there's no end in sight.

Brunettes Against Bubblegum Youth—The Brunettes
Comfortable Headphones—Georgie James
Your Ex-Lover is Dead—Stars
She Says It's Alright—The Rentals
I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams—Weezer
I Want To Hear What You Have Got To Say—The Subways
All The Old Showstoppers—The New Pornographers
Help Help—Mates of State
Let Us Go—Washington Social Club
The Long Grift—Hedwig and the Angry Inch

twin pizza margheritas


the ever-hard-to-capture maple-bacon cupcake

i'm late to the party, but...

...everything is amazing and no one is happy.

clickclickclick

Nada Surf—Blizzard of '77
P.O.S.—Purexed
Oasis—I Hope, I Think, I Know
Sam Cooke—Nothing Can Change This Love
Sharon Jones—Let Them Knock
Georgie James—Cake Parade
Doomtree—Dots & Dashes
Sage Francis, Prolyphic, and B. Dolan—SFR Pays Dues
Spoon—Take a Walk
In the Heights—96,000

repostable

Last Sunday I took a second trip to Tastebud. Our meal comprised a salad of radicchio, pear, and pancetta; a roasted plate of dungeness crab in a honey-paprika butter with focaccia; and three pizzas: one with shiitake mushrooms, caramelized onions, chili flakes, and goat cheese; one plain with sauce and cheese (still no basil on the menu! sad face.); and one ricotta, pickled peppers, and spinach. The crust was a marked improvement over our previous visit in terms of texture—beautifully crisp, with a nice puffy edge that had a crackly exterior. Pretty much perfect in the mouthfeel category, but bland. My guess is that the dough wasn't proofed for very long. My apologies for the lack of photography.

Ranking: 3rd best pizza establishment in PDX (not including my own pizzas).

¿que?

i will never be this good on the ball:



kid's apparently only 6 years old. how ridiculous! will he turn into a good player? remains to be seen.

wallaby is from california

Sunday was the worst day of the year ride. When I first woke up at 7:30, it sounded like, from my upstairs bedroom, it was pouring rain. And I thought, fuck this. I'm not going on an 18 mile bike ride. This is, of course, the morning after tweaking my ankle in a late-night indoor soccer game (a hard-fought 6-4 win in which Marty tallied a rocket of a goal from a very difficult angle, and I managed to slot in two in the first half). When I woke up again at 9:30, it was still overcast and cold, but I figured riding on my bike would be a good way to loosen up the ankle.



I knew that the cycling event would pretty big, but I didn't think it was going actually be 3,000 people. It was an inauspicious start. After being sent off to the rhythms of marching drums, we turned a corner and immediate were stopped at a red light. A few minutes later we were stopped at the Steel Bridge for a good 15 minutes, which was up to let a boat pass underneath. And then 5 minutes after that we got stuck as a freight train started up and left its station. It was encouraging to look behind and see five or six hundred cyclists all lined up.

By the time afternoon rolled around, the weather had turned for the best—mid-fifties and sunny. The flat tire, was bit of a bummer, but it was a bit of luck that I noticed it right by my house and was able to swap out the tube without a ton of lost time.

have a very berry president's day.

fail.

something that is really pissing me off about this whole bailout/stimulus argument is the complete lack of actual thought in the public discourse. can anyone tell me anything about these hyped bills besides the amount of money they may cost and a blanket statement about investing in infrastructure?

when our newspaper of note—the one best known for its political coverage—is getting quotes from the house minority leader like this:

a bill that was supposed to be about jobs, jobs, jobs has turned into a bill that's all about spending, spending, spending.

our "public servants" and media are doing us a disservice. it really appears that they're doing their absolute best to obfuscate the contents of the bill. and not only that, but the GOP seems to be on a tear to make it seem as if spending isn't necessary to create jobs. surely they, of all groups, would adhere to the adage "you gotta spend money to make money."

when items on the bill are enumerated in articles like these, it always seems purely superficial—area of the project and dollar amount. the bill, at roughly 1000 pages, i would hope contains more than a list of projects sitting next to a dollar amount, but there's no analysis of the projects themselves. $15 billion to clean water and environmental protection? great. how's that money going to get spent on those projects? are they going to buy 80 million britta water filters? are they tightening regulations on industry? are they putting money toward invasive plant removal? i'm not looking for anything really in depth in a four-to-eight column report, but the type of information being passed along does not make readers particularly informed about what's happening. is that not the point of newspapers? to inform us of historical events, major political decisions—why and how those decisions are being made?

blarg.

in other news:

one and a half...

...days til BSD!

Bye-bye GYWO. It was fun while it lasted.

the future looks good

"In June [2000], the [Clinton] administration predicted the [budget] surplus would be $211 billion, and would increase by as much as $1 trillion over the next 10 years."

Clearly this means our economy is going to skyrocket over the next two years.

10 tracks on 8tracks

Spending Time—Ozma

Use It—The New Pornographers

Asthenia—Blink-182

Hey Now Girl—Phantom Planet

St. Jimmy—Green Day

Good Day—Jukebox the Ghost

I Need You Back—Ben Kweller

Alright Alright—Sahara Hotnights

Translator—The Rentals

Loose Cannon—The Yoko Casionos

Putting together a mix of power pop is remarkably difficult. Normally I would think that making a compilation of music defined by it's thumpy rhythms and punchy guitars is a terrible idea—too much sameness. It's great for driving, but not for your office headphones. Hopefully I managed to mix up the instrumentation, vocal stylings, and tone of the track list enough to hold your interest.

(And a note to people who tend to enjoy a good power pop tune, but who associate Blink-182 with frattish stupidity and immaturity—somehow they molted off their idiocy before they splintered and crafted a fairly excellent pop album at the end. Catchy hooks! Dynamic volume levels! Variations in tempo! And vocal counterpoint!? It's full of surprises.)