WARNING: This post will take at least an hour

If you click on the photo above, a new window will appear and load a Gigapan photo of the Obama Inauguration. As I did, you'll probably say to yourself--"Wow, cool photo," or "look at all those people," or "it's like television but not."

Then you'll notice the navigation tools in the upper left hand corner and start to move around and zoom in. And zoom in. And zoom in some more. Pretty soon you'll be trying to read the brand name off some lady's glasses, or laughing at the guy zipping his pants by the porta-potty, or playing 'Find the SWAT Team.' As the post title implies, you will spend at least an hour doing this--it cannot be helped and I apologize.

You'll then ponder whether it is an amazing co-mingling of optics and technology, or a peek into our Sinister Surveillance Society. Both, I suspect, but also the source of some yuks, to which I submit the following:


President Clinton staring at the twins is too obvious, so I'll just give props to George the First on the headgear--I think he can see Sara Palin's house with that hat on.


Come on Justice Thomas--stay awake for a brotha!


It just ain't a party unless Sasquatch shows up.


"Dis' me all you want terrorist guy--I'm still The Decider."


You never see Mrs. Butterworth and Aunt Jemimah in the same place at the same time. Coincidence?


"Great seats, my ass! A $10k donation and all I get is a splitting headache, Willard Scott yapping in my ear and hair gel that smells like bird shit!"

A fino salvo from North Holland

One of the coolest things I've ever done on a bike. Seriously.


Blue river, red lights.

Yours truly peeing al fresco. Photo by Warren.

Imagine how big this would have to be to house that many cars.

Detouring Amsterdam on Bikes

The things we pass off as work some days...

Randamsterdam Photos

They have alot of __________ in Amsterdam

CATS...this one is as large as a bull.


CHEESE - Ummm cheese.


PROSTITUTES - Note the red lights.


GANJA - For the whitest Rastas you've ever seen.


BIKES - Though I've not seen one with a helmeted rider.

Amsterdammmit!

The buildings in Amsterdam list every which way.


We had Warren cloned and made into an army of supermodels.


A barge-o-bikes!


A wary Eli shields his cappuccino from a Dutch cat probably named Cappuccino.


Well the sign does sort of indicate that's how a bike should be stowed.


It's just a little simpler than "Netherlanders."

Number Six free at last

Rest in peace, Number Six. And thank you.

Score!

I just found this in my bag here at work! Yum!

Bumper Sticker of the Week

I'm not much for bumper stickers. Particularly here in Santa Cruz where the highest form of expression appears to be the Bumper Sticker Manifesto. Ugh. This one made me laugh, however, and I pass it along to you dear reader.

Chicago Christmas Parting Shots

Family friends Ryan (left, with toy motorbikes) and Zac are bundled to immobility and massive cuteness.


Though the pic is a bit unflattering, my mom's ravioli (made w/homemade noodles) rock.


Frank Gehry's Pritzker Pavillion band shell in Millenium Park is cool...but his Dancing House may be cooler.


Smallish Chicago coffee chain--for now anyway--Intelligentsia has awesome coffee.


In homage to A Christmas Story, I licked 'the Bean'...but did not stick a la Flick.

Winter Wonderland in Chicago

Sunny as it may look, clear equals cold on days like this. Three degrees to be exact.

It was so cold, this bull froze in place after wandering out of the stockyards.

Apparently Chicago pigeons are smarter than the livestock.

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Awaiting beam-up from the Chicago Cultural Center's lobby.

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The north dome of the Cultural Center...not to be confused with the North Pole.

Polly Jean Harvey and the mystery of my barometric iPod

Looks like we have a strong winter PJ Harvey in the jet stream this week.

I'm convinced my iPod has hidden powers that are not disclosed in any instructions, mentioned in any online FAQ, nor even talked about in the halls of the Cupertino Mothership. I think they're so under-the-radar that nobody knows but me…and the guy who enabled these powers. I envision some clever engineer burying hidden features—Easter Eggs—deep in the hardware/software architecture, self-sworn to secrecy until a safe old age wherein the culprit will make a confession to his grandchildren…

"I remember back before they implanted your entire music collection in the cerebral cortex when people use gigantic devices—MP3 players—to store their music. I worked for Apple you know…"

"Yes Gramps, and dinosaurs roamed the earth…you've told us a million times."

"Yeah well your old gramps has a secret that nobody ever found out about. I taught the iPod to think! It sensed people's moods…it made measure of political climates…it even reacted to the weather! THEN it would play the perfect song for such circumstances! It was unheard of…and I made it happen all without anyone knowing! It was genius I tell you!"

"Yeah, yeah gramps…whatevs."

And while the kids of 2043 may not believe it, I'm thoroughly convinced. I've often noticed that my iPod goes into a subdued melancholy mood when it's raining. It kicks in to an excited frenzy en route to happy events. Other times it almost seems to serve up commentary on current events as if it were tuned to news radio.

Case-in-point, during last Monday's nasty rain storm with the war and the economy and the general fuckedupness of everything on my mind—the Pod conjured Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On." This is one of the great anti-war-what-the-hell-is-up-with-society songs of all time, the album cover of which features Mr. Gaye standing in what appears to be a downpour wearing a rain coat! The band Lucero followed with "Here at the Starlight," a song so desolately heartbroken and lonely you feel hallow by osmosis. Next was the Weakerthans ode to urban decline amidst the grey of winter called "One Great City," a tale about the slow death of Winnipeg, a Canadian metropolis struggling with long-term economic and social depression.

Conversely, on Saturday's drive up to ride mountain bikes at Demo—a genuinely cheery occasion—it was Parts and Labor's upbeat and sunny "Nowhere Nigh" followed by the Talking Heads' undeniably comfortable "Naïve Melody," finished up by Buffalo Tom's "Tangerine," a song that actually produces delicious, easy-to-peel citrus fruit!

A couple weeks ago I happened to turn on the local news radio station to hear a grim report about storms and landslides in Southern California. When they rolled in to an extended commercial break of mattress stores, jewelry shops and medicated powders, I pre-empted with the iPod. The first song to shuffle up—Peter Gabriel's "Here Comes the Flood."

I know what you're thinking…that I'm just selectively remembering the tracks that fit the situation. Or that it's all just coincidental. But something so specific happened on Tuesday night that I'm absolutely sure of the iPods predictive powers. As I rearranged things in the yard to start work on a garage project, a freaky little sprint of a storm pelted me with freezing rain/hail. It was the kind of precip that was ice cold yet burnt the skin at the same time. The wind kicked up and got bitter and cutting…almost Midwestern. It felt a bit painful, yes, but real too…like winter should, I thought.

The sting still on my face as I entered the shelter of the garage, I pondered what might be the musical match for such conditions. I powered up the stereo and hit 'Shuffle Songs' on the iPod for the answer.


The best "Rid of Me" I could find online doesn't match the intensity of the original recording, but you get the idea.

The slow guitar build of PJ Harvey's "Rid of Me" started drizzling from the speakers, slowly turning into a steady, cold rain as the rhythm increased to meet Polly Jean's subdued voice. The pleading backing vocals kick-in quiet-but-cold at first—"Lick my legs, I'm on fire; Lick my legs, I'm on fire"—giving way to a few more angry lines from Polly until the chorus rips in, guitars and drums and vocals blasting in an angry, cold, biting hail that burns like frozen rain on the face—"DON'T YOU, DON'T YOU WISH YOU, NEVER, NEVER MET HER," she screams. Her voice re-quiets then shifts to a wicked shrill the way a gust of cold wind runs through the formality of clothing until building it all up for another round of chorus that dies with an anguished reprise of "Lick my legs." After which, I assume, an exhausted and near-frozen PJ retreats to the relative shelter of her garage.

It's minus 33 degrees...

It's minus 33 degrees...good thing my brother is well insulated.


It's minus 33 degrees...which can instantly freeze your face.

It's minus 33 degrees...so I think I'll skip the giant sundae on the right.

It's minus 33 degrees...but not at the center of a Superdawg's pure beef heart.

[Actual temperature -9 degrees Farenheit, wind chill index -33]

What you won’t find at Z Pottery Barrel

I'm a sucker for old junk. Especially so when it isn't that junky…and when they put a bunch of it all in one place as they do for the ginormous Antiques by the Bay dealeo…a monthly event out on Alameda Island that we went to last weekend.

Though I like old stuff, I've never particularly embraced the concept of 'antiquing.' The word itself grates me on a number of levels as well as conjures visions of sneezing, wheezing and expectorating wildly as I have an allergic reaction to the prerequisite fog of potpourri as we go from quaint overpriced store to quaint overpriced store. They also tend to have lots of doilies and I hate those things.

As Antiques by the Bay is so large that it's actually held on the runway of a former US Naval Air Station, indoor allergens aren't so much of a problem…though blustery weather can be. The upside of which is that if there were any doilies they'd been blown away by the time I got there.

I managed to coerce Troy—aka friend with a big pickup truck—to accompany Stacy, Shannan, Brock (Shannan's 16-month-old) and I to the sale under the ruse that it would be a Moab trip reunion and that there are really cool old hand tools there.

Running late because of errant power lines across the freeway, Shannan and Brock ended up driving separately and meeting us there. Troy, Stacy and I had been looking around for about 20 minutes—and actually already split off in different directions—when I got a call from Shannan saying they had just parked and could I watch the Brocster as soon as they got inside because she had to pee. I agreed, of course, but began to wonder if the little man would put up a fuss…I see Shannan every day at work, but I'd only 'met' Brock once when he was like a month old…wouldn't he cry or scream when he had to hang out with this stranger?


Brock eyes me with a contemptuous "Whatchu talkin 'bout Willis?" stare as he sizes me up.

As you can see above, 'lil' Brock (actually BIG Brock…at 16 months, he's the size of a two-year-old) looked a little perturbed with the situation but in a manner far beyond his years…er months…he made the most of a strange situation and found common ground—Look! A naked lady!

We we're pretty much buds from this moment on.

After Shannan regained a comfortable bladder disposition, we all regrouped briefly and managed to splinter off again. Stacy and I were looking for some furnishings and eclectica for our nearly-completed new garage space—specifically I had it in my head that I might be able to find an old industrial or agricultural cart to convert into a coffee table. Fleetingly, I had seen such a cart in an antique store window on a recent trip to Portland and did a web search for one when I got home. The only one I could find was this cotton bale cart from a store called NapaStyle that cost $650 + $150 shipping…ouch! I call NapaBullShit.

I figured MAYBE if I was lucky I might be able to find some iron wheels or hardware at the antique thing with which I could make my own cart using some rough lumber. Best case, I thought, perhaps I might be able to find something similar…something with that sorta 'rustic re-use' ethos embodied in it. I honestly didn't think I had much chance of finding an actual cart.

Cracklin' with radioactive goodness, everyone should have a Geiger counter.

Hopes-in-head, away I went and the first thing that caught my eye was an old Geiger counter. In addition to having that swanky Cold War feel to it, this particular unit had the coolest font on its gauge. At $35 though, I felt it was a bit steep for something that didn't work (was missing its probe) and might actually be radioactive, so I moved on. In retrospect it would make a cool door handle…or something.


Rusty California milk comes from rusty California cows and into rusty...well you get the idea.

Next to catch my eye was a giant orange rusty milk can. I had no particular need nor want for such a thing, but I liked its patina and shape. I liked its orangeness and bigness. After a smidge of haggling I liked its price too—$20. Done Deal.

Before the computer there was type. I heart the type.

One of the booths had all kinds of cool printing press letters as well as typewriter keys that you could fashion into jewelry and the like. Stacy ended up getting some typewriter letters and I got a "Don" work shirt patch. Two of 'em actually—a buck a piece.

With two Dons and a buck...well, at least you got a buck.

A couple years ago I bought an old clay olive jar, drilled a hole in the bottom and made a fountain for our backyard out of it. While disassembling it for the garage project a couple months ago, I dropped and destroyed the jar (though I can't bring myself to throw the pieces away). Fortunately, I found this beauty for the low low negotiated price of $30 which initially made me feel pretty thrifty. Then I added it to the cost of the one I broke and it comes out to $110.

I'll try not to drop this one. Doh!

A few aisles later I nearly wet myself. For there it was—the very object of my desire—the old as dirt industrial cart! But it was kinda buried…used more as a display table for other stuff more than an object on its own merit. There was at least 20 other THINGS either on it or leaning against, pinned behind it or otherwise supported by it.

Excitedly I looked it over…cast iron hardware…wheels and corner buckles…the top was just plywood, but I could get some planks. Where is the price tag? How much is it?! Everything else here has a price tag--$90 for a stop sign?! Are you serious?! Where is the seller…are you the seller? You are? How much for the cart?

"Well I was just going to sell it to these women for $100 but they said they'd think about it and maybe come back. I think it came from one of the canneries. Tell you what…if you give me $90 right now, you can have it."

"I got $80."

Grumble. Grumble. "Ok! It's yours!"

I'm not one to get excited about shopping, I generally loathe it but I was fucking excited! Yep…forty year old white guy here…getting his yayas by finding shit at an antique sale…that's me!

The much sought-after cart at rest in the front yard. Is that a halo?

After the adrenaline wore off, we loaded the behemoth of a cart (it must weigh 150 pounds) into Troy's truck…the truck where Troy had retreated to earlier to warm himself. We all regrouped and Shannan hit Brock in the head with a picture frame (accidentally). He cried for about a minute then forgot about it and went back to being his smiley happy little kid self.

We then retreated to the mainland—Oakland—where I treated to Zachary's Chicago Style Pizza which could have used a little more sausage, but was—all-in-all—a pretty good end to a pretty good day.


Brockman prefers PB&J and applesauce to pizza now...but he'll learn.