R.I.P. B.I.G.

I was in third grade when I began listening to the Notorious BIG. Where I grew up, rap is a big deal. I think Biggie helped make it so. I remember wandering the halls of my elementary school, with some of my peers chanting “Biggie Biggie Biggie, can’t you see…” often prompting the rest of the hallway to join in. All of us young white kids, we didn’t know much about the African American struggle yet, or about any of the influential music that came out of it. All we knew is when Biggie’s beats came on — most of them sampled from artists we didn’t know yet like Kool and the Gang or the Isley Brothers — we were ready to throw down and dance. Say what you will about white kids from the Bay Area, but you can never say we don’t know how to [pretend we know how to] dance to a beat.

So, on my generation’s adolescence bloomed, and Biggie’s music provided a backdrop to it. It wasn’t just for the ghetto anymore. It made us feel like we could partake in listening to rap, too.  Some might call this the commercialization of rap, the dilution of it. But I don’t look at it that way, because I would never know about some of the most obscure rap artists from New Orleans, or Seattle, or Gadsen Alabama, had I not first been turned on to rap by Biggie.

Whereas rap was once looked upon like the blemish of music’s evolution, now it’s seen as art, poetry, imagination– a craft that’s sometimes steeped with so many metaphors and cosmic imagery you have to dissect it to glean its meaning.

My love affair with this verbose, daring, unadulterated music began with him.

RIP Biggie. Without you, this blog would still be a zygote!

The Notorious B.I.G. — Juicy — Ready to Die (1994)

Geographer, and Diving In

I just started scuba diving.

It’s been kind of nuts, crazier than I thought it would ever be.

Sure, breathing underwater is, well, different. Sporting an 80 pound suit down there is a little unnerving, too.

But none of that physical stuff affects me as much as the idea of diving itself, or what the act of signing up for this class and doing it on my own is doing to my head. I don’t know that I can describe it close enough with words, I guess because this diving venture has opened up a part of my psyche that perhaps hasn’t been accessed yet.

The first time I descended in the pool, down to 15 feet, I decided simply what I wanted to do was sit on the bottom staring up at the surface. So that’s what I did. I emptied my BCD (air vest that keeps you afloat), equalized my ears, and let my weight belt drag me to the bottom.

I was probably supposed to be paddling around, getting my bearings and used to my equipment, but all I wanted to do was marvel and ponder.

Down there, even just 15 feet under, (which really isn’t anything to write home about in the diving world) I started to feel obscure. Obscure because not only was I embarking upon this activity alone, with ten other people I’d never met before, but also because at the bottom, perception of reality, as you might imagine, changed immensely. I was 15 feet underwater, where no one would ever think to look for me. I was staring up at the world from a place I have never been, below the surface, looking up. Objects beside the pool rippled and swayed with the movement of the water. It’s not often our perception of reality is so flagrantly tweaked like that.

We also don’t often quantify our own capabilities until they are tested. Mine have been tested by diving, and I haven’t even left the pool yet. But even after departing my last class drained both mentally and physically, I have some new ideas about what I can do, all on my own.

Diving isn’t so much a test of skill or endurance as it is of one’s own ability to keep calm. In real life, I’m not always good at this.

But down there underwater, when I’m all I’ve got, it’s my lifeline. Only I can choose what path I take to enjoying and, more importantly, surviving scuba diving.

Can I learn to be my own lifeline in real life?

 
“the roofs of the city like an
ocean spread for miles
i swear i saw my whole life
flicker in a window light”

Geographer– Paris — Animal Shapes (2009)

Ashkon: Niners In Paris

It’s not just because Watch The Throne sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me that I like this version of “Niggas In Paris” way better than the original. (No, I am not above finding any way to blaspheme Watch The Throne in all of my posts.) It’s mainly because well, if someone can do it better, well I am going to exploit it to the fullest and you know what that just sucks for you Jay and Kanye. Bay Area amateur rapper Ashkon also does just that with his own rendition, “Niners In Paris.”

Everyone knows the 49ers are owning this year. One game away from the Super Bowl, I think it’s time we have an anthem to sing to, much like Ashkon’s cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin,” which he released just before the 2010 World Series in honor of the SF Giants.

Also, basically all of this means that the Bay Area simply stomps on everyone in the most important of departments, sports and music. I can only say the same for Seattle in one of those, and I’ll refrain from saying which one lest I tread on any soft hearts of my friends up here.

In honor of this Sunday’s game against the Giants in which Smith will probably throw like Montana and Davis will catch like Rice, here is “Niners In Paris” for your audio enjoyment.  It’s a slapper!

Ashkon — Niners In Paris — 2012

Sexy Bass Lines and 90s Late-Night Television

Back when the USA network was the shit, a pre-adolescent me used to see how late I could get away staying up watching TV before Dad woke up to yell at me and send my butt to bed. Now that I think about it, USA’s late night programming back in the day was absurd on various levels. But back then, after 10pm in the Guthrie household, I thought I was so cool.

I didn’t really know much about sex yet, but I knew I shouldn’t be watching Silk Stockings. The opening credits that consisted of carnal moans and flashes of sweaty bodies sensually coming together among montages of sirens and women pulling sheer stockings up their legs told me I’d get in major trouble if I got caught. Also, when Quantum Leap came on and Scott Bakula was all jumping the future/past and saving the world, a teeny part of me I didn’t even know existed yet got a little excited. Probably woulda been the same for La Femme Nikita too I’m sure, had I turned out just a *tad* bit differently.

There’s a kind of music that reminds me so much of this part of my childhood, all the kooky shows I used to watch in the wee hours, what I gathered from them being the young person that I was. Perhaps I’d see all of these shows completely differently now— probably mostly because since like 2000 I can totes stay up as late as I want. But honestly if I’d just heard Silk Stockings’ introduction for the first time today I’d get really excited. Now that I am all old and junk I can pretty much govern my own TV programming and bedtime, which has definitely been awesome. But since TV just ain’t like it was in the old days, I have music like the song below to whisk me down a memory lane, themed by jazzy melodies and sexy bass lines.

The moral of all of this is that if you know me and have come to think I’m strange, blame late-night 90s television.

Ennio Morricone — Amore Come Delore (Needs Remix) — Ennio Morricone Remixes, Volume 1 (2003)

Baths, And the Mind Kaleidoscope

I can get high off colors. Just colors alone. No drugs needed. Sometimes, I’ll venture the uphill walk to the fabric store just to stand in front of their new fabric shipments, in awe, probably looking like a haggard stoner who’s also on ecstasy.

I never knew the true meaning and life color can take on until I lived in a place that actually has real seasons.

My world has been forever changed by trees that look like they’re on fire. By piles of leaves that look like massive heaps of confetti. By the sight of leaves falling — every shade of red, yellow, green, and brown — onto the greenest grass you’ve ever seen.

I never used to appreciate nature before I came up to the Northwest. I’d walk around completely oblivious to the natural beauty around me. But coming up here, I woke up to it all. I realized how much was missing from my life, just by passing by a patch of wildflowers without taking a second to admire their beauty, their tenacity; or by being so focused on getting to Pike Place to buy my weekly produce that I forget to cherish the majesty of the Puget Sound and the snowy mountains that frame it.

It sounds weird to say, but color has made me a better person. Taking the time to appreciate natural beauty and all that it encompasses has opened so many doors in my mind. I think I’m calmer, more at peace. Less judgmental. When you can see beauty in something so ordinary, or find meaning in an object you saw every day but never took the time to notice, something changes in you. A certain kind of humanity emerges, one that I couldn’t name if I wanted to.

A certain kind of new person emerges, too. Almost like I’ve shed a skin and come out a better version of myself, a more colorful one. I now envision the activity of my thoughts to resemble what happens when you look into a kaleidoscope.

Below is some music I’ve been listening to lately– as summer became fall, and now, as fall becomes winter and the trees go bare again. It’s just really chill and easy music, a soundtrack to my mind kaleidoscope if you will. It’s by Baths, who’s a California (woot woot) based experimental electronic musician.

And below that, you can see all of the ways color is infusing itself into my life.

Baths — Rafting Starlit Everglades — Cerulean (2010)

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Just Cuz: Elite Gymnastics

Weltschmerz.

Elite Gymnastics — We Don’t Dream Anymore — Neu ’92 (2011)

Bloc Party, And The Curse Of Generation Y

I feel like people in their twenties these days should all over themselves.

Like this: I SHOULD have a career by now, I SHOULD have met my future spouse by now, I SHOULD know how to cook for myself by now (ok, maybe I’m projecting on that one); but I know a lot of us in my generation thought the twenties were going to look a lot different than this.

I think there’s a curse lying beneath the obligations of my generation. All of us growing up being told you can do and be anything you want and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. That’s great and empowering and all, but now as a result we have this sense of entitlement, or maybe responsibility if you want to call it that instead, to be accomplishing things that are way more relevant, cool, world-changing than the guy next to us.

We are should-ing all over ourselves, generation Y. What’s this obsession with leaving an indelible mark on the world before we all even have the time to turn 30?

I should on myself too. I don’t know how to stop. I sit around at work all day thinking about all of the awesome and life changing things I should be doing instead of what I am actually doing. And the things I AM doing suffer at the hand of the thoughts of the things that I SHOULD be doing. It’s all about the future these days, where is this going, where is this taking me, what’s my next move, etc. And I’m one of the worst offenders.

Can’t we just collect a paycheck, go home and do some watercolors to a soundtrack of Count Basie and a bowl, get drunk with friends on Fridays, shop at the farmer’s market on Saturdays, catch a ball game at the bar downtown on Sundays, and effectively, just be happy?

At any rate, it probably doesn’t help listening to songs like the one below sung by angsty British twenty-somethings.

Oh well. This song is rad, and so is this band. Bloc Party is a four-man group from London whose songs are ethereal, complex, and affecting. Bloc Party is 80s reminiscent with beats and percussion that more closely resemble today’s alternative style.

And the lyrics, well– I think these guys and myself might be right on the same page.

Bloc Party — Plans — Silent Alarm (2005)
(This version is remixed by Mogwai, still a great song, but I couldn’t find a share-able original. I’ll post it as soon as I can find it but in the meantime, download Silent Alarm!)

Eye Candy: A Terrible Misconception

Occasionally, luck rains down on someone the gift of extraordinary confidence, something that sparks a long-lost motivation, a new found hope if you will. Sometimes, this happens after long periods of no hope at all. This otherwise elusive stroke of serendipity might propel one to feel one might perhaps like to try again, to walk in magnificent reverie down imaginary golden pathways of what could possibly be.

And then the next day a friend with knowledge might inform one that the person at root of such fraudulent ideas may or may not have a live-in counterpart and said faith has at once been crushed again and one then inevitably retreats back into one’s cave of apathy and repugnance.

“At least you have eye candy,” the friend might offer, as encouragingly as can be mustered.

No. No no no no no. No.

Eye candy you can’t unwrap is about as good as a bag of hair.

And that is all one has to say about that.

Kelpe — Eye Candy Bath — Cambio Wechsel (2009)

**I just discovered Kelpe and that’s why I have chosen to leave a misguided and/or erroneous description of him or his music out of this post, but so far I am loving his funk-inspired electro beats. Check more of him out here.

Ed Lee: 2 Legit 2 Quit

As November elections draw nearer, it is once again time to step up the ridicule of all politicians. These days, that is pretty much the only partaking of political discussion I choose to have on account of the US political system currently residing in something reminiscent of a porta potty at Burning Man. I only want to talk politics in snarky euphemisms and bitter anecdotes now (largely spending time doing this on e-news comment boards during work hours), because the real, true discussions that get to the heart of matters really set me into my negative cloud of grouchiness and hatred of which I am sure you all are very aware now. Even as a politics major, even as someone who helped our President get elected, I really don’t give a shit anymore.

Unless…and here is where I provide a few caveats. See below for my list of allowable topics should you desire to broach the subject of politics with me:

- Sarah Palin (our North Korean allies, Russia, and refudiation all acceptable)

- Donald Trump and/or his hair (er, wait…)

- Anything at all of or relating to Pat Robertson (I have watched the 700 Club many times, so this subject would provide an especially informed discussion)

- Any sports or music figureheads coming together to encourage the election of an effective leader. Now, I am really serious about this one. Which brings me to the promotional video “Ed Lee Is…2 Legit 2 Quit.”

“Ed Lee Is…2 Legit 2 Quit” is a collaboration of several famous figures using their wacky, offbeat talents to promote the election of San Francisco’s interim mayor Ed Lee. Lee was appointed to serve out the remainder of the previous mayor Gavin Newsom’s term, and is now up for re-election come November. Not only has Lee been a vocal supporter of Occupy Wall Street (which I finally, albeit reluctantly, am on the bandwagon for), but he has also consistently worked to create jobs at the grassroots level– something San Francisco desperately needs.

Aside from the political message in the video which is all well and good, Brian Wilson and MC Hammer are in it….soooo……

Ed Lee Is…2 Legit 2 Quit

Bring ‘Em Back Home

“I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year,” Obama said. “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”

Today is a glorious day.

Blue Scholars — Back Home — Bayani (2007)