Fourth of D

beaverton

2007-10-23T17:21:00.000-07:00

October 14, 2007

the dalles

2007-09-23T17:16:00.000-07:00

September 8, 2007

trillium lake

2007-09-03T12:13:00.000-07:00

August 24, 2007

ignant

2007-08-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

August 10, 2007

holocene

2007-08-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

August 10, 2007

Hells Canyon

2007-08-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

August 6, 2007

Hells Canyon

2007-08-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

August 6, 2007

Mule Shoe

2007-08-15T22:00:00.000-07:00

August 3, 2007

Mitchell

2007-08-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

August 2, 2007

Painted Hills

2007-08-15T08:39:00.001-07:00

August 2, 2007

Painted Hills

2007-08-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

August 2, 2007

Painted Hills

2007-08-15T08:29:00.001-07:00

August 2, 2007

Mitchell, Oregon

2007-08-15T08:25:00.001-07:00

August 2, 2007

Buckman School

2007-07-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

July 4, 2007

Mall of America

2007-06-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

June 16, 2007

Lake Okoboji

2007-06-11T08:47:00.000-07:00

June 11, 2007

Lake Okoboji

2007-06-11T08:41:00.000-07:00

June 11, 2007

Seattle

2007-06-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

June 9, 2007

At Home

2007-05-15T09:51:00.000-07:00

May 15, 2007

slabtown

2007-04-09T10:06:00.000-07:00

April 8, 2007

Parking Lot

2007-03-05T00:23:00.000-08:00

March 4, 2007

Oaks Park

2007-02-06T12:40:00.000-08:00

February 4, 2007

Expo Center

2007-02-05T13:28:00.000-08:00

February 3, 2007

SE 12th and Taylor

2007-01-22T11:16:00.000-08:00

January 17, 2007

Hawthorne Bridge

2007-01-22T11:10:00.000-08:00

January 16, 2007

SW Salmon and 10th

2007-01-12T12:23:00.000-08:00

January 10, 2007

Northeast Portland

2007-01-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

January 1, 2007

Home

2006-12-27T09:58:00.000-08:00

December 25, 2006

Camp 18

2006-12-01T09:53:00.000-08:00

November 25, 2006

Camp 18

2006-12-01T09:44:00.000-08:00

November 25, 2006

Highway 26

2006-12-01T09:43:00.000-08:00

November 25, 2006

Tillamook

2006-12-01T09:26:00.000-08:00

November 24, 2006

Rockaway Beach

2006-12-01T09:08:00.000-08:00

November 24, 2006

Rockaway Beach

2006-12-01T09:02:00.000-08:00

November 24, 2006

Newport

2006-10-30T10:18:00.000-08:00

August, 2006

Lincoln City

2006-10-30T10:10:00.000-08:00

August, 2006

Southeast 12th and Hawthorne

2006-07-03T19:24:00.000-07:00

Downtown Los Angeles

2006-07-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

June 24, 2006

Echo Park

2006-07-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

June 24, 2006

Santa Monica

2006-07-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

June 24, 2006

Hollywood

2006-07-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

June 23, 2006

Lake Okoboji

2006-07-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

June 13, 2006

it does exist!!!

2006-03-01T23:31:00.000-08:00

Last night as I was coming home from basketball, I spotted it-the infamous "Apocalypse Cow" the rarest of Pacific NW car species-the Sasquatch if you will of automobiles. I am fortunate that we live right in its natural habitat-ie, directly across the street from a sketchy bar that its owners frequent. Various people in SE have seen this magnificent freak of automotive nature, but here it is captured in vivid colorIn fig.1 we get a good over all perspective of the cowprint markings that transform this from a typical late-80's Mazda into this special misunderstood vehicle. The "Apocalypse Cow" scrawled across the side in vaguely Anarcho-Punk Font is also an unmistakablely unique and baffling trait. In fig.2 we get to the car's most distinctive feature. Now, this would not be out of place on say, Boss Hogg's Cadillac, or the wall of a western aparrel store-and one has to be amazed that this car can move under it's own power with 200 pounds of longhorn on the hood, but nature is a strange thing, sometimes cruel, often beautiful, and this miraculous beast survives.

I can't stop

2006-02-28T22:21:00.000-08:00

listening to Led Zeppelin and it's getting really embarassing. The second side of IV is so awesome (the first side on the other hand, I couldn't probably listen to as many times as I listened to it when I was 16). Jimmy Page was on some next shit before there was ever like, current shit. Or something. Me and Gabe and J Carl spent all of Sunday afternoon rigging together a supremely lo-fi recording (Jason's insanely budget mics, my Radio Shack Crapelistic mic, into a $50 Behringer mixing board with only 2 mic pres, so I'm boosting the mic for J's kick drum with a $15 distortion pedal-out of the mixing board into Gabe's cassette deck which has more wow and flutter than most analog synths and hasn't had the heads cleaned since 1997) setup out of frustration of forgetting every song we play. It was sooo incredibly enjoyable figuring out how we were going to mic drums, get signal from gabe's laptop, and somehow keep my guitar rig at a level volume. It really was! I don't know why I get off on sitting there battling and battling with it, but it feels so good when you can at last hear everything. I'm currently in full ebay/craig's list predator mode to get a "top of the line" casette four-track. With the advent of digital 4-tracks what was once a $500-$600 deck now goes for like $140-I love using computers to edit and generate sound but genuinely do not want to spend music time figuring out submenus on a hard drive 4 track. God, the TV is on behind me and all of sudden "Fraiser" just got all emo-Roz is screaming at him about something. Oh, really now, Roz! I bet that's what he'll say next.

skimmed

2006-02-21T09:40:00.000-08:00

so Thursday after work we are barbecuing up dinner, and I run across the street to get sodas. I didn't have any case, so I used my card to get cash-and it comes up with a message saying I had reached my withdrawl limit for the day. This was really odd since all I had done was purchased 1 burrito-so I ran back across the street and checked my account online. Holy shit. $500 had mysteriously been withdrawn that same day, and even odder, it was taken out all in one $500 ATM withdrawl in Decatur, Georgia. So I'm pretty much wigging out and fumbling over my own fingers trying to dial the numbers to the bank so I can get the whole process of dragging my money back out of them underway. They were nice enough, cancelled my debit card and sent me a new one, but it also takes "about five business days" for them to credit the money back (which will probably roughly translate to about a week and a half more likely than not) I could not understand how whoever did this could get my card # and PIN and then Sunday night the local news had an article on skimming-a fun creepy new identity theft deal-the person in the story also had $500 withdrawn from her account-also in Decatur, GA. Essentially skimming works by putting a fake front on an ATM that reads your card # as it passes through into the real ATM machine. A hidden camera is stuck in something that looks over the ATM keypad (like a little thing full of bank pamphlets of something) they videotape you entering your PIN, the card reader takes down your number, they make a bogus card and then withdraw the money elsewhere. (Illustrations of all this are available here.) On the upside Gabe and I went and saw the Church of the Psychedelic/White Rainbow CD release party and it was a beautiful night of sitting on the floor listening to beautiful washes of sound.

willie marches forward

2006-02-15T12:05:00.000-08:00

country outlaw/genius Willie Nelson just released what is thought to be the first openly gay cowboy anthem, called (awesomely) "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)" I guess he recorded this pre-"Brokeback", showing that the times change with Willie, never the other way around. Sample lyric: What did you think all them saddles and boots was about? Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out.

what I don't get

2006-02-15T10:33:00.000-08:00

about this whole "Cheney-Shoots-Guy-in-the-FACE" thing is that the secret service reported that the "incident" happened at 6:30 pm. It would have been pretty much pitch dark by that point-I'm not much of a hunter but I thought shootin' birds in a big group was pretty much a daytime activity-or at least that's what all my training on the NES taught me...oh, crap I guess "The Daily Show" already did a re-enactment using "Duck Hunt" oh, well-it took a good 5 MINUTES of MS Paint to make this, so what the hell...

More "Duckhunt"/"Dickhead" crossover here (warning: contains Aerosmith)

Happy VD from the NBA

2006-02-14T15:13:00.000-08:00

Smoove B had better watch his back-for some reason second-year point guard Delonte West of the Boston Celtics agreed to walk ESPN through his perfect Valentine's Day, and the universe exploded in an inferno of ridiculousness...a couple choice quotes "I'd have the music pumping on the radio. The Jim Jones pumping, you know, 'Summer in Miami' song pumping. Got to keep a little gangsta, you can't be too soft. You can't be in there playing some guy that's crying, talking about don't leave me and love me baby, wah wah and all that. So Jim Jones pumping and then from there, wind blowing through the hair, boom, we get straight to the point -- we eat afterwards because I don't want to kiss no onions. I don't want to kiss you tasting like onions and steak and mushrooms and everything." "The red Moet, we ain't popping no Kristal, it tastes like urination." "When we're on the yacht eating, we're going to have some Popeyes chicken. That's for dinner. It's to let her know, put a mental image on her mind, first and foremost, if you ain't from the hood, you don't like Popeyes chicken." mashed potatoes will also be served.

Down with America! Down with KFC!

2006-02-14T11:16:00.000-08:00

Colonel Sanders is a blashphemous puppet of the great Satan! Seriously-they have KFC in Pakistan? I'm as surprised as anyone.

so we were eating hot dogs

2006-02-03T16:38:00.000-08:00

from the Dog House in our front room last Saturday. We're sitting there peaceful as can be when there is some noise and after 10 to 15 seconds Jen says to me "we're having...we just had an earthquake" and I blow it off as a truck going by the house (it's funny-Jen was born in Texas but raised up in California, whereas I was born in California, but raised up in Iowa, so we must have very opposite earthquake instincts-if she had jumped up and got in a doorway I probably would have started laughing), but simultaneously realize that it would have to be a semi going by and those are extremely loud and there's no sound-as I'm thinking all this the shaking comes to a stop. And that was that-20 minutes later the news comes on and reports there was indeed and earthquake, a small little one, the epicenter was about a 10 minute walk from our apartment under one of the many bridges in the middle of town. Fortunately, it was 9 miles below the surface, and we just got lucky enough to be home to feel it. If you were on the bus or in any kind of substantial structure, I'm sure you would have missed it. So last night I asked her about the big quake back in San Francisco in 1989, which frankly I had barely thought about since, but upon reflection her dad and stepmom's house in the mountains/hills outside of Santa Cruz couldn't possibly be a scarier place to be on that day (think stilts underneath portions of the house)...she had a really amazing story about it that I am not going to relate, since it's hers. But anyway. There's really no point to this other than when there is something like an earthquake, it makes it starkly clear that everything is temporary in the long, long run no matter how much we think whip nature into shape. A major, active fault runs right through downtown Portland, 2 active volcanoes are visible to the naked eye. And while you worry about all that, everything might just flood. I don't mean to get all hippy or apocalyptic, I just think small earthquakes are really awesome. Also, electrical storms.

the "Best" part of the State of the Union

2006-02-01T13:55:00.000-08:00

was definitely when President George Dubble-ya Male Cheerleader Bush started talking about how we needed to take steps to ban "Human-Animal Hybrids"...wha? Thank god I listened, 'cause I was about to sink all my money into Centaurs...(btw, if you look up "centaurs" on google image search you get page after page of airbrushed she-centaurs wearing absolutely no tops straight from role-playing-fantasy world. Pretty Hilarious) Anyway, so last night after the speech I did laundry and got in a 2 1/2 hour long duel with Jen's computer-I was trying to get it to recognize this new digital camera, it was refusing...I did everything, uninstalled and reinstalled the software, changed the batteries, delved deep into the menus for every preference, option involving cameras & scanners, opened the computer to make sure something wasn't loose (this was the problem once when our monitor wouldn't work) finally, ended up going to the store to get a new connector cable, they didn't have it. I came home, defeated and pulled the cord out of the USB port on the back of the computer-then I looked at it, and blew into the cable, in this fashion that you use to nurse an ailing Nintendo cartridge back to life. Plugged in the cable, and lo and behold, pictures began transferring. Oldest trick in the book. I swear to god if you ever get something repaired all they do is breathe really heavily over every inch of it. Anyway, I got it all working so that I can bring incredible photographs like "Can...of Olympia" or "Corner of the apartment (Where the Lamp is)"

calm before the storm...

2006-01-31T08:46:00.000-08:00

we got a digital camera from my lady's parents the other day, it's kind of clunky and pretty lo-fi, but it works...we immediately did what anyone does, take pictures of ourselves by holding the camera at arm's length... or taking pictures of our cat. anyway, I put a few pictures on the computer, then the whole camera/computer connection just stopped working, so I have about 60 sweet-ass photos that will come up on here just as soon as I figure out why the computer is being such a buster. I have a rematch scheduled for tonight after I go watch the State of the Union at the Langano lounge, assuming I don't have an aneurysm listing to Dear Leader pander to America's basest instincts in 3rd grade English.

Memphis-land of beards

2006-01-20T13:04:00.000-08:00

Memphis Grizzlie's Power Forward/Spainard Pau Gasol is having a career year, and doing it while sporting a ferocious beard...in order to show support Memphis is giving away free tickets to anyone who shows up at their upcoming game with the Timberwolves to anyone who rocks a real or simulated beard to the game. And in case people can't come up with their own beard design, the Grizz were nice enough to provide a beard pdf file to download and cut out.

there's nerdy and then there's

2006-01-12T15:44:00.000-08:00

staging a live re-creation of Mike Tyson's Punchout!-complete with a band to play the backup music. -GI Joe is looking pretty soft now that you can get a Ghostface Killa action figure. -there may be a new face at the top of the heap in the heated world of poisonous-snake kissing!

I need to read Pravda more often, obviously

2006-01-12T10:14:00.000-08:00

good lord! Condoleeza Rice evidently made some anti-Russian comment the other, day and the Russians did not take it well-the leader of the Liberal and Democratic Party of Russia gave a hilarious interview attributing the statements to Condi being single, old, and not getting any...

This is the only way to satisfy her needs of a female. She derives pleasure from it. If she has no man by her side at her age, he will never appear. Even if she had a whole selection of men to choose from she would stay single because her soul and heart have hardened. Like Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, or Alexander the Great of Macedon Ms. Rice needs to fight and release tough public statements in global scale. She needs to be on top of the world.

No, he din't!!! Oh, snap! The interview goes on and on in some really hysterical slightly-broken English, before he wraps up saying she...

Condoleeza Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she would be satisfied. On the other hand, she can hardly be satisfied because of her age. This is a complex. She needs to return to her university and teach students there. She could also deal with psychological analysis.

the Iron Fist of Murdoch

2006-01-10T13:02:00.000-08:00

-myspace- the storm begins(thanks Greg J)-great quote "This is soooo like Fox and News Corp to try and secretly seal our mouths with duct tape"-even I think that's a bit much. -Canada has a new treatment for homeless alcoholics-booze! -more fire-Japanese firemen in fire awareness event after-party set fire station on fire. -Bush is mixing up World War II with The Little Mermaid again.

just to clarify...

2006-01-10T09:52:00.000-08:00

I wasn't saying I hated Grizzly Man, I was trying to do Horatio Sanz' semi-brilliant impression of Gene Shalit reviewing a movie using exclusively bad puns. I couldn't think of any cowboy puns so I went with bears. Interesting how without vocal inflection or visuals, impressions really don't work too well. I bet Gene Shalit hated Grizzly Man, though, for the record. Oh, and in other "Brokeback"-as-cultural-flashpoint-news, Larry Miller, the owner of the Utah Jazz (easily one of the more detestable NBA teams ever) is refusing to show the movie in his Salt Lake City megaplex. In the "Revenge is a Bitch" category, this is awesome-man catches mouse, throws mouse into pile of burning leaves, mouse catches fire and runs back into man's house, burning it to the ground. Last night I had a basketball game up in the west hills, as I came around a corner on Mayberry St, I happened upon a view of town more amazing than any I had seen so far of Portland. The city's tallest building was slightly to the left of center, Burnside Ave ran straight off into the distance and the whole city just spread out in every direction, lights everywhere and it was of course pouring rain. I literally stopped my car in the middle of the street it was really breathtaking. I'm going back up there this week with a camera.

Gene Shalit Off The Chain

2006-01-09T10:21:00.000-08:00

Oh, my-Gene Shalit went off on Brokeback Mountain. I'm sure NBC has been terrified of the day Gene finally lost his grip on reality and offended someone. This is an interesting phenomenon that seems to always happen with people on TV forever, regarded as institutions (I remember Jimmy the Greek-the guy who gave the weekly NFL picks all throughout the 80's- expressing his views on how cross-breeding slaves had produced exceptional black athletes, and ended up out the door)-what's the Today show without Gene Shalit's bad-pun-laden movie reviews? "Grizzly Man was so terrible I couldn't BEAR to watch it! I don't want to say it was boring, but this reviewer ended up HIBERNATING!" This was a really good weekend of seeing old friends and rockin' the karaoke in front rooms at a house party on Friday night-"Keep Your Hands to Yourself" is easily the best karaoake warm-up song in the world. Totally easy to sing and hilarious. Saturday was laziness, recovery, pancakes and the Original Taco House where a waitress with an extremely heavy accent asked Greg O if he wanted a "shell" with his Taco Salad and he couldn't understand why he would want his taco salad "Chilled" Then we went to a really great night of mellow electronic music combined with film, there were lots of people and everyone was super nice. Me and Jenny sat on the floor with beers and listened/watched a giant close-up movie of a praying mantis with awesome hypnotic trippy music over it. Sunday was more laziness-I ended up never putting on socks the whole day or night. I had breakfast at everyone's favorite pirate/sports bar the Jolly Roger and watched the Sonics play the Knicks, while NFL people screamed their heads off-speaking of the NFL-they are no longer advertising male erectile dysfunction drugs. Evidently the ads were just getting way too steamy. I always thought it was funny that our most hyper-macho of pastimes was so open about it's, er, problems. Tonight at Berbati's the Advantage is playing-who evidently do rock covers of classic Nintendo songs, and I really want to check that out. In order to get to the show I have to run from left to right while hopping over obstacles, so I'm not sure if I'll make it however.

the one and only...

2006-01-05T13:00:00.000-08:00

incomparable Larry David wrote an incredible op-ed in the Times describing why he refuses to see "Brokeback Mountain" Could we please replace Maureen Dowd with Larry David? Here's a sampling...

But I don't trust him. If two cowboys, male icons who are 100 percent all-man, can succumb, what chance to do I have, half- to a quarter of a man, depending on whom I'm with at the time? I'm a very susceptible person, easily influenced, a natural-born follower with no sales-resistance.

I've been really sick...

2005-12-23T16:19:00.000-08:00

so I haven't been posting or emailing or whatever...how about this wiretapping thing? This is totally unbelievable! And completely appalling! And that the President of the United States could be such an insolent little dick about getting caught-the whole gist of his press conference (which I saw through a fever-induced haze) was "hey, what the hell are you yelling at me for? I put together this totally awesome way to spy on an unsuspecting public like a creepy dictator, all the while talking about how free America is, and now that's just ruined, isn't it?"is totally totally crazy. And I think some people are just perfectly fine with it-they aren't that scared about how creepy a precedent it is to just start randomly tapping phones, that's way more abstract than Osama, who after all, has a beard. I just hope everyone in Iraq is watching to see how awesome Freedom is, because it really totally rocks hard.

play some funky dixieland pretty mama

2005-12-15T13:35:00.000-08:00

The more I read this the more I had to believe it was a joke-one of the top experts in the war on terror also used to be one of the doobie brothers (and a former member of Steely Dan). Totally over-the-top article including lines like this- Baxter: So, one day, I don't know what happened. I sat down at my Tandy 200 and wrote this paper about how to convert the Aegis weapon system — why it would make sense to convert it to do theatre missile defense because it would be on a mobile platform and give the United States a new role in NATO in the 21st century. I have no idea. I just did it. Suuure you don't know what happened, Skunk-so basically the key to landing a high-paying, top-secret defense department job is to sit around stoned all day long reading Tom Clancy books and typing up theory on your Tandy.

diary-billboard music awards

2005-12-06T20:17:00.000-08:00

Sorry for any spelling/grammar errors, but I didn't know I was doing this until it dawned on me at the last minute... This year's ceremonies-coming to you live from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas-yeah, sure, they're a movie studio, but whatever. -Li'l Jon roars out of the gate winning hip-hop artist of the year for a song, which in the 30 seconds I heard, is utterly, incredibly bad, even by Li'l Jon standards. -Gwen Stefani wins "Digital Song of the Year"-which is not, astonishgly an award for electronic composition, but most-downloaded ringtone. Yep, most downloaded ringtone. She thanks Pherrell for an "amazing cross-cultural something-or-other" and I begin to consider watching our Larry Sanders Show DVD. -someone named Ciara plays-yep, I don't know who it is either. Ludicrous is up there somewhere, though. That guy does more guest spots than Dom Deloise, I swear. Oh, wait, I think I heard this on Jammin' 95. All the dancers are like a combination ninja/navy SEAL motif, but it comes off as totally not tough in the least. There's a lot of starts and stops and random changes-it's really more like a cheer routine than a song. Did I mention she was introduced by 3-6 Mafia? I remember them from the cover of Murder Dog magazine, which me and Gabe found for free the first year I was in Portland, good to know they're doing well. -Hollywood Hulk Hogan-just keeps on plugging along. Good god, it looks like he's wearing a Hulk Hogan mask. Also he can barely walk. Still has the voice, though. Random anonymous blonde girl is singing Spanish for whatever reason. Oh, it's 'cause these two couldn't-possibly-be-more-caucasian people are introducing the Latin Music Award. Makes sense. The Hulkster is just butchering the pronunciations-this is probably going to be the best part of the whole show, bar none. Meanwhile the white girl is overenunciating everything to make up for it. And Shakira wins!!! I thought she was dead-no, that's Selena. Sorry, guys. -they keep talking about "Ashley Simpson....LIVE"-I like that the entertainment is everyone hoping she totally can't sing-also R Kelly is going to be in the mix somewhere, he's coming hot off taking a crap all over the National Anthem at some boxing match, I guess, I haven't seen the footage, so I don't know, it might be awesome. -Did I mention LL Cool J is hosting? Kool Mo Dee is at home in his wraparound shades, still seething with anger. -Two dudes-no idea who they are-introduce the R&B Female artists. Fantasia? Ciara? Nope, Mariah Carey wins as Mike Tyson looks on from the crowd. Talk about the lunatics running the asylum. Good insane synergy. -Larry the Cable Guy & Chingy? WILL THE WACKY PAIRINGS EVER CEASE? Chingy is pretending to laugh at Larry's jokes-this is really, uncomfortable, if you hadn't guessed. Chingy pronounces "Album" as "Ahbum"-and throws it to a live performance by the Country Artist of the Year-TOBY KEITH WINS-FUCK Yeah! TK looks even more terrifyingly pudby and jingoistic on a 3-story tall projection TV...did I mention his song is called "let's get drunk and beat somebody?" How exactly is this any different than the much-derided gangsta rap? -TK thanks the good lord for the ability to write songs about getting drunk with your friends and then singling someone out for random violence...I didn't hear him thank Ford Trucks, though. That's odd. -Fox's "Skating with Celebrities"-what can you say about Fox's willingness to show anything that hasn't been said at this point? -LL wants me to make some noise, but I have absolutely no idea who these people are? Oooo, Ashley Simpson and a hip-hop group that is like Boyz2Men combined with Onyx-smooth R&B interspersed with double-time screaming raps. Ooookay-that's an approach. And here comes Ashley!!! Well, she's live-the amount of "singing" going on is really up for debate-and most that is being done is being done by her backup singers. What's the difference between Ashlee and Paris? Someone clue me in-Paris has the porn tape, Ashlee has the album? Are we sure they're not the same person? -Okay, here's two more dudes-no idea , but I do know "Mario" just won best R&B/Hip Hop song-he didn't send a shout out to Luigi, I guess they're fueding (last video game joke of the night, I swear). First and foremost...are you going to thank God? Oh! How did I know? -coming up Billy Joe (Green Day) giving Tom Petty the "century award"-which they must give to any artist who recorded before the advent of the cell phone. -Whoa! An ad for Myspace records volume 1 Myspace represent!!! Wow, Clay Aiken is really starting to resemble one of the elves in Rudolph -LL wants everybody to hold up cellphones-and "ABSOLUTELY EVERYBODY IS DOWNLOADING RINGTONES, RIGHT?!" and makes everyone hold their cells in the air and affirm this. Frightening. That bit of corporate fascism can only mean it's time for "ringtone of the year"-and it's Fifty Cent-and LL's gonna call him on his cellie-and fiddy's in Paris? Isn't there enough gangsta shit going on in Paris? The last thing they need is Fifty Cent there. -LL is just a glorified hypeman on this show-the lowest rung on the hip-hop stepladder. Ok, and Gwen isn't going to do "hollaback girl?" She has some other song-whateves, I'm going to smoke. -the guy who is rapping in the Gwen song flow is so dismal I have to think he won a contest to be up there. Nice fronts, though. -Billie Joe is reading his intro for Petty off of scraps of paper-it's like watching him give a book report in junior high or something. They don't mention his Traveling Wilburys stint, oddly enough. Oh, wait a minute, they totally did! His music evidently "provided the soundtrack to our lives" He didn't do SHIT with ringtones, though, dawg!!! Billy Joe gets in a subtle dig at everyone thanking God. You little punk, Toby Keith and his backup band are gonna get drunk and beat you with their Ford trucks, son! -Tom thanks his band, his fans, not God, he does thank the record companies, but c'mon it's Tom Petty, not Ian McKaye. Man, oh, man, does he look old. -LL's trying to get people to give it up for Charlie Wilson, but there's only so much they're capable of giving up...they introduce R Kelly, who's performing amidst approximately 3,000 writhing bikini-clad women at the MGM pool-shouldn't he be in the kiddie pool? Okay, that was too easy. After Chapelle's parody of him it's really hard to take this seriously, okay, it was pretty hard in the first place. R's singing into the camera a lot. -I really hope FOX is running this show with their trademark corporate precision so that would mean it ends just in time for the "MethWatch" at 10pm, 'cause I don't know how much more I can take. I'm going to start looking on SoulSeek-nothing seems to be popping on myspace, I wonder how the late NBA games went? Kanye West is coming up, though. Maybe something will happen. Mike Myers isn't on the premises, I would imagine. -two actors from "House"-still on the air? Introduce Pharell and "Danny Ankeny", oh my mistake it's "Daddy Yankee", of course. I think he's rapping in French or Brazillian. I'm so clueless as to what's happening. They 've done this with a bunch of songs-calling them "groundbreaking collaborations", when really they're just two songs back to back, clumsily. Pharrell's wearing a gilded saucer on a chain. I think it's from the Li'l Jon collection at Zales, but I can't be sure. -ooo, the stars of "Stacked" and Young Jeezy-I tell you it's a great time to be alive right now. They're doing Modern Rock Artist of the Year-and it goes to Green Day, that's right, the band I listened to when I was 18. They've aged...interestingly. I hope they key Toby Keith's Ford truck in the parking lot on the way out. -they just said, "see the performance everyone on the internet is blogging about"-ouch, that hurt. -I mean, it's so blatant, every single guest from TV is from a FOX show, even the crappy ones no one watches-and now LL's giving props to American Idol, and it's the latest American Idol! Performing!!! Can't they just have that one crazy Trading Spouses lady come out and condemn everyone to hell instead? This song is just abysmal-no one likes this, right? You have to buy it to get a good deal on a cell phone or something, that's why it gets sales? Right? -currently downloading Manitoba, Ghostface, and Deerhoof, and of course "Daddy Yankee" Goddamnit, I could have been downloading shit all this time...oh well. -One of the non-Beyonce's in Destiny's Child is presenting the Artist Acheivement Award-to Kanye West. Can't argue with that. That squishy sound you hear in the back is Rupert Murdock shooting blood from his eyes. The whole thing is controversy-free. -I guess this is song of the year-there's a bunch of old guys dressed as Guns and Roses? goes to Mariah Carey-I have no feelings about this or anything else in popland at this point. She thanks about a million industry jagoffs that she reads in a list from her Blackberry-maybe she just had her assistant email her the list-just speculating here. Now they're going to reveal a "one-time only performance everyone is talking about"-I think I missed something-why am I not talking about this???

-the whole thing wraps with an insanely tacky R Kelly number that involves him in an all-white suit, playing an American Flag guitar, and holding a lighter aloft. Katrina Victims' pictures are used to show what a caring dude R is despite all the child pornography stuff. This is a neat summary of the country right now, actually.

today's happenings...

2005-12-06T14:50:00.000-08:00

oh, man, I am worn out this morning-I had a basketball game followed by Karaoke that lasted too late. On the upside we found a karaoke bar with an unheard-of song selection (the Farm? Farm House? Something like that), they had the MC5 for god's sake-and I finally found a place that has "SexxLaws" by Beck... -Ford to gay people-please don't buy our stuff anymore. The interesting thing here is that they only advertised Jaguar and Land Rover in the first place, not Ford or Mercury-preferring not to invoke the wrath of Toby Keith, Ford Truck Man numero uno and so totally not gay, buddy.

-Rashard Lewis of the Sonics gets pulled over for DUI and has a blood alcohol level waaaay over the legal limit, his statement to the press says, "I have been charged with a traffic offense involving alcohol." What? Did someone throw vodka in his face while he was driving? Mmmm-hmm, I remember back in college when I ate two Totino's party pizzas and passed out on the couch-I told my professor the next day I missed the exam due to a "combustion event involving marijuana."

-Slate thinks that "my humps" song is just terrible. Oooh, way to stand up for integrity middle-aged-rock-critic man! Quick! Rolling Stone needs 5,000 words on the brilliance of Wilco, stat! That song is totally the jam, solely because it is utterly retarded-I think if you really feel the need to attack it, you're gettin' old. But as Homer Simpson said-"Not me, man! I'll keep on rockin', forever, forever....for....ever

-a new study says that those who drink 1-2 drinks daily are 54 percent less obesity-prone than those who do not drink at all. AND they are 46 percent less obesity prone than those who drink four or more per day. So drink. But not too much.

some links to catch up on...

2005-11-30T15:26:00.000-08:00

If, like myself, young people are starting to freak you out more and more, a Welshman has just invented a device that repels young people. Howard Stapleton has rocketed to national fame with his "Mosquito" device, which "emits an uncomfortable high-pitched ultrasonic sound that can be heard by children and teenagers but almost no one over 30." We went to Packwood, Washington for Thanksgiving and much food was consumed, much drinking was done, and then we played bingo and karaoked in gay Indian war paint. Big ups to Packwood.

Pat Morita died (pause to pour out liquor)-I remember going to see "Karate Kid" in the theater with my dad and walking out convinced I was going to defeat my grade school tormenters through Karate, I got my ass beat as usual the next day but that 12 hours of hope was awesome. Anyway, here's the Boston Sports Guy's tribute to Mr.Miyagi and the "Karate Kid" trilogy-writing about which probably landed him the book deals and internet column, etc. so he knows what he's talking about.

a field guide to North American Hipsters-just remember as Schaeffer the Darklord says, "if you make fun of Hipsters, guess what-you are a hipster."

In the world of basketball, Kobe Bryant is wearing tights. I don't even know what to do with this, other than to reiterate that Nike is selling these tights for $35, but hey, evidently their- "Flat-seam construction eliminates chafing"-so they've got that going for them.

I was cool with headbands, but tights is a line I refuse to cross. Ron Artest, on the other hand, keeps it so gangsta he shaved the name of his record company into the back of his head. See, you'll never see Kobe Bryant do that or any of the 1,000 other crazy-ass things Ron-Ron has done-I'll just mention that his rookie season he applied to work at a Circuit City because he was having trouble making ends meet with all the people living at his house-and he also wanted the employee discount. Oh yeah, and he attacked someone in the stands and started-ahem-a riot-cough. Anyway...gots to run.

McSweeneys...

2005-11-15T14:56:00.000-08:00

A great article instructing high school basketball coaches on how how best to cover TeenWolf. (pictured at the right, and his NBA equivalent Baron Davis, below)

"While you're welcome to try it, my feeling is that man-to-man defense simply isn't an option. Some teams like to play a box-and-one, which generally works well against most lycanthropes."

For the record, I would use man-to-man, maybe mix in a 2-3 zone, give him the jumpshot, and try to shut down the rest of the Beavers-shouldn't be too hard to do, their starting center is Francis from "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" for chrissake

I had a meeting today.

2005-11-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

The focal point of which was a long, power-point presentation...always good times. The seventh-level business-speak ninja presenting actually used the terms "Business Chassis" and "Throughput" in a single sentence when speaking about a "30,000 Square-Foot Opportunity". I am convinced that designing corporate language is the only way to go- "Costitunity" (need to try to take "tit" out of there somehow-it will look terrible in a business plan) "Positracticty" "Sales Dumping Point" "Scorched Benefits Policy" "DownSmarting"

the answer to the age-old question...

2005-11-14T16:10:00.000-08:00

which is more supremely awesome-hot shred guitars or firearms? Why settle for just one-look at this beauty I found on the Craigslist... This guitar is a one of a kind. It originally was a 1987 BC Rich Ironbird. The electronics are simple and straightforward..whammy bar..etc. But the real attraction for this piece of machinery is the look. People go crazy over it! I have played it live quite a bit..and the response is awesome! Almost always I have people asking if they can hold , have their picture taken holding it , etc..is a lot of fun, plus people remember the band .It is heavy duty..welded steel clip, trigger , heat shield , etc. I dont have a case for it, perhaps a bass case would fit it. This is as much art as it is a musical instrument..but to play it live is awesome ! Vic If you want it, go get it before Ted Nugent beats you to it .

and now, R Kelly regarding Hurricane Katrina

2005-11-03T16:49:00.000-08:00

I'm going through my own struggle, my own hurricane in a way, we all do, and you're either gonna fold or you're going to stand, and I believe in standing," Kelly said. "I believe in overcoming, and if I can do it, I wanna be that light so people can see me and feel they can inspired and say, you know, R. Kelly can get through this, I can get through this, so we can actually go through this together.

-R Kelly regarding his upcoming trial on child pornography charges stemming from allegations he videotaped himself having sex with a teenage girl.

Yes Captain, Setting Course for Rigal FABULOUS!!!

2005-11-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

George Takei, you sneaky devil! All this time I thought it was going to be Shatner.

Brownie, Brownie, Brownie...

2005-11-03T12:40:00.000-08:00

Well, they just released ex-FEMA director, current black sheep Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown's e-mail correspondence during Katrina and they are a baffling mishmash of pathetic whining and/or just utter incomprehension . Here are a few of the excerpts: in response to being informed that the situation was "past critical"- "Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?" "Can I quit now? Can I come home?" "Tie or not for tonight? Button-down blue shirt?" "OMG, did you see Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are getting MARRIED ON THE EIFELL TOWER LOL?" "WTF, the Superdome is all messed up our something, the Saints have no home stadium, and I was totally going to take Duece McAllister with my 3rd pick in our NFL Fantasy League this year:(" "I got it at Nordstroms. ... Are you proud of me?" "No, your totally right, Cruise is soooo gay. ROTFLMAO about those Ted Kennedy jokes you sent me, Scootter!" "If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god," "OMG, at least I'm not as bad as that freaky ghoul Chertoff-get back in the coffin, Dracula LOL! You'd think somebody up there could get him to stop shopping for suits at Burlington Coat factory! OH, snap!!!" "Order a #2, tater tots, large diet cherry limeade" "What is with all these people? It's water, stuff is going to get wet. Any more bitching, and I am just going to say screw it, I'm not going to appear in public with my sleeves rolled up. Hey, Dub said I did a heckuva job, and he better keep saying that 'cause I've still got those pictures of him in the "Powder Room" with Bill Bennett back at the convention in 2000. Not to mention the video of the twins he doesn't want anyone seeing-I think that was shot down here, as a matter of fact." "OMG, did you see Kanye last night? I hate to say it, but when your right, your right LOL"

I don't care what they say.

2005-10-25T08:16:00.000-07:00

No matter how much NPR tries to get me to like Zydeco, I just don't think I'm going to ever like it. Period. Seriously, does NPR owe money to some kind of shady New Orleans-style crime syndicate and to pay back the debt from Terry Gross' bad night at the casino we're sentenced to an eternity of washboards and accordians? Although I did see Schlutze Gets the Blues, a German movie featuring plenty of Zydeco recently and it was a great film, for what it's worth.

Let me get this straight.

2005-10-13T14:30:00.000-07:00

Mankind evolved his way out of the primordial ooze, managed to make it through thousands of years of dumb-ass crap like slavery, colonization, religious wars, two world wars, a 40-year period with imminent nuclear Armageddon, the greenhouse effect, and now we're going to get to get done in by birds? I love birds! I don't think I can bring myself to hate birds. Maybe if it was "raccoon influenza" I'd be a little more enraged, all I can think about now is "well, we did slaughter all the passenger pigeons, after all..." Also, the Dodo, same deal.

Oh, man.

2005-10-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

I realize I work where I do by choice, but sometimes you get something in the old inbox that touches some deep-down hunter-gather part of you that realizes that you essentially are paid to move pixels and other meaningless crap around-here's a prime example, this actually made my jaded ass laugh out loud-I'm going to try and withhold some names to make it a little bit less fireable to post this, but I'm not too worried about it: Here's one we'll have a hard time remembering but I hope we do. I've discovered that write offs need to have the same attributes as the gift if we want them to count properly in gift summary reports when we are pulling pledges based on a gift attribute. For example, we have many pledges with the Oregon Opportunity Gift attribute. Some of these have been completely or partially written off. When I run an export that asks for a constituent giving summary based on a query of all gifts with the Oregon Opportunity gift attribute the summary counts the whole pledge in the total even though all or part of it was written off. The reason is that the associated write off does not have the attribute and so is not included as a gift in the query. When I add the attribute to the write off the summary calculates properly by adding in the pledge but then subtracting the write off. Long story short: please add the same set of attributes to write offs that exist on the pledge you are writing off. [Name Withheld] or [Name Withheld] - if you can find a way to query on Oregon Opportunity coded gifts that have write offs without the attribute it would be much appreciated. I found and dealt with several on some of our Board members records but haven't gone looking for others. I've also filed a case with [Software Company] but their response was that they could not duplicate the issue (even though it was listed as a known issue). I'll continue to work with them. We can discuss further if you have any questions or need more info. [Name Withheld] Hahhahahaha! Totally awesome. I feel like I work in one of those old-timey delis where all the sandwich orders are in code-you know like a Roast Beef on Rye is "Brown Dirt, keep it mooin'" or whatever.

MSOffice Art, part 1...

2005-10-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

One thing I never tire of is creating otherworldly pieces of art by editing photos using "The Big 3"-MSPaint, MSimaging, and MSPhotoEditor. That's right, I don't need Photoshop and all that fancy "spherize" stuff, check out this raw social commentary, in a little piece I call "Shame McClellan" -due to White House Spokesperson Scott McClellan always looking kind of flummoxed and embarrassed to be explaining Dubya's wacky nonsensical policies to the press. Oh, I so would not want to be in the administration right now, 'cause I am bringing it RAW, kid! Oh, yeah, and you know when you spell check "dubya" the first word that comes up is "dubious"-oooo, dropping knowledge, son!

The Darklord Cometh

2005-10-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

Last night we got the once-in-a-couple-of-yeartime privilege of seeing Schaffer the Darklord. When I first moved to Portland from Iowa, one of my lifelines to home that I brought with me was a crappy second-or-third generation cassette dub of Syphillis Bill, the immortal Iowa City porn-hop supergroup. Their raw, but insanely clever tales of intercine fictional Iowa gang warfare and explicit male on male/male on female/anybody on whatever sexx raps were on microwave rotation in me and Gabe's first real apartment out here-I remember subjecting an entire vanload of people to the tape on my first trip out to the coast. Schaffer is someone I could see having his life story made into a motion picture someday, I have run into him since Iowa a number of times both as an MC and as a drummer in fucked-up noise bands, and after I fortuitously tracked him down on myspace and heard his new-style jamz. I was impressed both by his flow, which was great to begin with, but obviously had been honed over the years, as well as his incredibly unique choice of topic material (cloning himself to use as a sextoy, how much cat people love their cats, an ode to Craig's List, among others) Gabe saw him perform a short set in New York a few weeks back, and we were stoked to see him throw down for real. Opening act Coolzey was in tandem with another Iowa Citian whose name I cannot recall, but they were a solid tandem, and set the table nicely for STD to pull the tablecloth on some muthafuckas. And pull it he did. His opening number was a brilliant homage to Snoop's "Murder was the Case" that undercut cliches about how he should act as an MC left and right, and refusing to pander to standard Hip-Hop cliches-everybody wave your hands in the air, etc. His only gear was a throwback wireless mic and his trusty li'l STD box which had his jams in it, during the back and forth dialog between the devil and Schaeffer, he stuck the mike into the box to give the devil his say. There was a Terry Gross shout-out among a billion other things. "Cat People" was an incredible jam that just displayed dazzling MC skills but all told within the context of how cute cats are in general, and particularly to their owners. This probably sounds a little "enh", but you had to be there-the beat was jammin', and Mark is the man to pull this type of thing off-he clearly loves his cat. I was going to go through and list everything that stood out, but I'll just say that what I really liked about all of it was that it was serious, but differently serious. STD managed to blend enough humor, pointed commentary, and real skills that you just didn't know what was coming next. Also, "Attack of the Clone Fuckers" showed Mark can still fall back on sex rhymes better than almost anyone. I wanted to slip something in here about his amazing stage presence, but I guess I already sound like enough of a mancrushed blogstalker so I'll just say it was a great show and next time he goes everybody better be there...

and the rivers ran blue with their blood...

2005-10-11T16:50:00.000-07:00

I would love to know how this made it out of committee-UNICEF's new advertising campaign is a fairly graphic portrayal of the smurf's village being carpet-bombed. Not sure if this was typical Gargemel Oppression or part of the Smurf's ongoing ethnic strife with the Snorks. It's working. We are getting a lot of reactions and people are logging on to our Web site," UNICEF Belgium spokesman Philippe Henon said Tuesday. Granted, they're probably for the most part stoned college kids looking for a new desktop image, but tprecedentent has been set-children's TV shows are fair game-which would explains Nickelodeon's 2 new Belgian TV series "Belle mauls Sebastian" and "SpongeBob MacheteFace"

Houses of the Haunted

2005-10-07T20:31:00.000-07:00

Oh, man...tonight Jantzen Beach Haunted House-it's gonna be on.

All I know is Slash had better be careful...

2005-10-05T14:30:00.000-07:00

Whenever I hear a news item that is particularly screwed up in it's weirdness or depravity, I always wait for the inevitable "reporting from Florida..." at the end of the segment. Why does this state produce such compellingly messed-up stuff all the time? The weather? The swamps? 2 Live Crew? Elian? I have no idea, but this article about a brewing reptile gang war (WARNING: picture of an exploded burmese python with 1/2 an alligator sticking out of it inside) due to a turf dispute between indigenous 'gators and pythons that Floridians have abandoned in the swamps is a thoroughly typical/awesome example. All the Floridians I've met have been great people, but I always ask them why their state can't just have some normal crimes or whatevs.

Hitting the ground running...

2005-10-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

Well, the "Moderate Justice" we just got appointed chief justice of the Supreme Court wasted no time showing where he would rule about stuff, tag-teaming with Scalia to tear apart Oregon's assisted-suicide law in his first at-bat. So evidently the Federal Government has no obligation for say, health care if I'm uninsured, but once I get terminally ill and am suffering horribly and am on life-support and racking up massive hospital bills that will be passed on to my descendants (well, hypothetical descendants), the federal government does have to authority to tell me I can't have my doctor end it safely and humanely. At this rate, we'll be lucky if we Roe V. Wade lasts until Christmas. Not entirely unrelatedly, I woke up in a cold sweat Tuesday morning after having a crazy dream about Portland in 10 years, only I was still 30 years old. I was walking to a friends house and I was at the corner of 20th and Morrison and realized I had left something at home and I had to walk back to the house. Only I couldn't go straight back the way I came, you see in 10 years evidently something is quite wrong with the power system or it's too expensive so there are kind of rolling hourly blackouts all night throughout town. This is especially problematic since there are now roving gangs of homeless teens running quite rampant in weird masks and stuff all over town, probably the children of the current generation of street teens who have migrated out of the downtown core where they were born into the neighborhoods. They all are on meth (or whatever meth has transformed into by 2015-does anybody remember "cat"-it was supposed to be the next crazy white-trash drug back in the mid-90's and it was made out of battery acid or something, and it was a total flop, I just remember one really funny hysterical write-up about it in SPIN or something) and as a result do not require food and are superhumanly strong and crazy. So the police had all these helicopters flying low through the dark parts of town shining spotlights everywhere, generally everything was like 200X more fucked-up in the dream than it is now, but everyone had kind of accepted it just like we accept the occasional car window breaking or constant spare-changing now. In the dream I was wondering how it got this way and assigning blame to various entities/attitudes, then I woke up and realized how much less elemental my nightmares had gotten. Weird.

Runaway...to deliciousness!

2005-09-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to send a shout-out to Runaway Jim's, the sammich cart that opened up in place of one of my old favorite hot dog carts downtown-if you're ever across from the FOX Tower and need food, RJ's has all manner of sandwich, salad, and burgers, and nothing is more than $4.25, and all the food is free-range, hormone-free meat. It's always thrilling finding a new cart downtown, even though you end up having that moment of uncomfortable recognition with the person working there, that, yes, you have been there three times this week.

okay, this is getting out of hand...

2005-09-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

I had no idea I would be devoting so much of this blog to facial hair, but this is ridiculous, responding to the "Schick Quattro", which was in turn a response to the "Mach 3" razor, Gilette has upped the ante yet again, bringing the public a five bladed razor. This means that after years of being complacent with less than three blades, since 1998 razors have jumped first to three blades, then 4, and now 5. we're eseentially gaining a blade every 1.5-2 years. We must stop this race to madness, or by 2016 razors will have cartridges the size of skateboards in order to accomodate the eleven blades needed for a shave. Women will have to make do with the Schick "Octo" pulsating 8-blade for ladies, since their shaving tech tends to lag a little bit. Act now by taking this highly scientific online poll-and keep hope alive!

This almost makes up for "Kazaam!"

2005-09-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Shaquille O'Neal has always been one of my least favorite basketball players-when he was in his prime on the Lakers he was merciless, egotistical, and frankly I think a lot of the credit for the 3 championships he won should go the refs who swallowed their whistles as he egregiously committed charge after charge in order to score. Now that Shaq has moved on and is not quite the dominant force, evidently he has decided to stick up for the disadvantaged, such as last week in Miami when he helped arrest someone assaulting a gay couple by chasing them down in his car and calling the cops. I just love picturing some hoodlum screaming epithets and slinging a bottle like he's some big tough guy, then noticing that Shaq Diesel is on his tail. This homophobe was just lucky he got in the protective arms of the law before he was exposed to some Shaq Fu...

dear, dear god.

2005-09-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

I just transformed to moustache mode...I think I'm losing consciousness...it's too much. What's more I'm about to go out in public. Now at last I know how Neil Armstrong felt.

Moustache Tracking-Day19

2005-09-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

I had intended to rock the moustache today at work, but I had insufficient time this morning-it's going to take a good 20 minutes or so to hack away the surrounding beard. I got a little anxious at how I was going to shape the moustache, then I realized it is quite like creating a magnificent sculpture from a large lump of clay-you simply visualize what it looks like when finished, then remove everything that is not in your visualization. In other words, you want to sculpt an elephant, get a big piece of clay, start removing all the parts that aren't on an elephant until voila! I had my assistant Becky take today's picture while contemplating these weighty matters-I will truly miss not being to stroke my beard in order to facilitate or at least give the illusion of facilitating, deep contemplation.

Moustache Tracking-Day17

2005-09-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

Missed a day due to the long weekend-gabe hadn't seen me since Friday, and when I saw him last night he said I looked like a "Lebanese Grad Student" (I was wearing a blazer) Friday the beard-to-stache conversion will take place. I'm impressed, it's definitely gotten very dark.

Quote of the Day

2005-09-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

"Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them."

-Former First Lady Barbara Bush, regarding the evacuees living in the Astrodome, who evidently need to look at things a little more from her "glass-half-full" perspective.

Quote of the Day-Labor Day Weekend Edition

2005-09-06T21:45:00.000-07:00

"You see...there's three ways to do things. There's the easy way, the hard way, and the Manu way."

-Manu, describing approaches to life.

Moustache Tracking-Day13

2005-09-02T13:22:00.000-07:00

With a week left, I'm at a pretty comfortable spot, I think I'm going to some cleaning up on my neck (not really visible here) to try and make it look a little more respectable for the office-I feel like everyone's talking to me as though I'm coming apart or something.

Compassionate Conservatism 101

2005-09-01T15:40:00.000-07:00

"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed,"

-Republican House speaker Dennis "Denny" "Asshole" Hastert-who in an interview said they should not rebuild New Orleans. Interestingly enough, he's had zero problems rebuilding Iraq despite it being located within a war zone.

Moustache Tracking-Day11

2005-08-31T15:09:00.000-07:00

Oh, my-tonight or tomorrow I think I'm going to try and kind of at least trim the beard off my neck a little. It's really itchy down there and feels like I've got fiberglass insulation around my neck. Other than that I have gotten used to seeing myself in the mirror this way, and the moustache area seems to be solidifying nicely.

Hey, sometimes you have to make sacrifices.

2005-08-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

Well, now we know what it takes to get the "vacation president" off the ranch. (Bush has logged somewhere around 340 days of vacation-essentially 1 of his first 5 years of being in office he has been on vacation) That's right, Dubya is cutting his vacation short by 2 days. I guess his original plan of having everyone pray real hard didn't pan out so hot. I bet he was wicked pissed. Let's all prepare ourselves for the inevitable horribly opportunistic photo-op where he flies over in a helicopter, (I'm hoping for a 9/11 redux, complete with megaphone on top of a flooded house) shamelessly exploiting the tragedy to show how human he is. The interesting thing, though is that part of the reason the damage in N'walins is so bad is the ongoing destruction of surrounding wetlands that naturally absorb some of the storm surge around the city, and guess who has been weakening protection in order to allow development on wetlands? "Dear Jesus, Please don't cut my vacation short." EDIT: Actually, he's not coming back 'till tommorow-he still has to speak at some event equating the War in Iraq with WWII. Awesome-the whole city is totally flooded, the water is still rising, there's no phone, water, gas, electric, and the president is too busy spreading disinformation to come right back and take charge.

Get your band instant respect among alcoholics.

2005-08-29T16:36:00.000-07:00

Hell yeah, get this shit while it's hot-Icehouse Beer guitar right now on thebay. This is nearly as awesome as the Gorky Park guitar that's been on and off of Craig's List for a while now.

Moustache Tracking-Day9

2005-08-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Well, it's coming along nicely-my face has not felt the steely kiss of Madame Razor in 9 days, playing basketball this weekend was tough-it felt like I was wearing a scarf on my face or something. Overall, though, I've gotten past the whole looking all stubbly phase. Here's where I'm at...

Not too shabby (I kind of look like a Eastern European basketball player or something)-I've noticed it's coming in all weird, though, evidently I am incapable of growing hair in a few places on my face. Here's a close-up (apologies for my co-workers ultra-lo-res digital phone pictures)

Fig 1. Close up on hairless regions

I feel as though I'm learning so much about myself!

FOX news-it's finest hour yet...

2005-08-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

I had heard that the fine folks over at FOXnews were having a particularly sensational time with this hurricane business, probably because frankly it distracts from the rough summer GW has been having, but still...how's this for an opening paragraph? Katrina May Turn New Orleans Into Atlantis Monday, August 29, 2005 NEW ORLEANS— When Hurricane Katrina (search) hits New Orleans, it could turn one of America's most charming cities into a vast cesspool tainted with toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins released by floodwaters from the city's legendary cemeteries. and the rest of the story is here So downtown New Orleans will be tainted with toxic chemicals and human waste? I've never been there, but I have seen "Live and Let Die" at least twice, and I've seen part of a "Girl's Gone Wild" video, and I was led to believe downtown New Orleans has been pretty much awash in toxic chemicals and human waste for the last 150 years or so. Hey! I kid, I kid. The news coverage is what I'm trying to skewer here-I was in a flood in Des Moines and it really blew, and I was in a gigantic wind storm in Iowa City that knocked out the power for a week, so if I could combine those two with all the tornados I went through, I can kind of imagine what's going down-I also know I would want to be hearing responsible news reports of what might happen, not crazy apocalyptic crap like this-news like this is the reason my mom never leaves her suburb. I really wish I had called in sick to work today and had cable so I could stay home and watch their breathless coverage as they try to sustain interest when the storm inevitably slackens, then veers off and pounds the shit out of some small town in Mississippi-which will probably go completely uncovered. I really think they should send O'Reilly down there to put Katrina in the "no-spin" zone and ask the hard-hitting, no-nonsense questions he is known for.

all this time I've been giving it away for free...

2005-08-29T01:13:00.000-07:00

Hey, does "dignity" got ya down? Well, the friendly folks at lease your body can relieve you of that, and hook you up for 5Gs just for TATOOING A CORPORATE LOGO ON YOUR MOTHERFUCKING FOREHEAD. It was only a matter of time after people starting getting paid to drive those Red Bull cars around, really.

I really have to come to terms with my Jean-Claude Van Damme obsession

2005-08-28T01:55:00.000-07:00

Few people give JCVD the credit that the man deserves-having to overcome being French to become a semi-major action star is tough-I think half the movies I've seen him in he is cast as being Cajun to explain away his French patois, Cajun being far more marketable. Over the last couple months I keep catching JCVD movies in bars with the sound off or on the Spanish Language TV station, and I have to say that as long as you cannot hear any of the actual dialog, JeanCVD is perhaps the most unintentionally hilarious and awesome action star in the history of mankind. Unlike most action movies which you can figure out the whole plot from the preview, JCVD keeps you guessing with random characters/plot twists/fight locations. In one of his pieces there is a great sequence I particularly remember watching when I was at the Know tavern a couple months back where Jean-Claude gets in this over-the-top-with-homoerotic-undertones fight for money/blood in a half-filled pool. Before too long both fighters are soaking wet and the sun is glinting off their bronzed muscles in perfectly back-lit, slow-motion shots as their hair flies about in long arcs, scattering beads of water into the air, wrestling and heaving and thrusting...all of this right after he had got done fighting a guy in a kilt in a parking garage. And this is why you have to watch his movies with the sound off, because I'm sure the dialog would alert you that these seemingly utterly random, hilarious things would happen (lines like, "okay, Benoit, now you have to fight a guy in a kilt in the parking structure.") Also, JCVD does not make a movie that doesn't have a hard-as-fuckin-nails name-here is just a small sampling: -Wake of Death -In Hell -Knock Off -Double Team -Maximum Risk -Sudden Death -Hard Target -No Retreat, No Surrender -Double Impact and of course he had a "walk-by" role in the original Breakin', but I'm sure he found time to crack some skulls.

mysteries of the Northwest...

2005-08-27T11:34:00.000-07:00

Last night we went to Clinton Street Pub, where they have $1 pints of Rainier-which I was excited about 'cause there aren't a lot of bars with it on tap in the first place, much less for one freakin' dollar...after 3 I was woozy and pretty drunkypantsed. This always happens with Rainier, which produces a weird drunkenness quite unlike any other budgetary beer. Almost like there's a little robotussin in every batch or something.

Portland-No Fatties

2005-08-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

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

2005-08-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

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.