Jonathan Coulton at the Mission Theater

juco

Jonathan Coulton is playing at the Mission Theater tonight! Coulton troubadored for John Hodgman's book tour, wearing a 'coon-skin cap and playing the hobo-themed "Big Rock Candy Mountain." All very amusing, but when he then sang the very sad song of an evil genius living on another mountain, this one named Skullcrusher, my boyfriend was hooked.

Skullcrusher Mountain is now "our song," such that I've commissioned a half-pony, half-monkey monster drawing for possible use in wedding-related program activities. I just hope Ape Lad doesn't use too many monkeys.

Jonathan Coulton - Skullcrusher Mountain [ Buy]
Jonathan Coulton - I Feel Fantastic [YouTube]
Jonathan Coulton - Baby Got Back [YouTube][ Buy]
Jonathan Coulton - Chiron Beta Prime [YouTube][ Buy]
Jonathan Coulton - Kenesaw Mountain Landis[ Buy]

Brady and Peyton, born Sept. 20, 2007

My sister had her second set of twins today! This is all I've seen of them, and I'm already gaga for them. Soon I'll head up north to the middle of nowhere to help my sister take care of her older twins for a month. Time to gather some good kids' books, movies, and music.

The older twins loved a few YouTube videos last time I visited, most notably how to walk, Hahaha, and Cat Attack.

Twenty Music Blogs

The music section of my blogroll was out of control. Under normal circumstances, this would be a point of pride. My tastes are many and varied! But my CD burner is broken. This is doubly annoying because I bought my new laptop primarily because the CD burner in my old laptop was broken and my computer was chock full of mp3s. On investigating the problem, I realized that I had again bought a CD burner that literally has the word SHIT in its name. MATSHITA. Why would I do that. I would link them, but they have no web presence whatsoever except tons of very sad forum posters. MATSHITA knows their product is SHIT. So why would they have a web site to hear about it, now that they have your computer manufacturer's money? Grrr.

Anyway, a thousand blog posts a week offering at least 5 MB of music each is unsustainable when I can't burn the keepers onto CDs. So I'm looking for twenty blogs that, early on, mentioned the songs I listen to the most. Writing this also served to test what's best for finding music: Hype Machine, Google Blog Search, or Technorati. Hype Machine was best, but Google Blog Search was pretty good if I got my search terms right. Technorati just sucks. I remember it being great when I blogged a few years back. Now it seems like it's all MySpace "blogs."

Here are the twenty blogs with the earliest links to the music I've listened to the most since May:
1. You Ain't No Picasso
Feb 6, 2007: The Apples in Stereo - Stephen Stephen (Advantage: Hype Machine)
May 26, 2006: Boy Least Likely To - Rock Upon A Porch With You (Advantage: Google Blog Search)

2. The Catbirdseat
Dec 12, 2005: Blitzen Trapper - Crazy on You (Advantage: Google Blog Search)

3. A Plague of Angels
May 2, 2007: Viva Voce - Eye in the Sky (Advantage: Hype Machine)

4. Sixeyes
Sept 15, 2005: Devendra Banhart - Quedate Luna (Advantage: Hype Machine)

5. Smudge of Ashen Fluff
Feb 20, 2007: Winterpills - Broken Arm (Advantage: Hype Machine)
June 21, 2006: Viva Voce - We Do Not Fuck Around (Advantage: Google Blog Search)

6. Yeti Don't Dance

Mar 2006: Elvis Perkins - While You Were Sleeping (Advantage: Hype Machine)



7. Touch That Dial
May 18, 2006: Jens Lekman - Washing Machine (Advantage: Hype Machine)

8. Killed by Death
Apr 2006: International Q - Small Talk (Advantage: Google Blog Search. At this point, I gave up trying Technorati because not only are the results a disaster of idiotic MySpace blogs and useless track listings, but an ad obscured the search box. Sure, I could probably tweak Firefox to make that stop, but it's not my job to make their web site function!)

9. Resonator
June 2007: Cocorosie - Rainbowarriors (Advantage: Hype Machine)

10. I Rock Cleveland
Nov 2006: The Thermals Here's Your Future (Advantage: Google Blog Search)

11. Bradley's Almanac
Nov 2006: Daniel Handler - Scream and Run Away (Advantage: Hype Machine)

12. Dreams of Horses

Nov 2005: Tegan and Sara Walking With A Ghost (Advantage: Hype Machine)



13. Jonathan Coulton

juco	Jonathan Coulton - Skullcrusher Mountain (Advantage: My magnificent brain)

14. Musica Social
Jan 2006: Ted Leo - Loyal To My Sorrowful Country (Advantage: Google Blog Search -- Hype Machine stopped working completely, as is its wont.)

15. That Sound
Aug 2007: The Shaky Hands - Soul (Advantage: Google Blog Search)

16. A Glass, Darkly
June 2007: Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation (Advantage: Google Blog Search)

17. (((without sound)))
Sept 2006: Sufjan Stevens - To Be Alone With You (Advantage: Hype Machine, which decided to load again)

18. Mainstream Isn't So Bad... Is It?
July 2007: Outkast - Hey Ya (Advantage: Hype Machine)

19. Some Velvet Blog
Dec 2006: Avett Brothers - Matrimony (Advantage: Hype Machine)

20. Bedford Rockers
May 3, 2005: The Bees - I Love You

Nathanson Creek Merlot - 96

Fancy synthetic cork smells nice. Wine smells hard; just sniffing it warms my belly. Tastes somewhat vegetable, salty. Has that round feel -- makes me feel I'm rolling a bouncy-ball in my mouth.

I'll admit that after I've seen there's no date and it's (probably) made by Woodbridge, I've turned against it.

But it was good each time I re-opened it, all the way into September, and if I wanted a sure thing from the one I've had so far, this would be it.

Available for $8.63 a bottle with shipping online. Drank in late summer, 2001, when I'd only drunk about 20 wines. I'm not sure how I'd rate it now, 'cause I can't find it in stores any more, and I have trouble spending $8.63 a bottle for wine available in a jug.

This is the second post in a planned series to see if I can track down my favorite wines online, for stockpiling purposes. Previously:
2000 Salice Salentino - 100
1998 Hogue Syrah - 98

Stars of Track and Field playing at LiveWire

I loved Stars of Track and Field's song "With You", even before I saw them at Bumbershoot. Seeing hot indie guys sing really pretty love songs that also rock has me tempted to see them perform again at the local public radio station's LiveWire production tonight. With occasional exceptions of legitimately good stuff like Pink Martini and the March Fourth Marching Band, LiveWire usually struck me as the ketchupy zaniness of "A Prairie Home Companion" (as I was born outside the Midwest after 1970, ketchupy zaniness is not a good thing) mixed with the Wednesday night bands at Dante's or Berbati's that you're just sick of hearing about.

But I'm far from sick of Stars of Track and Field! I want more! Maybe my ill-fated year in L.A. was SoTaF's Wednesday-night-at-Dante's year. More likely, they played at the myriad cool new venues that put more thought into booking than just getting willing half-naked hot chicks to sing Nirvana covers (they call this, Dante's old schtick, Stripperoke now, based on the ads I've seen). New venues booking cooler bands, I think, deserve more credit than Elliott Smith (rest his soul) for Portland's well-deserved indie cred. But don't despair, frat boys of Portland. Of course the lovely and talented and inescapable Storm Large will also be at LiveWire tonight. Hell, I was rooting for her, too, on that reality show with Nikki Six or whatever.

BikePortland.org

In addition to Stars of Track and Field and Storm, cool, hyper-involved City Commissioner (for now?) Sam Adams (he blogs) will be at LiveWire tonight. I was just thinking about his plan to install rental bikes throughout Portland this morning after I heard this story about how enamored NPR's French correspondent is of the rental bikes in Paris.

Also politically themed, Andi Zeisler from Bitch magazine will be at LiveWire. Now, I don't like Bitch magazine. Based on the Internet comments I read about Hillary Clinton, they ain't "reclaimed" shit by using the word bitch. I hate the word in any context, such that in the feminist section of Powell's, I've been known to turn the magazine around so I don't have to see it making assumptions about me just for standing there. There's also a lot of trite nonsense (knit for freedom!) and picking apart other people's family decisions ("How to have 17 kids and still love Jesus") by feminists like those of Bitch, who are otherwise awesome. However, some things that look like trite nonsense are crucial, and Zeisler hit a big one when she took a stab at the disgusting pink section in toy stores, which still turns girls into fairy princesses whose only goal is to land a rich man. Gender identity is "natural", my ass. When you're shoving pink binkies in your girl babies from birth, you're telling them to find something pretty to suck or they fail. The way girl children are treated as girls rather than as children is still a vitally important issue, and Zeisler nailed it. I wish the magazine were named something different, but of course that would alienate a lot fans. Rock, meet hard place.

Another writer who will be at LiveWire is Steve Almond, who I've never given a proper chance because I always think "Tainted Love Steve Almond? Soft Cell Steve Almond? Why is he writing about chocolate?" and then my brain gets tired. Also, books about single foods don't compel me, whatever their freakish popularity. And I don't read short stories or memoirs. So yeah, Steve Almond and I are doomed. However. Almond's resignation letter was right on. He's honest. You simply cannot divorce your morals from your working life, as he notes in this column, where he cites this trenchant Amazon review of his book:
"I literally threw the book across the room (where it still sits at this moment) after his progressive tantrum on page 204."

Do you think the reviewer doesn't know the meaning of the word "literally", or is it "irony"?

Also appearing at LiveWire will be local band The Sort Ofs. I can't find mp3s to download, and I won't link to MySpace because MySpace fucking sucks.

Road trip audio

My sister's plan to have a second set of twins (this is not my sister, but she sounds like she's in serious survival mode, too) messed with my plan to non-stop rock in September. Instead, I've been buying crib sheets and finger puppets and today I'm off to the ole homestead (east of the Cascade Mountains and north of Crackima).

It's a long drive, and I like listening to talking more than I like listening to music on long drives. Even if we hadn't lost our NPR map the very day we bought it, I suspect there would be gaps, where I'd attempt to listen to Bill O'Reilly for two minutes and just be furious for the rest of the week. The last time I tried this, he was saying something about people on welfare being lazy, which was infuriating because in fact, the only people I've known on welfare were disabled or they were people with children who can't afford daycare on minimum wage. They have tried the exhausting regimen of one or two low-wage jobs and raising their kids. They are NOT lazy. Man, I'm enraged again, and this was a couple years ago! Where was I? Ah yes, alternatives to geographically-limited NPR and compassion-limited Bill O'Reilly.

I love a good audio book. The best I've heard so far was Undaunted Courage, about Lewis and Clark. The worst was the The Blind Assassin, about an dull, uptight, upper-class Canadian woman, who fucked up her life by marrying an upper class American man. Woe was her, and boy did we hear all about it. Something like eight cassettes worth, and the two "surprises" are telegraphed from Chapter 2.

Unfortunately, I almost always consider my need for an audio book late the night before a road trip, when the Internet is the only possibility. This trip is no exception. But Audible.com sucks! My phone is my mp3 player. Not an Audible.com and iTunes aac player, mind you, because what's aac besides code for "You can't do what you need to with this file. Thank you for your $20." My phone won't play DRM-crippled aacs, and burning to a CD won't help. The CD player in the car long ago decided it loves Iron & Wine so much that it no longer opens or plays. In the age of the mp3, my intended fix for that involves a hammer. Apparently, there's an aac "hack" that involves burning eight CDs, then ripping the eight CDs back onto your computer as mp3s, but it would be my luck that I'd have dropped $20, spent all night fussing with CDs, and it wouldn't have worked for some horrible reason like file size or bit rate or something.

So I needed mp3s, and how. As of last night, my podcasts amounted to some enjoyable-enough episodes of the old CBS radio show "Suspense" and some left-over BBC podcasts about extremely intractable and depressing world problems ("Marrying into Conflict", anyone?).

I've listened to all my other favorite podcasts, and I long ago burned through the Internet Archives' incredible Black Museum with Orson Welles and the surprisingly-thrilling insurance investigator series Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. I've also finished off Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade. I couldn't get into The Shadow, and its popularity worries me -- it's so creepily suggestive of a nation that wants someone working for the government to watch them in private.

I've had mixed success with Internet Audio Archive audio books. I enjoyed Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." But the books read by computers, while an awesome idea in theory, are, in practice, really awful (they read some punctuation, and the title page alone can last an entire 5 MB file).

Nothing from my Good Reads lists was on the Archive, but some related material is promising. I've downloaded The Divine Comedy, Childhood, Jude the Obscure, Candide, and Roughing It. If I make it through all my Suspense episodes, I'm more than prepared.

Stars of Track and Field at Bumbershoot

I didn't know much about Stars of Track and Field but that they're from Portland, and I really love the song "With You." It was a pleasant surprise to find that they're a band of hot dudes, two them even stepping it up a notch with sexy stubble. One surprising thing about SoTaF was that the drummer was manning the Mac. It makes sense, beats-wise, but I think of Jeff Tweedy leaning over his Mac when Wilco went electronic (Judas!), and it's surprising to see the Mac at the back of the stage. Their performance was great, and they played "With You" to much approbation.

The bassist from Seattle's The Long Winters joined Stars of Track and Field for their last song, a mad rockfest. It was fun to see him wearing a t-shirt I have at home.