Summer Dynamite
Best purchase from Portland came from the Adidas store where I scored these dragons on the cheap. Something about the old skool materials or the thin body of the shoe – I’m not sure, but lacing them up for the first time took me back to buying sneakers as a kid at Donalds on Payne Avenue in Saint Paul.

The second image comes from the CD insert for 600% Dynamite. I’m already in balls-to-the-wall reduction mode around the house in preparation for “Manifest Destiny: Journey Out
West ’05. Everything must go! I don’t want to move shit. Garage Sale coming very soon. One of the boldest moves I’ve made so far is the entire elimination of all CD jewel cases. And boy were there a lot of them. About two years ago I took all my CD’s out of the cases and put them in a catalog of easy to move 200 page CD books. But I hung onto the jewel boxes and liner notes. The thought of hauling all those boxes of empty plastic with just the back inserts overwhelmed me so I got a couple boxes like these, filled them with the CD inserts and then ceremoniously tossed the extra plastic refuse.

My apologies to all the artists who spent many hours painstakingly laying out the back CD tray art. Also, to those artists who went to the trouble to make special elaborate packaging and cardboard cases – all that shit went bye bye.

Now all of this is very well and good but does me not a lick of good when it comes to the thousands of LP’s that must be moved. I ain’t about to throw the record sleeves away. I’m pretty much doomed in this department unless some wiz kid over at M.I.T. can whip out a Teleporter by months end.

July Fourth around here consisted of watching the neighbors brother run around in the dark wearing dual head lamps and handling a propane torch to light fuses. Their firework extravaganza lasted about a half hour. The wind was blowing just right and our house was enveloped by a sulfuric blue cloud for about an hour. God Bless America!