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A couple days ago I blogged about a treasured jazz discovery and all the old-school analog work I had to do to go about acquiring it. I closed the post with an adieu about digitizing an album of Civil War music I listened to regularly in my youth. I thought it had been loooong-lost, but in fact had been in my collection all  all this time — rediscovered serendipitously when I went searching for the LP with that jazz number on it.

So, in the wake of the epic battle waged yesterday between north and south with the highly favored regiment from Indiana engaging underdog troops from Louisiana, I salute the victors and  opportunistically offer up one of my favorite tracks from the 50-year-old platter, the somber and saintly “All Quiet Along The Potomac Tonight,” by Col. Beauregard and the Volunteers:

PS. The French horns always make me choke-up.

It was during the Minnesota/New Orleans NFC championship game a couple weeks ago that I looked up at our livingroom’s built-in shelves and saw a long-standing decorative touch of Susan’s that made me realize not only who was going to win that game, but who was going to win the big one they’ll be playing in later today:

Geaux Saints!

What a difference a couple decades makes. Nowadays if I hear a song on the radio, I simply open up my Shazam app on my iPhone point it in the direction of the noise and in a few seconds … well, SHAZAM I have the artist, the track title, and various links to listen and/or buy an MP3 of it.

Fast-backward with me tto one afternoon  in 1986. I was coming home from work driving north on Fulton Avenue listening to KKGO, then L.A.’s jazz station and the song being played was this rousing tune from some unknown big band that hooked me right from the toe-tapping start and featured an amazing dialogue of two tenor saxophones talking back and forth throughout. I was so entranced by the tight and hard-swinging number that when it was still going strong after I go to my apartment building I sat in my parked car listening to its end — and I’m so glad I did because it finished with a sax solo so effing JAZZ it gave me chills and I wanted it to keep going forever. But it didn’t, and when the DJ didn’t give me any info on it and instead went right into the next song, I sat in my car listening to that in its entirety with my fingers crossed that he would come back and give me some sort of clue.

My prayers were partially answered in that he did come back on air and quickly list the last several artists and what I heard for the second to last one sounded like “The Catearse Orchestra.”

You kids in the audience need to understand that in those dark days there was no running to a computer and extracting data from a search engine. Sure I could’ve dialed up a BBS at the blazing speeds my 400-baud modem was capable of and posted a question on one of the forums then waited around for an anwer, but the odds of anyone knowing were slimity slim.

So what I did in those analog days was start my car, back out of my parking space and roll a few miles to the nearest record store — in this case it was  The Wherehouse on Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. Inside I went and asked the nearest clerk if he knew anything about the “The Catearse Orchestra.” Shaking his head he pointed me to a massive phonebook-sized reference, which apparently listed all albums currently in print and available on earth.

I dove in and dug through it, but found nothing. Bummed but not beaten I came back home and gave the station a call.  When someone finally picked up I told them my plight about hearing a great song but not being able to find any record of the band at the record store.

“What’s the name?”

“Something like ‘The Catearse Orchestra?’”

And the person on the other end laughed. “No wonder you couldn’t find them. It’s ‘Capp/Pierce!’ as in Frank Capp and Nat Pierce. And the song you’re looking for is called “Little Pony” off their “Juggernaut Strikes Again!” album.”

“How do you know?” I asked, writing all that down.

“Because I’m the one who played it!”

Now it was my turn to laugh and thank the DJ. Then I raced down to my car armed with those facts, drove back to The Wherehouse,  went straight to the jazz section and when I didn’t find it in stock I dove back into the book, found Capp/Pierce, found the album and  went through the motions of special ordering the platter.

A week or so later it arrived. I brought it home, through it on my Marantz turntable, reveled in  it, and my musical landscape was never the same.

And now through the magic of my wonderful USB turntable, I can share the song with you — and in case you’re interested the two tenors are Bob Cooper and Pete Christlieb:

Now, while searching for that Capp/Pierce album in my LP collection I’m amazed to have found another that is a huge aural touchstone of my childhood. So if you’ll excuse me I’m off to digitize the heavily-scratched tracks from Whitehall Records’ “The Sound Of The Confederacy,” by Col. Beauregard Johnson and the Volunteers, an album I absolutely cherish and have not listened to in perhaps 35 years and thought long lost.

A front-page story in today’s LA Times details the mysterious struggles brown pelicans up and down the coast are having to survive.

Yesterday, biking to work in the morning along Ballona Creek between Overland and Sepulveda I found heartbreaking proof of that:

I stood where I was looking for movement, but there was none. Had there been even the slightest sign it was still alive you know damn well I would’ve stopped the world and been over the fence and down that bank like a shot to do I don’t even know what to try and help the poor thing. Because that’s how I roll.

But there was nothing I could do for a creature so magnificent to watch course through the air and so sad to see it downed there.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the general marginalization and rejection of cycling in Los Angeles and something dawned on me that may be sociological or profound. Or both. Or neither.

I realized — while biking, of course — that here in this city, content isn’t nearly the king that the container is. Instead of our characters being of influence, we are judged — and make judgments — based on what we put ourselves in, from our clothes to our cars to our homes.

We basically can’t help it. Sure, we’re all quick to spout the old adage about books and their covers, but it’s a weak line of defense given how early we were indoctrinated and are propaganized all our lives about how meaningful and fulfilling the superficial and material is. Possessions are power! Style is status!

On that level, it’s not about who you are, it’s about what you wear. No one cares what you think so much as what you drink. It’s not what you’ve done or where you’ve been, but what automobile you drive to get where you’re going.  And where you’re going better be a snazzy place full of snazzy stuff inside a snazzy zip code.

As such, one of our ingrained drives as card-carrying homo angelenii is to make money so that we can afford those things. And if we don’t have that wealth than we put ourselves in debt to acquire those things. And if we don’t have the credit rating, than we covet. Some who covet too much, resort to crime to achieve such things.

None of that should be revalatory. It’s how we function. We are consumers in a consumable world. Relentlessly bombarded with how important it is to surround ourselves with symbols that engender regard and define us as better people, we are powerless not to.

(more…)

Stopped on Redondo Boulevard waiting for the green to continue south across Pico Boulevard on my way to Venice Boulevard on my way to work this morning, there I was just minding my own business when came an “Excuse me?” from the woman driving the vehicle that pulled beside me on my left that got my attention.

I replied “Yes, ma’am?” And listened to her request for assistance, which I then provided.

But I’ll quit writing about it now and let you listen and observe the brief encounter, as caught by my sunglasses cam:

The What:  The 8 Presidents Ride
The When: Saturday, February 13; Gathers at 10 a.m., departs at 10:30.
The Where: Meet at Wilshire and Hoover by the tennis courts on the south side of Wilshire across from Lafayette Park.
The Where We Going: About 30 miles, pretty flat; the route is mapped here. Ride ends where it begins.
The How: This is a casually paced ride, probably averaging around 10-15 mph. There will be improvised snack/drink stops along the way and No Rider Left Behind. Helmets encouraged, so are functioning street-able bikes, along with the gear needed to fix any flats that may occur.
The Why: The why not?

Pretty uneventful commute this morning. Everything was safe and sane and the most interesting thing I encountered being an elderly gent in full suit and tie — looking like someone straight outta Copenhagen — biking south on La Brea this morning as I was stuck on 4th behind a line of cars waiting for the green. I was hoping to catch him and get a nice image to share, but sadly I didn’t catch up with him until I got to Wilshire and by then he’d hung a right and was west and out of angle and range of any decent image my sunglasses cam could capture.

But I certainly caught this guy who made me sigh as he rolled the red at 4th and Normandie while I waited for it (click for the slightly bigger picture):

First things first: I love that this guy’s out there on his bike, using it to get from his A to his B. He is simply righteous and awesome because of that and I applaud him. And I award bonus points for having the brains to protect his brains. And furthermore, when I arrived at the intersection, he was even more righteously and awesomely stopped and considerately awaiting the green on the other side of the street.

Or so it seemed. Because in the blink of the Don’t Walk sign, the good Dr. Cykyl sudeenly turned into the evil Mr. Ryde and he ran it — you’ll note from the opposing traffic signal that the crosswalk counter was at 3 by the time he reached the above point. So for the sake of argument maybe it was at 5 or 6 when he commenced.

Dude couldn’t've waited all of one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand, five one-thousand six one-thousand? Clearly not.

But see here’s the deal from my hunched and curmudgeonly perspective over the handle bars. I am in no kind of second-shaving hurry when I’m on a bike. Certainly I’m not always ahead of schedule when I ride, but rarely do I saddle up intent on undertaking a trans-city time trial. Instead of aiming to get there as fast as humanly and illegally possible, it’s pretty much a given that I’ll get there when I get there. I’m on a freakin’ bike for crank’s sake.

Not to be the pot calling the kettle black, over the course of my life as a cyclist, I’m guilty of jumping a red or 200. But if I do so, it’s usually after some interminable wait at an intersection whose sensors won’t ever detect my bike and is devoid of any traffic, cross or otherwise. And honestly when I am seen committing such a violation, even if it’s by a motorist way up or down the street,there’s a twinge of embarrassment involved. Crazy, right?

I prefer “conscientious.”

Because showing my fellow travelers that some of us cyclists do obey the law and respect others’ right of way is worth far more to me than that 12th of a minute the fellow saved reinforcing the popular myth that cyclists don’t give a shit about the rules or how we look breaking them.

If we haven’t reached (or maybe passed) the second anniversary of  the firing of our gardeners then it’s probably fast approaching. We shitcanned them after I caught them violating our adamant ban of gas-powered leaf blowers — whose residential use is against civic ordinance anyway, but it’s a mostly unenforceable statute most every corner-cutting sumbitch and the property owners who employ them loves to break.

Except us. But apparently Susan and I are in the city-wide minority who operate upon a “do unto your neighbors as you would have them do unto you” platform.

So for the past couple years in this troubled economy, give or take a couple months, we’ve saved the $80 a month spent on a scofflaw crew, and instead I have been the Chief Landscape Administrator armed with an electric weed whacker and hedger — along with a collection of rakes, shovels and brooms. Plus there’s the tiller I got at Susan’s request three Christmases ago, and the old-school push mower she got me at my urging two seasons’ past.

I’m pretty dependable in the execution of my duties but I must confess I’ve been derelict in denuding the backyard of its wild grasses and weeds, which have grown pretty rampant thanks to the abundance of recent rains.

Long story short: I made up for lost time and busted out the Homelite whacker. Plugging it in to the business end of a 75-foot extension cord I engaged the hostile growth indiscriminately to victory. And while I can’t claim that I beat back every blade of grass out there,  I’m proud to say that a couple hours later I’d whipped the place into far better shape than its been in a while.

Such is my exciting weekend.

Well after a quiet start to these first few weeks of 2010, I made up for lost flats last night. Got three — count ‘em: three! — on the ride home from work. Silly me: Earlier in the day I’d actually dared to consider that I might get through the first month of the new year without one. Jinx!

But before anyone gets all preachy about a flat’s occurrence being in direct proportion to the cheapness of the tire involved,  understand that I finally took that sage advice and instead of my usual $14.99 brand I have been rolling on a pair of $40-each Continental Gatorskins since the latter third of December.

I’m no stranger to flats. Over the course of the 6,741 miles I rode in 2009 I had to fix 31 of the suckers — and a lot of them had to do with the crappy tires I used.

But with last night’s first two flats even the touted Gatorskins were helpless to prevent them. Witness my assailant, newly developed on Centinela just west of Sepulveda thanks to last week’s rains (click for the bigger picture):

Sure, you’d think something this gargantuan as this freaking crater of doom could be avoided by a cyclist even half as alert as I usually am, but the problem began with a broken patch of roadway just out of frame to the left that I’d dodged to the right.  Coming past that hazard I came left to get out of the debris-filled gutter and with no room for oversteering I ended up zigging a little too far back into the lane and the next thing before me was this monstrous black hole looming. At about 15 mph all I could do was roll through it. And pray.

Dropping in the trench was no problem. But coming out the other end over what amounted to a sheer continental shelf? Problematic. It was like trying to climb over a sword’s edge. I felt and heard the clang as the  front tire compressed and the pothole’s edge came into contact with the wheel’s rim. Then came the inevitable POP!-sssshhhhhhhhhhh.

Little did I realize that when my rear tire followed the front over the sharp edge of asphalt it couldn’t help but do the same thing. And since it popped only a micro-second apart from the front I didn’t know I’d double-flatted until I came to rim-riding stop about 100 yards down the street.

Wow! My first-ever double flat. Never in my long history as bicycler had I experienced such a predicament. Had it happened in front of a bar I might’ve gone inside to celebrate the milestone, but instead in that desolate and dark no-man’s land I just grumbled, turned the bike wheels-up and got busy swapping out the popped tubes with the two spares I’m never without.

Thirty minutes later 8Ball was mobility-enabled again, and after returning to the scene of the crime to snap the above shot of the culprit, I got the hell on my way.

Not more than three miles later, on the Ballona Creek Bikeway approaching Overland Avenue, I feel my rear tire going flat, and as I slowed cursing, my first thought is that the existing patch on the replacement tube, which had been salvaged from a previous flat, had failed. So I pulled over, and called Susan to alert her as to why I would be home much later than I’d hoped.

She graciously asked if I wanted her to come pick me and the bike up, but I was game to do one more flat fix, and while on the phone with my hand spinning over the rear wheel, I chanced upon a protrusion from the allegedly bullet-proof tread of the Gatorskin. Telling her I’d take her up on her kind offer if I had a fourth flat, I soon extracted the organic little demon pictured below, partially pissed that the 1/8th-inch bastard had breached the tire’s touted defense system… and partially relieved  that it wasn’t the previous patch that had failed (click  for the bigger picture):

In short order I’d applied a glueless patch to the puncture, and after immortalizing the pointy thing that caused it got on with the rest of the ride home — flat free.

UPDATE (10:38 a.m.): As expected, I found the rear tire flat this morning. Glueless patches should never be considered anything more than a temporary fix. Even if the tire was still full this morning I would have deflated it and replaced it with a far more durable glued patch.