Valusint Borble

2006-07-28T01:16:00.000-07:00

I had a nearly mystical experience today in which I went to Kinko's and EVERY person working there knew what they were doing. Usually, there's one person who clearly knows what they're doing and a bunch of idiots whose motions and actions seem to be dictated by the original Nintendo's enemy motion engine, but today every employee on shift was a master. It was a true meeting of the minds.

Portland Music and The OLCC

2006-07-12T17:16:00.000-07:00

Without making this post any longer than it already is with an explanatory introduction...well, no, with that. This was a comment I just posted to Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams' blog in response to an article about music and the economy of music in Portland. The question was:

What is the future of the music industry in this town?
Who are the leaders?
What are the roadblocks?
Is there are distinct Portland sound that’s coalescing?
And finally – are we gonna make sure Storm wins this thing or what?

A short primer:
Willy Week and The Mercury are the local alternative weekly papers.
PDX Pop Now! is a free, all-ages, 3-day festival of Portland music I co-founded and co-run.
The OLCC is the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, the state apparatus for, well, liquor control. At least they names themselves well. Incidentally, the organization's former head was recently arrested for drunk driving.

Now the post.

-----------------------------------

I caught wind of this thread on Blogtown and was excited to pop on over and say a few words about what Portland really needs to create a fully thriving music community, based on my observations as a musician in a band, and as one of the organizers of PDX Pop Now! Also, to back up for a moment, I want to congratulate the Mercury and Willy Week for launching sites dedicated to local music, as well as for dedicating the time and energy that is required to sustain them. This is a hole that has needed filling for quite a while in town, and it is gratifying to see people take a stab at it. Also, City Hall with Quasi and the Minders is pretty darn cool, if I do say so myself. Thanks, guys!

The biggest barrier standing between Portland today and a totally healthy musical community is the OLCC, or at least its current policies. I'm sure the organization must do some good, but I frankly can't figure out what it is. And this is coming from someone who drinks only rarely. Allow me to explain. I'll do it briefly in the next paragraph, and then allow myself the indulgence of some personal reflection and polemic.

Briefly - The OLCC makes it fiscally impossible for all-ages clubs to be successful. Venues have to choose between staying in business and letting kids in to shows. People under 21 are an absolutely essential part of a healthy and functioning music community and economy. Only when kids, teenagers and college students are allowed into all shows, and without being physically barred from the rest of the audience, will Portland's music communities, cultures and businesses really take off. More people will come to shows. More music-related businesses will make more money providing goods and services to more people. This seems obvious, but Oregon's vestigial blue laws and the entrenched economic self-interest of the OLCC bureaucracy keep this from happening. Let's be reasonable and allow venues to admit patrons of all ages, alcohol on the premises or no.

PDX Pop Now! was founded in the wake of a soul-searching discussion on the pdx-pop listserv. The gist of the conversation is worth remembering:
1) We have great bands in Portland.
2) Many of them get more attention and generate better attendance nationally than here at home.
3) We see the same faces night after night at concerts all over town. These are the faces of fellow musicians supporting each other, which is a key element to a sustainable community, but not enough. We need fans, the merely curious and, well, non-musicians, too.
4) Portland's artistic community - to be fair, like all artistic communities - can be fractious and petty at times, letting territorialism get in the way of collegiality and building something bigger.
5) Some of the hubs of the community - yes, venues, promoters, t-shirt makers, sticker makers, music retailers etc. play a key role here too - had closed recently making things seem even more in shambles than usual.
5) We should and can do something about this.

Portland is really the only place I can imagine something like this happening, because the event is predicated on a few facts. Portland is small enough to make the logistics possible. To some extent, everybody knows everybody, or at least half of everybody, who in turn know the other half, and that made getting the word out and generating a sense of comfort with the festival and compilation easier. Portland is also big enough to have enough going on creatively to populate an annual event, in terms of musicians, in perpetuity and with a high level of quality, broadly speaking. Lastly, let's remember that this is a navel-gazing town - and I mean that in a mostly good, non-musical way. We like things that are local. We are proudly provincial in many ways. Local businesses put their money where our mouths were and really stepped up to finance the whole thing. We do have a great creative community on the services end - CD duplicators, retailers, web services, mastering engineers, studios, labels etc.

Those of us who went on to from the core group that put on the first PDX Pop Now! festival were working with a good deal of good will from the community, resurrecting and developing the idea of a local music festival that had been previously manifested in things like AIMFest (admittedly before my time, but I believe the stories). We wanted to facilitate an event that removed the usual obstacles that keep people from shows; make it free, all-ages, and try to include people from as many musical sub-cultures as possible. We are still working towards really achieving the last goal, but I think we have improved.

The key effect that we hope this ethic of attendance-road-block-removal is getting people out to shows that don't ordinarily come to them. Having a large number of bands play at one time, in one place, for free frees the casually interested from having to way costs and benefits, it frees them from having to decide which of a thousand shows played by bands they've never or barely heard of to go to on any given night, and - here's what I've been moving towards, and where I start to get negative - KIDS CAN COME. AND TEENAGERS. AND COLLEGE STUDENTS.

We do an unconscionably bad job in this city of making concert attendance viable for people under the age of 21. This goes equally for 9 year-olds that parents might want to bring to an at the Doug Fir as it does for 19 year-old college students who, in an alternate, sane reality, would be the heart of a concert-going community. It's no accident that "college radio" has long been the bastion of the kind of DIY music that makes up the heart of a successful local music scene. How odd then that we make it impossible for college-age people to fully participate in our musical culture.

I grew up in LA. With a few exceptions, I could go to any club to see and concert I wanted. The venues with alcohol simply did or didn't stamp your hand, and that was it. It wasn't an issue. As a teenager I never tried to get alcohol illegally at a show. That was beside the point. I didn't care. I was there to listen to MUSIC.

I remember very clearly the first time I went to a venue that served alcohol and allowed people under 21, but segregated them in the bizarre, physical fashion we do here in Oregon. It was as a college student in Connecticut, another state with illogical vestiges of blue laws. I saw Sunny Day Real Estate at a venue in which a floor-to-ceiling chain-link fence, running, literally up to and through the stage, separated me from those in the audience over 21. The few places in Oregon that have been blessed by the OLCC to serve alcohol and host all-ages events don't barricade in quite so dramatic a fashion, but a physical barrier in the middle of the audience is not exactly a winning metaphor for community.

Kids - and, again, I mean that broadly, from elementary schoolers to college students - make a local musical community fiscally viable. They go to shows. They buy CDs. They also add a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and, as performers, creative content. On the other hand, they don't buy alcohol and, unfortunately, that has spelled the doom of many an all-ages club here in Portland. Music venues should not have to choose between serving kids music and serving adults alcohol. The logic of survival dictates that venue owners will make the latter choice. This decision, fait au compli, allows clubs to remain in businesses, but ironically eliminates the possibility of a truly inclusive, vibrant, musical community that makes having the venues to begin with worthwhile. This is classic shooting-yourself-in-the-foot.

The handful of all-ages venues in Portland, in my experience, don't often bring all-ages attendees. I applaud them for flying the all-ages flag, as someone has to keep that torch lit, but there's not a whole lot they can do about this. The concert-going culture of Portland has cut kids out. One or two welcoming venues are not enough to make kids feel invested in local music and local culture, generally. This is why they don't show up the few places they can, I believe. If kids could open up a weekly and go to any show they saw, on a whim, they would. Not every day, but they would. I did. You probably did, too.

We are too stingy, collectively, to properly fund after-school programs, as the recent SUN cutbacks prove. Wouldn't the corresponding, fiscally conservative response, then, be to pass on to the private sector the expense of keeping kids out of trouble by providing them with activities and events in which they are interested? Allow venues to let kids into their shows. I guarantee that this will generate revenue for a broad array of businesses, from the venues, to the bands, to the promoters, to the duplicators, to the engineers and on and on. Plus, it's the reasonable thing to do.

Underage music fans should be able to see every show that happens in this town. They ought to be able to do it without being cordoned off by a fence. And, yes, they ought to be able to PLAY these venues too. Let's invite them into our musical community. It is rightfully theirs as much as ours.

Bratstvo

2006-04-04T00:57:00.000-07:00

I was in Orlanod this past weekend for my brother's 8th birthday. It was a landmark event, culminating in him and me staying up until 5am playing Lego Star Wars on Gamecube. 2nd graders don't usually (ever) stay up that late. It felt like indoctrinating him into a secret cult.

His most memorable quote of the night:

"It's good having a birthday once in a while."

Devil on Ice

2006-02-18T15:14:00.000-08:00

There's a player on the Slovakian Olympic Hockey Team whose jersey reads: Satan. I really like watching him skate around.

Heddatron - My Friends' Parallel Successes

2006-02-05T03:58:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned on the At Dusk blog a few days ago, my friend Alex has been having quite a year as the enfant terrible of the New York theater world, with coverage of his theater group, Les Freres Corbusier, in 2 New York Times slide shows, and a whole bunch of other couldn't-ask-for-better-press this year. His new project - put on and written by a bunch of my former theater brethren at Yale - is called Heddatron and is, through various framing devices, a play in which a woman is abducted and forced to act Ibsen's Hedda Gabler ad infinitum with a bunch of robots who are, literally, actors in the production. The run starts this coming week. If you are in New York, you should definitely give it a whirl. These guys are good at what they do.

This artistic triumph, along with classmate-of-our's Jake Gyllenhaal's Oscar nod, are giving me that much more drive to finish our record this week. You guys remember my "It's my time!" exclamation-snap from senior year? Yeah, that again. It's cool/scary to have enough time have elapsed since college to see friends' labors begin to bear publicly recognized fruit. 2006-The year of the dusk, yo. Either that, or total global annihilation.

Heddatron

2006-02-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

Not music, nor Portland, granted, but certainly cultural and all in the family. My friend Alex has been having a bunch of success in the past few years doing weirdly revisionist and absurdist theater pieces about intellectuals. The press fiesta continues with this Wired piece about his latest - written/produced by some other folks from my former East Coast life. It's called Heddatron and, as I understand it, involves a bunch of robots kidnapping a housewife and forcing her to act Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" ad infinitum. Many roles in the play are played, apparently, by robots. If you're in New York, you should see it. I would.

The Awesome State of the Union

2006-01-31T21:58:00.000-08:00

2 Reasons why America is still cool from tonight's State of the Union:

Human/Animal Hybrids

Tim Kaine's Left Eyebrow

So cool.

Feline Coitus

2006-01-16T18:10:00.000-08:00

For the past 4 days or so, morning, noon and night, there have been the most awful cat sex sounds coming from the side and back of our house. Have you seen or heard cats have sex before? My understanding is that cat penises are barbed in some way which makes copulation painful for the feline female, but, correspondingly, vaginal pain triggers ovulation or some such sexual process. Can anyone verify this?

When I lived in St. Petersburg, my friend Vasya - younger brother of Zhenya, for those of you who know him - told me a story about how when he was young in the USSR he awoke one night to a terrifying sound of a baby being murdered. His heroic instincts kicked in and he went and woke up his parents so that they could hopefully intervene. Vasya's dad, Dima, went outside and found two cats having sex which truly does sound like a baby being murdered.

Isn't January a little early for cats to be in heat? I guess it's a little exciting, viewed from a certain perspective.

The Complacency of Teaching: Introduction

2006-01-13T17:33:00.000-08:00

One thing I think about a lot but don't discuss that often with other people is how to fix, or at least mess up in a different way, all of the things I see wrong with our appropriately maligned public education system. In the unlikely event that someone I don't know reads this, I should state here that I work as, let me get this right, a Russian Bilingual ELL Educational Assistant at Parkrose Middle School in outer NE Portland. I love my job because my coworkers in the ELL department and superiors are pretty awesome, driven and creative, and, especially, because the kids I work with are pretty damn cool. There are about 175 students at my school, 6th-8th grade, identified as ELL, which essentially means that they speak a language other than English at home, perhaps in addition to, perhaps exclusive to, English. Additionally their English skills and academic success must be at such a level to warrant support services. I work with kids from a huge variety of places - Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Moldova, Mexico, Haiti, Laos, Ukraine, Somalia - but I am primarily hired to work with, interpret, translate and advocate for the Russian-speaking community of the Parkrose School District, most of whom are not from Russia at all, but from Russian-speaking former Soviet States. Many of them speak a large number of languages beccause of the geopolitics of that region, but I just learned that one of my 7th-grade girls takes the prize, speaking (or at least understanding) 6 languages including: Russian, Ukrainian, English, Moldovan, Romanian, and something I've never heard of before called "Khlyatskii."

This ELL population makes up a pretty large percentage of the student body at our school. This was not always the case, but is the product of a huge influx of former Soviet Evangelicals (the majority of my 50ish Russian-speaking students are related to one another and are 7th Day Adventists), Spanish-speaking migrant workers, and Vietnames, Hmong and Mien communities whose roots I don't really understand. 10 years or so ago Parkrose, located close to the Portland Airport (which, incidentally, used to be called the Parkrose Airport, apparently) was a pretty middle class, white, Americanized, Italian neighborhood. The construction of apartment complexes and the development of inner portland changed the economic dynamics of the neighborhood, which now houses enough lower-income families to make it so that approximately 70% of the student body at Parkrose Middle School is below the poverty level. The convergence of students whose family situations make it likely that their parents have received rudimentary educations themselves, meaning that they often work multiple, low-paying jobs for long hours resulting in the kids largely parenting themselves, along with teachers who are used to dealing with more-or-less driven, certainly English-speaking, middle-class white kids brings a lot of the inadequacies of the whole system into stark relief.

I do believe that most of the teachers I work with have nothing but the best intentions for their students, and that they believe in their work, but it seems to me like a large number of systemic factors work to dull their passion for teaching their subjects in a relatively small amoun of time, and also breed an incredible territorialism for which I was totally unprepared when I started working at Parkrose just over a year ago.

I guess that's a bit of an introduction. Hopefully I'll get around to posting some, "What if instead of doing things x-ly, we tried doing them y-ly" ideas that I've been having.

In the meantime, I suppose I should return to lyric writing, which I am using to fill my day until Meri comes to visit tonight.

Also, I must mention that you should really check out the Jose Gonzalex record "Veneer" from last year. It's totally beatiful and slipped under my radar last year.

Flightless Birds and Inflight Entertainment

2006-01-12T19:13:00.000-08:00

I've been pretty unreliable as cconcerns posting for the past while. Excuses include the convergence of: teaching, recording, writing lyrics for said recording, avoiding writing said lyrics for said recording, and watching TV shows. I have, however, written more than a few posts in my mind, so maybe I'll try to make use of that surplus:

I was on a few different flights this past December which took me from Portland to Orlando, then from Orlando to San Francisco, and finally from San Francisco back to Portland. All of these flights were significantly more turbulent than most, a fact that most passengers seemed able to agree upon, judging by the nervous laughter and frozen I'm-afraid-of-death smiles etched on all of our faces.

On the turbulent flight to San Francisco, the video selection for our inflight entertainment was a cute little nature show on penguins at the zoo. I wasn't listening to the audio, but I can say there is something quite disturbing about watching a bunch of flightless birds while perched 30,000 ft. tenuously in the air.

Favorites of 2005

2005-12-10T00:45:00.000-08:00

A few of my favorite 2005 things:

The absolute best music I heard this year was from the late 60s/early 70s. I cannot recommend the "Ethiopiques" series of rereleases of Ethiopian pop music from that era more highly. This music comes closer to expressing pure joy and confusion that anything I've ever heard. I would recommend volumes 1 & 3 in particular as good starting points. James Brown-y backing instrumental stuff fronted by amazing singers trained in a totally idiosyncratic vocal style combining elements of traditional Ethiopian music, Armenian music and Arabic pop music. Totally, mind-bogglingly awesome!

My Favorite Albums of 2005

1) The Joggers - With A Cape And A Cane
2) Animal Collective - Feels
3) M Ward - Transistor Radio
4) Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary
5) Architecture in Helsinki - In Case We Die
6) Akron Family/Angels of Light - S/T
7) Deerhoof - Green Cosmos EP
8) Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
9) System of a Down - Mesmerize
10) Sleater-Kinney - The Woods

I would also add that it was a much better year for "singles" than albums. By this, I mean there were some great songs on mediocre albums. Some of my favorites are:
I'll I'll Believe In Anything - Wolf Parade
7/4 (Shoreline) - Broken Social Scene
Hi-Fi - M Ward
Grass - Animal Collective
Police & Private - Metric
Dry Drunk Emperor - TV on the Radio
Cold Wind - Arcade Fire
BYOB - System of a Down
Raising The Sparks - Akron/Family
It's 5 - Architecture in Helsinki
Wicked Light Sleeper - The Joggers
In The Reins - Iron & Wine/Calexico

Favorite Concerts of 2005:
The Books @ Holocene
Nice Nice @ PDX Pop Now!
Talkdemonic @ PDX Pop Now!

Favorite Book Released in 2005: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Favorite Young Adult Sci-Fi Book Series I Hadn't Read Until This Year; The Ender's Saga by Orson Scott Card
Favorite TV Show of 2005: Six Feet Under Final Season (Maybe the Artistic Highpoint of the year generally)
Favorite Movie: Murderball
Favorite Geographical Structure: Islands (Hawaii and Greece, in particular)

Favorite News Items of 2005: That plane crash in Canada where everyone survived, and 311 collectively kicking Creed frontman, Scott Stapp's, ass after he picked a bar fight with them.

And my own band - At Dusk - will be recording its 3rd record starting on Wednesday. WhooppEEEEEEE!

Al-Qaeda Exchange Program

2005-12-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

I had a dream a few weeks back. In it a was participating in an exchange program. There was some sort of bureaucratic error, and I was placed in a host family in the Middle East headed by an al-Qaeda operative. It took a little for me to figure this out, although the family sertainly wasn't hiding anything. As it turns out, they were also the victims of a misapprehension, as they thought I was an al-Qaeda trainee.

This was not a nightmare, nor was it particularly stressful. Mostly the dream was filled with the banalities of daily life. The dad/operative was all pissed off that their wireless wasn't working, so I had to tinker with it to get it to work again. Bro picked on sis at the dinner table. Things went pretty smoothly.

I'm not sure how the dream ended, and I also haven't been able to figure out how we communicated exactly. My closest recollection is that my family, in training for their mole operation, were conveniently speaking English at home all the time

I would love to write a book about this.

Also, does anyone remember how in the first wave of reporting on al-Qaeda, the spelling was totally variable? Which spelling would I use in my book? What is the preferred self-descriptive spelling?

Morning of Unfun

2005-10-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

There are many more pleasant ways to start your morning than the one I just used.

Having been up late last night helping Michael Rockstar record an EP and transfer it from 4-track to the computer, I stayed in bed as long as I possibly could. Once awake, I moved around the house as slowly as possible, eating waffles and veggie sausage with a plan to move out onto the porch and continue reading Speaker for the Dead in the light and warmth of this preternaturally un-autumnal day.

Under the seat-right rocker of the rocking chair I intended to sit in, I discovered the corpse of a little pigeon, just beginning to show outward signs of death. After conquering my fear of bird flu, I fetched the snow shovel from the basement and a New Seasons paper bag from the kitchen and moved the victim to the trash can. I then returned to the porch to hose down the contaminated area with Lysol. That's when I discovered the maggot party that I brought to an abrupt end when I moved the bird.

Unfun.

Keyless Keyboard

2005-10-01T03:38:00.000-07:00

You're familiar with fretless basses? Yesterday - under the delayed influence of having seen the Moog documentary a week ago, and the current influence of see/hearing Sigur Ros - I was thinking that somebody should invent the equivalent mode for the piano/synthesizer. A keyless keyboard. There's lots of input modes for keyed instruments that allow you continuous flexibility of pitch (e.g. pitch wheel), but it seems to me that none of them are as intuitive or flexible as simply having a "keyless" keyboard on a synthesizer would be. Given envelope modelling and such, you could even have a pretty close approximation of a piano without a fixed tuning - putting to rest the whole tempered-scale-as-foundation-of-music-based-on-western-instruments issue that I'm sure keeps you up at nights.

Does this already exist? Anyone know how to build this? I'd make you a delicious sandwich.

The Joy of Dog Sports

2005-08-29T00:49:00.000-07:00

Agility Dog 7
Originally uploaded by Valusint.

Today Ethan and I went to the Oregon State Fair in Salem. Ethan has spoken about his visit last year as an unanticipated summer highlight, so I was excited to make the trek today, partially motivated by that surge of "I better have a lot of fun right NOW!" that one experiences during high summer, when you can smell the return of work and school on the wind.

I was most excited about seeing The American Kennel Club Dog Agility Competition in action. I had previously seen this amazing spectacle of athleticism only on Animal Planet my sophomor year of college, under the (superior) name Agility Dog.

Basically, a series of dogs are guided around an obstacle course by their human companions in a scored time trial. Obstacles include running through tubes, teeter-totters, steeple jumps, and pausing on a platform. This was, I imagine, invented, or at least embraced and marketed, by traditional dog show organizers who were witnessinng the success of extreme human sports and felt that extreme dog sports would be equally popular. If only they could find a way to incoporate parachutes, I think this thing would really take off.

What was most amazing about seeing this sport in real life was how unbelievably happy the dogs seemed about competing. As they slalomed (or weaved, depending on size) through a series of poles, some of the dogs yipped with joy after passing each post. It was as if they were screaming "I LOVE THIS!" I realize that human athletes enjoy their physical endeavours as well, but, as Ethan pointed out, you don't see soccer players, while running down the field after the ball, shouting about their love for the game.

It really made you feel good about being alive, seeing how good the dogs seemed to feel about it. The fact that the dogs awareness of being in a competition with other dogs - as opposed to just playing with their human and canine friends - is dubous and unknowable at best. A truly pure love of the game.

Weird how much I've ended up (kind of) talking about sports here. I would like to reference Cameron's post about humans' relative lack of physiccal prowess as a related and entertaining read.

I want to see dogs on trampolines! In parachutes! On skis! Playing jai-alai!

The Jewish Dojo Dilemma

2005-08-17T03:30:00.000-07:00

When Ethan and I were playing tennis the other day, I started thinking about other activities I'd participated in at various times in my life. My mind focused in on Judaism and Jujitsu, for reasons having nothing to do (as far as I know) with the obvious pun.

Many dojos and martial arts studios I've been in - all I think, actually - have framed pictures of the main sensei's own sensei, the founder of the particular martial style, or some other guru.

Do orthodox Jews study martial arts? I assume they must. Krav maga?

When an observant Jew walks into a dojo with a framed guru picture towards which, according to martial tradition, he is obligated to bow, what does he do? Does this count as graven imagery? Obviously, these martial masters are not being venerated as gods per se, but I would imagine the bowing thing doesn't sit well. It freaks me out a bit actually.

I remember reading about a line of workout videos for orthodox men, but that wouldn't really bring up the same issues.

Does anyone know?

The Outsider Athlete

2005-08-14T04:10:00.000-07:00

Today my roommate Ethan went to Fred Meyer and bought us each $20 tennis rackets. (I would like to pause here for a minute and point out that I would make Ethan's name a hyperlink, but I can't, because he doesn't have a blog. Or a computer. Or a cell phone. And my blog just now provided a new venue for me to rag on him for this). And some Penn #4 tennis balls. They're the best-selling balls in the world. Even better than Wilson. Who would have guessed.

Over the past few weeks, Ethan, Meri and I each independently, for whatever reason, got it into our heads that playing tennis would be fun, and probably a good thing to know how to do besides. Maybe this was the product of some 25-year-old-pre-30-year-old synapse firing, grooming its host into presentable middle agers prematurely. Maybe our attention was just drawn to all of the free tennis courts in Portland parks that are suddenly occupied, now that the good weather is upon us. In any case, I was very impressed that Ethan took this tennis project from idle chatter to the next, implementable level, investment and procurement of good and all.

On some level, I think I thought there was a chance that I would instantaneously turn out to be the best tennis player ever. The equivalent of an outsider artist. Someone with no real training or background who quickly and unexpecctedly moves from the fringe to the center of a highly regimented skill hierarchy. I think that I always feel a little bit of excitement about this possibility whenever I begin learning a new skill. That my prodigy potential will finally be realized. I wonder if most people feel this to some degree. I asked Ethan about it, and he said yes. But he sometimes has similar megalomaniacal pathies to me, in spite of being a really nice dude. He is also anxious about the number of things in the world. I have a similar sense of the potential for spontaneous celebrity whenever I start to learn anything new, but particularly when it comes to athletics, even though I have never shown any extraordinary gifts in that department. Except for at Ga-Ga, maybe. Nonetheless, I continue to dream.

To be fair, Ethan and I had both had tennis lessons at some point in our youth, including Ethan's attending a tennis camp (one in a series of camps he attended, and hated, including Balkan Dance Camp, wherein the next oldest "camper" was 20 years his senior). In spite of this prior training, and the obvious potential for Outsider Athlete Virtuosity (OAV) that we feel daily course through our veins, we weren't very good. But we'll keep trying.

And right as we finished, we heard the ice cream truck come by

TTSE #3: Random Delivery Service

2005-08-10T02:54:00.000-07:00

Things That Should Exist #3:

While recuperating from the blissful madness that was this past weekend's PDXPOP Now! festival at Laurelhurst Park today with Meri many things happened. Most of them were alternately starting crossword puzzles, and becoming too tired to complete them. We ate. We napped. And at just the right time, we heard a distant tune. An analog loop, about 7 seconds long, of Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag. It was an ice cream truck. I thought that I didn't have time to run to the street via the established footpath and made the mistake of trying to blaze my own trail through the bushes. The endless trench-system of spider webs forced me to turn back and run the regular pedestrian route. I caught the little mini-truck (not a musician flexvan, I should add) just in time to procure a Creamsicle and an Ice Cream Sandwich, for me and Meri, respectively.

A powerful enthusiasm surged in me - how cool is it that a little truck comes and brings ME icecream on a hot day! I wish they would just bring me everything! Then I thought of pinkdot and the handful of other home anything-you-want delivery services. I just never think to use them. Or, not having a drug habit, maybe I just never want anything bad enough to call somebody to bring it to me at 2am.

But how about a delivery service that brought me something cool - of their choosing - once a week? What if I could specify a dollar amount and, if I wanted, a category, and somebody would drop off an item or group of items fitting my parameters every week. I get pretty excited about the regularity of taking the trash out every Sunday night as is, so you can imagine my enthusiasm for somebody finding me a cool, unique present every week. I could say "$10. Surprise me!" Or if I wanted more control, I could say "$5. Something blue." Or "$20. A kitchen item."

I like this idea very much.

TTSE #2: Musician FlexVans

2005-08-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

Things That Should Exist #2:

For the first time this summer I had some time to just go out into the beautiful Portland summer evening sun on bike, get tired, and think about stuff. As I was on the final stretch back home, I passed by the Walgreen's parking lot at Belmont & 38th and saw a FlexCar. Not an unusual sight for Portland. But this was a minivan. For some reason, it had never occurred to me that there were FlexThingsOtherThanCars.

For the past 10 minutes or so I've been thinking about a new plan - either philanthropic, through PDXPOP maybe, or economic, through Executive. There should be a FlexVan service for bands. Owning a van large enough to put all of a band's gear in is a pain in the ass, what with parking - particularly on Portland's small streets - maintenance costs and all that. Usually bands, for economic reasons, end up having to buy 30 year-old vans guaranteed to break down on the hottest day of your tour. But musicians don't really need to own vans. they just need them to get to and from gigs, and to tour.

I think you could start a specialized business of van rental ala FlexCar, allowing people to reserve a van for a given time slot. You could do a lot with even a fleet of 3 or 4. I know that I would own a smaller car if I didn't have to move gear around relatively regularly. And this would certainly make the logistics of touring a lot simpler.

Alternatively, we could start a project through an existing non-profit like PDXPOP, through which people could donate old vans for tax deductions of greater value than the resale value of the cars. These cars could be refurbished and brought up to snuff through local mechanics who could donate their labor for tax-deduction equivalences. Or we could use existing non-profit funds to pay for this as a ccommunity service. And, again, these vans could be signed out for the timeslots that any given band or set of musicians need.

I just mentioned this idea to Greg who rightly pointed out that musicians would not necessarily be the most desirable leasers (lessees?), given the sometimes true stereotypes of irresponsibility, substance issues and all that. But isn't that what insurance is for? Prohibitively expensive? Require proof of insurance for leasing? Do criminal background checks or at least driving record or credit checks? Yeah, a little invasive maybe, but probably necessary.

I'm actually very curious about this idea. Any thoughts?

Iraq Dream

2005-05-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

Last night I had another in a series of unsettling dreams that involve my being taken prisoner, or otherwise harmed, in Iraq. They're pretty scary, and insofar as a dream can be taken as evidencce of anything, I really don't think I'd like being a soldier or guerilla.

This dream began at a fancy hotel/palace somewhere in LA. Something like a cross between Stary Grad Prague and The Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. There was a gala event taking place that my whole family - with the exception of myself - was attending to mark the signing of some sort of peace agreement with the insurgents in Iraq and, by proxy, I think with the jihadist world in general. In James Bond fashion, this banquet, and the twenty or so others of its ilk taking place in major American metropoles, turned out to be a trap. As the waiters came out with covered silver platters to serve the politico-celebro-intelligentsia guests, they opened fire and bombs went off. In the way that dreams are often "shot" like movies, I was not in this scene, nor was the "I" in the dream aware of it, but the viewing "I" saw it. I remember Will wondering years ago how the narrative language of film affeccts the way we dream and see dreams. Other people have wondered this, sure, but I think that's interesting.

Cut to me in Portland - only it's summer. I can tell, because the weather doesn't suck. I'm living in a smallish bohemian bungalo next to a smallish bohemian cafe. Reminds me of a Portland version of Chris' little loft above the Spider place in Austin on Guadalupe. I was hanging out in shorts, drinking a lemonade, walking from the cafe to my house when a series of bombs went off in the city, visible even in the distance. Presumably this attack took place at the same time as the LA hostage-taking/murder, as two in a string of major jihadist offensives.

As often happens, the actual substance of what then happened I don't actually remember. Suffice it to say that I was taken prisoner, shipped off to Iraq, and spent the remainder of my dream being afraid of getting blown up by sundry dangers. I don't know whether I made it or not. But it did seem a lot like the end of the world.

TTSE1: 24-Hour Movie Theater

2005-05-14T00:38:00.000-07:00

Things That Should Exist #1:

I've been talking about this one for a long time. Pretty clearly the product of summer nights in high school- a nocturnal schedule, some disposable income, burgeoning interest in local landmarks in LA. I'm not saying that every movie theater could support this kind of business model, but I think if you targeted the right neighborhood (Silverlake? Brooklyn? N Portland?) in the right town, a non-stop movie theater could be a viable and exciting place. Attach a cafe/bar, a little book store, some weird film series, maybe a second screening room that would always play unanounced, diverse fare - industrial videos, action blockbusters, commercials, music videos.

I would go. My friends would go. Isn't that enough?