October 2004 Archives

Not to diss my adopted city, but there surely is no worse place to try to ride a bike. The combination of hideous pavement, narrow busy streets, ancient street irons (sewers) and well-scattered neighborhoods to be avoided makes it a fairly dreadful place to try to undertake a leisurely ride. Unfortunately, I'm over there every weekend for Nutcracker rehearsals, which give me a nice window of opportunity, but I get tired of the relatively safe and enjoyable ride to the Albany Rural Cemetery. So yesterday I thought I'd shoot out to the State Office Campus (an arrangement of loops within loops that makes for long, flat, uneventful riding, traffic-free on weekends), and then over to the SUNY campus and back. (Has ever there breathed a soul so black that it looked at SUNY Albany and said, "My god! What beauty!" I fell in love with the campus of Syracuse University the first time I ever visited there; I can't imagine anyone even falling in like with SUNY's campus.) But I disliked the thought of going back in on Madison or Washington, both nasty rides, so I cooked up a return route that included only temporary lapses of sanity: riding along Fuller Road, shooting through two malls, and then coming out way over on Sand Creek Road. Little lapse of memory trying to keep Albany-Shaker and Watervliet-Shaker roads straight, but it all came out in the end. Nice 32k on a gray but warm day, but I won't be doing it again. At the same time, the bike path is under desperately needed renovations (though I'm not convinced they're doing much of a job in places), so there's really not a great set of options.

Today, didn't really want to ride but felt the need to because it's nice and warm (62 degrees) though not pretty out. Unfortunately, left my tool bag behind, and since I don't want to end up stuck in a place like Watervliet with a broken spoke, flat tire or loose headset without any hope of repair, I bagged it and came home. The leaves are calling me, anyway, and I think I'll answer them with a lawnmower.

Yesterday was one of those perfect fall days -- the temp started around 35 in the morning, too cold for a quick morning ride, but the sun came out and it climbed up to the 50s. Work was caught up and the boss was out of cell range, so I actually skipped out early, raced home and got out for a bike ride. Always hard to figure out what to wear when the temperature's down, but I went with full-length tights, long-sleeve jersey, my new hurricane-proof Postal vest, cap and long gloves. Turned out to be perfect. The sun was still providing warmth, the roads were dry, and it was just a glorious day. And then -- I'm ashamed to admit -- someone else on a bike passed me.

I had already done about 20K and was taking it leisurely up Palmer Road when I passed another cyclist who had stopped to chat with a woman and her dog. He was just starting up again as I went by, so I poured on some steam to open up the distance between us. The Lion of Luther does not get passed. I thought I was pretty comfortably out there, 400 meters or more, but then on a long straight-away I could see him gaining in my mirror (I always ride with a mirror, despite the additional drag it creates, and the attendant risk of being passed that comes with that extra drag). Then I got to the T where Palmer Road ends, and a truck coming up Elliot Road made me come to a complete stop before I could make the turn. As I pushed down on the crank and fumbled with my pedal, the other cyclist blew right through the intersection and passed me. So now, of course, I had to chase him down, which I did fairly quickly, and then I passed him just as he was turning off onto a dirt road. My dignity was restored, and best of all, we didn't have to keep passing each other for another 10k, which would have been a lot of work.

I recognize that there are probably lots of recreational riders (forget racers) out there who go faster than I can. I've seen them on the Tour de Cure, in fact. But here in the hills of Rensselaer, I haven't seen any. And it is my solemn duty to not only pass anyone I see, but in fact to blow their doors off. 16-year-old kid, age-appropriate male competition, 70-year-old ladies -- all must be passed with extreme prejudice. I could see someone nearly a mile ahead, and the switch flips and I am instantly concerned with catching up to the person and passing him before he goes off down a side road and the chance to display my alpha male superiority is missed.

Spouse says something to the effect of, "So, how your ride goes is determined by your ability to pass someone you've never seen before, no idea of who they are or their abilities, you just have to pass them?" So, obviously, she gets it.

As I said, catastrophe averted, and I'm feeling much better after a night's sleep. This won't happen again.

A couple of thoughts:

• Boston fans, and there are plenty of them around here, are going to be insufferable for a while. In Massachusetts, they were using the big overhead traffic information signs to flash the scores of the games. I can understand their excitement, and applaud their inventiveness, although it presumes a driving population that is both a) interested and b) unable to spring for that extraordinarily expensive "AM radio option" in their cars. This is less necessary in regions that are accustomed to having their teams win more often than every 86 years or so.
• Watching St. Louis fans actually cry gave me a little frisson of pleasure, because the one time I had to visit St. Louis, I also wanted to cry. It is not my city, though it would be a hell of a lot more interesting if they laid that damn arch on its side and let skateboarders grind on it. The rental car I was given had no gasoline in the tank. The hotel I stayed in had an "art gallery" that sold clown paintings by comedian Red Skelton as if they were Warhols. All meals contained some level of beef, and at a dinner when a colleague requested a vegetarian entree, they took her plate back to the kitchen, scraped off the slab of beef, and returned it to her, a plate of limp green beans accompanied by beef juice.
• The Cardinals must have been under the impression this was one of the new "wild card golf" years, when the lowest score wins. That's next year.
• Thank god for the mute button, because I really couldn't take any more of the incredibly stupid commentary. I think "That was a real big-league play" was the straw that broke the camel's back. You might say that at a Little League game, Babe Ruth, maybe even the low minors. During the World Series? Yes, I think this would be the big leagues, wouldn't it? Is cycling the only sport that has even halfway intelligent commentary? (I'm blocking out the whole Al Trautwig experience.)

I had to stop in a very questionable neighborhood (questionable if you're a bike-riding man in spandex, anyway) in order to snap this sign. No idea what it once pointed to (a rubble-strewn parking lot, now), but I thought it was wonderful. Little bit of Photoshop to give it that gauzy look. I gave this one a number of treatments, which can be found, on days when it's working, at my fotolog. And, even more highly modified, in my semi-new logo, above.

Abandoned pointer sign Originally uploaded by carljohnson .

If you haven't ever whiled away a few hours looking at other people's grocery lists, you simply must. One recent example: "Floss picks / Oreo B Interdental Refills / Ketchup / Nuts / Bourbin".

I personally view use of a grocery list as a moral failing. Even if I write one out for the unusual things I may need to get on any given week, I will forget to take it with me, and the act of writing it down erases it from my brain, so the whole thing becomes an exercise in frustration. Instead, I rely on fate. If the grocery gods intend me to remember something, it will jump out at me from the shelf. If not, there's nothing I can do; it was the will of the gods.

Were I to write one, my list for the day would include " Fix leaky washing machine / check dryer lint / Nutcracker rehearsals / 30k ride / dinner at Marcia's." So, I'm off to do it!

Camper Van (and honestly, I'm much more of a Cracker fan) is getting by with a little help from their friends, access to e-mail, and a desperate plea to borrow instruments for their next gig in Detroit. Yes, they've put out an e-mail that says: The emergency shipment from Gibson is taking a little longer than expected.. Anyone heading to the show in Detroit at the Royal Oak Theatre and have a guitar? Anyone want free tickets to the Detroit show and "more"? ("more" hasnt been decided yet) Is it like one of the ones listed here: http://www.campervanbeethoven.com/gearstolen/ Can you do the band a special favor? Send two things to this email: gear@campervanbeethoven.com 1. a brief description of the guitar 2. your phone number (hopefully a cell number) After you do that... something will happen .. we're not quite sure just yet though. Someone in Toronto just happened to have a Charvel Surfcaster last night and that is the guitar David Lowery used ... Now, that's rock 'n' roll!

But it's not Cracker that I'm working on this weekend. I'm trying to get the best of the 9-disc collection "The Complete Stax/Volt Singles 1959-1968" onto my iPod, which takes a while, since I haven't listened to these in a while, so other than the no-brainers (Otis Redding, most of the Bar-Kays, some Rufus Thomas), I need to go through and listen to each one to see if I want it on my iPod. (Nice little script called "Needle Drop" does the trick, playing each song in a playlist for as long as I specify.) So far, through disc 4. Can your monkey do the dog?! My heart is chained and bound! Gee whiz it's Christmas!

Be forewarned, when I go into a Stax mood, I don't come out for a while.

First, according to my spam, Viagra now comes in a soft tab. Seems to me that "soft tab" is exactly the kind of thing Viagra is there to prevent, but it's in my mailbox so it must be true.

Also, incredibly, Camper Van Beethoven had all their gear stolen yesterday up in Montreal. Bienvenue a Montreal, guys!

Sometimes when I'm dancing through the aisles of the grocery store, oblivious to the world in my iPod-induced haze, an old lyric I've heard a million times will suddenly cut through the fog and present itself in stunning clarity. Tonight, there were two:

"All that professional lipstick pressed into an amateur kiss" Elvis Costello, Starting to Come to Me

"Things are getting weirder at the speed of light, Nightmare girl" Aimee Mann, Nightmare Girl

By the way (Nancy), I refuse to get sucked into the National League Championship Series. Though I did just watch Beltran steal all the way home, something I haven't seen in a very long time. But no, I'm going to bed tonight, dammit!

Apparently, the Yankees' strategy of tiring out the Red Sox by letting them score so much they'd become exhausted didn't really pan out. Couple that with the surprising revelation that pitching is an important part of the game and you have the most sensational flameout in playoff history. Now I'm going to end up having to watch the series in hopes of seeing that smug Johnny "Breck for Men" Damon get his comeuppance. Something about him just sets my teeth on edge. Grrrr.

The honeymoon is over when your bride serves you meatloaf. (Given that by the most liberal possible measure of time, the honeymoon was over at least 20 years ago, I am not surprised. I am, however, surprised that it took this long for her to resort to meatloaf.)

Yankees. Please. I need some sleep. So does Jorge. Please make this stop. I can understand the joy of killing off the Red Sox in the Bronx, but I really can't take any more of these 6 hour games. For me, the Yankees haven't been the same since the old days when I could listen to Phil Rizzutto get progressively drunker throughout the broadcast. "Izzn't that right, White?"

The reason I only update my genealogy site about every other year? It takes forever. More than 2200 pages, and every little customization I want to make just bogs down GoLive for the longest time, even on my speedy little G4. Plus the debugging, plus the uploading, and the timing out and the crashing . . . .

Looking up Lindenwald, the not-so-far-from-here home of Martin Van Buren, just to see if anything happens to be going on down that way today that would call for a drive through the country (like I need an excuse). And Google offers me ads for "Sexy LINDENWALD singles." This conjures images of bodices and button-shoes, but no matter. But is this the interactivity we were all really looking for?

For that matter, do spammers really think that anyone is going to open mail with mispellings, gibberish, pidgin English? What is the point to mail with subjects like "Everyone Ne^ed_This fYVQqZ" or "Re: [unpredictable] 63% off Vicodin. bondsman" I know this crap gets through the spam filter because it can't identify offending words (or, generally, any words, the way they spell), but people can't really open this crap, right? I mean, who would open a piece of mail called "hamilton blood doping"? Oh, wait, that's from the spouse. Free Tyler Hamilton!

1) Have you ever had to root around for a substitute baking pan because access to the one you really want is impeded by a mousetrap? a) Mistah, yo singin' to the choir! b)Let me ask Manfredo, our day chef c) Please don't talk to me again

2) You have poured two bottles of Nuclear Drano into your bathroom sink, attacked it with a plunger (in clear violation of label directions and, possibly, federal law), and even resorted to the snake. There's not so much as a gurgle, and now there's a foamy mass of Drano sitting in the sink. You: a) Call a plumber and enjoy a good "norge" joke for only $120 b) Consider whether a propane torch would bring anything to the party c) Explain to the checkout girl at the Rite-Aid that, indeed, Drano plus Haagen-Dazs does equal "partay!"

3) The entire house has been sick in shifts for days. The dishes have spread well beyond the kitchen, the only potential for a meal involves stretching your supply of chicken nuggets, and you are nearly out of garbage bags. The first adult to return to health should: a) Help watch "Survivor: Vanuatu" b) Take another shot at the goddamned sink c) Post a blog entry

My younger daughter is currently singing into the computer (that's how we do it now, because tape is just so 1972):

Just Steve McQueen Always has a radar sheen And we're gonna catch him tonight Just Steve McQueen Always needs a fast machine I'm gonna catch you tonight

Well, somebody gave me fever. Nasty, spiky, unpredictable fever, the kind that literally makes my teeth chatter in the night, two nights running. This isn't Miss Peggy Lee fever, this is more like The Cramps' cover (Songs The Lord Taught Us -- the BEST free album I ever got, which should say something about what my record connections were like way back when -- although this album is utterly classic), dark, slow, scary. This started with a little sickness last Thursday and Friday, and then Saturday and much of Sunday I felt fine -- biked a mess of miles both days, and went to a great three-year-old's birthday party out at Indian Ladder Farms (the party was supreme, but my god the people that flock to these places in the fall -- don't even get me started, that's another rant). That night I started to sink into misery, and thought maybe I'd let myself get a little cold during the day, but then the teeth chattering thing started (can you still get wind-up chattering teeth? Yes, you can.). I thought, "Oh, goodie, Playstation games for me!" but I didn't have the energy to hold the controller. I did finish both books I was working on, though. "The Nanny Diaries" was excellent, though I felt the ending could have been stronger (and will be if they make it a movie, I'm sure). The other book was "Rock 'n' Roll - An Unruly History," the potentially deadly companion volume to an old PBS history of rock (so imagine), but it turns out the book is excellent. Robert Palmer (not the dead singer) focuses on the few trendsetters and changepoints in rock, and it all comes together quite nicely.

Got the new discs by both Elvis and the Hives, but haven't really had a chance to give either more than a cursory listen. Suddenly have a jones for Jonathan Richman, years and years and years after a friend tried to turn me on to him (I'm like that -- music needs to come at the right time in my life, or it'll just have to wait). The Palmer book rekindled my interest in Stax/Volt music (always simmering just below the surface), so I need to pull out that 9-disc box set and make myself a couple of discs of the highlights. (One of the most impressive things about Palmer was that he understood the difference between Motown, which was really aimed at a white audience, and Stax, which was not. Many rock writers fall so far under the spell of Berry Gordy that they barely notice Stax. Stax led to funk, and Motown led to pure pop. Nothing wrong with that, but there's a real underappreciation for the importance of Stax.)

I'd just better stop now.

Thank you for the flowers and the book by Derrida But I must be getting back to dear Antarctica _{-- The Weakerthans, "Our Retired Explorer (Dines With Michel Foucault In Paris, 1961)}

The death of Jacques Derrida is nothing more than a reason for me to quote The Weakerthans, and more reason than I generally need. But it's interesting that in all the blather about deconstruction over the years -- the deep desire to apply it to things that it had no relationship to, and the deep desire to deny that it was true in any way -- the essential truth of its central concept has been missed. In simplest terms, it's that you can't trust the text -- but when applied to older texts, histories, language that is no longer in fashion, etc., deconstructionism is a needed reminder that we've lost the context in which these writings have been created, and to truly understand the text requires either huge scholarly effort (which itself can be suspect), or may be impossible. For instance, when reading Ben Franklin, can we really tell when his tongue is in his cheek? Do all those footnoted passages in Shakespeare mean what the footnoters tell us they mean? Even books and movies from the last century can leave us scratching our heads at times, wondering what the phrases meant.

But mostly it's a reason to quote The Weakerthans.

Hannah: "I forgot to get a plate." Me: "I forgot to get up early." Rebekah: "You've already GOT a girly!"

24/7. Don't ya wish this were your life?

But many of you are searching for "Marlon Brando and Wally Cox." I find that disturbing, or maybe the whole world knew and I didn't until Peter Fonda explained it all to me. At least one of you is searching for "teenage girl resting heart rate," and I'm proud to say I came up number one in an MSN search (though Google, as is its wont, brings up material probably much closer to what you were looking for). Someone is looking for "slumber party layout," which is an interesting thing to look up. Someone is looking for "Comstock family tragedy history murder," and while if you put all those words together you get to one of my pages, I can't shed any light on them as a single subject matter (and Googling it didn't provide me any clues). And, last but not least, a single search for "non nude fotolog." Which mine definitely is. I mean, really.

Last week, I biked to the graves of two (count 'em! two!) dead presidents who are buried in the Capital District -- Martin Van Buren and Chester Alan Arthur. For those who doubt the very possibility of such a feat, photographic evidence is provided.

So here it is Friday, which I've been wishing for since Monday. I never wanted to have a "waitin' for the weekend" life, but here it is. Having the girls in two different schools, and having Hannah in ballet academy has put nasty pressure on our logistics (which any parent with kids in sports would already be used to), and there was an entire week when I didn't eat supper at home (or at all), which I don't want to repeat. Add work pressure, travel, etc. to that and the last few weeks have been a real mess. It means that when I get home I just have no energy to do anything at all (other than play "Silent Hill 3" on the PS2, my current addiction. Very spooky.) It's getting cold and dark here, which doesn't help the mood, and I've been unable to get on my bike during the week. Yesterday I had a nasty cold, mostly through the worst part now. I stayed home and rested, which meant I only spent 3 hours on the cell phone. When the kids were coming home, I switched from Silent Hill to Jak & Daxter, which has vicious hermit crabs but no dismembering monsters.

And so here it is Friday, and all I want to do is sleep. That extra day on Monday (thanks, Chris!) isn't going to help much. I'd like to get out on the water over the weekend -- for a few years in adolescence, Columbus Day meant we built rafts and floated them on the Mohawk for as long as they would float. Given that we were making them from random bits of scrap lumber and had to use rocks instead of hammers, they didn't float all that long. But the spirit of the thing was right, and I'd still like to honor that, even though I'm now much less willing to get soaking wet on a chill October day than I once was.

Anybody else read "The Nanny Diaries"? It's a hoot. There are some scary people in the world, and some of them have lots and lots of money.

Anybody remember Ko-Rec-Type? I found this one sad little strip of it tucked into some old papers. I went through this stuff like mad in high school, but when I went off to college I was given the greatest of gifts: a Smith-Corona Coronamatic typewriter with a correction button -- it had two cartridges, one for ribbon, one for correction tape, and with the press of a button you could correct the last character automatically. Anything more than a one-letter mistake was still a tedious process. I still wish my word processor would ding as I approach the end of a line, just for old time's sake.

ko-rec-type mod Originally uploaded by carljohnson.

One of the several excellent gifts I received for my birthday was a complete surprise: The Essential Clash on DVD. F'in' rocks! It's stunning to me (and a little disappointing) that this stuff still sounds as fresh as it did 25 years ago, and it left me wondering where the rebellion against corporate muzak is today? In a world where Disney sticks its recording stars in its movies and plays its own "artists" on its radio stations, where the complete consolidation of the music/video/entertainment industry has put ClearChannels in nearly complete control of your music money, it seems like there oughta be SOME kind of rebellion against all this truly awful music they're foisting off on us. And nowadays it's easier than ever to get music onto a disc -- getting it played anywhere is another story, but it seems like it's time for another garage band revolution, 'cause as Joey said, "Lately it all sounds the same to me."

Anyway, the Clash DVD is great. I still remember the first time I heard "London Calling," while I was working in the Community Darkroom at Syracuse, 1980. If you don't know, developing and printing film is an unbelievably tedious and boring process, and I had a deal with the campus TV station by which I would develop their slides (E-6 processing, difficult to do by hand) in exchange for free film. E-6 was about 56 minutes in the dark, if I recall, and required you to keep the temperature around 100 degrees, which wasn't easy. So, you're not reading a magazing or doing your homework while processing slides. Luckily, at that time SU had an excellent, extremely eclectic radio station, WAER-FM, and that's what they played in the darkroom. And so there I was in the dark, listening to those amazing bass lines coming through over the low-end speakers, and I was just stunned at what I was hearing. I had already heard OF the song, but hadn't heard it yet, and it was amazing.

For some reason, my first copy of "London Calling" was a cassette tape I made from a copy of the LP borrowed from the public library, which I would have thought would be the last place to stock The Clash. There were a few skips on the record -- no matter that the tape is long gone, when listening to the CD, I still hear those skips in my head to this day.

WAER, by the way suffered an ignoble fate a few years later, when its faculty adviser decided that in order for students to get "real" programming experience, it needed to be a programmed radio station, and oddly enough this adviser, who was widely and well-known as a huge jazz fanatic, chose jazz as the format. The radio industry's aching need for a fresh annual crop of experienced jazz programmers is met to this day, and Syracuse remains one of the few sizeable college campuses without a real college radio station. (The other station, which then didn't reach most of the campus, plays pop crap, and always has.)

Couldn't be more pleased to report that the other morning I drove Rebekah in to school instead of standing out in the pouring rain waiting for the bus, and when we got to the school and I walked her to the door, we passed the sitting (not idling!) school buses with their doors open and she looked into one, looked back up at me, mimed holding a spray can in her hand, and said: "This is glue. Strong stuff." (So, letting them see "The Blues Brothers" was definitely worth it, even though there's now the chance that they'll think saying "I guess you're up shit creek" to a nun is the funniest thing in the world. In fact, it is.)