Sometimes a Great Notion

In this Ken Kesey novel there is a character by the name of Lee Stamper who is a failed English student from Yale. For reasons that stem beyond the pale, he can't pass his final semester, fails at trying to kill himself, and runs across the country to help his half-brother's logging company with vengeful intentions.

Anyways, here's a brief passage that got me a' thinkin':

"This, this same world. They all tried to do something with it. Dante did his best to build himself a hell because a hell presuppose a heaven. Baudelaire scarfed hashish and looked inside. Nothing there. Nothing but dreams and delusion. They all were driven by the need for something else. But when the drive was over, and the dreaming and the deluding worn out, they all ended up with the same dull old scene."

Harsh toke, Kesey. Of course, the novel's not over yet, so perhaps Lee finds another perspective on this. Or not. Nevertheless, I understand what he's getting at. I was an English Lit student, after all, and four years of reading novel after novel after bleeding novel can result in an angry revelation that it all blends together, it's all a part of the same bowl of chowder goin' down the hatch of some hungry feller.

I remember the winter break between semesters of my junior year of college. I picked up a new book at Border's or Barnes & Noble, delightfully brought it home, read five pages, and then never touched the damn thing again. Not that it was a bad book, whatever book it was. Just, suddenly, from somewhere, for some reason, I didn't want to read that book. So I tried with another, but to no avail. Once I was back in school the problem disappeared. I could tear through an assigned novel in a couple days to not sound like an idiot in the classroom. Then the semester was over and the problem returned. And so it dawned on me: I'd forgotten how to read outside of a classroom setting.

I finally rid myself of this horrible ailment once I moved here to Portland. I think the dramatic change in my life spurred my need to keep searching for new stories. Also the library system is pretty kickass.

That's what Lee Stamper did. He left Yale, where his life had become stale (tee-hee, that rhymes), and ran across the country to the Oregon coast. And who knows, maybe his passion will be renewed by the end of the novel.

Or not. I still have another two-hundred pages to go. If you know what happens don't spoil the end for me.

I Should've Been a Comedian (not really)

Been watching a lot of stand-up comedy lately. The Late Night gods of course: Conan, Letterman, Johnny Carson, Craig Ferguson, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Leno. And of course the old cacahe of comedians that make it onto their shows, like Don Rickles, Jacky Gleeson, Bob Newhart, Bob Hope, Steve Martin, Rodney Dangerfield, and so forth.

There are too many funny people out there. And it reminds me of what I once wanted to be, when I was much younger. I even did a year of drama in high school, and received some warm reviews (I could do a pretty good impression of Professor Frink/Jerry Louis).

Anyways, all the watching and laughing reminded me of the important elements of comedy and how it relates to story-telling. The ability to create humor is entirely the ability to command MOVEMENT and FOCUS. It is a matter of timing. It is a matter of precision. It is a matter of direction and misdirection.

Of course, getting too serious and cerebral about comedy, strangely, makes it un-funny. So I'm stopping here.

The Mars Volta: Octahedron

I've been a fan of The Mars Volta for years. Since their first recording, Tremulant EP, made its way through the hands of indie kids still heartbroken from the death of At The Drive-In. Since that three song recording, they have recorded five albums, each one strikingly different from the last, each one with a significant impact.

De-Loused in the Comatorium rocketed them into the music world's face with an album no one expected and amazed everyone. Frances the Mute gave me what might have been auditory orgasms. Amputechture deconstructed the flow and presentation of an album, making track numbering useless. And Bedlam in Goliath was an unceasing torrent of energy and spiritual fervor.

The band's new album, Octahedron, is a departure from their past albums, as always. But in a way I wasn't expecting. Their first four albums were all musical achievements. Monuments, I dare say. Conceptually, musically, energetically, and structurally. Octahedron is not.

That's not to say I think it's a bad album. I still think it is a great album. The Mars Volta makes music unlike anyone else today, and Octahedron is not an exception to that rule. What I mean is, unlike their first four albums, The Mars Volta simply made a rock album.

They didn't try to top themselves. They didn't try to do anything different, anything more fantastic or amazing or mindblowing than they've done before. In other words, they made the anti-Mars Volta album, like when a punk rocker wears a tuxedo but still sports a mohawk.

To quote Cedric, the vocalist, "[We] wanted to make the opposite of all the records we've done. All along we've threatened people that we'd make a pop record, and now we have."

They made this album quickly, with smaller staff, and without as much conceptual gusto. And they did this intentionally, with seemingly no effort. And it's still fucking amazing.

Those bastards.

Newest Nine Inch Nails: the Best Things in Life are Free

Not what I was expecting from the new Nine Inch Nails album, The Split, but for free I'll love any Nine Inch Nails album. I know this is a year after its release, but whatever. I hadn't gotten around to downloading it until now.

Bottom line: it's a rockin' album, it's not excessive, it's accessible, and did I mention it's free? Download it from their website.

Snapshots: Harrisonburg, VA

For five years I lived in Harrisonburg, VA. Four of those years I was in college. Two of those years I lived in a dormitory, and spent the summers at my parents' house. Three of those years I lived in an apartment in the small center of the town, in Court Square. Added up, I remember a lot over those years. I never remember feeling at home, but it was close at times. Especially in that apartment.

The town was divided. Once it had been a bustling rural city in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, the agricultural staple of Virginia. Once it had been prominent, astride with southern culture, valley culture, and the local college was on the rise. And then a highway was laid, and a mall was built. Within months the downtown business center was a ghost town.

But that's history.

It's hard to put down on paper what I think of when I think of Harrisonburg, because so much comes to mind. But those experiences can be, I supposed, divided into three areas: college, the apartment, and bikes.

College. A journey. A confusing, odd, unreal journey. An isolated and idealistic world unto itself where thousands of newly liberated minors are quarentined into sterilized buildings to let them bleed their hormones dry and exhaust their newfound lack of boundries. It's like when puppies are finally let out of the yard without a leash: First they run as far as they can. Then they dry-hump everything they can, then they eat everything they can, then they puke, then they can't remember where they came from and start whimpering and lick themselves.

I remember isolating myself. Hating myself. Avoiding other people. Eventually I reached room temprature. I warmed to my surroundings. I let people in, and I let myself into people.

The apartment. Cheap, old, large, stretching with hallways, and centrified. Two coffee shops, five bars, even more restaurants, a bike shop, all within two blocks, and less than a mile to school, a serene commute through the neighborhoods. A back deck that looked over the town, two floors, two living rooms, and windows the looked over the town.

Filled with beer, bikes, parties, pizza, friends, laughter, a few brawls, some pints of blood, Irish car bombs, newspaper hats, disgusting couches, stained-glass windows, cans of Sparks, summer barbeques, beer stains, water bugs, at least one adorable mouse, broken televisions, broken glass, deck chairs, holes in the drywall, bad movies, and hazy memories.

Kurt was arrested at my birthday party for hopping the fence of the back deck and passing out on the roof of the next-door building. Ryan was nearly evicted for shooting bottle rockets out the window. Kyle walked on the glass of his broken window. Andy and Dan threw shoes through Kyle's window when they locked themselves out. I received a gash on my forehead from a flying magazine. I wrestled Kyle and ripped apart a coffee table. Justin blacked out and trashed our thirteen-inch television. Some idiot named Cassanova (no joke) was london-bridged and smashed his head on the floor, got pissed off, tried to start a fight, and smashed his bike into the glass shelves. I slept on a mattress on the floor, and had a window that looked at the air conditioner. We let Aaron, Kyle's younger brother, and his entire freshman hall party there when we were all gone and the cops showed up.

Bikes. Where I learned to love the motion and the use of bikes. They took me to school every day. They took me around town. They took me into the mountains. They brought together a community of people that were off, brutally honest, and hungry for fun, for adventure, for a thrill. They brought us to the mountains, to the trails that needed improvement and to the ones that needed us to carve them. The bike community was solid, noticed, and fun. United by a love for every pedal-stroke, for self-propelled momentum. "You ride a bike?! You have to come get drunk with us!!" It was a brotherhood.

And I left.

All good things come to an end, I told myself. It's not getting any better here for me, I told myself. I know I was right. But sometimes, I wonder...

Snapshots: Ireland (Dublin, Galway, Killarney, Cork)

Dublin. The Euro-fied metropolis of the Republic of Ireland. Stately, historic, costly, and cultured. It was cloudy and wet, yet the city was fast-paced, and personal. I met more people from other parts of Europe than from Ireland. Crass British who loved to tease American women, and Swedish folks who talked too close.

Dimly lit pubs with wooden bars and metallic taps serving the tastiest beer I've ever had. Cobble-stone streets by the quays, pedestrian bridges that stretched over the River Liffey.

Trinity campus was the heart of the city. Moss-covered buildings and ancient cars. A pub on campus at the end of the cricket green, and steps to sit on and watch the clouds move over the city. The library was more like a museum, and the bookstore was more like a library.

Pints of Guiness, Smithwicks, and shots of whiskey. World Cup matches in every pub, store, and restaurant. The words of James Joyce etched onto every wall, every statue, every sidewalk. History present and scorned. A post office as a living memorial, the columns still riddled with bullet holes. Cemeteries championed for grave robbing. Syringes discarded behind shrubs.

And of course, so much Fish 'n Chips I nearly puked.


Galway. Calm, friendly, and humble. The sun was out constantly. Street performers from across the world played banjo songs outside of the pubs and restaurants. The River Corrib gleamed in the sunlight and allowed fishermen to walk the water by the bridge.

I spent five hours and forty Euro at a crowded pub watching the World Cup Final, then stumbling through the streets to watch banjo players, drum circles with Brazilians dancing, a fan painted up as the Hulk, and then Italians parading through the Market streets. I stumbled the mile home, weaving through the streets, then woods, then campus. I helped a friend walk back home after he made a failing attempt to match his 21st birthday in drinks. I sang "Danny Boy" with a student from Donegal who loved American accents. I spent fifteen Euro on a glass of whiskey. I interviewed Galway residents about Wal-Mart, watched a friend dance with the Mayor's wife, and played soccer with Italian high-schoolers.



The Aran Islands. Killarney. Cork. Archaic geographic and tectonic marvels, all so fucking green. Catholic tombs and churches and cemetaries almost every footstep. Stone walls weaving through the green hills, grass stretching tall and tossing in the wind. Rivers and lakes carve through the rocks, isolated and clean. I drank water directly from a lake in Killarney. Walked hot, melting asphalt through a valley to the a small fishing boat with a motor and an elderly man wrinkled from the sun. I biked from end to end of Innish Moore. I rode a ferris wheel in downtown Killarney.

The Blarney Stone was a joke. The County Cork was gravenly serious. The River Lee reminded me of Pittsburgh. Cork accents were harsher, more real. The streetlights dissolved all color. I carried friends back home. I watched others stumble amidst their own fluids.

A country so fucking green. Brazen and friendly.

Snapshots: Richmond, VA

In Richmond, the colonial ghosts linger. The "southern pride" and heritage remain in the architecture, in the cobblestone streets, in the caste-iron statues emblazoned to Confederate heroes. Yet no one speaks it; it just hovers in an ugly, pungent scent in the back of your throat.

Basement shows with black shirts and bottles of malt liquor. Mattresses against the windows to bar the sound. Cigarette smoke and a single light bulb. Bands that play dirty and fast and angry, wading through the humidity and shambles. Houses with uncurling linoleum floors and beer stains, and strangers on couches brought in from the streets.

I spent a New Years there I don't remember. A number of weekends wandering the dark streets. Always on couches, hungover, disgusted. Waking up in places I don't remember. Playing house-shows with bands I never listened to. Trying to run from the cigarette smoke. Eating breakfast at diners in Carytown. Buying beer in Oregon Hill. Hipster parties in The Fan.

Punks, hippies, metal-heads, scenesters, crusties, drug addicts, drunkards, college dropouts. They all blur together. Youth disgusted and energetic yet spiraling inward with anger and misdirection.

No direction.

Snapshots: Portland, OR

Sometimes everything swarming around us in abstract splendor comes together. Or our minds, the obsessive pattern-seeking machines they are, make it appear so. Nevertheless, I think reading Local by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly put a metaphorical icing on the cake. At least in my head.

The last couple days I've been going over and over everywhere I've been in my still short life and putting little rubber stamps on everything. I'm thinking in postcards; in snapshots and tiny segments of larger stories that have yet to reveal themselves in entirety.

So, while I try to sort this out here are some snapshots of Portland, OR:



Trees stretch upward. Cityscape embedded into hillsides. Tattoo sleeves and cut-off shorts. Bike taxis, bike ice-cream, bike lanes, bike movies, bike organizations, bike culture so big and embracing it's abrasive and cliquish. Clear skies, low clouds that ripple like water on a lake. Cool nights, bright lights, dark taverns, smoky pockets, thick beer, strong coffee.

The first burrito I had I couldn't finish. Both fourth of July's I saw from a distance. Strip clubs without cover charges, basement shows with kids that can't dance, dance clubs with people that dance to themselves. Photo booths with five housemates. A house with too many people sleeping on the couch. An apartment filled with light and open towards a bustling street, but solitary and entrapping within.

A city filled with transients, with energy, with optimism, with heads in the clouds, with people fixated on an edge that doesn't exist. A city unlike any other; in conflict with itself.

Damn Elephants...

From Sheharzad Arshad. Very reminiscent of Stampy the elephant from The Simpsons. Ah, memories.