Don't Call Me Ishmael

Giffords' Unexpected Goodbye

2012-01-24T10:11:00.001-06:00

I could not believe the news of Gabrielle Giffords' resignation from Congress. She endured the worst year anyone could hope to survive and it seemed her rehabilitation had moved along.

She could have lingered in her congressional seat; the circumstances of her injury would have made her a formidable if not insurmountable incumbent. But I believe Giffords proved herself better than that. In her message, she attributes her departure to do what is right for Arizona. During her rehab, her appearances under the Capitol have been scarce but memorable (the debt ceiling vote).

Moreover, she ended her stint in Congress by finishing the meeting with her constituents that had been horrifically interrupted a year earlier.

It was hard to root against Giffords. One terrible day changed her live forever. Doing what a member of Congress should - appearing in an open public forum for constituents - nearly ended her life. Jared Le Loughner allegedly killed six people, including a conservative Arizona judge and a nine-year-old girl, and wounded 13others, including the congresswoman (The journalist in me requires use of the word "allegedly").

The struggle still rides on her voice; just listen to the resignation video. The words are heartfelt, even as Giffords must push through the impact of traumatic brain injuries. I hard a tough time finishing it with a dry eye.

Think about what change for Giffords. She has had to relearn basic functions, has to write with her left hand because her right has not recovered as quickly. After a tight win in 2010 mid-term elections, Giffords moderate politics made her a likely Senate candidate in 2012. That ended with a fateful bullet.

I long hoped she would recover quickly, but few people bounce back rapidly from "lucky to be alive" brain injuries from a gunshot wound. I half-hoped her husband, astronaut and shuttle commander Mark Kelly, would pick up the torch to run for House. Ask John Glenn or Jack Schmitt. But Kelly seems unlikely to run.

It would be easy to look at her announcement as retirement. But Giffords is just 41 and one year removed from a brain injury. She has time to recover away from the glare and the ugliness of American politics.
Let's hope her voice for cooperation and less demonization in politics will reemerge someday to break up the daily rancor.

Tracing The Roots of Tennessee

2012-01-10T16:02:00.002-06:00

Since my teen years, I have had frequent dreams about impossible highways,built solely to loop through forests or landscapes devoid of man. Since I gotonto the national park bandwagon, I have found them in California and Montana,roads that exist for pleasure, spanning distances not needed from Labor Day toMemorial Day.

Then my girlfriend Nancy introduced me to one in my ownbackyard. I knew of the Natchez Trace, the road that flat-boat veterans walkedfrom Natchez to Nashville before steamships fought back the rivers. But driving60 miles of its 444-mile, three-state span, Nancy and I more than filled aSaturday afternoon.

We originally planned to drive down to Huntsville. With afive-day vacation brewing and the need to sleep late on Saturday, we decided totravel some of the Trace instead. Nancy drove several portions before, and Ihad contemplated it on occasion. But I had a traveling companion. That providesall the difference.

Starting innocuously off Highway 100 west of Nashville, theroad rose quickly to hilltops and ridgelines. Separate roads serviced the farmsand residences visit hundreds of feet beyond the trees. The road ran away fromNashville, across a renowned bridge, past a few sporadic cyclists and into thewilderness. The original Trace was a buffalo run that was used by Indians andthen popularized by returning boatmen. The deeply rutted road is only visiblein places, and even in January, the 60-degree temperatures riled up deer ticksalong the walkable remnants.

We listened to Leadbelly, and he couldn’t have sounded moreappropriate.When he harmonized with himself on Moaning, it seemed to bridge a gulf from the 21st century to the harsh times of the Trace's prime years.

Early on, we passed the preserved homestead of a family whoran a ferry across the Duck River for a century. Down on the Duck, it was easyto see how the greenish blue waters required a ferry before Tennessee built abridge. We walked down to Jackson Falls, a trickle in winter that descended tothe Duck. The overlooks opened onto a farming world that couldn’t have beenmore foreign to the city life we had escaped.

The Trace offered a natural stopping point at its largestpoint of interest in Tennessee.The Meriwether Lewis gravesite gives the man his justdesserts. As the Lewis behind American history’s favorite pair of 19^thcentury pioneers, Lewis’ grave received its stone monument before the CivilWar. He died out on the Trace. Once considered a suicide, his death could havebeen murder. No one knows.

They buried Lewis where he fell, yards from the homestead where hestayed. His name appears across the continent. Modern Americans cannot fathomwhat the Corps of Discovery endured. I have seen where the Corps stopped westof Bozeman, where they spent a winter along the Oregon Coast and where theyleft the only physical mark of their trip along the Yellowstone River. Hismemorial makes clear that Stephen Ambrose plucked his title for the Lewis &Clark tale from Thomas Jefferson’s words.

The gravestones have been lost to those who were interrednext to him. But there were few surnames. Just a sunken stone structureremained from the original homestead. But Lewis stood tall in thewilderness that claimed him.

We drove through Hohenwald, which sprang with more life thanmost rural Tennessee cities. Two farmers had controlled fires burning. Smokelingered across the road. A handful of beers and restaurants peppered itsdowntown, even a Mexican place. Too many non-metro towns in Tennessee havesettled for a Wal-Mart and a downtown of shuttered storefronts.

Hohenwald also fields a missed opportunity. A sanctuary forretired circus elephants lies in its backwoods, but its keepers prevent anyoutsiders from viewing their small herd. I understand the desire to keep theseelephants from becoming an attraction, but something as simple as anobservation tower would please the public, make a little money for thesanctuary and keep people away from their prized pachyderms.

We drove back, stopping for photos at the bridge. As wereturn to TN Route 100, Alan Hovhaness’ SymphonyNo. 2: “Mysterious Mountain” erupted from the speakers. I cannot rememberany detail of the drive while that symphony entranced us.

The Trace was so close to Nashville, but unlike any road Ihad driven in recent years. Nancy promised we could finish it some other time.The road’s appearance in different seasons seemingly promotes traveling itquarterly. No matter the season, it will still lead away from the trappings of civilization.

2011 Keepers List

2011-11-29T15:50:00.001-06:00

For once, my year-end list took some digging. A lot of old favorites put out records, and some came up surprisingly flat. There are atleast three great songs on Iron & Wine’s We Kiss Each Other Clean, but a few could use his acoustic brevity, not ornate instrumentation. Albumsfrom the REM, the Decemberists (who essentially wrote an REM album) and BonIver left me cold. Plus, I shower too much praise on Tom Waits to include Bad as Me. There are rules to this.

Some nearly made the cut. I had given up on the FooFighters, but the consistency on WastingLight had been missing from their recent records - White Limo could be the heaviest slab of Foo ever put to tape. The Lonely Island’sTurtleneck & Chain amused, but the album does not work without itsaccompanying videos, and some tracks are immediately forgotten. Wilco's return to form, The Whole Love, narrowly missed the list, but I haven't picked it up since hearing most of it live in October. I burned it up, unfortunately.

As always, I did find a highly subjective list. So read on, shake your head in disgust and wonder what I was thinking.

Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues

Robin Pecknold and Company deftly dashed any haters hopingfor a sophomore slump. How a 25-year-old man can pen such heartbreaking tunesabout growing old, I will never know. As with their debut, I have a hard time criticizingany note here.

Various Artists/DangerMouse, Rome

If the movie to this soundtrack ever arrives, I’ll be inline. My feelings have already gone public.

Panda Bear, Tomboy

Another year passes without a new Animal Collective record,but at least Panda Bear feted us with his distinctive vocals. You won’t missthem … as much, but Tomboy is a fine companion to his previous effort, Person Pitch.

Feist, Metals

From the first notes, it becomes clear why Leslie Feiststepped away from music for 18 months before starting from scratch for her newrecord. Only her voice links Metals to TheReminder and Let It Die. There’sno 1,2,3,4 on this record, only thelooming apocalypse of Undiscovered First.

Low, C’mon

I’m extremely late to the Low bandwagon, but caught up in abig way throughout 2011. Not only did I buy their latest, but grabbed Long Division, Secret Names, the GreatDestroyer and Christmas. With C’mon, the Duluth, Minn. band’s strengthsrise up, with meditative songwriting and sweet, subdued melodies never far away.

Drive-by Truckers,Go-Go Boots

The Truckers tone down the guitars for a more muscular,stripped down sound. Recorded at the same time as The Big To-Do, Go-Go Bootsis the superior record. With CartoonGold, Mike Cooley wrote the most poignant song including a line about dogcrap. Shonna Tucker continues to improve as their third singer-songwriter – justtry to hate Dancin’ Ricky. PattersonHood never stumbles (see Ray’s AutomaticWeapon and Everybody Needs Love).Their slice-of-life-on-the-darkside songwriting hits a peak on Used to be a Cop. For a band thatunleashes a solid long-player every year, this album’s dusty soul vibe juststruck me differently.

Favorite vinyl reissues

Nick Lowe, Labour of Lust

I saw the man perform not once but twice this year, and hissense of pop songwriting seems to sharpen with age. Just rereleased on vinyl, Labour of Lust follows up Jesus of Cool, and like the latter, teachesa clinic is clean, smart songwriting.

Calexico, Road Atlas 1998-2011

This vinyl boxed set collects nine limited edition touralbums from the Arizona rocker’s history. It’s definitely for hardcore fans(like myself), but accessible to anyone enamored with cinematic rock tunes. Thetwo live albums unveil how the band built its dedicated following, and nomatter how many times Crystal Frontier appears across this set (three), you will nevertire of its blistering pace.

The White Stripes, Live in Mississippi July 31, 2007

Enough griping about Jack White. This vinyl-only record from Third Man Records Vault series chronicles the band's final show, which includes a crop of excellent blues covers, including two from Robert Johnson, and a load of old cuts. Forget that limp take on We're Gonna Be Friends on Conan O'Brien; the Stripes triumphantly end here.

Late to the Party

Om, God is Good

I would be amiss if I left out some doom metal goodness.This three-song, 30-minute album adds some Middle Eastern influences to a soundthat could grow stagnant incredibly fast. The bass-and-drum duo nonetheless completea short but compelling cycle perfect for driving due south from Seattle at 5a.m.

Over and Out from Beverly Hills (Almost)

2011-11-04T16:28:00.000-05:00

In a different life, these hands might have belonged to a cartographer. On any flight, I only suffer when I get a window seat in exchange for a cloudy day. On my recent trip to Los Angeles for the second annual ACO Congress (sorry for the work-speak), the winds favored my flights. Leaving Nashville, I got the plane's last window seat, and ended up in a particularly chatty row with two other businessmen. Talk ranged from brewing beer to why they loved living in Williamson County (I was noticeably silent in that exchange). Aside from my mention of standing behind Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) in the BNA security line and finding him much shorter than I expected(true story), I doubt much of what I said resonated.

But that was fine, because the window held wonders. With almost 4 hours to Las Vegas, I has hours to burn on the geometry below. Despite despising the term "flyover country," flying over the bulk of the U.S. spoke to how the land shaped us and the people we kicked off that land.

Photos this bad from great heights don't do it justice either.

The skies cleared for nearly the entire route, highlighting the vivid squares, circles and crescents of the Plains. Rivers curled and blossomed into reservoirs among the green that faded as we reached the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. After a patch of desert emerged the snow-capped Rockies in New Mexico and the southwest's signature red buttes and steep canyons.

Finally, the Grand Canyon appeared, looking almost small next to the high-desert plain it occupied. Almost. The brilliant bands of rock could not be escaped. I anticipated a sighting from Oklahoma, and it did not disappoint.

A two-hour layover stood between me and Los Angeles. Unfortunately, McCarran International feels like a man refusing to accept that his waistline has grown two sizes and won't buy new pants. Between the slot machines, the oxygen bars and lack of seating, the concourse almost got claustrophobic.

Everything possible delayed our departure, and the Strip was fully lit by the time we ascended above its gambling palaces. A Las Vegas firefighter sat next to me, and we chatted through the 40-minute jump over the desert and mountains to L.A. Fighting fires was small part of the work these days, and most calls were drug or health related. He was heading home to El Paso. We got talking about places out west, and I asked about leaving Vegas. The hardest thing, he said, was remembering that Las Vegas is a 24-hour town and most others aren't. If you need milk at 11 p.m., you might have to wait till morning. Not so in Vegas. We talked at length and admitted the rich sunset burning down beneath the mountain ridges.

Once we escaped the clouds, downtown L.A. shimmered. I said goodbye to the friendly firefighter and soon enough LAX spat me onto the curb. My cab driver took immediate interest when I told him I came west for a healthcare conference. In a cab on the 405, my Russian-born cab driver went deep into his health insurance woes -- $800 a month with a $9,000 deductible. He left his homeland at the end of the Soviet era, and conceded that not everything socialist turned out badly (i.e. healthcare).When we reached Century City, on the edge of Beverly Hills, I could hardly believe my eyes. The Halloween fog lifted enough to reveal a pretty glamorous hotel. The room was modern and comfortable, the balcony a nice flourish after so many hours cooped up on a 737. With an open-air mall across the street, it wasn't long before I was fed, watered, and ready to crash on Pacific time.

Purple light of the Century City sunrise.

At the actual conference, I spent three days as a stenographer, jotting down everything I could from top-level health executives. It was rare to get such people in one room. Some nice folks from a few health plans sat near me, which helped during the down moments.

I did kick off a little early on the second day, when no late-afternoon panels were of interest to my coworkers. I took a three-mile walk, talked to my mother while navigating the streets and stopped at Wally's Wines for a glance at its wares and to hunt some Russian River Brewing Company ales. I think I saw Beck, but it makes me kinda nervous to say so (bah-dum-dum). It seemed logical - he's a California native, that stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard was the Los Angeles answer to Music Row, except the L.A. version had a lot more palm trees and luxury sedans.

Returning to the room, I found my laptop had picked up a nasty virus through its portable wireless card. Thank goodness all my conference notes went into the notebook they provided. I had a bit of laptop envy when I saw almost everyone sporting iPads at the conference. The only advantage I had was I could savagely beat anyone who laughed at my antique technology. After the virus meltdown, it was little more than a paperweight. The last night had a silver lining. My old traveling buddy Alicia drove straight from her reporting job in Riverside to meet me for dinner and some beers. We talked life on the little balcony of my room and downed a few Fuller ESBs and Lost Coast Great Whites. Soon enough, the morning session would pass, I would pack and huddle up at LAX again.

Long Beach. Alicia used to live close to the pier.

The skies were just as clear on the way home. The 737 rocketed out above the Pacific (all the recent whale activity left me hopeful for a sighting, but ultimately disappointed). A cluster of small clouds draped Palo Verses as it jutted into the Pacific next to San Pedro, home of Anna Draper in Mad Men. The skyline of Long Beach, its port and oil-producing islands came next. Alicia once lived a few blocks from the pier, shoreline and bluffs that were a perfect perch Sunday morning lounging. Long Beach zipped away as the jet turned back above L.A.'s infinite grid anchored to the cluster of skyscrapers to the north.

Joshua Tree at 38,000 feet

For its size, L.A. vanished briskly into the brown and khaki desert beyond Irvine and Indio. My map skill from seven miles high improved dramatically. A massive field of wind turbines spun, and a faint road cruised up a narrow canyon to the high desert of Joshua Tree National Park. While not visible here, I remembered enough of our route to plot where it should lie. Sure enough, I spotted the access road leading to an overlook. From this altitude, the piles of weathered rocks were no more than grains of sand.

There was no second act from the Grand Canyon, although the plane's right-side passenger glimpsed Phoenix. We got the desert, the red rocks of Sedona and a healthy forest fire coughing up smoke to its north. Tracing Interstate 40 subtly snaking across northern Arizona, I glimpsed the badlands of Petrified Forest National Park before the first thatch of clouds moved in.

Possibly Sedona, definitely a forest fire.

Without land to map, I dozed till sunset. Before the vibrant hues cut to black, I employed those mad mapping skills again, this time finding Amarillo plotted out on the dusty Texas panhandle. I glimpsed the somewhat amazing depths of nearby Palo Duro Canyon as the clouds took over, beating twilight to the punch.

Percy On The Mend

2011-10-26T15:39:00.002-05:00

For almost two years, Percy has roamed the meadows and treed patches of Greenland Avenue without fear. He has conquered marauding dogs and cats not smart enough to know they breached his territory. He has come home with black cat fur protruding from his toes, a trophy of a backyard victory.

A few weeks ago, he met his match. Aside from a cat’s battle screech, I found no other evidence of his attacker till his attempts to hide a gash on his neck finally failed on Tuesday evening. Young Percy had been wounded badly.

I knew something felt wrong the moment I returned from an afternoon walk with Nancy to find a groggy, silent Percy clinging to sleep at all costs. For as much as his voice rattled me from sleep at inopportune hours, its abrupt disappearance was an instant tipoff to his condition. I let him outside, and he immediately curled up on the porch couch, somewhat disoriented and oblivious to his surroundings.

Monday he seemed better, acting almost gregarious in his attempts to go outside and eating a little more food. Tuesday he seemed fine after work, enjoying a brief jaunt through the yard and reluctantly accepting his return to the apartment. By Tuesday night, he regressed and again lumbered with a groggy gait. That was when I found the dime-sized plug of gray and crimson behind his right ear.

Until they shaved it at the vet’s office, I had no idea. The deep puncture just missed his ear, and abscessed with amazing speed. I can only guess the teeth of a large dog or possibly a coyote could cause so much damage. I had gone to the vet with the worst case embedded in my brain matter. If the infection had damaged his brain, I knew what had to happen. It left me quite glum when watching his every action in the apartment windowsill or on the exam room’s table. I wanted to capture everything in case I could capture nothing else.

Until they shaved it at the vet’s office, I had no idea. The deep puncture just missed his ear, and abscessed with amazing speed. Cats excel at hiding weakness, so it was not shocking. They attached a cone for me. I detached the cone so Percy could eat.

After gorging himself on canned food, Percy went for the wound immediately, licking and scratching at the drain. The cone has stayed on ever since. It interferes with his ability to navigate. All cats use their whiskers as a guide; Percy has exceptionally long whiskers and keeps stumbling into items around the house. His jumps are almost painful to watch, as he fears missing his target.

Percy could fend off the neighborhood dogs, but the depth of his wound indicated a canine culprit. I suspect some shepherd, husky or pit mix got grasp of his neck and dug in. His early morning ventures do not rule out a coyote, though. They do roam Nashville with the same impunity of everywhere else in the Lower 48. A coyote might have had the patience to ambush him, patience a domestic canine would not. In the end, I can only guess. The vets could not tell either.

Friday brought the biggest surprise. As expected, Percy has shed his collar while I worked. Unexpectedly, he also pulled out the drain installed in his wound. In his zeal to scratch the wounded area, he had impeded the healing process.

Saturday had equally strange turns. Ten minutes after reattaching his collar, bottles and dishes rattled in the kitchen. I found him thrashing on the floor with one leg stuck inside of the collar. He growled and lurched against the ground. Once freed, I tightened the collar two more notches. I was no longer concerned with his comfort, not when he would slip free at every turn and launch his claws onto the wound.

Once he stopped trying to break free of the cone, the healing began. He also began to accept the wound cleaning would happen whether or not he wanted it. The quality of food he received usually went up after a cleaning, so I think the

He still has scabs yet to heal, but he sits in the window, ornery as ever. Yet something has changed. Whether he has forgotten or not, his zeal to run outside has diminished. He emits a few meows from the window ledge, but never fiddles with the doorknob with his former fury. Perhaps he is weighed by thoughts of what bit his scruff, or perhaps a little time will increase his clamor for the outdoors.

When Nashville Met Sunnyvale

2011-10-12T11:53:00.003-05:00

Three months ago, I couldn’t have told you a word about the Trailer Park Boys and the mishaps of Julian, Ricky and Bubbles. After a heavy dose of DVD time and occasional YouTube excursion, I cannot fathom how I endured without them.

Seriously, check out the Mustard Tiger and you'll see what I mean. The Nova Scotia-based comedy conjured up laughter I didn’t know I still had. Set in Sunnyvale Trailer Park, the boys plot to get ahead through illegal schemes and usually boomerang back to jail by each season's end.

The boys brought The Ricky, Julian and Bubbles, Drunk, High and Unemployed Tour to Nashville on Tuesday. They emerged in spacesuits after a backstage opening that involved drinking from piss jugs and hidden cameras. Also introducing the boys was Conky, Bubbles' ventriloquist dummy that takes on a personality of its own. Conky broke up the action on occasion, illustrating Ricky's inability to comprehend a two-dimension screen.

The early plot followed the get-rich schemes integral to the show, including Julian selling hot dogs to the audience and Ricky plotting a religious school. Bubbles’ attempts to film an audition tape to send to Jackie Chan drove the night. He played cut-rate Jeff Foxworthy wig in a Are You Smarter Than a First-Grader, which pitted audience members against Ricky. His responses were high points in an already uproarious night, especially the number of legs a centipede has and the difference between beavers and beavners.

Now, I didn’t prepare myself for one thing – the boys’ celebration of a dirtbag lifestyle, mostly drinking and smoking marijuana, appeals to demographics I’m no longer or never was a part of. So it was a pretty drunken crowd. At least one guy got booted, and walking out the majority were shambling and bleary-eyed.
But people got into the spirit, and most kept to yelling lines from the show. One couple dressed as the boys’ dim-witted henchman, Cory and Trevor. People seemed to know them much better than I expected. They even earned a nice write-up in the Nashville Scene, with Robb Wells conducting the interview in character as Ricky. Even in print, his delivery shined through. They reenacted a scene from the first episode with an audience member in the role of trailer park bully Cyrus.

Audience participation in theBubbles Idol section was painful; the boys mocked their volunteers who insisted they could sing to get onstage. One girl salvaged the whole skit by singing Conhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifky’s Patrick Swayze ode to Julian. Soon, Bubbles donned a wig and dress then tried to coax Julian into dancing along to Time of my Life.

After a brief clip from their new show, The Drunk and On Drugs Happy Time Hour, the boys reemerged. Mike Smith wore normal eyeglasses and joked how nice it was to finally see the audience (he can’t see anything in Bubbles’ pair). John Paul Trembley (Julian) and Robb Wells both seemed genuinely shocked at the Nashville’s turnout for the show. Most of the Polk Theatre’s main floor was full.

The live show perfectly capped the three-month odyssey with the boys' profane yet intelligent brand of humor. To see them onstage instead behind a shaky, faux-documentary camera enhanced the experience, even if it didn't quite compare with their best episodes. I'll chalk that up to a lack of a Steve French cameo.

Last of the West: Portland, Olympia and West Seattle Redux

2011-10-03T11:51:00.006-05:00

The drive from Crater Lake back to civilization was uneventful but rugged. I crossed deep evergreen forests and tried not to compare them to the redwoods. Outside the park, the road jogged with the North Umqua River and stopped at the whim of the state transportation department and stimulus-approved projects. In other spots, it the highway hugged steep rocks and curved slowly to a milder elevation. Several construction stops of 10 minutes or more slowed the pace, but before long, I joined the flow on I-5 toward Portland.

Little changed until I reached Portland. I didn't get the enjoy the street names that Matt Groening plucked for his Simpsons characters (aside from Terwilliger). These streets challenged me. Usually good with a map, I struggled until I bought one outlining the maze of one-way streets. The hotel gave me poor directions from the highway, and I continually traversed neighborhoods nowhere near my destination. About 30 minutes before my planned lunch with Kate, an old college friend, I finally found the Jupiter Hotel and left the Mustang. I met Kate at the adjoining Doug Fir restaurant, a late-night place with affordable comfort food. We discussed the 14 years that passed since we last saw each other at Mercyhurst. She had settled into a life in Portland, with one young daughter and a son on the way.

With a few hours to burn, I set out into downtown. Crossing the Burnside Bridge, I encountered Portland’s social service hub. In the nearby park, dozens of homeless people slept. People and even dogs crowded the shady spots. It got a little claustrophobic, but no one hassled me.

I hustled up the blocks to Powell’s World of Book, the city’s legendary new and used book palace. The shelves were high, the books stretched on forever, and there were rooms I never reached. But I saw enough to know that every city deserves a bookstore this eclectic and large – even in the age of the Kindle and the iPad. It will take generations for print to vanish into the digital sphere, and I won’t aid its disappearance.

In June, my friends Christian and Kristin introduced me to a former Tennessean colleague, Laura, who had migrated to Portland. She told me she would be happy to show me some local haunts in Portland, an uncommonly kind gesture from a near-stranger. But she had the endorsement of C&K, which goes a long way. After returning from Powell's, the night started at Noble Rot, a wine bar four floors above the East Portland streets and with a perfect view of the skyline across the Willamette. A quick wine flight of old favorite Three-Legged Red, a Washington Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon provided the perfect kickoff to a run around town. Next stop was the Green Dragon Brewing Company, a fun but subdued beer bar. Monday nights do that sometimes. A paddle of bars and a pour of Hair of the Dog Adam pushed me through till sundown.

The finale came at Saraveza's, a neighborhood bar with walls lined with ancient beer coolers (oh, and the men's room had this excellent Saison DuPont sign). I could have dropped $100 on beer chilled in those coolers, but went with a few local pours and the dynamite contribution from Free Bacon Night. I caught a handful of local broadcasts before crashing in my room at the Jupiter, unable to move without knocking anything over.

Tuesday sped into sunrise. I enjoyed a quick breakfast at the Doug Fir, packed up and returned to I-5 for the final leg. The City of Bridges extends in front of me. The wide Columbia came quickly. Minutes from my hotel, Oregon disappeared behind me and the road held sway. I stopped to conduct a work interview in a Safeway parking lot, but otherwise motored away.

What does Mount St. Helens have in common with sea lions? I knew it hid just under the marine layer blanketing southern Washington, but could do nothing to gain a glimpse. I stopped at the visitor center and spent a little quality time, but time was evaporating quicker than the marine layer. I had to return my car by 2, and still wanted a quick stop in the state capital, Olympia.

On an overcast day, Olympia’s collection of Greek-style government buildings were made for photos. I wandered the campus and into the capitol, feeding my little hobby of photographing statehouses, then wandered back. Western statehouses always feel different, with the state officeholders actually working out of the capitol, not adjacent officer buildings. I had little time to enjoy the town or its inlet of Puget Sound, but a taste of the capitol campus sates my appetite.

Jenny was free after a dental appointment and spared me from taking the light rail downtown. Once she gathered me and the Mustang was gone, I stayed in West Seattle until the time to depart arrived. I wanted to walk, so we headed off to California Avenue for some Indian food. We drove around for a bit, then relaxed with Roseanne reruns until a quiet dinner from Taco Time, a surprisingly fresh Mexican fast-food operation without the gargantuan portions of Chipotle or most mass-market Mexican joints.

Wednesday I struck out early onto West Seattle’s streets. I had no intention of venturing across Elliot Bay. West Seattle was enough for me on my last day. There was plenty to see, but I just hit the record stores for another round of cheap classical finds and last stop at the Beer Junction for some Alaskan Brewing anniversary stout.

We had a few quiet nights watching old movies (UHF, anyone?) sprinkled with South Park and Roseanne episodes. I drank beer and we both teased Kyona to best of our ability. The quiet moments stuck with me, because after all the monuments of nature packed into a few days, a few relaxed ones with my sister meant just as much. I don’t mean to get sentimental, and I won’t. We never fought, I never got drunk, we enjoyed our time, and we knew it would come again.

Wilco Rarely Skips In Its Ryman Groove

2011-10-03T10:05:00.006-05:00

Few evening can beat a 25-song Saturday night with Wilco, espechttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifially at the Ryman with Nick Lowe opening and knowing how it almost didn't happen.

You can't hesitate with tickets to the Ryman. With a band like Wilco, you stake a claim early or accept not attending. I did just that back in August, when I had no inkling about their next record. After the last album, I didn't want to get burned again (their 2009 Cinci performance gave some life to those songs, but it quickly faded). But they turned out a gem, and the tickets were long sold out.

Enter some friends with some highly placed friends. Two weeks before, four tickets in row Q of the main floor came through. As a beggar, I chose not to complain about the difference between floor and balcony seats

Wilco took a bold step by opening with Sunday Morning, a gentle 12-minute epic full of sad, personal lyrics about a bitter father-son relationship. They bounced right back to The Whole Love. Released just five days earlier, the new album's songs dominated the main set. Numbers such as Red Right Lung and I Might feel effortless. On the third album with this lineup, Wilco felt more comfortable than ever in its own skin, even on fractured songs like the Art of Almost.

The older tracks were a stranger bunch. Immediately after Sunday Morning, they launched into One Wing and Bull Black Nova, two false starts from the lackluster Wilco (The Album). They continued their streak of playing Shot in the Arm at shows I attended; nothing else from Summerteeth surfaced.

Wilco rarely follows the same pattern with its encores - sometimes, they extend out to two or three returns to the stage. They went for one big encore Saturday night, eight songs spanning their career and that of their opener. The highlight of the encore came when Nick Lowe returned to join Wilco for 36 Inches High from Jesus of Cool and a duet with Tweedy on I Love My Label, which Wilco covered to announce its new own label.

Regrettably we missed all but four songs of Nick Lowe's opening set, but what a quartet he unleashed. Solo and acoustic, Lowe eased through Cruel to Be Kind and "a song by an old friend," Elvis Costello's Alison. he closed Rockpile standard When I Write the Book and The Beast in Me, his contribution to former father-in law Johnny Cash's American Recordings.

If anything felt off, it was Tweedy's banter. He seemed disengaged and aside from mocking someone with a demand that they play Lexington - to which he responded that they play everywhere, and planned to play Antarctica in 2013 - most of it felt tossed off. But I wouldn't have wanted to talk to that audience either. It was almost entertaining watching people try to hooter and holler above the white noise of songs like Poor Places.

For an album-oriented band, Wilco never struggles to bump early tracks against its noisier output in a set list. Nothing shocked more than the inclusion of two A.M. tracks, Shouldn't Be Ashamed and Boxful of Letters. Being There went ignored until they tore into Monday and Outtasight (Outta Mind), the encore's closers. By pummeling their way through that duo, they proved they can still blaze through early staples without a hitch.

The Legendary Mountaintop Lake

2011-09-21T15:22:00.015-05:00

The fog horn which tolled through the night continued through rumors of dawn and lightening of the marine layer that coasted Crescent City. For the last time, I turned off the Coast Highway, this time on a diagonal for southern Oregon. Hungry but eager to move on, I went northeast through the Jedediah Smith State Park and its thatch of giant trees. A morning of redwoods did a tired body well. I didn’t take any hikes, but for a few minutes sat roadside among the Smith grove giants, soaking in a little more of their atmosphere as they imbibed the Pacific fog.

A few miles into the forest, the road entered Hiouchi, a patch of hotels, gas stations and restaurants. The Hiouchi Café provided the atmosphere the Beachcomber could not. Local s crowded the counter and regaled me with Crater Lake advice or recalled how they had never visited in 40 years of living in Northern California. It was an older community, as evidenced by the pile of reading glasses on the counter. In the dining room, I would see my only sign of 9-11’s 10th anniversary – group of firefighters enjoying breakfast. The Crater Lake Lodge has no televisions, so I had no worry of further reminders.

Leaving Hiouchi, the trees along Highway 199, the Redwood Highway, would shorten and narrow. The rock formations got steeper. The tough mileage came after the road narrowed and the chain of cars sped through the Smith River gorge. I can’t stop myself from thinking about the consequences of the car rumbling over the embankment. Every time I see the railing stop or steep plunge past the white lines, the thought rolls in. Then came a tunnel and entry to Oregon.

For a few miles I joined with Interstate 5, then split off again to follow the route to Crater Lake. I made few stops, even as the road soared above the Rogue River and the dam-made lakes along it. The national forest hemmed in Route 62 as it barreled toward the park. I rarely exceeded 70 mph, and there was

At the natural bridge lookout, I stopped to take the rare sight – the Rogue River funneled into a lava tube for a few hundred feet, disappearing except for a few geysers springing from the rocks. I’ve never seen a river take such an underground turn. This part of the Rogue was not navigable by boat, but it was nonetheless picturesque.

I grabbed a few bottles of beer at Prospect, the last stop before the road abandoned civilization and cut toward Crater Lake. The road rose in the sunshine, and a brief thunderstorm pounded the Mustang. It handled the hills with skill until we reached the entry shack and a line of cars crawling up the switchbacks toward Crater Lake.

As the rain stopped, I noticed a small spider extended a web from the car ceiling close to the steering wheel. But it stretched too thin, and the current of the open window dragged it away. With the magnificent of Crater Lake approaching, I was better for remembering how small we are.

I had not yet glimpsed the lake, but my eyes fell dejectedly upon a man with a Bluetooth earpiece strolling the lake rim. And he was staring at me. And he would not break out of his state. So I thrust up my hands in my best Don Draper impersonation and mouthed "What?" at him. It flustered him, but not as much as my original planned comment, "Way to enjoy nature" was not uttered. Seriously, at a unique place, there’s always some guy who cannot conceive of missing a call.

While he looked at me bewildered, I turned the corner and left the Mustang. The long wait, the view I wanted to see since I first heard of Crater Lake as a child, was now in view. Deciding to follow the rim road east, I barely went a mile before stopping at Discovery Point, the first place from which white people saw the lake. It should be noted that American Indians lived in the region at the time Mount Mazama blew and collapsed into Crater Lake 6,000 years ago. They had a record, and kept people away from the waters. No one Caucasian saw it until 1851.

The blue was unavoidable. Even with some cloud cover, no lake in North America was as deep or displayed such colors (well, maybe Tahoe). I hiked wherever I could. This was a lake in which altitude matter. Even if most viewpoints started at 7,000 feet above sea level and 500-1,000 feet above the lake surface, I could not skip it.

Up next was the Watchman Trail, which climbed just 400 feet of altitude and 0.7 miles along a switchback trail to the best view of Wizard Island, the large volcanic cone in the lake. It was a brutal hike, but absolutely worth the slog. I got to the top, where a fire lookout sat, and let my heart catch up with the 8,100 feet above sea level. The wildfire burning to the east was plainly visible, and I threw a few questions at the ranger walking the lookout rails.

Created by lightning strikes in a dry summer, the fire burned within the park and at 300 acres, was the largest of three now burning within the park. The smaller ones were visible but less impressive. Trees within the largest fire burned noticeably when the fire hit their sap.

After a few more photogenic stops, I reached Cleetman’s Cove, the only path to the lake shore. It was too late for a boat ride around the lake, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to reach down, cup my hands and take a drink from that impossible blue. Walking down was simple. I passed people of all ages, and passing the obese and elderly only encouraged me that the upward return trip would pose no problems. German tourists stripped to Speedos and dove in. Others corralled chipmunks accustomed to people and posed for photos. They got their swims, I inches out onto the rocks and got my drink. Water never tasted better.

On the return path, I passed French, Scandinavians, Germans and Japanese. It was every bit the challenge I never anticipated, covering 1.1 miles but all uphill. I finished and my heart reminded me of its presence. I struggled and my pulse showed it. Immediately I turned to Skell Head, one of the viewpoints. Here again I was pleased to be alone just miles from Cleetman’s Cove.

I skipped the Pinnacles, a collection of volcanic features down a one-way road. At the Phantom Ship Overlook, which highlighted a volcanic cone which predated Mount Mazama and somehow survived the blast, I heard a curious conversation. One woman ranted how the afternoon haze and the forest fire burning had "ruined their afternoon."

I waited half a lifetime to see Crater Lake. I got all kinds of blue-sky photos early in the day, and just miles from the fire got great pictures of Wizard Island from Watchman’s Peak. Holding my tongue, I contained all sorts of comments like "Did the fire burn down your house? Then it didn’t ruin your day." Sorry, but I am tired of soft American nonsense. Unless the fire raged on Crater Lake’s rim, there is no way it should ruin anyone’s day. A little smoke lingered in the air, but I arrived at 1 p.m. and had no problem getting crystal blue views.

Leaving the complainers behind, I was alone until the parking lot for Sun Notch, an excellent view of the Phantom Ship, named for its resemblance to a giant boat on the lake. I got much better pictures scrambling past the orange barricade fence to the steep incline down to a viewpoint rife with gnarled trees. My best photos of the Phantom Ship were taken here, alone and without interference from people who had no faith in the lake’s beauty. Around Sun Notch, the wildflowers of Crater Lake’s short growing season grew into a dazzling array of color. Crimson and violet brightened the grass.

Curling back up the switchbacks toward the lodge, I shared an unguarded moment. I spotted a young deer grazing in a ditch along the road. It was the purest representation of the species, a young foal that likely just left its mother but established itself as independent. We traded stares, no one else joined in, and I didn’t bother with a picture because I would not forget that little encounter. Usually deer ran at first sight of cars or humans, but this one gently raised its head from the tall grass and blinked its giant obsidian eyes. I couldn’t shake that one moment with the wildlife of Crater Lake. Backcountry hikers were often the only ones to encounter fauna at Crater Lake. The rim was too populated for animals to venture that way. I got one deer encounter independent of the masses, just minutes outside the caldera. Its beauty so pure, the foal almost brought tears to my eyes.

Just before 5, the park was empty. It made perfect sense – aside from the park lodge and accommodations at the Mazama facilities just outside the caldera, every other stop required an hour of driving. Most people had gone by then. In the hall of the lodge, where drinks and appetizers were in order, I found myself among the youngest enjoying the lodge – by generations.

I alternated between beer, postcard writing and walking along the lake ledge. Week One of the NFL season raged somewhere else, as did the somber memorials for a terrible Tuesday in 2001. Patches of snow clung to the cliffs near the lodge. Rather than drink myself silly prior to a 9 p.m. dinner, I sat with appetizers and talked with George, a Greek native who claimed his homes as Athens, Toronto, NYC and Los Angeles. He was driving to British Columbia from L.A. and hit all the sights on the way up, including the Oregon Caves National Monument, which his T-shirt indicated. He was the luckiest man on Crater Lake, a noisy room opened up that afternoon, so with no notice, he got lodging on the rim. Sure, I made my reservation in March, but had to salute his good fortune.

After a long bath and dinner in the lodge, the best fine dining along my route, I crashed hard. All that hiking caught up with me, and the alcohol did not hurt. Without air-conditioning in the lodge, I never missed it. The smell of the forest fires infiltrated the room, but the smoky odor never intruded too deeply. I poured myself an after-dinner and laid on the bed. At 1 a.m., I awoke again, having never taken a sip.

Shortly before 6 a.m., the smoke subsided and sunrise clung to the rim ridges. I hurried to pack and get on the road. The views from Discovery Point and the bottom of the Watchman Trail emanated colors unavailable at other hours. The deep-blue lake had fall under a yellow-purple haze. There I would leave the mythical lake on its mountaintop to my memory and turn north into more uninhabited Oregon.

Five Percent Bliss: Quality Time Under California's Coastal Redwoods

2011-09-20T08:11:00.011-05:00

Waiting on photos of Coos Bay proved unfortunate. The morning fog blocked the bridge from the hotel. I could see the tide had fled and left an expanse of muddy sand that ended beyond the mist. Fog blocked everything but bird calls, barge horns and the Bay Bridge Hotel’s neon sign. If not for the Internet and bombardment of 9/11 anniversary news, this narrow thatch of highway might have been the entirety of existence. I wasn’t about to spend it with the sallow-eyed men leaning out their room doors to smoke so they didn’t have to wear pants at 7 a.m. One bore a faint resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones. When I check out, Bay Bridge Betty shook her head and mentally prepared to clean up after them.

A few sea lion calls echoed in the mist, but once on the span, everything was invisible beyond the guardrail. I decided to follow Bay Bridge Betty’s advice and traveled through Charleston to check out the botanical gardens and coastal islands. After fighting through the fog that engulfed Charleston, I couldn’t have imagined it lifting to let the gardens work their magic. I dodged cyclists overwhelmed by the hills and clearly fearless of automobiles.

Even as the ticket booth swallowed a five dollar bill, Shore Acres State Park appeared deserted and closed. Only one other car sat in the voluminous lot. But the emerald oasis sparkled with all colors in the spectrum. Manicured greens gave way to bursts of yellow and purple.

They were a revelation, a fantastic remnant of an estate built a century ago then wiped away by a storm. The state bought the land and converted the gardens into a state park. Despite the fog, there were no vision problems when entering the gardens. Carefully manicured plots framed ponds with stone seabirds. A few amateur photographers skulked the grounds.

Returning to the mist, I continued to Cape Arago State Park, a promontory lookout on a group of islands forbidden to sightseers. Simpson Reef and Shell Island were nowhere to be seen anyway. The surf crashed hard against beaches deep inside U-shaped ridges, and the rocky fringes jutted out into the unknown Pacific. Fifty feet out, the fog kingdom ruled all. I would see nothing of the islands but heard hundreds of sea lions bellowing just under the lip of fog. Beauty might lie underneath, but I was not meant to view it.

The Cranberry Festival rerouted traffic around Bandon, the first town south of the Coos Bay area and a series of construction stops. Port Orford was quiet but welcoming, about what one would expect of the westernmost incorporated community in the Lower 48. Finally, the fog faded and the Pacific was unobstructed.

Signs on Port Orford’s asphalt pointed toward the ocean view. Port Orford’s beach was the opposite of Cannon Beach, with just a person or two wandering the white sand. A rugged collection of ships sat adjacent to the beach, the port which gave Orford its name. Gulls congregated around the best beach vantage points, attracted by what past visitors had donated to them.

The names of random beaches lost their importance. They were all part of the same coastline I had now traced 300-plus miles south to Gold Beach, where Highway 101 crossed the mouth of the Rogue River. Boats thickened those waters beneath another charming green bridge. Oregon spent the money to build artistic bridges 80 years ago, and the coast benefits to this day.

I sank up to my knees in some places, with the coastal mounts and boulders an unavoidable draw. Elsewhere I stumbled around rocks in the shallow sand. It was a giant’s playground, a blank slate plotted by impossibly strong forces. The river mouths swept out the driftwood and the rough ocean returned it to the beaches. But mountainous rock formations ruled these tides.

The coastal comparisons failed here. There’s nowhere I remember on the east coast when you can go from miles of beach to an highway hugging a cliff hundreds of feet above the water. I watched the waves rolled in from miles out; in some spots, there was just violent white stretching to the horizon.

With just coffee for breakfast, I wanted to stop but felt the urge to drive on. The redwoods awaited. My desire for a burger and a beer could be postponed. Leaving Brookings, the last major Oregon town heading south- it took Japanese fire during WWII - I crossed the border shortly after 1 p.m.

California conducted its standard fruit inspection, and the road galloped into California. Every liquor outlet touted its price on Black Velvet half-gallons. Without any fanfare Crescent City arrived soon enough. Its beaches were beautiful and its harbor was poorly suited for tsunamis – several people died when the Japanese wave slammed into the harbor earlier this year. Passing through Crescent City, taking advice from the pony-tailed ranger at the visitor center, I proceeded south on a hilly section of U.S. 101 to survey the best coastal outlooks.

The roadside trees expanded to unbelievable proportions and I knew the redwoods had arrived. The firs of northern Oregon and the sea-sculpted bonsai of the coast were instantly forgotten. These dimensions were impossible anywhere I had dwelled. Aside from the fossilized stumps of the Flourissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado, I had never gazed upon such massive trees. I stopped at a few early viewpoints, not yet realizing these old-growth groves towered over these giants.

I skipped most early stops to target the Klamath River. Nature viewing would offer nothing better than the overlook above the Klamath’s mouth. A month ago, a gray whale and her calf had stayed in the estuary, with the calf fleeing for the ocean and the mother dying soon after. An unusually clear day blessed the viewpoint, which rose 600 feet above the river’s mouth.

In the surf a few hundred feet from shore, black specks jumps and frolicked. Clearly something alive had camped out. The park ranger was not sure what types of whales they were, but I borrowed her binoculars, saw black and white flesh to confirm that a pod of orcas had taken up residence. A British couple camped out in Crescent City watched them with joy; two other men never looked up at their Blackberry phones. That led me to wonder: Why come to such a spot of natural beauty and fixate upon a square of technology? I would ask that question again and again.

I descended the steep road with a mind still reeling from whale sightings. People paid hundreds of dollars for ocean voyages, and I only had to borrow a pair of binoculars. Leaving the overlook, the Edwin Drury Scenic Parkway arrived quickly. An alternative to Route 101, it ran through the Prairie Creek Redwood State Park and a good slice of old-growth redwoods.

Here the forest that substituted for the moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi became apparent. The road was lightly traveled and the forest loops were even emptier. It was easy to get lost under the steep canopies and minimal light. I touched many of the big trees, walked through the holes that forest fires burned at their bases, and just relished in the time alone among giants. I rarely felt such peace only a few hundred feet from the road.

Civilization had little sway in this protected forest, just 5 percent of the original 2 million acres that dominated the California coast. In a few decades, man’s lust for bug and fire resistant wood toppled all but scattered groves of old-growth redwoods. Like the bison in Yellowstone, we were so close to losing them forever.

Stopping for a stamp at Prairie Creek’s little headquarters, the ranger noticed my notebook bore a Yoda stamp, which I only had on there as postage in case I ever lost it and someone wanted to mail it back. I made a feeble Ewok comment and moved on. I wanted big trees, not talk of George Lucas.

As I zipped through Orick and onto the Humboldt Lagoons, I passed the elk that caused motorists to swarm. I had seen herds in Colorado, Montana and Wyoming, so the draw was minimal. Realizing I missed the turnoff for the Lady Bird Johnson Grove, I had to break back north before I ended up in Eureka sipping brews at the beer the tattooed fisherman recommended.

The Lady Bird grove, which contained some of the park's biggest trees, was well worth the one mile forest loop. I was alone for most of it, aside from a clutch of birds used to tourist food. The former First Lady was there for the dedication in 1969, and a plaque in front of one monster tree marked the occasion.

The temperature dropped and the afternoon sun dappled on patches of redwood trunk. If you didn't feel and insignificant in the redwood forest, you were somewhere else. Some trees dated back to the time of Christ. The unique conditions along California's North Coast made their phenomenal growth possible.I had only hours in their grasp, but could have spent years and never grown tired of craning my neck to examine their heights.

Route 101 was almost thick with hitchhikers. For a place with so few cities, it seemed an unlikely draw. Most with their thumbs in the air sported dreadlocks and homemade clothes; others felt like college students out on an adventure before fall term. I passed one group of well-soiled five 20-somethings and wondered how they planned to move along with so large a party. Would a flatbed straight out of On the Road slow and urge them to pile on? It just might have. Thirty miles from Crescent Beach, where I first sighted the party, I spotted them walking along the grass. Olympic medalists could not have covered that distance in so short a time.

A beautiful sun glided for the horizon, bathing the Del Norte redwoods and the white beaches in golden rays. My body ached from the mileage and my stomach cried foul at its emptiness. I checked into the Curly Redwood Lodge and prepared for a peaceful eve to match the afternoon.

There’s not much to say about Crescent City, but it was not the gateway to the redwoods as advertised. Sure, a mile or two in any direction beyond its boundaries and the giant trees emerged, but the city was unlike those on the Oregon coast. That said, I enjoyed my accommodations at the Curly Redwood Lodge, a hotel of 36 units constructed from the wood of a single redwood tree. An older couple ran it, the sign out front advertised no vacancy, and I parked immediately in front of my hotel room. There would be no chain hotels on this voyage, only the kindness of local operators.

Digression: My hotels in North Bend, Crescent City and Crater Lake all had keys, and this was the first time in probably a decade when I stayed in a room without a swipe card. Keys I found easier to remember than those credit cards that didn’t always fit the room.

The city’s culinary (ahem) culture fared less well. After 10 minutes without acknowledgement, I walked out of a restaurant billing itself as the city’s best seafood location. Searching the blocks of downtown, nothing appetizing emerged. So I settled for a hodgepodge dinner of picnic items from the local grocery and a six-pack of Lost Coast Great White.

I chased my poor man’s meal with a long conversation with Ben Crites and a walk along the harbor to admire the shades of sunset and the framing provided by the lighthouse on Crescent City’s outer harbor. It was only visible in silhouette, but with the vibrant twilight surrounding it, no further color was necessary.

Coastal Ramblings: West Seattle, Oregon's Rugged Shore and Incessant Fog

2011-09-19T10:09:00.012-05:00

In hours, six months of waiting went into action. Gate A2 at Nashville International Airport sits perpendicular to the Batman Building downtown, giving it a view unlike any other. Soon enough, we punched through the clouds toward Denver, and after a quick layover, onto the clear view of Washington’s Mount Rainer east of Seattle. So much desert filled the space below us. Little streams, possibly mighty rivers would feed small towns and the geometry of farming.

After a delay, the rental agency’s lack of available cars netted me a red Mustang. U.S 101 and a red Mustang sounded like a perfect match, although the gas mileage would never compete with a hybrid or even the compact I requested. Fifteen minutes later, I had crossed the West Seattle Bridge and its neighboring shipyards and found my sister’s apartment. Two years passed since we last saw each other, but when you grow up down the hall from someone, the good feelings move quickly. We sat for a minute and ventured out to some views of the skyline and the mountain, which would not show itself again during my stay. I had 36 hours before the coastal drive began, and little time to waste.

We walked along Alki Beach at the peninsula’s north end. Aside from the pines, it could have been ripped from Southern California. Across from the beach sat restaurants, bungalows and condo towers. To sate my seafood craving, we ate chowder and salmon tacos at Duke’s on the waterfront. The sun filled me eyes and the breeze broke the evening heat.

While Jenny baked organic dog treats for her night job, I wandered the businesses of California and Alaska avenues. Easy Street Records drew me in, crossing a few long awaited records off my list (Fairport Convention’s Full House and a $2 copy of the Grand Canyon Suite). Cupcake Royale had huckleberry cakes in their cabinet and I could not deny a regional fruit in season.

With Jenny’s baking finished and some time spent playing with the young cats up for adoption in the store, we departed for the people-only ferry connecting West Seattle to Downtown. The 15-minute ride passed a ship buoy overrun by sea lions, who splashed and dove to the delight of passengers. We docked next to the passenger ferries and took a short walk upward to downtown and the Pike Brewery, crafter of fine ales and good grub. Then we wandered the market, dodged some fish-tossers so Jenny could buy some dahlias. We stopped after some of the Sound overlooks before wandering back to the docks for the return ferry to beat afternoon rush hour.

We hit a Thursday night tasting at the Beer Connection, West Seattle’s neighborhood store. It highlighted the brews of California’s Firestone Walker, which a Grand Cru coworker lauds regularly. The lighter ales were good, the hoppy ones aimed to scorch the palate. We walked out with a six-pack of Pale Ale 31 to match the sixer of Big Sky Scape Goat Pale I bought the night before.

Before I knew it, 4 a.m. Friday arrived, and an hour later the Mustang roared across the West Seattle Bridge, past the columns of Army reservists and National Guardsmen reporting for weekend duty, and fog marring any views of Mt. Rainer or any other peak. Only the Washington Capitol’s stately dome broke up the misty darkness.

Eschewing an MP3 player, I nabbed some cheap CDs in the weeks leading up to the drive, concocting a bizarre mix of the Seattle scene (Screaming Trees), stoner metal (Sleep and Om), sea shanties, Latin-Jewish hybrids (Juan Calle and his Latin Lantzmen), and others that fit parts of the drive.

Just after sunrise, I left the interstate for U.S. 30 at Longview, crossing the first notable metal span of many. Barges and container ships floated in the Columbia while piles of timber lined the shore.

Soon it would all fade into haze. Astoria was invisible beyond a certain height. The Fort George Brewery came highly recommended, but not at my 8 a.m. arrival. Aside from its Oregon ramps and support towers in the Columbia’s mouth, the Astoria-Megler Bridge also hid. Fog would be the bane of my coastal trip, opening and closing without pattern.

After a quick breakfast at the Pig N’ Pancake in the bridge’s view, I trekked uphill to the Astoria Column, barely visible even at its base. Built in the 1920s, its outside depicts the region’s history from Indian times to John Jacob Astor’s fur operation starting in 1811 to modern days. Inside, the column was somewhat drab, with translucent window panels illuminating the spiral staircase. It was easy to look down. Quickly I realized 120 feet up looked higher than it was. I was barely tired at the top, but suffering from a dose of vertigo from frequent downward glances. At the top, I opened the wood door and before I stepped out saw a waist-high metal railing. Fog obscured everything but the wind racing through it. I quickly descended and prepared for the long journey on 101.

At last I turned south on Route 101, ready for the coastline.

The replica was within 100 yards of the original site, and the trees were still young. When the parks service bought the land, it was still farmed. Most evidence of that history had been erased for the more thrilling account of Lewis & Clark. I skipped the other Lews & Clark sites on the trail, but Fort Clatsop aimed a quality lens onto their voyage.

For a stretch, 101 could have cut through any fog-ridden community. Then a loop tied it to Cannon Beach, home to some iconic coast images. I stripped off my shoes and socks to bury them in the sand on every step. From my first step, Haystock Rock was visible just offshore. In the foreground of the famous mount people flew kites and wandered the beach. No sooner did I ask a couple to photograph me than the wind threw a thicket of fog in front of Haystack. In two minutes, fog covered most of the rock. I turned back among the bird tracks and returned to civilization.

Just up (and down) the hill, I stopped again at Arcadia Beach. A set of stairs ran down to the sandy expanse that ended abruptly in a rugged incline that ran up to a tree-covered bluff. Picnickers occupied its bottom. Any of these beaches could have been plucked from Charlton Heston’s fateful ride in Planet of the Apes. I could not avoid their churning waves and albino sands.

Highway 101 would wind inland across some inlets and crossroads, but would soon return to the coast. The traffic became a problem in Tillamook. Even though the giant cheese facility tempted me, crawling past its full parking lot only inspired more driving. Lincoln City was worse, a collection of suburban development populated by rented RVs. Any character was wiped away by the abysmal traffic, which would not carry any further south.

Any disappointment faded by time I reached the beaches north of Newport. Some were shrouded in fog, others basked in brightest sun. Try to discern a pattern. I couldn’t.

The edges of Newport gave away no hints of its magnificent deep-water harbor at the mouth of the Yaquina River. I reached the bay bridge and saw no signs of where to reach the harbor, then a little side road shunted me down to the beautiful harbor. It also led me past my destination, the Rogue Publick House. Rogue has breweries across Oregon now, but I wanted to visit its home turf. I got a treat as the bartender gave everyone a sample of Juniper Ale. Everything I sampled was dark.

I got into conversation with a tuna fisherman, a young Californian covered in tattoos and full of stories. He gave me all sorts of wild advice, from ditching the rental car and hitchhiking south to San Francisco. It sounded good, if only because it didn’t apply to my tightly scripted narrative that ended in Seattle at 2 p.m. Tuesday. I told him I would try to make it to the bar in Eureka where he promised drinks would be on the house if I mentioned his name, but I never sniffed 40 miles of that California town.

As for the pub, the atmosphere was top-notch (no cell phone use at the bar) and the Pier 82 sampler had a lifetime of fresh-off-the-boat seafood fried in a light breading.

Across the bridge, Newport disappeared quickly and the fog overtook the sun again. Any highlights offshore from Ona Beach hid in the haze, but the beach’s plantlife and water features were bountiful. In the mist, trees bent away from the harsh Pacific wind, their shapes set by the speed of the gusts, giving them a bonsai feel.

The gas gauge lurched toward empty on a windswept bluff in Yachats, so I pulled off for some Oregon Full Service. The car I had trailed since One Beach stopped at the same pumps, and sped off quickly while the attendant finished with me. I can be a little paranoid, so I don’t blame them for wondering why the guy behind them made the same stop. It couldn’t have been because my tank was close to empty, but it was.

I grew tired as North Bend neared. At Reedsport, a drawbridge’s rotation cost me 20 minutes. A hitchhiker trekking north from Crescent City jawed with a the pipefitter stopped in front of me. I couldn’t escape their conversation and couldn’t forget that not everyone who takes to the road is lazy or looking to rob an unsuspecting traveler.

Jenny called to check on me as I spotted the Coos Bay span. As I prepared to cross it, the Bay Bridge Motel appeared on the hillside, just feet from the bridge deck. The reservation I made was not a joke and the inn truly sat on a bluff just north of the one-mile bridge. The hotel was small but comfortable. An amiable older woman ran the desk She and her late husband bought it more than 30 years ago. Flanked by inlets and sand dunes on the approach to the Coos Bay Bridge it was the only structure adjacent to the bridge.

I wanted a cold beer, but not from a bar. I had trouble finding either until I drove through both North Bend and Coos Bay. Coos Bay’s natural beauty could only clash with industry. It had the harbor. Freighters rusted down the road from a casino. The neon of the Tioga Hotel towered above everything else. But both towns had a certain charm. As North Bend's neon welcome sign began to glow over 101, I began to fade. The longest driving day was over, although the next few legs would be just as intensive.

Tasting Saisons

2011-09-16T12:02:00.004-05:00

For all the praise of Nashville beer geeks, I have to admit that Chuck’s Liquor Outlet smokes any store in Tennessee. High alcohol taxes are our bane.

Most beer guys are never satisfied. I was always curious just how different the beer spectrum became across the border. Sure enough, it was 60miles from home but light-years ahead. For years I had friends bring hometown Great Lakes Brewery’s wares down from Ohio. No more. I can pick up most of their lineup in Bowling green. The same goes for Bell’s from Kalamazoo, but I’m not as enamored with their hoppy concoctions as most beer geeks.

With plans for a saison tasting this weekend, I wanted to see if Kentucky offered any alternatives to familiar Tennessee lineup. They delivered in spades, with a few Belgian classics and a departed favorite.

It’s weird. Beer Geeks baffle me. For all the praise Chuck’s received online, there were plenty of complaints about it only having “one aisle” of craft and imported beer. Now, that one aisle contained 300-350 different types of beer. Some people cannot be pleased. Even with a 120-mile roundtrip, I have no complaints with Chuck’s or Bowling Green’s charming commercial district.

After our stop at Chuck’s, we ventured through the abominable retail corridor of Bowling Green, we arrived at its thriving downtown square. A Greek statues topped a massive wrought-iron fountain and various statues surrounded the gathering spot.

The village green was surrounded by old storefronts on three sides, including a handful of restaurants and an old theater transformed into an art exhibit. Western Kentucky University loomed behind the square, its footprint much bigger than expected for school whose football players sell tickets door-to-door. It was dark and foreign but only an hour from Nashville. Sometime we will see it during daylight hours.

Okay, three priests walk into a bar … Actually, I didn’t see them walk in. At dinner, we couldn’t stop looking across the room. Three priests ages 30 to 50 to 60 dined, probably discussing parish matters. In line with his generation, the youngest broke up their conservation to check an iPhone. Even a priest in priestly company wants to be somewhere else.

About that tasting

With the bounty acquired in Kentucky, we had a solid lineup for a Labor Day tasting. Justin and Jen contributed a few other options to round it out. Justin had asked about holding a saison tasting, so I designed a beer menu and he came up with the food.

I skipped Saison DuPont because it’s the most commonly imbibed saison thanks to a Men’s Journal rating. We started with Hennepin, the creamy, spicy masterpiece from Ommegang in Cooperstown and the first saison made in the U.S.

Moving onto Sierra Nevada’s Ovila Saison, I tasted the difference instantly. The first Ovila I sampled came off as a dead-ringer for Hennepin. Tasted side by side, subtle differences arose. Ovila shed the creaminess and had a more herbal finish with chamomile and a touch of mint on the finish.

We moved toward one of the tasting’s outliers, Brooklyn Brewing Sorachi Ace, an American twist on Belgian saison by way of Japanese hops. Sorachi ace is the fickle, bone-dry hop that defines this saison. Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver is know for bold experiments, and Sorachi Ace hits a summer high note.

The biggest question mark was a Saison de Pipaix acquired in Bowling Green. I popped the cap to find a surprise cork underneath it. Almost black in spots, the cork looked as if it held back an ancient beer. Pipaix certainly drank unlike anything else we sampled. Herbal, medicinal and somewhat sour, this bottle had some age and the beer had developed some odd flavors thanks to wild yeast or the lactobacillus that creates sour ales. It was my favorite of the night because of its skill at pushing saison boundaries.

Avec Les Bon Vouex is Saison DuPont’s big brother, a strong saison originally brewed as a New Year’s beer but later inducted into the brewery’s regular lineup. I had it years ago, and always remembered it as one of the best strong saisons from Belgium (the alcohol content pushes 10 percent). Big and bold, it showed saison could push extremes in alcohol content without sacrificing the complexity and character inherent in the style.

Last we came to Dogfish Head Namaste, a 5-percent summer salivator that perfectly closed off the tasting. After a few monsters like Avec Les Bon Voeux, we needed a light quencher to level us out. The blonde thrived on doses of lemongrass, coriander and oranges.

Most of our party had not tasted saisons before, so it was a good introduction to a style I love that gives little detail in its name.

Where the hell have I been?

2011-08-24T09:08:00.003-05:00

My blog has been quiet since Omaha, but my relationship with an adventurous gal named Nancy has not been. We saw a fair amount of the Belcourt’s run of 1970s classics – Taxi Driver, Badlands, and modern documentaries like The Last Mountain, a tale of West Virginians fighting King Coal. We have traveled a lot this summer, starting with walks in Murfreesboro parks and Percy Warner Park, with some massive winding hills and a dazzling, distant glimpse of Nashville’s skyline.

Bell Buckle, a whistle-stop town known for its annual RC Cola and Moon Pie Festival (and accompanying it, a grueling 10-mile race). It was a hop-skip from her part of Murfreesboro. As the town prepared to close shop for Sunday, we ate comfort food at the café and ice cream at the picturesque antique store and ice cream parlor. An elderly couple ran the counter, and we wandered the small commercial block that covered the restaurants, antique stores as well as the town hall. Even the small neighborhood behind it stood out thanks to the wild pastel colors brightening most of the century-old homes. A few block away we passed the Webb School, an ultra-exclusive boarding school that drew wealthy students from around the world.

Later in July, on a day when the car temperature read 104, we headed north to The Land Between the Lakes, the giant inland peninsula formed between the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. The government bought out a group of farmers half a century ago, and turned into recreation land between the commercial barges that plied the deep-channeled rivers.

We started with the bison and elk prairie. The elk hid on the forest fringes, virtually blending into the broken stumps and thick limbs. The bison wallowed on the banks of a shallow lake. A few females lingered in the tan waters. A lone bull stood in the trees and another sat among the herd.

On a loop walk around a small lake, the wildlife was just as rich. A handful of snakes breezed across the path in the muddy flats away from the boardwalk. Butterflies supplied most of the color. I’m sure something venomous crossed our path, but they fled before we could identify them. The last 200 yards lost all shade and dropped us under a vicious July afternoon sun.

This is just a glimpse. I’ve never been one to air too much on the blog, and I won’t start now.

A British Songwriter in Country Music's Court

2011-08-20T13:09:00.007-05:00

Nick Lowe didn't mince words as to why he was talking about songwriting at the Country Music Half of Fame on a Saturday morning. "I really don't know," he said wryly after apologizing for his weekend wear, which made him look a teenage record store clerk (albeit one with shock white hair).

The HOF landed a big non-country star for its Songwriter Session, and Lowe didn't disappoint in offering details about his writing process, his country ties and his famous former in-laws. Lowe can't escape his bonds to country music royalty( he was married to Carlene Carter, daughter of Carl Smith and June Carter and step-daughter of Johnny Cash).

Lowe recounted his first touches of country music (his mother's Tennessee Ernie Ford records) and the influence of British skiffle records on his own sound. With his songs, Lowe says he starts with something personal before pushing the song into places that make him feel as if he's covering someone else's song. With a cover, he quipped, he takes the opposite approach. When covered, Lowe prefers the songs which drift away from his template to those that stick too close. "I like to hear when it goes somewhere else," he said.

For his set, Lowe breezed through seven songs covering his entire career. He opened with Stoplight Roses and Sensitive Man off his upcoming record The Old Magic. It was not a stretch to hear the latter sung by Elvis Presley. I was pleased to hear the bleak tone of Raining Raining from Nick the Knife.

(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding was the clear highlight. Lowe owned his song, even though Elvis Costello made it famous. He broke out some Rockpile with When I Write the Book and Raging Eyes from the Abominable Showman.

Lowe chose The Beast in Me as his encore, an apt pick given the time spent dissecting the song. Lowe conceived it on a drunken evening and the next morning had to play it for Johnny Cash, hangover and all. Two rough turns through the song didn't help its standing but he returned to it occasionally over the years. Finally, he finished the tune and it became a standout on Cash's seminal American Recordings.

The Beast in Me speaks to the resiliency of Lowe's career. His experience as a producer informed his brief career topping the pop charts, and Lowe knew the end would come. He reoriented toward songwriting and now has become an elder statesmen penning timeless tunes in the vein of Cole Porter and Roger Miller.

Striking Omaha Now on the Radar

2011-08-17T15:52:00.013-05:00

People of a certain age know Omaha for Mutual of Omaha’s sponsorship of Marlon Perkins' Wild Kingdom. People of another know Omaha for Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway, and Alexander Payne's use of the city as a canvas for several cult filma (Election, About Schmidt).

That’s an exaggeration, but in all my travels, few destinations drew less of a response than Omaha. Even Boise caught a little fire, if only for its distance from the Midwest. Omaha drew blank stares.

By all rights, it shouldn’t. A city of 400,000 a few hours from Kansas City, Omaha has a strange character, a hybrid of Midwest friendliness and frontier roughness. Arriving from St. Louis, our jet skimmed the flooded farm fields of Iowa. For all Nashville endured in 2010, the Missouri River states continue to face much worse. Road vanished into muddy pools, telephone wires barely stayed about water and farmhouses once on hills now had lakefront property they would gladly exchange for dry fields.

The skies opened up as the plane unloaded, and the temperature fell at least 25 degrees below the steam of Nashville earlier that week. Little did I know, but the cab ride into Omaha already passed through Iowa. Only on Tuesday morning, when going back to the airport, did I learn that a change in the Missouri’s course created an oxbow lake, leaving Carter Lake, Iowa, the state’s only settlement on the west side of the river.

Originally I planned a bicycle trek downtown, but I couldn’t find a key to its lock and didn’t feel like spending vacation riding a bike in the rain. With a quick Google Map search, I discovered 3.4 miles of walking would get me to the Old Market.

So I set out to see Omaha on foot. Jon lived at the foot of the brownstone buildings that formed the Dundee, a neighborhood the pretty brick homes which included those of Warren Buffett and Payne’s fictional Warren Schmidt. All the way I followed the Woodmen of the World building, the landmark I learned from About Schmidt. Most of Farnam, the street I followed, was in relatively good shape. I passed the Beer Corner, which would quickly become the epicenter of the weekend’s drinking.

Although the bank thermometers never rose above 74, humidity crept back in as the fog lifted over the Woodman and the cities few other skyscrapers. While Omaha lacked an impressive skyline, its mid-rise and high-rise buildings were often masked by its unexpected rolling hills. Most impressive was Midtown Crossing, a new mixed-use urban development that breathed new life into the area, with shopping, restaurants and a crescent-shaped condo building overlooking a tree-lined park. An older corporate resident made a bigger impression; the massive Mutual of Omaha complex framed the Midtown area. Little did I know, but its best-known anonymously occupied the same street - Berkshire Hathaway was already several blocks back.

I expected the plains of Kansas to continue in Omaha, but the city didn’t own a lot of flat spots. The journey to the Missouri had plenty of elevation changes, almost on par with those in Nashville. Water had claimed much of the flatland along the river.

Soon Farnam descended toward the waterfront and I quickly finding the Old Market, a marvel that spoke to Omaha’s heritage. The market’s brick buildings had been refurbished in recent decades, and its brick streets were easy to imagine with horse-drawn carriages and muddy lanes in their place. Trendy restaurants and boutiques had overtaken the market’s old produce vendors. In its former firehouse, The Upstream Brewing Company occupied me for the next two hours.

I returned to Jon’s brownstone just before the next wave of rain. On the way back I crossed paths with Beertopia, the retail store anchoring a block of interconnected taverns and taprooms. Sixty dollars later, I was back on the sidewalk, ready to walk the last 12 blocks with a wine case of beer.

Along the way some people in a car made monkey noises at me. In fact, they had been making their grunts and hoots before I entered the beer store. They gave the impression they wanted me to call them out on it and force a confrontation. Playing games with mental midgets only cuts one off at the knees, so I said, “Have a nice day.” Despite their sad reinforcement of a stereotype I never subscribed to , they couldn’t ruin the one I already had.

I would get my shot at the Beer Corner following a home-cooked dinner. The staff was versed in Belgian beer, and able to talk the lingo. For a $2 corking fee, they would go next door to Beertopia to acquire a bottle missing from the bar. For my 34th birthday – which began with Order No. 34 at the Nashville Airport Burger King, a private irony I thoroughly enjoyed – I went with the safe hand. Most of their Belgians were familiar, so I went with St. Bernardus Abt 12 on tap, a Geuze Fond Tradition and an Orval, three high achievers and symbols of Belgium’s big beer spectrum.

Every town should have what Omaha entrepreneurs located in the same block – a beer store (Beertopia), a Belgian alehouse (Max and Joe’s ), an American pub with 40-plus handles (Crescent Moon), and a German-style beer hall (Huber-Haus).

Saturday morning I returned to the Old Market with Jon and wandered a little deeper into its corners. The Old Market Passageway, a glass-topped arcade lush with greenery, held some of the market’s most intriguing businesses and bistros. Jackson Street Booksellers had an intimidating collection, including 12-foot-high rows of historic books I dared not touch. But I dug out a paperback history of phylloxera and a pristine Marvel Masterworks edition of Jack Kirby-drawn early 1960s Captain American tales.

Anyone writing off Omaha as a boring flyover spot without much history should dig into the Durham Museum, housed in the former Union Pacific train station. A wonderful restoration preserved the Art Deco building’s main atrium. Flourishes included metal statues of everyday people from the 40s and 50s. Below, a full passenger train, a street car and other means of transportation. A George Washington Carver traveling exhibit led into a streetscape of a vanished Omaha.

The museum fleshed out Omaha, giving it a rich, vibrant history from Indian times to the stockyard heydays and the development of Mutual of Omaha and Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. As the hub of the transcontinental travel, it had central role in westward settlement and more than earned its nickname.

Sunday I had a single task: walk into Iowa, made possible by the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge. Kerrey was a senator - with a borderline liberal streak for a Nebraskan - who won a Congressional Medal of Honor and lost a foot during Vietnam. He's been seen in other ventures since - chairing the New School in New York City, for one.

As I drove down to Omaha's riverbank, I struggled to find the entrance due to all the flood-closed streets near the waterfront. The bridge was open, but only to the other bank. Midway across the bridge, text noted the change of states. I had hoped to ride a bicycle into Iowa, but the Council Bluffs end of the bridge was barricaded. Local flooding had closed the gate, and police patrolled it and promised $150 fines for trespassers. So I drifted back to Omaha, pausing only to feel the crazy trembling of the bridge cables, unable to shake images of the swollen river.

Much of Lewis & Clark Landing, as well as Omaha’s other river attractions, were muddy or submerged. Islands in the Missouri only showed their treetop branches. Flood damage meant that when the river levels came down, so would the trees. This damage was nothing compared with what the farming communities faces, but a sobering reminder that dams only stop so much when floodwaters reach this magnitude.

I would cross by car on Monday, intent on a quiet excursion to Council Bluffs. I wandered around the town center and settled on a small lunch spot for an ice cream cone. Near my car, someone assembled a tent, and soon I noticed the name atop it: Michelle Bauchmann. Why would she be coming … to Iowa … in the August before a presidential year. I picked the wrong time to get acquainted with Council Bluffs. In an hour, there would have been nothing quiet about the picturesque downtown.

The moral of the story: If going from Omaha across to Iowa, don’t go the week before the straw poll or the month before the caucuses. Some candidate will always block your path or shout their way into your thoughts.

Across the river, Omaha’s biggest attraction still awaited. Every city claims a great zoo, but the Henry Doorly Zoo always lands in America’s top 10. I expected a statue of Marlon Perkins somewhere. Only later I discovered that Perkins was director of the St. Louis Zoo, and only his corporate sponsorship came from Omaha. The Doorly Zoo had a pedigree all its own, and a dozen exhibits unlike any other in North America.

Beneath a glass dome, the zoo housed one of the world's largest indoor rain forests. Who can take their eyes off of sleeping Malaysian tapirs? Not I. The bodies were so clearly divided between black and white skin, and they looked too comfortably on the rocky banks. The amorous monkeys might have swooped among the vines, but I enjoyed watching the lumbering black and white mammals sleep among the rocks. The sheer volume of animals and exotic flora made it difficult to keep a running total of the zoo's collection.

After a brief spell in the day's pounding heat, I entered the Desert Dome .... for more heat. This exquisite display showcase creatures from most of the world's deserts. Most slept, but the burrowing owls and the Cape thick-knees provided ample intrigue.

Beneath the desert environs lied the Kingdom of the Night, replete with bats and dozens of other creatures native to other continents. After watching through the swamp exhibit, which featured about a dozen alligators, I had enough. My clumsiness worked fine when dealing with bats clutching the ceiling, but I couldn’t account for the black waters below me and the leathery reptiles within. A pass at the tank of juvenile alligators, where they swam alongside spectators in hungry anticipation, letting visitors know what they wanted on the menu.

My trips in the dark eventually led outside to the cat complex. I expected a handful of enclosures with sleeping cats wedged awkwardly into outcroppings. I got more than a dozen tigers, many half asleep, others panting frantically, some lying in misting pools to ease the summer brutality.White tigers, Malaysian, Bengal and Siberian tigers were all represented. They were part of a successful breeding program, including a three-legged Malaysian female who produced eight cubs. Few were more active than the Siberian below.

A few more laps didn't come close to passing all the zoo's enticements. The crowds were thick, but I almost had the bongos and the aviary to myself. For all its exotic animals - I could have traded their kookaburra for my own orange-and-white American Talking Cat - they had no elephants. The diversity of animals and the size of the exhibits made them a bearable omission.

The long weekend wrapped with an encore at the Beer Corner, this time downstairs in the beer hall over burgers, Bavarian pretzels and a smattering of German lagers.

A 5:45 a.m. flight rushed me into morning. Jon's girlfriend Lanie volunteered to take me to Eppley Airfield. The city was peaceful at that hour, and lights glimmered off Carter Lake near the airport. To the south, "Woodmen" still shone above Omaha. Only at 4 a.m. was Omaha the sleepy Midwest town envisioned by those unfamiliar with its quirks and characters.

Lost on the diamond

2011-08-02T10:10:00.003-05:00

After 11 years, I found my way back into softball this summer. Last year I watched the Grand Cru team take its hacks, but this year I joined.

For most of the season, I kept score. There are more talented people on the diamond, and we should have the best team possible. Sure, I like to play, but after so many years, I’m rusty. I lose balls in the lights. My depth perception is seriously out of whack and strikeouts are possible. I can’t embarrass myself out there. It has to be fun.

For the first three months, I was mostly immune. Then we hit the dog days, and players started vanishing.

I got drafted. My debut came with a reprieve; the other team had just eight players and forfeited. When we played the league’s best team – a bunch of ultra-competitors who try to put on a home run clinic in every game – my luck ran out.

I had a pair of singles and a fly out that scored a run (no sacrifice flies in the Metro Parks league). They battered us with fence shots and hard line drives all night. At least it rained through most of our time in the outfield.

In the second game, I hit the ball solidly on occasion - when I wasn't fanning at eye-level pitches.

But second base ... well, lefties don't belong there. Lefties with ten years of rust should step further away from second. We had little choice with just nine players against a team sure to give plenty of outfield shots.

I missed a few force plays, at least a dozen cutoff throws, but had one assist and one force out in two games. Our shortstop was fast and took many of the force plays on his own, reducing the need for me.

Lefties should never play second base. I proved it. Before that night, I had never played second. Two games left me toasted. On the few plays I had at first, I nearly fell over getting into position to throw. Anything hit hard was a single or more.

I hit softly to second in both at-bats. Each time the first baseman muffed the throw. Hustle counts. Since this is co-ed softball, those reached on errors turn into hits. Each one scored 2 runs. In the outfield, not a single ball came my way.

We ended up in the city tournament. I rode the pine and kept score - the latter is harder for some people than I anticipated. Tonight could brought a quick exit, a 20-4 shellacking that ended after four innings due to the run rule.

Either way, it has been a rare blast. I didn't know I missed the game this much. I missed the camaraderie of hanging with a new friend of people even more.

Next year could be different. During post-game beers and revelry, talk inevitably turned to the 2012 season. To keep the pressure off some of our bigger hitters, I might share coaching duties with one of the girls. It might be a better role.

Until then, I'll just have to find some batting cages. Not every grounder to second can be beat out.

Alternative Dispatches From Nashville's Big Beer Weekend

2011-08-01T10:59:00.007-05:00

I never go to the Music City Brewers Festival. Every year the evening session (i.e. the DUI session) sells out, and who wants to wander a shade-free park on a blazing hot day. Nashville’s unpredictable weather usually throws a violent summer thunderstorm into the session, so it’s a bad bargain for those opposed to inclement weather and drunken crowds.

The beer festival trend is getting ridiculous anyway. Now beer events are myriad, with Grand Cru's own beerfest getting squeezed by upstarts looking to make a few bucks (all of our proceeds go to charity). In October, there are three local beer festivals that could crowd us out.

My night job means I usually get involved in some way. I didn’t touch the festival site, but managed two quality beer moments.

Preview Night, Mark 2
Middle Tennessee’s main beer distributor, Lippman Brothers, held their preview party, a rare occasion for us beer sellers to interact with company representatives. Aside from our affable New Belgium Beer Ranger John, we don’t get much face time with people working for the breweries.

The sticker collector in me to wrangled a few new numbers from Stone. I also got a big answer. We haven’t seen any of its three-way collaboration beers in Nashville. We missed out in the brilliant Saison du Buff and the intriguing Highway 78 Scotch Ale. Stone only sends a little of its collaboration beers this far south, and the Carolina markets get first dibs. Needless to say, there is no second round of that draft. It’s the only hole in Middle Tennessee’s Stone portfolio, and it won’t get filled anytime soon.

Kentucky Brewing Company finally made it into the market. Their excellent bourbon barrel ale, aged in fresh whiskey casks from Woodford Reserve, sparkles like few barrel-aged brews. Their flagship Kentucky Ale, a mix of a red ale and pale ale (in essence, a hoppy red ale), made for decent session brew.

The people from Boulder Beer Company were pure delights as always. They poured Mojo and Kinda Blue, their blueberry ale which finally graduated from bomber bottles to six packs.

The biggest surprise was North Carolina’s sole entrant, Craggie Brewing. They based Antebellum Ale on an 1840s recipe that includes molasses, ginger and spruce tips. The beer goes light on the alcohol (4.2 percent) and high on flavor. All three ingredients pop, and more than sate my love of old-style beer recipes. Their Bourbon ale was okay, but not the revelation of Antebellum Ale.

It was a little moment, but a good one. Too often, we never get close to the operations behind our favorite beers.

The Humid Miles to Yazoo
Foreboding gray clouds drifted over Nashville Saturday morning, not the best atmosphere for a day of outdoor activities.

At 2.5 miles, it was the shortest race I ever ran. It might have been the most uncomfortable. Rain poured before and after the run, and dullest butter knife could have parted the humid air. As much as I wanted to stop along the course, it was pointless. Stopping meant no break in the sweating or the heat, so it was better to run , finish and mill around indoors.

Without a clock, I had no idea how long it took. Once in the taproom, the staff lined up rows of Gerst Amber, Yazoo’s attempt at the recipe of a long-dormant Nashville brewing institution. It was an impressive lager, easy-drinking but flavorful.

In the taproom, the organizer announced that Yazoo’s sustainability policy meant we could all take our pint glasses home and wash them there. It was an unexpected bonus on top of the nice race shirt.

I must thank the Music City Beer Society meetup group for assembling this. Only two of us ran it, but it was good to get back involved with the meetup. I spend too much time away, and they are a good group.

The 2.5-miler served a second purpose: the unofficial kickoff to my training for the 2011 Murfreesboro Middle Half. More on that as summer progresses.

The Summer of Malick

2011-07-22T10:49:00.009-05:00

Enter a theater in the middle of a Terence Malick movie and anyone could conceivably mistake it for a nature documentary. His five-film career dabbles in Western geography, locusts destroying wheat, exotic animals and now, the universe's origins and dinosaur encounters framing family drama in Tree of Life.

Leading up to Tree of Life, The Belcourt Theatre ran a retrospective of Malick's previous films. I caught Badlands and Days of Heaven, but skipped both The Thin Red Line (great but long and already saw it) and The New World (the subject doesn't really interest me).

From the beginning, his signatures emerge - establishing shots of the natural world, amazing vistas, sun-dappled trees and filming at much as possible at the Golden Hour the time after dawn and before twilight that accentuates colors and tones. It is especially notable in Days of Heaven, where the cinematography bathes almost every daylight scene in luxurious hues. Badlands is great right out of the box, with Martin Sheen's killer shockingly humorous after the manhunt ends and an army of lawmen take him in.

In late July, last domino finally fell, Malick's long-developed personal project, Tree of Life. Set in the 1950s and with a detour through Big Bang and Age of Dinosaurs, it's a shocking film, if only in delivery. Malick's singular vision makes the film riveting, even when it just depicts kids behaving badly in the 1950s and the weight that leaves on them as adults.

From the introduction of the central family's mother as a young girl, Malick is masterful. Some say it sags in a scene when Jack (who grew into Sean Penn) frolics on a beach with his family. But the death I believe it symbolizes works in concert with Malick's depiction of the end of the Earth, Sun and universe (at least that's what I though it depicted).

It's easy to come away with your own meaning. Mine goes like this. Life has always been brutal and harsh. Sometimes we survive by sheer luck. At other times, we're stuck with mortal wounds and only able to absorb a final sunset. Tree of Life conjures the issue of our significance or lack thereof, just as The Thin Red Line's battles will scar the islands but life will go on.

Malick directs and constructs films in unconventional ways - he is more concerned with imagery revealing his story. The story's twists lie in taking the family back to the origins of the universe (effects made largely without CGI, but through chemical reactions and close-ups on petri dishes.

People in Malick's films don't say everything we think they should; neither do we. The voiceover monologues frame the story and eliminate the need for that dialogue. Why hear a character speak when the audience already knows what they think?

The images speak loudly. For almost every viewer, there will be a touchstone to their childhood, reaching back to when the days ran forever and worries were few. Everyone focuses on the mosquito fogging truck and the kids joyfully racing through its clouds, all hoping to get lost on their home streets.

I got stuck on the shot of the father and three boys taking grease paint to their eyebrows and drawing in mustaches. It was a moment of rare purity between their father's angry bouts caused by his failures.

After Tree of Life, I still look at Malick's small filmography in awe. There flaws, sometimes deep ones, but the ambition and desire to push filmmaking further cannot be understated. Each film speaks to universal themes. I haven't seen any of them twice, because I wonder how the meaning will alter if I did. I struggle to think of a director whose films are so circumstantial to the audience member. Everyone takes away something different, even those who hate it. That's rare in any medium.

No Break from the Bad

2011-07-12T10:06:00.004-05:00

(It’s hard to write about a television series with so many intricate plot twists without completely spoiling the story. However, having just finish Breaking Bad Season 3, I need to spout a few words about his beast of a show. Some details have to leak; if you can’t handle spoilers, stop reading).

I continue to wonder when Breaking Bad will slip the Kinks’ song “Do You Remember Walter?” into an episode. Not entirely obscure (it appears on The Village Green Preservation Society), the song about memories of a lost friend seems appropriate to the coarse evolution of chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-cook Walter White.

The mild-mannered chemistry teacher’s naivete is immediately challenged by the drug peddlers he encounters. Walt acts in self-defense; later, he will engage in dangerous acts of self-preservation for himself and Jesse Pinkman, his cooking partner.

Early in Season 2, Walt goes on an odyssey. He left the room mid-conservation with his wife, then drug kingpin Tuco orders Walt into a car by gunpoint. Out in the desert, he conceives a plan to hide his indiscretions (they are many). Walt covers up his kidnapping by stripping naked in a grocery store and acting as if he entered a fugue state, a rare disorder where stress causes amnesia that can last for days.

Before he left, he nearly confessed his drug cooking ways. Instead, Walt has to further his lies, stretching them to where Skyler doubts them. She mockingly brings up the fugue state as their marriage dissolves.

In a fashion, hasn’t Walt been living in a fugue state? He gives his name as Heisenberg, a name that circulates back to the DEA. Working under that name, he leaves Walt behind.

Walt’s transformation isn’t a true fugue state because he saw the point of no return on a certain night in Jesse’s apartment. "Fly" outlines how it was the turning point for both Jesse and Walt.

Think of the transformation actor Bryan Cranston has undergone with his roles. From twisted dentist Tim Whatley on Seinfeld to the goofy, neurotic father on Malcolm in the Middle, no one could have predicted Cranston would tackle Walt and his descent.

Take the man from Season 1 and he wouldn’t recognize the bald, goateed stranger in black. By Season 3, he no longer maintains the pretense of a normal living. Although in remission, his cancer scarcely receives mention beyond subtle reminders.

On indefinite sabbatical from teaching after a making a pass at the principal, Walt cooks 9-5 for a drug kingpin hiding in plain sight just like him. Yet at home, there exists some semblance of normal. Still estranged, Skyler has been drawn into the morass. Walt Jr. is anxious about getting his license then a car. The moments holding his baby daughter are the last vestiges of the old Walt. Even those moments are fleeting, swept away by calls on the secret cell phone.

The cracks appear to the world at large through little moments: the poolside tequila scene; the rambling speech at the plane crash memorial; and the confession of a gambling addiction to his sister-in-law. To us viewers, we get the global view, and all its ugliness.

The meek man we saw washing cars to supplement his income faded quickly - it's hard to see any traces in mad, desperate actions that end Season 3. There's more to the story, but don't try to remember old Walter anywhere in Season 4.

Last Thoughts on Vermont and New Hampshire

2011-06-29T15:50:00.008-05:00

Time might have passed for a post-mortem on this trip, but not in my opinion.

I have heard San Francisco called the most European of American cities. Having never gone beyond the airport, I can believe that.

As for states, I have to call Vermont and New Hampshire the most European of American states. Small places with large mountains, fiercely independent people and drastically different spirits, the two don't share much more than climate, mountains and the river separating them. The towns are small but possess histories twice as long as most U.S. settlements.

Yet I cannot shake either. Almost daily I see the gold dome of Montpelier wedged beneath the Green Mountains but soaring above the Winooski River. We can attribute that to my strange affinity for centers of government and never visiting Concord. The converted mills of Manchester closed out the adventure

Two months later, I am still stricken with Northern New England Fever. Five days and 1,000 miles did not come close to offering a cure.

I look at how much ground we covered in Vermont, and barely covered any of it. Those big mountains contained hamlets I can now only imagine. I look to its northern lands like St. Albans and the Lake Champlain islands. We only grazed the Northeast Kingdom, the state's rural northeast. My mother recommended the Grandma Moses Museum in Bennington. Two hours roundtrip from Rutland, as far southeast as we traveled, Bennington pushed the trip too far on a different course.

Maybe the speed impacted me; off the interstate, 55 mph was rarely approached, and the steady stream of small towns made 25 mph and 35 mph far more common.

New Hampshire was lonelier, traveling the mountain highways and the winding routes that traversed the White Mountain National Forest. For its lonely stretches, it also welcomed us, with friendly folks in all corners and an old English major friend across the river in Lebanon. The Bretton Woods region, lying in the umbrage of Mount Washington, could be ripped out of the Alps.

Maine didn't get a full pass. Hell, it received the most minimal touch imaginable, I crossed the Piscatagua River via I-95 and returned directly. When Maine receives the full treatment, possibly sometime in 2012, Vermont and New Hampshire will earn a welcome encore.

A few words about Rome (the album)

2011-06-29T09:34:00.007-05:00

I haven't written about anything but live shows in months, so I'll break the chain with a gem from Danger Mouse and an all-star cast. The mainstream gave Rome a quick sniff, above-average reviews and tossed it onto the novelty pile.

I admit to sitting on the fence with Danger Mouse. He has a sound he ascribes to, whether producing Beck or partnering with James Mercer. But Rome is truly something different, a soundtrack without a film, and a tribute that actually pays tribute without resorting to note-for-note covers.

More importantly, Rome radiates Morricone's influence and remains the work of its collaborators. Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi brought in Jack White and Norah Jones for their Ennio Morricone tribute. Despite the big names, Rome doen't play like an all-star extravaganza. Those voices never threaten to rise above the music, effortlessly woven into this ornate tapestry.

All of it sounds like slightly tweaked Morricone cuts that could have made films if he had a few more minutes of screen time. The Matador Has Fallen could have been ripped out of a spaghetti western. I waited two months for the belated vinyl release, and won't regret a moment.

Rome succeeds by narrowing its guest list. Dark Night of the Soul, his partnership with the late Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse) bogs down with its laundry list of singers. Here, a shorter cast led to a tighter album. Rome fills a niche I didn't know was empty.

On the Cat Food Trail

2011-06-28T09:53:00.007-05:00

A product leaves a shelve, and the world changes. In this case, it's just cat food. Thanks to their are ornery and fickle natures, everything with cats is a chore.

Percy gets plenty of wet food, probably more than he deserves or needs. His outdoor activity keeps his body from turning too much of it into fat.

When presented with a bowl of new food, how many times have cats sniffed then glared with blank expressions that scream, "Are you fucking kidding me? I'm not eating that."

Occasionally, Percy dragged kitchen towels over his bowl, amplifying his dismay. Worse than not wanting to taste, the cat won't even look at his meal. Finding food that meets those high culinary standards is difficult. When outdoors, he eats bugs and grass, so only the best cuts of meat will suffice.

Now I have to scramble. The grocery might close out the food, but I'm not ready to concede. It took too long to acclimate the cat to any food. Finding one which did not produce clouds of "cat gas" took even more time. Every time I contemplate the opportunity to move the cat back to dry food (he still eats some, but only when really hungry), I remember how difficult it is to get a pet to backtrack.

This weekend I began the Kroger search. As the only place that sells this food, the hunt is simple. So far, the cat-owning public hasn't caught onto the new closeout price. I've already cleaned out three Krogers. I plan to hit everything close to home. Other cat owners will notice the lower price. By then, it's too late.

My kitchen pantry holds a small stockpile. But I know how much a 15-pound cat devours weekly. The recycling bin often carries nothing but cardboard and tins from cat food.

Two Rivers, One Forest, One Weekend

2011-06-24T15:24:00.004-05:00

The visions wouldn’t end, and the wave of fear would not crash then recede. The whitewater trip I dodged for years has finally arrived. The fear was built on knowing myself – I’m clumsy and my mind is constantly adrift, not good traits for navigating rapids. But my friend Wade wouldn't let go this year. So I went.

An uneventful morning drive took us past the middle section of the Ocoee –our Sunday destination – and the mostly dry upper section. The temperature, already mild for June, dropped as we rose into the Nantahala National Forest, just south of the Great Smoky Mountains, and set up camp aside the Valley River. Our rustic cabins gave a little bit of privacy at a busy campground. We unloaded and set up for the mountains.

The river cuts through the Nantahala Gorge, a steep slice of real estate deep in the mountains. Wade steered the boat with his friend Dobbs and myself in the other two spots. We were both rookies at the mercy of a river rat who took us through every major rapid and spun the boat at will.

Jaws, the rock formation to the left of a Class 4 rapid at the run’s beginning, came and went. We paddled through and I perfected the art of ducking into the middle of the boat every time I
I had visions of river "carnage" - getting tossed from the boat at every noted rapid and fighting the current back to the raft. It didn't happen. Most of the time I wedged myself in. At one point, Wade declared that I had given birth to his dry bag.

Obviously whitewater moves fast, so it only took two hours to cover the nine mile course. The biggest obstacle awaited us at the finish. The Nantahala drops 15 feet in its last quarter mile. We passed the Bump without incident, then came Nantahala Falls, the last rapid on the river.

We tilted over the falls. As we landed I knew the angle was wrong and no amount of leaning would keep me in the boat. I put my hands over my face so my glasses did not beat me downstream, and plunged out of the boat. In The Life Aquatic, there’s a moment of silence as the malfunctioning helicopter hits the water. I had a similar sensation as the rushing water when I submerged. In a few second, Dobbs fell out behind me.

Stopping proved hard – the water was deep and not the kind of place to stand. I mostly floated until a spectator offered a rope, which gradually dragged me to shore. Like a fishing tired of fighting on the line, I flopped onto a flat rock and rested, then left the water. It was a good moment for a small ego. The bus took us back, and we lounged at Pizza By the River (the other PBR) until

Driving back, the water generators had already slowed, reducing the Nantahala’s rapids to ripples. It seemed like a cheat - all that force gets turned off at night.

The gang returned for a second Nantahala run on Saturday, but I passed. My body felt like I lost a fight the day before (which I essentially did on those rocks). In need of a relaxing day, I sat by the creek, talked with the fisherman, read a few short stories while rain roared in, turning the placid Valley River aside our campsite into a muddy, fast-flowing stream. The campground was the site of several great meals, good champagne and an impromptu volleyball ball where I dove for every volley within 20 feet of me. Those who stink at volleyball must dive - it's in the rulebook, I believe.

Judgment came Sunday. We were bound for the Middle Ocoee, with its 20 named rapids and in two weeks prior, its first rafting death in 15 years. Wade assured me it wouldn’t be an issue. Then he proceeded to spend part of our Wednesday shift showing people wipe out on the largest rapids.

The upper section, which hosted the Olympic whitewater events in 1996, ran dry when we passed on Friday and Sunday mornings. But the middle section grew thick with rafts. The highway hugs the mountain wall above the river, so every step of the river is visible.

My nerves didn’t die until we exited Hell’s Hole to a placid river stretch that ended with the take-out ramp. Without that focus, my mind would wander - strange as it sounds, I leaned on fear to keep my paddle moving.

As relieved as I felt, fortune just went our way. We got tossed from the raft at an easy rescue point – I could stand in the water if the current weren’t so relentless. We should have never fallen in; another raft took a terrible line through a rapid while we took the best one. They crashed into us and emptied both boats. Once we collected our crew - Wade ended up a few hundred yards downstream - we got through fine, albeit short two paddles.

We stalled on some shoals due to the paddle shortage, but it made little difference.

Not everyone had such luck on Sunday. Sure, I hate to hear that news. What starts as fun ends with a bad break.

That doesn’t dampen my trip – the rapids took care of that. As we went on, the splashed barely bothered me. On the big rapids, enough water flowed into the boat that I quickly grew accustomed to it. I just couldn't handle it with any regularity. That clumsiness problem pairs poorly with undercut rocks and swift eddies.

If it's all the same, though, I'll pick a wide, calm river for my next paddling venture.

Nothing Gruff About Rhys' Low-Key Set

2011-05-25T08:05:00.007-05:00

On a Tuesday night in Nashville, a little patch of Welsh-pop only goes so far. Gruff Rhys learned this lesson at the Mercy Lounge.

Super Furry Animals generally escape the notice of American music fans; a string of uneven albums in the past 5-6 years has not helped. Their prolific singer, who participated in the Sparklehorse/Danger Mouse Dark Night of the Soul project andreceived surprisingly good promotion (a write-up in the Scene) found no greater warmth from Nashville. At most, 50 people listened to his set. By the time he finished the first song solely in Welsh, it winnowed to 35.

Crowd size does not determine quality of a show. Rhys started slow, stuttering through his thick Welsh accent. When an effects pedal failed to work, he turned battery replacement into performance art and pronounced the act a new song called "Battery Change." He alternated between piano and acoustic guitar.

His new album Hotel Shampoo took up most of the set. The mid-tempo rock songs eschewed the "everything and the kitchen sink" feel of SFA songs for a more typical rock setup. Quality songwriting shone through on If We Were Words (We Would Rhyme), Sophie Softly and Honey All Over. When played live, the similar melodies that inhabit and sometimes hamper Rhys' songs were much less obvious.

He peppered the set with an ample supply of Welsh-language tunes. SFA wrote Mwng, a gentle acoustic album sung entirely in Welsh, and many singles that pushed their native language into alternative rock.

The music was most effective here. Rhys' delivery displays Welsh as an expressive language, his emotions shining through words none in the audience could translate - Call it the Sigur Ros Effect. At least Rhys sang in a living language, albeit one spoke fluently by just 600,000 people.

Overall, Rhys his crew could have used a bit more energy and stage presence. Splashing in a SFA tune would not have hurt, since the reception wipes out any shot of Rhys' main band trekking to Music City.

Dreamin' of this man named Zimmerman

2011-05-24T09:55:00.008-05:00

The celebrity dream is a long-running feature of the American subconscious. At least I believe it true.

Our mundane dreams slip by. Our eyes glaze as other people describe their dreams. When graced with a famous or long-dead face, their resonance builds. Herman Melville was a gracious host in that old Victorian house until he went on a tirade insisting there was no way we could be related. Lawrence Ferlinghetti accused me of stealing a pair of chauffeur gloves.

I still remember walking with my father and bumping into Bill and Hillary Clinton. Before we parted, Dad quipped, "Well, if you ever see us again, you won't have trouble with our names," at which the president chuckled awkwardly. I have no idea what conjured Howard Cosell a decade after his death, but there he appeared in vintage 1970s form.

But until May 24, I had lacked a Bob Dylan dream. Seeing him onstage in a dream doesn't count. In this dream, Dylan and I threw rocks and skipped stones across a creek that doesn't exist.

We stood before the old house on Chillicothe Road in Mentor, Ohio. The drainage ditch that plagued during 12 years of summer mowing had grown wide enough to house deep blue pools teeming with aquatic life. The spines of dark-scaled fish occasionally ruffled the water. We started our throws with pebbles and gradually moved to large chunks of rock to compete for the largest splash. Goliath frogs sat on the marshy bank. The African natives' presence was odder than Dylan's.

Eventually we tired of the rocks and sat on the lawn, which was three or four days overdue for mowing. Wind tousled the lone massive tree in the front yard.

I long ago lost the ability to retain a dream in its entirety. I know there wasn't any talk about music, as much as I wanted to ask him about Highlands, his 16-minute song/dissertation based on a Robert Burns poem. We talked about life and now most of that conversation has broken down to mumbling. Not that I expected clear enunciation - this was Bob Dylan, after all.

Some other friends popped in. Dylan popped out, gone from the dream as quickly as he might flee in real life. Then I was up, ready to deal with another round of storm damage.

The irony of the dream became apparent an hour later, when the news touted Dylan's 70th birthday and recounted his influence. My subconscious spawned a dream, probably after a week of birthday build-up I barely followed. My brain knows I'm not a celebrity chaser, but granted me a few odd minutes with one of modern music's masters.

Case Closed: Neko Rules the Cannery

2011-05-17T22:52:00.008-05:00

As Neko Case took the stage, I remembered an odd moment when she popped into my head (no gutter thoughts, people).

While driving through rural Vermont, the sounds of the marshes moving into spring carried me back to Marais La Nuit, the 30-minute field recording from the marsh on her farm which ends Middle Cyclone.

There were no signs of crickets at the half-full Cannery Ballroom Tuesday night, as Case and company poured on the roots and the powerhouse vocals. Starting from Things That Scare Me, Case glided through highlights of Fox Confessor and Middle Cyclone, with a few other gems mined for good measure.

Case fit the room she played; instead of a formal dress she sported at the Ryman, it was hooded sweatshirt and jeans for the Ballroom. That laidback vibe took a minute to catch on; sometimes it's easy for the Ryman to bolster its performers.

They dropped a few new songs seamlessly into the setlist. I expected more, but due to Case's membership in the New Pornographers, she averages three years between records, so this tour is probably the prologue for studio time. It's always nice to hear The Tigers Have Spoken worked into the mix. For some reason, the sheer volume of animal songs in Case's repertoire was on display. She doesn't get preachy with them.

Her delivery flawless, I come back to the moments I haven't worn out on CD, record or digital. The dustiness of The Pharaohs never fails to impress. Given the venue's name, it should not surprise that they broke out the biting Margaret vs. Pauline, in which one of the women loses fingers in a cannery.

I can't tell you about the encores, because Case finished the main set with This Tornado Loves You, her poignant, mighty intro on Middle Cyclone. The three-minute tune encapsulates all of what Case is capable with her voice and songwriting. After all, it's a song about a tornado in love with a human, and every second is riveting.

Whatever came after that world-changing shriek on "What will it take to believe me?" could not hope to eclipse it.

Foxes Grow Fleeter With Age

2011-05-17T08:31:00.009-05:00

The Fleet Foxes can sell out the Ryman in a few hours, but few in the audience noticed Robin Pecknold tuning his own guitar during soundcheck. When lights dimmed and the band emerged, the supposed Pacific Northwest roadie actually was Pecknold.

Considering Pecknold scrapped a full album of songs before the sessions that became Helplessness Blues, it made sense that such a controlling fellow would tune his own guitar.

The band jumped into The Cascades, Helplessness' sole instrumental, and the virulently upbeat Grown Ocean.

The setlist mirrored what the Foxes played earlier on the tour, but it didn't matter. They took majors chunks of three releases then spun those songs into cohesive whole. The harmonies sizzled beneath the Ryman lights, and if ever there was an indoor venue for the Foxes, the Ryman fit the bill. I have heard Pecknold push his vocal range in smaller venues, and in Nashville's most famous, he never seemed to sweat the high notes.

From Sun Giant, the band cut through charges versions of the always emotional Drops in the River and the moodier Mykonos.

Most of the self-titled debut fit into the night. They couldn't avoid Blue Ridge Mountains in this venue, and Your Protector.

This night was about the new album, and it received its proper spotlight. The multi-movement The Shrine/An Argument survived its transition to the stage, while Battery Kinzie and Sim Sala Bim sounded tight and organic. For the first time, I heard clearly where Pecknold paraphrased the opening line of the Marine's Hymn in Montezuma.

The album closes with the hope of Grown Ocean, but the set shuttered on an encore of Pecknold going solo on Oliver James and the band reconvening for a spirited Helplessness Blues.

It's a little odd to hear a guy in his mid-Twenties spend so much time singing about growing old. Fortunately, Pecknold understands growing old doesn't mean growing stale, a slight no one would levy the night the Foxes headlined the Ryman.

Goodbyes, Reunions, Tax-Free Wine and Old Brick Mills

2011-05-11T10:03:00.005-05:00

My first day on the clock since Thursday left me a little edgy. I had to return the rental to the Manchester Airport by 5 p.m. Alicia checked into her last hotel, and we popped downtown for breakfast at Magnolia, Vermont's first green-certified restaurant. Our three days of journeys, we said our goodbyes and I aimed the Malibu east, with three hours of driving left in Northern New England.

Luckily, a way to break up the trip emerged. I dumped a planned stop in Concord to see the state capitol to visit with an old friend from the Mercyhurst English Department, Stephanie Clarke Gunn. Mark Zuckerberg might be selling my personal information, but his little social media site has reconnected me with people I hadn't seen in a decade or more.

As I prepared to exit Vermont the rain struck up, pounding West Lebanon and the river valley for a few minutes. Steph and I met for shakes at the Burger King, talked about life, the old days in Erie and everything else under the clouds for about 90 minutes before the clock ushered me back onto I-89. Thirteen years passed since our last visit, aside from random Facebook conversations. Life's too short to skip chances to get reacquainted with old friends. No matter how little time we can spent, it's always worth every second.

The wine store employee in me had to stop at New Hampshire's infamous rest-stop liquor stores. Inside, it felt the same as any store, but there were a few finds. I scored two excellent bottles of French wine -- a 2007 Chateauneuf-du-Pape and a 2007 Gigondas, great wines from a great growing year on the Southern Rhone - for $55. After four years in Nashville, I could grow used to a place without sales tax.

After checking in (hotel) and dropping off (rental car), it was time to wander Manchester. The stunning rows of former mills along the Merrimack River gave the city tremendous character. Most of the red brick buildings which were five or six stories tall, filled with new businesses. Music for Zumba class poured out of open windows. People filled restaurants below. The Manchester Fisher Cats, AA affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, were away, so I instead hunted down Milly's Tavern, Manchester's sole craft brewer.

Cabbing it home, I holed up in the hotel, walked to a nearby diner for a mediocre meatball sub, wrote a stack of postcards I forgot to mail, and fell asleep early. After a day on the clock, my return flight was on the board.

White Mountains, White Trails

2011-05-11T09:32:00.004-05:00

We set off early, straight up the most desolate eastern interstate I ever drove (I-91). The random wild turkeys gracing the mountain hills were the only wildlife of note on the entire trip, a letdown I got over quickly. Aside from the mist cascading from one of its dams. The road followed the Connecticut River up to St. Johnsbury, where we turned southeast and crossed back into New Hampshire.

It was time to confirm our route before plowing through the White Mountains. An elderly man ran the counter at the rest stop; beyond custodians, I had never seen so populated a rest stop before. (Blogger's note: Vermont rest areas looked like something out of the future, with ample staff, free wifi and not a spot of grime or dilapidation anywhere.) He outlined the best route through the White Mountains, and the return voyage along the Kanc with which I already familiarized myself.

Crawford Notch State Park spanned U. S. 302. From high in the mountains, some waterfalls spilled more than one thousand feet flowing beneath the road to meet the Saco River in freezing pools. Their flows spoke of the season, when temperatures finally broke into the seventies, even at these altitudes.

Narrow passes, steep waterfalls, plentiful gorges, and finally clear views of Mountain Washington and the weather stations at its peak (I’ll bash you good). But driving the mountain’s auto road was out of the question. It would be weeks before workers would clear snow to the peak. For this trip, I had to accept its beauty from a distance.

Then came a nugget of history at the Mount Washington Hotel in the Bretton Woods area; the gorge opened up to a small valley that highlighted New England's highest peak. Below it sat the hotel, which hosted the Bretton Woods conference that birthed the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in 1944. One wonders how they accomplished anything amid this beauty, let alone such monumental creation.

Alicia is a waterfall junky, so we decided to hike up to Arathusa Falls, one of New Hampshire’s largest set of falls. The steep, rocky hike was a little difficult one day after a half-marathon, but we endured. Between rocks and roots, I was a stumbling fool, but stayed on my feet. It got tough as the path narrowed and followed a hillside wet with snowmelt. We had to cross an ephemeral trickle that muddied the path, but continued as the creek and falls roared louder. Eventually, we had to stop; the hills were still thick with snow, and the blue marks on trees could not leads us forward with the ground below us unknown. Begrudgingly, we turned around, and returned to the highway.

The summer hotels of New Hampshire impressed with fresh paint and bright colors. It would be only weeks before the first wave of tourists would descend. We missed the first glut by weeks, even if it denied us trips to the top of Mountain Washington and a view of Arathusa Falls.

We returned to NH Route 16 at North Conway, and headed south to Moats Mountain Smokehouse and Brewery. I didn’t expect bison quesadillas in Conway, New Hampshire, but I didn’t argue once devouring the fresh ground beast.

We traced the Kanc once again. This time we ventured onto the rocks at the Lower Falls,a followed the ferocious waters channeled through Rocky Gorge (shown above), and hiked the short path to Sabbaday Falls, a sharp cut in the rock that produced a magnificent eaterfall that turned almost 90 degrees. The air was crisper than on Friday, and the little walks in the woods broke up the driving perfectly.

We traced the route I had taken Friday, right down to the stop at the Threepenny Taproom. Our late arrival in Burlington did not diminish our spirits, despite a few failed attempts to find a hotel close to downtown. We bought cigarettes and returned to the downstairs Italian restaurant from Saturday for a few pours of wine. Our last night of travel would end peacefully, even if I had another crazy day of driving to return to Manchester.

Middlebury Musings

2011-05-09T12:25:00.003-05:00

Under the bluest of Saturday skies, our drive past Lake Champlain and Vermont’s vineyards and orchards led to Middlebury. A more perfect New England town could not be plotted, from its maze of small businesses (even a Ben Franklin store), its small pubs and its institutions (the namesake college, and buildings aged a century or more). The Middlebury Inn might not handle stagecoaches anymore, but its original building dates to the 1820s, and sported all the elegance one expects of an old inn, plus a portrait of Robert Frost behind the counter.

Our room was simple, but quite nice and modern where necessary (the television hid in an armoire). Bookshelves lined the hallways, and little parlors broke up the suites. A gusting wind that ran between the hotel’s two wings had an unshakable ghostly feel. After all, someone probably died there. But it soon faded, and we ventured into the town. Eschewing pre-race pasta, I went with the local shepherd’s pie and a few Otter Creek brews. Later we strolled the square and the bridge crossing Otter Creek Falls (see above). The temperature dipped with the sun, and matters of race day became impossible to ignore. Poor training or not, the Middlebury Maple Run arrived in the morning.

The shuttle ran us to the start/finish/staging area, and immediately I knew where I would finish in this pack. But it was my own fault- due to being tired all the time and not committing to a training regimen, I put my faith in muscle memory, and muscles which had gone no further than a 15K in the year since the last half-marathon.

We spring through downtown, crossing the pedestrian bridge again and heading for some rural roads. Alicia sped away after the first mile; I knew I traveled at a pace suitable only for me. At Mile 2, racers crossed the state’s oldest coverage bridge and turned away from the city. Miles 4 to 6 went by smoothly, without any paved road and plenty of shade. Then we entered Middlebury College campus. I admired the observatory-crowned science building from a distance and couldn’t imagine we would pass it. How wrong I was.

The race turned steeply uphill and I had to walk, wondering how fit I would be had I gone here (and poor, since Middlebury is considered Little Ivy League). We returned to the starting road and embarked on an even more rural down-and-back. Here my legs caved in to walking long stretches. My inner thigh muscles fire off their usual volley of spasms, and I ran when they allowed for a few fast strides. No shades and farm smells helped even less through the series of inclines that were repeated before the finish line. At 2:46:53, I finished far from my best time, but not near my worst.

Rather that take the shuttle, we walked the full distance back to the hotel, and my legs failed to stiffen. Driving would be difficult later, but for now, I had survived, and my friend had thrived, almost beating 2 hours. We cleaned up and left the inn, which would easily be the best we stayed on the journey. The staff hoped we would return for the next Middlebury Maple Run, a promise I know I can’t keep 365 days out. But it was so picturesque, even if it was the toughest half-marathon I ever ran.

We ate at a nice restaurant on Otter Creek, the swollen creek almost sloshing against the windows at times. Grilled chicken and a beer suited our muted post-race celebration. We had plenty of Northern New England to see, and first we trekked south to Rutland before heading into the Green Mountains via U.S. Route 4.

The mountain road reminded me of my trip through the Lewis & Clark Forest on the way through south-central Montana. We twisted past towns which barely bothered to exists, little rows of hotel that earned addresses, and ski lifts rises through bare land streaked with fading snow. Minus the lifts, it had a singular beauty, and I was happy to travel it between the throngs of seasonal tourists.

The most tantalizing of the crossroads was Bridgewater Corners, home of Long Trail Brewing. Originally I wanted to hit the former Catamount Brewery now owned by Harpoon, but the local brewery won the day (more here).

I wanted to view the Quechee Gorge before we broke for White River Junction or its New Hampshire superior, Lebanon., across the Connecticut. Fortunately, U.S. 4 cross over the most spectacular portions of the rushing water. The river broke across amazing rock formations, and in white crests turned through one bend most canoers would have trouble with. White River Junction only had the Hotel Coolidge as a lodging option, so we crossed into Lebanon and picked something more mainstream.

After a quick dinner at Lebanon’s Salt Hill Pub, we were ready to crash. A lifetime passed since the Maple Run, even though we moved only 80 miles from Middlebury to Lebanon.

Then a news bulletin announced a presidential address at 10:30 p.m. Eastern, no subject released. Fox News speculated bout Libya, CNN and Wolf Blitzer – for some reason, I could not stop calling him ”Wolf Blister.” Maybe that owed to the condition of my feet after the race. But I digress. CNN stuck to actual news and Blist ... Blitzer knew what was coming and telegraphed it the best he could without saying anything.

As a former reporter who knows the rarity of Sunday night news conferences, I immediately speculated it had something to do with bin Laden. Short of a presidential resignation, you have to shoot big when forcing the American public back to the TV at that hour. You know the rest of the narrative, unless you believe the conspiracy theories, in which case you can claim the mantle of pure idiot. He’s dead, folks.

Americans will remember where they were when they heard the news, and I can remember the night at the Lebanon Days Inn.

Riding the Kanc, Raiding the Smallest Capital

2011-05-06T10:49:00.007-05:00

Departure time rushed out of the gate with Percy bolting as I went to leave, jumping into the bushes and trying to hide. As usual, the suitcase tipped him off to my departure. Fortunately he paused to roll on his back in the damp grass, and he was quickly returned to the house.

Soon enough, I stared down on Appalachia's verdant hills. Nashville to Baltimore breezed by. The plane turned sharply at D.C. and for the first time, I saw the Capital, the Washington Monument and the Pentagon were identifiable from air. I thought about that more on Sunday night.

Not leaving the plane, the second leg went even faster. From Philadelphia and New York City, I trace our northern progress. The mountains rose and the Connecticut River cut between Vermont and New Hampshire, and saw the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plan, which helped earn nearby Springfield the right to host the Simpsons Movie premier in 2007.

Coasting through Manchester-Boston Regional, New Hampshire awaited. The rental place ran out of compact cars, so I landed a Chevy Malibu with only driven three miles.

With 24 hours before I picked up Alicia in Burlington, I left the Manchester airport without a clue to my next stop. Since I hadn’t seen the ocean in years, I set out for Portsmouth, a stone’s throw from Manchester. The old seaport vaguely reminded me of Westport, Conn., where my mother grew up and I spent part of my first 14 summers.

With UNH up the road in Durham, Portsmouth had a more egalitarian feel than upper-crust Westport (supposedly an inspiration for the Great Gatsby). The small businesses clustered in the old town catered to tourists.

Originally I intended to find Smuttynose Brewery, Portsmouth’s best known import, but landed by the Portsmouth Brewery for a quick lunch. After a stunning haddock chowder and a solid burger, I circled around to 95, crossed the Piscatagua Bridge into Maine and put feet on the ground in Kittery. Because I saw so little of Maine, it won’t leave my list of unvisited states, and will require q more thorough trip, perhaps as soon as next year (hello, Acadia, National Park).

A turnoff for Lake Winnipesaukee tempted me, but it tumbled after I remembered What About Bob wasn’t actually filmed there. No, Friday was the time for the Kanc, and I wouldn’t be dissuaded. Since we planned to meander around the two states after Sunday's half-marathon, I had no guarantees of seeing the scenic highway later.

Coming over a ridge, Mount Washington’s white peak consumed the horizon. Later, a local would tell me with the fog often surrounding the peak, visitors aren’t guaranteed that glimpse, even from 50 miles away.

Reaching the Kanc and passing thousands of moose crossing signs (alas, no moose crossed), the road followed the Swift River, which churned and flowed thanks to mountain snowmelt. At the Swift’s lower falls, I saw a kayaking trio looking to cross the fast-moving falls and its spectacular rock formations.

For about 20 minutes, they prepared, charting a safe path through the boulders forming the falls. One kayaker sat at the bottom and another stayed on dry land to signal the third, who would run the falls. Slightly tense, this was an experienced trio, waiting amid the rapids and finally dropping over the safest rush of water.

Several glacially carved cliffs hosted ephemeral waterfalls produced by snowmelt. By Monday, the rocks would be stained and the falls poured out.

Rising gradually toward the pass, two or three cars passed. The chill in the air and the upcoming rain chased off almost everyone. Aside from a tech addict unable to comprehend why his phone had no signal at the high point in a national forest, I had the Kancamagus Pass and the short switchbacks to myself. The next 100 miles crawled by. After descending from the Kanc and passing multiple ski resorts, the horizon boasted at least three ridgelines. The rain poured and the road clung to a rock face above the churlish Ammonoosuc River.

At Woodsville, a small metal bridge crosses the Connecticut into Vermont without fanfare. Until Barre, I would not pass any places large enough for a postcard, but rural Vermont was thick with scenery. Lush hills and rivers peppered with rapids and waterfalls lined the road.

Scale is everything in Vermont. With just 600,000 people, most living around Burlington, rural is the norm. Even government is scaled down. Vermont’s State Lottery Commission operates out of a storefront fit for a convenience store.

After traffic circles on the lonely Hi-Line (U.S. 2, the northernmost crosscountry route in the U.S.), the gold dome crowning Montpelier broke from wooded hills.

Plotted along the Winooski River, the country’s smallest state capital had a Friday night culture fully in swing by the time I checked into the hotel and returned downtown. In 30 seconds, I found the beacon that brought me to Montpelier – the Threepenny Taproom.

Morning arrived quickly and with it, time for a quick call back to Nashville to wish the Gross Brothers good luck on their 26.2-mile grind. After several failed attempts to find an open entrance to Hubbard Park, the green space that boasted a tower looking over Montpelier, I gave up and headed onto Burlington, the 40,000-person metropolis on Lake Champlain.

Drove through Essex Junction, around downtown and time arrived to pick up Alicia. Twenty-four hours separated me from a date with poor preparation for a half-marathon. But I found my friend, then we grabbed lunch at a nice Italian bistro in Burlington (nothing like a Super Tuscan and a plate of tortellini to improve spirits).

Our moods improved even more at our next stop, the Ben and Jerry’s production facility. The tour was a bit weak --- a 10-minute propaganda video that danced around their corporate sellout a decade ago, a look at the empty production floor, and the obligatory sample of Stephen Colbert’s Americone Crunch.

Still, the cemetery for discontinued flavors was a nice touch, although I understand America even less knowing that Cherry Garcia has been their most popular flavor since its mid-1990s inception. At that rate of ice cream consumption, B&J-loving Deadheads are looking a lot like Jerry these days. Well, I suppose it's cheaper than tripping.

If a Tree Falls and Just Misses the House, Does it Make a Sound?

2011-04-05T09:42:00.002-05:00

Thanks to swings between mild and severe, it might be time to outlaw Nashville weather. The past two weeks started with bruising winds and pummeling rains.

Aside from four days of working from home , the 2010 flood had little impact on me. If I had stayed in West Nashville, it would have been different - my neighborhood sat adjacent to Richland Creek, which wiped out several shopping centers and dozens of homes built on its banks. The thin flood plain was overwhelmed.

Winds swirled into tornadoes on Monday afternoon; at work, the power flickered and the window panes bent against the wind. Some went to the basement; I hunkered down in my cube, hoping the glass would hold. It did.

But the first storm left its mark, tearing the roof off the nearby middle school and toppling the massive hackberry in my backyard. The tree fell parallel to the house, its limbs draped on the roof tile and root system pulling up huge chunks of asphalt.

Limbs briefly continued to bud new leaves, as if the uprooting had not registered in the branches that once stretched 50 feet above the house. Birds still hopped through the branches, nibbling at the buds and infuriating the cat just inside the screen.

Photos don't do it justice. From my bedroom and rear porch windows, I see nothing but limbs. The cat has not gone outside since, and reminds me every time I return home. I answer his meows at the back door with, "I can't get out that way either."

The emergency cases are still getting sorted out, then the tree men moved onto ours. For now, this tree awaits a chainsaw. There's one in the garage, but let's face facts, only I should fear loss of limbs using that thing, not the tree.

Tennessee's Wine Quandary

2011-03-31T08:32:00.005-05:00

If you're familiar with one state's alcohol laws, you're familiar with one state's alcohol laws.

They laws differ in every state. We have control states (state-owned liquor stores), commonwealth states (no alcohol at groceries, only at distributors), anything goes states, and "3.2 Beer" states. Those in Bible Belt include more restrictive and sometimes baffling measures.

The Tennessee Legislature has moved closer to approving wine sales in grocery stores. On its surface, this seems like a slam-drunk. You can buy wine in an Ohio grocery, as well as many other states.

Once untangled, Tennessee's web of state liquor laws don't make this issue as clearcut as the convenience seekers make it out to be.

In Tennessee, anything with 6.2 percent alcohol or more is considered spirituous. That covers all high-gravity beer. Why 6.2 percent? The state raised the limit so Dogfish Head could sell 60-Minute IPA in grocery stores. Incidentally, Dogfish Head exited the Tennessee market early this year.

What can you sell in a Tennessee liquor store that doesn't have alcohol? Nothing.

They cannot sell corkscrews, ice, non-alcoholic mixers, cigars, wine glasses or anything else. So far, there are indications a trade-off would be allowed. For most stores, selling bags of chips won't cover the loss of wine.
Plus, stores would have to add cooler space if they could now sell Budweiser (we probably wouldn't).

We cannot hold on-premise tastings, and the tastings must be free. When Grand Cru Wine & Spirits was founded, the owners wanted to install a table & chairs in one corner with some wine magazines. The Alcoholic Beverage Commission took a dim view of that proposal. Could a grocery hold tastings onsite? Unanswered questions lie everywhere.

Those restrictions led many stores to open adjacent to grocery stores, a retail version of symbiosis. That decision could be a deathblow if suddenly wine comes to groceries.
In fairness, the store where I work should be hit less hard than others. We lie in an middle class neighborhood and are 2-3 miles from the nearest grocery.

Wine in grocery stores is a lot like the Dogfish Head decision - a patchwork move made to please a single constituency. The question shouldn't be "Why isn't wine in grocery stores?" It should be "Why doesn't Tennessee overhaul its retail alcohol laws?"

Separate bureaucracies cover the grocer alcohol sales and the state liquor establishments. An individual can only own one liquor store - which leads to extended families getting into the business - but no restrictions apply to grocers.

I get tired of people touting the job creation abilities of wine in groceries when I might lose my second job. The "this is the people's will" argument also grows stale. Unfortunately, I have no interest in wearing a goofy Hawaiian shirt at Trader Joes.

That said, I do see a place for wine at Tennessee groceries. I also reject the evangelical argument that it will lead to more underage drinking. Fact: if kids want alcohol, they will find a way.

Grocers won't be stocking Anderson Valley Cabernet or Hermitage at the grocery, leaving the niche for wine stores to flourish.

But any change needs to be package with broader alcohol law reform.

Necessary National Parks

2011-03-24T13:41:00.007-05:00

We'll chalk up this post as filler, some thoughts that coalesced out of daydreams today. But in its own way, this list is important. I want to see all of these places before I die. That might not be feasible, although the two topping the list and potentially three more parks will be visited in September.

I haven't visited any great number of parks, but some critical ones - Yellowstone (twice), Glacier (three times), Joshua Tree, Hawaii Volcanoes, Rocky Mountain, Grand Canyon, and Theodore Roosevelt. If fortune had not brought me there, those would clog up the list. Glacier is my favorite, Yellowstone is the essential, and Roosevelt is the most underrated and least visited.

Fortunately, there are still vistas to intoxicate the senses.

10. Great Sand Dunes National Park (Colorado)
The dunes rise 750 in a valley rimmed by 13,000-foot peaks in Colorado's San Luis Valley. Ideally, it would be paired with a trip through Mesa Verde and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, but this would be the centerpiece of a rural Colorado driving tour.

9. Grand Canyon's North Rim (Arizona)
Visiting the southern rim in 2003 only got me halfway there. Closed in winter, the north rim sits at higher elevation and receives fewer visitors. I'm guessing pictures don't it justice either.

8. Big Bend (Texas)
I first saw this stretch of West Texas border country when Harry Dean Stanton rambled across it in Paris, Texas. Since then I've mapped my way there a dozen times. Big Bend features high peaks, desert vegetation, some beautiful canyons carved by the Rio Grande and of course, illegal immigrants and drug dealers crossing the border. I probably won't rush on this one.

7. Acadia (Maine)
This cluster of Maine shoreline and islands has the highest point on the Atlantic Coast. Someday I want to see the sun rise there.

6. Zion (Utah)
This almost happened in January, but I couldn't make the math work for the drive from Las Vegas. Furthermore, those beautiful canyons have roads connecting them with the other Utah parks. It will be best to hit this one in winter, because a shuttle bus runs most of the year, and in the cooler winter months, it's still accessible to private vehicles.

5. Great Basin (Nevada)
Three hundred miles from Las Vegas and 230 from Salt Lake City, this park must be hit on a clear night, because it's one of the darkest places in the Lower 48. I want a tent, a sleeping bag and the bright band of the Milky Way lighting the night. Great Basin NP has a huge collection of bristlecone pines, the oldest trees in the world. They can exceed 5,000 years, and their needles alone can push 40. Its signature mountain, Wheeler Peak, is among Nevada's highest.

4. Yosemite (California)
Between Half Dome, the sequoias, El Capitan and the waterfalls, John Muir's favorite park is a trip unto itself. After watching 12 hours of national park history, I can't escape Yosemite.

3. Denali (Alaska)
North America's highest peak, Denali or Mt. McKinley, as we call it in the Lower 48. Large population of grizzly bears and other megafauna. Glaciers. Unpaved roads. Steep drops. Pristine wilderness. This one could take the longest between the expense involved and the time commitment. Spending time up there requires plenty of preparation.

2. Redwood National & State Park (California)
Since kindergarten, I always tried to imagine the redwood forests which populated Woody Guthrie's This Land is your Land (our sanitized public school version left out the more socialist verses). Later I found out the forests of Endor were really just coastal redwoods, the world's tallest trees. My interest never dimmed, but free time and funds made these type of trips difficult until I left journalism.

The collection of remaining redwoods totals just 5 percent of the original grove which stretched along the northern California coast. I'm obviously not wired like the people who saw those giant trees only to profit and opportunity. From ground level, I can only imagine the majesty of trees five times as old as this nation.

1. Crater Lake (Oregon)
This one also goes back a long time, possibly to the third or fourth grade, when I first heard about the country's deepest lake, a blue beauty on top of an ancient volcano. After Glacier National Park, it's easily the place I've most wanted to see.

The list for Crater Lake runs longs - driving the rim drive, hiking one of the peaks for a panoramic view, taking a boat tour to see the log that has floated upright in the lake for more than a century, and staying at the lodge. If pictures and words cannot adequately sum these places, I have to make the most of my time there.

A few words about Nilsson Schmilsson

2011-03-23T07:28:00.004-05:00

(Throughout the next month, I'll be digging through my crates to explore records I bought but never sampled.)

Thanks to The Point and Lime in the Coconut, I’ve always seen Harry Nilsson as a goofball.

He was, but stopping there ignores his pop instincts. I don't quite buy the "American Beatle" tag. To label him as such takes away from what Nilsson could produce.

Gotta Get Up is sheer brilliance, a Beatlesque cacophony with every instrument in its right place. I wonder if Nilsson’s similarities with McCartney attracted Lennon. This song has undeniable ties to Paul, but succeeds thanks to Nilsson’s unexpectedly curt, gruff delivery. I expect it’s hard to avoid the Beatles references with Klaus Voorman playing bass.

Driving Along breezes by, as if Nilsson wrote it to emulate its subject (a la Lou Reed and Heroin).

He drops the band and just plays organ on Early in the Morning. The Moonbeam Song brings back the band, but they glide at an impossibly slow pace as Nilsson gently croons.

The bluesy piano and horn section give Down a much-needed dose of swagger. Nilsson runs with it, shedding all the sleepiness of The Moonbeam Song. Down sounds right at home in 1971, a worthy glam-rock challenger for Ziggy Stardust and Goats Head Soup.

I can’t listen to Without You without thinking of The Departed. Still, it’s an archetypal mournful ballad.

Reservoir Dogs closer or not, Lime in the Coconut is a weak point for me. That has nothing to do with the song itself. Unfortunately, the Muppet version will always be first in my heart. It’s as bizarre a song as will ever appear on a pop record, but Nilsson’s persona makes it work.

Let the Good Times Roll is a Brit-pop take on the Fifties classic, with a jaunty piano that can’t help but navigate the way to Liverpool.

Jump into the Fire is a revelation. Tell me that this song didn’t inspire young Declan McManus to change his name to Elvis Costello. It might not have, but it’s the exact type of song Costello wrote in his golden era. Nilsson’s raw vocals echo over a a pop-punk landscape. Don’t call it New Wave, because Nilsson precedes it. Here, he definitely foreshadows that movement., even if it rambles into jam-band territory. Everything builds to a nice crescendo reveals Nilsson’s rocking side and breaks away from the tight songwriting that dominates the record.

I’ll Never Leave You feels like the flipside of Without You, perfectly bookending the record’s second side. Nilsson’s fragile voice is cushioned by a mighty world-ending orchestral arrangement that does stick around long enough.

Ten songs and thirty-four minutes have passed. Today that would seem an oversight or the work of a band ripping off its fans. In the days of records, Nilsson Schmilsson was pretty typical. People conveniently forget Sgt. Pepper runs about 37 minutes. In a different way than Sgt. Pepper, Nilsson Schmilsson offers bright glimpses into rock music past and present.

There's no crime in stealing glances

2011-03-20T16:00:00.008-05:00

You won't find maps of the dull routines in this post. I worked, drank, exercised and surrounded myself with people. but long before Vincent Vega's soliloquy, I liked watching for the little things, to examine the scraps and margins of life. Sometimes those scraps contain a vein or two of gold.

Friday
Finally nailed down a quick dinner with my old friend Holly. I think of how much she was around when I first moved here, and now we average a bimonthly meeting. A plate of fine Mexican and raucous dialogue with an old friend sounded good, and so we headed down near Vanderbilt.

Due to my brother's condition, I have the ability to spot a handicapped child or adult at one hundred paces. At the Mexican joint, my peripheral vision immediately caught the sandy-haired boy with Down's syndrome. On a night when Vanderbilt sorority girls paraded around in outfits resembling high-class hookers, no one gave him a stare. He ate and talked with family and siblings.

When the staff brought out a candle-crowned birthday cake and his family sang the requisite tune, he squealed in delight. The family clapped when he easily blew out the candles. For I contemplated clapping with the family when he blew out the candles, but thought better of that. Why take away from their moment by inserting myself? In a popular restaurant pounding with cellphone immediacy, they were a world away, a content oasis.

Saturday
Minutes before I needed to leave for the store, Percy refused to be herded on Saturday. Usually he comes running with a clap and call of his name. Standing in the middle of Greenland Avenue shaking a bag of treats and shouting, I found him bounding away from a fluffy brownish-black cat.

This cat cannot avoid trouble; the neighbors with cats moved away, and apparently he must sate a lust for sparring. He reached the living room rug and plopped down, panting hard. I left him a small pile of treats and headed for Sylvan Park.

The full moon glided across the Nashville sky with a diamond of fog to focus it. Maybe the hazy setting did not help it meet the "supermoon" hype that built all week.

Sunday
Rather than risk the police at a late hour, I drove home this morning. Rather than take the interstate, I jumped onto Gallatin Pike, figuring it might look and feel different at 7 a.m. Sunday. Due to church and factors I still haven't uncovered, Nashville doesn't come alive until 11 a.m. or noon. The early birds get this town to themselves.

The street possessed an odd, fragile beauty. Yes, I am talking about the same Gallatin Road that forms East Nashville and Inglewood's main drag. It does wonders for the eyes when Gallatin lacks the swarms of people, the drivers ignorant of road stripes and the grit of early evening (the only time when I normally drive Gallatin).

The pink hues of sunrise gave a it a glow I remember from the Long Beach neighborhood where Alicia once lived. Aside from a few gas stations and fast-food venues, it was all shut down. A few odd characters traipsed the sidewalks. I didn't catch a red light for three miles and didn't dare look back. Gallatin Road couldn't hold onto that atmosphere for long.

Around 3 p.m., a rental van slowed on Greenland. Immediately I knew the attic apartment next door had been filled. From the kitchen window, I took a few seconds away from cooking and watching the army of 20-somethings stock their friend's new pad. I saw parents milling around and directing the younger generation.

If these neighbors are like most, awkward greetings will be the extent of our relationship. But we'll always have those fleeting glances.

Hellbent for Lent

2011-03-10T11:21:00.003-06:00

Boy, that title sounds awkward. But lapsed Catholic or not, Lent is a greason for testing willpower.

Last year I quietly quit sweets. This year, I aimed higher. Until Easter, I am prohibited from buying, streaming, downloading in any form any new music. No new vinyl, used or otherwise. That means no First Listens from NPR, Pitchfork or Spinner. That means missing out on Record Store Day exclusives. I will live.

I need a break from music consumerism. Since college, my buying habits only worsened. Since my CD burner died and I have dealt exclusively in MP3s and records, it has skyrocketed. In the past year, too many nights have ended with the single-click purchase of MP3 albums.

For 40 days, I plan to spend the time scavenging my record collection for the unlistened, the rarely played and records in need of revisitation. I have crates of records demanding attention. They will receive it.

I'll start briefly with a record that has stuck with me recently: Wild Honey by the Beach Boys. Expect a few paragraphs a few times a week.

There's a ton of detritus in the post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys catalog. Wild Honey came out in 1967, the same year as the awkward Smiley Smile.

The first three songs alone are worth the price of admission, especially the Stevie Wonder cover, I Was Made to Love Here. Carl Wilson's white soulman vocals initially sound out of place. Once accustomed to his tones, they have a strange but friendly power.

It doesn't have the staying power of a truly great record, but at 24 minutes, Wild Honey is no novelty. As a bonus, the record flies by, ending before any of it causes anger.

"Remember that foul evening, when we heard the banshees howl?" Clearly and painfully.

2011-03-10T07:58:00.002-06:00

If we stood any closer, Shane MacGowan's whiskey breath would have given us a contact buzz. Our semi-annual Pogues gang met and traveled to Detroit to see the Pogues' latest U.S. tour. Without the rougher New York City crowd, we had no fear of getting trampled 10 feet from the stage.

Openers Titus Andronicus, for their Shakespearean name and bushels of rave reviews, were a letdown, pummeling us with 45 minutes of unimaginative indie-punk.

As usual, the band came out bright-eyed and sharp, with the exception of the one Pogues member most people can name. MacGowan was wrecked, gripping the microphone stand for balance,attempting incomprehensible banter and stumbling offstage whenever Spider Stacey took over lead vocals.

In general, the Pogues are a tighter outfit in MacGowan's absence - they just stop being an attraction. This audience didn't glaze over when Stacey led on Tuesday Morning and several other standards.

But MacGowan is still a performer. Anyone who hear his heart-wrenching performance of And the Band Played Waltzing Mathilda that night knew the man still has some beauty left in that ragged voice. it was aching, haunting and earned everyone's full attention, an impressive feat for the tale of a maimed World War I Australian soldier. MacGown balanced that by hitting the yelps on "Poor Paddy" with knife-like precision.

The show came in a little behind 2009 in New York City, mainly due to location and energy. As the second show of a 10-night tour, the Pogues felt as if they were still getting back into form.

The setlist covered much of the same ground, but covered it well. There won't be too many more opportunities to hear Sick Bed of Cuchulainn, The Broad Majestic Shannon or Body of an American, three tunes that have never grown stale. Philip Chevron still owns the Irish immigration ballad Thousands Are Sailing.

Two surprises came from their mid-1980s heyday, the instrumental Repeal of the Licensing Laws and the accordion-heavy London Girl.

As always, the end came too quickly with the frantic Fiesta. It was a great bookend to Streams of Whiskey, the bouncy opener.

By night's end we probably rivaled MacGowan for Guinness consumption, our post-mortem of the show running into the wee hours. We found comfortable pub down the block and made it our temporary home.

By Saturday afternoon, the four of us agreed our livers deserved another two-year gap between Pogues shows.

Before I Get to that Foul Evening...

2011-03-08T07:27:00.008-06:00

Last weekend's roadtrip cannot begin without a few words about a Western Ohio institution. More specifically, a Lima institution.

On our way to Detroit (names have been changed to protect the guilty), we pulled up to the Kewpee. The boxy restaurant, with its slightly creepy doll logo, gave away little. The line of cars circling the build spoke volumes.

As the only non-Lima native, I was curious to taste this cult burger. Many people feel the same way about In N Out, which comes off as a fresher Rally's - in other words, nothing special until you order a shake.

Named for the old-timey doll, Kewpee was the forerunner of McDonald's and every other burger joint save White Castle (or A&W, depending on who writes the history). Its business cratered in the Great Depression, leaving just five locations today - three in Lima, and one apiece in Racine, Wisc. and Lansing, Mich. Burgers, pie and chili propel its reputation.

Kewpee's quality likely lies with staying small and local. Kewpee operates older stores in Lima - its downtown location earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Place. But the inside felt like a timewarp. The staff wore pristine white uniforms that would have felt proper in the 1950s. With just two lines, they hustled dozens of customers through in minutes. My friend tells me the staff tended to be older because Kewpee is among the few fast-food chains to pay employees well.

The meat all comes from local beef, which the restaurants grind up every day. I rarely eat fast food anymore, but rarely does a quick burger taste fresh and flavorful.

Anything you might say about a Big Kahuna Burger would apply to the Kewpee. I never expected fast-food beef so sturdy and juicy.

Normally I wouldn't even consider a fast-food burger, but at Kewpee, you really can't consider anything else. Considering I never traveled to Lima before, I can't foresee another Kewpee excursion. Fortunately, I cannot forget the flavor.

Sawing at the King of Limbs

2011-02-24T09:30:00.005-06:00

Maybe I should have taken These Are my Twisted Words more seriously.

The free tune Radiohead dropped in August 2009 works as a perfect prelude to King of Limbs, its second consecutive "surprise" album. They ditched the "pay what you want" model this time around, but pushed it out a day early.

The Oxford band again flexes its musical and financial muscles by dropping an LP with one week's notice. Aside from the speed of release, King of Limbs bears little in common with In Rainbows. Thom Yorke, Johnny greenwood and company leaning on their experimental side for a record that baffles, surprises but never comforts.

There's a relaxed groove running through the songs, grounding them as only Radiohead could. Phil Selway's drumming lies at the center of many songs, a break from the past but a welcome one. The crazy time signature he keeps on Bloom gives the sensation of standing on moving ground; only Yorke's reverb-heavy vocals and piano buried in an electric haze keep the balance.

Morning Mister Magpie pops with two dry guitars in competition, working as a companion to These Are My Twisted Words. Little by Little should soothe fans shaken by Bloom, with its electronic percussion and smoother guitars resembling pasty load-bearing songs (I Might Be Wrong comes to mind).

Feral is easily the least accessible piece here, a menacing drum-and-bass number with loops of Yorke's voice breaking through.

At just eight songs and 37 minutes, it's short but deep. I immediately gravitated toward Codex, a ballad of broken piano chords descended from Pyramid Song. Give Up the Ghost dazzles with lush moments of gentle pats, ethereal vocals and sporadic strums. King of Limbs peaks on those two songs.

After a series of album-ending downers like Street Spirit (Fade Out), Wolf at the Door and Videotape, King of Limbs concludes with Separator, which goes slightly upbeat in its melody, with arpeggiated guitar lines flaring up. At times, Yorke finds his inner Prince, giving Separator a tenderness it might otherwise lack.

Almost a week after its release, King of Limbs has not sunk in. The album feels ephemeral, a wealth of sonics pushing musical fringes that evaporate soon after Separator ends.

I wonder if King of Limbs owes a debt to modern listening habits -- music has become disposable. We spin albums for days or a week then never return. We barely have time to connect. With King of Limbs, I want to connect, but the songs have an impervious nature, blocking me out. That isn't enough to make King of Limbs a great record, but it is constantly compelling.

Political Rambles (Wisconsin Edition)

2011-02-17T14:37:00.003-06:00

It doesn't happen nearly enough, because rarely do states tackles issues so divisive. But minority Senate Democrats in Wisconsin know how to preserve their relevance.

With a 19-14 majority, Republicans need one Democrat to hold one of those union-busting votes up in almost every legislature where Republicans rules. Budgets have suffered from the recession, and unions are an easy target - and the cause of all problems not caused by Obama, in case you didn't know. At least that's what I hear.

My belief is employment standards need tweaking, especially when states are in a financial bind. Too often unions stick to monolithic policies and refuse to budge. They should accept when change is necessary.

This "crush the unions" mentality is conservative payback against organizations which elevated workplace quality for all Americans. Unions have their dark sides --- Cadillac health benefits and leadership disconnected from reality at times. The largest union for local employees was founded in Madison, Wisconsin, so bill is steeped in symbolism.

However, the Wisconsin Senate Democrats have vanished. All 14 left the state to urge the new governor and Republican majorities to slow it down a notch. No one has said to where they fled. They're holding up the vote.

Minority political parties are good for about one flight a decade. The last one of note was bigger than the others, but appropriate given the location. In 2003, U.S. House Majority Tom Delay helped engineer a second round of redistricting of Texas Congressional and State Assembly seats. Republicans won the Statehouse for the first time since Reconstruction, and the Hammer decided it was payback time.

He would later have to order the Texas Rangers to find the Democrats (which he didn't have the power to do), who wisely bolted for a hotel across the Oklahoma border. They dodged the vote for a while, but later recanted. In that out-sized Texas way, it was great drama.

I could see Ohio's statehouse Democrats pulling the same tactic, but most would end up drowning in Lake Erie or the Ohio River. In Tennessee, Democrats are too inconsequential to matter after they wasted 130 years of dominance.

This isn't about partisanship or favoring a party. I don't enjoy majority tyranny. Period. Bush II barely won and he used it. Obama won big then used it, but has wisely backed off after the 2010 elections massacred the Blue Dog Democrats.

Now, a breed of recently elected governors and freshmen legislators wants to flip the establishment on its head. I worry this is the Tea Party brand of governing, a few quick fixes to soothe the savage political based without a thought for long-term consequences. Obsessing about destroying your political enemies never works well -- Richard Nixon had some great accomplishments, but that desire to pulverize led to his resignation. It's self-defeating.

By attempting to to demonstrate how hard they're working to upend that status quo, lawmakers tend to forget the deliberate nature of politics and rush into major changes. In the parlance of our times, it means "pulling a fast one."

I don't know if Wisconsin Democrats will slow that progress. They might get some concessions, but they cannot stop majorities of that magnitude.

There's nothing wrong with taking it slow. If we need a few stunts to get our brand of democracy to work, then by all means --- run legislators, run.

What Comics Should Be (Doctor Strange edition)

2011-02-10T10:21:00.003-06:00

There's an old line at Marvel Comics about every creating having a story pitch for Doctor Strange but none knowing how to sell it.

As a Doctor Strange fan, I couldn't agree more --- he's a tough character to write and gets shoved onto teams where he's an awkward fit. Brian K. Vaughn's mini-series was an exception. Doc Strange had endured more bad relaunches than almost any other Marvel character, partially due to the groundbreaking Stan Lee-Steve Ditko stories from Strange Tales and the always reliable series from the late 1970s and early 1980s. The 1990s-era Strange book is almost unreadable.

Strange varies from the standard Marvel template - we meet him in medias res. In his first appearance, we already see him as a powerful spellcaster. A few issues later, we discover that the good doctor evolved from an amoral egomaniac into Marvel's go-to guy for dealing with alternate dimensions and higher powers. We only get to glimpse the younger Strange to see how much he changed.

Which brings us to "This Old House," the recently released Marvel Vault selection that revives stories that for whatever reason never saw print. Roger Stern's name alone coaxed me to depart with $2.99.

A leftover from a short-lived Marvel Universe anthology series killed 12 years ago, Roger Stern and Neil Vokes tell a simple tale: Doctor Strange buys a house (known to diehards as his Sanctum Sanctorum).

This type of story fits nicely into past Doctor Strange continuity without feeling as though Stern shoved in a story where it doesn't fit. Too many writers flip back through character histories and drop in their story wherever they feel. "This Old House" doesn't change the character, but explains how he chose his domicile and what struggles came in making it his own.

Needless to say, Strange doesn't just tear out the carpet and install granite countertops. The beauty of scripting a younger version of an established character is the chance to show Doctor Strange still learning his new powers and striving to overcome his nerve-damaged hands (it was a car accident, nothing sick or disgusting).

Voke's artwork only contains necessary ties to Ditko's psychedelic, magical realm backdrops. It comes off as stylish but not out of bounds for Doctor Strange.

Instead of stopping the story dead, Stern deftly sprinkles essential nuggets of Strange's origin into the action. It flows and genuinely moves the plot in some instances.

What remains in Marvel's vault is unclear. Tales like "This Old House" deserve daylight, especially when presenting a sometimes confounding character in an accessible fashion.

One condensed week

2011-02-07T08:19:00.002-06:00

White Stripes broke up this week. I would act surprised, if I had not considered them broken up from the moment Jack White decided to break their every-other-year recording cycle for (shudder) playing drums in the Dead Weather. Watching Under Great White Northern Lights and Meg’s extreme discomfort with the camera, it was all too apparent (seriously , she speaks so softly that they give her subtitles). At least they never sacrificed quality – you can quibble with their individual records, but overall, those six records form a solid discography.

***

What goes forgotten with the White Stripes is the shoddy state of rock music circa 2000. They made the duo cool again. Jack White liked to record fast to push himself. One friend predicted a reunion within the decade. I doubt it--- watch Meg’s tears from their Canadian tour documentary, and I don’t see a woman eager to resume the rigors of touring. Let them rest.

***

If heavy metal defined your teen years, go see Lemmy. If not, it's still an interesting character piece. It holds back nothing, and entertains constantly. The documentary also reinforces why no music fan should ever skip a Nashville show --- for reasons unknown, Lemmy popped up at Metallica’s Sommet Center date in 2009. I might never attend a Motorhead show – hell, I shouldn’t say that – but the film dives deep into the history of rock’s foremost survivor.

At nearly 2 hours, the amount of pummeling Motorhead songs nearly becomes a drag, but the filmmakers keep the focus on Lemmy.He lugged Jimi Hendrix’s gear, hot booted from Hawkwind, and has nearly four decades of metal/punk/garage rock history blaring from his Rickenbacker bass. In any event, I need a long break from Ace of Spades.

***

One more music item – after repeatedly missing the Fleet Foxes in 2008 (coincidence enable me to see them in Denver), I landed the prize on Tuesday morning – tickets to their Ryman debut for Crites and myself. Hopefully, their second album will not disappoint. I still count on the brilliant, spare acoustic tracks Robin Pecknold played last year to serves as prelude.

***

The next great American vacation is in the works. The trip will include a half-marathon, some of the Eastern United States’ highest peaks, three more states off my “unvisited” list, state capitol architecture and possibly a swing past the lake where Bill Murray once tortured Richard Dreyfus.

***

Pushing myself through Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice. The enigmatic author delivers a very Lebowski-esque noir, but it proves rewarding due to the twists and eloquent prose.

***

For the first time in recent memory, I visited a competing wine shop in Nashville. The dust jumped out at me immediately (we dust nightly), as did the clutter. But wow, what a bunch of French beauties. I walked out with a 2008 Cahors blend (80 Malbec/20 Merlot) and could have spent $100 just on wines from my namesake vineyard near Santa Barbara. Plus, they stocked a few 2007 Chateauneuf-du-Papes we don’t. That was a great year for the Southern Rhone Valley wines, and CNP always delivers the best grapes in the region. That shop is worth a second visit.

Las Vegas in the Rearview

2011-01-28T16:08:00.008-06:00

The pre-dawn departure from Nashville has evolved into a necessary ritual when flying west. Otherwise, the day cannot begin upon arrival. My usuall cabbie came at 4:45, I boarded for Denver minutes after hitting the gate, and in Denver I barely paused for a piss before the next flight called its passengers.

Despite its massive size and tram system, McCarran International Airport was easy to navigate. After collecting my bag, rental car and then Braif, we set out for the In N Out Burger pilgrimage. It opened at 10:30 a.m. and never of us had eaten more than a snack. Forgetting all I knew about the restaurant's hidden menu items, I stuck to the basics and never looked back. I rarely bother with fast food, but the novelty of In N Out cannot be avoided.

This journey had been conjured up by my old friend Crites, who wanted a birthday away from Ohio's cold. He couldn't have picked a better set of days, as winter storms stalled both Columbus and Nashville, which received a blast of Arctic ice. I cannot skip any chance to head west, and reveled at the chance to actually travel with other people (my preferred pace does not work for most).

The second wave of our party - Crites, his brother and his brother's friend Coop - would not arrive until early evening, so we need time to kill. Unfortunately, it was not enough time to venture northeast up the Virgin River Valley to Zion National Park. Leaving from the In N Out Burger, we could have driven the 150 miles in three hours, but would have had less than two hours before we had to return. So Zion awaits a future trip.

We cruised up the Strip, all the way into Downtown Las Vegas and into parts of town strongly resembling Phoenix and Tempe. Take away the eye-grabbing Strip skyscrapers, and the southwestern scenery, palm trees and low houses behind stucco walls take over.

From North Las Vegas we followed Lake Mead Boulevard through heavy sprawl, which abruptly broke into uninhabited desert with a lone road wedged into the khaki hills. Across those plains dappled with low, durable vegetation.

After a small toll, we returned to the desert and journeyed through the series of overlooks, enjoying brief lapses of total silence broken by air traffic at McCarran International and the occasional black helicopter cutting a low path above the blue depths.

Only a few people bothered with the beaches on this clear, balmy day. A bright band of white rock ringed Lake Mead, marking the dramatic water loss drought incurred in recent decades. With the suburban tracks fanning out around Las Vegas, it was not shocking, but still sobering. As we wound south toward the reservoir's southern terminus at Black Canyon, the islands which barely broke water on the maps naming them had grown more pronounced.

Rather than return to Vegas early, we soldiered onto the dam, and an unexpected pleasure. Like most, I knew about the O’Callaghan-Tillman Bridge, the U.S. 93 bypass which finally ended decades of cars driving across the top of Hoover Dam. The only time I crossed the dam, back in 2003, I had no idea the windy road actual twisted across dam until we descended into traffic and the crawl past the damn towers

Following a few checkpoints, a little turnout announced a path up to the bridge and the new stretch of U.S. 93. Interpretative signs outlined the construction. In a few minutes, we left its safety and stood on the bridge deck, looking out at Arizona and down at Hoover Dam. I looked forward to walking across to Arizona -- until I put my hand on the railing. An 18-wheeler roared past and everything shook ferociously. At that height, the bridge was obviously designed with pedestrian safety in mind. There were no worries. But I had no desire to stand above the Colorado River any longer than I had to.

With its Rube Goldberg-esque maze of escalators, stairs, moving sidewalks and diversions through shopping malls, he Strip does an excellent job of ensuring people don't walk far. After checking in, we took to the Strip, dodging phalanxes of Hispanic men handing out Girls!Girls!Girls cards (yes, it was worse than the Motley Crue song), and finally returning to seek out the Freakin' Frog and escape from the maddening crowds.

We finally met Crites and his brother after 9 at the Luxor, the pyramid-shaped casino anchoring the Strip's southern end. It connected with the Excalibur, the castle-shaped hotel where Braif and I landed. A little time at the Wheel of Fortune machines preceded departure for a few beers.

Thanks to Crites and Braif, I finally managed a pre-dawn start with company. We left Vegas at 6 a.m. with a full moon blazing before sunrise. In a few miles, the superhighways surrounding Vegas condensed down to a series of rural roads crossing mountain passes.

F We buzzed past rows of Joshua trees that grew more massive the further we drove. After mocking of the new Decemberists album's heavy REM tendencies concluded, the latest Iron & Wine served as the perfect soundtrack, complicated music for a complicated landscape. or all the desert splendor spanning Las Vegas and Pahrump, especially the yellow warning signs for bighorn sheep, a curiosity at the state line held me captive. Just shy of the Amargosa Opera House at Death Valley Junction, pools of water bubbled and lapped at the road, in some places nearly spilling over.

The wind buffeted the car as we rolled up to the park entrance. Aside from a credit card machine and a sun-bleached map, it wrapped itself in the same desolation as the preceding 30 miles from Pahrump.

Fourteen miles later, we got our spectacular first view of Death Valley. The road climbed steadily, then broke to a 14 percent grade for the last turn into the parking lot, which laid bare all of Death Valley to us. At a height of 5,400 feet, words failed me. My hands failed me too, as the bullying wind quickly numbed my digits to where I couldn't operate the panoramic feature on Crites' camera.

For a few moments, we loitered at the rolling rocks of Zabriskie Point. The sun's angle gave us great shots of the mountains, along with the shadows of us three displayed on a nearby boulder.

We left the visitors center and stopped on the other side of the Zabriskie Point formations at Golden Canyon, a deep, shaded gully with tight turns and too many branches to count. Crites disappeared up one. After a few minutes, Braif and I followed. At first, the terrain was manageable. But these canyons had been pummeled by floodwater just weeks before. The path grew thick with tiny, loose rocks which ruined my traction. Every time I lurched upward, the eroded rocks almost slid me back to my starting spot. Finally I gave up, and soon enough, the others descended.

Rested from our hike, we breezed past the oxidized rock of Artist's Palette, a collection of hills renown for the sparkling colors. I saw little since the one-lane road required more attention than I expected, even at 25 mph.

When we reached the valley’s renown low point, the floodwaters has formed a great brackish lake where people waded and the salt flats no longer mimicked the appearance of water. What looked like water from Dante's View actually was.

We would travel another hour without passing more than two or three souls.

As we turned away from the muddy basin and the salt flats resumed, our first and only taste of wildlife bounded and dashed across the road. It wouldn’t be Death Valley without a handful of persuasive coyotes corralling motorists exiting the park.

With their doglike demeanor, this upbeat trio obviously encountered people before and almost certainly scored a meal. On cue, they struck majestic poses, trying hard to hide their reputation for scavenging. Seeing them up close brought me back to the passage from John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley that had rattled in my skull all day.

When crossing the Mohave Desert, Steinbeck plays God, watching two coyotes at a distance through his rifle’s scope. Rather than kill them, he lowers his gun and opens two cans of dog food for them. As the coyotes paced the asphalt, invigorated by the mild Death Valley winter, I wondered if this bunch were not descended from Steinbeck’s coyotes. If he had experience them at 5 feet instead of 50 yards, he might have marveled at their resilience in this brutal landscape, but their chicken-stealing tendencies. Granted, Steinbeck dealt with them regularly during a western boyhood; I know them better as a suburban nuisance.

That thought had little time to linger – when driving so far from civilization, my mind shouldn’t have the chance to wander. We blasted across 40 more miles of desert, returning to Pahrump and followed the Joshua trees back to Vegas. With six hours of Death Valley filling our cameras, Red Rock Canyon was skipped. It took a brief bit of maneuvering to get back to the airport to deposit the car, as the highways branching into McCarran fell under heavy construction and several traffic lanes collapsed down to one.

In minutes we returned to the Strip to prepare for our Crites' birthday dinner at The Sinatra at the Encore. It was a great dinner, with good wine and a sighting of billionaire developer Steve Wynn at a corner table.

Later we found some mild debauchery at the Encore’s blackjack tables and multiple beers at New York New York. A conspiracy of two days of desert driving and alcohol drove me to retire hours before the others, but not without rich desert visions from Dante's View still wafting across my closed eyes. Yet the AC unit couldn't come close to mimicking the feel of the valley wind.

Beer Utopia in Sin City: The Freakin' Frog

2011-01-24T08:47:00.005-06:00

With slim and highly commercial options for craft brewing in Las Vegas, I ventured off the Strip for a beer bar experience like few others. Online I found the Freakin’ Frog near UNLV campus, across the street from an In N Out Burger.

Its spot in a small shopping plaza next to a head shop did not reveal the beer wonders that lied within. As for the Frog, its interior only hints at its mighty beer collection and the 500-bottle whiskey collection stored upstairs.

For a visit, I suggest renting a car, if only to avoid the chance of walking back to the Strip (a solid 2.5 miles). We only made it back from a Friday record store trip because a cabbie happened to stop for an album. Otherwise, walking is the only option

I perused their giant beer guide, which boasted hundreds of brews, including a handful of rarities not available. When my choices kept coming up empty, I urged the bartender to give me a view of the cooler. The happy hour crowd prevented that from happening, at least not immediately.

Thankfully, the Frog's taps include two delights not available due east. I started with the mighty Rogue Charlie, a strong American ale in their words (an American barleywine in mine). The name is in honor of American homebrewing pioneer Charlie Papazian, president of the Association of Brewers and founder of the American Homebrewers Association. With lots of hop leaf on the nose, its florid complexion covers a wide spectrum. Plenty of alcoholic pepper and creaminess mingle on the finish. This was a dangerous beer, with an alcohol content estimated in the 14 percent range. Still, served in a Chimay chalice and at $10 a pour, it did not wipe me out.

The second brew equaled it in rarity. The Frog had acquired a keg of Rogue Smoked Porter brewed with vanilla beans. The deviation from the standard smoked porter had not been bottled and otherwise available only at Stone’s brewery in Escondido.

The vanilla beans add a starkly different direction to the standard smoked porter. The porter finishes with a dry blast of vanilla – it isn’t extract or artificial, but raw pure vanilla. More importantly, it preserves the light, drinkable quality porter should emanate. This beauty vanished before I realized it. Obviously, the porter is too expensive to widely brew with the vanilla beans. If the chance arrives, grab one, or as many pints as possible. It was the best domestic porter I tasted in ages.

Then it was time for a splurge from the Frog’s catalog of brews. I had been turned down on Westvleteren 12 and the fake label on the bottle. As much as I want to abide the monks, I would have splurged for that rarity made rarer Several saisons were also out of stock. I heard whispers of the cooler containing bottles not on the list, and inquired about a quick view.

The bartender acquiesced and let me wander it for a few minutes. Their estimate of 1,000 beers felt light. I could have wasted an hour picking one out, and passed a dozen ales which could have finished me off. As I wandered, the reveler's silhouette on the bottle of of a Cantillon Gueuze stuck with me. I almost balked at the $22 price, then realized I would not find one back in Nashville.

As for the gueuze, it possesses a fantastic complexity. Cantillon combines lambics aged one, two and three years. Without the fruit most people associate with lambic, it takes a jagged turn. It was sour and puckered the lips, then finished by leaving me salivating. The initial flavors were Granny Smith apple, pineapple, apricot, sour orange and a layer of brilliant tart peach. That’s just in the nose. All flavors reappear in the body, along with a cidery texture and a mustiness often reserved for French red wine. This was real deal, intricate ale worth every penny.

With Cantillon delicately coating my palate, I didn’t touch another beer for hours.

Watch Them Jumpstart: GBV Blister the Ballroom

2011-01-15T10:14:00.007-06:00

To my knowledge, the great Guided by Voices documentary has not been filmed. When it comes to the screen - face it, everything gets a documentary in the 21st century - the title “Drunken Masters” would fit perfectly.

The venerable Dayton band descended on Nashville, supposedly closing out a brief jaunt with the group's best lineup. This was the first time I ever caught an act twice on the same tour; with chances of future tours for the 93-96 GBV and better chances of a vastly different Nashville setlist, I could not conceive of missing.

At any Music City show, you must fear Nashville Crowd Syndrome. This constitutes a poor showing for a small national band because people did not score free tickets. It might cause the group to pass Nashville on future tours.

Thankfully that plague did not afflict the Jan. 14 performance of Guided by Voices. GBV failed to sell out, but it was a good showing, light on douchebags and surly hipsters. People packed against the stage for a high-five from frontman Robert Pollard or a good view of his multiple scissor kicks. And he kicked a lot when not twirling the microphone. For a former elementary-school teacher, the man has the rockstar frontman routine down pat.

For me, Guided by Voices began A Man Called Aerodynamics, when I picked up Under the Bushes, Under the Stars, the last record from the classic lineup. That album opener it a blistering rock number with power chords and Pollard’s voice radiated hope and good spirits in a way rock music rarely did in the 1990s.

GBV can condense an anthem into 50 seconds, then pack 15 of them on their best records. Their live sets on the Classic Lineup tour skipped the tape hiss and low production quality for ballsy, anthemic pop-rock that recalls the Kinks and multiple artists on Nuggets.

The band’s kitchen sink ethos with its album held it back at times, but you wouldn’t know it from this tour. They plucked highlights and rare gems from their beloved quartet of albums (Vampire on Titus, Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes) and dropped in the My Impression Now from the EP Fast Japanese Spin Cycle. Pollard claimed he considered it an album, just like all their EPs.

Vampire on Titus got a few excellent spotlights, including Expecting Brainchild and Tobin Sprout’s Gleemer (Deeds of Fertile Jim). For a record that sounds as if the four-track was down the hall where from the band played, it contains some great tunes.

Golden Mountaintop Queen Directory was reborn, its magnificent chorus harmonies laid bare in a way Bee Thousand’s production could not. Keeper of Elves went down smoothly, I Am a Scientist dazzled, and who in attendance would forget Buzzards and Dreadful Crows or Smothered in Hugs?

Hot Freaks droned forward with its dark, Satisfaction-style back beat.

Echoes Myron is a GBV essential, a few minutes of rock euphoria that never grows old. Pollard helped by ending it with the declaration, “Free beer forever!” He ad-libbed through A Series of Sneaks, tying Dayton and Nashville together in a second verse I didn’t know existed.

Pollard showed his alcohol earlier than in Columbus, and by the time GBV reached the encore he began to show his wear. I lost track of his Budweisers, and he pointed held out the bottle of Cuervo before swigging. “I’m going to drink from this bottle of Cuervo, and you’re going to let me. You’re helpless,” he mumbled with smile.

He would mumble more and just like in Columbus, snap back to lucidity every time a song began. My friend Kristin remarked that she had not seen an artist perform so well while drunk in a decade or more. Having seen GBV in October, my timeline was a little different. But the band demonstrated a tightness few indie rockers can match.

Near the main set’s end, Pollard exclaimed, “I miss Tobin,” a sentiment fans of this lineup wholeheartedly endorse. Guitarist/vocalist Sprout served as Pollard’s foil, and his departure threw GBV out of equilibrium.

Balance was back on this little reunion. GBV might not tour in this form again, or have ever cracked the record charts. But they can claim one hell of a victory lap.

Nothing for the new year?

2011-01-12T15:40:00.002-06:00

Almost two weeks into 2011 and no posts?

Allow me to retort.

At the strike of midnight Central Time, I popped the cork on a Veuve Clicquot Vintage 2002. If you're going to start a new year, at least do it with real Champagne.

There was no Andre flowing at my friend Wade's house that night. This was wine store employees toasting with the wares of the rich. With a Champagne Varnier-Fanniere he won in a sales contest, it began. The buttered toast tones of a good sparkling were inflected with a rustic feel, not surprising given the four-hectare lot from which it comes. It had an amazing floral noise and compared nicely with what was to come.

Before we go further, let me drop these statistics.
Bottles of champagne consumed: Five
Retail value in Tennessee: $400-plus
Wine & Spirits Discount rate: Much less

Next came the heavily discounted Gosset Brut, which compared surprisingly well with the Varnier-Fanniere and those to come. Our lineup fell off with a Tattinger Domaine Carneros Brut Rose. This California sparkling from the venerable Champagne house really couldn't compete, not with the elegant Marc Hebrart Brut Rose that delighted the Burgundy lover in me.

As for the 2002 Veuve, vintage champagne produced a wholly different animal. It easily topped my list for the night. The bubbles were smaller, the flavors more elegable and complex. I will have to squirrel away another for a special occasion.

By the time we reached the fine, dry bubbles of a Champagne Billecart-Salmon Brut Reserve danced on our palates, I tried to concentrate on the amazing wine, not what I spent (a lot, it turns out).

I have no memory of the night's funniest moment. Wade's video camera continued recording after I slumped over on the couch. He shot me with a Nerf gun, and the bullet, bounced off my chin, I roused, looked left and right. With a quick "Whatever" my head lolled back and sleep resumed. Now it's immortal.

An old favorite

2011-01-10T15:27:00.006-06:00

You might recognize this tyrannosaurus Rex from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. I had to fortune to pass him and neighboring brontosaurus (or whatever they're calling them these days). No giant, angry boyfriends chased me through the valley, fortunately.

The valley restaurateur built the dinosaurs as a roadside attraction. Eventually they came into possession of people who turned them into .... a Creationist museum, and use them to decry the fossil record. Fortunately on March 1, 2008, it was closed up and we had free rein of the beasts.

The pictures don't reveal the windstorm striking as we returned from Joshua Tree (correction: zoom in and you can see my hair whipped to one side). The valley has hundreds of windmills on the interstate's opposite side. We devoured date shakes (a local delicacy) before leaving the dinosaurs to their creationist masters.

Dead Bird and the Dirty Pavement

2010-12-28T09:11:00.003-06:00

This happened this morning, and it already feels like a fragment from 1,000 years ago.

Walking up the sidewalk to work, I found a small bird dead on the concrete. Dead birds, especially finches and sparrows, seem more common in Middle Tennessee. Our cold snaps catch them unprepared. Here, night freezes into the twenties and teens after an afternoon into the forties, and they cannot cope. The cold spell struck early this year, undoubtedly throwing off many migratory creatures.

My mind is too prone to exaggeration. A single bird died, not a suicidal flock blocking the entire sidewalk. The only other dead one I encountered in recent memory hanged limply from my cat's mouth.

This poor fellow had a thatch of marigold brightening his tail feathers and a more subdued yellow on his belly. For a moment, I feared the bird might start moving in my hand as I grabbed it, the unexpected warmth resuming its fight for life. Instead it remained still and stiff.

I tossed the body into the shrubbery hemming the main entrance. He tumbled onto his marigold belly so I had to reach into shrubs to flip him over so his brown coat blended into the topsoil and mulch that would claim him. A flash of yellow between the dull green bushes could catch someone's eye. But with all the cell-phone zombies shuffling in and out of this office complex, probably not.

Maybe a few people walked past that dead bird. I couldn't let it go. Call it strange, but leaving it lie on the pavement felt wrong. I did it once or twice upon early arrival at Suburban News. Better to leave the dead bird in the bushes and let life continue on its excepted trajectory.

Empty Engine Christmas Jamboree

2010-12-28T08:28:00.004-06:00

At some point I planned on writing about my dead car stereo and how my mind fills the space between signals. By the time I reach Manchester, even NPR stumbles into static.

But I won't bore you with those musings. Yet. Instead, I can wipe my brow in relief. Because the radio failed in rural Tennessee and Georgia, I heard the unusual rumblings beneath the old Corolla's hood. As I left the interstate and rolled down along Georgia Rte. 20, it worsened. I got no help from idling through a roadblock caused by the genius idea to drop 3 millions square feet of retail space onto a two-lane exurban highway.

Conferring with my father, we decided I should just check the oil when I hit the gas station. Although unclear at first, the dipstick showed a bone-dry engine. With 1,000 miles until my next oil change, I couldn't believe those results. A few minutes later, the auto store clerk confirmed, before the thirsty engine gulped down four quarts.

Twenty minutes later with the engine humming in old form, I came to rest in Cumming. In the morning, the repair garage found nothing amiss, just a little too much oil. Not a drop leaked onto my parent's cul-de-sac. Sunday, the car hurtled through the gusts of North Georgia and crossed Monteagle without incident.

I keep waiting for the ugly rattles' reemergence. I cannot shake the feeling that this was the first chapter in my car's engine troubles, not its last.

Answers are fleeting. Without a leak, what caused the oil to vanish?Did the auto dealer which usually changes my oil short me a quart or two, hoping to strong-arm me into a new car? I cannot prove that. It's a bold accusation to levy against the dealership.

But no other logical cause presents itself. Which leaves me to face a more difficult tasks than buying a new car - finding a new mechanic that I can trust. Even after the dealership's support of the failed English-only amendment, I kept going. Now, too much doubt clouds my view of the folksy Toyota service team.

Waits Overlooked

2010-12-17T10:42:00.003-06:00

Has a week passed since I last referenced Tom Waits on this blog? Probably not.

He just won election to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this week. Sure, it's a dubious honor guided by the wankers by Rolling Stone. But the mainstream media has to explain Waits, and that's always entertaining.

To mark the occasion, I thought about picking 10 favorites. Instead, we'll go with 10 tracks that get overlooked.

I purposely skipped songs from Small Change and Mule Variations because most of my readers are intimately familiar with those records. I couldn't help but pick two from Rain Dogs, because Waits covers so much terrain on its 19 songs.

A Good Man is Hard to Find - ending the most depressing album he ever recorded (Blood Money), Waits manages to sound optimistic with words totally absent of hope.

Anywhere I Lay My Head --- Nineteen songs later, the climax of Rain Dogs is easy to miss. Waits constructs a brief yet strangely uplifting dirge that turns into a New Orleans funeral match. It's a wanderer's creed.

Blind Love - Pure country. A brief stop on the stylistic journey Rain Dogs takes, the fiddle-driven ballad finds Waits getting rural in a manner he never approached again. I always come back to the line, "They say if you get far enough away, you'll be on your way back home."

Cannon Song - Taken from Berthold Brecht's Threepenny Opera, Waits is only accompanied by his own beatboxing and percussion. Easily the most militaristic performance he ever recorded, and probably my favorite Waits cover. It's hard not to love the line "If the population, should treat us with indignation, we'll chop 'em up, because we like our hamburgers raw." Brecht influenced Waits 1980s stylistic turn, not to mention his brand of gallows humor.

Falling Down - the studio album cut on Big Time, Waits revived it with an exuberant live take on his 2006 and 2008 tours.

Foreign Affairs - On the title track for Waits' uneven fifth record, his poetry hits a masterful stride. This album closer sums up the dangerous and inevitability of wanderlust once you start traveling.

In the Neighborhood - I've lived in this part of town, been wedged in by the flatbeds, and seen the kids without ice cream because the market burned down. The song came on as I rolled into Clintonville a year after moving to Nashville, and never sounded more appropriate.

San Diego Serenade - The Heart of Saturday Night gets unjustly labeled as Closing Time 2.0. Not true. Despite their sonic similarities, Waits' writing has matured on this beautiful ballad and others.

Walk Away - taken from the Dead Man Walking soundtrack and resurrected for Orphans, Waits does a brutally effective vocal turn above a simple backing track of bass and primitive percussion.

Who Are You - spun from the same cloth as Hang Down Your Head and Downtown Train, this cut brims with heart and emotion, backing away from the dark depths plumbed elsewhere on Bone Machine.

A Feller Unlike Any Other

2010-12-15T22:26:00.005-06:00

Bob Feller had been in hospice care almost a week ago. I knew what that meant - the greatest Indian of all time had finally run his course.

But the man was 92, even if he seemed immortal until his leukemia diagnosis early this year. He's among the few athletes I encountered in person. There are any number obituaries floating around the Internets, so I'll keep these words to what you can't learn from them. Feller infamously hung around the Indians pressbox, every sports reporter opining on Feller's death has a first-person encounter to recall.

Baseball steeps in nostalgia and Feller, the longest-tenured living Hall of Famer, brought fans back to the Thirties, pitching to Lou Gehrig and pre-dating Ted Williams. At a time of mercenary athletes, the thought of a man so tied to one sports city is mystifying.

As a kid, I lived on photos and stories of the Indians. Feller was the Stephen Strasburg of the Great Depression, probably the sport's first rookie pitching phenom. Feller would have won 300 easily if not for his military service and other facts thanks to Dad's book he kept from Bob Feller Day in 1956, an celebration near the end of Feller's career.

During my baseball card collector days, he was a frequent site around Northeast Ohio. He signed autographs at a small baseball shop in Chesterland. On a rainy day, we drove to isolated shop and for $2, got a Feller autograph. Mom wasn't there (meaning no photos exist), but a few moments in a Hall of Famer's presence spruced up that Sunday.

Our first encounter came in Atlanta, when we got an autograph was at an Old Timers' Game which preceded a Braves game in Summer 1986. It rained till the start of the early game, highlighted by septuagenarian Luke Appling diving at an infield grounder and leaving on a stretcher. We saw Feller signing for a crowd of fans near the field; an usher tried to stop us and Dad dutifully ignored him. We spent a few seconds chatting with him and moved on.

Till my mind goes, I will always remember the Indians-A's doubleheader in summer 1988, when Jose Canseco closed in on his 40-40 season. We went to leave in the middle of the second game, and as we reached the concourse, my Dad yelled,"Hey, Bob!" I thought the older gentleman was someone from my father's Euclid neighborhood, until Feller stopped mid-strike and turned back to us. He seemed glad that someone noticed him, signed my program and with us for a few minutes. Ballplayers live in gated communities today; personal connections like that are hard to make. But Feller was made of tougher material from a bygone era. The AP obituary talked about Feller not being tolerant of fans; my experience says otherwise.

After another half-dozen times I saw him at card shows and just said hello when I walked by and few people even acknowledged him. At one show, they brought in Early Wynn and Bob Lemon so a fan could get three Hall of Famers for $15. Not a bad deal for autographs, especially since all three have since passed.

It is easy to accuse the man of too much self-promotion, about hitting every card show imaginable to keep his legacy alive. He signed a book for my aunt just last year, and never ventured far from the Indians. He didn't court much favor with Reds fans, either. I always enjoyed his loathing of Pete Rose and his promise to boycott the Hall if Rose ever won election. He even threatened to march off the stage if Marty Brenneman pitched Rose's induction during his acceptance speech. A little extreme, but Feller never struggled to express opinions.

My experience is not unique. It seems everyone in Cleveland has a Bob Feller story, most of them in his 50-plus years of retirement. With all those personal moments, few ballplayers could ask for a better legacy.

Keepers (2010 Edition)

2010-12-07T09:16:00.013-06:00

Five years ago I started this list and by some miracle, all the albums still get regularly play. Now that 2010's chaff has been separated I'm left with a similarly small list.

As always, I struggle when albums with brilliant tracks don't lead to a cohesive whole. There's no debate about Bloodbuzz Ohio, but the rest of High Violet threatens onset of major depression. Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell reinforce their collaborative prowess on Hawk, a record marred by other contributors taking Lanegan's place on several tracks (That takes nothing away from the dusty You Won't Let Me Down Again. The Walkmen hinted at greatness on Blue as You Blood and While I Shovel the Snow, but they don't evolve enough on Lisbon. The Black Keys finally tossed in additional instruments - and Dan Auerbach's newly found falsetto, which delights on The Only One and Never Gonna Give You Up. They too disappeared by fall.

Most records will not stick around in 2011. The list below will. Modern ears quickly abandon new music, so the list stays short.

The Keepers for 2010

Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
Roky Erickson & Okkervil River, True Love Cast Out All Evil
I wrote about both records at length, saw Erikson and Arcade Fire perform (in Louisville and the Ryman, respectively). Neither album has grown stale.

Spoon, Transference
A record comes out in January and spend six months in continual rotation. By December, it feels as though a lifetime passed. Not with Spoon. On the surface, Spoon churned out the same reliable record, but their first self-produced takes chances, scuffs up their sound. I cannot escape the infectious, bouncy Mystery Zone or the raw, angry I Saw the Light. I don't often listen to Goodnight Laura anymore, but it's a powerful, sparse ballad that shows the growth in Britt Daniel's songwriting.

Broken Social Scene, Forgiveness Rock Record
Broken Social Scene albums resemble a reunion of old friends. They're not all welcome, but the majority hold up well. When your friends include Feist, Amy Millan from Stars and BSC creators Brendan Canning and Kevin Drew, it all works out. After opening with a "typical" BSC tune, the group descends into the dark bassline, Morricone-style horns and strings of Chase Scene. The female harmonies on All is All smother the competition - except Emily Haines' comforting lead vocal on Sentimental X's. For its huge cast, BSC never sounded tighter. Meet Me in the Basement could be the best instrumental track this year not written by Fang Island. Speaking of whom ...

Fang Island, S/T
If a listen to Fang Island cannot improve a mood, few other things can. These joyous, multi-movement rock songs sound like fragments at first, with pieces of Thin Lizzy, Metallica and Queen strewn about But the mostly instrumental record effortlessly connects them. The band said they want the record to feel like everyone high-fiving each other. Fang Island never leaves you hanging.

Janelle Monae, The ArchAndroid
Aside from its Metropolis references, I can't claim to understand all of this album. But every note remains riveting. Usually I avoid hip-hop and R&B, but labels only hem in Monae's genre-blending masterwork. Breaking down tracks would strip away the accomplishment; The ArchAndroid needs to be heard in its entirety, and descriptions will not do it justice.

Jonsi, Go
Rock music doesn't embrace the flute often, and the Sigur Ros frontman offers a compelling case on the album opening Go do. With his sweet, sonorous voice challenging heights usually reserved for Thom Yorke and Jeff Buckley, Jonsi serves up a batch of orchestral, catchy pop. He scales down the epic-length songs of Sigur Ros into more concise packages, preserving their emotional power. The manic, primitive percussion lines up perfectly with the electronic and symphonic flourishes on Animal Arithmetic, and Tornado's lush simplicity.

Belle & Sebastian, ... Write About Love
The slew of reissues that followed The Life Pursuit never allowed Belle & Sebastian to fade away, and .... Write About Love finds them pursuing a steady course. Fortunately, B&S records know how to surprise even when sticking to the template. With fewer high-tempo songs, their introspective edge shines on The Ghost of Rockschool and its sympathetic horn progressions. I Want the World to Stop threatens to turn into The Cure's Lovesong, but is saved by dynamic song structure.

Justin Townes Earle, Harlem River Blues
The beauty of Justin Townes Earle is how easy he makes it look. What he accomplishes here effectively distills his sound into a blend of old country and modern Americana. The title track easily ranks as the best gospel tune written about suicide, and Working for the MTA takes the classic country train song and places it underground. The longing on One More Night in Brooklyn rings out in JTE's clean, country tone.

Conan O'Brien, Live at Third Man Records
I wrote extensively about this when it arrived this summer. But the ousted comedian sounds as if he's having the time of his life on Jack White's little stage playing country classics, Elvis movie tunes and his own cockney take on Creep. Besides who would have predicted O'Brien's appearance on this list? As of December 2009, he was still trying to get his footing on the Tonight Show, and we know how that turned out. Nothing shouts 2010 as much as this live set.

Best Bet for 2011
January drips with promise, thanks to Iron and Wine's Kiss Each Other Clean and The Decemberists' The King Is Dead. With Colin Meloy and Co. giving wisely concept records a break - plus prominent billing for Peter Buck and Gillian Welch - this country-tinged album should guide me through the rest of winter.

Five Politicians Who Fascinate Me

2010-12-02T11:02:00.002-06:00

Here's a little non-sequitur. I had some other names in mind, but they lost their elections. If the list leans Democrat, well, party purity makes candidates less distinguishable.

1. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma): James Inhofe's global warming denials come off as cheap politicking. Coburn earned his nickname of "Dr. No" for blocking bills, voting against spending and tacking on poison amendments. He's also an arch-conservative with respectable principles. He's in league with the Tea Party Senator as much as Jim DeMint, but more quiet about it, and actually voted for TARP. I just find Coburn's honest streak relatively refreshing; I may not like what he does, but he is transparent with what he does.

2. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada): Sheer survival instincts. The moment he became the Senate's Democratic leader in 2004, Reid saw the Republican target painted on his back. He built alliances, got appointments for potential appointments, worked with Nevada Republicans and watched the Republicans appoint the only person he could possibly beat (Sharron Angle). This might have been the most carefully constructed Senate campaign ever, a fifth term secured by planning for it from the moment the fourth began.

3. Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-Montana): You just know someone from Montana would make the list. This second-term Democrat with a Republican running mate is a character, with a background in irrigation and ranching. No less an authority than Jonathan Athens tells me Schweitzer was the only politician he could never rattle with an incisive question (John McCain, not so much). Schweitzer stole the show with his humorous speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. When his term ends in 2012, don't expect this big personality to exit the stage.

4. Governor-elect Lincoln Chafee (I-Rhode Island): It would have been inconceivable for a Chafee to depart the Republican Party. His family held Senate seats from Rhode Island for generations. After a sobering loss to a Democrat in 2006, he dropped out. Considering he was the last Republican I remember that people actually called "liberal," it wasn't surprising. For a while it appear as if Chafee would become a Democrat, but he struck out as an independent and rebounded to win the governor's office.

5. Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota): Conrad is the king of charts, never lacking for a pithy visual to back up a budget argument. I debated between him and Ben Nelson (D-Nelson), the Senate's most conservative Democrat, but fewer people know Conrad thanks to Nelson's role in health reform. He usually gets rolling on his points when the eyes of the masses begin to glaze over. In a country with a growing anti-intellectual minority, I turn toward politicians rooted in fact.

Irregularly Annual Bob Dylan Lovefest (A Few Words About the Witmark Recordings)

2010-11-23T16:00:00.004-06:00

If the space between posts continues to grow, they will all highlight Bob Dylan. With the Bootleg Series Vol. 9: Witmark Demos, 1962-1964 officially in hand, my hands are tied. Another batch of Dylan brilliance spins in the CD drive, bringing clarity to the rough bootlegs that illustrate the budding songwriter.

Heavily bootlegged, Dylan demoed these tracks for other songwriters to cover - and cover they would. All his early classics lie here, plus different takes from the earlier Bootleg volumes. That might dissuade all but hardcore Dylan fans, but I couldn't imagine a better primer of his early work. Many tracks never received proper releases, but they fit snugly against When the Ship Comes In or Masters of War.

DSO long ago supplied me with bootlegged versions of these recordings, but they don't touch the sound quality present on most tracks. For proper release, they received a thorough studio scrubbing, which shows on all but a handful of ragged tracks.

Depending on your flavor, the prizes are myriad. I longed for a better recording of Tomorrow is a Long Time, and this remastered version delivers. Dylan never issued a proper studio version of Tomorrow, letting other artists (Elvis Presley, Judy Collins, Sandy Denny) interpret him.

The lyrics are among Dylan's sharpest and most poignant. The song just improves life after line, but it all comes back to the name-giving lines "If tomorrow wasn't such a long time, then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all."

I first heard Dylan perform Farewell as the intro to a surprisingly confrontation 1963 episode of Studs Terkel's Wax Museum. The bootleg version lacks none of its intimacy and pain.

For protest songs, The Death of Emmett Till is among Dylan's darkest, a stunning retelling of a black teen murdered for talking to and allegedly whistling at a married white woman in 1955 Mississippi. All Over You is a bawdy, light-hearted tune, and with 47 tracks to choose from, the weakest links don't stand out.

The only disappointment came on the last track, a nearly garbled version of I'll Keep In With Mine that pales against the Biograph version. Other tracks are slightly fragmented, like Let Me Die In My Footsteps.

Say what you will about amazon.com, but I have few complaints after their Witmark Demos pre-order came with In Concert: Brandeis University 1963. Previously unreleased, the seven-song show is a solid bonus. Dylan played two short sets of his early protest songs at the Brandeis Folk Festival. It's more historical document than a great show, but it proves it worth with the always delightful Talking World War III Blues.

Missing the Brandeis show won't damped the impact of Dylan, his guitar and harmonica setting out as a songwriter. The Witmark Demos succeed as both as a historical document and an excellent selection of Dylan wisdom.

Corsair Distillery Enhances Marathon Motors' Taproom Tradition

2010-11-17T07:13:00.006-06:00

As with its predecessor, Corsair Distillery does not boldly announce its operations in the Marathon Motor Company building on 12th Avenue North. Aside from a lack of lines and no growler fills, the distillery kept the tasting room close to its old appearance. It fit the Music City Beer Society perfectly.

Corsair pours most Yazoo flavors, and fleshed out its lineup with a disparate group of craft brews -- the fine, spicy Pumpkinfest and Moo-Hoo Stout from Terrapin, BBC Nut Brown, Avery's White Rascal, Scrimshaw Pilsner for those accustomed to light beer and a few others I already forgot. They've added a few sandwiches to the limited menu from the Yazoo days.

The space looked a lot different in another aspect. because nonsensical state liquor laws require a separate room for whiskey pouring, Corsair has nearly completed construction on a stylish whiskey tasting lounge with a dark wood bar and soft mood lighting.

The brief tour illuminating many elements of distilling. Corsair only uses its barrels once, with donors going to Yazoo for beers like their recent batch of barrel-aged Sue porter.

The bottling line and other distilling operations continue in Bowling Green. But the Nashville site has some perks, mainly its pre-Prohibition copper still.

Since the mash is essentially beer until it enters the distiller, Corsair plans to experiment with Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout and has already distilled a whiskey using Left Hand Warrior IPA. Watching these experiments take off adds a thrill to the small-batch distilling trend.

Plus, the tour guide gave me an answer to the cork problem. For most of the summer, the two-piece cork on every Corsair bottle I touched separated. They assured me the problem has been fixed, and frustrated them just as much as the consumer. With so many craft spirits hitting the market, a little problem could weigh a ton and distract from Corsair's superb wares.

The taproom held onto the comfortable atmosphere present on uncrowded Yazoo nights, but without the hipsters or young yuppies weened on Blue Moon and Arrogant Bastard.

Not Moving Past This Feeling (Heavily Delayed Edition)

2010-11-11T14:32:00.001-06:00

(Blogger's note: This was written back in August, but delayed due to life and freelance deadlines. Take it as a preview for the 2010 keepers albums due next month, or file it under "Better later than never".)

Thanks to the Arcade Fire, I called the race for 2010's best album in August. I don't like every song on The Suburbs, but a new album hasn't hit me with this force since the Fleet Foxes debut.

Win Butler and company have penned the perfect missive for people who grew up in the suburbs but are not of the suburbs. At times, it feels like the wounded adult looking back on the whimsical moments from Funeral with a much darker perspective about the crumbling houses and shopping malls.

It's almost hard to move past the first track, easily one of the band's most powerful statements. Digestion of these new songs came with a blessing -- seeing a chunk of them live six days after the album's release. In a rare moment of performer honesty, Butler admitted they weren't too comfortable with playing the new songs live. They didn't show it when tackling Ready to Start, the harrowing title and Regine Chassagne's vocal display on Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains). Butler knows how to create an atmosphere; on the Ryman stage, his group could have come from a century ago (minus their electric instruments). I counted nine, but at times there could have been more.

I kept coming back to Sprawl II, the record's penultimate moment, which is both danceable and full of lament for an inability to escape the suburbs. Live, Sprawl II loses none of its potency, its disco beat underlying a wryly positive message about continuing to sing when people just want you to punch the clock and escaping the artificial world created by the sprawl. But ultimately there's an acceptance that the world is small and those mountain cannot be escaped, so the only hope is for darkness to obscure them.

On the album, it serves as a counterweight to the title track and the ultra-maudlin Sprawl 1 (Flatland), which turns the suburbs into a bombed-out warzone rich with memories and sprawl. The atmosphere drives dark tunes like Rococo and the slightly pained Modern Man ("I'm a record that's skipping, I'm a modern man").

I have seen some reviewers talk about the album taking a positive view of the suburbs, but I'm pretty sure they were listening to a different record. There is a shiny thin veneer of nostalgia, but it only primes a darker foundation. We embellish the memories of our youth spent in faceless suburbs (well, I do).

It all returns to a little coda built on a simple backing track and the opener's gut-punch line, "Sometimes I can't believe it, I'm moving past the feeling." After all the emotion poured out in these songs, it's an effective reminder that feelings fade with time, and it's fine to let them go.

Packed Nights Point to a Crash

2010-11-10T12:45:00.007-06:00

Freelance work and personal strife have restricted my blogging. To catch up, here's a rundown of the past week.

MGMT @ the Ryman (Thursday)
My lack of glowsticks was far from the only reason to feel old during MGMT's night at the Ryman. The beer lines always give away an audience's age, and this crowd comfortably fell around 19 or 20 at most. The crowd was thick with Ryman virgins, who didn't know about the tight fits in full pews or that ticket prices did not grant unlimited time to shoot grainy camera-phone video at the balcony railing.

Although I will always have my audience complaints, I won't always get to see such stellar shows. Good ole Christian had an extra ticket, and I was the lucky recipient. The band didn't miss a trick, at least none that I noticed. MGMT ran into a different brand of sophomore slump with Congratulations, a less danceable record that took deep inroads to psychedelia, art-rock and more atmospheric sound. Interspersed between the Oracular songs, those from Congratulations gained steadier legs and soared on occasion.

The new record's title track ended the show well. It followed the swirling stomp of The Handshake drifted into a noisy jam. With incredible ease, MGMT drowned out its doubters.

Brian Ritchey (Friday)
Thursday night's show was a surprise, but Friday brought a long-anticipated release show for Nashville songwriter Brian Ritchey. (Full disclosure: Brian is a friend who works at the coffeehouse next to Grand Cru, but I knew him through mutual friends since I came to Nashville.)

His new album, No Way Out of This House, strives to separate him from the Americana sound he so effortlessly created on earlier records. By embellishing the sparse, melancholy songs with strings, he marched through most of the new record then chased it with a set of oldies. His Midwest modesty only added to the emotion power of the new songs. Brian might sound like Jeff Tweedy's brother, but he has his own set of chops. Hopefully he earns a wider audience for this risk-taking record.

Hash Away (Saturday)
My friend Krista was leading a hash -- a running course determined by innocuous trail markers and with beer stops. Since it fell in my neighborhood, it felt right to offer the backyard as a beer stop. I had done one hash back in January and the calendar kept me from trying it more often.

I even missed this one. After begging for more Grand Cru hours, I couldn't beg off. So I stashed a cooler with 12 Yuenglings behind the back steps to ensure good behavior. Returning after dark, I found the cooler empty and nothing changed except for the hasher signs marking my house as a stop. The hashers stuck at the Village Pub until I arrived and returned the beer favor with a few Guinness pints. After a day of mild antagonism at the store, it suited Saturday's end perfectly.

The Inevitable Crash
The weekend's and the always depressing end of daylight savings time. My internal clock already screwed up (who drops off their recycling at 6 a.m.?), the morning's pace seemed relentless. Chris and Mitzy needed help moving their king-size mattress up the early 20th century stairwell of their rental house. Bill, my soon-to-be-former neighbor needed help loading his washer and drier into a pickup bed. We canceled that move when he could not figure out how to separate the stackable units. By that time, my own work beckoned.

Not even a second Browns upset could shake loose the allergy assault brewing in my head. By dinner, my throat hurt on every swallow, and an achy current washed over my bones. Instead of leaving for Fang Island, NFL action intruded upon some slightly feverish dream. I awoke at 11 p.m. figuring I had missed the show, only to learn they want on at midnight. The younger Melville might have dressed and driven to the show, only the end up with a nasty sinus infection for the following two weeks. The older one has shrugged off any illness, but must overcome the regret of missing Fang Island's 45 minutes of rock bliss.

Laundry Saga (The Uplifting Kind)

2010-10-27T08:55:00.008-05:00

I sometimes wonder if the ability to launder clothes at home is one of American civilization's great divides. Anymore, it is utilitarian and lonely, with people sticking to their loads or their technology and paying no mind to those around them.

The characters have not disappeared from laundromats. Upon my first visit, I noticed an elderly man with a walker and a prosthetic leg drain three 20-oz. Cokes while his driers spun. Later, I overheard the place's manager describe him to a tee, only adding that the old man had a severe case of diabetes - and judging by his favorite drink, a death wish.

Tuesday night draws its regulars. One young couple loads their wares together, only taking breaks to bring their three little ones back in line.

But they weren't the ones who stuck with me, week after week. A black man a few years older than me with a senior-aged white woman giving him orders with the laundry. He followed each cue silently yet vigorously.

Since childhood, I knew the ticks and gestures of my brother Joe, who is severely mentally handicapped and falls under the broad autism diagnosis. Out in public, I learned the need to withhold judgment if someone acted a little abnormally. In every instance, they were like Joe, or they were ignorant fools openly mocking people like Joe. The man had a gaze and smile too innocent for anything but autism. His gestures had the same unmistakable sway.

For some reason, my encounters with the handicapped (I don't know what word best describes them) usually jumpstart my emotions. Perhaps it owes something to my relationship with my brother. Perhaps it has more to do with the innocence and harmlessness many radiate.

It took action from him to end my observation. When he handed me a damp sock I'd left in the laundry cart. His caretaker admonished for taking the cart without asking --- I told her not to worry, since my laundry was nearly dry. He needs to learn, she said.

His words were thick with shyness and from under-utilization of his vocal cords. Except when he sang. I told her that the man didn't need to be put on the spot; my melancholy would turn to rage if anyone laughed at him. But he sang clearly and without a hitch, breezing through a song I didn't know that came back to the line "Look at what the world has done for me."

In his case, life had recently done wonders. It took him a year-and-a-half to learn that song and others, but he enunciated clearly when singing. Before, she said, he was non-verbal, rarely left his room and would shudder at the touch of other people. It turned his caretaker was a neighbor working pro bono. She wouldn't take credit for the progress he made, saying he had done all the heavy lifting.

I thanked him for singing for me, and he shook my hand, offering me a spirited if garbled, "You're welcome." At 41, the man had expanded his world radically, especially for autism, which can leave people disconnected from the outside world.

My own brother turned 30 this year, and lives a similar life, cloistered in his room of old Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and Disney records, with rows of musical bears lining his shelves. It's Joe's refuge the one place in the world absent of hostile forces.

Yet in seeing this man, who had gone from non-verbal and disinterested in the surrounding world to singing and talking, I couldn't help but wonder ... is it too much of a stretch to say Joe couldn't show similar progress? Possibly or probably not. But from one autistic man at the laundromat, I saw a bloom of hope.

The rain had stopped an hour before I hustled my basked to the car. Yet driving home, my eyes were still wet.

Oh, Robert, Don't Let This Be the End

2010-10-20T08:00:00.007-05:00

No amount of grit and dirt on Bob Dylan's voice can ruin the apocalyptic tones of Ballad of a Thin Man, which sounded as ominous as ever at Nashville's Municipal Auditorium.

Dylan and his longtime band provided a tight reintroduction to what I had missed about his Neverending Tour.

Thirteen years ago, Bob Dylan nearly died of a rare heart condition. Two months later, he headlined a bizarre night opened by BR-549 and Ani DiFranco. Six months later, he hit Cleveland's Public Hall. Aside from a random Dylan & The Dead show in 2003, when Blossom Traffic denied me all but his final three songs, I spent ensuing years taking Dylan's neverending tour for granted.

When Chris Clancy, a friend and coworker, asked if I wanted to go, I could not refuse. As Dylan nears 70 and shows no signs of slowing down, I realized he's among the last artists of his stature still touring and still producing quality songs - he demonstrated that with Jolene and the stellar Beyond Here Lies Nothing from 2009's Together Through Life.

People say his voice is shot, yet outside of Nashville Skyline, his voice has been criticized for nearly 50 years. His newer material fits the voice, and he rearranges the older songs to fit his limitations.

If anything deserved a raised eyebrow, it was Dylan's outfit. Dylan has been high on country gentleman suits for a decade or more. With its red piping, this black number shouted 19th century militia leader from the American Southwest. Were his hat black instead of white, he could have passed for Col. Mortimer from For a Few Dollars More.

Spending most of the evening at his keyboard -aside from some soaring harmonica moments in Tangled and other tracks - Dylan cut an imposing figure. The outfit contributed to that vibe.

We missed Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat, entered the arena to the strains of This Wheel's On Fire (Dylan started promptly around 8 and closed shop by 10), and found our seats by the second verse of Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, which Dylan chased with Just Like a Woman (which I initially mistook for Every Grain of Sand).

This concluded the Blonde on Blonde portion of the set, with Dylan mixing in more new tracks around Highway 61 Revisited gems and Tangled Up in Blue.

When taking up the harmonica, Dylan moved more on stage than I ever remembered, shedding his awkwardly rigid posture for a slight strut here or there. It's nice to know he still has a little swagger to reveal.

When the band finished scorching its way through Like a Rolling Stone and bowed, it occurred I might not see Dylan might not have too many victory laps left on the Neverending Tour.

I didn't get my dream second encore - that would be Highlands, the 16-minute closing track from Time Out of Mind he probably wouldn't play under any circumstance.

Fortunately, Dylan's professionalism and ability to tap an aquifer of unparalleled songwriting goes a long way.

Guided by Voices Bash Away in Columbus

2010-10-18T16:06:00.008-05:00

Give Robert Polllard credit – he slurred and swayed between songs but as his lyrics arrived, his voice sharpened back to album form. Give his old bandmates credit for making up, and finally bringing their original lineup back to Ohio.

There might be no better place to see GBV than Columbus, just an hour from Dayton, their hometown. Before the group’s final breakup in 2004, they typically stopped at Alrosa Villa. For their reunion, they landed at Outland, the bondage club I always expected to resemble a Medieval dungeon.

Instead, it was a relatively stylish club with a lounge - albeit, one where someone could easily have had hot candle wax poured onto them without an audience batting an eye. But GBV would trumpet its return from Outland's performance space, a 400-capacity black box that hearkened back to the late, lamented Little Brothers.

The Columbus crowd ran a bit older, unsurprising considering the middle-aged GBV lineup onstage. Once the neon light above the stage signaled the bar was open, any thoughts of age evaporated.

(For pictures and further links, please check out the good people at donewaiting.com)

This version of GBV has split in 1996 – Pollard, guitarists Mitch Mitchell and Tobin Sprout, bassist Greg Demos and drummer Kevin Fennell. Seeing Pollard reunite with his old songwriting foil Sprout demonstrated what propelled the band through its golden period.

Cutout Witch highlighted the Under the Bushes Under the Stars offerings. This lineup stuck to its era’s songs, mainly plowing through much of Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes – a little taste from Vampire on Titus worked superbly.

Pollard swung the microphone and broke out a few of his old kicks, jawed between songs and introduced every song. His slurring caught up with him here; until the blistering chords of Motor Away tore through the room, it was hard to tell what song he just announced.

No matter how nonsensical Pollard's lyrics grew, almost every tune became a singalong. I myself shouted out lyrics to Echoes Myron, a Bee Thousand favorite, and quite possibly the best song ever to include the name 'Myron.'

These songs are classics among a certain group of people, those in love with the twists a 90-second nugget of pop-punk perfection can take. Not everyone can handle the inherent sloppiness that GBV wears as a badge of honor.

The band simply blistered, never caving into the drunken chaos which has enveloped past shows. They turned their standard fare with renewed enthusiasm. I Am a Scientist, Tractor Rape Chain, and Smothered in Hugs all received face time. The slinking beat of Hot Freaks broke up the manic pace of GBV's punkier material.

The live GBV experience wiped away the biggest gripe of critics: the sloppiness of their studio records, the ultra low-fi recording techniques, the commitment to putting every minor song idea onto a record. They alternately felt loose and tight, with nary a missed note and Pollard's voice in fine form.

Guided by Voices never changed the world, even though their pop-punk acumen could have filled arenas with a little refinement. But pressing them into that mold would have stripped their off-the-cuff brilliance. Despite dabbling with the mainstream, GBV always thrived when mining 50-second nuggets of rock joy.

If they never come around again, that's fine. This small crowd at Outland tasted the peak, drunken form of a great band taking on its last go-around.

A Short Venture to Appalachia

2010-10-18T12:34:00.009-05:00

Six year years blinked since my last trip to the Crites hunting cabin in Homer Township, Ohio. The return did not disappoint, even if a wounded cat meant a late arrival. It delivered a little slice of autumn sorely needed after a long, punishing summer (I count May 1 as summer's start, when the Nashville flooding began).

With Moses snacking on wet food dosed with painkillers, we ventured into rush hour. Crites, Braithwaite and I endure the traffic jams along U.S. 33 and the narrow roads on the moonlit night, finally unloading just after eight. Even in the dark, the cabin was a beacon, Main and Gibby arrived before Crites' got the fire rolling. Following some brats and beers, we just sat around the fire, talking into the wee hours. The Milky Way stretched brightly across the break in the pines. Hours of talk and drink followed as the heat sucked us in. After spending most of the day in a car, I crashed first, a fire going strong across the room.

The next morning, we ventured down to Burr Oak State Park to find the lake enveloped in dense fog. In daylight, the trees revealed the burst of color they would exhibit for a few more weeks before reduced sunlight and cold weather stripped them bare. We wandered the shore for a minute, massive rows of water plans extending into the billowing white obscuring the opposite shore. Aside from a ranger who looped through the parking lot, we had the hike to ourselves.

This trail immediately jumped into the foothills and ravines hugging the lake. I immediately felt the burn in my thighs, hamstrings and calves. Every muscle was alive, every breath was labored.

Up in the hills, we found a thick finger of mist firmly pressed on a clearing. The haze just covered the sun, casting off an end-of-the-world feel. The four of us simply wandered through it for a minute before finding the hash marks where the trail resumed.

The trail took us on a three-mile loop which occasionally dipped near ridges above the lake. Fall colors surrounded us, and giant spiderwebs bridged many lower branches.

By the time we returned, the burn in my legs signaled the original reason for the trip, the Columbus Half Marathon, wouldn't happen for me this year (more on this later). A breakfast stout upon our return telegraphed my intentions or lack thereof.

Friday's late start killed our chances of pumpkin carving. Or so I thought.

We finished cleaning early enough to carve a pumpkin with Gibby's .22 rifle. After my usual hem-and-haw routine, I agreed to take a few shots and of course went through a full clip. Before bullets pounded the pumpkin into a shattered mess, it almost resembled a carved face. Give it a long look, and you might find the vague traces of a pumpkin all five of us took a round in carving before we rumbled back to Columbus.

Beer Fest Post-Mortem

2010-10-13T08:23:00.002-05:00

Let's skip back ten days to Grand Cru's fourth beerfest, the second on my clock. Just pulling 15 hours a week at the store means the other guys do almost all the heavy lifting . I get the luxury of helping to set up, pouring beers and bombarding attendees with beer knowledge.

It was a long day, begun with a 15K, compounded by anger at setting up and volunteers serving as nothing but obstacles. But it was a blast, punctuated by an evening at the pool hall with beautiful strangers.

Absence

2010-10-08T13:02:00.001-05:00

I have been away for a while, but should resume posting next week.

Constructive Summer's End: The Hold Steady

2010-09-22T08:52:00.008-05:00

An Ennio Morricone interlude from A Few Dollars More ushered the Hold Steady into the Exit/In, and that snippet couldn't have been more appropriate.

For a decade or more, Metallica entered its shows to Morricone's Ecstacy of Gold from The Good, the Bad & the Ugly. ... buncha assholes. The Hold Steady went with a difficult track from the least seen film in Sergio Leone's trilogy, a memorable nugget of glockenspiel, strings and one-note bass.

With their literary references (Sal Paradise and John Berryman's suicide in Stuck Between Stations), dense lyrics and bruising power-chord songs that hearken to 1970s rock, The Hold Steady are not for everyone. Hell, the near-capacity crowd surprised me; they might reside in Brooklyn, but the band has Minneapolis roots. Their blue-collar Midwestern flourishes don't always jibe with the American South or the coasts.

Onstage, leader singer Craig Finn could have used one of the Budweiser cans ceremoniously lined atop the amplifiers. When overdone, his gestures and ticks recalled Robin Williams (never a good thing). But Finn's embrace of The Hold Steady's status as America's best bar band more than compensated. Despite playing the Ryman during their last pass, the group felt more comfortable on the smaller Exit In stage and its 500-person room.

The Hold Steady didn't let up, mixing in tracks from their past four records, even Chicago Seemed Tired Tonight from Separation Sunday. Their latest, Heaven is Whenever, competed with their best known, Boys & Girls in America, for the spotlight. Luckily, their ability to write Springsteen-esque anthems and sing-alongs allowed for smooth transitions. From Chips Ahoy to We Can Get Together, they chronicled the albums and lives of 30-somethings. It might not be world-changing music, but it's nice to know someone else has lived Girls Like Status or Sequestered in Memphis.

They unleashed Our Whole Lives, a pummeling anthem from the new album with the unforgettable refrain of, "We're good guys but we can't be good every night, We're good guys but we can't be good all our lives." That line was in no way an apology for their manic night in Nashville.

Best Brands: A Hard Name to Argue

2010-09-20T08:40:00.002-05:00

As a Man of Two Jobs, the interesting perks of the night job run into conflict with other commitments. Not confounds me as much as the distributor trade shows, always scheduled during the afternoon and mid-week, the hardest time to take a late lunch.

But person after person at the store told me not to miss Best Brands's show. So here I was, racing through the Stadium Club of LP Field. I only had 45 minutes for unprintable reasons, and Best Brands had nearly 70 tables of alcohol, so there was no time to mince words at the Jim Beam or Hybrid tables (for the uninitiated, Hybrid makes solid if unspectacular $10 wine).

Justin, Grand Cru’s resident fine wine guy, already scoped out the locations for the high-end reds Best Brands poured at these events. First came Bond, makers of $400 Cabernet from tiny vineyards in Napa. Despite all the elegance of Quella and Vecina, they could not rationalize that price. For better value and comparable elegance, I truly enjoyed my splash of Shafer’s First Select, a ridiculously rich $250 Cab. The other Shafer Cabs would prove slightly less rich, but just as enticing. The Staglin Cabernets were their equals, especially a 2005 Cab poured from a 375 mL split bottle and a 25th anniversary Cab from 2007. Orin Swift’s Papillon, a Cab blend with tiny doses of Cab Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Malbec, topped the Cab-based blends that I tasted.

Just down from the table of riches sat the Silver Oak display , which curiously did not appear on the map. You could classify its renown Alexander Valley Cabernet as good, but not transcendent. It’s top tier California Cab, just not at the top of that tier. But its reputation carries it, and anytime someone without much wine knowledge wants to drop a name, it’s usually Silver Oak. However, the Twomey Merlot told a different story, a Merlot that stood apart from the California pack due to use of methode suterage to age the wine. It was full, elegant, but had those rough edges necessary for character.

My namesake pinot noir, from the Melville Vineyards in Santa Barbara, did just as well with its 2008 vintage as its 2006. I couldn’t peg the blending grapes, but this pinot noir definitely had a little more meat to it than expected. Immediately, I chased it with the Hanzell Pinot Noir, a $100 California specimen with all the elegance and mouth-watering textures classic Burgundy should produce. Williams Selyem Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir also had some nice flourishes.

Gaja provided the best Italian of the day with its Margari, a Bourdeaux-style blend of 50 Merlot, 25 Cab and 25 Cabernet Franc. Before release, they aged it for 18 months in barrels, then 6 more in the bottle.

The gentleman at the B.R. Cohn table would not let me pass with an empty glass, so I sampled their Olive Hill Cab, definitely a step above their standard $20 Cabernet, which is a steady seller. Their neighbor, poured a fine single vineyard Howell Mountain Zinfandel from Highlands Winery, was the day’s sole zinfandel, but easily on par with Seghesio, Ridge and the other $30 zins in our collection.

Justin had an eye for Scotch, and circumstances forced me to consider one more table of fine wine before exiting. I stumbled onto Blackbird Vineyards, which we stocked and sold had sold good volumes of their $30 Arriviste Rose. Devoting that much space to Cabernet Franc in a California blend ensured my rapt attention. They offered a revelatory trip through their three $100 red table wines; as their president explained to me, they don’t mess around with varietal names, instead choosing to go the French route with the trio – Illustration, Paramour, and Contrarian.All three were Bourdeaux style blends, with different percentages of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot with a little Malbec blending into the Illustration.

They tout their use of Merlot in blending, and rightly so – the Paramour takes the template of a classic Cheval Blanc (50 Merlot, 45 Cab Franc, 5 Cab Sauv) and shows Americans can rival the French in crafting such regal blends. Contrarian was the clear winner to these taste buds. A blend of 46 percent Cab Franc, 34 percent Merlot and 20 percent Cab Sauv, it has the richness and texture of blueberry, blackberry, cherry and a little earth often lost on California wines.

With Blackbird, there was no need to travel further through the dozens of unexplored tables – nor was there time. That window into the industry had closed, but for the first time, I could describe most bottles in our fine wine room. From that vantage point, a few minutes and a few tiny pours made all the difference.

Severe Clear at 11,000 Feet: Driving the Beartooth

2010-09-16T08:05:00.003-05:00

The blinding sun could not mask the chilling clinging to the air in Paradise Valley. Following the Yellowstone River backward to the national park’s north gate, the drive was only notable for its solitude. Across 50 miles, I passed a dozen other motorists.

At 6 a.m. I debated more sleep and skipping the Beartooth. My health respect for heights would not win this argument. The morning scenery along the Yellowstone's unencumbered waters and the mountain ranges hemming the gorgeous valley could not properly prepare me for the turns ahead.

From the quick spin of northern desert starting at Yankee Jim Canyon and winding through the Yellowstone’s first few miles, I was prepared to meet the Beartooth.

Having visited all the major sites a year ago, I could skip around Mammoth Springs – besides, not a single elk lounged on its grassy common. The narrow road wound from high desert to deciduous forest with splashes of prairie in a matter of miles. Of course, in Yellowstone, the wildlife will quickly sabotage a schedule.

The first bison could have been a brown rock in the prairie grass if not for a tail intermittently flopping upward. Everyone dotes on their first brush with megafauna; for all I knew, I might not see anything noteworthy the rest of the way.

Within minutes of turning into the Lamar Valley toward the Northeast entrance and the Beartooth Highway, I nearly forgot the lounging buffalo. A herd of 30 or more grazed on either side of the road, another pack of 20 adults halted traffic. The lingerers seemed to guard an older one with a lame foot. The grunting males kept watchful eyes on the camera-toting armies they attracted.

Later, I spotted a lone male drinking from a creek below a scenic rock formation. From the moment I interrupted him, till I backed away, he trained his eyes on me. Not only do they run fast, but their heads are essentially a bone battering ram with horns attached. So I slinked away, and left him to his drink.

No site could surpass the one ripped from the 19th century. Along a wide river plain, hundreds of buffalo grazed. Just black specks from the road, the view seemed to closest that 21 century eyes could come to those of westbound pioneers, before the trains split them into northern herds and the orgy of bufaalo slaughter nearly wiped them out. Yellowstone bison are different; the park held the last wild herd, and those roaming its plains descend from them. This was the last wild herd, which later intermingled with bison brought in from other states. But at Yellowstone, there bison have been a constant for millennia.

Aside from a coyote and a lone bull bison outside the park entrance at Silver Gate, the fauna displays had ended. It was Beartooth time. Sixty-nine miles separated Silver Gate and Red Lodge, but they were like few other drives in the lower 48. The road rose in wide curves from 6,000 feet to nearly 8,000, the little engine in my rental car straining to hold its speed, much less accelerate.

As the forest thinned, more lookouts reveal the majestic Wyoming ranges beyond Yellowstone. They would be forgotten the moment I glanced the monsters to the north – the Beartooth Range, which contained all the state’s 12,000 foot peaks, and more plateaus above 10,000 feet than anywhere in the lower 48. Glaciers hugged their upper crags, and at the lookouts close to 11,000 feet, children shrieked as they bombarded each other with snowballs in September.

Winding up those narrow switchbacks at 20 mph, I talked to myself incessantly, with helpful reminders that I was almost to the top and had no need to look down from the guardrail. If I wanted to look down, I had to stop, which I did about 20 times once I reached the first alpine levels. Once the tree line vanishes, there's nothing to do but look, and the Beartooth scenery offered scores of panoramic vistas.

Nothing could have readied me for turning bends and finding rows of pristine lakes. Getting a glimpse of the switchbacks to come rattled me momentarily. Neil Young Unplugged and Marje’s Spring 2010 mix focused my ears. Conversations with people at the lookouts warded off any loneliness.

I could handle the little curves and switchbacks fine. But the last five miles came in four lengthy switchbacks ending on a canyon floor. Each minute to the bottom felt like an hour until I finally I approached the “Leaving Beartooth Highway Scenic Road” sign and took the picture I refused to take at the entrance.

Now that you’ve found me at the bottom of the Beartooth Highway safe and sound, I must warn you that none of these words comes close to the impact of what I saw up there. You can boil the drive down to rock and ice, but at 11,000 feet, you cannot scrap at their magnificence.

At Red Lodge, it was time for a beer from the region’s only craft-brewer, Red Lodge Ales. The quaint resort town crowded, but not the brewery. From there, I contemplated a trip up the road to Billings, but decided the lonely road to Melville was overdue. Rolling plains passed through more farms and tiny communities, including Montana’s rundown version of Columbus.

At Big Timber – which really wasn’t that big – I jumped on U. S. 191, bound for Melville. Nineteen miles up, I came upon a restaurant and post office with a cluster of houses off in the distance.Aside from a spectacular view of the Crazy Mountains, Melville barely registered as a bump in the road.

I shrugged at how little cache the Melville name had in Montana. It was here, and that was enough. Turning back to Big Timber, thoughts of Livingston already burrowed in my head. My grandfather and great-grandfather had passed through their during the Depression on their way to Yellowstone, so the little railroad town had more to say about family history than the one with our name.