Pics from NYC

It needs to be said that I didn't take these pictures, they were on the WWEEK Flickr page. Not sure who the photographer is for all of them, but Scott aka Super XX Man took the one of me playing, Rob and I on the subway, and the Valiant Arms splitting eardrums. The other pics are of the PDX contingent of CMJ out front of The Knitting Factory.

Sometimes college is lame

Today I don't care for the education system. The highschool I tutor at is genuinly fucked up. They want me to assist students with little to no English with complicated language based algebra problems. Many of these students don't know how to borrow or carry much less distinguish a number from an integer. Furthermore, they are still learning to navigate basic English interaction.
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Then I found out that my credits from Oregon college of art and craft don't transfer because they're not accredited. $715 per credit and they don't help me graduate. What a fucking mistake. Sorry to sound so upset, but I am amazed at how frustrating these things can seem.
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Portland, oh Portland

Today Tif and I went for a drive in my truck. It gets pretty shitty gas mileage so I almost never drive the thing. It's great for many utilitarian tasks, but the seats don't stay bolted into the chassis, the seatbelts probably aren't properly attached, and the center link is completely messed up so the steering is totally unpredictable. I know my truck and am not surprised by the crazy response of the steering wheel and I consider driving it an adventure. In addition the brakes are going out. But somebody on Craigslist was giving away a heavy duty desk, which after tacking some hardi backer to the top,  I intended to use as a wedging table. Well, the woman with the desk never called back, so after a pleasant happy hour, Tif and I went for a drive, which I guess, brings me back to the first sentence. Great, I'm redundant. I'm redundant. I'm redundant. Err, anyway, we headed to the west side of the west hills. There, we admired some mansions, more mansions, nice cars, Aston Martins(which are not even in the same ballpark as "nice cars") - I might have seen a Rolls. . . and then I saw what, to me were a blessing, AND I was in the truck - a pile of tree stumps sitting on the side of a school. They had obviously chopped down the tree and taken the smaller pieces away and maybe were headed back for the larger chunks. I've been looking for some stumps for a sculpture installation I've been thinking about. When I pulled over and started tempting a hernia by wrestling them into the bed of my pickup, the nonchalant glances at my shitty truck by passers by, reassured me that folks assumed I was "the help". 500 lbs of stump later, I returned to the cab of the truck sweating, breathing hard and with scraped up forearms found Tiffani practically hiding under the dash. She was so embarrassed that she stayed there until I managed to navigate my unruly vehicle a third of the way down a very tall hill. They are great stumps. I can't wait to use them for something relating to compartmentalization and modular consumption.

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NYC was fun.

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Well, that's all for now.

Pickchers

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A bit of travel within the city

Dr Jones turned 35 today. We met up for a beer in hell's kitchen befor heading to Williamsburg. There, we met up with Jeff and his wife Ece(aycha), two very nice people! Also I met Scott from XX man. Also very nice.
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From there we went to a club in north slope and caught Laura Gibson's set, which was lovely. After, we went to a very good Italian restaurant where I had a delicious salad of dandelion greens, a poached egg and panchetta. It was finished with a sherry vinagrette. Next I had a folded pasta stuffed with sweet corn and mascarpone.
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Took a train back to time square and hoofed it back to hell's kitchen to call it a night. I'm looking forward to the shows tomorrow. Now it's time to rest.
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Happy birthday Dr. Jones

Heading to Williamsburg on the L train
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Am pica from nyc

Ah New York. So much action. So much to do. It's overwhelming.
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Good morning New York.

Lot's of great bikes at the handmade bike show in the PDX airport. Flew into LA where I spent way too much money on a egg salad sandwich.
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The flight to New York was turbulent, which I prefer, and otherwise uneventful aside from smelling like a sleeping mouthbreather for a few hours. Got to NYC and Joe made homemade meatballs. I was pretty tired and spaced out from the flight so we watched game one of the world series and called it a night.
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It's time for some coffee.
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Egg salad sandwich

$7.95 can you believe that? See ya Los Angeles.
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If you're going to New York City, make sure to wear black jeans

I'm getting ready to leave for the airport after a tumultuous 3 hours attempt at rest. I'm having a really hard time deciding whether or not to take my snare drum. . . I really like it, and I want to take it, but I'm seriously pushing the airlines size limits for a carry-on with my cymbal stuffed bike bag. It looks like it's just cymbals and my guitar. My next blog will be from the trip and I'll be sending lots of pics from my trusty cellular telephone-cam. I am really hoping that the handmade bike exhibit is still up at the airport. I haven't been able to see it, cause it's on the safe side of the security checkpoint.

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Alright, suckas, see you in New York!

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Eject

I know I'm asking an age old question, but here goes; how in the hell does the Portland transit authority convince so many noisy, dim witted, smelly people to ride? It's amazing!
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I spent some time in the garage last night working on the wheel. I had about 20 lbs of Grolleg, which is a clay body that can be a bit of a pain to work with. It is soft and supple, but it doesn't want to stand up to much work. It also doesn't particulary like water, so it was a bit frustrating and pretty exciting to work with it for the first time. Generally, Grolleg based porcelains contain a lot of Iron due to the addition of dirty plasticizers, like Bentonite. One resource suggests using Kaolin based Porcelains, but I don't know if it matters that much for me goofing around in my garage. The aspect I'm excited about with the G based, is that it is supposed to have a wonderful translucent quality when thrown thin and fired. I don't have a kiln or access to one right now, but when I do get to fire something, I'll post some pics.

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I picked up my cymbals from Diane's house yesterday along with my snare and bass drum pedal. I'm going to try to fit it all in my big bag, so that I don't have to check a bag in addition to my guitar, the thought of which is making me very nervous. I leave in two days. I'm excited to play in and visit New York City again. I'd like to have the opportunity more often, but wouldn't we all? Since all of my luggage space is full of musical equipment, I'm taking only two pair of underwear and socks. I'm only staying for two days. . .

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It's raining in Portland, imagine that.

Finally

I hate to admit that I haven't sat at a potter's wheel in almost 6 months. Unfortunately, it's true. I bought a used wheel a few weeks ago and it's been sitting in my garage taunting me. With school and life taking up most of my time, I haven't made time to throw. It's shameful, and it speaks to my need to address my lack of work ethic lately. Well, tonight I had a few minutes of free time so I wedged up some clay(on the floor, cause I don't have a proper wedging table) and made a pretty terrible cylinder. It was a cylinder, however and I'm glad I did it. Afterwards I threw a few more cylinders and burned through 25lbs of clay in less than an hour. I need to get some plaster so that I can wedge my work back to a dryer workable state a bit faster. Or I guess, I could just pick up some more clay. . . Either way I think I need to get a recycling situation in place.
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Um

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Quiz day

As I think about NYC, I'm getting more excited. The only major detractor, being my fear of my Japanese class. It's kicking my ass. I don't particularly feel like I'm getting smarter in Japanese. I missed class yesterday due to a training for work, and I'm cramming for a quiz that begins here in an hour. I guess we'll see how smart I really am. . .

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The sculpture studio at school still isn't finished. We're writing a letter to the Dean, to ask for some form of compensation. It's pretty ridiculous to be coming to the end of our third week of school and still not have a bench grinder or enough tables for everybody in the class to work. Plus there is no room to keep our projects or materials.

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ok, this has been nice, back to studying

Busy. . .

Friday was a very busy day! Some people at school decided to start a sculpture club. I am interested in joining a sculpture club, so I expressed interest. Well, Friday was a major training for officers of clubs. Every club had to have officers attend, and since the Sculpture Club is brand new, there aren't any officers. I received an email asking if I could attend any of the training. I was able and sat through hours of boring, informative meetings and lectures. Then, I went to Japanese  thoroughly unprepared. Feeling a bit downtrodden for being such an ass in Japanese, I rode home to get ready for a hectic weekend.

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Our friend's birthday was this weekend, so a bunch of us went to Rockaway Beach, Friday. The drive over was nice, with a beautiful sunset and a lot of traffic. We arrived at The Stairways to Heaven, seriously, that was what the cabin was called. It was very cool, but also very strange. There were 9 stairways in the place, since it was situated on a cliff overlooking a lovely waste reprocessing plant and the ocean. We played cards, danced and drank too many beers.

Saturday morning we had a really terrible breakfast at a local place. It took forever, the coffee was awful and the food was lukewarm. The weather, however, was wonderful and we did some walking on the beach afterwards.

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Our intention was to drive down the coast to Florence and then head to Eugene from there, since I had a show last night at the Wandering Goat. After 2 hours of driving behind very slow vehicles through dairy farm scented autumn sunshine, I decided to head east to I-5. Along the way we stopped at the Casino and threw a few bucks away playing slots. I lost $4 and Tiff made $.25, pretty typical of our relationship dynamic. We stopped in at Salem and had a delicious Philly Cheese Steak sandwich, which immediately made me feel like hell. The flavor was worth feeling bad, and I took a nap while Tiff drove for awhile.

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In Eugene we got to the Wandering Goat in time to visit with some old friends, and relax a bit. The show was packed, seeing as Calvin Johnson was the headliner. Afterwards, we drove back to Portland in time to get a decent night's rest in our own bed before doing all the chores, grocery shopping and homework we've been avoiding for the past few days. Had a good Valiant Arms practice today - last one before we head to NYC for CMJ. I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with gear at CMJ. I don't have to take a drumset, but I need a Guitar, Cymbals and probably my Snare. . . Now I'm rambling.

Action packed weekend

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Lunch for a week

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Monochromatic static

Bus, bus, bus, bus, bus, bus, bus, bus, bus, bus, bus, bus, bus, bus.
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Federale

In Federale, the lead singer is replaced by a whistler.
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Federale.is a great band!

Wow! These guys are fantastic! They perform score to imaginary western movies.
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