blast off!

fucking squirrels busting walnuts all over my yard and house 24/7 right now. annoying.

going to SF today. going home! need a trip to yosemite. anyone with the willingness to do a little backcountry hiking this winter should contact me. can't wait for shamus and maya's wedding! probably will end up doing mushrooms in the middle of the central valley with a bunch of Reed grads who will go back to their jobs working for Feinstein, DeutscheBank, etc. next week. life's rich pageant...

point of order: I am the only one who can make you hate candy.

sizzler and nona helm the sauna this weekend.

also, school has taken over my life. you need be proactive with me again. activities include:

Ethics
Algebra
English
Astronomy
and...

...wait for it...

FUNDAMENTALS OF MUSIC

after reviewing the workbook lessons, i have determined that i could teach this class.

hearts,
rs

hair

Photo by Cameron Wittig

had fun finally getting to play our loring park show last night. pins and needles for me during the 24 hours prior, watching massive storms roll through the dakotas and western minnesota. but luckily nothing came our way until later in the evening.

except a whole hell of a lot of wind. i spent the entire set trying not to choke on dust or my hair, both of which were constantly flying throughout the set. got a pretty killer rainbow out of the deal though.

the band sounded great, from what i was told. there were moments where i could hear what other people were doing, but for the most part i felt like i was performing in a vacuum. in reality, i was performing in the opposite of a vacuum– with nothing to keep sound bouncing around within earshot, anything not pointed directly at your head is pretty much lost on you when you play outdoors.

so i heard a lot of my guitar last night (good to get to turn that amp up last night- got all the way to 2 on the volume knob! who needs amps that go to 11 when 4 will melt your face!?), and my voice, which has undergone a lot of changes over the last three years. either my range has increased up into the tenor realm, or i've only recently learned how to use it. my pitch control, projection, and falsetto have solidified greatly since i made my last record, and in the recordings i've made over the last year i've noticed i've acquired, of all things, vibrato. my high school choir teacher would be proud of me.

but the mix onstage was rather uninspiring and at times (and for reasons unknown) precarious. i was really looking forward to singing out as i had been in rehearsal the last two weeks. our rehearsals had been very moving despite their novelty; marshall, nona, joanna, and ellen brought new vigor to old songs and new songs into fruition. at one point i even got choked up during a song as i drew breath to sing after hearing nona sing a solo counterpoint part she wrote for hungry ghost. but alas, this was all in rehearsal, and while there was a much appreciated element of catharsis from last night's performance, i awoke today glad that i have another opportunity in the near future to attempt to fulfill the very personal, esoteric, and at times abstract and unrealistic standards by which i define a good performance.

TOO HUNG OVER

... to blog. jesus, people who live in the middle of nowhere can drink. one day and i was ready to go back to appreciating things for what they look like without the beer goggles on.

Brasa

As some of you may or may not know, I'm into food. Pretty into it. I've had the good fortune to travel a lot, and in my travels I've gotten hungry. It's been a rather unemotional time for me, watching restaurants come and go through here; it always seems that food in the midwest is a tandem of quality and inaccessibility, unlike what you find on the coast. I can't eat at JP's, Alma, or La Belle Vie every night, sorry. Contact me about donations, though.

It just so happens, though, that the last time I really got excited about a restaurant, it was soul food. I used to be neighbors with Big E on Loring Park. I could walk up the back porch stairs and order red beans and rice, greens, catfish, fried chicken, pork, etc.- until his electric stove set something ablaze. Not an advantageous position to put yourself in when looking to eventually legitimize yourself in the restaurant industry, but whatever. I think his restaurant, amongst other things, got shut down because he didn't pay his electricity bill.

But last night, after dilly-dallying for several weeks, I ate at Brasa.

Yes, that event deserves its own paragraph. All I'll say is this– simple food, done incredibly right. Local, organic, slow-food. I've eaten wonderfully like this in Portland, OR to New York– the idea that slow-food is a southern-only tradition is simply obsolete.

GO!

corn pancakes

brekkie, you say? do this:

1 egg
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 c milk/soymilk/buttermilk
3/4 cup corn meal
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
5 tbsp honey
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp shortening or vegetable oil
1/2 c corn
1/2 c blueberries

goddamit i had a great breakfast.

moustache rides!

Photo by Cameron Wittig

cheered me up

i guess i'm just one of those people who feels neither kanye west nor will oldham can do wrong, but put the two together and it gets just a little ridiculous.

pretty fucked up

that's all i got to say about it. hard to be more descriptive when you can't get within about 500 yards of something, but i found a good vantage point from the guthrie's "endless bridge". we've all seen much better photographs than mine, but nothing compares to the experience of taking the photos yourself.

snaggletooth

look... there's a whole conversation involving dental history that could ensue, but let's just say that i have "perfect" teeth, except for my left wisdom tooth. fuck that thing. no cavities, no braces– yet i've spent days passed out in the back of a van on tour, obliterated by painkillers, on account of said tooth. it is, almost literally, the bane of my existence– all i know is that i have this tooth in the back of my mouth that is not hospitable to things like tortilla chips, and prone to infection.

that said, vicadin sucks. i had a long-standing idea to have a halloween costume titled "Vikes", in which i'd wear a mn vikings uniform and pop a couple vicadin and drink some beers, while uttering only the word "Vikes!" vicadin is doing nothing for my tooth. wrong drug. thanks, though, john.

other things that suck today– bridges in mpls. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! i'll take some pics tomorrow, but in the meantime, peace be with the families of people they are pulling out of cars that have been underwater for about 6.5 hours now. i can't imagine. i thought this shit just happened in california and southeast asia, but apparently someone will (hopefully) be held accountable for today's catastrophe.