Crystal Frontier

crystal frontier

Calexico has a new album out and the name of the first single is called "Crystal Frontier".

I love it. It's great. It's very layered and has different tempos running through it, and tells a story. Gonna play it more on the show.

mud

The sky here is almost like the color of dried lakebed mud. The air burns your eyes a little. It reminds me of hot summers in San Pedro in the 70s, except in that case it was smog burning your eyes. Also, the layering you see in the air in the LA basin is not so noticeable here. We do have inversion layers, but more in the winter time, but the air today is pretty still for now and layers might still appear for a little while before the thunderstorms move in.

product

Yay that "some of the jammers" video was taken on the new camera.

I've never owned a video camera. In my life. Never even had one available to me. So this is not just an old toy in a new way, but a totally new toy.

Cue up the Lydia Lunch!

some of the jammers

my heart soared

and then crash-landed into a remote, snow-capped peak, bursting into flames and leaving no one alive.

Something big and shitty just happened with our festival. It'll go on, but not how we had intended it to.

kf tactic

I got to witness an interesting tactic by the police at the jam last night.

Seems they like to hang around the rowdier establishments. They wait outside, not really doing anything. Eventually word gets back to the people inside that the cops are here. All is quiet for a while, and then a really drunk person goes out to needle them. Bam! Into a car they go. For whatever reason, who knows... Then another drunk goes out to see what happened to the first one and to needle the cops his own self. Into the car with him...

So yeah I don't know what the hell was going on at the jam last night, but that's how it appeared to me.

Good times. Who needs TV?

so much fun

the camera got here yesterday. I put the batteries in, threw in a card, formatted it, flipped through the user manual for like 45 seconds and then started pressin buttons. For shits and giggles i stuck it on the dashboard and took video of the ride to the jam.

on the dressing habits of guys from Oregon's hinterlands

They don't wear their pants looking like they are walking around with a load of shit in them.

Out at the party in the woods, one did not see many loaded pants around. One saw long legs with jeans that fit ahem *really well*. Was almost shocking, because you never see men's asses anymore.

Let's hear it for the farm boys!

still chomping

shipment details show the new camera to arrive between tomorrow and the 28th. Squeeee!

pretty damn cool

I got sort of inundated the last couple of days with CDs and links to some great bands from the area to play on the show. I will be changing my usual "play one artist at 10:30" thing to at least an hour of stuff every week. That's how much came my way.

Dug up some Nothingface to play early on. The bass player from that band has gone on to do some great shit of his own in the form of In For The Kill, and I'm stoked to find out that they are heading into the studio to record a full album.

Blues society is playing on the courthouse steps on 4th of July at 9 am. zoiks, scoob... will have to grab everything after the jam thursday in order to get it downtown by set up time of 7:30 or so.

the wait

agh the only thing worse than wanting something really badly is getting it and having to wait for it.

the new camera should be here BY the 1st. Well, I simply won't have any furniture left by then, having gnawed all the legs off.

The old one I'm sending up to Rude and his mom. It still works, still takes pretty damn fine pictures, but has some frustrating quirks for me that I'll explain for them. Rude's a photographer at heart but never can remember to buy film or process it. Yeah I know how that feels. Hopefully he'll enjoy the old Kodak and stuff.

In other things, Smart Half tells me that his mom has never come to visit him anywhere he's lived, either. So this summer is kind of big for both of us. He and I have sort of similar issues with one of our parents. For me, it's my dad. For him, his mom. I joke that we should introduce them and they can go bowling. They're very similar people. Driven, work-oriented, maybe a little inattentive as a parent, maybe a little oblivious to what their kids needed in the past. Both of them were suspicious of the wrong kids behaviors. Well, my dad's suspicion was perhaps justified to a certain extent but while he was accusing me of stuff, my brother was getting away with much, much more than I ever hoped to.

So yeah. Fun summer. Hoping soon to get MY mom up here, and maybe eventually untether my biodad from his unhappy household for a week or so.

not much funnier sometimes

farts

math class!

Ok my first one was today. We got something like a 20 minute intro to the class and what the teacher expects and then ran headlong into the work. Eight chapters in eight weeks is the schedule.

I wasn't sure if this was the right math class for me, but after a day in it, that isn't the case. I KNOW its the right one. hahahah. Math 20. woot!

carlin

Wow that's kind of a shame. He sure was funny as shit. I have always especially liked the bishop (or whatever he was, maybe just a priest) in "Dogma".

thanks pop!

I needed a new digital camera some kinda bad. I'm supposed to be shooting the festival in September, and my nearly-decade-old Kodak EasyShare is tottering along. Doing it all on film crossed my mind but would be prohibitively expensive. Sent dad a note asking if he could pick one up cheap over there in Thailand and bring it when he visits in August. He said they're more expensive there, weirdly. Then he asked what I needed in one. Then I shot for the stars and said I wanted, basically, a Nikon D40. Now, I of course knew that this was not going to happen. But this is how you ask for (expensive) things from my dad. You ask for the golden plate, and bargain down to the silver goblet.

On it's way is a brand new Cannon PowerShot A720.

WEll, one of these days I'll have a digital SLR.

And I messed around some more with the Minolta Maxxus (maxxum?) yesterday. Took it out to Blystock and finished the roll that was in it. Then spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to rewind the thing to get the film out. I don't have a manual for this camera and the one I found online is, like, translated straight from Malaysian which makes for fun reading like "press the buttons being on the top in blue". Ok got the film out. Another half hour trying to figure out how to wind the new roll in. Embarrassing, I can rewind unload and load a manual camera in just a couple of minutes and now I look like a total idiot of course scratching my head at this automatic thing. Successfully shot through another roll getting used to the autofocus and hoping the shutter speed was right- I see no way to set it so back to the online manual I will go.

The camera has a lot of buttons that work together or separately, it appears. I just don't know how yet.

Using film again after a digital for so long took getting used to. There could be no deleting as I went. Every frame was precious again. There is maybe one decent picture on the roll I shot yesterday, which is ok. That ratio will get better as I learn the camera. I do intend to do some of the festival with film, I just was not wanting to do ALL of it.

blystock

this weekend was blystock. The fourth annual. It's the first one I've been to. It's waaaaaaaay out in the woods. It's a whole weekend of food, beer, live music and good times. They have mostly local musicians playing for all three days from sun up to whenever. It's dirty, dusty, there are portapotties but no water and people get shitfaced drunk but there are no fights. It's all kinds of people. It's dirty little kids with twelve toes pushing a toy dumptruck around the crowd for hours on end. It's stove-up people sitting on couches in the dust. It's walking around through clouds of sweet smoke. It's Oregon mountain boys and girls, in perpetually brown clothes with skoal rings in the pockets. Bikers, yokels, rednecks and hippies and Indians.

It's a rockin good time and I want to spend the weekend there for the next one.

i love the universe

last week, as I was driving out to Tulelake, I was designing flyers in my head. The one I was working on particularly was one I had intended to hang around school to offer proofreading services. Another one was something similar to give businesses who do a lot of print advertising. (note to Gibson Concrete- You can't just take Gibson Guitars' name logo and slap it on your 2 x 2 newspaper ad and call it yours). Then, when I came back home, I looked around online for what the going rate is for proofreading and copy editing. Liking what I saw, by the way.

Yesterday at the Third Thursday thing, the girl who is in charge of the company who is doing our web page for the blues festival asked me if I did any copy editing. Why yes, yes I do. I had sent our prez corrections for our page and she sent them on to get fixed. I also sort of lambasted the logo they designed, because in all honesty, it looks to me like someone raided their clip art file and has no idea about composition or using lines to draw one's eyes to the thing that you want to have the most attention. No skill with advertising art, basically. I have also sketched out three different designs for next year's festival because I'm so irrationally hostile to the one for this year.

So she has my number now and hopefully this will work out. I decided on a price and I think it's reasonable considering we're in a smaller place. I am officially burnt on the merchandizing thing.

Oh and the KF City Council has a member that is about to run headlong into our prez. This will be very amusing to watch.

check your hundreds

as you hand one over for a tank of gas...

No seriously there was an article in the Grants Pass paper about it, and in Weed today I was told one of the stores had gotten one yesterday. I guess they look like 100s but the watermark has Abe Lincoln's face on it. They didn't have it still :( I would have liked to have seen that.

whole fam dambly

and then smart half's mom is flying in at some point after July.

well, FINALLY! We've been here 12 years and family is coming to us for the first time.

We've made trips to Wyoming, Illinois, SoCal, Arizona to see them, and it's so nice to not have to make those arrangements this year. Especially since it wouldn't be as easy as paying a friend $100 to stay in the house. We'd have to board pewhead so he'd get his shots and all that.

I have to say that I do love traveling. I love traveling to go camping or something where there is no itinerary once we arrive at the destination. I don't love traveling somewhere and then being dragged all over the place seeing and doing things I'm not interested in. Like going to Reno and then being stuck in casinos the whole time.

message from a dad

Got a note that my dad will be visiting the US with his girlfriend in August.

Well this will be weird.

zomg

For the first time, I'm listening to a copy of my show.

I get really ooked out hearing myself come out of speakers for some reason.

But I played some happy shit on the show today, it being gorgeous outside and OITs 60th commencement ceremony.
"Cowpunk" by Scott Goddard
"Tantalize" by Jimmy The Hoover
"Handlebars" by the Flobots, who someone just turned me onto a couple of days ago.
couple of Sparks songs. The Sparks wrote some of the best lyrics, ever, in case you didn't know.
"It ain't a pretty sight to see the way it leaves 'em
It chews them up and spits out creatures with those
Goo-goo-ey eyes
Sick sickly smiles
It just isn't right

And my father said "don't worry, son"
But look at him, he should have run
Eaten by the monster of love"

I laugh every time I hear that part of Eaten By The Monster of Love

That's You?!

Someone last night at the truck stop introduced me to someone she knew, and then told them a bunch of stuff about me, like that i play music and have the radio show and when it's on. (I get a little weirded out when people introduce me to their friends like that) His eyes lit up and he said, "That's you?!".

Turns out the guy loves my show and listens every week.

I have TWO listeners now!
I'm totally thrilled. you betcha.

But it was embarrassing last night.

i dream about this

this bass... someday I shall own one.

They're about three times heavier than either of my current basses, but I still want one.

job griping. move along. boring.

I have got some serious muscles in my back and arms and have a more fantastic pair of legs than I ever have, thanks to my job, but I'm kind of starting to feel it for much longer than I like.

Yesterday I picked up a tote full of frozen stuff with some more boxes of other frozen stuff on top (probably 120 pounds of frozen crap), took three steps and felt my leg muscles go noodly on me for a few seconds. I was in a spot where there was no room for me to put it down and dropping it would have landed all that shit on my feet (which I enjoy being able to use, by the way), so I just had to stand there and think "wow, that feels really weird".

BUT i saw something beautiful, twice. There is a spot on the 97, just about a mile south of the Juniper Valley road, where you can get a totally unimpeded view of Mt Shasta and the hills and lava fingers around it. In this one spot, vegetation is growing back from a recent (less than five years ago) fire. Right now, this area is a landscape of blackened stick trees standing in a carpet of yellow wildflowers- I think it's rabbit browse but i have not stopped to look. Maybe it will still be there next week, and maybe some other colors will appear, too.

And I guess the forest service started doing prescribed burns around and just north of Grass Lake yesterday. Which was weird because it was windy enough to be blowing the scootypuff all over the road.

Spring on highway 97 is really, really nice.

and the angels are in the pocket

Well I must have died at some point yesterday and stumbled into heaven, because i just found this page dedicated to hollowbody BASSES.

There are some go-juss instruments there. Some look real pretty but you gotta wonder... some are all around blindingly awesome.

I am going to go hug my Harmony now :)

neato meme thing

hey i saw this over here and I am gonna do it.

10 things I've done that you probably haven't

10. Bought crack cocaine in the Jordan Downs projects from a chick called "Peaches"
9. Tried to get a police officer who was writing me a ticket to sign up to sell Avon under me.
8. Re-measured and re-marked running tracks for almost every stinkin high school and college and university in Los Angeles county from English to Metric.
7. Been almost nailed for driving a "stolen" car. (a non-event!?)
6. Owned a car that all the side windows had been shot out of and drove it around.
5. Unloaded crab boats.
4. Ate shit in a car going 85 mph and walked away
3. Helped set up an Accutrak machine
2. Made missile parts
1. Sat in the cab of a running Amtrak locomotive

maybe interesting but probably only in the worst way. It would be interesting if you had also bought product from Peaches, though.

(well, i am an idiot. I pasted in a link to an Ida Cox video and now I have to find the blog I got the meme from. So, for now, enjoy the song and I'll get to fixin stuff later)

4

got my grade for one class. Got an A on the final and an A in the class. Still waiting on the other one.

Well, I have a 4.0 gpa so far.

hahaha

bat boy

I was wearing my Bat Boy shirt last night. It was custom made for me by a friend a few years ago. It has his screaming face on it and "Bat Boy has the hots for (my full name)". It had been in a box for a while.

But the warthogger had never heard of Bat Boy, so I had to relate the whole damn story, as well as background info on the great and now deceased Weekly World News. Actually, the WWN had been crappy for a good 8 years before it bit the dust. But for a while there, it was the most entertaining thing one could buy for less than an Abe.

humor in the soviet union

i caught this documentary this morning, "Hammer & Tickle". I actually happened to be awake at 4:30 am when it was on. My sleeping pattern is fucked up again and I have been waking up earlier and earlier.. but that's beside the point.

It's the second time I've gotten to watch it. Some of the jokes they told are damn funny. Far, far funnier than many political jokes I've heard over the past 10 years (can we put the stupid goddamn chimp thing to bed yet? It isn't funny anymore.)

here's one: A man comes home early and finds his wife in bed with another man. He screams, "Are you crazy, woman? They're selling butter at the grocer!"

This one was rendered as a cartoon- A man is in hell. On one side of him, a sign points to capitalist Hell, on the other, Communist Hell. No one is in line on the capitalist side, but the communist side line is typically long. He asks the little imp on he capitalist side what is in the capitalist hell. The imp says "First we flay all your skin off, then we boil you in oil, and then we cut you up into little pieces." The man says forget that and heads to the communist side. He asks the communist imp about communist hell. The imp says "First we boil you in oil, and then we flay all your skin off, and then we cut you up into little pieces. But sometimes, there is no oil, and sometimes, there are no knives". (This joke is rendered much better here. I have never been very good at jokes)

And my favorite was rendered as a skit. Two men are waiting in line in Romania (or maybe it was Hungary) for something. One says "I'm so tired of waiting in line for even the most basic food. I'm going to get a gun and shoot Ceaucescu" (sp? close enough). He runs off, then returns a while later. His partner in line has not moved, but whispers, "did you do it? Did you shoot him?" The would-be assassin whispers back, "No, the line to shoot him was too long".

And they had some footage of Reagan telling a pretty good joke he had come across. Acually, from what the movie says, Reagan used to collect jokes that the soviets told.

And then later, I was reading someone's rant against (or maybe for) their political idol (or pariah) and I thought, "We don't just tell political jokes here. We elect them, too"

in the rain shadow

from our kitchen window I can see Doak mountain- at least what I think is Doak mountain. It's right where I think Doak mountain should be. This is the home of the pass that sucks the most in the winter time. Well, I think so at least. Doak is where storms drop all their moisture before the clouds break up and float over Upper Klamath Lake.

It's kinda neat to be able to look up and see the delineation of western oregon/eastern oregon right out my kitchen window.

We had a 10% chance of precipitation today, but it looks like whatever was coming decided to get off at the Doak Mountain summit again.

icky

Saturday morning i was runnin behind for my show and stopped at the gas station by my house to grab something to eat. I got a banana, a thing of milk and a package of pop-tarts.

I don't like pop-tarts all that much but what the hell, you can take a while to eat them and you don't have to cook them and all that. And the ones i bought were chocolate-flavored (allegedly) so i figured that would be tasty with a banana.

Boy are those things nasty. I probably eat some once a year. Like eating cardboard with chocolate-flavored icing sandwiched in there with more weird flavor stuff on top.

While I was choking a bite down, I read the label. The first four ingredients after Enriched Flour are sugars. Different types. Four different kinds of sugar. Included sugar, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, dextrose.

So I read them on the air and disparaged the pop-tarts. "four kinds of sugar, enriched flour, and then a big list of things one cannot pronounce without a brain-sprain".

How can people eat them? Even better, how can anyone feel decent giving them to their kids?!

I ate like five bites during the show, a few bites later, and then split the second one with someone else.

wind

i'm so sick of wind. It's been a long time coming. The whole time I've been in oregon, probably.

and then there's this-

A local bar has a lot of events. I really don't like the bar too much, and really don't like the owner all that much either.

One of the events they have is the US Male (or whatever its being called now) revue. I went to one of them. It was probably the lamest thing I'd ever had the misfortune of experiencing. I was happy I got in on a free pass instead of paying money, but still it was two hours I could have used to like, do laundry or pluck eyebrow hairs or something thrilling like that.

So the four dancers they had this time are in jail on rape charges today.

Hopefully, they get a little greybar hotel version of what they did.

See ya. I mean it this time.

I got a call from one of my co-workers on Friday. She said the boss guy wants us to use these new time sheets. Ok. I can do that. Oh and we have to find our old time sheets going back to 4/14 and then re-write them onto the new one and fax it in by 7 am on Monday morning.

I have finals right now. One is done and the other one I have to go in and do in the morning. I have other things I needed to get done this weekend that now will wait because of this stupid thing.

So, again, with my fax on Monday morning, another two-week notice. Won't be talked into staying with the job this time because I won't have time to do the job with the schedule for the summer semester. Plus I have my eyes on one I can walk to. While I love making the drive to Siskiyou county every week, it's costing too much money, the car needs work the job is no longer paying for and it's crap like this- the time sheet thing (why didn't we get this information, say, LAST WEEK? or even two months ago?!)- that pisses me off. And it's pretty standard. Last minute instructions for things that suck up time that could have been done before. Stupid bullshit.

perfect

it's sunny out. It's fairly warm. I have what sounds like an aviary in the back yard. Which is a prime worm-hunting ground for all the neighborhood robins.

and this one too

I've never seen footage of Son House playing. I like his style.



One of the reasons i wanted to do the KBS show is that I know almost nothing about blues except how to play it, if that makes any sense, and not even very well if you wanna know the truth.

I know i like this old stuff a lot, and not so much the whole horns and shiny suits thing.

And as for guitar stuff, I play a little like this. Except not quite so polished. More like flailing away and hoping for the best.

took to school

We hunted around on youtube for most of what we played yesterday on the KBS Blues show. We played some rad shit, like this Ida Cox song.

where the river comes from

I stumbled upon a park in Mt Shasta today that has the headwaters of the Sacramento River on it. A damp little grotto tucked away. I ate my sandwich and traced the route of the Sacramento in my head.

Hey, that's pretty swell, I thought.

stunned

I came across a person today, while out and about, in Northern Cal. She was moaning about outsourced customer service for a company. She tells me she asked the guy where they were located, because she couldn't understand him. She was told "New Delhi". And then she says to me, "Now where the hell is that, anyway? What country is it? Yammer Yammer Yammer. I'm a proud American and yackety schmackety".

(pril chomps gum and adopts a blonde expression for a moment)

I was all...

"So hey, lady, you ever wonder why the world hates us so much? Because they think we're all like you."

Why do people feel it necessary to stand next to a merchandiser and talk to them? Go away! I don't care! I have a knife!

weirdo cat

i think py actually comes and lets us know when its time for his shot. he'll come get one of us and run into the kitchen, but there is food there, and we maybe change the water thinking he wants fresh water, and that's not what he wants. So give him his shot and then he's off doing something else. Whatever cats do.

i laughed so hard

more graph humor and song chart memes

and thanks, jack, for sharing this site.

slow on the uptake

someone was playing Puddin last night and broke a string. They asked where my spares were.

My what?

I swear it never occurred to me to keep an extra set of strings. I've never broken a string. My bass has had the same strings on it for 8 years. Most of my guitars get changed like once a year.

He was all apologetic about it, but hey, it happens. No biggie. heh.

gone

Bo Diddley is dead.

so close...

I'm squealing excited right now. I'm keepin it to myself though until everything pans out.

We will just say there was a question asked last night about whether I would like to do something for money that I already do for free. And my answer was, of course, hellz yeah.

The question was not extended as an offer, but could very well possibly turn into one. So, thus I am keeping the piehole shut. And telling the universe, "yes, please".