Home Alone!!!

Goats!!!

Em just sent me this - could possibly be the greatest movie ever.

Less Grumpy!!!

I just got back from the beach & was so happy to see the comments on the last post!!! I was actually going to close up the blog, which is what I do when the comments that people make are much more interesting than my posts, but I figured I’d just do another post instead. Definitely read the comments from the last one though (glad you liked the picture Sweetheart!!)

Anyway, it's so easy for me to get grumpy about things like the Pitchfork list (kids today, fat guitar players, etc. etc.), but really the amazing thing is to be able to not only hear about all of this music, but to be able to listen to it right away!! And how much does this cost? Uh, nothing. Wow!! I do miss the days of “The Song Remains the Same”, and “Scarlet Begonias”, but obviously there is still some awesome music out there, and it is so amazing to be able to have a great discussion about it and then be able to listen to it in the comfort of your living room!!

Thanks for your suggestions Bell! I’d love to borrow a Dagons album from you because they are kind of hard to find on the net for some reason (I’m sure a teen could find it in 10 seconds, but I’m pretty much limited to YouTube!). And of course Lucinda Williams is great, although “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” was 1998, so no dice ; )

Eric – you must make a list, and I don’t know if I can wait until the end of the year! One funny thing though is that you said that you hadn’t heard half of these songs. If you’re not exaggerating, then I am amazed that you’re at 50%!!! I think I had heard about 30 of them total!! So one of my goals for the week of vacation I have left is to listen to all of them!! Well, maybe not the Britney Spears, but MOST of them. I feel like I should give the decade a fair shot before getting too grumpy!

And, OK, I do have a thing against much electronic/club music, which kind of kicks me out of the whole contemporary music thing. For example, LCD Soundsystem (at #2!!)? Don’t get it. Am old. But…Daftpunk is OK – at least “Harder Better Faster Stronger” (#139). My real beef with their list was the top 20, which I thought was kind of slight. But after looking at the rest of the list a little closer, there were definitely some really good songs. Again, a “Suite Judy Blue Eyes” or “Strawberry Fields”? Maybe not, but times have changed. Anyway, here are some other ones that I would put on my list:

Lose Yourself – Eminem
Young Folks - Peter Bjorn and John
New Slang – Shins
Lost Cause – Beck
Sorry Miss Jackson – Outkast
Time to Pretend – Mgmt
Kids – Mgmt (just heard it again on KROQ! A great song, but the video is totally disturbing – I would not recommend it – although the mother is Joanna Newsom!!)
Nightingale – Morning Glory

Happy Friday to everyone & have a great weekend!!!

Grump!!!!

Last Friday, the online magazine Pitchfork posted their picks for the top 500 songs of the 2000's (sorry, but I don't think that the "aughts" is going to stick). If you're not familiar with Pitchfork, it's one of the most influential new music sites, and is kind of like the Rolling Stone Magazine of the Internet, except with far less Bruce Springsteen. As much as I love real print, one thing that is really great about an online magazine is that you can also listen to all of the songs!!! So this was kind of a cool thing for me!

I have to admit that I do love lists, and I will probably read every end of the decade list that I can find!! But the Pitchfork list surprised me in many ways. First of all I was like, "Is it that close to the end of the year already?!" The answer to this seems to be no, but I guess they just wanted to get a jump on things. But then I was like, "Is it that close to the end of the decade already????!!!!!" And I guess that we are getting pretty close, which is so weird!! Ten years since we were partying like it was 1999 and waiting to see if all of the lights would go out.

But my final surprise after listening to a bunch of the songs is how ridiculously weak they are!!! I know I get on my grumpy hippie pedestal sometimes (often), but seriously, if that is the best that they could find then the 000's have been freakin' pathetic!!

Just to take the top 20 (out of 500!), there are two songs that are OK ("Ignition" #19 & "Hey Ya" #12), one legitimately good song ("Maps" #6), and one legitimately good song that's mainly good because it uses a song from 1982! ("Paper Planes" #3, from "Straight to Hell", by the way). And the #1 song of the 000's? "B.O.B."!!!!! Now I can't even listen to that song once! And of course I know that this is because I'm getting old, but is this really up there with "Hey Jude", "Try a Little Tenderness", "Radio Free Europe", or ANY SONG YOU EVER HEAR ON ANY CLASSIC ROCK STATION!!!!!!! uh, sorry.

Anyway, it feels good to rant a little bit & here is my much shorter list of the best songs (so far!) I would sure love to hear anyone else's suggestions!! By the way, I'm only counting original songs and not new arrangements of trad. stuff.

Take These Chains - Uncle Earl
Mushaboom - Feist
Surprise Hotel - Fool's Gold
Paper Planes - M.I.A. (OK, it's a pretty good song!)
Everything is Free - Gillian Welch
High on a Hill - Kate Rusby
Four Leaf Clover - Badly Drawn Boy
Yankee Bayonet - The Decemberists
Bridges and Baloons - Joanna Newsom
Only Skin - Joanna Newsom
I Feel it All - Feist
Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show
In the Beats We Trust - 3am
Mary From the Mountain - Morning Glory :)

And here is the Pitchfork list (top 20):

http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/7693-the-top-500-tracks-of-the-2000s-20-1/1/

Peace & Love to everyone!!!

Man, I almost forgot about two incredible birthdays happening today!! Not only is it the b-day of our bass player Doug (happy birthday Doug!!), but it is also the 110th birthday of one of the all-time great writers, Jorge Luis Borges!!

Borges was one of the first major post-modern authors, and, although his stories are full of allusions and profound ideas, he is also one of the funniest authors I have ever read (although his sense of humor may not appeal to everyone). Plus, he only wrote short stories, so you can try him out without wasting too much time!

Borges had a strange relationship with modern authors in that, while he had great respect for many of them (especially Joyce, by whom he was obviously influenced), he didn't understand why their books needed to be so long! In fact, one of his most characteristic strategies was to imagine that a large book had already been written, and then write a literary analysis of it!

I could write a lot about Borges, whom I loooooove, but here's a taste of his style. Writing about an author who admired Cervantes enough to try to emulate him, Borges remarks:

"Initially, Menard's method was to be relatively simple: Learn Spanish, return to Catholicism, fight against the Moor or Turk, forget the history of Europe from 1602 to 1918 - be Miguel de Cervantes. Pierre Menard weighed this course...but he discarded it as too easy."

Again, maybe not for everyone, but if you're interested, try the following stories:

The Garden of Forking Paths

Death and the Compass

The Aleph

Feliz cumpleaños Maestro!!!

Kunstrad EM 2009 Carla und Henriette Hochdorfer

I have no idea what event this is, but if it was a competition, I sure hope they won!

Back to San Marino!!!

We took a nice trip to the Huntington Gardens this weekend. It’s such an amazing sprawling place, and we’re always in awe that it was basically someone’s back yard! It was a beautiful, but hot, day, and we really enjoyed the shade and the water everywhere. By the way, has anyone else noticed that there seem to be more praying mantises around these days? Strange!

One thing that’s great about it is that there always seems to be something new to discover. We just found out that there is a grass labyrinth there!! Such a cool place!

Teeth!!!

Here's one from Em:

Our baby is growing up!

Well, it’s official. Finn lost his front tooth last night. He’s already lost his two front bottom teeth, but those weren’t really all that noticeable. A big gap has been growing in his upper teeth for a while now, though and one of his teeth has been dangling by a string for what seems like weeks. As you can see from the photos, last night the tooth finally gave up the ghost. Now he’s got plenty of room for his big grownup tooth to come in. *Sigh. In two weeks he will be starting first grade. Live in the moment, I keep telling myself. It’s okay that he’s growing up. Every once in a while, I just get a glimpse of how quickly it’s all going to go. This was definitely one of those moments.

Getting Better!!!

Last week was a busy one for my band Morning Glory! We played the Eagle Rock Farmer’s Market on Saturday. This is a strange market that’s actually in the parking lot of the Eagle Rock Plaza. We hadn’t played live for a while & were pretty rusty, but we still had fun. Thanks to all of the family & friends for showing up – we’ll play better next time!
Actually, next time was pretty soon after that. We played a late night gig in Eagle Rock at Dave’s Chillin’ & Grillin’ sandwich shop. It was Dave (the owner’s) birthday, and he likes us, so he asked us to play for his party. Unfortunately, we still weren’t playing too great – too much partying with Dave probably! Plus the space was really small, so we should have played much quieter – I think we probably annoyed a lot of people : (

There were some nice moments, though. We did play pretty well at first! Plus it was also Doug’s birthday, so we had a band celebration for our wonderful bass player! We played until 2:30 in the morning, and we had some pretty good jams, but everyone was kind of grumpy at the end. Some people were really upset with each other for playing certain ways (loud), and of course the alcohol didn’t help much! It wasn’t a horrible night, but I think that everyone was a little disappointed with how we had done.

Fortunately, the next day was the complete opposite!! We played one of our strangest gigs ever – a benefit for the deaf! It was impossible not to make jokes about it, but it turned out to be a really great gig!! The good side of all of that ill feeling from the night before is that everyone was trying to play really nice and mellow – this could also be because of hangovers! But I think that we kind of learned our lesson, and really did learn from the Dave’s experience. You’d think that we would have figured this out by now, but it’s so easy to fall into bad habits when you have loud electric instruments. We’d probably be better off as a folk band!! Hopefully we can keep all of this in mind. Thanks to the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness, and to everyone else for a good learning week!

Of course I didn’t get any pictures of the good gig!

the books - classy penguin

Some good stuff from Spike!

Last Oregon Post!!!

Barney!!!

For Eric & Amy (below ). I love you guys, and I think we should enter the fray with love in our hearts. I wish you could come to the pool, Eric!!

Update:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/19/rush-limbaugh-makes-gay-j_n_263405.html

Barney Frank Confronts Woman At Townhall Comparing Obama To Hitler

Portland (and materialism)!!!

Another one of the best parts of our trip (I know that I’m up to 4 or 5 now, but this was really great!) was that Em & I got to leave the kids with the grandparents for a night and headed up to Portland!! We lived there for a while about ten years ago, but Em hadn't been there since then, and I'd only been there really briefly, so it was a special trip!

Our first stop was the Mcmenamin diner (affectionately known as “Dirtbags”) on 23rd Street. It’s near where we used to live in Portland, and was about the best place we could afford back then! It’s actually pretty good. If there is one great thing about Portland, it’s that they have amazing food for just about any amount of money. The Mcmenamin places (and the awesome Dots that we didn’t get to this time) give you decent healthy food pretty cheap. On the other hand, the Mexican food is horrible, which is why L.A. is still better!! Being back there brought back some good memories though – it’s nice now that we’re not quite as poor as we used to be : )

We stayed at a beautiful hotel called the RiverPlace, and you can see why since this was the view out of our window! Portland really is such a beautiful city, and one of the best things about it is the Willamette River running through the middle, with all of the amazing bridges. We do love Los Angeles, but the L.A. River (trickle) is just not the same thing!

I swear that we really do like Los Angeles a lot (maybe I’ll have to do a post about that!), but I have to admit that there are some great things about Portland. One of them is a group of movie theaters that show second-run movies with really cheap tickets. They make their money by selling food and alcohol in the theater and have tables in front of all of the seats!! It is so cool, and is made possible because Portland has more easy-going alcohol laws than Los Angeles – which is why there are so many breweries (a typical Portland block has a brewery, three coffee shops and a record store!)

This theater is called the Baghdad and I think it’s the most beautiful one in Portland – a real classic old movie house. We went to see “Blood Simple” when we were there. We don’t drink that much, but watching a Coen Bros. movie with a glass of wine is pretty great!!

Look at how cool the interior is!!

We had an amazing breakfast at the Hawthorn Café. The food there is unbelievable and very healthy! The funniest thing is that there was a guy working there who was the nicest waiter and even moved us around to find the best place to take a picture of us. He was such a cool guy, and when we were leaving we saw that he was also cooking the food!!

Apparently the best place for pictures (I love the painting behind us!)

We couldn’t go to Portland without going to Forest Park, which is behind our old apartment there. It really was one of the best things about living there having this incredible park right behind us. It looks like a rain forest, and has a beautiful creek. There are even tiny owls that stare at you! Did I mention that we were pretty poor up there? Having this great free park right behind us was a real blessing!!



The tree that we called "The Dragon" - can you see it?

Our final meal there was at Nicolas, which is a great Lebanese restaurant on a divey street near the river. It’s hard to say whether it’s better than Carousel in Glendale, which has awesome Middle Eastern food, but it’s pretty great – apparently they have a “special oven”! They make delicious vegetarian mezzas, and definitely have the best falafel, but can it beat Carousel’s schwarma? Very hard to say. One thing’s for sure though, is that we had some great meals in Portland!!

That brings me to an important point about Portland – they really do have some great stuff! After a couple of years there, we know that L.A. is the place for us right now (again, I feel guiltily like a need to do a good L.A. post!), but there are so many nice things about Portland that we miss. If only we could put all of these places together somehow!

One last thing that I want to mention is that Em indulged me so much in looking in the stores up there! We went to a lot of hippie stores in Portland (and Eugene – they have great stuff too!) I feel kind of guilty being so materialistic after that “M” post, but we were on vacation, so hopefully I get a pass. Anyway, I love looking at all of the amazing 60’s style stores up there (and we did get some very cool stuff!).

I liked this silly wooden deer head (didn't buy it though).

I even managed to drag Dad and Molly to three hippie stores - thanks guys!!!