Burmese Pressure Cooker

It's impossible to say right now whether the people of Myanmar (Burma) are taking the first dramatic steps toward political change and democracy, or if the government and military are just waiting to react, but whichever way it goes, there is something big stirring in Southeast Asia.

The images coming out of the country are striking--monsoon-soaked monks marching through the streets of the nation's cities in full scarlet robes, at first alone and observed, now joined by increasing hordes of citizens. They turn their "begging bowls" upside-down in a gesture packed with significance. Myanmar is a heavily Buddhist country, the monks widely revered, and turning the bowl upside-down means they accept no alms from and perform no rites or services for military and government personnel.

Americans claim to be intensely religious, but I think this gesture is largely lost on us. This is a huge thing for Buddhists, on par with being excommunicated from the church, though I still don't think that goes far enough in translating the importance.

This article in the NY Times covers the current situation and offers links to the stories that have charted this movement's progress up until now.

We, who take democracy and freedom for granted even while we claim to fight for it, who view politics as a series of soundbites and tawdry tabloid snippets, who decide on the person and administration we want to run out nation based on such subjective bullshit as family values and whether or not the person is for or against gay people getting married, could learn a lot from these folks about what freedom means.

(Image taken from The New York Times.)

23

In many cases, moving from experimental music toward the mainstream, in however small an increment, can be disastrous. Fans turn against you, critics slam your lack of principle, and fans you might gain will generally only engage you cursorily, abandoning you as soon as the next Modest Mouse release trundles along.

Not so Blonde Redhead, at least as far as I can tell. Their new release, 23, has been a grower for me.

To be fair, I've only recently come around to Blonde Redhead. While there have been tracks that have clicked with me and I've seen them do some solid shows, it wasn't until I saw them open for Interpol and gave Misery Is a Butterfly a really close listen that I felt like I was getting it. And then, of course, wandering through their back catalog brings about all sorts of epiphanies and rewards.

23, though, for all its change in tone and structure and its migration toward the middle, has really grabbed me. From the outset, the title track puts Kazu Makino's ethereal vocals at the fore of the mix, which is a good thing. The strong, spacey melodies they've developed their songs around for this record swath her voice in a cozy nest of sound, both nurturing her breathiness and strengthening her enunciations. It's a fantastic balance, made stronger by the sturdiness of the tunes.

Perhaps the new sound is a result of the change in producer, as no shift from Guy Picciato (of Fugazi) to Alan Moulder (producer for U2, NIN, and the friggin Smashing Pumpkins) could go by unnoticed. But it's not just the sound; the songs have shifted as well, focusing more on the flow and fluidity of each song and melody more than the breaking down of those things.

The record is largely midtempo, and while Amedeo Pace does get some time at lead, neither small shifts in tone nor a different singer break the mood of the whole.

If you've already come to love Blonde Redhead, this album might be a shock to your system. But accept that bands evolve and change--and that this very well may not be where BR stays--and you will no doubt enjoy this. And if you're new to the band, this is an accessible inroad to their music. Start here and work backward.

Cubs Tops in NL Central

Here's a surprise for anyone not following along.

It's mid-September, and the Cubs are in 1st place. They're a game up on the Brewers going into the last dozen games of the year. That's exciting news.

Tonight we start a 6-game homestand, first the Reds and then the Pirates. That's what you call the catbird seat.

How long can we put the heartbreak off? It'll be exciting to find out. Stay tuned.

George Tops in Missouri

Big George Hincapie came through in his final race for Discovery Channel to win the Tour of Missouri.

Not the biggest race in the world, but a solid overall victory for Hincapie. This is the inaugural edition of the new week-long tour, which is big in itself. But even bigger, Team Disco is over, and George is going out on top.

Next year he'll be in the big pink of T-Mobile, and while that'll be a big big change, gone are the days when pink and black stood for the German dynasty. They're up-and-comers now, focusing on racing clean and developing the next generation of pro riders.

George has a valuable role to play. Strong as he is, and destined though he was to play a perennial supporting role, he'll be of utmost value to teaching the young guys how it's done in the bigs. I can't imagine a better mentor.

Congrats, George.

New on the Range

New music rains down on the Range this week.

We got the good stuff, and we're sharing it with you.

New music from Modest Mouse, Wilco, New Pornographers, MIA, Earlimart, Editors, Artanker Convoy, St. Vincent, Manu Chao, Thee More Shallows, Imperial Teen, White Stripes, Minus the Bear, and more.

Join me Friday from 1 to 3 mountain time, won't you?

Smoky Days

The many fires burning throughout the state and region wreak havoc on air quality, especially in valleys like ours where the air can get trapped by pressure systems and hang around for a while.

We've got air quality alerts most days here. On this day, when Cathy and I and the hounds took a hike up in Orchard Gulch, the alert was orange.

It's nasty stuff. And while I've ignored the alerts in the past and gone about my riding/running/whatever, I've learned that inhaling this rate of particulate matter can really do some deep damage to your lungs.




So if you heed the warnings, it gets pretty tough to get the workouts in. And it looks nasty, too.

Park City

About 5.5 hours to the southeast of Boise lies a nice little mountain town called Park City. Maybe you've heard of it? Sundance? Skiing? Hmm?

Well, the draw here is the singletrack, in the summer anyway. And there's miles and miles and miles of it, all a ride straight up and out of town away.

For this my first trip, I stuck to the Mid-Mountain Trail, a sprawling line of singletrack cutting across the face of the ski hill. It's huge, ginormous, fast and fun.

I drove out on Saturday afternoon and hit town late Saturday night, just in time to carb up (read: drink beer) before bed in prep for the next day's ride.

Sunday's ride was so fun, so big, that we did it again on Monday.

Good times riding with Eric and his ATX crew, decked out in the AustinBikes kits, shredding the shit fast as I could in the vain hope of keeping up with Eric and Sol. They are not mortal.

Park City: I'll be back.

Sundanceland

Got a call on Saturday morning from Eric, in Park City for a wedding. Come on down he said, plenty of room. So, I did.

That's some amazing mountain biking down there, boys and girls. Amazing. The Mid-Mountain Loop was thrills galore, swoopy singletrack for days.

I've got some killer pics and I'll post some of them as soon as I can find the danged cable to plug the camera into the computer.

The Elephant In the Stall

Toles (c) 2007 The Washington Post. Used by permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.

Noble Creatures

Let's interrupt the political naughtiness with something far more pleasant.

The Gourds have a new record out. It's called Noble Creatures, and it's a great step for the band. It's all still pretty new to me, so I don't know if I can call it a great record yet. But their last one, Blood of the Ram, was a grower, so I'm guessing this one will be too.

Immediate notice goes to "Promenade" for being gorgeous and "A Few Extra Kilos" for being really fun, and of course it's wonderful to see "Cranky Mulatto" and "Steeple Full of Swallows" get album treatment at long last.

Boise folk: The Gourds are playing Alive After 5 tonight, down on the Grove at 5pm. Check it out.

Hypocrisy with a Smile

Hoo boy. This dude's done fuggd up.

Larry Craig should be the poster boy for the modern Republican party. (But, you say, what about Tom DeLay? Or Duke Cunningham? Mark Foley?How about Abramoff? Or Cheney, for piss' sakes? Sure, lovely candidates all, but stay with me.)

Larry Craig fits because he is above all a hypocrite. He's a liar who has violated the confidence of his constituency and is now lying about lying. He, like all others on this list and beyond it, will lie his ass off, then he'll repent, finding Jesus and devoting himself to being a good Republican.

Unfortunately, Idahodians will buy it, and they'll forgive him because he's not a Democrat.

But for a while, we can watch him squirm and enjoy it. This dickhead has trampled on the rights of minority groups for decades, has caused harm unmeasurable to progressive causes and humane politics in his home state. And now it turns out he's a member of one of the groups he has so persecuted.

Good looking out, man. I can't wait to see you get yours.

And a PS: Let's not let the gay thing cloud this issue. The issue is not whether Craig is gay. Who cares. The issue, really, is not even that he's denied being gay. None of my business, I say. But he's lied about it, consistently and at length, and has followed his lies with bad policy and politics.

And the issue now is that he's engaging in disgusting predatory behavior, apparently over and over again, and not only is he lying about it, but he's attempting to use his position as a representative of the people to weasel out of the trouble he's in.

Beyond that, even, is the fact that this all happened over a month ago, and this clown thought the info would never see the light of day. He came back to Idaho and pretended like nothing ever happened.

The nerve. The nerve and the gall.

hee hee hee.

Follow Your Folly

Tour de Fat is this weekend.

Every year the folks from New Belgium Brewery come to town and put on the best part in Boise. And all the proceeds go to benefit SWIMBA and (I think) the TVCA.

It's at Julia Davis park on Saturday, starting with the bike parade at 11am, kegs tapped at noon, and fun and music all day long.

UPDATE:

69 kegs of New Belgium beer were consumed at Julia Davis park last Saturday. 69 kegs. That's how I spell success. That and a cruiser parade that surely had more than 1,000 participants, many of whom came out in full freak regalia.

It was a smashing time, a total blast. If you missed it, don't miss it next year.

O8AMA

Barack Obama was on The Daily show last night. I couldn't get the video on their site to work, but it's on YouTube, of course.

Scum. Bag.

Sure, some cyclists dope. But outside the arguments over the state of the sport, the pursuit of cheats, and the ethics of both sides, at least we can rest assured that this dude and the folks he runs with are not part of the sport we love.

Who knows what'll happen. Jail time? Looks like it. Lifetime NFL ban? Doubtful, but we can still hope. If there's any justice, he will be reviled for all time as a POS thug who used considerable fame, fortune, and influence to do nothing short of the lowest, meanest, most disgustingly brain-dead and trashy thing you can do, namely to start a business venture on breeding, exploiting, terrorizing and killing domesticated animals for whom humans have accepted responsibility.

We made dogs depend on us through centuries of breeding and domestication. That brings responsibility. Vick has not only abused that trust, but he's sunk about as low as a human being can sink, in my opinion.

Yes, serial killers and psycho- and sociopaths start out abusing animals. We know that. But outside the Dahmer comparisons, this dude is just low, the sort of scum you would hope would implode or disappear before having a chance to breed. Let's hope prison gives that outcome a chance.

Enjoy yourself in there, dude. I only hope you get a chance to experience some of what you put your dogs through.

Denver

Cathy and I just spent a long weekend in Denver. I'd never really hung out there before, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

Not that I was expecting it to be bad or anything, just that I didn't expect to like it as much as I did.

Maybe it was the dinner at Cuba Cuba that did it. Or my fun but pitiful turn at Guitar Hero at the Garage. Or maybe it was the 2000'+ of vertical we covered on mountain bikes at Keystone. Perhaps even the fly-fishing expedition on Clear Creek, interrupted though it was by a fast-rising and furious rainstorm that chased us from the canyon with out tails between our legs. Certainly the splendid bowl of Pho I had at a Vietnamese joint on Federal (surrounded by loads of Vietnamese folks having lunch) had something to do with it.

Of course, it was great to see Jody and Steve, whose baby shower (or kegger in anticipation of the baby, more like) was good fun. And Christine and Brett, too, along with Maggie and Finn, two of the cutest kids I know. They weren't even afraid of me, as most kids are! I missed hooking up with T, though we may end up back there in a month for the Arcade Fire/LCD Soundsystem gig. We'll see.

Either way, I really enjoyed myself, and I hope to visit Denver again soon, this time with more days and my own bike to ride.

This Chicken Ain't All Natural

Priceless photo. (Yes, that's a Dopers Suck t-shirt.)

Stars of the Lid

The new double-CD release from Austin, TX-based minimalists Stars of the Lid is a fantastic collection of sounds, the perfect thing to have on the stereo for a meditative Sunday afternoon.

I didn't get too deep into these guys when I lived in the ATX, but I'd known about them and heard some of their stuff, and put them on the same plane as Labradford, who I liked quite a bit but who also got limited play time due to the situational constraints of the appropriateness of the music. In other words, this is music for a certain time and place.

In the proper context, And Their Refinement of the Decline is an amazing record. It's drone-based music whose changes are subtle and elegant, tracks made up more of lengthy movements than any verse/chorus structure, transitions from one track to the next often indistinguishable. This is ambient music at its best, and well worth checking out.

The National

This one's long overdue. What with the Tour de France and the new bikes and big trips and all, I've neglected to post a few words about what is, so far, hands down the best record to come out in 2007.

The new release by Brooklyn outfit The National, called Boxer, is not a leap forward for the band, not a new direction of some experimentation with form gone right or even a departure from what they've done previously.

Boxer is none of those things. But it is a document of a rock band coming into their own and arriving at a level of sound and artistry that most bands can only hope of glimpsing. The songwriting is impeccable, Matt Berninger's lyrics and baritone delivery as dead-nuts and smooth as anything you could imagine. Plays on words and syntax meld seamlessly with narrative journeys as they do in the best literature.

The music, too, is spot-on. Guitarwork and bass on this record seem more natural and impressive here than in the past, even if it's more subtle, and Bryan Devendorf's drums are just amazing. You don't expect such prominent drumwork in songs like these, but his timing is otherworldly and his beats so totally original and inspiring that it seems like they couldn't happen any other way.

Boxer is one for the ages, and one any lover of American music needs to own.

Superb Sawtooths

Timing is everything.

According to the guy slinging coffee at the espresso trailer in Stanley, they've been socked in up there for weeks, unable to see the range from the road for all the smoke. Until Friday, that is, when the wind blew it all out and cleared the view and the air.

So, we nailed it perfectly.

We had a fantastic trip, which started off on the boat across Redfish Lake. The shuttle only took about 5 minutes, but saved us a good 5 miles of hiking. So, we got to start on the far end of Redfish Lake, which meant we hit camp off Redfish Lake Creek in mid-afternoon. The site we found first was very nice, close to the water and with some flat and open space to hang in. But further investigation found an even better one, just a bit farther from the water but up on a rock plateau shielded from behind and wide open in front onto this view:

Amazing.

We dayhiked out on Saturday to Saddleback Lakes, a pristine pair of joined lakes right at the base of Elephant's Perch. To get there, we did quite a bit of bushwhacking, intending to hit what was described as a faint trail at some point before reaching the lake. 2 hours and quite a few cuts and scrapes later, we hit the trail, which wasn't faint at all.

I'm glad we went the way we did--Cathy was a total trooper and impressed the hell out of me with what she was willing to go over and through. At one point, when I was worried that this was getting to be a bit much, what with the very steep terrain and dwindling supply of water, she piped up and said "This is kinda fun." She rocks.

We made it to the lake and were able to hang out and have a nice long lunch, letting the dogs swim and dive to their hearts' content. Then we followed the trail down, which only took us about an hour and ended up about 50 meters from the turnoff to our site.





Sunday morning we lazed around camp and then packed up and headed back to catch the boat.




Great trip, can't wait to explore more of the Sawtooth range on foot.

More pics here.

Heading for the Mountains (and Smoke)

Friday's here, and Cathy and I have been planning to head to the Sawtooth Mountains. We were going to do a 3 day backpack trip around Petit and Toxaway Lakes, with plan B to backpack out from Redfish Lake to Alpine Lake.

However, a purple warning in Idaho City and a fire burning around Lowman has us rethinking our plan, and we'll likely instead head to the Sun Valley side of the pass. Maybe Corral Creek and some dayhikes and fishing the Big Wood; maybe head up and over Trail Creek to the Pioneer Mountains and Wildhorse Creek. I guess we'll play it by ear. But we've got to get out of town, so.

Have a good weekend, y'all. I'll leave you with this: