Behind the Orange Curtain

Best of 2011 Mix

2011-12-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

Top Songs of 2011
(may contain tunes from 2010)

Trumpets? Check.
Banjo and/or Mandolin? Check.
Surfy guitars? Yeah, baby!
Adorable male / female duets? Check aaand Check.
Song in Espanol? Si.
A song about being at sea? Oh yes, we have that too.

Here they come... in no particular order...my favorite tunes from 2011. When possible I've included a link to listen/buy the song. I hope you will consider supporting these artists.

Abrazame (uproot Andy remix) by Las Rakas is actually from 2010 but I didn't come across it until January 2011. If this doesn't make you want to shake your booty - your booty is probably broken.

Two songs from Austra caught my attention this year. Beat and the Pulse is more trance-like and Lose It is a little dreamier. I felt validated by this find when I heard Lose It playing in a Berlin hipster clothing store.

If Moon was Cookie by Laura Jansen (cover) - see video below.

Stamp by The Rural Alberta Advantage has the best drumming I've heard all year. The lead singer's voice is a little bit rat-like but the drums, man-oh-man. Hope I can write a drum part like this one day.

Little Talks by Monsters and Men - this song has it all: horns, accordion, great vocal parts, lyrics and it's hooky as shit. Bonus: these guys won Icelandic band of the year in 2010. Expect to hear this song in a movie trailer or TV commercial in 2012.

Icarus by Kairos - was released in 2010, but I had a hearing-it-for-the-first-time moment when I was diving in The Solomon Islands. I took it as a sign and incorporated it into my Solomon Islands recap video. It's dreamy with a nice little beat. Makes you want to listen to it while staring at the ocean on a sunny day.

Be Your Bro by Those Darlin's - let Those Darlin's charm the pants off your inner Tomboy.

I just wanna I just wanna be your brother
You just wanna be my boyfriend
I just wanna run and play in the dirt with you
You just wanna stick it in
I just wanna be your brother
I don't wanna be your lover
Woah-woah-woah I wanna be your bro

Holcombe Waller - Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan is another cover - really ballsy. The Native American / First Peoples vocal part at the end could not have been easy to learn and it's a Buffy Saint Marie tune. You can tell that Holcombe really loves this song.

I loved the entire Wild Flag album, but primarily Romance and Racehorse. I couldn't be happier that the Traveling Wilburies for our time happens to include two chicks from a Portland band. Carrie Brownstein is one of the greatest living guitar players and that goes double for Janet Weiss on drums. Many thanks to Carmel over at Evolving Epicurian for finding this great live performance on OPB where Wild Flag performs most of the tunes off their new album.

We Have Everything by Young Galaxy - I feel like this song would have been the closing credit music for my favorite 80s movie - had it been written in the 1980's. Is it me or does anyone else think this chick's voice sounds like Carly Simon?

Something to Brag About by Deer Tick - here's another one that I like for the lyrics. The band plays it at punk speed but it's got this kinda classic rock feel as well. If you like The Gaslight Anthem, this tune may be for you.

Here's a link to live performance. The tune starts at about 45 seconds in.

123 Forever by Apparat Organ Quartet is, as you might guess, a song made by a band with four keyboards. The vocals have a machine-like quality that adds to the flavor of the song rather than seeming gimick-y.

If you don't mind tunes that aren't in English - Ave Que Emigra by Gaby Moreno is a particularly adorable tune. It's got a vintage country-western kind of feel and she has this very cute and sincere voice.

Half Moon by Blind Pilot - is a sweet little tune by an up-and-coming Portland band. On a mix like this the song seems almost pedestrian, but I had to find a place for it. The ebb and flow of the music, the composition, everything in this song is done just right.

Analog Woodland Song by Viva Voce - some songs have a particular time of day when they sound best, we'll hear one of those tunes later. Analog Woodland Song, in my opinion, can be enjoyed at anytime, anywhere: at your desk, while driving, working out, in the morning, or on the way home from the bar.

Hunting by Katie Kate - the first tune I heard from Katie Kate was Totebag, and I felt pretty meh about it because I wanted the totebag song to be funny or at least ironic - so I kinda wrote her off.

Then I heard Hunting and was like holy shit, this is the Totebag chick? If you've pined for more electroclash or just like a good uptempo tune, Hunting is one of the best this year.

Her whole album - Flatland - is pretty alright, I bought about half the tracks, yes, including that Totebag song. It's kinda growing on me.

Dystopia by YACHT - The earth, the earth, the earth is on fy-ah! We don't have no daughter. Let the motherfucker burn! Uh, I guess this is like the hipster dance take on Midnight Oil's Beds are Burning.

Street Halo by Burial - if you already know Burial, well, this is more of the same. If you're not familiar with Burial, um, his sound is a darker dub-step. It's kinda ambient, kinda house, and a great song for driving at night.

Forget That You're Young by The Raveonettes - I love the guitar sound in this tune. The singer could be reading the phone book, really, and I would still love it.

Lonely Boy by The Black Keys - this track hooked me in the first 10 seconds. The guy dancing was just a huge bonus.

Want more? Check out:
Best of 2010 round up
Best Music of 2009 post

Here's one last tune, it's from 2009 but it was new to me in 2011 - Me Voy by Julieta Venegas. I like the song as a stand-alone, but it's even better if you check out the translated lyrics and watch the video (see below).

Office Antics

2011-12-18T16:39:00.000-08:00

I work for a fairly conservative company (by Portland standards). So I like to bring a little bit of PDX randomness to our employee break room.

Blog Plug:
Many of the ideas below were gleaned from Rats Off - a tumblr blog which summarizes itself as "the internet - so you don't have to." Rats Off is a superior aggregator of all good and funny things on the internets. You don't have to take my word for it - Rats Off was named as one of the top 90 Tumblr blogs for the second year in a row.

Without further ado, here are the 2011 break room highlights.

Lionel Ritchie - Hello Is It Me You're Looking For?

Henry Rollins Coloring Page

Skittle Burgers

This last one has nothing to do with something from Rats Off. It's something I was inspired to do on my own after repeated mis-uses of the word insure appeared in e-newsletters sent to our entire customer database. The word they should have used was ensure. I posted a short document explaining the difference and provided examples of how to use each word.

What's awesome is someone from our Latin America team posted a reply of sorts. The addendum notes the difference between ano and año. Please click the image above to make it bigger.

The Holidays

2011-12-04T13:57:00.000-08:00

Tonight as I sat down to Google how long is pumpkin pie safe to eat? ... it occurred to me that I don't hate the holidays. I know that's an uncool opinion, but it's true nonetheless.

You're not going to catch me caroling, or anywhere near a mall - I still hate fun, okay? But I do like christmas lights, pie, the company holiday party after-party, and buying gifts. Last year the gang at work got farting pens, not sure if I can top that one this year...

Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

I can't bring myself to buy a real tree (then there will be fewer to hug), but every year I enjoy deploying the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree at work. Also, Little Red Car gets a little snowman dangling from the rear view and of course Christmas lights. Ain't that so cute you could puke? Well that's how I roll.*

* After pulling back half the dashboard to fix my cigarette lighter plug only to find out it was a bad fuse.

There's a lot to hate about the holidays, no doubt. I wonder though - how much misery do people bring upon themselves? Do ya have to go to the mall and deal with mobs of people? Hell, no. I've done 90% of my holiday shopping online for the last several years.

I do find it a little upseting that Christmas creeps in sooner each year - encroaching on Thanksgiving during the 90's and these days it's creeping in on Halloween. You know what though? Someone is buying that shit or the stores wouldn't put it out for sale earlier and earlier. You don't see bikinis for sale in November.*

* exception for places that have swimsuit weather year-round.

People also hate Christmas because it's totally commercialized, okay sure. But buying into it is a choice. The talking heads tell us what the hot gifts are for the 2011 holiday season, but does anyone remember the 2010 list? People get over it, and usually the best gifts are the ones you didn't know you needed.

When I was a kid all I wanted for like three years was a She-Ra Crystal Castle. One year I got a bike instead. I was perturbed because it was a typical grey rainy Christmas in the Northwest and I didn't get to enjoy said bike for several weeks. The Crystal Castle I could have played with immediately. But the point is, in the end I loved that bike in the end, even though it wasn't the hottest gift.

I've also loved a lot of gifts that didn't cost anything at all. Mix CDs, a really nice note, all of these things cost next-to-nothing and mean a lot. In fact, I'd rather have a personal or funny card than another bath set with a pink shower puff and bath salts that I'm never going to use. I know, I know, it's the thought that counts, but when I get a bath set I know that thought was "I know nothing about you, but I felt obligated to buy you something."

So... I'm writing this post now because I don't want to get started on my Christmas cards. Every year I curse myself from ten years ago. If I never started sending them out I wouldn't have to worry about it now. Damn you Me from the past!!!

Here's the thing though. I complain about the obligation of sending out Christmas Cards but ultimately I am the enforcer. Deep down I must actually like doing it. In fact, the more I think about it, the whole Christmas card deal is kind of narcissistic. I spend hours scouring the internet for a card that borders on offensive and send it out with an illegible greeting for recipients to decipher.

The only inescapable misery of the holidays I can think of is having to spend time with family. But I actually like my family, so I really value the holidays because it gives me a chance to spend time with them.

Imagine if we didn't have the holidays...

I guess there would be a few more evergreen trees around and we'd all have another $200 - $500 in our pockets, but think of what would be lost. Without Christmas there'd be no leftover dessert in the fridge, no War Is Over, no SantaCon.

Also, I think we need a reason to show our appreciation to the ones who matter most in our lives. If we didn't have this preset time of year to give gifts and take some extra time off, when would people get around to it?

Okay Holiday Haters, go ahead. Hit me up with all the wretched things I missed about why the holidays are the worst time of year. But before you do, don't forget, the person who writes this missive was born on Christmas - it is my birthright to hate Christmas.

Ladies Rock Camp Portland 2011

2011-10-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ladies Rock Camp
The 2011 Experience

Do you remember when Powell's was in a bad neighborhood? The Portland Trailblazers were good, and Drunk and Abi's played at La Luna? This year's Ladies Rock Camp band took inspiration from Portland of the past. It was blue-collar, gritty, and hipster-free.

For those of you not familiar with Ladies Rock Camp: we formed a band on Friday afternoon, wrote a song in two days and gave a one time performance on Sunday. We're total beginners, but I think our song kicks intermediate-to-advanced ass.

Without further ado, here is the video for Ladies Rock Camp 2011 - Girls with Glasses performing Let's Get Shanghai'd Tonight.

Let's Get Shanghai'd Tonight by Girls with Glasses

Did you ever walk up the stairs at the Big Bang?

To buy your first bottle of Manic Panic?
It was a really big decision!

Was it green? Or Purple? Blue? Magenta?
(repeats)

Did you see your first show at La Luna?

Did your mom drop you and your best friend off?

What band was your favorite band?

Sweaty Nipples? Pond? Black Happy or Hazel?

(repeats)

Let's get Shanghai'd Tonight!

Don't Put up a Fight!

Don't Put up a Fight!

Did you buy some drugs by the Arby's on Hawthorne?

Twenty bucks you can get what you want.

What did you score from the dealers?

Was it weed? Acid? Schrooms? Oregano?
(repeats)

Did you ever shoplift from Psycho Safeway?

Did the one-armed man from Twin Peaks try to stop you?
What did your friend get caught with?

Was it cheese? Or yogurt? Or milk? Or butter
(repeats)

Let's get Shanghai'd Tonight!

Don't Put up a Fight!

Want more?

I wrote a blog post called Psycho Safeway - Portland Like it Used to Be.
Here's my 2008 recap of what it's like to attend Ladies Rock Camp.
You can also check out a video tour of Ladies Rock Camp (Portland). Sadly, Ladies Rock Camp and (more importantly) the girls' programs, are in need of a new home.
Rock and Roll Camp for Girls website.

The Netherlands and Berlin September 2011

2011-09-24T14:53:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago I set a goal for myself: fill up all the pages in my passport with stamps. Alas, I didn't make it. My passport will expire next year with a few blank pages in it. Oh well, I'll have from 2012 - 2022 to try again.

In the last ten years I managed to visit twelve countries - including all three countries of my "ancestors": Italy, Japan and Germany. As many of you have heard me joke - I am the original axis of evil.

All joking aside, a lot of locations I've visited recently were the last places on earth an American would want to go 60-70 years ago including:

Tokyo and Hiroshima, Japan
Berlin, Germany
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands
Peleliu, Palau

It kind of makes you wonder if there will be a Disneyland, Baghdad one day.

So anyway, I started my trip in The Netherlands. Friends and fellow bloggers Maggie and Jeff let me crash at their place in The Hague. I did a biking tour of Amsterdam and borrowed Maggie's bike to explore Den Haag. I got to see two famous Vermeer paintings (The Girl with the Pearl Earring and Delft - both much better in person) and stick my finger in the North Sea.

On Thursday, Maggie and I flew to Berlin. We stayed at Rick Steve's recommended Pension Peters. It was cute and clean with breakfast included for 73 Euro's/night. I chowed down on muesli every morning - which just isn't the same in the US as it is in Europe.

Interestingly, my credit card didn't work in a lot of places. Credit cards in Europe utilize a chip - which provides an extra layer of security. Supposedly we'll get these chips here eventually. Who needs credit card security when you have freedom?

The first day in Berlin we did a four-hour walking tour with Original Berlin Walks. The tour was a great orientation to the city and we saw a lot of the major sites including the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, Museum Island, etc. Our guide was a PhD candidate from Australia living in Berlin. Her knowledge of history was fantastic and I learned more in four hours than I ever did in history class.

We saw one of the three remaining sections of the Berlin wall. Our guide explained that there were actually multiple walls. The first wall was put up in one night, and "improvements" were made throughout the years.

I was surprised how little of the DDR remains. Then I thought about it: the wall came down 20 years ago. I don't know what I was expecting - even Portland has changed significantly since the 90's (too much, if you ask me). Still, it was surreal to see signs like "this way to the McDonald's at Checkpoint Charlie." Joke about economic colonialism goes here.

After the walking tour, Maggie and I decided we'd explore the city. We asked our walking tour guide for some suggestions. Judging by her dyed-black hair and piercings we figured she'd know some cool neighborhoods to visit. She suggested we avoid touristy Alexanderplatz and head to Prenzlauerberg and other outer-neighborhoods. We ran out of time to do maximum platzing but it was nice to get a feel for more of the everyday city life. Hipsters, it would seem, are the same everywhere: beards, bicycles, putting birds on things

So you may be wondering: what does a vegetarian eat in Berlin? Käsespätzle - lots of it, and beer. Every beer I tried was good - and most were picked at random. In the spirit of exploration, we'd be sitting at the bar and Maggie would say, let's try that one, it has a picture of a monk on it. The monk beer, by the way, is awesome. That said, my overall favorite was Schneider Weisse.

Kasespatzle? Schneider Weisse?

Yes, it's fun to speak German and Dutch. Here are some other great words:

Dank je wel - (Dahnk oo vell) means thank you in Dutch.

Alstublieft - (Oz doo breevt - say it as though you're doing an impression of the queen of England). This means please / can I help you in Dutch. It's used kind of like prego in Italian.

Lekker! - means delicious in Dutch and German.

Pindakaas - is peanut butter and literally translates to "peanut cheese"in Dutch - laying waste to the rumor that no one outside of N/S America likes peanut butter.

Everywhere I went in Amsterdam, The Hague and Berlin - people spoke English. That said, I learned something interesting about language. During WWII the Dutch could determine if someone was a true Dutch person or a spy by asking them to pronounce Scheveningen (a coastal area on the North Sea).

Ack. Scheveningen? Can I buy a vowel?

So anyway, you're probably tired of reading. It's time to move on to the video portion of this post. Please check out the video below for 6 min 30 sec of mediocre photos and slightly-better music.

Further reading

I strongly encourage anyone with an interest in Northern Europe / good travel writing to check out Maggie's blog and / or Jeff's blog. These two have been living in Northern Europe for the last year and write colorfully about life abroad and their European adventures.

Solomon Islands Scuba Diving Trip on the Bilikiki

2011-08-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

Solomon Islands Scuba Diving

10 Days on the Bilikiki

Ten days on a boat? Could my landlubber guts handle it? Would my Eustachian tubes hold up? Would I get attacked by an underwater crocodile? Read on and find out..

A Brief Overview of the Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands are located in the South Pacific: west of Fiji and east of Australia. The nearest country is Papua New Guinea (to the north).
The Solomon Islands = 922 islands and atolls spread out over 1,000 miles. That's about the distance from Seattle to Los Angeles.
There are land-based dive operations, but a liveaboard boat makes the most sense. Each night, the boat moves to a new island while the divers sleep - you wake up each day in a fabulous new dive spot.
Only a third of the islands are inhabited and the total population is just over half a million.
Roughly 4,000 tourists per year visit the Solomon Islands (that's 1/5th of the Rose Garden, or 1/4 of the Honda Center). By comparison: Disneyland gets 40,000 tourists per day.

This wasn't my first liveaboard, I did a 7-day trip on the Palau Aggressor in 2009 where I logged 17 dives before my ears said no more! For those of you who don't dive, ear problems plague many divers (me included). As a diver descends to depth, the ambient pressure changes and you need to "equalize" your ears. If you've ever swum to the bottom of the deep end, you've experienced that feeling.

The Bilikiki trip was ten days. I would need to hit a new personal record for dives the fun would be over halfway through the trip, but the promise of seeing a mantis shrimp, cuttlefish, beautiful coral gardens, crocodilefish and maybe an actual crocodile - it was too much to resist. So... off to The Solomons.

After 12 hours of air travel, we boarded the boat (Bilikiki) in the main city - Honiara, Guadalcanal (yes- that Guadalcanal). As for the rest - please take a look at the video below. I crammed ten days and twenty-seven dives into six minutes, dammit. Reading this post as an email? View my Bilikiki Solomon Islands Scuba Diving video on Vimeo.

There are a few things we saw that didn't make it into the video. Yes, we saw a crocodile on one of the dives (see photo evidence below). Also, we were able to see the Milky Way some evenings. Whoa.

A big thanks to Sam, Kellie, Sarah, Steve, the Bilikiki crew and the kind and wonderful folks who dove with us.

Further Reading / Viewing

For an excellent video of underwater life in the Solomons (including a "disco" clam) please check out Underwater Scenes from the Solomon Islands or view the embedded video below. Jack and Sue Drafal also have a great video of a music performance from a Solomon Islands village we visited. For up-to-date info about diving in the Solomons check out the Manager's Log or the Bilikiki Facebook page.

For more mediocre travel videos with pretty-okay music and nice underwater images (where applicable), check out:

Japan 2007
Alaska 2009
Palau 2009

Photos from the Window Seat

2011-07-15T20:33:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a Flickr account from a pilot. He has some great behind the scenes images from the cockpit including St. Elmos Fire and the Northern Lights. He has videos too.

If you're interested in the life of someone who works on an airplane for a living, check out Another Flight Attendant Writing. The title implies something blase, but the writer, Heather Poole, has a fun style and addresses all your burning flight attendant questions like:

I'm about to head off on a plane trip myself. I like sitting by the window because sometimes I can snap a cool photo or two (see below). They're not as good as the pilot's images, but I'm proud of this little collection.

I call it "from the window seat."

The Window Seat, a set on Flickr.

Nerd Gender Dichotomy

2011-06-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

As a teenager I was a pretty hardcore geek. I saved money to buy import CDs and checked out a lot of graphic novels from the library.
Just picture the music nerd at your school, usually a guy with long dirty hair, okay? That was me. My personal style was loud polyester shirts in the winter and concert t-shirts in summer.

If I had one selfish wish it would have been to be re-born in the early 1960s so I could grow up listening to Janis, Jimi and Zeppelin... move to NY for the height of CBGB... then move to Boston for the rise of the Pixies, Throwin Muses, et al.

I worked as a projectionist from about 16 - 21. This turned me into an even bigger nerd. I memorized the films of Stanley Kubrick and spent a lot of time debating shit like why PT Anderson's Magnolia was / was not a derivative p.o.s. (answer - yes it was, see Robert Altman's Short Cuts).

All my friends were nerds too and, well, most of them were dudes. At the time I thought, "these guys are smart and interesting - and they're all super-interested in my opinion." Holy shit.

Of course now I know better. Those dudes weren't interested in why The Head on the Door is The Cure's best album... they were waiting for me to have one too many Henry Weinhard's. Too bad for them. I sincerely thought our chit chat was about the music (and nerdy guys are too passive to try anything) so the '95 Mirage and I would go home unmolested.

Looking back, I realize that if I had been born a dude, I'd still be a virgin. What guy can get away with driving a late model car, disliking children, being an ubernerd ... and still get laid? It's impossible (except maybe in Portland - but the nerdy guy would have to be in a band).

Just for S's and G's I recently took the the Nerd, Geek or Dork test.

Warning about the test link above: to take the test it makes you create an account at OK Cupid. Just type in a fake email to proceed. Sorry guys, I won't be answering the hookup email you just sent to "joemama@yourmom.com."

Here are my results (see below - email subscribers may need to click through to view images).

Apparently I'm less of a nerd than I thought. I am, however, in the top percentile for geekosity and dorkiness. On the upside, my celebrity counter part is... Bill Gates.

Maybe if I'd answered "most of the time" to that black turtleneck question I would have been Steve Jobs. Har har har.

Anyway, Bill Gates reinforces the point I'm trying to make. I bet Mr. Gates wasn't much of a ladies man in his teens and 20's. I'm not trying to talk any crap about Bill Gates here, I'm just taking a wild guess. He's just lucky he thought up the personal computer instead of, you know, nachos on a stick. Which, by the way, I wish someone would hurry up and invent.

My Korean-American (guy) friend and I were having a discussion about our teenage years, and he said being a male Asian nerd is three to the ninth power worse than being a female nerd. He pointed out that everyone likes Asian girls (check the back of your local newsweekly if you don't believe me) but there are very few Asian male sex symbols.

It just occurred to me that the last sentence I wrote will probably get this blog flagged as spam. Oh well.

So anyway, experience now tells me:

#1 Being a nerdy girl... not so bad compared to being a nerdy boy.

#2 Meaningful conversation with a dude can be duplicitous. The more interested they seem, the worse their intentions.

#3 I have been under-charging for my good company.
In Orange County men will pay $237 - $399 for a date.

Yeah, yeah, I know: "date."

Working the Pole: OC versus PDX

2011-06-11T20:15:00.000-07:00

Back home in Portland, going to a strip club isn't a big deal. If you're a guy or have guy friends, a 21st birthday visit to The Acropolis is de rigueur. Once upon a time, $24 got your best buddy a steak and a lap dance on his birthday - and I'm not using the word steak as a euphemism for something else, okay? Rumor has it whoever owns "The Acrop" also owns a ranch so they have the best steak special in town.

Portland also has the most strip clubs per capita of any US city. All this competition leads to:

Very reasonable drink prices
No cover charge for ladies
Christmas specials
and Stripperoke nights
(the person singing karaoke performs with two strippers, if the singer stinks, the girls keep their clothes on and take the microphone away).

Perhaps due to the reasons described above, Portland strip clubs also have a more diverse clientele. The average club attracts couples, groups of friends and yeah, a few creepy dudes.

There are also a wider variety of strippers in PDX, they're not all blonde freaks of nature with boobs that stick out like goldfish eyeballs. We have strippers who wear glasses, dance with fire, chicks with mohawks, and girls who are tatted from neck to ankle and all places in between.

When I moved to (very conservative) Orange County, I expected folks would have a different attitude. I was only half right.

Not surprisingly, going to a strip club is the kind of thing OC people do only as part of their "crazy" weekend in Vegas. Pffft! The only thing crazy about strip clubs in Vegas are the drink prices and the super-creepy no alcohol clubs. But, I digress..

So, while the stripper thing is verboten here in the OC, pole dancing is huge. HUGE.

There are at least nine pole dancing schools in Orange County including Pilates on the Pole and another company that will bring stripper poles to your house for a "pole party." If Portland has the most pole dancing clubs per captia, OC must have the most pole dancing schools.

But wait there's more. A Newport Beach company sells all kinds of pole set-ups for your home or vehicle. If you want a stripper pole on your trailer hitch, it can be yours for only $399.

Personally, I've always wondered how pole dancers learn their skills. You never see a stripper mess up or fall off, is there a practice pole in the back of the club? Well, now aspiring strippers can wait for an OC Pole Fitness Groupon and start their career training for only $20.

Okay, I'm mostly kidding.

Collette and her daughters

In case you hadn't guessed, there's no stripping at the OC pole dancing classes. In fact, some of the women become serious athletes.

The OC is home to Collette Kakuk, a mom and founding member of the PFA (Pole Fitness Association). One of the association's goals is to get pole dancing in the 2012 Olympics.

After watching highlights from the American Pole Fitness Championships 2010 (co-ed, who knew?) and world champion pole dancer Felix Cane (see video below)... I can see the logic. The activity requires significant strength and grace ala gymnastics and the competitors are no more scantily-clad than a volleyball player or springboard diver.

Just for S's and G's I inquired about pole fitness back home. Turns out Portland has a bar that recently installed stripper poles for amateurs and two pole dancing schools. We damn well better. If a Portlander can't win a gold medal for stripping, that'd be worse than a Canadian hockey team losing the Stanley Cup to a team from California.

By the way, if you're receiving this as an email, you may need to click through to the website to view videos and images.

Want to read more about (ehem) Portland's nightlife? Check out my 2007 Home for the Holidays post.

The Most Beautiful Video I've Ever Seen: The Mountain

2011-04-24T16:05:00.000-07:00

Filmmaker Terje Sorgjerd shot timelapse mountain / starscapes at El Teide - Spain's highest mountain. Known as one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars, if you're into starscapes or timelapse imagery, please take a moment to view the video below.

This is one of the most beautiful videos I've ever seen. Thanks to MoHawk for this great find.

Please view "full screen" by clicking the little group of four arrows in the bottom right. Just click in between the words "HD" and "Vimeo"

While watching The Mountain I thought to myself, "I would love to see this guy's version of the Aurora Borealis." Terje Sorgjerd obliges us:

Disneyland Has Proved I Have No Inner Child

2011-04-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago I went to Disneyland - my first visit since moving to Orange County. I'll spare you the details of how and why. All you need to know is that it was work-sponsored.

The trip included lunch at Club 33 (the "secret" restaurant) plus - leaving work early. So I figured, WTF not. I'll give this place a second try. Everyone loves it, even people I respect for being totally jaded.

This was my second trip to the magic kingdom. I first visited Disneyland when I was six. I wasn't impressed and haven't been back since. Somewhere there's a VHS cassette with my dad griping "we paid $35 so you could go to Disneyland and all you want to do is go back to the motel pool!" After that I made my dad go on It's a Small World eight times.

What can I say? I grew up in the Pacific NW, an outdoor pool was a big freakin' deal to me. Swimming Outside!?!? I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Not to mention - there was no wait to use the pool. Let those other suckers wait in line 45 minutes for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I had the waterslide all to myself.

When I moved to Orange County, Disneyland ranked at the bottom of my list of places to visit. Right after jail, but above the emergency room. My flights are regularly infested with Disney-fied brats, why would I spend $75 + parking to see inside their hive?

Nevertheless, fate intervened and off I went.

I arrived at the Disney compound just before 1:00 pm and parked in the "Woody" lot (I'll spare you the pederast joke). It was a 20 minute bus ride from the parking lot to the magic kingdom. The shuttle bus took such a circuitous route I wondered if my co-workers and I were being taken to a "re-education center" rather than Disneyland.

This parking shuttle would later be the site of a minor existential crisis, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Lunch was okay. The toilet was interesting (see below). For souvenirs they gave us a chocolate mint candy and something that probably used to be a matchbook, but now appears to be rolling papers.

After lunch, we were free to explore the park. After 90 minutes - I had to get out of there. The place made me anxious. I wanted to breathe into a paper bag, and not just because of the 18 fart clouds I walked through.

Actually, I was ready to leave after about an hour, but I couldn't find my way out of the Tomorrowland pavilion. There I was, standing in someone else's fart in the Future Kitchen sponsored by Microsoft / Siemens and thought to myself "The future smells like ass... GET ME THE F*CK OUT OF HERE!"

I retraced my steps to the pavilion entrance and escaped. I didn't feel any better. I wished I could just teleport out of there.

It's not that crowds bother me. I just spent the weekend working a trade show with thousands of people. Normally I would just kick back and enjoy some people watching, but I'd had enough. I called my guy and said "I'm leaving, I know it's rush-hour, but I'm over this place." He encouraged me to stay and enjoy myself and I struggled to convey that I could not enjoy myself.

The main problem is: I don't like amusement park rides or silly hats and of course you know how I feel about a place infested with kids. Truth be told though - I wouldn't like Disneyland if it were filled with well-mannered gays.

I often joke that I hate fun... but maybe there's some truth to that? I like to think I have a fun side. I liked the first Jackass movie and I think the new tacos made with Dorito-flavored shells are hilarious.

To exit the park I had to walk through Main Street USA. There were happy people of all ages: families holding hands, couples canoodling, even really gothed out types looking happy. Some of my black-clad brethren were even wearing the mouse ears (un-ironically!).

I became disenchanted with the disenchanted and there my mini-crisis began.

Back on the parking shuttle it occurred to me: I don't have an inner child. I mean this 75% jokingly, but I am 25% sincerely bummed out. I've considered the after-effects of reading The Old Man and the Sea when I was eleven, but I think I was simply born this way.

I remember (vaguely) being in kindergarten. The other little girls wanted to play house and fought over who would be the mommie. I wanted to be the rebellious teen who ran away from home. Before too long I stopped going to recess. They sent me to the second grade to do reading lessons.

Even as a kid I didn't want to be a kid. I'm not saying this to seem superior, I say this because I want to know if there is anyone else who felt this way. Anyone else out there? And what are your feelings about Disneyland...

Dad Rock and What Makes Your Musical Taste

2011-03-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

When I was seven years old I loved Debbie Gibson, Belinda Carlisle and Madonna. I couldn't understand why my dad made me listen to Jimmy Buffet, Van Morrison, and Paul Simon. It was soooo embarrassing especially when he sang along. Hadn't he heard those songs a million times when they first came out? Why did he have to listen to them over and over?

I vowed that as an adult I would always listen to top 40 radio and keep up on popular music. No way would I waste my time on old music when there was perfectly good new music out there!

This vow lasted until the mid-90's. When my favorite AM radio station that played The Pixies, Throwing Muses and The Cure, and other great bands got bought out. After the station moved to FM it was all Nickelback, Creed and other Eddie Vedder impersonators.

Since then I've been on a steady diet of mixes from friends, KEXP and blip.fm. A spot check on the top 25 artists I listen to (see below) you'll see quite a few 'from the vault."

Okay, this is not news.

I realize it's only natural for people to develop a taste for a certain type of music. When that genre falls from popularity* what can you do but keep listening to the music that's already been produced?

* come on world, why can't we give female-fronted post-punk bands another try?

What I don't understand is taking music and crap-i-fying it. I don't mean sampling, I mean really shitty covers. Here's the distinction:

Jessica Simpson samples Jack and Diane for one of her songs, Kid Rock mashes up Werewolves of London with Sweet Home Alabama - I don't like it, but I can live with it.

At the gym last weekend I heard the most god-awful cover of Brown-Eyed Girl. It was slow and really hammy, I almost put my fingers in my ears. Sampling is one thing, but can't we leave the original versions alone?

What's next, Justin Beber covering Jim Croce's Operator? Ke$ha doing an auto-tune version of The Beatles' Yesterday? Don't answer that... if those exist I don't want to know.

Getting back to Dad Rock:

I learned a lot going to and from school everyday in our '79 Celica. I never want to hear Call Me Al ever again, but I value it as part of the foundation of my musical taste.

In high school I met this awesome chick (who curates an excellent blog now) and we discovered: not only did we like the same music - so did our parents. Come to think of it, she may have been the one to coin the phrase Dad Rock.

Anyway, we lost touch and years later, guess what? Second verse, same as the first.

With the internet giving us greater access to fringe bands and lots of them, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that (yet again) our tastes aligned. I'm talking up-and-coming bands from Scotland and college bands from Bellingham that only existed for two years. I think she is my soul mate in music. We joked that we have the same music "genealogy."

I can't help but wonder, as many others have, what from the current era will hold its value into the future? With so much of today's pop culture made from recycled materials (music - and movies too) what will be held up as "classic"? Will we simply digress into a crap-that-begets-crap cycle of cultural degradation?

At least Debbie Gibson wrote her own material...

I didn't have the stomach to watch this entire video, but my reaction to the first 60 seconds was OMG they're so... clothed.

Map Game - Middle East and Africa

2011-02-24T20:19:00.000-08:00

Someone sent Tom this map game (see below). The goal is to complete the map by dragging the country name to its appropriate spot on the map.

Holy crap.

I am ashamed. Ashamed!

The middle east I completed okay. Africa... not so much. I'm sure every eight year old in England knows this stuff backwards and forwards. Um, but I could kick those kids' asses, so there.

I feel like I should do this game everyday until I can complete it without resorting to trial and error. If you have concerns about how well you'll perform - I suggest getting drunk before trying this game - so at least you'll have an excuse.

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

2011-02-21T07:48:00.000-08:00

Vancouver, WA - We've Got It All

Lost Fart, San Francisco

Business Diversification - Portland, OR

A Dog Wearing Sunglasses

click image above to make bigger

Peace, Love and Banksy?

Chinatown, SF

Kim Jong Il Looking at My Little Pony Art

reblogged from RatsOff.com originally posted to kimjonillookingatthings

Email subscribers - if you can't see the images above, please click through to themadhapa.com.

Want More?
From the archives - Weird Japanese Stuff - photos I took from my trip to Japan in 2008. You'll see plastic food, a shower made out of a sink, and the strangest Beatles T-Shirt ever made.

What I Eat

2011-02-07T20:14:00.000-08:00

Today's post is inspired by three things:

1. My friend Maggie's posts about food in Der Nederlandes. Dear God I want Vlaamses Frites so bad I can almost taste them!

2. A book I read over Xmas called What I Eat about where people in different parts of the world are photographed with what they eat in an average day.

3. My friend Mac's school project: DIY claymation interpretation of Shel Silverstein's Hungry, Hungry Mungry. Sometimes I feel like this little clay character.

Each person profiled in What I Eat is photographed in front of a table of food.

What floored me was how little food 1200 or 1600 calories amounts to and how (what I would consider) a normal person's daily intake of food is 3,000 or 4,000 calories. When you read just about any women's magazine they're always profiling the 1200 - 1600 calorie a day diet. That's not much food!

The book also talks about how a calorie is actually an ineffectual way of measuring food intake. For example: a whole grain calorie versus a fat calorie are processed and stored quite differently by the body.

Anyway, so I decided for S's and G's to keep track of what I ate in a day. A photographer I am not, and sometimes I forgot to take a picture, so, you get what you pay for with this blog.

To get a fair representation, I did one weekend day and one weekday. First, the weekend - in this case Sunday.

Sunday

Breakfast
(250 cal) Toast with peanut butter and 1/2 banana, two cups of coffee

Second Breakfast (not just for Hobbits!)
(130 cal) Power Bar Pure and Simple Energy Bar (Oatmeal Cookie)

Lunch
(250 cal) Leftover whole-wheat spaghetti with red sauce (one and a half bowls)
( 70 cal) Handful of dry-roasted edamame, cup of coffee

Dinner
(300 cal) Two glasses Asahi beer
(170 cal) Vegetable roll (4 piece)
(150) 3 pieces lotus root tempura
(200) Bowl of cold soba noodles with kitsune and spinach
(210 cal ) 6 oz frozen yogurt with non-fat granola, 12 mini reeses pieces, 6 cubes mango
(30) six gummy vitamins

TOTAL: 1760 calories

Monday

I eat my food with chopsticks because they never go missing from the break room - unlike forks.

This is what I eat at work almost everyday:

Breakfast
(190 cal) Toast with peanut butter, cup of coffee

Second Breakfast
(225 cal) 1/2 cup shredded wheat, apple with string cheese, green tea

Post-workout snack
(100 cal) Banana

Lunch
(180) Mixed veg salad, slice of tofu, Tapatio sauce, 2 ginger chews

Dinner
(200) Focaccia bread
(100) Glass of wine
(1000) Asparagus and Spinach Spaghetti
(30) six gummy vitamins (various)

TOTAL: 2025 calories

Here are some of the products I mentioned in the above blog post:

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NHL Guardians Project - The Duck

2011-01-30T20:37:00.000-08:00

My Favorite Hockey Team Has the Worst Stan Lee Character EVER

Stan Lee's The Guardian Project debuted today at the NHL All Star Game. The NHL has been running ads for this all month trying to build hype like crazy.

The origin story of The Guardian Project is this: the NHL wants more 9 - 14-year-olds to watch hockey. Lee, in conjunction with other creators, transformed the various NHL mascots into superheros. I love hockey and I love comic books, but this endeavor seems misguided.

Here's how it works:

Each mascot / hero has a special power related to the city they represent. For example: the Los Angeles King has the ability to cause seismic shifts. One would assume that his weakness is balancing a checkbook. A little CA state bankruptcy humor for ya there.

Some of the mascots naturally make good superheros. There's the Boston Bruin who is a scary-ass bear. The Nashville Predator is a saber-tooth tiger thing with titanium teeth. So far so good.

But what about more esoteric mascots like the St. Louis Blues and the Vancouver Canucks? More importantly, what about... The Anaheim Ducks?

It's worse than I could have imagined. Other cities will look at The Duck and say, "well, at least our guy isn't as bad as Anaheim's." But before I get to the big reveal, let me give you an example of some that are not very good before you get to see ours - which is truly awful.

Here's the Vancouver Canuck.

The Vancouver Canuck is a human mixed with a killer whale. His cape allows him to shoot through the water at extreme speed and glide through the air. This, of course, makes me think of the David Hasselhoff bits from The Spongebob movie.

Also on the not-so-great list:

The Columbus Blue Jackets' Guardian has a codpiece with an NHL logo at the tip.

Other teams ended up with superheroes who look an awful lot like legacy comic book characters. Puck Daddy points out how the Edmonton Oilers' Guardian looks like Juggernaut.

Personally, I think the Minnesota Wild's character looks like the Cookie Crisp Wolf on steroids.

Still... none of the Guardians is more embarrassing than the Anaheim Duck.

Rebel with a trust fund? Really? Really!??!?

If the tagline weren't bad enough, the full description of our superhero says The Duck can only fly short distances - oh but he's really smart. Great. Every comic book nerd knows the end game of being the smart guy around a bunch of meat heads. You know the other Guardians steal his tater tots at lunchtime and give him shit constantly:

"Learn to fly yet? How's that nerdmobile of yours coming along? Maybe you can ask daddy for some more money so you can pay someone else to build it."

"Hey I sprained my ankle the other day, can you help me file a claim?"

I know what you're thinking: well, what can you do with a duck? It's not the greatest animal out there, I will give you that.

Then again, what do you do with the Montreal Canadiens? What's The Canadiens' ability? Giving out free health care? Muttering rude things in French under his breath?

Guess what? The Canadien is a guy who can absorb and use the super powers of others. Not bad, eh?

It's like The Duck got all the money and intelligence of Iron Man - but as a trust fund kid gets none of the respect. I know I'm not the target demographic, but no matter what age you are I don't see how The Duck can be cool - I don't care how good he is at surfing.

The Green Hornet at least has an ass-kicking Asian buddy. Maybe it's not too late for The Duck to have a smokin' hot Asian girlfriend.

Afterall, he is from Orange County...

Portland Versus Seattle

2011-01-27T20:30:00.000-08:00

(this post refers to an earlier entry from 26 Jan 2011)

In no way am I trying to compare Seattle and Portland. Dear Lord, no. Portlanders have very little interest in Seattle - especially now that we have our own IKEA.

In fact, nothing irks me more than when someone says, "Oh, you're from Portland? I love Seattle!" GRRR! Just because both places are rainy and full of weirdos who like to read doesn't mean they're the same.

I mean, Boston and New York are almost the same distance apart as Portland and Seattle - and you wouldn't dream of telling someone from Boston how much you love NYC, right?

To further prove my point, I'm putting together a short list of a few ways these two cities are weird but in different ways.

Seattle: random troll sculpture
Portland: random bike sculpture

Seattle: Roller Derby
Portland: Hula Hooping

Seattle: Asian horror movies shown at midnight
Portland: so-bad-it's good movies shown at midnight

Seattle: Utilikilts
Portland: Stilts

Seattle: Too many cars, not enough road
Portland: Too many graphic designers, not enough jobs

Seattle: people who like starting businesses
Portland: people who like starting bands

Seattle: named after indian who's people believed it was wrong to speak the name of the dead.
Portland: name decided in a coin toss (it was almost named "Boston").

Seattle: home of Toys in Babeland - seller of obscenely wonderful bedroom devices

Portland: home of Voodoo Doughnuts - seller of obscene and wonderful doughnuts (available vegan, of course).

Seattle: Bumbershoot
Portland: Last Thursday

Now surely this post has your mind working - feel free to post your thoughts or angry rebuttal below. Here's one to get you started.

Seattle: Glitter Party
Portland: .....

The Next Hipster Mecca

2011-01-26T19:36:00.000-08:00

You know what my greatest fear is about the IFC show Portlandia?

I'm afraid it will make Portland look fun and interesting and then even more people will move there. Whoever quoth the line "Portland: where young people go to retire" was spot on. We don't need any more people with a dual masters in art history and world religions. Dammit there are only so many barista jobs to go around!

Long time readers of this blog are familiar with my rants about how Portland used to be a lot scarier and (therefore) better. Why can't some other town become hipster mecca? Come on Austin, let's see what you've got!

Or maybe it's time we revisit Seattle....

Seriously, hipsters Portland is so 2004. Aren't you tired of composting your own manure and waiting in long lines for the food truck de jour? Why not pack it in? Take your bacon-print suspenders and head north.

Sure it was grunge land, but now it's fertile ground for new wave hipsters to carve out an identity. They have microbrews, grouchy locals, Fred Meyers, and better roller derby!

Guys, find yourself a Utilikilt and ladies strap on those TEVA high heels. Seattle awaits!

2010 Mesmerizing Memes

2010-12-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

With the exception of Bed Intruder (irresistible that one), I've tried to pick some internet "greats" from 2010 that may have escaped your notice. So if you're looking for double rainbow videos, sad Keanu, and Pants on the Ground go here.

Here are the Madhapa's 5 favorite overlooked internet videos of 2010. Let's count 'em down.

#5 - Will it Blend? Meets Old Spice Guy
Two great memes that taste great together.

#4 Video collage of Heaven and Hell
Video artist Marco Brambilla created a mash-up of movie clips to create a scrolling pastiche of heaven and hell. This one's actually... not funny. It's just cool. Marco Brambilla's Civilization.

(is that Michael Jackson?)

#3 60 Ghetto Names
This one I find funny mostly because of the response video - 60 Jewish Ghetto Names.

#2 iPhone4 (I don't care)
Android users will probably find this video funnier than iPhone users. Then again, the iPhone users won't care. Heh heh...

If you want to hear what conservatives (in the form of fuzzy animals) think about Quantitative Easing, or just like hearing people refer to things with a direct article (such as "The Goldman Sachs" and "The Ben Bernank") ...

Check out QE II explained. I think the best bit starts at 3min 19 sec.

#1 Bed Intruder Song
Bed Intruder has actually charted on iTunes (#3 on R&B and #25 overall).

Read the story of the Bed Intruder Song - as reported by NPR so you can feel sophisticated about your obsession with Bed Intruder as an intriguing comment on society's insecurity with black poverty.

Best of 2010 Mix

2010-12-13T10:00:00.000-08:00

Here are my favorite tunes from 2010. I've included links so you could listen to each one, or you can download most of them via iTunes. I created an iMix so you can iListen to them on your iDevice.

I Died So I Could Haunt You - Stars
Don't let the title of this track turn you away - this is a catchy little number. Hey, these guys are Canadian after all.

If you like I Died So I Could Haunt You, check out Dead Hearts - or the whole album The Five Ghosts for that matter.

Go Outside - Cults
It starts off with a toy piano and the vocals remind me of The Langley Schools Music Project even though the vocals are probably done by some Swedish hipster(s).

Odessa - Caribou
Sometimes I like electronica for its creative and meditative powers. Sometimes I like songs that make you dance / tap your toe / grind your butt back and forth in the driver's seat.

If you like this track, check out Take by Soul Particles. Take also has a disco groove, albeit slower; I'm including it because I think the rest of that Caribou album is shite.

Paul Valéry- Blue Scholars
The Scholars bring us a track about The Future - more specifically what we thought it would be in the 80's. Click the link above to download the track, or just preview the song / watch the video.

De Donde Vengo Yo - Choc Quib Town
This band is * kind of * like a Colombian version of The Fugees. The song title means "Where I'm From."

Cigarettes and Liquor - Murs and 9th Wonder
I like rappers with a sense of humor. Plus, it bangs.

Texico Bitches - Broken Social Scene
It's catchy... so damn catchy. You'll love singing along soooo much who gives a crap what this song even means?

If you like this track, check out Ungrateful Little Father from the same record.

Orion's Belt Buckle - Free the Robots
Why do I love throbbing beats so much? WHY?!?!? This song f-ing makes the doors rattle on the '95 Mirage. If you like this track, check out Fools Rhythm by Two Fingers.

Lovesick - Lindtrom & Christabelle
Damn Caddillac putting good music in a TV commercial shit. Grrrrrr. Make hipster angry.

Dark Shine - Smoosh
Asy and Chlose are teenagers now, can you believe it? The little girls from Seattle are 16 and 18 now. Their little sister (14) joins them on bass. The song starts out slow and at about 1min 35 Chloe brings in this wicked beat.

Not Like Any Other Feeling - The Thermals
The Thermals are the only pop punk band I need. The only ones from now on. Listen for the lyric "You Only Exist to be Replaced. Repeat. You Only Exist to be Replaced." Genius.

If you like this track, check out Never Listen to Me from the same album.

Best Cover Song of 2010

The MGMT track Kids covered by The Ooks of Hazzard. It's seven ukuleles playing the hipster groove and it's... kinda moving. Thanks to Smartwick for this awesome find.

Favorite New Artist
Lightsick- Zola Jesus
Zola Jesus could be Peter Murphy's daughter (musically speaking). Zola Jesus voice sings directly to the 16-year-old goth inside me. If you like this track, check out a slightly more upbeat track called Night.

We Used to Wait - Arcade Fire
This song really grew on me. I didn't buy the album, I just played around with their damn interactive music video for like a hour. Basically you put in the address of your home town and, using google maps, it integrates local photos into the music video. By the end of it I was hooked on the song. I guess this is proof marketing works, go figure.

Crash Years - The New Pornographers
No surprises here - The NPs put out another album that I love. Quite honestly though, I always love Neko Cases's songs the best. Her voice... brilliant - but accessible: just like a girl from the Pacific NW should be.

The Queen of Lower Chelsea - The Gaslight Anthem
I went totally apeshit for The Gaslight Anthem's last album The '59 Sound. I still recommend '59 as the best starting place for this band, but 2010's release American Slang is no slouch. The band continues their Americana straightforward rock, with Jackson Browne-esque ability to create an entire world in under four minutes.

Degrassi - Super Wild Horses
If I'm putting together a mix you know there's going to be a fuzzed-out girl band on here, well here ya go. This is a duo from Melbourne, Australia.

Love Cry - Four Tet
This track has the best drum beat I've heard this year. I'm learning to play this (slowly). This tune really stimulates my brain. There is a monotonous element that makes this track really meditative but in a creatively-attractive way.

Like what you've heard? Check out my favorites from 2009. Every now and then I find something that turns out to be a winner - last year I picked The XX and also Macklemore's The Town.

One that I picked up after publishing the "Best of" post last year was the very catchy track Little Secrets by Passion Pit. Let me know if you've got some 2010 indie or quasi-indie fav's that didn't hit my radar.

I Love Hockey

2010-11-07T07:19:00.000-08:00

It's funny how life has these little turning points. You're going about your business and then - WHAM - it takes a new course. I don't mean car accidents or finding out why you vomit every morning. Hey, I don't write this blog to depress the shit out of you.

A couple years ago, my friend Traci offered me some tickets: Anaheim Ducks hockey tickets. I don't remember if The Ducks won this game or not. What I remember is: it was one of the most entertaining experiences of my life.

Growing up in Oregon, the Portland Trailblazers were my favorite professional sports team. Full disclosure: they were our only professional sports team. The Blazers... what can I say? If you are a Blazers fan you are no stranger to heartbreak. They'll have a series of great games and then when it counts - choke. During the "Jailblazers" years I strayed from following professional sports and never looked back.

Until that fateful night in Anaheim...

At that point, I wasn't familiar with hockey other than: a bunch of dudes try to put the puck in the opponent's net. It was soccer on ice for all I knew.

Here's some of the more surprising things I learned right away:

Each team gets only one time out.
The player line-up changes about every 2 minutes.
There's no out of bounds.

Once the game gets going, it hardly ever stops. It's so great! In other sports, the game grinds to a halt every minute or so for a time out or because the ball goes out of bounds. In hockey they keep it going. Players go on and off the ice without having to stop play.

The constantly changing line-up is another great thing about hockey. No one player dominates the game -they're not on the ice long enough. The team really has to work together to maintain momentum. A group of five guys forms a "line" and those guys typically play together, but sometimes, due to injury or penalty, a different player has to jump in on the line. So, in other words, it's a very dynamic game.

Speaking of penalties and injuries: I cannot lie, the aggressiveness of the game is fantastic. You've gotta love a sport with penalties for: tripping, spearing, hooking and slashing. These guys get beat up more than any football player and unlike basketball there's none of that bullshit flopping. If a hockey player gets knocked down, he doesn't put on an act for the ref. He gets up and keeps playing.

There's also something called an enforcer. They tell me the NHL has discouraged the use of an enforcer in recent years, but The Ducks have one - George Parros.

Parros is 6' 5" which means when he's wearing skates: he's too tall to walk through an average doorway. I figured this dude has to be 40-years old and a bitter hockey veteran. Turns out he's about 31-years-old and a really smart guy (he attended Princeton) and does a lot of charity work for kids with cancer.

Anyway, George is our on-ice security. If the other team messes with our top goal-scoring guys too much - George sends them a message. He'll also go out an kick some ass just to motivate the team (and the fans). It's fucking magical. They'll play Rob Zombie or some butt-rocking metal music while he skates to the penalty box. Sometimes the crowd chants "Ref You Suck."

Something else I love: the player's names. You've got to hand it to hockey announcers. They've got to pronounce Slavic, Nordic, Finnish, Swedish, Russian and French-Canadian last names. Our Yankee mouths are not shaped to say things like:

Lupul
Selanne
Luongo
Pavelski
Niedermayer
Miettinen

Oh, and they even have a player named Satan. It's pronounced "Sha-Tan" but hey, it's spelled Satan. That's so metal!

Other great things about hockey:

The ref's (unofficially) stop blowing whistles with one minute left in the game. The game just keeps going no matter what.
Also in the last minute of play, the goalie of the team that's losing will leave the ice so the team can put an extra offensive player in: making it 6 on 5.
Sometimes (due to penalties) the teams play 4 on 5 or even 3 on 5.
Cup holders in the bathroom stalls.

Before we go, I'd like to leave you with this short video from the game I went to on Friday. One of our top goal scorers (Bobby Ryan) checks this dude from Pittsburgh. It's a great hit. They show it a couple times, so watch until the end (it's only 28 seconds).

P.S. Portland used to have a pro hockey team. In fact, we were the first U.S. team to play for the Stanley Cup. The team was sold shortly thereafter and became the Chicago Blackhawks.

Election Exhaustion

2010-10-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

Is it me or is this election season the worst ever? Here in California it feels like I'm choosing between the lesser of two evils (and I bet Oregon can say the same).

That lesser of two evils platform seems to be the candidates' platform as well. Check out this Jerry Brown ad:

Basically he's saying, "vote for me because I'm not Schwartzenegger." Greeaaaat.

Honest to God I thought about writing in Clint Eastwood for governor. Hell, he was mayor of Carmel, at least he's got some experience.

A friend at work has a 19-year-old daughter and this is her first election. They were discussing how to determine the most qualified candidate. At one point, her daughter was so frustrated she said,

"Okay, who cares. I've decided I’m not voting for the lady that looks like George Washington! I’m voting for the guy who looks like a turtle."

At this point, the only proposition I've decided on is Propostion 19. The other ones are a freakin' mess. We even have two propositions about the same thing (who draws the legislative districts).

Okay, I realize that whining does no good, so I've come to a decision. I'm going to start my own proposition - one the people can really care about.

Here in the OC we have noise abatement at our airport. It exists because the rich farts in Newport Beach don't want those icky, loud airplanes waking them up. Wah, wah, boo hoo. Flights are not allowed to take off before 7am or land after 11pm. So what happens if your flight gets delayed? You guessed it: they re-route you to LAX (which is an hour away). Oh, um, but this noise rule doesn't apply to private planes... only the commercial flights that scum like you and I have to use.

I'm going to start a ballot measure called WAKE UP AND SMELL THE JET FUEL YOU RICH BASTARDS. Why should that one city control the air travel of an entire county?

I can't wait for the 2012 election...

Portland-Themed Playing Cards

2010-10-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

A deck of cards featuring Portland landmarks - hell yes. This hipster needs $500 in funding (from a variety of contributors). Check it out...

Sleater-Kinney Has Moved On - I Haven't

2010-10-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

Corin Tucker released her first solo project album yesterday. A review I was reading said four years have passed since Sleater-Kinney disbanded. Has it really been that long? It seems like just yesterday I was a teenager watching them at La Luna and falling in love.

Carrie's moved on to a TV show of all things. For better or worse it's a show about Portland. IFC is filming in town right now and the show is supposed to air in 2011. Carrie also writes in her closing post for NPR blog Monitor Mix that she's got a new band.

As for Janet, well, she remains one of the greatest living drummers as far as I'm concerned. Check out this video of her "drum battle" with Sara Lund (um, Sara's the drummer of Corin's new band). I think it's pretty obvious who wins.

Watch the video for The Corin Tucker Band's first single: Riley. Of course it was filmed in Portland, did you have to ask!?!

Happy 25th Birthday Super Mario Brothers

2010-09-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

What's the most successful gaming franchise of all time? Super Mario, of course! Super Mario Bros. celebrates 25 years of grabbing mushrooms, rescuing princesses, etc.

The video below shows an evolutionary timeline of the game. The first 2 min had me grinning like a fool. After that I was like, hunh?

For more Mario goodness, check out The Guardian's 25 fun facts about Super Mario Brothers.

Drivin' Around the OC on Labor Day Weekend

2010-09-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

I can't wait for Labor Day weekend to be over. After Monday, the summer tourist invasion will be over for the most part and I can go back to my favorite spots in Laguna!

In the meantime I'm cooling my heels, hoping to catch an afternoon showing of Machete and enjoying some really good fake meat we discovered called Gardein. Will it grill?

I'm also out and about running errands. Here are some pix I snapped yesterday.

On my way home from the gym I saw a guy in a cow costume jumping and waving at cards.

Temperatures were in the upper 90's yesterday. I can't imagine being in a mascot costume on a 70-degrees-and-cloudy day much less sunny and 90+!. Haven't these guys suffered enough?

(I didn't take this photo, it's from the interwebs)

My next stop was the grocery store.

Why do people leave grocery carts in parking spaces? Look how close this F-ing cart is to my car.

Okay, now look how close the shopping cart return area is.

What's the deal, people?

I've noticed this problem is much worse at "regular" grocery stores (as opposed to Trader Joe's).

Okay, last thing...

The approach path for John Wayne Airport is directly over the 405. Having a plane fly directly over you while driving down the freeway - never gets old. I swear you can almost wave at the passengers.

Music Video 2.0

2010-09-04T08:14:00.000-07:00

Whether you're a fan of Arcade Fire or not, their new video is worth checking out. Using a mash-up of video, animation and google maps, "The Wilderness Downtown" video experience is different for every user.

The website will ask you for the address of where you grew up - this is where the Google Maps effect comes in. New windows will open up showing both aerial and street-level views of whatever address you've punched in.

I used my folks' house to start and it said there wasn't enough Maps data to make the video run with its full effects. I'm guessing that the program wants to use both recent images and ones from several years back. That said: I tried several different addresses and got the same messages every time. I tried:

My house
The old Henry Weinhardt's Brewery
Hotel Laguna
Catalina Island Pier

None of these had enough Maps data. If anyone comes across an address with enough history let me know.

Okay last couple things...

The site will also tell you it works best with Google's browser (Chrome). I ran the program on my Mac running Firefox, it seemed to do its thing just fine. That said, here's a link to download Chrome if you want it.

When the video starts, multiple browser windows will appear - don't close them, just let it run. You should, however, minimize the main browser window.

Read more about it and see more screengrabs, or go to thewildernessdowntown.com to see what it's all about.

Retirement, Social Security and Financial Masochism

2010-08-15T17:53:00.000-07:00

While I was visiting home last month, Mom and I talked a bit about retirement. She hopes to be retired by age 66 - because that's when she gets full social security benefits (according to the government website).

For anyone born 1960 or later, full retirement benefits don't start until age 67. So, if you're 30 you get full benefits in 2046 or 2047.

I know what you're thinking: who knows if social security will be around that long?!?!

Well I have the answer - NO.

To the right is an excerpt from a social security document I received this year. Basically, they expect the funds to run out in 2041.

I know this isn't breaking news, but I was surprised to see it spelled out so directly. Well, at least my folks will see a piece of it.

So where does that leave the rest of us? Because I'm a financial masochist, I keep a close eye on my 401k and IRA. Occasionally I will opt for the special torture of a retirement calculator.

To retire at age 60 and have my current salary, I need to round up $2,573,000.

To reach this 2.5 million dollar goal, I must sock away roughly $2500 month. Sure, I have that lying around.

Hoo-boy is that some depressing s#it.

It gets better...I have this Roth IRA.

When I got laid off in 2003 I rolled my 401k into a Roth IRA. According to, well, everything they tell you, a Roth is this magical thing that will compound like crazy. If you start young enough (like in your early 20's, which I was), a Roth IRA is supposed to make you a millionare by the time you retire.

To date, I have made $750. Ouch!

Here's hoping the CA housing market turns around...

Asian Family Olympics WTF

2010-07-29T22:55:00.000-07:00

The Iwata Family Olympics take place tomorrow. I should be resting up so I can thoroughly pummel the Funatake, Matsumoto and other branches of the clan.

The family olympics are not what you'd expect from a group of several dozen Asian-Americans. When I think Asian family olympics I'm thinking: violin scales, math problems, maybe some SudoKo or whatever that shit's called.

NOPE!

It's going to be all american stuff like three-legged races and water balloon games. Dear God, we're going to be outside... running and throwing and running. It seems unfair because clearly the family group with the greatest number of white spouses will have the upper hand. Good thing I loaded up on carbs.

Now that I've just watched a video about women in Kendo (see below) I think bamboo sword fighting is definitely in order for future family olympic events. See you suckers in 2014!

Thanks to Ms. MoHawks at iheartsnow for sharing this interesting vid!

The Best Android Versus iPhone Video I've Ever Seen

2010-07-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

BRING THE HATE!!!

Photos That Aren't What They Seem

2010-07-05T17:17:00.000-07:00

The picture above: it's not a glacier. Sure, it looks like a glacier, but it's actually made out of sugar. The artist / photographer, Matthew Albanese makes fantastic landscapes from common household materials. Lighting, timing and talent fill in the gaps - transforming his dioramas into superlative-worthy photographs.

Take a minute to check out Matthew Albanese's images and behind-the-scenes shots.

30 Songs for 30 Days - It's Done!

2010-06-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Today marks the last day of my quest to post 30 number songs in 30 days.

A huge thanks to JulieoftheSea, Carmel, Cary, AZecho, Rob, Bookbuster, Lena and everyone who sent in suggestions (I needed 'em). Sorry if I didn't get to all the ideas - I was punching in songs from Zion and Bryce National Parks for most of the "20's."

You can view the complete list on my Blip.fm DJ page. I am, of course, DJ madhapa.

Best Spoof Movie Trailer Ever

2010-06-19T07:51:00.000-07:00

After working as a movie projectionist for five years - I've seen thousands of trailers and hundreds of formulaic movies. Non-movie-nerd friends think I'm just grumpy, but the spoof movie trailer below says it all.

"Academy Award Winning Movie" is stunningly accurate (and funny too).

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Songs with Number Names - Blip for 30 Days

2010-05-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

Since becoming a "DJ" on Blip.fm a while back, I've decided to go for the "level four DJ" badge. To do this, I have to post at least one song per day for 30 days. If I can do this, I'll become a "level 4 DJ," which - besides denoting me as a level five NERD - gets me a special badge on my profile.

While it isn't exactly resume-material, I'm thinkin' why not?

I'm starting tomorrow (1 June 2010). My plan is to post songs with names that correspond to the date. Yes, I know this is level-five musicnerditry, but I like a challenge!

So anyway, on 1 June I might post:

All Hands on the Bad One (Sleater-Kinney)
California One (Decemberists)

... but I need your help.

I've made a list of songs (1-30) but I have some weak spots / blanks.

11:
15:
16:
18:
19:
21:
22:
26:
27:
28:

Shoot me an email or post a comment if you have any suggestions. You can follow my progress on blip.fm.

Here's my original blog post about Blip.fm: I Became a DJ You Can Too.

Purses Versus Pockets

2010-05-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

I first discovered the purse conspiracy in my early 20's. I had just made a job change from projectionist to cubicle rat and was forced to wear something other than Levi's 501's.

Much to my dismay, the already loathsome task of shopping for work clothes became more challenging. Let me lay it out for you:

As a down-to-earth kind of girl, all I carry around with me are my keys, a wallet and some chapstick. Sunglasses get stowed on the top of my head and back then I didn't own a cell phone. I found it increasingly difficult to find pants with real pockets, but back then I could still fit into Juniors-sized Dickies so I didn't worry to much about it.

A few years ago I noticed something odd happening to my lower half. Things didn't seem to be configured as they once were. I didn't gain weight, things just moved around.

These days, I'm forced to buy women's pants and I gotta tell you: I'm not loving it. Where are the pockets, people?

I honestly think it's a conspiracy with the purse industry. The Man will do anything to get my hard-earned money.

I shared this theory with a friend last night (a guy) but could not convince him.

I asked, "would you carry a purse?" His answer was of course, "No."

I asked, "would you buy pants without pockets?" Again, he answered (logically), "No."

Guys wouldn't tolerate this sort of thing, so why should I? It seems un-feminist. I'm afraid I have to invoke the "F" word here, but it seems like a serious equality issue.

No, really - it gets worse:

Have you ever compared the prices on men's and women's pants? Our pants always cost more - despite being made with less material.

Seriously, go check it out. Try Gap.com or Banana Republic.com. You'll see similar pants (linen-cotton blend, for example) are $10 more for women.

Am I the only one who thinks this higher pricing and no pocket thing is total bullshit?

I know there are purse-less women out there. Can I get a witness?!?

I Became a DJ - You Can Too

2010-04-22T15:08:00.000-07:00

I became a DJ. Oh yes I did - on Blip.fm

Blip.fm is a website where you can post the songs you're digging at the moment. Friends can follow your stream of songs and you can follow their stream as well. It's super-easy to use and I've used it to discover a lot of new music in the past few weeks.

I've joined scads of these music sharing sites over the years and Blip.fm is a step above the rest. Basically whenever you find a song you like, you type it into Blip and it's added to your RSS feed. You don't have to upload anything and it doesn't need to sync with iTunes. I'm not exactly sure where the songs come from other than: the track has to posted on the interwebs somewhere. Whoever curates the database does a good job, I'd say 19 out of 20 songs I punch in - they have.

Here's my Blip DJ Page.
Here's another page featuring my favorite cover songs.

Friends can sign up for Blip.fm (hint hint) and "follow" the music you're digging. This really cool chick I knew back in the SMA days - who I haven't talked to in ten years - has a fantastically similar taste in music as me. It's been fun to see what she posts.

It has another use as well:

Every year I put together a best of [year] list. Here's my list from 2009, for example.

Typically I start with around eighty songs and reduce it down to about 18. A lot of them get thrown out for not being released that year. So, even if I listened to INXS's Suicide Blonde 17 times last year it doesn't belong on a best of mix for 2009.

Hey, I was preparing the mix for my 29 1/2th birthday. It required in-depth musical research.

So anyway, hopefully you get the idea. Listen to my favorite songs of late via my Blip.FM Channel, and/or start one of your own.

Separated at Birth?

2010-04-08T08:12:00.001-07:00

Will Farrell & Red Hot Chili Peppers Drummer Chad Smith

Thanks to Rats Off! For this discovery.
Photo from The Stranger's website.

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Johnny Drama and Ethan Hawke: Separated at Birth?

2010-03-05T16:18:00.000-08:00

Separated at Birth?

Johnny Drama

Ethan Hawke
(in Brooklyn's Finest)

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Separated at Birth?

2010-03-01T12:26:00.000-08:00

Separated at Birth?

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The Rosa Parks of Reusable To-go Containers

2010-02-27T08:26:00.000-08:00

I lived a sheltered life back home.

In Multnomah County they keep the styrofoam beast at bay. Down here in the OC? Not so much. Every time I bring my leftovers home with me they're packaged in a styrofoam box that will last for eternity.

When I first moved here I didn't know what to do. I collected the styrofoam containers in the garage and scoured the internet for a place where I could recycle them - no such luck. In the end, the lady we were living with threw them all away when I was away for a work trip.

I've thought about bringing my own to-go container with me. Tupperware makes some colorful, collapsible containers (bonus: sold by a drag queen). Unfortunately, I always forget to bring it.

One of the great things about going out to dinner is that it's spontaneous. "Babe, I don't feel like cooking tonight."

Hooray! I don't feel like scraping cheese off a plate with a ratty sponge when we're done. Unfortunately, packing a tupperware kinda kills the spontaneity factor.

Also, full disclosure - I'm not sure if I can get over the nerdy-ness factor of whipping out a plastic tub at a restaurant. In Portland I wouldn't think twice about it, but down here it would be the first time in history anyone had done such a thing.

Not sure if I'm ready to be the Rosa Parks of reusable to-go containers.

Grist.org has a short n' sweet video about going green when getting take out.

That one seems easy enough - so long as

a) you tell the place in advance and
b) they understand WTF you're talking about

Tom Brokaw Explains Canada to Americans

2010-02-27T07:52:00.000-08:00

On the eve of the gold medal game against Canada I wanted to share this very touching tribute about the relationship between the US and our friends to the north.

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Adorable Stop Motion Japanese Critters Playing a Ukulele Song About Hawaii

2010-02-12T10:16:00.000-08:00

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What English Sounds Like to People from Other Countries

2010-02-11T20:01:00.000-08:00

I work for an international company and behind the orange curtain this dose of culture is much needed. It's a real hodge podge of language in my department sometimes.

First there's the MexiCal slang that's part of the local culture
A co-worker from Italy has taught us how to swear in Italian
and we throw in some Japanese and Hawaiian for good measure

I know some "working" Spanish (thanks for holding, you're speaking to Sebastian, what's your store number?), but there's one language that alludes us - French. Usually I can get someone from our Canadian office to assist, or one of the really nice Swiss guys. Today I got skunked so here's what I came up with:

S'il vous plaît excusez-moi. J'ai utilisé Google Translate.

I never studied French, I have no idea how to form the words. What can you do? It got me thinking though how French has that lilt to it - so charming in all those Godard films but not-so-charming when you have an angry Quebecois on the line.

I also came across this: What English Sounds Like to People from Other Countries

The first video is a must-see. The American Idol from Bulgaria is pretty good too.
The Japanese kid and the short German bit aren't that interesting.

Enjoy!

A Change of Fashion

2010-02-06T20:11:00.000-08:00

So, as you all know I've been wearing black for some time - almost ten years.

What most people don't understand is that I wear black - not because its my favorite color or its how I feel on the inside.

I wear black all the time because:

#1 I hate shopping
#2 I hate picking out what to wear in the morning
#3 Sometimes I spill coffee on myself and with black clothes no one can tell.
#4 I would rather spend money on travel

To be quite honest, if I woke up tomorrow and my closet was full of purple clothes - that's what I'd wear. I shit you not.

So, at Ladies Rock Camp last year there was this grad student from Canada. The whole weekend she rocked different cardigan / scarf combos. I was intrigued....

Since then I've invested in one black cardigan and one dark purple. Someone gave me a camel-colored one and I bought a matching scarf. So altogether I have three cardigans and three scarves. A few more and, Man, I'm set!

Not sure how this will work out in the long term. There are some 100+ degree Southern California days coming up this summer, but let's not worry about that just for a moment.

Is this cardigan-scarf thing really a lasting trend? Am I going to be, like, so 2009 in a few weeks?

What if I go old-school. I'm thinkin' Merchant-Ivory old school. Emma Thompson really worked those cardigans... but then again she has that lovely British accent - the perfect accessory, really.

I really wish someone would make a Queer Eye for the Straight Girl or for Tim Gunn's show to come back on. All I really want is a free trip to New York, $5000 and a gay man to show me what's up. Is that too much to ask!?!?

Selling CDs on Glyde Versus Secondspin

2010-02-05T19:04:00.000-08:00

This is a follow up to my post from last week: One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure.

Of the items I've posted to Glyde, I sold three in the first week.

Of the 59 items I sent to SecondSpin they accepted all but one CD because it was a promo copy.
They're sending me a check for $172.81 and some additional reimbursement for shipping (media mail rate).

Here's where things stand:

Glyde: three items sold, average price: $1.04/item, total revenue: $3.13
SecondSpin: 58 items sold, average price: $2.91/item, total revenue $172.81
eBay: $0 (auction still in progress)

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Solving Problems and Staying Safe - Using 90's Gangster Rap

2010-02-04T17:38:00.000-08:00

I was up in LA on Sunday and I ran into a problem... which I solved by listening to 90s gangster rap.

I found myself in Hollywood and wanted to take the 405 freeway home.

There was an accident on the connector freeways - which meant I had to either take I-5 home (which takes forever and is always backed up) or drive through South Central.

Since I visit LA only two or three times a year: I'm not very familiar with the area and where it's safe or not safe. Here's what I know:

California...knows how to party
California...knows how to party
In the citaaay of L.A.
In the citaaay of Watts
In the citaaay, the city of Compton
We keep it rockin! We keep it rockin!

Okay, that's a good start. What else do I know?

Only in Cali where we riot not rally to live and die
In L.A. we wearin' Chucks not Ballies (that's right)
Let'em recognize from Long Beach to Rosecrans
Bumpin and grindin like a slow jam.

I know Inglewood is "always up to no good" and I've heard Snoop et al mention Crenshaw a few times. I don't remember them mentioning an shit going down on La Brea Ave, so that's the route I chose.

At first I spend about twenty minutes driving through Koreatown. I feel totally safe rollin' in my '95 Mitsubishi.

From there I drove through Baldwin Hills (which seems really nice actually) and then into Inglewood. I put on TLC's Greatest Hits so everyone will know I'm just a cute girl who doesn't want any trouble (or Scrubs).

As it turns out, the part of Inglewood I drove through didn't look that different from the rest of LA. Apparently my idiotic sterotyping made everything work out just fine.

My Car Qualifies for Wellfare - Woohoo!

2010-02-02T20:22:00.000-08:00

I got a letter from the state of California today. They will give me up to $500 for (emissions-related) repairs to Little Red!

Poor thing, this is the second time she's failed her emissions test. The standards are more strict here than anywhere else and hey - if someone stuck something up your tailpipe and made you go at maximum exertion, you'd be grumpy too.

It's a pretty nice thing that the state offers some assistance toward the repair. Last time she had to get a new catalytic converter. That was a few hundred bucks..

The way it works is almost like health insurance: I pay $100 and then they pick up the rest (up to $500). The state will even cover the cost of the smog re-test. I'm not sure where the $500 limit comes from. Maybe the max value is determined by the blue book value of the car!

The car welfare thing is called the Consumer Assistance Program. It's been around for a few years but the smog station I'd been going to before never told me about it. I went to a different one that offered a coupon (thanks, Yelp) and they told me about it. Not sure if Oregon has something similar, but it's worth checking!

Turn Frequent Flyer Miles Into Gift Cards

2010-02-02T19:07:00.000-08:00

I have 45,000 Delta SkyMiles and about 6,000 American Airlines miles I'm never going to use. It's kind of ridiculous because the miles are just going to sit there until they expire. I don't have enough to "afford" a free ticket and both airlines have really limited selection of award tickets anyway.

So I was very pleased to discover points.com

Points.com lets you swap frequent flyer miles between airlines, exchange miles with other people or redeem for gift certificates to Home Depot, Best Buy, iTunes, etc. Right now they work with Alaska, Continental, American, Hawaiian, Iceland Air and some other regional airlines.

For example, you can exchange

8,971 Alaska Airlines miles for a $25 iTunes gift certificate. It’s not that smokin’ of a deal, but if you’ve got miles on an airline you’re never going to use, then it’s better than just letting them expire.

There's also this stock market exchange kinda thing where you can post an exchange deal for other users. For example, for $30 I can swap 3,000 Delta Miles for 1,000 Continental miles. The $30 fee is charged by Delta. I think points.com charges a $7 transaction fee.

I haven't found any mind-blowing deals out there, but, for example I've got 45,000 Delta miles I'm never going to use. Delta has the nerve to route OC flights to Portland through Salt Lake, and I'll never make that mistake again.

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Best. Cover. Ever.

2010-01-27T18:48:00.000-08:00

Obviously this isn't Neil Young, but holy crap it's a great impression.

One Man's Treasure Is Another Man's Trash

2010-01-24T20:00:00.001-08:00

I displayed them proudly in my living room - an external view of my internal soul.

To look upon them was to know the real me. The import singles, the special editions, it was all there.

I valued them more than money. If my apartment were to catch on fire, I would fill my arms with as many as possible, forsaking photo albums, clothes, even my stereo.

After selling off nearly 400 CDs and DVDs before I moved to California, about 200 CDs and 30 DVDs (the creme de la creme remained). This weekend, I decided to cut it to the bone.

To be honest, I think I waited too long on the CDs. I haven't bought one in ages and I don't know how many people still buy them? You can vote in my poll...

Do You Still Buy CDs?

At first I thought I'd put everything on eBay, but a friend of mine mentioned a new site called Glyde.com - it's like a kinder, gentler eBay. There's also a CD/DVD re-sell site called SecondSpin.com. You mail them CDs and DVDs, and they send you a check.

So I'm running an experiment. Which site will give me the most money for selling off my (formerly) most-prized possessions...

Glyde, SecondSpin, or eBay?

Here's how Glyde works:
You type in an item description (All About My Mother)
You tell Glyde what condition it's in (New, Excellent, Good, etc)
Glyde tells you how much money you'll get, less their cut and the shipping cost.
Once the item is posted, you wait for someone to buy it.
When someone agrees to buy, Glyde sends you a pre-paid shipping envelope.

UPSIDE: easy to use, higher profit than eBay, item stays posted until it sells (no re-listing)
DOWNSIDE: waiting for someone to buy the item.

Here's how SecondSpin.com works:
You type in an item description
SecondSpin.com tells you how much they'll pay for that item
You add the item to your "sell" shopping cart.
Upon check out you get an order number and an estimated total.
You mail everything to SecondSpin, shipping costs are partially refunded for 5+ items.
SecondSpin checks in the items and mails you a check (or PayPal)

UPSIDE: you get paid right away
DOWNSIDE: SecondSpin reserves the right to reject CDs/DVDs for scratched discs or cases. They will not return rejected items. Profit isn't necessarily better than eBay.

If I still lived in Portland, I would just go to Everyday Music...

So Here's the Experiment:

First I went through all my CDs and set aside the ones that were scratched since SecondSpin won't accept them. Anything in good condition got priced out on the three sites. I quickly discovered that some of my most treasured CDs were worth, well, bubkiss.

Under the Pink - 25 cents on SecondSpin, 55 cents on Glyde
Heartbreak!

Living in Clip - 10 cents on SecondSpin
I guess today's angst-ridden teenagers aren't interested in the bi-sexual poet-folk of Ms. DiFranco.

Artists that are still drawing new listeners (such as The Gossip) fair a little better. For That's Not What I Heard. I get a guaranteed $2 from SecondSpin or I can wait for a buyer on Glyde and get $5.05.

I'm not done yet, but out of about forty CDs and two dozen DVDs, the only item that would do better on eBay is a collector's edition of Pulp Fiction. This item goes for $8-$10 on eBay and Glyde was only $7 and SecondSpin would give me a measly $4.

I sent about two dozen items up to SecondSpin.com today. We'll see how many of them they accept. I've also posted two dozen items to Glyde. We'll see how long it takes for them to sell.

So stay tuned for the results of the experiment, and check out Glyde. They have great deals on CDs, DVDs, and books too...

Update #1 - so far I've made $172!

Palau Scuba Diving Trip - My First Liveaboard Dive Boat Experience

2010-01-10T12:20:00.000-08:00

I'm back from Palau... and sick.

Not sure if I caught something from the airplane or one of the other divers, but man-oh-man...I haven't spent this much time on the couch in ages *hack* *hack*. On the upside, I've had plenty of time to finish my recap video. Run time is about 8 minutes, but I put the highlights in the first 1 min. 45 sec.

IMPORTANT INFO:
Please view in full screen mode.
(click the four white arrows in the bottom right corner - next to the Vimeo logo)

Also, please turn your speakers on!
There are some nice tunes from XX, Blue Scholars, and some old-school Jamaican Ska I hope you'll enjoy. Or you can mute the sound and just put T-Pain on repeat (Mom this is a joke, don't really do it).

Things that weren't captured in the slideshow:

Ascending from some of the dives... it was amazing to look down: coral as far as the eye can see. In other places I've dove (the Caribbean, Hawaii) there are patches of coral and sand in between. In Palau it's solid coral - not one patch of sand visible.

Some of the dive sites, especially down south in Peleliu, there were WWII artifacts. During the dive it would be all round-y organic shapes and then all of sudden - a perfectly square box 10 ft x 10 ft x 10 ft covered in coral. Sometimes the coral growth was so dense, it was hard to tell what mother nature made and what was man made.

I wish I could capture the sounds in the rock islands. It's the classic, movie soundtrack beautiful-and-a-tiny-bit-creepy combination of strange bird calls, trees rustling and water lapping. It reminded me of the river scenes in Apocalypse Now but no monkeys and not at all threatening.

The guide on our kayak trip was great. A native Palauan, she had a lot of interesting insights about growing up on a (somewhat) remote island. Besides being a great naturalist, she gave an interesting perspective on Palau's history as a territory of Japan, the U.S., and at last as an independent nation.

Big thanks to the crew on Palau Aggressor II and the staff at Sam's Tours. I hope to be back one day!

Best of 2009 Mix

2009-12-10T21:08:00.000-08:00

Favorite Tunes of 2009*

* Most of these tracks were released in 2009. There's a few on here from last year that didn't make it onto the '08 mix.

At the bottom of this post you can click "Read More" for a link to buy (most of) these songs on iTunes. You can also get a lot of them on eMusic.

Intro: The Xx
I love the way this track builds, slows down, and picks back up. It just grooves. The xx have made a simple instrumental that's very satisfying. It could be an intro to a film, a sports team, or just the intro to your day - pulling out of the driveway.

If you like this track, check out "VCR" which has vocals.
Both Ends Burning: Come on Gang (08)

See gush-fest from earlier this year about Come on Gang.
Iamundernodisguise: School of Seven Bells
Etheral and a little spooky - just my kind of tune.

It makes great music for a video about giant, calving glaciers (skip to 8 min 22 sec).
Fresher In My Kicks: Dyme Def
Whether you rocked the Air Jordans or LA Gear with the dual-colored gills - anyone who went to public school in the 80's can appreciate what this track has to say.
So Human:Lady Sovereign
British rapper chick samples The Cure. Catchy yeah, yeah's in the chorus. What more do you want?
Collect Call: Metric
This isn't Metric's first appearance on a "best of" mix and I'm sure it won't be the last. Year after year this Canadian band puts out great albums. They're also great live. Help I'm Alive is definitely the single off their 2009 album Fantasies, but I really like the subtlety of Collect call.
Great Expectations: The Gaslight Anthem (another 2008)
I must have listened to this song 500 times this year. It reminds me of the Bruce Springsteen-esque rock I grew up with in the 80s. This track starts rocking right out of the gate and I think the lyrics are great:

They burned down the diner where I always used to find her
- licking young boys blood from her claws.
And I learned about the blues from this kitten I knew
Her hair was raven, her arms like a tomb.
Now We Can See: The Thermals
There's nothing really groundbreaking about this tune from Portland trio: The Thermals, but I can't really slight them for consistently putting out instantly catchy-as-shit pop-punk songs.
Daylight: Matt & Kim
What would a Megan mix be without a song from an adorable male/female duo? I don't think Kim sings on this one, but like Mates of State and The Submarines... I bet she's playing that cute keyboard riff.

and in the daylight we can hitchhike to Maine
I hope that someday I'll see without these frame
and in the daylight I don't pick up my phone
cause in the daylight anywhere feels like home
Something to Prove: The Redwood Plan
Every Megan mix must also include some kind of feminist tune. Here is my favorite for 2009 with the amazing Leslie Wood (formerly of Ms. Led).

I have to be honest: this song is almost too empowering. I listen to it and kind of feel like a slacker because I don't have something to tear down (give it one more try - yeah)!
Born on a Day the Sun Didn't Rise: Black Moth Super Rainbow
This is dreamy little pop song will most likely find its way into being an add for a cell phone. As you listen, imagine black and white photos of people co-mingling with brightly-colored hand-drawn animation. At the end... the HTC logo.
Hi-808: Blue Scholars
My favorite hip-hop group puts it down for Hawaii (area code 808)! Sab'z and Geo escape the snow of Seattle to film in Oahu (rockin' swap meat T's no doubt). Check out the 808 love.
The Town: Macklemore
Macklemore puts it down for the town, the 206ness and Seattle hip hop then and now. Even if you're not a Seattle hip-hop follower, this song will speak to anyone who loves their local music scene.
Listened On: Lightening Dust
The Lightning Dust are a duo from B.C. Their songs are folky and spooky. This one is my favorite so far, but I'm looking forward to digesting the album more. It's the kind of music I feel I can't fully appreciate in southern California.
You Push, I'll Go: Baby Dayliner
Something else I really love: handclaps. Oh yeah. I put this one on at work sometimes and do a little office chair dance. Click the song name to hear the full track - KEXP's song of the day.
So Far Around the Bend: The National
This song came out as part of the Dark Was The Night compilation (benefiting is the Red Hot Organization - remember those?). I love this band. This song doesn't show it off so much, but their drummer is really fantastic. 4AD 4-ever.
Pistols: Throw Me the Statue
There's an art to nonsensical lyrics. It can't be just blather like, "refrigerator show time epileptic heartbeat ... just doesn't do anything for ya." It's got to be something you feel cool singing along with. Kristin Hersh is amazing at this type of songwriting.

Pistols is a catchy tune that strings together oblique words and phrases in an interesting way. I got the album though and, a little goes a long way.
Love Lies Bleeding: The Ettes
A critic I was reading described The Ettes as girly garage rock. It's something I only needed a small taste of, but I dig their sound.
Oh Paris!: Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele
Dent May owes a lot to Jonathan Richman, but he does some nice things with a ukulele.
Heavy Water/I'd Rather be Sleeping: Grouper
A space-y song from a Portland band with a dreamy-sounding singer. Perfect background music for when you're crafting your novel or screenplay.
Settler: Balmorhea
This mix tells the story of the year that was. I discovered it earlier in the year and saved it - unsure why this bright piano tune attracted my attention. Several months later, it was the perfect accompaniment to the whale section of my Alaska re-cap video. To hear/see it, skip to 1 min 20 sec.

What Storm Troopers Do on Their Day Off

2009-11-17T12:09:00.000-08:00

The guy who created What Storm Troopers Do on Their Day Off is awesome.

Not only are his ideas very imaginative, they're really well-shot. This is totally worth checking out even if you're not a Star Wars nut.

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Make and Share a Mixtape at Mixpod.com

2009-10-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

Remember Muxtape (RIP)? Well now there's something kinda like it but better. Over at Mixpod.com you can make a playlist and add it to your blog, Facebook, whateve's. They have different players, but I decided to go with the old school tape for my mix (don't think I'll choose it again, but more on that later).

You don't have to upload songs to Mixpod - somehow they have them all in a giant online library. I was surprised that they had all but one of my fairly "indie" picks.

How to describe this mix? It's stuff I started listening to in summer that I just can't get enough of...

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

The only downside to this player is I can't figure out how to skip to the next track (there are five in all) without click through to Mixpod. There are other player formats available that show all the tracks, so, guess I'll pick one o' those next time.

To listen to the other tracks, click "Get Tracks." Underneath the cassette tape.

Here are all five songs in the playlist:

1. Intro: The Xx
- great song for cruising in your '95 Mirage (rain or shine)

2. Pistols: Throw Me the Statue
- I could only find a live version of this one. It's got thoughtful but semi-nonsensical lyrics like Her Space Holiday or Death Cab but it also grooves. Seek it out.

3. Pregnant Women Are Smug: Garfunkel and Oates
- to call them the Female Flight of the Conchords doesn't do them justice, but it gives you an idea. Check out these hilarious and talented ladies.

4. Daylight: Matt and Kim
- yeah, I know I'm late to this party... still spinnin' it tho.

5. Hi-808: Blue Scholars
- my favorite Seattle hip-hop group gives us the straight dope on life in Hawai'i

6. You Push, I'll Go: Baby Dayliner
- This is the song they didn't have. Click the link to check 'er out at KEXP. This is a great one for rising and shining... even if you have to be at work by 7am like I do. By a half-mile in I'm doing a little driver's seat dance. Can't help it.

One Street. One Name. What's So Wrong With That?

2009-09-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since we had a good old fashioned rant about Orange County. The temp is about 100 degrees here and I'm feeling good and agitated.

So why not?

First let me say that there's something all of you in the northwest take for granted: your streets don't change names.

One street. One name. That's how it should be. That's how God wants it. It's natural. Normal.

It isn't until you move to the vanity plate capitol of the US where every cookie-cutter community wants to distinguish itself from the others that these name-changing streets are not only prevalent but tolerated!

People in Beaverton feel my pain. Is it Canyon Road? Hwy 8? The TV Hwy? WTF, right?

Now imagine if that kind of thing happened all over town...

Irvine Blvd Becomes Trabuco Road

But wait there's more!

Here's a road called Moulton Parkway changing its name to Irvine Center Drive. There's no good reason to change the name of this road and even less reason to change the name to "Irvine" something when there's already an Irvine-named road a few miles away.

Moulton Parkway becomes Irvine Center Drive

Whoever planned Orange County had a two-year-old draw the maps. The roads twist and turn: changing from an east-west to north-south and then back again.

I guess in a planned community it's more important to design tasteful shopping plazas than make it easy for people to locate said tasteful shopping plaza.

Without google maps I'd never be able to go anywhere besides work and home. I would have made a wrong turn years ago and ended up either in Mexico or Arizona.

Here's the worst road of them all...

We have a road that changes its name three times as it passes from Mission Viejo to Aliso Viejo and into Laguna Woods. ARGH!

Oso Parkway becomes Pacific Park Drive

Pacific Park becomes Glenwood Drive

Oso / Pacific Park / Glenwood is a main thoroughfare. It's like if 33rd changed names* as it crossed from Alberta to Hollywood, then Hollywood to Laurelhurst.

* (too bad Cesear Chavez Blvd is taken)

The real kicker is: the damn thing used to be called "Oso" from beginning to end. As new communities sprung up, the "city" planners for each one wanted to unique-ify one of their main roads.

If they ever invent a machine that can send me back in time, I'm going to find those stupid planners and stop them (ala Terminator 2). Even Governator Schwarzenegger won't be able to stop me!

My Friend Molly's Adventures in Korea

2009-09-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

My friend Molly was adopted from Korea when she was a wee baby. She's over there right now to find out more about her birth mother. Read about her adventures and see her great photos!

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Napa Sonoma

2009-09-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

After five years living in California I still hadn't made it to Napa / Sonoma.

Temecula and Santa Barbara are a lot closer... Napa is kinda the valley that started it all, right?

Oh heck, what do I know? I just drink the stuff!

So, Napa is one valley and Sonoma is another. There are sixty-seven wineries in Sonoma and probably that same number (or more in Napa). They're about a fifteen minute drive apart.

September is harvest season (also known as crush). The vines are heavy with berries and it's very scenic.

It's hard to know where to begin on winery row. There are loads of different maps that the wineries pay top dollar to be listed in. So instead I turned to Yelp. Through yelp I found some fun, off the beaten path wineries and learned a lot about how one website can drive a ton of business.

My favorite stop was Cuvaison. It's across the way from a really big, commercial winery that was not my, errr, cup of pinot. By contrast, Cuvaison is solar-powered, small and they really take the time make the tasting experience fun and informative.

On this trip I learned a lot of things about wine. I also learned that there are white wines out there that I like: namely Cuvaison's Chardonnay. It also helped that our tasting person had a real passion for wine and was such a sweetheart. I asked if it was okay to taste some of the grapes so she went out and got a few.

Here are the pinot noir grapes with a bottle of wine that, two or so years from now, those grapes will become! Supposedly the smaller the grape, the better. They want a small skin-to-juice ratio because the skins provide a lot of flavor. The pinot grapes tasted pretty good, actually. I'd eat 'em!

Read on for more wine info to wow your friends with at parties...

So, it's crush time which means they have viniculturists and interns working like crazy to identify when the grapes are right for picking. When the sugar content is just right, it's time to pick the grapes. Sometimes they start picking at 3 am because the grapes shouldn't have another day in the sun.

The grapes are then processed (see image above). This involves sorting out rocks and bugs and other foreign objects. The grapes are then pressed and juice and skins go into a big steel tank. The winemaker then adds a fermenting agent. Some wineries ferment their wine in steel the whole time, some switch to oak barrels.

The facility we visited had up to five ton steel tanks where the grapes would sit for about a week. The expert said they could get six tons of grapes in one day, but that was above average. Six tons!

There are some interesting differences between winemaking in the U.S. versus the old country. These are some comments you can drop at a cocktail party to sound like a super-smart wine snob.

Typically, Europeans select wine by the vineyard - not the grape. Whereas Americas ask for a Chardonnay or a Merlot, a European would not. Instead you would ask for a Robert Mondavi or a Beringer.

We also differ in the way the wine is made. In the U.S. they leave grapes on the vine longer - giving them a higher sugar content, but we don't spend as much time aging the wine. The Europeans pick sooner, but age longer. The extended aging smooths the wine and balances the brightness of picking the grapes earlier.

One last factoid: one of the vintners mentioned they are discontinuing their Merlot because demand has declined. The country's taste has changed - mainly because of the movie Sideways. I asked other winemakers and they said the same thing. Lucky for this Oregon girl, I've always had an appreciation for Pinot!

Alaska Video!

2009-08-31T09:24:00.000-07:00

I finally finished it!

Please view it in full screen mode. To do this, click the four arrows in the bottom right corner - it's the icon to the left of the Vimeo logo - next to the blue bars.

Also, don't forget to turn your speakers on. The sound didn't synch up quite like I'd hoped, but, I spent a lot of time picking out the tunes. Hope you like it!

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The Cruise Ship Experience

2009-08-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

If you'd asked me ten years ago, "would you like to go on a cruise?" I would have said, "hello no!" Followed by, "... wait, is it free?"

In all seriousness - I've never had any interest in experiencing McMexico or McCaribbean. Giving up quality time in a country in exchange for a boat full of Americans (and their ill-behaved children) sounds like torture.

Alaska is a different story...

The most beautiful parts of the 49th state can only be seen by boat. There's really nothing like seeing a glacier that's a quarter-mile wide filling your range of vision. Sure, you can cruise glacier bay on a smaller boat, but there's no afternoon tea on those boats.

So, with it being a recession year and all (I got a balcony cabin for almost half-price) I figured, why not? I hope after viewing my Alaska video (about 11 min) you'll see why its worth braving the hordes of "newlywed, overfed, and almost dead."

To be completely honest, the cruise experience wasn't as bad as I expected. The food was great, the scenery was amazing and it was nice to see so many things and only unpack once.

So, perhaps you're wondering:

Megan, you get motion sick watching iMAX movies, how can you go on a cruise?

Well, the answer is drugs. Yes, my friends, sometimes drugs are the answer. In this case I took 1/2 a Bonine every day. I tried going off it one day but started feeling pukey-y so I took a Triptone (which can make you feel better even if you're already sick) and had a nice, long nap.

Here are some cruise ship myths I've debunked:

MYTH: Cruise ships are full of old people.
It's 85% old people.

MYTH: You have to get dressed up every night.
You can eat on the Lido deck and not dress up.
That said: all meals are included, so, why eat at the buffet when you can have a three course meal in the dining room? Even I'll put on a sweater and a necklace for that.

MYTH: Don't try to bring your own booze, they'll take it away.
Holland America allows passengers to bring wine and champagne in your luggage. After you're underway it's a different story. If you buy booze in port, they take it away when you get back on board and give it back at the end of the trip.

Here are some interesting things I learned:

The horn is really loud. It's a bad idea to be at the bow when they blow that thing.
There's a mandatory lifeboat drill for all passengers on the first day.
Our cabin steward worked 11 hours/day with no days off.
The guys who run the gym love Roxette's greatest hits.
The cruise ship people don't mess around when it comes to hand-washing.

Seriously, the captain gave us regular reminders over the PA. There were also burly guys posted at the bottom of the gangway next to a Purell dispenser. These guys - in-no-uncertain-terms - wanted every passenger to sanitize their hands before boarding the ship after being in port.

Alaska!

2009-08-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Alaska... still working on a round-up of all the photos and a well-worded recap. I'm also working on a video. It's challenging to capture the amazing scenery of Alaska in just photos and videos, but it's better than another rant about misbehaving kids, eh?

It was a great trip overall. The highlights were

Glacier Bay
Vancouver, BC
Visiting a dive shop in Ketchikan

As for the cruise itself: my travel buddy described the cruise ship as, "a floating restaurant with scheduled activities." Which I think is accurate.

They were also really really fanatical about hand-washing. There was a Purell dispenser every time you turned around - two in front of every entrance to the dining room. The captain would get on the PA and remind people to "vash your handz."

We started making jokes, "If zu do not vash your handz, ve do not bring out zee vhales OR ZEE FOOD!"

Really though, it was a fun trip. I never thought I'd take a cruise, but it's the only way to see some of the most spectacular scenery mother nature has to offer.

Coming Soon...

A video recap
Photos of scenic stuff
Photos of whales
Pix from the lumberjack show

My Favorite Band of 2009 (so far)

2009-06-18T21:22:00.000-07:00

Come On Gang!

Every so often I come across a band that I like so much I can't talk about them like a normal person. I start off okay and pretty soon I sound like I'm ten talking about someone's really cool older sister.

Come On Gang is, like, this really cool band from Scotland. Their singer, she's a drummer, and when she drums she also sings and she's like really, really good and cute. I want to grow up to be just like her.*

There are two boys in the band and they play guitar and bass and it's this really driving, toe-tapping beat that's super-awesome, okay? Go get their EP off iTunes for $1.98 already!

Here is my favorite track: Both Ends Burning. I challenge you not to bob your head.

The sing off their album is called Wheels click "read more" to watch the video on you tube.

* and since this band formed at a college in 2007 she's probably ten years younger than me. D'oh!

Ladies Rock Camp 2009 - the videos

2009-06-02T19:00:00.000-07:00

I can't believe the weekend is over already! For those of you who couldn't make it to the show, here are some videos.

Check out more Ladies Rock Camp videos including "Crank Skank" and a song from Alley's band - the singer who totally channels Grace Slick.

CRANK SKANK by 2nd Hand Pussy (possibly my favorite song from camp)

"Waiting for You" by Push This Way

To find out more about the Ladies Rock Camp experience: read my write up from 2008. Or visit the Ladies Rock Camp home page - there's still one more session in 2009!

At the Airport Ready to Rock

2009-05-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

I'm using my Android phone (aka G1- The Google phone) to write from the Orange County airport. I'm headed up to PDX for Ladies Rock Camp. I went last year and it was one of THE BEST things I've ever done.

I'm playing drums again this year and I'm stoaked to try a new genre. Last year I held out for people to form a metal bamd but ended up in an "indie" band with some other leftover musicians - who turned out to be amazing people.

In 72 hours it will be all over. I'll have formed a band, written a song, rocked, and played a gig at Satyricon. Whoa!

Stay tuned for all the details...

To read about last year's exploits: type in "Ladies Rock Camp" into this blog's search box in the top right. Sorry, I can't figure out how to copy and paste a URL from the browser of this phone. Alternately you can click on the archives on the far right - click on 2008 and then April.

Last year's post includes video and an explanation of how I got the nickname "pants."

DAM!

2009-04-19T19:33:00.000-07:00

I have to be honest: I had no idea Hoover Dam was so close to Las Vegas. It's less than a half hour away (depending on traffic).

There's a $30 tour and a $11 tour. The $11 tour was fine, you get to go 500 feet inside the dam and walk around in some of the tunnels.

What's really interesting (and scary) is how much Lake Mead has dropped. See the white band just above the water line? That's where the water level used to be.

If you can't tell from the photo, the water has dropped about fifty feet. Keep in mind that lake meed is 120 miles long and has 550 miles of shore line. It's HUGE. This is not like Lake Oswego losing 50 feet of water.

SccaaaaAAAAAAAArrry.

Today you can drive across the top of the dam. Pretty soon (2010?) there will be a bridge across from the damn. Here's a photo taken from the top of Hoover Dam of the new bridge (see below).

The road across the top of the dam is only two lanes wide. Semi-trucks can't go across it so they have to use a bi-pass, and in the summer - there's a three hour wait for people who want to drive over the bridge.

The new bridge will make it easier to see the damn and make it safer. Allowing anyone to drive across the top of the damn is kind of a security risk. Even though the new bridge may make it easier to skip the visitors center, I think it's worth sticking your head in. They do a good job of explaining how hydro-electric power works and there's some nice art deco.

It's Never Too Early for an Easter Greeting

2009-04-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

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The Oregon Trail: Now for iPhone

2009-03-30T20:01:00.000-07:00

WARNING: This is not a screen grab from the iPhone game!
I can't even begin to guess how many hours...days even...I spent playing Oregon Trail in elementary school. The best part was "rainy day recess" when I could convince a substitute teacher to let me go to the computer lab instead of playing with the other kids (FORESHADOWING!)

Anyway, turns out there are tons of other Oregon Trail fanatics out there. Well, at least enough to justify the creation of an Oregon Trail game for iPhone.

I was a little disappointed to find out that it's not the original game. Someone dolled it up with better graphics and typical video game crap like a health status bar. Oh well, it was only six bucks and it will be worth it when someone dies of dysentery.

Read the Gizmodo review (with screenshots).

My Friend's iPhone Game: Retrobots

2009-03-30T19:30:00.000-07:00

Retrobots

A friend of mine made an iPhone app. It's been several months in the making and debuted on the app store over the weekend.

Find retrobots by searching for "retrobots" (all one word).
Click on the icon to read about the app / download for $2.99

If I'm remembering right - it's based on an old Apple Macintosh game.

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100 Top Indie Albums of All Time

2009-03-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

Here are the 100 Top Indie Rock Albums of All Time... as proposed by Amazon.com's music editors.

Am I a dumbass because I've never heard of #5?

I was surprised by how many new albums are on here. I'd like to see a pie chart breaking down the 80's, 90's and 00's. It's got to be at least 50% from the last five to seven years.

Rankings and the definition of "indie" aside,

They totally got it right with:
Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs
Postal Service - Give Up
Liz Phair - Exile In Guyville
Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One
Broken Social Scene - You Forget It In People
Mirah - Advisory Committee
Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun
Bikini Kill - Pussy Whipped
Notwist - Neon Golden
Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out
TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
Rachel's - The Sea and Bells
(I was happily surprised to see this made the list)
The New Pornographers' Mass Romantic
(at first I thought this was the wrong choice, but the more I think about it, this is the right pick)

I guess it depends on what the criteria is for "top album" but there are some albums on there I'd disagree with:

Right artist, wrong album:
Belle and Sebastian's - If You're Feeling Sinister
(Tigermilk, their first album was really the breakthrough and believe me I'm trying to be sensitive to first-album bias)
Neko Case - Furnace Room Lullaby
(Blacklisted is better from beginning to end)
The National - Alligator
(yeah, Boxer was more popular, but that's because it's a more solid album)
Pixies - Surfer Rosa
(I can see the argument for Surfer Rosa, but I would have picked Doolittle)

Where the heck is...
Throwing Muses?
Ani DiFranco?
The Mountain Goats?
Metric?
... shoot, I know there are a ton I'm spacing on.

Read the complete list at Amazon.com's Chordstrike blog.

Is Obama a Socialist?

2009-03-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

A leader of the US Socialist party says, "no," and makes some great points.

Read the complete article from the Washington Post.

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Youtube mash-ups by Kuitiman

2009-03-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

Youtube mash-ups by Kuitiman

To me, youtube is a great place to waste time and / or find horrible videos you'll never un-see. This guy, Kuitiman looks at youtube a little differently. He sees it as a massive collection of samples.

He created an audio/video mash-up of different youtube videos. It's kinda like what DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist do - but with youtube. Check it out:

Ready for another one?

Check out the complete album at thru-you.com.

Kay Sedia: Who Knew Tupperware Parties Could be a Springboard to Youtube Fame?

2009-02-22T20:43:00.000-08:00

Kay Sedia is not only the #1 teenage model from Tijuana and the best tupperware lady in southern California... she's a youtube star. Check out Kay and the rest of "Chico's Angels."

Why ju gotta be so crazee all the time?

I Guess No One Ever Said Buying A Condo Would Be Easy

2009-02-19T16:58:00.000-08:00

I Want this Condo Deal to Be OVER

This past Tuesday was an important day. I sent over the big wire transfer for my condo... and then I heard nothing.

It's been just over two days now and no one has said, "hey we got your money" or "hey come get the keys."

I emailed my real estate agent this afternoon and asked, "sooooo, I can move in next weekend right?" and "how about them keys?"

Before I get any further into this, let me say: I had a bad feeling that this process was going all-too-smoothly.

For one thing, this condo is a short sale. This is bad because the bank has you by the balls the entire time. From the very beginning they jack with you. I put an offer in on a condo back in mid-December and they took over a month to say, "no thanks." Meanwhile the condo stays on the market while they wait for higher offers to come in.

The situation gets better: there are TWO loans on this condo. There's the mortgage and then there's some other loan with BANK OF AMERICA for $3,000. These aren't my loans, okay? I don't know where the $3,000 loan came from, but we negotiated a deal where I pay half and the bank eats the other half.

... or so I thought.

Escrow was supposed to close TOMORROW. As in: tomorrow I was supposed to get the keys and be a happy homeowner.

Apparently not.

The representative at BANK OF AMERICA who coordinated that "halfsies" deal – quit. Now the paperwork is on someone else’s desk and the bank is saying, “weeeelllll, maybe we don’t want to write off the other half of this loan.”

Dude, if I changed my mind on that deal, they’d send my ass to collections.

What other industry can get away with this transactional flip-flopping? If I agree to buy a car, and come in the next day to pick it up, the dealer can't say, "uh, the guy you bought that car from doesn't work here any more and we want to charge you more so we're going to change the price of your car."

The realtors will call BANK OF AMERICA tomorrow and try to negotiate something. At which point one of three things will happen:

#1 Escrow will close on Monday (instead of Friday)

OR

# The bank will say “we’re going to think about it for a couple weeks.”

Which means I have to negotiate something with the apartment people (who will ream me on next month's rent) and of course reschedule the move.

Then who knows? They're probably thinking, "this chick is antsy to move, if we wait her out she'll just pay the whole thing." She can't live out of boxes forever...

Dude, this really bugs me.

I Don't Think You're Ready for this Jelly

2009-02-18T07:58:00.000-08:00

100 Days / 100 Dances / 100 Locations
(and NO that's not me dancing)

BOOMBOX from Ely Kim on Vimeo.

Ready to get some jelly? Ever wonder what a 60 lb Rice Crispie treat would look like? Thisiswhyyourefat.com

Fifteenth Time's the Charm

2009-02-17T15:59:00.000-08:00

The Final Week of Escrow

I'll be honest with you, I don't really understand escrow. I've been sitting here, twiddling my thumbs for three weeks waiting for them to say, "okay write the big check."

In the meantime I've signed stacks and stacks of paper - most of which they tried to send via overnight courier for $30 a pop. I insisted on UPS ground which gets it there at the same time for one-fifth the price.

Seriously people. This too old school for me. I know these documents are important, but the fact is: I don't get to make changes to them anyway. In the end, I have to sign. So why not do this interweb style and just have an "I Agree" check box and a "next" button.

After clicking "next" a screen would load where you put in your bank account number and it sucks all the money out of your savings account. Voila. Done. Same as escrow but in a fraction of the time.

Finally the big day has come. With four days left in escrow ...

...I wired over the down payment today. Moving day is next Saturday, so, in two weeks I will be installed in my new place. Here's what it looks like.

I plan to rip up the carpet and put in tile. That's about it right now.

A really nice lesbian couple owns it now and they did some nice upgrades. I feel bad they got foreclosed upon. They paid $145,000 more than I paid for this place (and not that long ago).

Oh, and if you're wondering what the subject line means - this is the 15th place I've lived in ten years. Mom writes my address in her address book in pencil.

Things that make you go.... WTF?

2009-02-09T20:48:00.000-08:00

I took a couple days off work last week and of course it rained the whole time. I got some quality internet surfing in and here are some odd things I found:

#1 Dining in the Dark
There's a restaurant in LA (and San Diego) called Opaque where you eat in the pitch black dark. I guess the idea is, by eating in the dark the food's taste is not obscured by how it looks.

I wonder if they let you pay in the dark? Yeah, that's three $20's.

#2 Median versus average household income

The median household income in the US is about $50,000/year
The average household income is $317,000

The average household income in California is just under $60,000 - but we're not the #1 state. I'm going to call my lawyer.

#3 Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice - Zombie edition

The blurb on this book says it includes the original text of Austen's beloved novel with "new bone-crunching zombie action." I wonder if they try to integrate it in or if they just start a new chapter with

"... all of a sudden, a zombie bit into Mr. Darcy's jugular."

(thanks to Cary for finding this last one)

Blueful

2009-01-27T22:04:00.000-08:00

Blueful is a short story . . . almost a poem . . . strewn across several websites. You'll need to devote at least five minutes of no-distraction time to fully appreciate it.

The writing isn't groundbreaking, but the methodology is. This is something I bet we'll see ripped off by some promotional firm. In the meantime, hope you'll enjoy a simple journey of discovery across the internet.

END OF POST (there is no "Read more . . .")

Condo Condo Condo

2009-01-19T06:40:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, for the last two months I've been looking at condos. When my apartment lease re'ups, my rent will increase to about $2,000/month. This is for a 2BR / 2Ba for godsakes!

Here's a slideshow of the 40+ places I've looked at:

(they all run together after awhile, eh?)

In other words, my decision to buy a place isn't motivated by a dream to have 1,000 sq. feet in a people farm to call my own. I'm doing it because a mortgage is cheaper than my damn rent. My wonderful and fantastic roommates have agreed to stay roomies with me and help me pay the mortgage. They are the most kind and generous people who have ever lived.

I'm running into a big problem though: a lot of condos are short sales. At first I thought, "sweet, I'm going to score a great deal." Unfortunately, the banks don't like FHA (first time home buyer) loans.

I put an offer in on a place this weekend - the third offer I've put in. The prior two were turned down because the bank found someone who could put 20% down (FHA only requires 3.5% down).

It's like that conundrum that new college grads get stuck with: they have no job experience and can't get any job experience because no one will hire them. Same same with being a first time homebuyer: I can' t get into a place because I can't afford a 20% down payment. I can't afford a 20% down payment because I pay all my money in rent! Arrrrgh!

Well now that I've bummed you out, here's a link to the place I'm hoping to buy. There's a virtual tour if you click "read more."

UPDATE: I put an offer in on the 21st and have started escrow, WTF? The link above doesn't work anymore because the place is off the market. Click the Read More link below to look at the virtual tour.

Take a virtual tour and keep your fingers crossed!

Remember to Honk When you Drive Past Vern Fonk

2009-01-04T00:07:00.000-08:00

I can't believe Vern Fonk has eluded me this long. His ads are GENIUS.

Check out this locally-produced gem known as "DANCE!"

Want more? Of course you do. Check out Shapoopi 2

TAKE THAT TO THE BANK!

More videos from Vern Fonk available on youtube. He spoofs The Sopranos, those annoying ads from mattress companies, some popular movies . . . but Shapoopi is the best (in my opinion).

With the ever-deflating price of home video / editing equipment, we should have a lot more homemade ads like this, don't you think?

Buying Habits of Different Generations

2008-12-30T09:57:00.000-08:00

Generation Gap

My project over the winter holiday is to write an article about the buying habits of the different generations (Gen X, Baby-Boomers, etc). By the way - a big THANKS to all of you who participated in the survey earlier this month and forwarded it to your friends. I had nearly 275 responses!

To be honest, I took this writing assignment because I think our company's fevered pursuit of the 25-and-under demo is misguided - but I need hard data to prove my theory.
The survey was critical to the success of the article or it would have been a focus group of one. I'll disclose some of the findings in a later post (I'm still digging through it all) but if you have any additional thoughts on this topic, I hope you'll consider posting a comment below.

The company's rationale is: the Gen Y / Millenials are the largest consumer group in modern history. Our company must pursue them or lose them. While I agree that companies should be catering to this demographic, I don't think it's the right demographic for my company.

Our sport is sustained by people who purchase equipment, take trips, etc. This means a significant financial investment - vacations that are upwards of $1,000 per person and a set of equipment that ranges from $800 - $1,800.

From 19-25 I didn't have this kind of money: I bartered movie passes to get free oil changes for godsakes. It wasn't until my late 20's that I had any disposable income to speak of - so if we're going to target younger people, shouldn't it be college grads with a few years work experience under their belts?

The counter argument is, "the college kid can talk his/her parents into footing the bill for the gear and vacations." I'm not sure that's realistic unless you have the parents' buy-in to begin with (in other words - someone in the family already participates in our sport). Personally I could never have talked Mom into forking over for something like this. Helping me out with a car was one thing - it allowed me to have a job. She would not have seen the value of scuba diving lessons.

So is it still all about the baby boomers? Are they the cash cow? I'm not really sure. I think about other things boomers like (golf, taking cruises) and I don't see them bringing the younger generation along on those activities. Maybe it would be the same for diving.

What about Generation X? Often derided as "pessimistic" and "too small of a population" by marketers - maybe it's time to give a crap about the slacker generation. Hey, we invented Facebook doesn't that count for something?

Lastly, I'm having a hard time assigning "crunk" to Gen X or the Digital Generation (aka Millenials). If you have a sec, please vote in my poll.

Best of 2008 Mix

2008-12-22T21:40:00.000-08:00

Here are my top musical discoveries of 2008. Not all these songs came out in 2008, but the majority of them did. If you are interested in this mix, I exported it to iTunes so you can buy it (see below).

Sing Again CHRIS WALLA (check out the video featuring PDX)
Killing Machine HOW I BECAME THE BOMB (great lyrics)
This Is My Life FIREWATER (punk rock voice with world music)
Lost In the Light THE HEAVENLY STATES (good driving song)
Daydream Vacation (Boom Bip Remix) HEAD LIKE A KITE (dreamy electronica)
Burnout Babies SYBRIS (gritty, chick-fronted rock)
A Tribe Called Rocco TEAM GINA (lesbian rappers)
Release SHE KEEPS BEES (if you like PJ Harvey)
Gilt Complex SONS AND DAUGHTERS (catchy, no-holds barred pop-punk)
Fuji MINUIT (if you wish Bjork would make another Post)
The Rip PORTISHEAD (it's fucking Portishead, what more do you want?)
Woman of Cain PALODINE (raw, frank lyrics)
Hairy Candy TOBACCO (sunny, weird, electronic)
Great DJ THE TING TINGS (catchy . . . maybe too catchy)
Code Monkey JONATHAN COULTON (best lyrics of the year)
Liz the Hot Receptionist JESUS H CHRIST & THE FOUR HORNSMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (cute song but the rest of the album is "eh")
Old Old Fashioned FRIGHTENED RABBIT (Scottish. Cute).
Once And Never Again THE LONG BLONDES (think British Sleater-Kinney)
A & E GOLDFRAPP (beautiful like a summer's day)
Kids MGMT (if you like Time to Pretend, you'll love Kids)
I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You BLACK KIDS (that's right, dammit).

If you want to buy these songs, visit iTunes for the iMix of TheMadHapa's Best of 2008 . The only song I couldn't put in the iMix is, unfortunately, Goldfrapp's A&E.

If you're wondering, "Where's Vampire Weekend, MIA and Santogold are:

. . . they appeared on last year's mix. Thanks to my myriad savvy new music sources. You know who you are!

iPod Poem

2008-12-12T09:23:00.000-08:00

How to: write a poem with your iPod

Put your iPod or iTunes on shuffle. The first line of the first 20 songs is your poem, the first line of the 21st is the title.

Thanks to Will at Shark Fin Hat for this idea! For the list of songs I used, click "Read more."

One Evening as the Sun Went Down and the Jungle Fire was Burning

I've never cared for authority, never felt part of the majority.
By myself alone at home feelin' blue.
Eyes boring a way through me.
You've got a nerve to be askin' a favor

Right about now, what's up, we're gonna start this right. Puerto Rico! Puerto Rico!

I had no choice but to hear you.
Might do you harm hangin around this farm.
Come in alone, you'll love to let go.
Won't you please let me go?

Mott the Hoople and the Game of Life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

My opinion could change today. I'm responsible anyway.
I give protection to people I don't like.
He shakes his dick rattle, spittle on his bib.
Chiquitita tell me what's wrong?

I have been listening such an ancient song.
Where do we go from here?
I think I'll go home and mull this over before I cram it down my throat
Now that it's time, now that the hour hand has landed at the end.
Hey Man, leave me alone.

Poem title: Big Rock Candy Mountain: Harry McClintock

Songs:
This is my life: Firewater
Wonder, Wonder: Enino Morricone
This Fire: Franz Ferdinand
The Rat: The Walkmen
Culo: Pitbull / Sean Paul / Little John
Head Over Feet: Alanis Morrisette
Out on this Farm: Amy Ray
Come in Alone: My Bloody Valentine
Age of Consent: New Order
Man on the Moon: REM
On Fire: Sebadoh
Kojak: Minny Pops
Plump: Hole
Chiquitita: ABBA
In This City: Enon
The Bends: Radiohead
Ode to the Banana Kind: Tori Amos
Caring is Creepy: The Shins
Fairest of the Seasons: Nico
Suffragette City: David Bowie

If you liked this game try soundtrack to your life (using iPod).

Chris Dan Owens Video Shine - He's Bringing 80's Back

2008-12-09T09:42:00.000-08:00

This video . . . is really something. Apparently it’s some guy’s vanity project: some guy, who wishes he was a rock star in the 80’s. Click on the image below to play the video.

If the chicks in this music video had feathered hair, this would be a forgotten video gem from the 1980's – but it was made in 2008! You've got fair maidens, enchantresses, sword fighting, an ice palace, and alligator . . . at one point I thought for sure Robocop was going to ride in on a unicorn.

END OF POST (there is no "Read more . . .")

Please take my survey

2008-12-03T16:58:00.000-08:00

I'm writing an article about the buying habits of Gen Y, Gen X and Baby Boomers. Rather than pull the information out of my ass like I usually do, I decided to go empirical and shit.

The survey takes 10 minutes at most. If you have a sec to take my survey I'd really appreciate it. I need at least 200 responses to have a statistically valid survey.

If the link above doesn't work, please copy and paste this link into your browser:
http://www.surveygoldplus.com/s/2535FEF76E194AAD/52.htm

Thanks again for your time. I'll be writing the article over Christmas break and it will be published in March 2009.

What Were Your Favorite Books as a Kid?

2008-11-22T16:45:00.000-08:00

Growing up in rainy Washington state meant I read a lot. I mean - A LOT. I remember reading over 150 books in one summer.

I think the Sweet Valley Twins books were an early favorite. Then I moved on to Sweet Valley High, and the Newbery Medal winners. From there it was on to Narnia, and The Black Cauldron series. I tried to get into Tolkien but burned out halfway through The Two Towers (dude, I'm not that much of a nerd).

Then I got into my apocalyptic / dystopia phase and delved into

On the Beach
1984
We
Brave New World
Animal Farm
. . . and tons of Arthur C Clarke

Then I moved on to lesbian classics such as:

Herland
The Well of Loneliness
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit
Love in Bloomsbury
. . . and tons of Virgina Woolf

Why do I bring this up?

I signed up to donate children's books to a non-profit that shelters woman and children escaping physical abuse. Of all the donation options, books seemed to be the best option. The alternatives were:

Girls make-up kit, girls crafting kit, boys crafting kit (WTF?), boys army toys.

I know jack shit about those items, but books I can do. Then it occurred to me: the books I enjoyed are probably not appropriate for an OC kid.

So now I'm in a pickle. Should I just buy a complete set of Harry Potter and be done with it? I'd like to pick something beyond the obvious: something that will strike a chord with a young person. Any suggestions?

A Tale of Two Concerts

2008-11-10T21:32:00.000-08:00

Madonna at Dodger Stadium

Have you ever waited twenty years for something? I have.

For twenty years I've waited to see Madonna. The first cassette I ever owned was True Blue. The first thing I ever saved up my allowance to buy was Like a Prayer. She never played a show in Portland and now, finally, I was able to catch her tour in Los Angeles.

Last Thursday, the long wait was finally over . . . after a two hour drive to LA and a third hour sitting on the 101 Freeway that is. Was it worth the wait? Hells yes!

The show was exactly what I hoped it would be. She did a mix of new songs and past hits (NME has the set list). New songs off of Ray of Light and Music she played pretty straightforward. Older songs like "Like a Prayer" were updated with heavier beats. Others had the beats stripped out entirely and she played them on an electric guitar.

What floored me was - Madonna actually sings her songs. Working for the radio station I saw Britney, Janet and others. In most cases, the songs sounded exactly the same live in concert as they did on CD. She even takes requests! Someone in the front had a sign that said "Dress You Up."

Right there, on the spot, she busted into "Dress You Up in My Love" acapella. It wasn't the best rendition, but it took serious balls.

Nope, the only fake thing that night was that blonde Betty Page hairpiece (see above).

I know it's predictable, but it's impossible to write about Madonna without mentioning her staying power. I mean, seriously. When I first fell in love with Madonna, her peers were Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Whitney Houston and Belinda Carlisle. Where are they now?

The other cool thing about the show was the fans. People came in their best Madonnawear. Sometimes that meant fishnets and a bustier, others wore short shorts and a glitter jacket . . . and it wasn't just women dressing up.

Van Morrison at the Hollywood Bowl
There weren't as many dress-alikes when I went to see Van Morrison two days later (although there were a few).

This was my second time seeing Van Morrison, and it was better than the first time (Gorge Ampitheater 2006ish). We were treated to a set of hits (St. Dominc's Preview, Gloria, Here Comes the Night) followed by a complete performance of Astral Weeks.

If you've seen Van before or read a review, you know two things:

#1 His voice sounds as clear and youthful as it did forty years ago.

#2 He never EVER performs Brown Eyed Girl

. . . but he did on Saturday night. I don't know if Van is un-retiring the song or what, but the crowd went bananas.

There was only one thing that kept the night from being completely perfect:

Typically, you can bring whatever you want to the Hollywood Bowl (food, wine, snacks, etc.). For Van Morrison, they changed the rules. No glass bottles and no alcohol allowed. I thought to myself:

Do they think people are going to riot? It's a Van Morrison show for godsakes. No one's going to amped up and chuck bottles on the stage during Wild Night.

"Fuck you, Van! Where's Michelle N'degeocello?"

I digress . . .

So we get inside and, since everyone had to chuck their booze at the gate, there's a huge line at the beer and wine stand. I high-tail it to the "market" and discover the red wine section is completely cleaned out. The cupboards are bare except for six bottles of Gallo - at $22 a pop. Never in my life did I imagine I'd feel fortunate to pay $22 - for Gallo Merlot.

Then I thought: Oh my God. I think I've just qualified for an entry on that White Whine blog.

Anyway, once I got some overpriced Gallo in me I felt much better. Then I slipped Into the Mystic.

Sweet, Hilarious Failure - Failblog.org

2008-10-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

Damn. I wish I'd thought of this . . .

It's a whole blog of things that have Failed in one way or another.

Here's my favorite:

For more time-sucking goodness, visit Failblog.org

I Want This Car- BMW GINA

2008-10-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

It's no '95 Mirage, but it's pretty damn cool. I love that the car has skin and eyelids. In the video you can see it "blink" and also change shape to achieve better aerodynamics.

Read more about GINA.

2008 Snarky Election Goodness

2008-10-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick round-up of my favorite bits of snarky goodness to come out of election season thus far. - Enjoy!

Favorite Info Graphic:

Favorite Video
(the Tina Fey-Palin stuff is a close runner-up)

Favorite Blog:
ThingsYoungerThanMcCain

Favorite eMail Forward:

Dear Red States…

We’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and
we’re taking the other Blue States with us.

In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon,Washington,
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We
believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially
to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.
We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get Elliot
Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.

We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood.
We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.
We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.
We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You
get Alabama.
We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states
pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the
Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a
bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and
anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at
once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have
kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no
purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their
children’s caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and
hope that the WMDs turn up, but we’re not willing to spend our
resources in Bush’s Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent
of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple
and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of
America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners)
90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most
of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and
condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale,
Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88
percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care
costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the
tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern
Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh,
Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was
actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred
unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say
that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved
in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy b*****ds believe you are people
with higher morals then we lefties.

By the way, we’re taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt
weed they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,
Blue States

Tagged by Paula

2008-09-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

Tagged by Paula

I haven't done one of these "you've been tagged" things before, but hey - why not? Karen, mAc, Dinah, Carmel, if you read this and want to jump in - go for it!

1.How many songs are on your iPod?
3842 - there would be more, but I only have a 20 GB.

2. What music would you want played at your funeral?
Kristen Hersh's Gazebo Tree.

3.What magazines do you have subscriptions to?
BUST, Women's Health, Paste, Fast Company, Wired and Esquire.

4. What is your favorite scent?
New electronics right out of the box. Yeah, that's weird. I know.

5. If you had a million dollars that you could only spend on yourself, what would you do with it?
Travel, travel, travel, baby. That amount of dough would surely last until I croak. Of course there's really only one way to find out . . .

6. What is your theme song?
Six Different Ways - The Cure

7. Do you trust easily?
I assume people want to do the right thing. Real trust takes time.

8. Do you generally think before you act, or act before you think?
I think before I act - but I don't think before I speak. Oops!

9.Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days?
The shit head kids up stairs that start body-slamming each other at 7 AM every morning.

10. Do you have a good body-image?
Yep. I think it's because I don't watch TV or read bullshit women's magazines like Cosmo.

11. Is being tagged fun?
Gets me off the hook for coming up with a clever blog post!

12. How do you spend your social networking (Facebook, etc.) time?
I'm still waiting for Friendster to make a comeback! Just kidding. To be honest I haven't jumped on Facebook because I'm concerned about my personal life and professional life overlapping.

13. What have you been seriously addicted to lately?
English muffins with fake bacon, cucumber and spicy mustard.

14. What kind of person do you think the person who tagged you is?
Paula is, has, and always will be a very cool chick. I don't know why she lives in Vancouver, WA!

15. What’s the last song that got stuck in your head?
Old Dirty Bastard's Baby I Got Your Money.

16.What’s your favorite item of clothing?
It used to be shoes, but now I'd have to say coats. Which is weird if you think about it because you don't need a coat in Southern California... yet I own more coats now than I ever did living in the NW.

17. Do you think Rice Crispies are yummy?
Yes, but I don't want to clean the pan. I hear Fruti Pebbles treats are also good - "like getting punched in the face with a lemon."

18. What would you do if you see saw $100 lying on the ground?
To be honest - I'd put it towards Megan's condo fund.

19. What items could you not go without during the day?
Water, air, sleep... also, coffee.

20. What should you be doing right now?
Studying for my Emergency Oxygen Provider Instructor class (no really).

NO FREAK DANCING

2008-09-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

The gal who sits next to me has a teenage daughter. She recently received an email regarding the homecoming dance. I think it speaks for itself . . .

--------

To: Trabuco Hills High School Students and Parents
From: Trabuco Hills Administration
Date: September 12, 2009
Subject: Homecoming Disco Dance

Friday, Sept. 19 is the Disco Dance in the gym from 9:30-11:30 p.m. for TH students only! Disco attire is a must; however, dress code does apply. Starting next Monday, Sept. 15 pay for the dance and save big during lunch. Cost will be $5 with ASB Card and $10 without . . . Reminders! You need to have a current ID Card when you pay and also at the dance. Make sure you leave your valuables at home. There is no storage at the dance. Also, you will be searched before entering the dance.

NO FREAK DANCING! Freaking includes riding legs, bending over, feet off the ground or front to back dancing. There must be visible separation between partners during fast dancing.

CONSEQUENCE: Removal from dance, parents contacted and NO HOMECOMING DANCE for you!

I'm "Racing" For the Cure

2008-09-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

I'm Racing For the Cure . . . and by that I mean I'll be walking in a giant herd of people on a Sunday morning saying to myself, "damn it's early," and "when's breakfast?"

In all seriousness, breast cancer is something that has touched all of our lives. If you have a couple bucks to throw at my donation page, it would be appreciated.

The event is at the end of this month (Sunday September 28th). Here is the URL for my donation page: http://www.ockomen.org/race/megand

She Who Shall Not Be Messed With

2008-09-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

For S's and G's I decided to take an Israeli self-defense class. It's called Krav Maga and it was developed by the Israeli Army.

It's different from traditional martial arts in that all the moves are based on instinctual reactions. For example - if someone runs at you from the side, your natural reaction wouldn't be to issue a roundhouse kick to the head. You'd probably throw your arms up to block. Krav Maga teaches you how to block effectively and issue a counter attack at the same time.

Also, Krav Maga assumes that a street fight lasts less than a minute. They train you to defend, and escape. Here's a video that gives a general introduction to Krav Maga. There's also a pretty good Krav Maga explanation on wikipedia.

Watch more Krav Maga videos on youtube.

Tesla Coils Playing Super-Mario Brothers Theme

2008-08-09T10:06:00.000-07:00

Q: You've just inherited two Tesla coils from your crazy uncle. What do you do with them?

A: Wire the Teslas to a computer and play music from 1980's video games of course.

BEHOLD! The Super Mario Brothers theme performed with Tesla coils.

According to Amazon.com's music blog, the individual musical tones are created by the Tesla coil. In other words, there isn't a person playing the music on a keyboard in the background.

I have just crapped myself.

Behind the Orange Curtain

Best of 2011 Mix

Top Songs of 2011(may contain tunes from 2010)

Office Antics

The Holidays

Ladies Rock Camp Portland 2011

Ladies Rock CampThe 2011 Experience

The Netherlands and Berlin September 2011

Solomon Islands Scuba Diving Trip on the Bilikiki

Solomon Islands Scuba Diving

10 Days on the Bilikiki

Photos from the Window Seat

Nerd Gender Dichotomy

Working the Pole: OC versus PDX

The Most Beautiful Video I've Ever Seen: The Mountain

Disneyland Has Proved I Have No Inner Child

Dad Rock and What Makes Your Musical Taste

Map Game - Middle East and Africa

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words

What I Eat

NHL Guardians Project - The Duck

Portland Versus Seattle

The Next Hipster Mecca

2010 Mesmerizing Memes

Best of 2010 Mix

I Love Hockey

Election Exhaustion

Portland-Themed Playing Cards

Sleater-Kinney Has Moved On - I Haven't

Happy 25th Birthday Super Mario Brothers

Drivin' Around the OC on Labor Day Weekend

Music Video 2.0

Retirement, Social Security and Financial Masochism

Asian Family Olympics WTF

The Best Android Versus iPhone Video I've Ever Seen

Photos That Aren't What They Seem

30 Songs for 30 Days - It's Done!

Best Spoof Movie Trailer Ever

Songs with Number Names - Blip for 30 Days

Purses Versus Pockets

I Became a DJ - You Can Too

Separated at Birth?

Johnny Drama and Ethan Hawke: Separated at Birth?

Separated at Birth?

The Rosa Parks of Reusable To-go Containers

Tom Brokaw Explains Canada to Americans

Adorable Stop Motion Japanese Critters Playing a Ukulele Song About Hawaii

What English Sounds Like to People from Other Countries

A Change of Fashion

Selling CDs on Glyde Versus Secondspin

Solving Problems and Staying Safe - Using 90's Gangster Rap

My Car Qualifies for Wellfare - Woohoo!

Turn Frequent Flyer Miles Into Gift Cards

Best. Cover. Ever.

One Man's Treasure Is Another Man's Trash

Do You Still Buy CDs?

Palau Scuba Diving Trip - My First Liveaboard Dive Boat Experience

Best of 2009 Mix

What Storm Troopers Do on Their Day Off

Make and Share a Mixtape at Mixpod.com

One Street. One Name. What's So Wrong With That?

My Friend Molly's Adventures in Korea

Napa Sonoma

Alaska Video!

The Cruise Ship Experience

Alaska!

My Favorite Band of 2009 (so far)

Ladies Rock Camp 2009 - the videos

At the Airport Ready to Rock

DAM!

It's Never Too Early for an Easter Greeting

The Oregon Trail: Now for iPhone

My Friend's iPhone Game: Retrobots

100 Top Indie Albums of All Time

Is Obama a Socialist?

Youtube mash-ups by Kuitiman

Kay Sedia: Who Knew Tupperware Parties Could be a Springboard to Youtube Fame?

I Guess No One Ever Said Buying A Condo Would Be Easy

I Don't Think You're Ready for this Jelly

Fifteenth Time's the Charm

Top Songs of 2011
(may contain tunes from 2010)

Ladies Rock Camp
The 2011 Experience