Artistic Sampling Once Again

I have a very specific theory about artistic "sampling" that I've maybe only explained to Corrie and maybe one other person (Norm).

Here "sampling" is being used in the sense of American hip-hop artists taking bass lines or drum beats from established songs and using them as the backbones of their own songs. MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice both got sued very badly for not acknowledging the sources for their mainstream busting hits "You Can't Touch This" and "Ice, Ice Baby", respectively (originally, also respectively, Rick James and Queen).

I believe that this kind of sampling can occur in other forms. Personally I've been working on a novel (down the pipeline) that touches on this subject (I've spoken about it with Norm and maybe Corrie). My prospective novel dealing with this is a little more in depth than another item that has to be in this same area, the mostly well known "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". I'm sure you can guess the idea...

Now this post is about something entirely different from re-writing a classic piece of literature from the prospective of a zombie invasion (way far away from my own idea), but could be seen as a "sampling" I posit.

Okay.

My brother Dan turned me on to an episode of a web show on Cracked.com's site. The show, After Hours, featured four friends sitting around a table dissecting, hilariously and highly intellectually, pop culture items, and the specific episode Dan sent me was "Why 'Back to the Future' is Secretly Horrifying". That turned out ot be the first episode from these folks, and has since been seen by nearly five million people.

It you haven't yet seen it, please watch. All the episodes are enlightening and entertaining. The website has other shows that they create, on a shoestring budget really. For a while, one of the character/actors from After Hours, Michael Swaim, played a robot who sifted the internet for random websites and brought them to viewers like Tosh. It was funny.

The producers began to get ambitious. They made a show about a Jedi school in the Star Wars universe. I didn't watch it too much, but it looked good.

Another recent show they created is called "Rom.com", a show at a dating website office. It's quite funny and very smart.

And then we get to the show that caused me to post in the first place.

"Welcome Back Potter" is the name of this newest show. Michael Swaim plays a mostly adult Harry Potter who, with Ron(?), left Hogwarts and took off for Muggle-Land in America as a kid, and they, he and Ron, have been using magic and scamming Yanks since they arrived. The chick, Hermione maybe (sorry, I don't know anything about Harry Potter besides the drive-in movie I watched in SLO with Gary Oldman and mucho vino) has come to America to try to convince them to return and stop the nose-less dude, Voldemort.

That's the premise that's discussed in the opening thirty seconds of their webisodes. Where am I going with this? Right here:

Who does Swaim look like here?

I saw some of the previews and thought, oh my, Swaim's playing Harry as Hunter. Harry and Ron changed their names, Harry to "Jarry" and Ron to "Don", and "Don" has based his mannerisms on those of somebody from Jersey Shore.

Swaim is playing an adult Harry Potter exactly like Raoul Duke, and it's pretty exciting. This is one of the moments that made me think of artistic sampling. Here's one writer/actor's interpretation of a scamming adult Harry Potter on the lam---Raoul Duke.

This led me to look for some pictures...

Ron/Don isn't playing Oscar Zeta Acosta, which is kinda a bummer, and probably too much to ask for, since The Situation opposite Duke is funny enough. Here's Oscar (and Hunter):

I won't waste the reader's time with who's who.

Hunter S. Thompson/Raoul Duke and Oscar Acosta/The Avenging Lawyer have been represented before in film, first in 1980:

and again in 1998:

Which makes this picture marginally more meaningful:

From 1994: Bill Murray and Johnny Depp both appeared in Tim Burton's Ed Wood. In other times they both befriended and then portrayed one of Hunter's alter egos, Raoul Duke.

Now...if only I could find a Peter Boyle/Benicio del Toro movie...

Commuter Documentation: A Personal History in Two Coasts

I find myself in the mornings pulling out my phone around the same part of my commute and taking a picture of the environs, just to document the different ways the day looks in that section of South Central LA. It started, maybe, because I think the particular street doesn't look like any part of what's normally associated with "the 'hood", and could be mistaken for other locations in the Southland.

But this practice of mine---snapping a phone camera picture of the same, mostly pleasing set of landmarks or other environs---dates back to living in New York.

(I dug the following pictures up from deep in the bowels of our deathbed Mac...)

The year was 2007. I was working at the most hard-core restaurant I'd ever worked in in Manhattan. Have you seen Pixar's Ratatouille? Like that, only more serious and stressful, since it was just opening and working towards its Michelin star. The Chef was Michelin rated and had been running Grammercy Tavern for a dozen years for Tom Colicchio, and this restaurant was to be his new baby.

Anyway, I would take the A-train to West 4th and walk through Greenwich Village over to Union Square. It was a longer walk than transferring trains, but sometimes it would take less time, and I could control more of my commute, as it were.

One day, as I came up from below, I looked up the street before cutting right (and east, towards Union Square), and saw the Christopher St. Historic Firehouse. I thought it looked cool, so I pulled out my tiny, candy bar-like phone and snapped a picture of it. It had been a dreary October day, and it was mostly lunchtime:

12:45 PM

(I put, as a caption, the time-stamp data from the picture, and, you can see, I did it for all of the pictures here.)

I was working night, as was every other cook at this restaurant, seeing as how they didn't yet have day shifts. On a different day, I came up again, saw the same sight, pulled out my camera, and took another picture. This day was Halloween itself, and after my shift, Corrie and I braved the Village on the walk back to the rain. Greenwich Village on Halloween? Done it once, accidentally, and that was way enough...

Check out how blue and crisp that day was:

1:06 PM

A few days later, in November, I remembered to take another picture. It was another dreary day. I remeber those shifts were stressful and no fun, for sure. They'd start early, and end late, with your ass being chewed on the entire time. It wasn't for me...

12:46 PM

In any case, the restaurant began, in mid November, to offer lunch service, and I fought pretty hard to get one of the morning spots. Some folks really wanted those positions, but not everybody. Many of the white kids who, for them, this was one of the Golden Jobs, all wanted the night shifts. For the Latinos, and the white kids who don't love the life and were in the middle of stressful wedding planning and wanted to have a relationship with their fiance, the morning shift was key.

This led to a new style of Firehouse Photo: morning...

6:34 AM

 I'm truly enjoying the limitations of that old camera's abilities; the softness and the blurs...

Some mornings were rainy or damp, like above, while others were clear, like this next one:

6:53 AM

In the one above, and 7 minutes to 7 am, I can tell you that I was late, and that I was stressed the 'eff' out at that moment. I don't remember it personally, but I know what that job did to me on a daily basis as it was...and knowing that I was going to be even a few minutes late? Forget about it...

Here's a more appropriately timed clear example:

6:26 AM

It's so dark at this early hour because it was then December, and as it got later, it would get darker. Check out this next picture, recorded a single minute earlier, but noticeably darker:

6:25 AM

And then this collection ends with this next picture, where, taken at 6:23 am, we see it's still nighttime. It was around here that I started just transferring trains and missing the sun entirely. It took longer, but the walk across Manhattan was becoming quite unbearable:

6:23 AM

Fast forward six years and a few months, say seventy-five months. My commute, and life, are definitely different, as now I'm on a different coast, but still stationed in one of the nation's two largest population centers.

What strikes me about this whole endeavor is the vast similarity and consistency in the times that these various collections were taken.

Again the view is looking north, only here it's along Miramonte Street:

6:58 AM

The quality of the photograph is better:

7:00 AM

As is, generally, the weather, although this next picture I took specifically because it was foggy:

6:43 AM

For that one, I had left the house earlier, caught an earlier train, and had to spin my wheels, figuratively, and burn off some time before I could get to my final destination.

Mostly the days are blue and crisp, like below:

6:58 AM

And again, the sun making everything golden:

6:57 AM

I ride my bicycle up this street and turn left onto Gage Avenue. There are certainly less people than in the Village, even earlier...

6:58 AM

My reflections of my experiences in these last few, the Miramonte Collection, are mostly absent because I'm still living this commute. I don't think I would have been able to have the perspective on my own life had I had this blog active back at the end of 2007.

Sometime in the future, maybe a better and more robust reflective piece will be available to my brain...maybe this post can be considered "begun", but not ultimately done-dundy.

Happy Birthday Tuxedo

Today is the day we celebrate Tuxedo's birthday...we don't know the true date, just that it was between March and May. At first we chose March 17th as the day to celebrate, but after some discussions with our erstwhile vet, we chose to move up the celebration day, and settled on the 20th of April. So, happy birthday Tux!

He's ten years old. Ten. Years. Old. I'm not sure how to feel about that. Right now we're battling something that's wrong with him, and that's frustrating, since nobody really knows what's wrong. We've got a plan of action, which is nice, but still, it's mostly groping in the dark.

Other tidbits...

While in Portland, Corrie and I saw a dog that we both felt like we could settle on when the time comes for us to get a dog (which is on the horizon somewhere). I'm not going to say now, but this is an exciting moment, since we've discussed on many occasions what kind of dog would make both of us happy, and be able to be with us in our living conditions.

On May 4th the Simpsons is debuting their Lego episode. It begins with Homer waking up in a Lego world and thinking something isn't right. Or something like that. In an interview I read, the writers and producers mention that the Lego aspect is partially aimed at the kids of the show's primary viewers. That's how old we are, folks: we grew up having our notions of humor shaped by The Simpsons, and now are having kids and showing them the same show that we grew up watching, only it's not the same show. A local channel here in LA shows reruns during the time of evening when I'm doing dishes and getting dinner ready. The episodes were from season 14 or 15, and were shows I'd never seen. I didn't pay much attention to them.

Then, sometime last week, I noticed the colors were far older looking, and the episode was one I'd seen, but couldn't immediately place. It turned out to be the Whacking Day episode, and I stopped working and found myself watching, shaking my head that this episode was on broadcast television in 1992 or whatever. It's a show about clubbing snakes to death and even has Marge getting turned on by Homer's practicing.

Broadcast, primetime network television.

I neglected to mention that I started reading The Pale King, Wallace's meditation on boredom and existential dread---and the Internal Revenue Service---on precisely April 15th. It seemed fitting and all.

Portland: Final Impressions

One thing I haven't yet mentioned were the meth fiends. The pictures I've posted or painted with words thus far have, for those people familiar with Portland, been devoid of the aggressive, twacked out druggies who like to accost you at all hours of the day. There were many homeless folks, like San Francisco. Many of them like to babble incoherently, and if you're unlucky enough, they'll babble in your face directly at you like you were some kind of mechanic who had wronged them.

Late at night Audrey, with little experience dealing with drugged out weirdos, was taken aback by the people who would temporarily join our walking cotillion, loudly laughing and talking about how much they liked something that would then trail away into mumbles that you couldn't understand but could sense the person's enthusiasm. "Was that guy on LSD?" she'd ask.

"No honey, that was a meth fiend, like all these other jaunty scab-faced black-toothers..." Actually, not too many exhibited the normal facial features--they were still in the fun, early stages of their dependencies.

They weren't totally overrunning the place, but the aggressiveness is something I hadn't seen before. Maybe chock it up to the young folks and their sense of privilege and entitlement affecting their drug habits and drugged out point of view.

Anyway, it wasn't a deal breaker.

There were, though, deal breakers as far as choosing a city to live in. We're not in the market to move, by any stretch, but we've been told before about how we would love Portland and could totally live their and would fit in perfectly.

We would fit in, mostly. And I could get used to the bikability, and the Blazers are a quality run local sporting franchise. But the city itself, with the quaint half-sized blocks, is oddly slow. That's nice for many folks, but I'm not sure it's the kind of thing we're looking for.

I'm not sure what exactly it was about Portland, but I wouldn't live there. Visit? Sure...

It was a great trip and wonderful birthday celebration, and I'm glad we got to celebrate with as many people as showed up. Thanks everybody who made it, and thanks Corrie for putting it together and making it happen!

Tuesday: Tram; Too Much Chocolate; Returning to The Beach

We woke early after a restful night sleep and finally got the hotel's coffee pot to work. After packing, we got got out to the bus stop and headed for The Tram.

I capitalize it because it was pretty cool, and I don't know what else it should be called. It was a gondola style skyway commuter deal:

We made it to the "base-camp" around 8:40, and it was packed. People were parking their bikes and filling the gondola. They were all dressed quite well, either in nurse-like scrubs or suits, no one was older than fifty, and they carried themselves in an uber-professional manner, if that makes sense.

The Tram carried the workers and students for the OSHU from a commuter hub near the banks of the Willamette River up to the complex on top of the nearby mountain in two minutes flat, an easy twenty minute drive. It turns out that OSHU stands for Oregon Science and Health University.

I wanted to rock the gondola, but Corrie would have attacked me. At least I would have been surrounded by doctors.

Here's a view of the tram car heading back after making a dropoff:

The cars could hold thirty or forty people. They were pretty comfy, but even better on the reutrn trip, when it was occupied by less than a dozen people. There were two sides, and one at this hour traveled up every four minutes or so.

The view of downtown Portland from inside is only obscured by your own reflection on the glass:

After returning to downtown but before leaving to catch our flight, we stopped in at a pair of chocolatiers to get some treats for the ladies with whom my wife works. Moonstruck was the first, and I ordered a medium sized dark hot chocolate.

It was good, but I had been expecting even more chocolate-ness. At the second place we actually tried what they were calling the "chocolate drink". After sampling it I realized that's what I should have had at Moonstruck. The name of the second place was Kakao. Chocolate drink was sold in smaller portions and was much, much thicker, made primarily with heavy cream. Mine was fantastic, but it was like drinking brownie batter.

After the hot chocolate and chocolate drink, and finishing Corrie's chocolate drink, I was assed out on dairy products. I'd made it to that rare moment: too much chocolate for me...

The Portland airport, abbreviated in a way that is used by many folks to abbreviate the area in general, PDX, didn't cause too much of an issue, of course it wan't as fast as the Long Beach airport, but what is?

When we arrived back in Long Beach we started to reflect a little on the weather. In Portland, it had been beautiful. The skies were mostly blue, the temperatures hovered between 60 and 73, with the only chilly times being once the wind kicked up at night. Long pants and t-shirts were comfortable, but having a sweatshirt was mostly necessary.

When we got home? 76, no clouds, blue skies, slight breeze, and the need to change into shorts was real. As we walked to find a cab, Corrie said, "I love getting home from our trips; the weather is always better here."

Monday: Dinner, Bridge Walks, and Early to Bed

I'm not sure why I ended that last post right then...

Oh well.

We walked a few of the bridges, and took some neat pictures...

This is a view of the Steel Bridge from the Broadway St. Bridge. We walked across the Broadway Bridge, down past the Rose Garden Arena, and back over that Steel Bridge to the west side of town. A few metro rails go over that Steel Bridge, and it is a rocking scary time when you're on foot.

The Broadway St Bridge is a drawbridge deal, and this is a picture of my shoe spanning a gap on the walkway, with the Willamette River visible far below:

Here's the west side of Portland:

This is one of the streets leading up the way to the basketball arena. They'll always love Clyde Drexler around these parts:

This is a working factory of sorts, but I thought it looked cool from the Steel Bridge:

Later that night we explored the town looking for a brewpub that we hadn't heard of to try their beer and grub. We settled in an old saloon looking spot called McManimans, which turned out to be a Northwest chain of exclusive hotels. They'd purchased Renglers, which was the name of the beer makers on the spot, and had the sense to retain the name and beer recipes. The beer was okay, but we are pretty tough to blow away nowadays, and the food was fine.

It was a nice slow Monday night, and the bartender was very honest and candid with his opinion on the beer his employers made. He was certainly professional.

We went to bed early that night just to make it out to a cool tram ride the next morning. We were going to do a bike tour, but what we thought was our departure time turned out to be the arrival time in Long Beach, which put an end to the bike plans. For a place that perceived as hilly, or mountainous, Portland is remarkably flat, and since most everything is so close to everything else, biking seems like a perfect way to commute and/or explore.

See some upcoming posts on The Observatory for some more random pictures of Portland.

Monday: Alone with Portland's Institutions

So far, up until Monday found Corrie and I by ourselves, a rundown of the things normally associated with Portland that we'd experienced were: roses; the Blazers; the foodie scene; Oregonian beers; the tiny intimacy of the downtown region; the temperate rain-forests of the Greenbelt; and the meth fiends (I'll get to them in due course).

There were a few things that we'd yet to do or see with our "Fellowship of the Paggi", that we decided to tackle on our own on Monday. In no specific order, they'll appear below, but for a glimpse: Powell's Bookstore; Chinatown; Voodoo Doughnuts; and the historic train station.

Chinatown

There was a cool gate that led to the historic district:

...but the district itself was mostly a quiet letdown. A few chop-suey restaurants, a few more gentleman's clubs (establishments that were in abundance), and many empty lots. The area is certainly ripe and ready for attention.

Union Station

It looked cool, and had some delicious water that we used to refill our water bottle:

I'm not sure how old it is, but the black and white pictures inside give an idea...

Powell's Bookstore

I wasn't sure where I wanted to start with this. I have a weakness for books. Powell's bookstore, as I mentioned in last night, is the de facto King of the Independent American Bookstore. I had reservations about that designation, reservations that grew out of my appreciation and love for the Strand in New York. The Strand had signed copies (as in plural) of Gould's Book of Fish, straight chilling on the shelf. 

Whutchoo got, Powell's?

Well...

The Strand didn't have anything like this, an early '60s pocketbook edition of The Crying of Lot 49. Score.

I found the Flanagan section, and while it was robust, it didn't have any signed copies of Gould's...

Not that I'm really keeping score, but this is serious (for me). Powell's had enough Mishima books that you could tell it would be a contender, but their Mo Yan selection made me a believer. They had multiple copies of each of his books except the one I wanted, of which they only had a single copy. It happened to be a first edition hardback and cost fifty bucks.

Too rich for my blood.

They had nearly every Murakami book published by the colorful Vintage editions.

I even found the following David Foster Wallace book I'd been looking for since 2010:

It was a first edition as well, but less than ten bucks.

This was the book that Wallace was writing when he ended his own life. It's about sadness and boredom and tax professionals.

Powell's did have a rare book room. The Strand may have one, but I didn't get over to see it. Powell's was very nice, quiet, clean, and had a handout of sorts, a sheet of paper explaining various things about their rare book collection.

Curious about their oldest book in their rare book collection? Printed in 1480, De Bello Judaica ("The Jewish War"), is their oldest book, printed at a time when book printing was still in its infancy. It only costs $12,500.

I say "only" as a modifier of the cost because it pales in comparison to Powell's current "most expensive book". That title belongs to an 1814 two-volume first edition of Journals of Lewis and Clark, complete with original binding and large, folding map. The original binding and map help make this edition exceedingly rare and expensive: it's priced at $350,000.

The math and science section of Powell's is across the street at Powell's II. 

That's the kind of thing that helps me see them as the preeminent independent bookstore.

Voodoo Doughnuts

Home of the famous maple-bacon bar, we stopped by a few times only to see the line fifty people deep. On this Monday, though, it was oddly quiet, so we went inside and took a look at the Big Board:

We did get two of their famous signatures, the bacon-maple bar (a maple bar with two slices of bacon on top), as well as one of our cashier's favorites (it was also my choice for doughnut number two) an Old Dirty Bastard. The ODB is a chocolate frosted doughnut with crushed oreo for sprinkles and a drizzle of peanut butter over it.

I was prepared for the maple and bacon mixing for yummy-ness, but I wasn't prepared for the super high quality of the doughnut itself. I'd taken for granted how good a good doughnut could be. Oh man, was it good...