Westside Bike Path

Yesterday I went on my longest ride yet, which really wasn’t all that long compared to all the hardcore bikers that pass me constantly [[ No one likes you ]]. But going about 11 miles at one time on my bmx was an accomplishment, considering that before 2 months ago, the last time i’d been on a bike with any sort of regularity was maybe 12 years ago. So my route took me up the eastside bike path (springwater corrider) from sellwood to steel bridge, over the bridge and down waterfront park to riverplace, and points beyond. I say points beyond because after a certain point, you slowly realize you are no longer on a bike path [[ ... and thus the decent into madness begins. ]]. At one point I had to ride on the sidewalk facing the the wrong direction [[ oh noes! ]] while cars 2 ft away from me were flying down the street AND dodging telephone poles that for some strange reason were placed in the middle of the sidewalk [[ I played this video game on nintendo in 1989 ]]. All this while trying to keep up with the line of bikers that had grouped behind me (while I love my bike, I’m not so sure people behind me do). [[ This is probably the scariest part of the whole story.  Bikers in PDX are scary. ]] I did happen to notice a sign saying the bike path would be reopening in november (perfect timing for bike riding, duh). So I guess until that section opens up again, I’ll be avoiding going that way. Anyway, a question for all the millions of readers this blog has: Where do you like to ride? [[ To your mom's house. ]]

This coffee is fucking great.

I just spoke the above words outloud.  I am drinking some of Spella coffee. And goddamn, it’s fantastic! Living in Portland, we have a ton of great options for coffee, and people take it seriously, but damn, this stuff is just great. I am used to drinking somewhat mediocre coffee from Boyd’s, which is decent, but basically just better-than-starbucks.

You assholes, my non-existant readers, need to try this, right now.  Go.  Oh except they close at 4.  Ok tomorrow morning.

Things I Hate – #1

This will most assuredly be a regular “feature” type post.

Fist bumping. How did this ever get popular?

[[ I actually really like fist pumping.  -idtl ]]

How ’bout this heat?

I live in Portland, Oregon.  In the summer, it is typically very mild, sunny and does not have the near constant drizzle that the pacific northwest is known for.  Today however, it will reach 100 degrees … or more!  This seems to cause no end of consternation among native Oregonians, or people who just like to complain.

Riding in the elevator with one of my douchebag neighbors, I’ll make eye contact and give them an east-coast “howsitgoin’?” and in return I basically get a variation of “Oh its just so HAWT out”.  I think people here actually prefer the drear and rain.  So I have decided to wander around all day and sing the asshole song.  Thanks Dennis Leary, how are you still alive anyway?

Request For Proposal – Food Cart

Portland has a great food cart culture. Just about anything you could possibly get in a restaurant, you can get on the street for cheaper. One local Sellwood food cart even got a write up in a national food magazine (Bon Appetit). So you would think I would have nothing to complain about when it comes to cheap eats in this city. But if you know me, I’ll complain even about the things I like. So here is a list of food I would like to see at a single food cart (the nearer to Sellwood, the better! Or open for dinner downtown, maybe)

hot dogs
pretzels
cheesesteaks
italian beef
italian sausage
fried oreos (twinkies, snickers etc)

Of course, most, if not all of these, are pretty regional foods that aren’t really available here anyway, or if they are, they are made wrong (lettuce, tomato, and mayo on my cheesesteak makes me want to punch somebody). If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d start this cart myself.

Lollapalooza – why?

This is the first (of many?) post about my recent trip to Lollapalooza.

Recently, I said to friend while standing in line at the insanely overcrowded Oregon Brewers Fest, “beer is so easy to find in this city, why are we making it harder to get it by coming here?” The same thought kept running through my head as I waited in line over an hour in the hot Chicago sun (without sun block because thats punk rock) to gain entrance into Grant Park, where I expected to be rocked, and generally rolled, by the promise of seeing, and most of all, hearing great bands I grew up with or have recently discovered. So why was I making it harder on myself?

Reason 1: How often does Radiohead even tour the US, much less come to Portland?
This may or may not be a valid reason, since I honestly have no idea if Radiohead tours a lot. I’ve never felt the need to see Radiohead before, and I still don’t even consider myself a huge fan of this band. But more on that later.

Reason 2: Rage Against the Machine! ZOMG!
Yeah, as a child of the 90’s I have a borderline unhealthy obsession with this band. Far from my favorites, but regularly in rotation on my Itunes nonetheless. I’ve never seen this band before, and given the volatile makeup of the people involved, who knows if I’d ever have a chance to see them again.

Reason 3: Kanye. in Chi-town.
As an unabashed pop music fan, I have to say that Kanye almost lives up to even his own hype about himself. And to see such an arrogant genius perform in front of his hometown, well that was too much to pass up.

Reason 4: all of the other bands
Going into this I kept thinking “this is like my Woodstock.” I’ll probably never go to such an incredibly huge music festival again, so the opportunity to experience something like this is definitely a once in a lifetime thing. Besides the major headliners, I was most excited to see Mates of State, Uffie, the Raconteurs, and Girl Talk.

Next time: What bands I saw, what I liked, what I didn’t, and getting caught in the storm.

What the fuck is wrong with Sony?

I like video games.  I hate Microsoft.  Of the last gen consoles, I was a big PS2 fan, which wasn’t hard, the PS2 was awesome and had all the great games.  The Gamecube basically sucked, other than Zelda, even the Mario game, Sunshine or whatever the fuck it was, sucked monkey balls.  The xbox tried to come onto the scene with features like a hard drive, which was good, and downloadable patches, which i figured would make game developers make even lazier.  I refused to even play it, so high was I on my stupid fanboy high horse.

Then the next wave of consoles.  The Wii was basically unattainable, and didn’t have anything to appeal to me anyway.  The PS3 was friggin expensive, so that left the xbox.  I wasn’t really playing a lot of video games anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal.  My brother had gotten a 360, so I used to watch him play Gears of War, and yea, the graphics were pretty friggin good, but I just can’t get into many FPS games.  Go here, shoot these 10 aliens in the face, then maybe if its a “good” FPS, you’ll flip a switch.  Joy.  But that’s a rant for another time.

So one day, he brings home this stupid looking little guitar, and the now ubiquitious Guitar Hero 2.  This was my first experience with the 360 and rythym games in general, and I was hooked.  At first I was no good, like most people, but soon I was taking on all comers.  I still couldn’t beat most songs on Hard, but who cares, its fun.

Fast forward to a year ago.  I move into a new pad, get myself a nice HD Television, lots of speakers, and decide, time for some Guitar Hero action.  Due to unforseen circumstances (read: them actually having one in stock) I got a Wii as well. I looked like a retard walking home with all my consoles. A retard with a lot of disposable income.

Fast forward even further-er (try to keep up, I know I bounce around like a butterfly on crack; deal with it) and the release of Metal Gear Solid 4. I have loved the Metal Gear games since the first one on the NES, and the solid series is so good, I just bought MGS1 on ebay and will probably play through them all again. Still, Sony FINALLY managed to actually keep an exclusive on their system, so I had to get a PS3. I shopped around for the bundle, but it wasn’t easy to find, so I just went out and got a 40gb PS3 and forwent the downwards compatible PS2 support. (I also just got rid of both my PS2s. Yes, I had two).

So I get the beast home, damn its big. I hook it up, HDMI-style, and am ready to go. After hooking it up to my wireless, which was a pain, but hey, you only do it once. Hopefully. Then it needs a system update. Fine. Then I play the game. Hooray! Much ink has been spilled on MGS4, and if you like Metal Gear’s, or interactive movies, you’ll love it. If not, you won’t. So save your pennies for GTA4 DLC on your xbox or whatever gay FPS shooter comes out next.

My problem is not with the game itself, its, well basically, loading screens. Loading screens suck. Microsoft is, supposedly, going to allow you to copy games to the HD on the 360, and I had something similar for my HD’d PS2, which helped a lot. Sony and MGS decided, they will do something similar, where when you first load the game, it must “load” into the hard drive. This takes like 10 minutes and you get to watch snake smoke. Then whats the VERY NEXT SCREEN after you push start? You guessed, it “loading”. Then you get to repeat this process after every chapter, although its shorter.

So, I beat the game, its fun, and I decide to start a new one, since you can get extra stuff, and hey, it was a fun game. I start over, and whats the next screen? LOADING. Words cannot contain my joy. Regular words anyway, curse words might come close.

After that bullshit, I decide to play around in Sony’s store. Microsoft actually has this right for a change, their store is just another section of the ‘blade’ interface. Its basically built-in. With Sony, you’re executing an application, the difference is subtle, but it makes all the difference. And yes, I know, navigating through all of the Xbox content can be a pain. Suck it up, it could be much worse …

Trying to download a ‘theme’ for my kind of ugly default PS3 background, it tells me it won’t do it in the background, and to apply I need only go through the follow option, 35 minutes deep on the XMB …

Wait. What the fuck?

On the xbox, you download a theme, you hit ‘apply’ and it applies, amazingly. If you sat and wanted for a game to download, you can play it immediately. This is horseshit from some giant Budweiser horse.

So then I download a game demo. It DOES download in the background, but sony has some weird shopping cart interface going on here, and instead of downloading the second demo I had queued up, it … didn’t. Not sure why. Maybe I didn’t hit left trigger, whoops, I mean L2 when I clicked the download.

So lets play this game? Oh right, gotta exit the store. Find the stupid game, hiding below metal gear, and run it. Nope. Its got to install. What the fuck are you installing! I downloaded it, was it compressed? Is there some background process clicking ‘next’ over and over again? Yes, thats a fucking Windows joke. I’m making Windows jokes about Sony …

And that long meandering rant leads to my point. Sony has some released the Windows Vista of consoles. Its sort of familiar, everything works, just worse. I don’t understand how you make a worse interface than MICROSOFT? These guys brought us MS-BOB, Windows Millennium, and the current turd, Vista. Maybe its because you stole the PS3 interface from the PSP, itself a best seller. Either way, its ponderous. Fucking ponderous.

Sunny Day Real Estate

It’s been a long time since I could even listen to Diary again. In my senior ye
ar of high school, this was THE album, the soundtrack of my life, and all that. But then, every other band in existence decided to glom onto this sound, diluting it and changing what was one of the last original ‘emo’ bands into something laughably derivitive, even though it was a sound they helped create.

Some 12 years later, though, it still stands up. As with every great and influential album that is considered a cornerstone of a genre, Diary will continue to be one of the most brilliant works not only to come out of emo, but also as an inspiring rock album on its own.

Further releases may not have been nearly as consistent, as band members shifted and/or found religion, although there are moments of brilliance on all of the albums (like “eight” from LP2, and “every shining time you arrive” from how it feels to be something on). The Rising Tide has always been the most difficult album for me to really get through and digest, partly I think because the band itself had changed so much and broken up and reformed twice (?) before this came out.

Members later went on to play in the Foo Fighters, which doesn’t seem like much of a leap if you really think about it. After all, SDRE were labelmates with Nirvana for a very short time (although probably not overlapping, I have to think that Dave Grohl still pays attention to Sub Pop releases). Jeremy Enigk continues to have a solo career, and the splinter project The Fire Theft, released one album and EP earlier this decade.

I was hoping for a reunion for Sub Pop 20, which wasn’t realized. I actually expected a lot of reunions or one off type shows from ex Sub Pop bands, but unfortunately, Flight of the Conchords as headliners was the best they could come up with (nothing wrong with them, of course, but who else was hoping for a Sleater-Kinney reunion? Not just me, I’m sure.)