Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Worm City


Worms comprise a significant part of planetary biomass - and of our living room biomass. It was bound to happen sooner or later. UPS recently delivered a 2 lb package at our door. 'O Boy! My worms are here!' exclaimed B on seeing the package. 2 lbs of worms is a lot. When I heard worms were in our future, I lobbied for freeing captives from the bait shop, but low class crawlers wouldn't do for our composting (or whatever they are supposed to be doing for us). Instead, our worms - Red Wigglers- were special ordered from wine country, the Sonoma County Worm Farm. Nothing but the best for our coffee grounds.

But why are the still in the worm growing box --in the living room? And why must they be fed only the best finely chopped garbage? I don't know, but I'm sure that in time I will. Watch this space for breaking worm news.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Summer's Gone - Not Forgotten


Last week's pounding rain and this week's mackin' swell ( shown here breaking at Mavericks) makes it clear even to hard core season change deniers that summer is no more.
But the sun is shining today and it's time to pull out the past season's classic video of Sarah's cousin Andy Haumersen and friend Ricky popping major skim board moves in the Long Beach Island shore dump. Notice - no wet suits! How different the east coast is. This vid is sure to put you back into summer daze- if only for a moment. Good work, boys! The sponserships are sure to come.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Brass Mania

I've been on a brass craze lately and want to share two great bands I'm particularly grooving on.

The first, The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble is an amazing street band from Chicago & New York with loose, swinging progressions and latin echoes. I really enjoy them. Apparently most of the band are sons of the famous Phil Cochran who played with Sun Ra. A piece in the June New Yorker gives the background and a good description of this crew. Read HERE. Even though a street band they have been recording since 2004. Check out their myspace site HERE



The second video is Dave Douglas and Brass Ecstasy. It is sweet and sometimes sad - a more composed jazz virtuosity full of funkiness and humor and old time New Orleans jazz references. It also includes some interview time. The NPR "Tiny Desk concert" shown in the video (about 17 minutes) was my introduction to Brass Ecstasy - I had to get their new album ( from the library of course) called Spirit Moves. They totally grabbed me, jumping out from a bunch of concert podcasts I was surfing through on a long drive. You can download this Tiny Desk concert and other full length live concerts free in the podcast section of the iTunes store under NPR All Songs Considered.



Hope you like!

Monday, October 12, 2009

Yosemite Revisited!












































Last week an ace team of veteran Yosemite adventurers returned to base camp in Upper Pines Campground to renew friendships, attune with vast glacial spirits and push the most challenging routes into the beyond. The weather was stunning; a sprinkle of snow on day one, clearing to brilliant blue skies and moonlit evenings. Hiking and biking was a blast. Breakfast buffets at Curry Village were staggering, first fueling a successful assault on Glacier Point(both Marty and Kristin summitted)and then a day of bike touring of the valley with an extended hike to the Half Dome rock slide at Mirror Lake. Evenings were filled with gourmet feasting, prescription strength margaritas, a dirty joke contests dominated by those with good memories and bad taste, (Conrad, Dirty Dave and Beverly what a surprize!) Sadly we had to return home, but hardier souls stayed the rest of the week and explored ever farther. I hope we don't have to wait a whole year for our next Yosemite outing. Steve's picture album HERE Marty's album HERE

We missed you Sarah! Thanks John Muir!

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Ballistic Waterslide


"Since the dawn of time, man has battled the forces of gravity. We've built gliders, wings and contraptions of all sorts. In the end, all it took was a simple giant water slide down the side of a mountain."

OK - this video isn't family or friends, but the foolishness meter is pegged! Could easily have become Darwin Award material. And it is aqua oriented. That's my excuse for posting. Plus of course a demonstration of the indomitable human search for transcendent experience through stupid stuff.

Thanks to Robert Church for finding this one!