Portland-No Fatties

Good article today suggesting that the reason why Oregon was the only state in the union to not have an increase in obesity last year is due to the large % of the population that commute by bike. Portland's relative svelteness was relatively hard for me to appreciate until a recent trip to Iowa, when I found myself stuck at a "Pizza Ranch" (in my experience any restaurant with "ranch" in the name is probably bad news) fearing I would be ingested by one of the patrons if the buffet spread were to run a little low at some point.

Moustache Tracking-Day6

All right, so I've decide to track the facial hair growth I'm undergoing-on September 12th I'll be attending Stache Bash 7-Moustaches in Heaven, and I had gone back and forth all throughout August debating-should I grow the moustache or just save myself the embarrassment during the growth period and buy a prosthesis of some kind? Well, the die is cast, the wheels are turning, don't stop believing-every day is a little more itchy and uncomfortable, but brings me closer to my hirsute destiny. I must add that besides the typical issues a sane person has with rocking a moustache in a serious capacity (though there are a number of hipster douchebags in Portland who do just that-not saying I'm not one myself, btw, just one without a moustache), my father also sported a 'stache for the first 29 years of my existence. My father is, to put it mildly, the antithesis of the Burt Reynolds/Boogie Nights image immediately conjured up by moustaches. To me, moustaches have as much to do with working as an insurance underwriter for 30-odd years and reading magazines at the mall bookstore as they do doing expensive drugs off of a stripper's ass in the backseat of a 1978 camaro whilst listening to "le freak". Anyway, here's how far I've gotten in 6 days of not shaving...future updates will be more concise, I just had to share some moustache-related ennui first. I feel this event is giving me the chance to really break through some complicated facial-hair issues I might otherwise have repressed, and for that I am thankful that I get to participate-I am breaking down personal boundaries one follicle at a time.

having a backup is selling out

Shellac was excellent last night-they zipped through a bunch of jams in about an hour and 15 minutes, from Live at Action Park/Terraform stuff through newer things I didn't recognize. (Although they didn't play my girl and I's favorite song of the moment which is this kind of loose narrative one where Albini is kind relating this out-of-control sexual relationship, all from the girl's perspective-interspersed with completely incoherent screaming-we always think this would be most funcomtable song ever to have playing during a traffic stop) No one we were there with had seen them before, with the exception of one of Jenny's friends who said they had played at her house in Missouri, at 10 am for some kind of waffle breakfast-which of course sounds totally feasible alongside all the other fun self-and-otherwise created mythology surrounding the band (they only play on houseboats, recorded all their albums in one giant marathon session and have slowly been parceling them out over the last 10 years, all their songs are either about baseball or Canada, etc) When Albini broke a guitar string Bob Weston led an impromptu audience Q and A (although no one asked what the hell are in the giant aluminum boxes with enormous knobs that seem to power the band) Anyway, shortly after the string was repaired his guitar started cutting out intermittently, and they played a couple more songs they could do sans guitar and then apologetically called it a night. Initially I was bummed-how the hell does he not have a backup guitar by this point-but once me and Jenny got on our bikes and headed back across the bridge to our side of town, I was happy to be in some fresh air, and relieved that I wouldn't be getting in at 2:00 am and at work at 8:00.