic garage door was powered. It took a long time just to figure out the entire downstairs/garage wiring plan. It's a shame people don't keep updated wiring schematics on hand with a house. Trying to navigate the decades of electrical 'improvements' is like inheriting a clients website where nothing is commented/documented and you have to spend hours slogging through someone else's horrible code to try and figure out which way is up. Electrical work can look pretty intimidating but once you figure out the schematics, making additions and subtractions is actually pretty logical. Just remember to avoid hooking up the 220 volt central air-conditioner to the 110 lines. Not good.

With the electrical in the garage done, we had six grounded outlets humming and ready for action. With power we were able to juice up the saw and with the saw we were able to cut wood and with cut wood we were able to make improvements and reinforce the deck off the back of the house. The deck railings were janky at best. One good lean on the things and you'd be flying through the railing like a scene out of an old John Wayne western. Now, I think you could have a Jackie Chan style brawl up there and unless you got tossed over you'd be secure. But even if you did get tossed over, the hammock down below would catch your fall. Alright, I think I've effectively covered all the worst case scenarios now.

Oh wait...what about the one where Kate Moss is out on the deck, snorting endless lines of coke, and then she gets kinda spacey and teeters too close to the edge and then...

Also, the servers that host afrojet got hacked this week by some little vagrants from Brazil called the Spy Kids. Apparently, I wasn't the only one.

And, DVD recommendation: The 70's Dimension - a collection of pre-videotape, 16mm film television commercials, public service announcements, news clips, and other celluloid oddities from 1966-1974. It made me all kinds of nostalgic for a time when cigarette commercials dominated the airwaves and Jack LaLanne was the king of the infomercial.

September 23, 2005

A Million and Counting
Yesterday, Oprah picked James Fry's rehab memoir, A Million Little Pieces for her next book club read. That's a good choice. James and Oprah cooked up a scheme to have James' mom in the audience when she announced the book. Mom didn't expect a thing. Nice video of the mom screaming and crying some proud tears.

September 18, 2005

I Brake for Demolition
Without question the single greatest item in my quiver of tools is the Wonderbar. I can't even imagine what life was like before this solid piece of steel with its generous curves landed in my hands. All other tools that man has invented up to the forging of the first Wonderbar seem shiftless and unstable next to the substance and resolve of this beauty. When the Wonderbar gets called off the bench you know the game is on - like when Paul Newman calls in the Hanson Brothers in Slapshot. Simply put, the Wonderbar brings violence. Demolition is its game and it plays for keeps.

My favorite household project is anything that involves heavy demo. Beauty? Creating? Building? Planting? Fuck all that noise. I just want to break shit. Smash wide holes in walls and excavate foundations. Tear everything down until you're staring at open studs and dirt floors.

Once you get going it's impossible to stop. Black Sabbath pushes the limits of your 25-watt paint splattered boom box. Your right arm becomes intimately linked with Bill Ward's manic drum pounding. You get in a frightening zone and by the time 'War Pigs' finally crescendos, you find yourself standing like a lone warrior atop a giant pile of rubble, tile, and whatever the fuck else got in your path. Your head is covered in a mix of dust, sweat and blood. And then it hits you - with equal parts satisfaction and distress - you've completely overdone it. Whole. Eee. Crap. have you overdone it! Your own sanity is really what's been whacked. It's going to take a lot of work to put this mess back together.

I've found that after a good demo session there's a bit of a depression that washes over me. It doesn't last more than a couple of minutes. Usually I just start thinking about another demo project that might come up in the future or I simply make a giant sandwich and demo the living crap out of that.

September 15, 2005

A Life Encased in Styrofoam
It feels like I've spent the better part of this summer throwing things away. How can two people create so much garbage? In preparing for our move out to Portland, the misses and I made countless trips to the Goodwill, sold half our lot in a garage sale, and spent countless hours filling garbage bins to their fullest capacity. Foolishly, I thought that once we landed in Portland that the garbage days were behind us. But I'm still filling large chunks of time contemplating, strategizing and eventually hauling so much damn garbage. It never stops.

Thursday is garbage day here on Alfred Street and you should see my driveway! It looks ridiculous. Embarrassing really. Luckily the garbage folks come by for pick up real early here. So if I put all the trash out under cover of darkness the night before, then hopefully the neighbors wont notice that my trash production now rivals that of a mid-sized manufacturing company. Being that Thursday is trash day and because of the early morning pick up, Wednesday nights have now become marathon trash preparation events. I spent almost two solid hours toiling away in my garage last night preparing tightly packed cans and a number of 32 gallon garbage sacks for curbside removal. My trash packing skills have become quite extraordinary. I've become especially adept at cardboard origami. I take small satisfaction in plying as much cardboard into one small recycling bin as is logistically possible.

Many of the new home purchases have come from internet buying sprees. Every item arrives safely at our door in a solid cardboard box with ample packaging materials for extra comfort. I could have built a small styrofoam fortress on just the materials delivered in the last few days. And let me tell you, all styrofoam is not created equal. Not only does Apple Computers make a solid fucking computer they also make some of the most bad-ass packaging styrofoam that I have ever tried to break and crumble. It's like concrete. I had to break out a hack-saw to get at that shit. At one point I was covered head-to-toe in a thin layer of clingy styrofoam snow. Styrofoam is just plain evil. At this point in our technological evolution, we really need to come up with a better packaging solution.

I'm probably being way too optimistic, what with the home imprüvo projects on the docket for this weekend, but I think after last night's trash packing that our garbage production should level off. Oh hell, who am I kidding? It never stops. Never.

September 13, 2005

The Return of the Page-turner
Almost two years ago I posted about a Peter Serkin concert that I attended at the Saint Paul Ordway. In the post, I ruminated on the the craft of the gentleman who was turning pages for Mr. Serkin. Somehow, through the magic of Google and the blogosphere, said gentleman found the post, identified himself as the page-turner, and wrote me a nice note answering some of my questions regarding the practice. To wit:

""Page-turning" is indeed the name of the activity, and the person who does it is called a "page-turner." A pianist will tell the concert presenter (like the Schubert Club): "I need a page-turner," and it's the presenter's job, usu. to supply a person. It's something that all pianists do at some point, though many people don't like to do it. It can be nerve-wracking, and an inexperienced person can spoil a concert by dragging the music off the rack, or turning two pages at once, or simply getting lost. The ideal page-turner isn't even noticed. Composers often like to do the job because they spend so much time looking at scores (the printed music). One has to be a fluent reader; with some modern music the printed page can be very hard to follow. I find that the activity has a rhythm: you look for the best place to turn, decide when to stand up, turn the page, then sit down and relax attentively."

Composer David Evan Thomas served as 'page-turner' that night. The Schubert Club has some of his recording for sale.

Many thanks to Mr. Thomas for the insights. As an aside, I was a little disappointed to learn that 'page-turner' is indeed the actual title for someone who does that job. Although I appreciate the what-you-see-is-what-you-get aesthetic of it, it strikes me as a bit pedestrian next to the the ornamental and voluptuous latin derived nomenclature that populates the genre. I might suggest something like:

The Notation Agent
Sultan of Scales
Clef Steward
The Octave Officer
The Keeper of the Staff

September 09, 2005

No More Swimming
Rolling Stone recounts the Gonzo Fist Memorial and publishes Hunter S. Thompson's short and focused suicide note.

In a related bit, last weekend my father entrusted me with his entire collection of old school Rolling Stone magazines - back when they were still mostly black and white newsprint. Almost exclusively (save for the nude Janis Joplin Issue), the issues he kept have articles that were written by HST and illustrated by Ralph Steadman. The scan at the top of this post, I took from Issue #115 (Aug 17, 1972). It's one of my favorite Steadman pieces. It's from Hunter's 'Fear and Loathing in Miami Beach'. Of course, the illustration could easily apply to the unrelenting, round-the-clock media coverage of Katrina.

Kanye West Remix
I'm sure everyone and their pomeranian is going to be linking this one up today so I'll just surf that bandwagon. It's a Remix of Kanye West's 'Gold Digger' by the Legendary K.O. The song brilliantly takes Kayne's off-script ("George Bush don't care about black people") comments at the NBC relief concert last week and weaves a tragic narrative around a deeply southern-fried groove.

Listen to the song here or here.

Five days in this motherfucking attic
I can't use the cellphone I keep getting static
Dying 'cause they lying instead of telling us the truth (...)
Screwed 'cause they say they're coming back for us, too
but that was three days ago and I don't see no rescue(...)

via boing-boing

September 08, 2005

Memory-Foam and Posturepedic Elite Pillowtops
The Skelton Ranch is almost ready to accept visitors. Unfortunately in order to set up our guest bedroom we had to buy another bed, which meant that we had to make an unfortunate trip to a mattress store. Next to car salespeople, mattress pushers have to be the second sleaziest people on the planet. It doesn't make sense to me that there is an inverse correlation between the price of objects and the gimcrack tackiness of the people who sell them. Mattress stores are exceptionally squalid environments. The fact that you have to try out, test drive a mattress really, by lying prone atop the sauces and stains that a hundred other customers have deposited on the floor models is repulsive enough. Doing it under the penetrating gaze of the salesperson while they bark our statistics about double galvanized steel springs is distressing. The fact is, you need to be in combat mode when dealing with these kinds of sales people, the last thing you want to be doing is lying on your back with your belly exposed to these hyenas. It gives them a huge advantage.

We were doomed the instant we walked into the mattress store as we were the only customers there. The sales guy who descended upon us reminded me of a large, imposing, and over the top Vince Vaughn like character without the comedy. The platitudes and cliched sales talk made my eyes hurt from all the rolling they were doing. At one point he went back to his desk to get a 'secret' coupon that he told us only he and another sales guy were given by the Company. It was supposed to be used for people who were buying beds in bulk, like for a bed and breakfast or a Martha Stewart prison but he was willing to make a special exception for us. He tried to make it seem like he was giving us the golden ticket from a Wonka chocolate bar. Saddly, I might of bought his schtick if it wasn't for the misses who whispered under her breath, "I saw the same coupon online, but I forgot to print it out." "Ah Ha! Exposed! You vagrant liar. We shall take our mattress business to a more wholesome seller. How dare ye' try to assuage our uncertainty with your flimflam deals! Six horse-loads of graveyard clay on top of you!"

So yeah, we took the coupon and free delivery (take that!) and bought our bed and got out of there as quickly as we could. Hell, I've bought a pair of two dollar socks that I felt better about after the purchase. The good news is that we now have a guest bed. So come one come all.

The misses has been busy all week renovating the guest bathroom too. She ripped out all the floor tiles that we just assumed were asbestos tiles. I took some hot pictures of her wearing the respirator mask, but I've been threatened with immediate and permanent divorce if those pictures ever graced these pages. She got all the wallpaper removed and now the bathroom looks like an empty shell. I still haven't dry-walled the gaping hole that got knocked out on day one. I am waiting for the new bed to arrive so I can rest up for that job.

September 06, 2005

Even the Clouds are Relaxed
Nice relaxing Labor Day weekend. Friday, we unplugged from last weeks tragic realities and headed down to my fathers tranquil and remote compound in Southern Oregon. No T.V., no cellphones and no computer were the name of the game. Technology replaced with a whole zoo's worth of nature's critters. We saw tons of deer, hawks, star fish, sea anemones, a bear (that we barely missed hitting as it hoped across Highway 101). We drank wine on the deck, read books, and watched impressive cloud formations explode upon the horizons. Even the clouds are different out here in the West. My dad's place is situated on top of a large hill and from the deck you can enjoy a vista that spans about 300 degrees. The amount of stars you can see at night while laying in the hammock is almost unnerving. It reminds me of an old Calvin & Hobbes comic where Calvin, staring up at the stars, contemplates existentialism, only to be pounced on and ravaged by an overly playful and downright darwinian Hobbes.

While staring up at the stars Saturday night the misses received her first ever bee sting. I know, it's hard to believe someone can make it into their 30's without ever having been stung by a bee - but she did. Her winning streak ran out when, in the dark, she inadvertently stepped on a ground nest and subsequently got stung on the foot. It was pitch black outside, so it was anyone's guess what hit her. She was certain that she had just been bitten by a huge venomous snake or overtaken by a whole party of deadly scorpions. Next time we head down there we're bringing two of these bee death hotels.

I'm trying to convince my father that he needs to buy a vintage airstream to put on his property.

Soundtrack to this week being provided by the beautiful samba-bossa stylings of Joyce. Her guitar work and voice are completely settling, like the sound my cat makes when it jumps on the bed. Also, a great Azymuth Brazillian Soul t-shirt.

September 01, 2005

RIP RL Burnside
A sad day all over the place. Fat Possum Records is reporting that RL Burnside passed away this morning. Also, in the aftermath of Katrina, both Fats Domino and Irma Thomas are both reported missing. Here's hoping they both turn up real soon.
Update: Fats Domino Found