Darwin Gets Knifed

I thought The Knife couldn't get cooler. But I was wrong. They just released an opera based on Darwin's On the Origin of the Species in collaboration with Mt Sim and Planningtorock. I wish I could see it. My birthday is coming up. If someone wants to send me to Stockholm to see it, I wouldn't protest. Also, I wouldn't protest if someone gave me a recorder that cost more than a dollar. Or an icecream cake. I've always wanted an icecream cake.

Egg on my Pants

I am house-sitting right now. This involves hanging out with a large gray cat with no teeth who likes to talk to me and appears to be eating an insane amount of food (I'm worried that he is eating so much because he doesn't know how to deal with abandonment and they told me to feed him when he wanted to be fed and if he keels over from overeating I'm going to feel really bad).

I went snowboarding this weekend. It was good, best conditions yet. Which doesn't mean that much considering I haven't been able to go on any of the great days this season. Because I have a job. And knees that are giving out. But anyway, I always stop at Mountain Moka in Sandy and get a coffee refill and usually a bagel or a breakfast sandwich and the girls are always caffeinated and chipper and foundationed and I have a frequent customer card that I have almost filled, but instead we went to that gas station which has the burrito shop inside. I got a breakfast burrito and it got all over me and my hands and my face and my pants and my car. It was a battle. I was wrestling with this burrito for a good portion of the drive and was probably one ill-timed bite from an accident. And while it was tasty, it seems wrong to keep finding little bits of egg in the creases of your clothing as you move forward with your day.

Long Live the Landlord

I saw Do Say Make Think at Mississippi Studios last night. Wow. I'm not really familiar with them, started listening to their stuff last week when I saw that they were playing this show. I had pegged their sound as settlers migrating over desolate plains music. Not quite as apocalyptic or exciting as Godspeed You! Black Emperor (a favorite of mine).

But I kind of take it back. Here are some things I jotted in the dark in response to their songs, they are my quick impressions and some of them are observations and some are my cinematic imaginings. It was the best show I've seen in awhile.

(a) Animated eagle clan's epic battle with sky warriors ending with a thunder flying battle.

(b) A wasteland filled with swamp and dying trees and the heavy sky and dead rabbits litter the meadow, poisoned, and the fish lay gasping in the ponds.

(c) and then it's long slow plodding plains with the mountains so far away they never move and the dust in your mouth and jackrabbits and low scrubby fires that can't drown out the vicious vast sky.

(d) I just noticed there are two drummers! Two guitarists, a bassist, a violinist, alto sax, two trumpets. Sampler and keyboard. The sound is just right, I'm swallowing but not chewing.

(e)An imploding city with live animal markets and people in love and dusty streets and pigeons flying up and children sucking on nitrous balloons in alleyways trying not to be the people their parents told them to be.

(f) The dying throes of a superficial futuristic lifestyle. Vitamins and motorized walkways and filtered air and gelatin supplements. Our hero escapes and runs through the last forest and licks sap off trees and rolls in the dirt and freezes in the river and bleeds on rocks and falls asleep in the sun on a hillside.

(g) The guitarist/keyboardist just went for some flair on the keyboard and knocked it off the stand. He is the most animated of all the musicians and it's a bit unnecessary. Incongruent in fact.

(h) Swimming in a river and sun on rocks and a long slow departure from the place and person that you were. But it's nice, the way the sun is on the stone and it's like sitting under a porch when it's raining or walking through fresh snow or tall grass.

Fingers Crossed

courtesy of Hot Chip website

I love Hot Chip. I really really love them and have been forcing other people to listen to them ever since I was a prep cook at the Doug Fir and Lance the cook (who randomly enough was a bartender at the Horsehead before that) passed on his Hot Chip megamix to me. And I still haven't seen them live and it kind of breaks my heart. My love for Hot Chip can be compared to your biggest lamest high school crush and the disappointment I will feel if they aren't on the Sasquatch lineup will be comparable to how you would feel if your crush decided to ask out your best friend only because you happened to be home sick that day. They are playing Coachella. If those LA assholes get Hot Chip and I don't, there is going to be another blood curse. This is the single from their new album of the same name. They're moving into the ballad side of things on this one and I'm okay with that.

Composition: Winter Oregon 2009

I keep this little composition books. The ones with the faux marble covers and the taped spines. They are a great size, only slightly larger than a credit card and I jot down observations and dialogue and stories and sketches and sometimes write in them to give a situation purpose (some people do this with texting and cell phones when they feel a situation is awkward). And I have been kind of busy lately and just today got a request to keep my readers entertained (yes, it was only one request so maybe the correct thing to say would be reader as in singular). This book is red and I started it last winter. It's close to being completely full. Here is an excerpt:

Tonight Alex was punched in the face and his nose was broken. We hung out in the fire station afterward. I didn't say anything because I was peeing behind a building in the dark when it happened. Alex was bleeding all over and his nose was entirely shifted to his left, or maybe his right I can't recall. After it all happened and the police came and a taxi came and took some people went to the hospital, Liz and Adam and I hitchhiked with some hippies in a minivan across Eugene. It was excellent. We rode in the back and I sat on a plastic box and Liz hiccuped through the night as we rolled through the dark neighborhoods and kept an eye out for Jocelyn's street. We got home and pulled Rosie into bed with us in apology for waking her up at 4 a.m. I am writing and Liz is hiccuping in her sleep and Rosie is licking my elbow and Alex is having his nose set. Alexa is probably crying. What a mess the whole thing was. Lauren went to help Alex figure out hardship no-insurance health care. She went along as his adviser. She is probably advising right now.