Spring '24 playlist

Heavy on the Colombian stuff this time, plus more indie rock than usual:

SoCal trip July 2024

As mentioned previously, I went down to southern California for M & M's wedding. It was great. Things I loved:

The whole transportation scene, from riding my bike to the airport to taking Metrolink. Turns out SoCal is a lot nicer when seen from the back side - train tracks, bus lines - than it is from the freeway. 100% would do again.

Ojai, which I had no clue about when I was living there. The warmth, the food and wine scenes. To be fair, it would be a lot less fun on a ramen budget.

Sampling infinite amounts of wine, the nonstop fusillade of wine and talk about wine. Good wine. Hearing the Wine Weirdos go on about wine. Having a picnic under an oak tree by the vineyard at Ampelos. Watching people licking wine off the sandstone poolside and talking about "minerality."

The beautiful wedding. Beautiful sets by Kiss Hello and Shannon Lay, quiet reverence and revelation. The sun going down slowly. Shannon's lovely LPs Geist and August are on sale at Sub Pop and I just grabbed them.

Baby L. 15 months old and curious about everything.

Walking in Oxnard. Palm trees against a radiant sunset, oranges casually smashed on the pavement, unfamiliar flowers, famliar eucalyptus smells, a handwritten street sign CUARTO DE RENTA PARA MUJER. 

 Walking at night through the park, dodging sprinklers. I spent $2.64 at W*lm*rt.

Ventura on a Sunday morning. The mission open wide and organ music wafting out. I walked as far up into the Botanical Garden hills as the paths would let me. The otherworldly scents from the Chilean plants heating up. Getting my feet wet in the ocean but not going too far - no room in my backpack for a towel or spare shorts.

Train to Burbank. Walking around by the airport. A decrepit former Fry's Electronics covered in weeds but still completely recognizable. A park, butterflies chasing each other, pickleball thwacks, a man sleeping in the back of his pickup in the shade.

Flying home and riding off into the last bit of Portland evening light, my legs somehow still working, my motor inside. Catching the train just as it pulled into Gateway TC and gratefully jumping on.

Picks to click July 2024

• Sole Otero's graphic novels - apparently the epic Naftalina is coming out on Fantagraphics translated as Mothballs, so I thought I'd beat the rush and check out the Spanish version from the library. Intensa is also pretty over the top.
• How did I not know that there was a video for Nilsson's beautiful"All I Think About Is You"? And of course it is super weird.
  
• My dad was a big Nilsson fan and it explains a lot about both him and me.
• Riding the cargo bike up the hill on SE Bell Ave and having people tell me "you can do it!" This has happened multiple times. Do I look like I'm struggling? I probably do. That thing is massive.
• The horrifying and perfectly told title essay in Myriam Gurba's Creep. Plus I'm very fond of her take on going to Iowa, "Waterloo," featuring an all-too-familiar story of ordering a salad at a Pizza Ranch.
  
• Finally breaking down and buying a cheap Swytch with Aminal Krossing pre-installed, playing it in the hammock with my boy, both of us laughing and laughing.
• That and Untitled Goose Game, even funnier.
• Trying to figure out some cover songs for a pool party at Mike L.'s wedding. I haven't played a solo set in front of other people in forever. 
• Also looking at an epic journey by five different modalities from Clackamas to Ojai - bike to airport, fly to Burbank, train to Oxnard, walk to the place where I'm staying, take a couple different buses to Ojai the next day. Now that I'm writing it out it's a little crazy.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Happy Valley bike ride / Freeya

Free plug for the app Freeya, a pretty good solution to the problem "how do I get rid of this free item without driving to a thrift store, leaving it at the curb, or dealing with a dozen BuyNothing/Craigslist flakes?" Everything is automated, and if someone flakes out on you (as they always do - I don't understand it) it's no big deal. Their window to pick things up just ends and someone else gets a chance. Anyway, if you're in Portland, Seattle, or Atlanta, recommended.

I posted some tape decks today and decided to look to see what's around. Someone up in Happy Valley was giving away some earbuds that would be an upgrade to what I have, and I was looking for a bike ride, so why not? I hopped on the non-electric bike because I was feeling crazy and headed up the daunting slopes of Mt. Scott.

The motor in my core and legs took me up past the mall, past the fire station, past the inevitable golf course. The motor in my core and legs was regretting my choice at the top of the hill. I rode down past dozens of McMansions, rode through the park, walked my bike on the gravel trail, then went up the hill, past the barrier, and emerged on 122nd. Taking the secret path made me feel like a genius and a super-dork all at once.

Here's where I ended up - the house was at the bottom of this serious hill:

I picked up the earbuds, emerged from a secret pedestrian exit next to the inevitable Jamba Juice (there is an outlet!) and rode home next to all sorts of fancy Happy Valley vehicles in all sorts of anonymous shades of white, gray, and black, then took the bike path home to the sanity of the flatlands.

Sonora Casino "Astronautas a Mercurio"

 

This Peruvian oddity goes everywhere all at once, and just when you think it can't find another gear, there it is, another gear. Total strutter.

I love they hand lettering and color scheme on the cover. My wife had the cover model saying "make sure they get my good side."

This is one of multiple tempting 10-euro LPs on Vampisoul's bandqlamp at the moment, but one of the many stupid things about vinyl is that even a good deal like this one is negated by the fact that it takes so much petroleum to haul big chunks of petroleum like this one across the globe.

Cabalgata rabbit hole

I was working on a document from Mexico for work and wanted to get an idea of the geography for a small town in Jalisco. The town was too small to be on Street View, so I did what one does, typed the name of the town into YouChoob.

The first hit was for a cabalgata, a horse-centric town-wide party/parade (English equivalent "cavalcade" is less relevant in non-horsey urban USA in 2024). I was not aware but it is awesome. I won't link to the video in question for privacy reasons, so search for cabalgata jalisco in YouChoob. There are a lot. Watch the horses dancing, hear the tubas echoing in the horse paddock.

Ads on the walls for businesses in the US. BIENVENIDOS HIJOS AUSENTES. Día de los Migrantes. A two-sided flag with the Great Seal of the State of Oregon on one side, but instead of a beaver on the other, the Mexican flag. 

Mules. Ponies. Men drinking Modelo on horses. Pretty ladies in fancy dresses sitting on the hood of lifted trucks. Dancing in the horse paddock, lifting up their fancy dresses. Crazy trumpet sounds. Stick with that video for some hoof-based ASMR at 03:15. Looks like a good time.

Apparently these horse-based festival parties are a thing in Colombia as well. Probably other places where people have horses and like to party. This rabbit hole is deep and I will get there eventually.

Things to love June '24

•  Helen DeWitt The English Understand Wool
• Reading The English Understand Wool in the hammock under the apple tree in a single sitting
• Discussing The English Understand Wool with one's sweetheart after she also read the book in the hammock under the apple tree in a single sitting
• Playing Donut County and the Frog Detective series on the Steem Dekk with the boy in the hammock
• The hammock
• The apple tree
• The typography in the inner sleeve of Born Against's Nine Patriotic Hymns for Children
  
  
• Thinking about sending cash in the mail in the 90s to order Born Against records
• Wanting to send cash in the mail to order records in 2024
• The new bike paths next to Linwood Avenue in unincorporated Clackamas County
• Riding my big blue unelectrified puffy-tires cargo bike on said paths and feeling like I'm sailing a yacht
• Getting to ride those paths every day this summer to take the boy to summer care and back
  
• Thinking about doing the library's summer reading bingo game for adults
• Thinking about doing the reading in the hammock under the apple tree