My fourth album pick was Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles. They have other albums that I like more, but this one (and possibly Sgt. Pepper’s) had the biggest effect on me growing up.
We saw another house yesterday that was near our current temp place and it was nice, but it was missing a few things to make it exactly right. I think we’re zeroing in on what we want, and hopefully one of the next three we have lined up to see by Saturday morning will be the lucky property. It must be close to cheap beef jerky, preferably near a teriyaki joint, and very loud and busy at night. Wait – we’re already there!
I think this is the third song from Clientele’s “Suburban Light” album that I have posted on this blog (my next album pick continuing the series). I bought that album around 2000 and still listen to it quite a bit.
I (temporarily) live across the street from this place. In fact, this photo could have been taken from my living room window. This must be an old photo because Toshio’s Teriyaki Restaurant has a different sign now. I went to both of those places on the same lunch hour a few days ago. I got a bunch of rock-bottom-priced beef jerky and then at Toshio’s I got the pork/chicken combo. My daughter got an Oh Boy Oberto paper hat that she proudly wore to my embarrassment, and Toshio’s turned out to be a religious place that says “prayer” and “living water” are free, everything else on the menu must be paid for. They had “God Bless” written in 10 different Asian languages on a white board. These are not the two eateries you want to spend time at if you have an afternoon to kill in Seattle, but it was an interesting lunch hour.
Also, Oberto has flowers planted in a way that spell “Oh Boy” which is all wrong. But the beef jerky was oh so right.
I’ll post twice today to start this week off right. Things have been crazy with trying to find a new place while living in a temporary furnished condo and working from home and getting to know our neighborhood. But we’re getting there, slowly but surely. I think we’ll be living somewhere around the Central District/Beacon Hill in the next couple of weeks. I am hoping to post once a day again going forward …
I hardly ever answer those “Pick your favorite albums” type things that come through on Facebook, but I did do one today, in which you had to pick 15 albums in under 15 minutes that affected you or will stick with you permanently. Of course, #1 for me was “The Head on The Door” by The Cure (it was either that, Disintegration, 17 Seconds, or Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me), so here is the song “Push” from The Cure in Orange video from that album.
I made it to Seattle, and it’s almost as hot here as it was in Durham (I think I just missed a major rainy patch, so this is nice).
The trip out here was great. Packing up our shit and getting rid of a lot of belongings that couldn’t fit into our moving pod was not any fun at all, but we somehow got through it and left last Sunday. We left later in the day than we planned, but were able to get to Knoxville, TN. The next day we had lunch in Nashville with a friend of Kyla’s who was very nice and showed us a bit around the area we were in, and then we went to Memphis. We spent a few hours on Beale St. watching kids do back flips for money (literally) and washed up blues musicians perform for tourists like ourselves. We made it to Little Rock, Arkansas that night.
After visiting Little Rock’s farmer’s market the next morning, we made it to Dallas in the afternoon and visited my brother and his family. It went too fast, and I hope we can get out there to visit again.
We made it to Albuquerque the next day via some small highway that goes from Denton to Roswell (and almost ran out of gas on the way). I saw my cousins Mark and Lisa and my friends Nick, Shenoah, Lisa, and Kathy. I ate red chile carne adovada at a restaurant called Maria and Tito’s that blew me away in its perfectness.
We drove through Durango, CO and Salt Lake City, UT, and then on to Boise and Pendleton, OR. We stayed at a great little bed and breakfast there that looked like a regular motel on the outside but was cozy and nice on the inside.
We then ate at the Hedge House and Pix Patisserie in Portland, OR and ended up in Seattle on Sunday evening. Our rental condo is very nice and the weather is HOT, which is crazy. So it has been a good drive and transition back to the PNW, and I missed it a lot more than I thought. I’m very glad to be back, although I miss Durham in many ways, too. Now I hope to see some old friends out here in the next few days. And this will be the last grunge posting for a long time, I hope.
This is my very first youtube video. There may be more later.
lo-budge, Buh-bLAM and I were in Spain the summer of 1993 at lo-budge’s summer castle. lo-budge, his brother and I were shooting billiards when this guy Ace showed up to teach us a thing or two on how to do it.
Congrats, lo-budge, on your move to Seattle. We’ll keep posted on this site to follow your adventures in your new home town.
No video today – I just wanted to post that today was my last day at work and now we’re packing like crazy to move away by Sunday. My next post should be from either Nashville or Dallas, or maybe not until mid-week in Albuquerque. But I’ll try to post something before we get to Seattle. I can’t believe this weekend is already here. It seemed so far away a few months ago.
This skate park in Durham opened up less than a year ago. It’s near downtown across from a police sub station and near the Farmer’s Market. At first I thought a skate park across from a police station would make it just a daily scene of arrests, but the other day (I pass it on the way home from work every evening) I saw a cop help bandage up a 12 year old who had wiped out, and I never see any cops hassling anybody. It’s a nice park and fun to watch everybody at, and Simone is now very aware of what skateboarders are. Here’s hoping that she someday skates herself! I still have my Powell Peralta Mike Saiz mini which will be her first board, unlike my first shitty board: a Nash Executioner (one step below the Kamikaze, but I remember it fondly).
This is a place I try to eat at whenever I get the chance. They often park their truck where I work during the week days, and at weekends they often show up in the parking lot of the best beer store in this state, if not the nation, called Sam’s Blue Light (also called Sam’s Quik Stop).
Don’t let their shitty website fool you. Read the comments about it here, or check out their MySpace page. Just recently I was there and this guy gave me a free bottle of Stout to thank me for my business over the years after I told him I was leaving to Seattle this weekend. I told him that for all the great beers the PNW has, there is no beer store quite like this in that area. It was always nice (three times a week or so) to stop in and listen to the Clerks style employees blast heavy metal music from a boom box and talk about new beers they were receiving and having tastings for.
Fullsteam Brewery opens this weekend in Durham. Kyla and I have been eagerly awaiting the opening, which was originally supposed to happen back in May, but got pushed back. I’m going to have to pick up some of their beers to bring to Seattle. I did get to try some of them recently when a bar near where I work hosted some of their kegs for people to try for the first time, and it was great.
I haven’t had a beard ever since I left Portland, where I had a pretty decent one, so I stopped shaving last Friday and should have a good one by the time I get to Seattle. It may go away if I schedule my third interview for a job I applied for to be there in person, instead of from on the road.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops are Durham-based and are pretty well-known nationally (in the bluegrass and old-time string band genre, and even outside of it). They have performed many times in the area where I work, which hosts summertime concerts on the grass. But alas, I have never seen them perform. I thought this video was interesting in covering what they chose to call their album as well as their discussions of the rarity of black country musicians.
And, at long last, the oil spill meter is coming off the page today. I’m not convinced that oil isn’t seeping from the sea floor, and the additional news that Matt Simmons died today seems a little suspicious to me as he was a major critic of BP throughout this ordeal and led many to think that the main leak has been hidden from sight and the full enormity of this catastrophe has not been made public yet. But I’ll try to quit talking about it here until any major new info is found out about it.
Mark Trail, 9/2/10 You know, I was about to make fun of the idea that a caged hunt of semi-tame exotic animals could be this hideous, unpleasant man’s ticket to the governorship, but then I reflected on the mysterious ways in which the government works in the Mark Trail universe. This, after all, is a […]
Does a bear make mischief in the woods? Slylock Fox, 9/1/10 It doesn’t surprise me to see this bear casually destroying a nice sign that a thoughtful forest ranger put up. Bears are a sinister menace who will stop at nothing to lure humans into feeding them … with human flesh. What does sadden me […]
Mary Worth, 8/31/10 Wow, just when you think it would be physically impossible for the current Mary Worth storyline to be packed with more twists and turns — BAM! Dr. Mike’s father expires mere hours after their reconciliation! My guess is that Lonnie, feeling his liver dying inside him, orchestrated the whole sequence so […]
OK, your COTW in a moment, but first, thanks to many faithful readers for alerting me to the existence of the Jersey Circus, which, yes, it’s pretty much exactly what you think it is. Also! Confidential to elitist iPad users! If you read this site on your elitist iPad, you have probably noticed to this point […]
Crock, 8/30/10 Many comic strips set theoretically in some specific time and place often end up wandering afield from that time and place, either for humorous effect or just out of sheer forgetfulness. Thus, while the action in Crock once was meant to be understood as taking place in North Africa under French colonial rule, […]
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