The Obligatory

Drove up to the Angeles National Forest early this morning for an extended hike to the Twin Peaks.

Unfortunately, setting my alarm clock on Sunday morning did me little good. A bike race blocked the most direct route to the Forest, detouring me into the sprawling freeway maze of downtown L.A. I got spit out in Pasadena which, while a very picturesque city, does not have the best street signs in the world. Finally, due to missing signs in the actual Forest itself, it took me almost two and a half hours to get to the trailhead ... which is just over 50 miles from my apartment.

But all was forgotten when I stepped out of the car. Warm weather, the scent of cedar all around me, and clear skies ... at least above the 'marine layer,' anyway. Just a few minutes onto the trail, and I was surrounded by giant trees like these:



I crossed a few small mountain streams and pressed on, and was soon greeted by an odd sight - snow.



But Casey, you may say, didn't you just say it was warm? And isn't it May already? Well, yes. But it was also almost 7000 feet above sea level, and it snows up there for a long, long time. There were several stretches where snow covered the trail, too. It wasn't too bad, but as it was warm, the snow was the slushy, slippery kind ... which doesn't make for easy walking.

Due to a late start and me looking in the wrong spot for the Twin Peaks trail (I really do have to get a pedometer. Direction I know. Distance, not so much), I skipped on the Twin Peaks trail and instead opted for Waterman Mountain's summit. And now that I can find the Peaks trail in a reasonable amount of time, I'll tackle it when I don't waste hours on the drive in.

The views weren't particularly spectacular, but the surrounding scenery was fantastic. And, aside from birds, deer, and a few swarms of gnats, totally silent. The kind of total, peaceful silence that is absolutely impossible to achieve anywhere remotely near civilization. I love the white noise of a good waterfall or crashing surf as much as the next guy, but sometimes you just need that quiet.



... as always, more pics on Flickr.

Labels: hiking

Nintendo Wii? What the fuck?

Worst. Name. Ever.

Yeah, I'll still get one, but I'm buying it online. I'm not going into a store and asking where all the Wii's are.

Good thing I got my new Mental Floss in the mail today. I'll have SOMETHING smart to read.

I went to San Diego on Sunday for San Diego Earth Works, a giant Earth Day celebration at Balboa Park. It's billed as "the world's largest environmental fair," and it was pretty freakin' huge. Lots and lots of people, lots and lots of dogs, and lots and lots of great vegetarian food. Of course, I was instinctively drawn toward the apple cider area.



The festival had a great mix of new green tech demos, environmental action groups, foods, musicians, and pretty much just a giant mix of great things. One highlight was a collection of green cars. Some of them were retro-space-age looking biodiesels, others user-created hybrids. The U.S. Navy was showing off a fully hydrogen-cell based car, but by far the coolest car on site was a consumer model 2005 Honda Insight, slightly modded ... to get a mind-blowing 87 miles per gallon.



The owner of the car added a few more electric batteries, some ultra-aerodynamic paint, and removed his side mirrors - replacing them instead with cameras he could control from inside the car. The end result is a normal-looking consumer quality car that can drive from Los Angeles to Seattle on a single tank of gas. And this is just one guy who did this on his own. The technology is here. Just imagine if auto companies started actually manufacturing cars like this. Those $4/gallon gas prices wouldn't seem so bad, would they?

Of course, this being such a large festival, there were greens of all stripes - from the California State Park System and the Sierra Club to naked campers, Scientologists (huh?), and back-to-earth agrarian collectives. Drum Circle Hippies and, in designated "protest" areas, Born-Agains and anti-abortion protesters.

For the record, the people I talked most to were the California State Park rangers and the guys who sold the awesome apple cider ... who, as it turned out, were a back-to-earth agrarian collective. Go figure.

After hangin' out there for a few hours, I headed to the Cabrillo National Monument for a little bit of light hiking and some maritime history. It also had some pretty sweet views of the city, and down the coast all the way into Mexico.



The Cabrillo Monument is also notable for having this in the gift shop.



Now y'all know what to get me for my birthday.

OK, not really. But still ... pretty awesome.

Check out a few more pics at Flickr.

Labels: travel

I should probably mention that I spent Saturday night at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles for my friend Sean's wedding. The ceremony was great, the hotel was beautiful, and when the videographer came over to me to ask me to wish the new couple well, I'm 99% sure I included praise for the architecture of the ballroom in the toast.

That's just how I roll.

Shoutout to Table 15, which included myself, Kevin, Luis, Scott, and the rabbi - who was amazing. Entertaining both during the service and at the table, willing to talk spirituality and Benny Hill with equal passion.

Best part of the night, aside from the beautiful wedding, was joining in with three other nerds dressing up in suits and really enjoying it. Luis has a few pics up on his site, but here's one you'll enjoy for now:

"Garden Ruin" is one of, if not THE most anticipated releases of the year for me ... for the first half of 2006, probably. It's Calexico's first full-length album since 2003's "Feast of Wire," and they had a few interesting musical developments in the meantime.

2004 saw the "Convinct Pool" EP, with Calexico nearly perfecting their southwestern orchestral sound on a tight group of covers and originals. It was nothing revolutionary, but it had everything great about Calexico - giant, dry percussion, twangy guitars, nearly-whispered vocals, and joyous bursts of mariachi horns.

2005's split EP with Iron & Wine - "In the Reins" - saw some real growth with the band, and it was a great opportunity to watch two artists truly influence each other. Iron & Wine loosened up and started rockin' out a bit more, while Calexico sharpened their songwriting and performance. Which is where we pick up "Garden Ruin."


It's a tough first listen for Calexico fans. Gone are the lazy, cinematic instrumental desert landscape songs. Gone is the wild experimentation that found the band jumping from mariachi to folk to dub within three songs. Gone is the sparse, echo-y production. Hell, even the mariachi horns are toned down. Where's our Calexico?

The first song, "Cruel," opens with a plucked acoustic guitar that sounds like classic Calexico, but when Joey Burns starts singing, you notice his vocals are up in the mix. Way, way more than any Calexico song has before. "Cruel" is a great song, but it sounds more like a straight ahead alt-country rock song with some slight Calexico touches. When the horns enter, they sound more like Beulah than the Tuscon desert-rock band we fell in love with in the first place.

Then comes "Yours and Mine," an overly hushed country-ish ballad. It is completely unremarkable.

I never, ever thought I would think a Calexico song unremarkable, but it is. Instead of highlighting an interesting lyric or arrangement, here the stripped down production highlights the band trying too hard to sound focused or mature. For some reason, the same thing happened when I didn't like the second song on "At War With the Mystics" - I started LOOKING for faults.

Thankfully, it is very difficult to find any with the rest of the album. Once you accept that Calexico is refining their sound, you can enjoy the light brushstrokes they use to paint what - at first - sound like standard folk-rock songs. You'll pick up a slide guitar buried in the mix ... or a touch of flamenco in the background. It makes listening a rewarding experience.

And if you're not down with that, you can at least appreciate that this is the most the band has ever rocked on record before. "Cruel" hints at it, with a billowing string section, but songs like "Letter to Bowie Knife" and "Deep Down" absolutely explode with sound and driving rhythm guitar. The final song, "All Systems Red," starts with a simple acoustic guitar and burns, slowly, to an amazing crescendo to close out the album.

In between, you get to hear the band's unique take on low-key downers; bouncy, slick singer-songwriter; spiced rock; and weird minor-key French ramblings. "Roxa," one of the best songs on here, sounds the most like old Calexico - a dark, sinister duet with verses in Spanish and English and great vocal harmonies.

While at first listen, I was put off by the band's adjusted, focused sound, by the final notes, I had accepted the new direction and really found myself enjoying it. When it was done, all I could ask myself was, "I wonder what they'll do next."

Then I immediately went back to track one and listened the whole way through again.

In One Sentence: Polished, sharp, progressive alt-country-southwestern-folk. Wow. Lots of hyphens. Must be Calexico.

Final Word: A few minor missteps, but a worthy addition to your CD rack.

My buddy Luis, who you probably know as the Intrepid Animator of Attack of the Show ... or perhaps from his magical performances as "Benny" or "Home Key Man," got himself a little web project.

To inspire himself, or keep busy, or whatever, he's decided to paint one picture a day. And of course, being the talented artiste he is, they're pretty fancy.



So go hit up his site. It's a nice way to get your digital art groove on.

Another Sunday, another hike. This time, back to Sandstone Peak / Moshe Mikwa, and ... with other people!

In an effort to placate my mother, who spends every Sunday telling me how I'm going to get mauled by a mountain lion or killed by some homeless street crazy ... who managed to hike miles into the wilderness on the sheer chance of attacking a hiker ... I picked up two friends from work.

It was Albert and Anthony's first time on the trail, and Anthony took all the pics here. Nice hike, even though it was a bit cloudy. The visibility from the Peak was great, though. We could see all the way from Santa Barbara, down to Catalina and Palos Verdes - with all the Channel Islands off the coast. My favorite part, though, was this very, very friendly Australian Shepherd who'd climbed to the top with her owner.


Dogs know when 'dog people' are around, and this one climbed over to me as soon as I made eye contact ... right before practically climbing into my lap. For a guy who misses his own dog and only gets to see him once or twice a year, it was a great Easter treat. Far better than even Cadbury Eggs.

But those are nice, too.

Labels: hiking

to all my fellow New Englanders.



Just be sure to also be historically accurate and remember the battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19th.

I swung by the LACMA last weekend, and found it to be even more rockin' than it usually is.

The museum had a special gallery open to showcase the broad range of gifts they've received from donors for their 40th anniversary, and they also had five huge Gustav Klimt paintings - freshly returned to their rightful owner after being seized by the Nazis and tied up in Austrian courts since the end of WW2.


You've probably seen "The Kiss," before, at least in a high school history book. The weird neck, the golden patterns, etc. Personally, it never did anything for me, but seeing some of Klimt's other works up close, it's completely understandable why people go crazy for the guy. The patterns are incredibly intricate, the vibrance immediate. The flecks of gold in the paintings shine with a brilliance that is impossible to see in any photograph.

It's also fun to think what these early 20th century Austrian society ladies thought when they commissioned portraits and received these bizarro amalgamations of mosaics, Greek pottery designs, Egyptian heiroglyphics and Byzantine religious icons.

Of course, if you're into more modern stuff, it is defintely in your interest to see "You Only Live 25 Times," a multiple room site-specific installation by French artists Petra Mrzyk and Jean-François Moriceau. Basically, they raided the LACMA archives for 19th century satirical/pornographic woodcuts by Félicien Rops and painted a Bosch-meets-Gilliam-meets-1970s comics mural that connects everything together.

It's also very, very funny.



The Klimt exhibit runs through June 30th. "You Only Live Twice" runs through June 4th.

An attempt to talk about three of my favorite beers in under 30 seconds, courtesy of Mr. Pereira's fancy camcorder-phone.

If you're interested and wanted a bit more info on these beers than my unrehearsed 30 seconds of alloted time could provide, here ya go.

- Rogue Smoke Ale: German beer from smoked malts. A thick ale with subtle smoke flavor that lingers. If you want something a bit spicier, I recommend the Rogue Chipotle Ale, which is pretty much the Smoke Ale with roasted chipotles infused in.

- Rogue Chocolate Stout: A wonderfully thick, rich chocolate stout. Not as rich as a Guinness, but with a more pure chocolate flavor. Actually leaves a chocolate residue in the glass when you're done drinking.

- Alaskan Smoked Porter: A dark, very robust smoky porter. Much stronger than the Rogue Smoked Ale. Now that I think about it, "tastes like camping" is probably the best way to describe this. Goes great with salmon, and is one of the few beers that can age in the bottle.

Maybe I'll do some more of these, too. Who knows?

An oddly compelling mash-up from footage of the Dr. Phil show and The O'Reilly Factor. Highly enjoyable, with great editing. Enjoy.

Labels: Internet Video

Howe Gelb has always been a somewhat difficult artist to like.

He's a great songwriter, a skilled guitarist, and a witty lyricist. Unfortunately, he's also been extremely gifted at covering up all of his talent with what he calls his "sonic muck." A heartbreaking folky-blues song will start out with a moaning steel guitar, Gelb's lazy drawled sing/speak painting a vivid picture of loneliness ... and then the whole thing will get buried with tape hiss or inexplicable noises.


Which is why, when listening to his latest - "'Sno Angel Like You" - you'll find yourself constantly looking back at the CD spine, making sure you actually ARE listening to a disc by Howe Gelb.

Gelb has stripped away his production quirks, written and chosen a great set of songs, and limited his instrumentation to guitars, drums, and a B3 organ. Oh, also, a gospel choir. A straight-up, full-steam-ahead gospel choir for the entire disc. In the process, he's also crafted one of the most fully-realized, inspiring, and entertaining albums I've ever heard.

Listening to the disc the first time is a great experience. The opening track "Get to Leave" starts out as a standard Howe Gelb folk song. Immediately you notice the clean production. The song's got a nice shuffle to it, and Gelb's world-weary Waits voice chews on every syllable. About 25 seconds into it, a soft blanket of harmony voices quietly surround Gelb - so slight that you're not even sure you heard it.

The choir provides a beautiful contrast to Gelb's voice that simultaneously underplays his slightly-off-tune singing while also lifting it to the forefront. It also often gives the listener a pleasant entry point to the song ... and when they belt it out, their joyousness is infectious.

"But I Did Not" is Gelb's own slightly skewed version of a straight gospel song. He growls out depressing observations, enough to drive anyone in his position to give up completely. But with each line, he's countered by a blast from the choir, singing the title phrase. It's sadness turned to joy, and it's incredible to listen to. From the slow twangy groove of “Hey Man,” to the sinister, full-fire barnstormer “That’s How Things Get Done,” to the bluesy solo-guitar “The Voice Within,” Gelb offers slightly-broken glimpses of Americana.

Picture a small, tattered church somewhere in the middle of the Arizona desert. From outside, you hear the smoky ramblings of a guitar-toting preacher followed by the call-and-response of a jubilant gospel choir. The sound echoes and resonates from the church before emptying across the dusty plains.

That’s this album. And it’s fantastic.

In One Sentence: Dusty desert Americana, lightly topped with a Canadian gospel choir.

Bottom Line: Highly recommended.

Hey, remember Flickr? 'Cause I just did.

In response to people (mainly my mom) asking for a way to see pictures from my hikes, I've taken the leap to Flickr Pro and started uploading. If you scroll down a bit, you'll see five completely random pictures, selected and displayed for your viewing pleasure, using the magic of Google algorithms.

You can click through on that one to see some of my other photo sets, which I'll be updating gradually. Or if you're too lazy to scroll, check 'em out here.

Side note, I did an unbelievable hike near Boney Mountain today. I was up and out at 8:30, and didn't get home until around 4. I even did a little "off the official map" hiking, courtesy of LocalHikes. Right now, I can barely feel my legs, but it was amazing. More than I've ever hiked, too. I can't tell, as the maps I have don't have accurate trail measurements (and the whole off the map thing doesn't help, either), but I'm going to say low estimate 10 miles, probably around 12 total.

12 miles!

Jones is still the apartment overall distance winner, what with her multiple marathons. But for hiking, the title is mine!



BAM!

Labels: hiking

Now that "viral" is offcially the best new way to sneak an advertising message past us ultra-hip, media-savvy, too-cool consumers, everyone's getting in on the action.

Unfortunately, not everyone actually 'gets' what viral marketing is supposed to be. Sometimes you get some cool, genuinely weird stuff, like Burger King's Subervient Chicken or the on-going Halo 2 promo / bizarro mystery ARG I Love Bees. Most of the time, though, it's just a YouTube-quality video of someone getting hurt, and then a giant company logo somewhere in the scene.

Lame.

Now, it looks like the thing companies are trying to get into are 'user created' advertising. The idea being, "hey, the kids like the mash-ups, and the remixes. Why don't we let them create our advertising FOR us, then they can send it along the inter-web to their friends?"

The problem is, most of the people who would be into remixing their own advertising, probably aren't gonna be into sending the message your marketing department would like.

Witness the Chevrolet Tahoe. As part of an 'Apprentice' tie-in (a.k.a. "1 Hour Product Placement the Show"), Tahoe launched Chevyapprentice, where users can use stock ad footage of the Tahoe in typically car-commercial moments to create their own ad. You can select music, add text, and have the chance to win tickets to fancy concerts or getaway vacations.

Predicatbly, most of the commercials created poked fun at the Tahoe and SUVs in general. And, just like the Chevy execs wanted them to, they're being passed around virally on the YouTube. One of the better ones is posted below, but just search for 'Chevy Tahoe' on YouTube, and you'll find a bunch.



And, of course, if this kind of stuff gets your blood boilin,' and you still have a little tax refund money left over, might I recommend the TerraPass once again?



For just 40 bucks for the year, you can help offset the amount of greenhouse gasses your car puts into the atmosphere. It's not a perfect solution, but it's a start. It's cheaper than buying a hybrid car and has the added benefit of making alternative energy power plants more economically viable. And you'll feel good about doing it, too. Honest.

Labels: Internet Video

South Park won a Peabody Award.

Awesome.

Also, last night's episode was phenomenal. A show that can simultaneously attack another show while poking fun at itself, its parent network, and American attitudes toward Islam while still being funny is amazing.

I still can't believe how funny this show is, ten seasons in. Kudos.

So I'm going to try to start something new here, a little something more than my occasional ramblings on hiking, microbreweries and digital rights issues.

Mini-music reviews.

Why mini? Well, for one, I don't really have the time to do a full-on review right now. Maybe sometime in the future, I'll get to do research, make clever allegories, and then get really self-indulgent, like Pitchfork.

But for now, I'm going to try just giving you First Impressions of whatever I just bought. Sometimes it'll be new, sometimes it'll be really, really old. Sometimes it'll be on the day after its released, sometimes at some random time. It's a crapshoot. At least it'll keep you on your toes.

I'm going to load the disc on my iPod, bring it to work, and listen to it once through during the day, taking notes on that most trustworthy of programs - Notepad. Then I'll try to make 'em make sense. That's it. One listen. Notepad, then Blogger.

So behold the first First Impressions - for the new Flaming Lips disc, "At War With The Mystics."



For their first album in four years, the venerable statesmen of left-of-left-field noise pop have returned, with more direct music and lyrics ... and really, can anything be more unexpected from the Flaming Lips?

Thankfully, 'direct music' is an extremely relative term, and the Lips don't fail to create sounds from bizarro sources on this album. Even a fairly straightforward fuzz-guitar led song like "Free Radicals" is filled with enough twisted vocal samples and studio effects to keep the most inquisitive headphone-listener busy.

Perhaps some of the feeling of directness comes not from the songs themselves, but rather from the album as a whole. Instead of having the unified lush pop symphony sound of "The Soft Bulletin" or the prog rock mini-opera feel of "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots," the songs of "Mystics" jump from style to style. "Free Radicals" is a stripped down, slowed down funk song. "The Sound of Failure..." opens with a classical guitar before adding enough wah-wah and flute loops to sound like a time capsule from the 70s, as if opened, dissected and reassembled by future technocrats.

But as I listened to this for the first time, I couldn't help but compare it to those old albums. It's unfair, but it's going to happen to anyone who's familiar with their past work. And the bottom line is, there's no one song on here that jumps out at you as immediately beautiful as "Do You Realize??" or as catchy as "Fight Test."

Lyrically, the album seems to be a bit TOO straightforward. Whereas before, the Lips were content to bury their themes in third or first person narrative allegories, now they're more willing to just come out and say it. And say it to "you." Songs like "Gash" or "Fight Test" play up the narrator's shortcomings and mistakes, while songs like "Haven't Got A Clue" attack the listener - or the undetermined "you". Lines like "every time you state your case, the more I want to punch your face" seem a bit ... beneath the Lips.

Which is not to downplay this album, but just to put it into perspective. There are plenty of great moments here. "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" has a great twisted rhythm and a singalong chorus. The touching "Mr. Ambulance Driver" puts a siren to a soft guitar shuffle that'll make you tap your foot while the song muses mortality. The epic "It Overtakes Me" builds handclaps and a bass line to a kick-ass backbeat before exploding into a shimmering spacescape reminiscent of the best moments of "Soft Bulletin" and "Yoshimi."

And that's the major problem. No matter how good this album is, when you're done, you're probably going to want to listen to one of their older ones next ... which, when you're talking about the Flaming Lips, is not necessarily a bad thing at all.

In One Sentence: Psychadelic Noise Pop from the masters of the form.
Bottom Line: Worth a listen, but not as good as their recent work.

I remember back when I first got the game "Civilization." I got it - copied, naturally - onto four 3.5" blue floppy disks.

Immediately, my already geography-lovin' mind took to the game, and I was hooked for the series. Through middle and high schools, the knowledge and concepts in the Civlopedia, the government types, the city names of ancient empires, all permeated themselves into my brain.

Sid Meier's lesser-known Civ spinoff Colonization was one of the most hyper-complex games I've ever played. Dozens of specialty citizen-types (lumberjacks, miners, trappers, farmers, statesmen, preachers, scouts, soldiers, etc.), terrain-types, and native nations - each with their own agendas. It also had an extensive trade goods system, which added another entire layer of information to the game.

Civ II added military units and even more systems, and all those long gaming sessions fighting the Mongolians or developing silver mining colonies paid off on more than their fair share of tests and essays. Even though college.

Now it seems like teachers are noticing.

The series got acclaim at last year's "Games in Education Conference," and fansite Planet Civilization just reported that Firaxis opened up a section of their site specifically for teachers who want to use the game in the classroom.

More positive attention to games like the Civilization and SimCity series is well deserved. The accessibility and immersion of these complex systems encourages the players to explore, problem-solve, investigate, and learn in ways that regular ol' textbooks can't do. Of course, it's important not to solely use video games for these subjects, but it's a great way to make seemingly impossible-to-understand concepts easy to grasp.

Try to explain to a student the relationship between industrial and developing economies, and it gets boring. But watch as they discover that investing in factories to produce finished goods in Colonization ends up being profitable, and they get it. Then watch as they start to seize raw materials from weaker nations, and you'll see they get it even more.

Not all video games are about beatin' up hookers.


... and look at all the information on that screen!

if you're interested, you can download the Abandonware of Colonization here. Go Dutch!

- "Thank You For Smoking" has snappy dialogue, and not much else. A renter.

- "Brick" is amazing. Really, really good. I might go see it again.

- Nutella on crepes is always a good idea.

- I still suck at Guitar Hero.

- Another reason my little brother is great - getting me into Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, and Son House.

- I think I may have found my new favorite L.A. area hike. Maybe second fav.