May

31

Lawn maintenance.

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One of the aspects of owning a single-family house is figuring out what to do with all the land that surrounds the building. Or, in the case of those houses with sheds, detatched garages, or mother-in-laws, buildings. The vast majority of homeowners, when the decision was most pressing, chose to fill a significant portion of the property with grass. With a lawn. And most subsequent homeowners declined to radically deviate from the now-standard grass-centric approach to landscaping.

When D and I purchased our first house last summer, we were left with a choice: leave the lawn essentially in tact, tear it up and replace it with other landscaping immediately. Being not exactly flush, what with having to deal with all the costs associated with new home ownership, and what with plants being, well, expensive, we opted for the third way: retire the lawn slowly over time.

Which left us with a choice as to what to do with the lawn in the mean time. Naturally, not being insane, we gravitated away from plug-in electric lawnmowers. Again, having not hit the lottery lately, we opted away from the rechargeables. But we were disinclined to go with fossil fuels as well, aggravated that the sorts of technologies that make automobiles relatively low polluters don’t seem to have been adopted by the lawnmower industry.

And so we went with a reel mower. Human power. Which works great if you (1) live somewhere relatively dry, where the grass doesn’t grow meters per year, (2) are on-the-ball enough to mow regularly, and (3) have worked out the issue of weeds, with chemicals or sweat or indifference or otherwise. Seeing how (1) Olympia is not dry, (2) I am lazy and not easily motivated by the frowns of neighbors, and (3) our dandelions and hairy cats’ ears are prolific and hardy motherfuckers that don’t respond to anything short of a combination of Round-Up and napalm, I should have known the reel mower wasn’t going to work out. Nevertheless, I kept at it for almost a year before breaking down a few weeks ago and purchasing (gasp!) a gas-powered mower. Leaving the lawn looking, well, better than before. Improvement!

May

31

Scrobbled albums.

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A few years back, I started using last.fm to scrobble everything I listen to from a computer. So I could play data geek with my listening habits. Last.fm has glitchy system that refuses to treat, for example, “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below Disc 2,” “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below Disc 1,” and “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” as the same album. Or at least it used to; it’s been getting better. And, more importantly, I still listen to an awful lot of music on CD and over-the-air radio, and last.fm doesn’t interact with my home or car systems, so a lot of my listening habits are missed.

That said, my overall charted albums have some interesting entries. I anticipated The Mountain Goats’ The Sunset Tree and Tallahassee would chart in the top ten. And Langhorne Slim’s first album, Kool Keith’s debut, Regina Spektor’s breakthrough, Neutral Milk Hotel’s masterpiece, and Fugees’ triumph all make sense. But that Blue Scholars’ Bayani and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s self-titled frankly shock me, given how relatively unfamiliar with those albums I feel. A few of the higher charting entries–Madvillainy and Anal Cunt’s I Like It When You Die, with their many short tracks–are best explained by last.fm’s practice of counting tracks, regardless of length. And the apparent absence of Glen Hansard in the top hundred has more to do with his work being paired with Markéta Irglová inconsistently (with an ampersand, a semicolon, or underneath the “Swell Season” moniker).

What albums have you scrobbled regularly? Any surprises?

May

30

Folklife.

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Saturday, gray skies notwithstanding, D, B, and I went to Folklife at the Seattle Center. Examined the schedule ahead of time to work out some sort of game plan, parts of which were miraculously followed.

Rock star street parking located and seized.

A passable two-guitars-and-an-upright-bass folk act in the tradition of Joan Baez desperately tried to ignore a drunk front-toothless man whose idea of flirting with the lead singer involved throwing objects on the stage, playing air guitar, and spilling his presumably vodka-laced Mountain Dew on small children. A pair of tonally mismatched singer-pluckers sing updated sea shanties and almost completely failed to harmonize while B and I drank BridgePort IPA from corn-based cups. Mine decided to start bio-degrading before I was finished quaffing. [Aside: why was Folklife so dominated by Oregon-based brews. Seattle can't get its act together to sponsor a local festival?] A trio of just-a-little-too-Christian-for-Seattle folkies mutilated “Polly Wolly Doodle” and assorted gospel numbers with one voice modified by testicular cancer, and another silenced by frowns. The Raggedy Anns, channeling 90s-era Chapel Hill, NC and Franz Ferdinand, were introduced by an emcee who made an inexplicable reference to the British Invasion (citing The Rolling Stones and The Kinks) landing in New Orleans.

Street parking maintained.

A hip hop duo–The Theoretics–with fine if unexceptional vocal work along the lines of RA Scion; stage moves that waxed nostalgic for a younger, prettier Marky Mark; and a crazily large and improperly miked band (too much keys, not enough brass). Good Jekyll and Hyde piece, though. [Aside: doesn't Jekyll, as a name, sound like it should be that of the monster?] A singer-songwriter with a really lovely voice–Olivia De La Cruz–and a wicked Mariah Carey cover. A Marie De Salle sort, perhaps, only with an Olympia-lesbian look.

And a great-concept, poor-execution metal jug band called Black Oak, who was the act I was most looking forward to, and most disappointed by. Black Oak plays heavy metal music. Think Megadeath. Only, Black Oak is comprised of a comic book nerd banjoist, a faux-hobo (fauxbo?) with a washboard, an inspired-by-Brandon-Lee and strangely seated fiddler, and a frighteningly normal-looking cellist. Awesome, right? But the whole thing sounded tinny, the players seemed thrown off by the cool temperature, and the vocals were absolutely atrocious, attempting to cover up the absence of singing skills in each member with loud off-kilter-synchronized sing-shouting. Black Oak needs a audio technician who understands what they’re trying to do, and a barking metal vocalist. And a jug.

May

29

Cough.

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On the way back from Greece, D picked up something that had her more-or-less bedridden for a week. Fever, cough, and world-weariness. A virus, no doubt. [Aside: does anyone else think of Hugo Weaving when reading the word "virus"?] In due course, I was infected as well.

The major symptoms drifted away after a week or so, but a persistent cough remained. With that yellow goopy lung shit as a chaser. [Aside: one of my fondest memories is watching Disney employees at Epcot attempted to sweep my hacked-up pulmonary discharge on a family vacation some years ago.] After two and a half weeks of this, D convinced me to follow in her footsteps, see the doctor, and get me some antibiotics. [Note: the antibiotics aren't as stupid as they might first appear. The doctor told D she had an opportunistic bacterial infection, preying on her weakened state due to the virus, and it was the bacterial infection that was lingering.]

Of course, by the time I got the appointment, the cough, although still present, had dissipated somewhat. Become more intermittent. Which meant I was a relatively healthy-looking fellow sitting in a doctor’s office. There’s something vaguely shameful about that, isn’t there? I mean, unless you’re looking to score some recreational drugs. The doctor actually seemed to think so too. He ended up giving me a prescription for Zithromax, but suggested I should refrain. To avoid damning the human race with superbugs, like MRSA.

Now, after caving and buying the damned antibiotics, taking them as instructed, the cough, although improved, doesn’t seem to have gone away completely. Likely it’ll resolve itself in due course. But a there’s a nagging voice in my head that’s repeatedly asking, “Is there something really wrong? Like lung cancer? Maybe you should go back to the doctor.” Damned pixies.

May

28

Windsor.

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There was a line in Stranger than Fiction that has bothered me for some time. The narrator and author Karen Eiffel, played by Emma Thompson, describes Will Ferrell’s narrated and authored Harold Crick as using the “half Windsor” knot when donning a necktie to save time. As opposed to a “full Windsor.”

Now, I learned to tie a tie many years ago, from my father. And I end up wearing a tie a dozen or so times per month, so I’ve had a lot of practice. I always tie in the same way. But some of my ties don’t end up looking particularly good with my ordinary knot choice, with a too-small bulge at my neck.

So, percolating in the back of my mind for a couple of years has been the thought that perhaps all this time, I’ve been using the half Windsor. And that if I were to graduate to the apparently more time consuming full Windsor, what I’d lose in waking hours, I’d more than offset with style.

Today, that thought has been addressed. Finally. I have been doing a halfway job all these years. And tackling the full knot has a decidedly fuller look. Huzzah!

May

27

Battlestar ending.

Filed Under Broadcast Media | 1 Comment

I’ve been putting off discussing the ending of “Battlestar Galactica” because, well, I was I just too angry. I needed several months to calm down and convince myself that, no, the series as a whole was not completely undermined by the too-pat and too-mystical steaming pile of cylon shit that was the final episode. But then Pajiba had to come up with a list–Five Television Finales That Nearly Ruined the Series and somehow left “Battlestar” off. And ruined “Life on Mars” for me to boot. Ugh.

May

23

Cosa Nostra Donnas.

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Olympia’s Cosa Nostra Donnas apparently won the 2009 Women’s Flat Track Derby Association national championship. For little old Oly to have the best roller derby team in the country…well, I thought I should at least show some support. So D and I attended a double header last night.

What with my personality and all, I do like to accentuate the negative. For example, the Cosa’s home rink, Skateland, is a decaying pit with completely inadequate seating–volunteers auctioned off raffle tickets for an opportunity to sit on the “comfy couch”–and bad-even-for-a-70s-roller-rink concessions that appeared to be warmed exclusively by heat lamps. The Oly Rollers’ next-rung down team–the Dropkick Donnas–were embarrassingly outmatched by the visiting Rose City (Portland) Axles of Annihilation in the warm-up match, losing something like 280 to 50. [Some of the Dropkicks' blockers seemed perpetually out-of-breath and unable to muster even the semblance of a defensive strategy, and moreover struck me as antagonistic to each other, undermining any joint slow-down attempt. Ugh.]

But all was well when the Cosas came out. The Cosas and Denver’s Rocky Mountain Rollergirls were both fabulous teams, with each member being absurdly skilled, rough-and-tumble, and, well, sexy. Roughly evenly matched, too. But it was the Cosas’ amazing come-back-from-behind rally toward the end of the first half that got me up and shouting like a sports fan.

Will I be studying up so I can learn how the game actually works in anticipation of the arrival of the Texecutioners next month? No doubt.

May

18

Neutered DJs.

Filed Under Broadcast Media, Music | 1 Comment

Today was listening to a major radio station that more often than not plays modern popular guitar music, with a smattering of compatible 90s and early 00s hits thrown in for good measure. DJ seemed psyched about the impending release of the first new Stone Temple Pilots release in quite some time. Brought up the upcoming album release at least twice in as many hours. Both times, failed to play anything from the new album, instead playing “Creep” and “Interstate Love Song.” Another DJ mentioned how great it was that LCD Soundsystem and Band of Horses have new, well-reviewed recordings being released today. Failed to play anything from either band–new or old–and instead dropped a well-worn M.I.A. chestnut, something from Coldplay, a Red Hot Chili Peppers track, and a surprisingly resilient little ditty from The Offspring.

Can anyone explain how a radio station that characterizes itself as the place for new music of a certain ilk can so routinely fail to actually play new music? How it can manage to neuter its disc jockeys so completely in terms of playlist decisions that even new albums from well-known, money-making bands that the DJs are excited enough to mention on the air still cannot get a spin?