Category: Life

Today it occurred to me that I could make a mix CD of my all-time favorite pieces of music and I don’t know anyone who would want to listen to it more than once. I’ve always known that there is no one person who really likes what I like, but the distillation of that fact into the idea that my ultimate mix CD would appeal to no one is pretty depressing.

Via a series of MySpace messages, I said to one of my old students the other day: “send me your address and i’ll mail you a box of blah busting materials.” She replied, “my mailing address is [whatever]@gmail.com.” Then I said, “I meant your snail mail address.” And she said, “snail mail? [whatever]@gmail.com is the only other email I have. Other than my Zune one and one I use for MSN messenger.”

So I sent her this MySpace comment:

“Snail mail” is a system whereby a guy in a little truck drives or walks from house to house delivering actual, physical messages inside things called “envelopes” or “packages.” He has a little office where he sells things called “stamps” that you affix to whatever you’re sending. Outdated and quaint, yes, but far more handy a system for delivering three dimensional objects than conventional internet protocols allow.

It has been brought to my attention that I have entirely omitted mention of Jessica and Josh Ebert, Our People in Tacoma. They accompanied me to the Space Needle (forewarning me of the photographic troll planted at the entry, with whom I regrettably tangled) and the EMP/Sci-Fi Museum. Sadly I only got to hang out with them for that one afternoon, but this should not in any way diminish the intense significance of Jessica in my larger existence. I also neglected to take any pictures of them[1], further establishing my status as foppish churl and itinerant mountebank. I hereby apologize unreservedly.

1.) Taking pictures of people is something I have to really work hard to remember to do. In fact, after having dinner with Odie and Mona in Arlington, we said our goodbyes, and I had made it almost to the edge of their neighborhood when I realized I didn’t get a picture of them, so I turned around and went back to snap this shot. Here is a list of people I neglected to photograph on this trip:

• Heath and Mary Beth in Oklahoma City
• Kevin, Michelle and Chris in Kansas City
• Cousin David in Los Angeles

The little mechanism in my brain that says “ooh grab the camera” is so attuned to the strange and unusual that I forget that my own friends need to be photographed for purposes of personal reflection and posterity. So I try to remember to do it.

It has come to my attention that “The Texas Panhandle” is the northern rectangular protrusion, rather than the pointy western protrusion. I had always assumed it to be the latter, given that, if one were to make a pan in the shape of Texas, one would probably prefer to grip it by the El Paso end rather than the blocky, cumbersome Dalhart end. But people don’t name state panhandles by application, as so few people even bother to make pans in the shape of states. So it’s the top part, the part I had been referring to as “The Texas Stovepipe.” I think that’s a better metaphor anyway, but then it only causes confusion.

On Friday I drove from Laramie to Dalhart, Texas. Dalhart is by far the smallest of my various destinations, with only 7,000 or so souls in town. My mother’s family lived there in the late 1950’s. My grandfather was a civil engineer who worked on a reservoir and park south of town, so there is a street named after him. I wanted to take a picture of the street sign, and I thought it would make a nice diversion into smalltown America.

I stayed the night in a motel, and ate breakfast at the 50-year old Sands Restaurant. I had the ultimate greasy-spoon diner breakfast of my life here. I could not believe how great the coffee was – I asked the waitress and she just said it was Cain’s Coffee (a restaurant supplier so generic I couldn’t find a website for them). So I’m forced to assume there is a rich, dark, chocolatey magic in their mugs and carafes. I dare even say it was the second best cup of coffee of my trip. And the hash browns were fluffy. Fluffy! The eggs and toast were great as well. I set off to explore the town and found an Alco. Much like my A&W experience in Oregon, this was a trip back in time. Alco in Harrison closed around 1992 I think. It even smelled the same! I could’ve written Proustian volumes of the memories this place triggered in me. Even the price tags were the same. I really wanted to find something in the toy department to buy just to have something with the price tag. I couldn’t find anything worth buying though, although I did find some bargains in the music bins – for $4 each I got Spies Like Us on DVD, the remastered Police albums Outlandos d’Amour and Reggatta de Blanc as well as a lesser-known gem, Traffic’s Low Spark of High Heeled Boys.

I set out in search of John Todd Drive, to no avail. I asked three people, including a cop, who informed me that I was essentially standing on it. He pointed me toward the street sign, and theorized that it had most likely been removed for re-painting. Had I not experienced the joys of Alco and The Sands breakfast, I would have been greatly dismayed at having driven 8 hours to find a blank sign frame.

Laughing quietly in the face of misfortune, I set out toward Amarillo on some very rural north Texas roads – the kind of lonesome stretches of highway where the telephone poles blur into a low sine wave over the long rolling hills, and the towns you pass through only have one cash-only gas station if they have one at all. I actually enjoyed this a bit more than the Interstate at Amarillo. From there to Oklahoma City you can trace the route of the old Route 66, in a far less romantic fashion. I took a picture of this leaning water tower, which I later discovered makes an appearance in Wikipedia’s Route 66 entry.

I arrived in Oklahoma City on Saturday evening to hang out with fellow Pointed Stick founder Heath and his wife Mary Beth. Oklahoma City’s street plan, it’s worth noting, is a marvelously convenient grid, but its freeways make no damn sense at all. On top of that, I got stuck in a Heller-ish limbo[1] wherein I could not get back on the freeway after accidentally exiting, so I went to down to the next on-ramp, which also prevented me from going the direction I wanted.

Today I’m in a coffee shop in Kansas City’s Westport district. I’m staying with my old high school chum Kevin, and hanging out with fellow HHS grad Michelle as well. I have to get back to Little Rock for Superflux rehearsals on Thursday (I’ll be playing my last gig with them in Stuttgart on the 24th), so I think I’m heading back to Arkansas tomorrow, stopping off in Harrison tomorrow night. That will conclude the larger portion of this trip, which will resume the weekend after Thanksgiving, when I set out for New York with various stops along the way.

1.) I apologize for making two literary-figure adjectives in one blog post, but seriously I-40 in southwest Oklahoma City was a damned Catch 22 for me around the Portland exit. Plus there was a dead cow blocking traffic. Click here for a funny bit of Heller trivia I just read.

For several days I pondered the prospect of making the 5 1/2 hour drive to Devils Tower. This is a distance greater than the trip from Little Rock to Dallas, and as I preferred not to stay the night in a motel, I would be going up and back in the same day. Fortunately, the magnificent desolation of Wyoming is infinitely more interesting than the featureless plains of Texas, or even the constant thick of Arkansas trees. I accepted the challenge and set out at 8AM.

The journey was mostly uneventful until I turned onto highway 59 outside Douglas. I cannot describe the magnitude of the roadkill, mostly rabbits in various states of decay, that I saw. In less than a mile, I counted more than 100 remains. For several miles, I could not drive 50 yards without seeing something dead. I noticed the lack of trees, and guessed that there was probably a lack of scavenging birds in this region to pick the roads clean. I’ve also heard that many animals choose to sleep on highways at night for the warmth the roads absorb during the day. And on roads so infrequently traveled, the animals are more likely to be taken by surprise. Not only was this somewhat traumatic to experience, I also was reminded of the scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind where the animals near Devils Tower have died as a result of the government coverup.

Fortunately the roadkill tapered off after a few miles. I did see plenty of live fauna along the way – mostly antelope, but also some bison and deer. I reached Devils Tower around 2PM. It was as freakishly magnetic as I had always imagined it to be. For awhile I just sat and stared at it. I went to a couple of different gift shops looking for souvenirs, and took pictures of some abandoned structures nearby[1]. I only stayed for about an hour. It is the geological equivalent of a question mark. Even geologists can’t quite agree about how it was formed, or why it is so rare. I get a peculiar enjoyment[2] out of shifts in my environment, particularly when something that is known for permanence changes – for example, when the full moon gets large in the early evening, or when clouds allow the sun’s outline to be made distinct at sunset, or even just unique cloud formations after a storm. Devils Tower is like that: it’s something that simply does not happen often, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen in life or books.

Not wanting to be tempted to stay very long, I didn’t pay the $10 to enter the park. I wanted to get as much daylight driving on the way back for fear of running into antelope on the roads at night. I got to see a spectacular sunset on the way back to Laramie. The sun is gone by 5:30PM up here, and I got back around 8PM.

1.) One building contained several documents: order forms from Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck, and canceled checks from the late 30’s and early 40’s.

2.) I think this enjoyment is the sense that I’m getting as close as one can on Earth to experiencing life on another planet.

I’ve been staying with my friend Heather Cox in Laramie, Wyoming, since late Saturday. Here are some fun facts about Wyoming:

• It is the least populated state in the nation. Yes, less people than Alaska.
• The license plates usually have only 5 characters, only one of which is a letter.
• The high winds in the southern part of the state have been known to blow down 18-wheelers[1].
• Along Interstate 80 there are numerous snow fences and road-closure barriers, as high winds and heavy snowfall will often close the route during the winter months.

Sunday we went for an easy hike, despite the insanely high winds. We parked some distance from the forest, so we had to walk back to the car across a barren field in what had to be 60mph winds. Had I been wearing a parachute, I would have easily achieved lift. That night we drove down to Ft. Collins, Colorado (about an hour’s drive), to see Old Crow Medicine Show who rock out un-ironically with the old-timey sounds.

Today I did laundry and read books. Semi-rambling blog entry on psychology and music courtesy of This Is Your Brain on Music coming soon.

1.) Or knock over mobile homes; an admittedly easier task.

I’m in a coffee shop east of Salt Lake City. I stayed the night with Matt and Lori (pictures soon, although I did upload a shot of Zoe and the last two days’ journey plus Halloween with Ben as a spot-on Dr. Strangelove), and am headed to Laramie, Wyoming, today.

A random observation I’ve been meaning to put down but keep forgetting. Los Angeles streets are a mess of Spanish mispronunciations:
La Cienega is “LASEE-a-na-ga” but should be “la-cie-a-NE-ga”
Sepulveda is “se-PUL-ve-da” not “se-pul-VE-da”
BUT…one important exception is Rodeo Drive. The denizens of that region wouldn’t dare pronounce it as “RO-de-o.”

I also neglected to mention an important warning about the Seattle Space Needle. In the path between the door and the ticket-takers, there’s a feisty man with a camera and a cheesy backdrop who will physically prevent you from moving forward by asking how many are in your group and cordoning off everyone behind you as he takes your picture. You pay later if you want to. This sort of sneak-attack capitalism irks me to no end, so I tried to scoot by with the group ahead of me and the man yelled at me, “SIR THERE IS A LINE!” Now, I know this guy’s job has to be rough, but he has to know how sh*tty he’s being to people. He really should just let them go. You can decline his advances, but you need to beware of him beforehand. So that’s why I want to make sure all three of you reading this know about him. Just in case you’re ever in Seattle. And I have to vent.

I had a great time on Thursday driving through Roslyn, Washington, where Northern Exposure was filmed. As a fan of the show, I had a great time eating lunch at The Brick[1] and shopping for gifts in Dr. Fleischman’s office.

Driving through eastern Oregon was quite dull, although occasionally the grass achieved a bright gold color that was really pretty. And Salt Lake City is a beautiful town, very well-planned. I climbed Ensign Peak up behind the capitol and you can see everything from up there.

1.) Turns out The Brick saloon is the oldest saloon in Washington state, built in 1889, with one of only two continuous-flow spittoons in the state. A rush of water runs under your feet at the bar for tobacco chewers to deposit their juice. Nifty yet gross.

Everyone needs to see Seattle in the Fall. I can see why the property values are so insane here. This may well be the most picturesque urban area I’ve ever seen. Trees are everywhere – uptown, downtown and all around. It almost makes you forget you’re in a major city. This town also seems to have the most book and music stores per capita of any major city. I bought David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day for $3, hardcover. I’ve had a hard time not buying bargain vinyl, just because I won’t have anywhere to put it. I did buy a DVD of the 1967 Stax/Volt Revue (Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Booker T. and the MGs, etc) live in Norway for $15, though.

The Science Fiction Museum and Experience Music Project are fantastic, and an absolute must for any fan of either. The SFM is mostly a display for Microsoft co-founder and world’s richest nerd Paul Allen to show off all the greatest nerd props and memorabilia he’s amassed (the actual Robby the Robot, Robot from Lost in Space, the captain’s chair from Star Trek, and hundreds of other original pieces of science fiction history. And next door is the Experience Music Project with dozens of historical guitars, including Clapton’s “Brownie” and some Jimi Hendrix strats. And at Emerald City guitars I saw a near mint 1955 strat on sale for $68,000.

And the coffee. Today I had not one but two of the greatest cups of coffee of my life. The first was at Bauhaus, the second at Verite Coffee/Royale Cupcakes. And great Irish pub food and tap Guinness at Fado (our waiter was originally from Little Rock! So weird).

The area of Fremont is where Heather and Ben live, and it’s appealing in a way similar to Bernal Heights in San Francisco – lots of great places to eat and shop, plus more cool little music stores and book stores. I really can’t decide how long to stay here.

From Wednesday to Friday I drove north on 101 from San Francisco to Seattle. The majority of my time was spent in Oregon, which was impressive but frustrating. Driving through northern California spoiled me completely; four lanes and very little traffic made for a glorious driving experience. Once the border to Oregon was crossed, however, the quality declined sharply. The majestic redwoods and ocean vistas gradually gave way to small, depressing little towns, bumpy two-lane roads with log trucks and local traffic. The road veers inland, hiding the ocean behind walls of trees, hills and dunes. I stayed the night at a motel in the neat little town of Port Orford, and had a good fish and chips dinner at The Crazy Norwegian. After that, though, the trip was frustratingly blah[1] until I diverted off the 101 from Pacific City to Tillamook. The roads remained crappy but the scenery and seclusion were unparalleled.

I took my time on that last stretch of road. It led back to 101, which itself greatly improved after Tillamook, when the road stops being an important route to anywhere big like Portland. I made my way up to Astoria and stayed the night there at The Lamplighter Inn. Astoria is an interesting little town – it’s built into a large hill, so there’s little room for big box stores. I needed to buy socks, and the lady at the front desk said I’d have to cross the bay back to Warrenton to do that. So the town’s geography has helped it maintain its picturesque look and feel, something not lost on Hollywood, as the town was used for exteriors on both Short Circuit and The Goonies, two of my favorite movies as a kid.

I made my way leisurely up to Seattle on Friday, diverting off the highway in a failed effort to get a good shot of Mt. St. Helens. The town of Longview offered a fine opportunity to see both Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier, but the viewpoint was accessible only to the uphill lanes, and I didn’t want to drive back up the hill. I did get a nice shot of Mt. Rainier from Highway 7 outside of Morton, though. Eventually I made it to Seattle. I had precise directions to Heather and Ben’s place on my laptop, but the battery ran down right as I reached downtown. I had assumed that I could just find a coffee shop and plug in to get the info back, but I could not for the life of me find a coffee shop! Ordinarily one would assume that not being able to find a coffee shop in Seattle is a failure roughly akin to not being able to find a hooker in Amsterdam, but Heather pointed out to me that downtown Seattle really doesn’t have many coffee shops; it’s the little neighborhoods around the city where they thrive. We had some very tasty Thai food and watched Tideland, which they agreed was a supremely f*cked up and fantastic movie.

1.) Although I did have the pleasure of eating at an honest-to-gosh A&W drive-in in Florence, with the whole hang-the-tray-on-your- window and drink-a-big-glass-mug-of-root-beer experience that I haven’t had since I was a very young child.