Futebol 2002: Available at DustyGroove

Yeah I still got the World Cup heavily on my mind and am coping with withdraw armed with this Brazilian soundtrack to life and futebol.

Heading to Philadelphia tomorrow. My flight leaves way too early. I went to the OkayPlayer site to try and track down some good record stores to visit while I am in the Liberty City and found OkayBaby week. A great collection of childhood pictures sent in by their readership. Hilarious snaps.

I wish I was going to Istanbul for the Istanbul Jazzfest instead of Philly. They have an amazing line-up this year. All the heavy hitters.

The readers of these pages know I have a small addiction for flip flops and these little gems available at IKEA push the boundaries of the Avant Garde but they would definitely leave some great prints in the sand.

Last week I mentioned the amazing new plastic that decomposes when exposed to water. Now the Glass manufactures at Pilkington have invented self cleaning glass. How could the economy be in the toilet with products like these breaking on a weekly basis? I don’t get it.

Sweet t-shirts for the Mason layer or Concrete lover in your family. Ohh and a great one for the ladies too – brick chick.

I had to throw this soap as far off my patio as I could this morning. It’s green and shaped like a thin hockey puck so it flew for a long time, caught the sun just for an instant and all the glycerin sparkled as it came to rest in the front lawn of a neighbor three doors down. It startled a squirrel who went over to identify the UFO, it wasn’t too impressed. I don’t usually make a habit of launching things off my patio just to amuse myself at its trajectory and sun play but I’ve had it with this stuff. I picked it up as one of the complimentary soaps at the lodge over the weekend. It’s actually not soap but a “Glycerin Completion Bar”. And damn it, every time I go to use it and see the word glycerin embedded into it I start singing a few bars of that terribly annoying song by the band Bush. I think the song is actually called Glycerin – Like Nirvana’s Lithium, but that’s another story.

So there I am, with a clean face, coffee, paper, quietly singing a Bush song for the rest of the morning. How is it that I even know the words to the song? I reach for my guitar to try and find my own melody to pry the steel grip that Bush has on my gray matter. A few chords into it the cats appear. Because of the weather all the windows and doors are kept open in the hopes of moving this stale air around. The air hasn’t moved in this town in two weeks. So now the neighbors cats think they own the place. Just waltz right in whenever they want. I don’t really mind. They’re my entire fan base for personal late night/early morning jam sessions on the six stringer. They really dig you know? The dumb big fat gray cat is called Burt. He’s a chiller. and the little skinny black one’s gota name I can never remember. I know she’s had hip surgery and had to roll around in one of those gladiator carts for kittens where their hind legs are all bunched up and they look like half animal part machine, errr, ahhh.

I was never really a cat guy. I never got them. But I think i’ve come around and now enjoy their company very much. Their Rhythm. Their Timing. It’s odd but we expect conversation from people almost all the time. It’s uncomfortable dining out with friends when sitting amongst the tofu teriyaki and spring roles a big fat uninvited pregnant pause that inflates with every passing second until you can’t squeeze it with your chop sticks and toss it onto someone else’s table. “Waiter could you please get this huge cancer of an uncomfortable silence off my table, or hell, could you just give us another topic to toss around so heads can start nodding and I can concentrate on eating again”.

But cats don’t say nothing and we don’t expect them too. Which is just fine. 98% of talking leads to some sort of trouble or worse yet boredom.

So the cats teach me to slow it down. Sit and stare at the wall. Watch the two stupid summer flies try and figure their way out of my living room and back into the still night air. Puravida.

Fine north shore getaway. I barely even remember how to use this computer thingy. Lazy times. Highlights include; Nordic Scandinavian architecture, simple analog living, lakes that seem like oceans, a full twenty degree temperature difference that is perfect for hoodie sweatshirt living come supper time, evergreen smells, vistas, super rare Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Sarah Vaughn records for $1.00 at local flee market, wood carvings, not hearing or seeing one firework on the forth of July, walleye over wild rice, that one part, about 4 minutes into track 10 of Wilco’s new record-wow!, and the whole darn town of Grand Marais.

Also I shouldn’t forget – losing myself in the Canal Park Antique Mall and then emerging victorious with a 1905 second printing of The Sea-Wolf by Jack London (with dope illustrations) and Jack Karouac’s letters to Carol Cassady. An archavist never sleeps.

At the Sivertson gallery in Grand Marais I fell in love with the photography of Minnesotan, Lonnie Dupre. The photos he took while attempting to circumnavigate Greenland in a kayak and using sled dogs, tell me, i need to do some traveling in Greenland: Earth’s Largest Island. The book Where Ice is Born captures the best of these images. Also his wife writes children’s books with an Inuit and Greenland pride flavor. The Illustrations for The Raven’s Gift are terrific. What a team.

Also scored a great record called, “Convoy: 20 of Today’s Hits”, which I guess is like the top songs that truckers were listening to during the whole Convoy movement of the late Seventies. See the great Sam Peckinpah directed Film Convoy starring Kris Kristofferson and the ever lovely Ali MacGraw if your not familiar with this epic period of tragic American History. The back of the record sleeve comes with a full C.B. Directory (Instant Messaging is really just a modern day versions of the C.B., with much debate on the fad like quality of the medium). Here are some highlights. Don’t be surprised if they start showing up more frequently in these pages after I get a handle on ’em. Haaa! Get it? Handle? C.B.’s? Oh man that’s rich.

GoGo Girls = Load of Pigs Headed for Market
Ten-One-Hundred = I Gotta Go Potty
Bear = State Highway Patrol
Tijuana Taxi = Full Dressed Bear
Roller Skate = Small Car
Pregnant Roller Skate = VW
Seat Covers = Girls in Cars
Ratchet Jaw = Never Stops Talking
Suicide Jockey = Driver Hauling Dangerous Goods
Shakyside = California, Becasue of Earthquakes
Threes and Eights = Heavy Regards

Has anyone tried the new vanilla coke? I admit I was curious and foolish and purchased one last night. Holy gods is it awful. Dare I say even worse than new coke. Out of all the cool brands they have why not give the public something halfway consumable to drink.

Some crazy plastic designers in Australia have finally created a plastic made from corn starch that will actually dissolve when exposed to water. Excellent. I wonder if it dissolves when exposed to vanilla coke?

I’d like to see the DVD format branch out and create some best of collections. Best Car Chases from the 70’s. Best scenes of Sidney Poitier Kicking Peoples Asses. Whole DVD’s devoted to the little people; the designers, typographers, musicians and still photographers. There definitely needs to be a Best Opening Title Sequences DVD. To which I suggest the inclusion of:

  1. The Man with the Golden Arm with titles by the legendary Saul Bass. An incredible performance by Frank Sinatra too.
  2. Blow Up where the titles are enhanced by a funky lo-fi Herbie Hancock soundtrack.
  3. The Pink Panther is just a classic. Clueless panthers, animated type, Harry Mancini soundtrack. Great start to a solid movie.
  4. Bullitt with titles designed by Pablo Ferro and scored by Lalo Schifrin’s blazing instrumental, make this gritty beginning nothing short of galactic. This is my favorite. Nothing has come close to this in 34 years.
  5. Seven is probably my favorite of recent titles today. The titles, designed by Kyle Cooper, instantly draw you into this movie and buck the trend of current Hollywood fodder where the opening titles seem more like an afterthought.

What’s your favorite opening title sequence to a movie? Let me know.

I found this little piece of software over at KStudio that automatically resizes all digital photos within a given folder. It makes creating thumbnails a snap. It’s a good addition if your like me and haven’t fully upgraded to iphoto yet.

Loving the new Blue Note release Mantis by Eric Truffaz. Dusty analog hip hop beats mixed under some great Miles influenced cold Trumpet lines. Thick Double Bass. Also, enjoying Suba’s posthumous release Tributo. A Brazilian journey by the producer of Bebel Gilberto’s “Tanto Tempo” and other modern Brazilian super stars. A good disc to celebrate Brazils crushing victory over Germany.

The comb storage table is being dialed in as soon as I can rustle up 823 British pounds. Maybe Philip Stark will design a cheaper version and sell it at Target.

The World Cup is over and my feet are in bad shape. My insistence on traversing that last few weeks in a full flip flop fashion has left me nursing a couple bad sores dealt from the makers of cheap plastics. That, and the mosquitoes are on the attack. I can battle most of them but I’m at a horrible disadvantage at six foot four to get to the ones that take their meals on that one hallowed out indent right under the heel bone. Adding insult to injury, I have learned that my immune system isn’t all that I thought it was; i have trouble moving the toxins out of my body, the results of which are too gruesome for these pages but lets just say that when the Mosquitoe giveth and taketh the scratch remains for at least a full agonizing week. So, to the ever expanding drug cabinet, I have now added a healthy supply of Flax Seed Oil. I guess it speeds things up, mellows out the lymphatic system, and, taken with the right amount of Duke Ellington on a hot hummer day, jump starts my pores into acting responsibly and more importantly empathetically.

The condition reminds me of Belize during the rainy season, when my feet collected a colony of sores that didn’t heal for weeks. This was mostly due to the fact that you can’t get anything to dry in the rainforest. My feet didn’t even have a sporting chance at recovery until I was safely across the border and into the low-lands of a tepid Guatemala. In the tropics everything just rots and falls apart. Good times.

Belize was hot but not like this heat. Minnesota is the dramatic switch hitter of the National Weather League. I’ve spent all my money on high powered fans and beer. Window fans. Shotgun fans. Dual exhaust fans. I got ’em all and they are all strategically placed around me right now to produce what one Holmes model calls a “Blizzard”. We spend Eight chilled months wishing for summer and the remainder praying for its demise. Huh? To make matters worse, my beer of choice for these impossible afternoons – Premium Lager, is now going to be discontinued as the Pigs Eye/Grain Belt plant is shutting its doors and closing down its taps. So now all I got is these damn fans and ehhh…errr…wine? Yeah well o.k. so my new favorite wine was discovered at Big Top Liquors the other day. The title of the wine is everything I’ve ever wanted to be but didn’t have the guts or the talent to pull off. It’s called Fat Bastard. It’s a Shiraz from France and goes down smooth and with frankness, especially when served with pasta, salmon or with the good air you breath on a Sunday afternoon. I guess the title is a British term for a damn fine wine, a fact I will now wield mercilessly at all private and public engagements that offer silky elixirs with warm conversations, “Wow Sally. You’ve got yourself one hellava Fat Bastard there. What this country needs is a good medium-priced Fat Bastard, wouldn’t you agree Donald?”

So we pass the time drinking wine, thinking about biking or skateboarding, Miles and Marley, reading the books we hustled from the Library. I love the library. But damn the library is getting to be a wicked place. I think Kelly’s about had it with the Library. I’m always off on some wild goose chase to find a book that was checked out in 1977 and never returned or I find out that the book I want has 147 holds on it, which means it might be available sometime in the year 2007 if every one of those 147 people returns their copy. When I catch back up to Kelly she’s in Fiction. She begins pointing out, a) the guy with the black beret who keeps following her from stack to stack saying, “oh, isn’t it a coincidence that we keep winding up in the same section”. No. It’s no fucking coincidence. Back the fuck up you pervert. Go back to Florida, And, b) the guy who keeps agreeing ceaselessly with the voices in his head, “hhmm – yes, oh yes, hhmm, mmmhhmm, excuse me do you know where the best places to work in Oregon are? I’m really looking to work for the best place in Oregon…uh huh, oh-yes, mmmhhmm.” And lets not forget about the middle aged men locked behind the doors of the “quiet room” talking on two cell phones at one time. Just what the hells going on in there? They are clearly not reading. I’m determined to ask next time.

I read Philip K. Dick’s The Minority Report after being won over by the theatrical rendition last weekend. It’s good stuff. I like Philip K. Dick because he’s a science fiction writer that doesn’t write science fiction and he doesn’t write about the future. It all feels present.

I also enjoyed reading this interview with Chris Locke (I have his book on hold at the library). It put together a few of the missing pieces of a little puzzle I’ve been trying to put together now for the last Three years. Now if I can only find the others pieces.

Gnats.
Everywhere.
I am under siege.

Every bike commute this week is a galactic battle with a trillion tiny Cylon warriors determined to make my mouth the final frontier of the 2002 gnat dynasty. Worse yet, they are not alone. They move amongst planets – small puffy air based satellites that fall like soft hailstorms. They are the product of cottonwood trees. It comes in waves. My morning meteor shower navigation through the storm of cotton balls and gnat colonies is plenty work for the day.

This morning I saw the chalk drawing too. They live amongst us. People are telling each other in the most ancient codex available that the battle will be fought on all frontiers. They are the “sign” people and they support the digital world and spread the message with low tech weapons undetectable by traditional radar systems. Know your neighborhood. Learn to play THIS game. I know my airport is supported and accessible. I’ve seen it in the hieroglyphics just down the block.

Chuck D knew it. He lived and wrote about it. Caught the movement when it was still pushing people over just to see if they would fall. He’s on a slightly more obscure path now but the adroit will still listen and see his motivation in casting rhymes in pine tar and the deep worn leather of a thousand pastimes. His next shit is forecasting the rise of a new baseball anthem. His relevance will be proven:

“If baseball comes to a halt, this summer or next spring or any time, here’s a plan: We all get old-school boomboxes and stand outside the owners’ offices holding them over our heads and blasting “Fight the Power,” like John Cusack in “Say Anything,” when he’s trying to wear down Ione Skye and appeal to her better, truer, angels.”

Just like Herbie can’t forget about Miles, we can’t forget about Chuck. Some of us owe him (and Miles) our lives.

Some days things seem so clear. Maybe it’s the gnats. Maybe they whisper truisms and wisdom in my ears just before they’re killed and wiped away by my giant and annoyed finger. That’s the only explanation. Why do Mosquitoes buzz in your ear? It’s cause your not fucking listening to what they are saying!

I think they told me that AIBO is the way. Man, I’m totally into these things. I know I slept on ’em and they are old news but damn I want one. Hell one? I want a whole flock, a gaggle, an army. If you aren’t convinced, watch the movie “picnic” on the Japanese site and your shit will be looking to fill your house with ’em. Maybe you can find ’em at the humane society. The real headz have already programmed (or trained) theirs to take advantage of the Sony open code that allows you to program your metallic canine with the ability to slap you when you’ve worked on your D&D pewter figurines far too long (brian?).

I shouldn’t even be thinking about these magnesium mutts. I should stay with what I know — t-shirts and posters.

If you were as completely freaked as I was when SoMaFm disappeared from your itunes and was replaced by the silence of greed and the stealth styled murder of innovation. Then you must do something. After you’ve done all the irrational things like bike locked yourself to your powerbook and done a virtual sit-in on the RIAA site, do something boring like writing your senator and telling him (or hopefully her) that you buy all your music at giant mega stores for no less than $18.99 a pop and that you occationaly buy something new after you’ve been exposed to it on “the internet”. They love to hear from you. I’m so glad my senator rocks.

Brazil wins. I am thrilled and not the least bit tired.

If your kids are doodling, building mammoth creations out of legos or tinker toys or putting on catwalk fashion shows for the whole neighborhood, then do what so many parents do and send ’em to camp. Design Camp. I wish this stuff was around when I was a young tyke with a crayon and a blank living room wall.

This summers series of design lectures at The Walker Art Museum looks like a promising one.

My landlord dropped by this morning just as Germany was driving in the final nail into the hearts of 67 Million Koreans. A bit early if you ask me. I was heavily drugged up on two pots of coffee, a half a box of golden grams and two Turkish crisps when he stumbled through my back door with a tub of plaster and a trowel. He looked frantic and determined to get to work. I was teetering on the verge of an athletic collapse in the 82nd minute of play. I threw him a crisp, muttered something to him about the possibility of my rent being hella late this coming month and then demanded that he fix the sprayer on my sink that Kelly broke as part of her weekly dismemberment plan of my possessions (first it was my mushroom lamp, then the mirror, my computer, and last – my sink sprayer). He mouthed a few words that were drowned out by the determined fans of Korea. Man that country is going to be horse for a week solid.

I’m always the first stop on my landlords rounds. He’s great. Really. No slum lord he. It’s become a weekly ritual now. He stops by just as the coffee’s piping hot and I got booty amounts of bagels, crisps or jelly rolls out on the counter. I was more polite before the world cup started. He obviously doesn’t give a damn about soccer and can’t wait to get on with his daily “projects”. I guess the cracks in the plaster behind the tub have gotten to him as he’s already got a fresh start on the fissure repair when I give him the red card and demand some bathroom time. Denver. I feel like i’ve been in Korea all morning watching the game. I’m exhausted already and now I’ve got to put on the other game face and try to pass as employee, friend, and creative upright citizen.

He doesn’t seem to mind the pause in his work. I can hear him going for his third donut. I wonder if he thinks about wheather Brazil’s got what it takes to put away Turkey.