The ‘Dredge Report

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I think the Weakerthans is one of the great underrated bands of our time.   It’s not their music itself, which could quickly be relegated to “bar band” status in another context — it’s the songwriting. The tunes might be jangly americana-pop (or, canadiana-pop, I suppose), but the lyrics are sweet, clever, and dead-on.  Also, they wrote the saddest song of all time.  Read this before clicking on that last link, though.

A few days ago in one of Portland’s alt-weeklies, a music reviewer surmised that maybe the reason we love the band so much is that the lead singer sounds like Big Bird.  I thought about it for half a second and knew it to be true — he does sound like Big Bird!  And we all know and trust Big Bird; so loving, so naive, so ready to be a friend even after facing staunch rejection from his peers.

In any case, I’m moving tomorrow, on what’s sure to be one of the 5 hottest days of the year here in Portland, but my reward is seeing the Weakerthans tomorrow night. And at a venue with seats, no less. Could life get any better?

The past, we all know, was pretty boring. Except when technology makes it COME ALIVE.

#1: The Flickr group Looking Into the Past, where historical photos of interesting buildings or spaces are held up next to the buildings as they stand today.

#2: The Times Traveler blog, where the achingly matter-of-fact headlines from the Times 100 years ago are bereft of the kind of clever wordplay that ruins so many of today’s headlines.  Back then, you knew exactly what you were getting when you read “Dozen Hippopotami Attack Roosevelt — Natives Rowing His Boat Are Terrorized, but He Kills Two and Drives Off Others — Tows Spoils Back to Camp.”  And that’s just for starters, my friends.

She’s a braver woman than I: Carrie Brownstein is attempting to become a Phish fan – or at least give their music a fair shot – over the next week or two. Sadly, I have no excuse to take advantage of her meet-up offer, as I don’t own any Phish albums or bootlegs to share; indeed, like her before she started this project, I don’t think I’ve ever heard more than 15 seconds of a Phish song. Where’s Julian Sanchez when you need him?

However, I do like the idea behind her quest: take a band you’ve previously categorized as crappy, overrated, or “not my style,” and make a genuine attempt to listen to them and figure out why others are drawn to them. Can a diligent musical deep-dive a fanboy/fangirl make, or does it depend?

This is where I admit I’ve never listened to a single Grateful Dead album. If I were really honest with myself, I’d make myself do this experiment with a variety of prog rock bands, but in truth I’d rather slit my wrists.

I keep meaning to post something about Portland’s much-heralded transit system. I’m in a bit of a strange position because I had essentially been living a car-free lifestyle ever since going to college — the only exceptions being the summers I spent at home in Texas, when I used my parents’ cars. So, a brief recap of the public transit systems I came to know and love:

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I made a list yesterday of the number of discrete moves I’ve made since beginning college back in ’00.  “Discrete move” means any time that I packed up a bunch of stuff, put other stuff in storage (when applicable) and moved to a new location, even if it were a location I’d been in before (say, my parents’ house).  17 times, people.  17 times in 10 years.

Number of roommates? Also 17, interestingly.  I did not count anyone that I shared my college house (dorm) with, though arguably I should – yes, I lived with 80 other women and 20 on my floor alone, but I had my own room, so. This does not include my parents or brothers for all the summers I moved back home, though, again, they are arguably just as difficult as normal roommates, if not more so.  I did include my host parents in France, because they were strangers that I had to eat dinner with nightly and be cordial to, which resembles a roommate relationship, vaguely.  It does not include my craziest landlord ever, who didn’t live in the house she rented to me, per se, but dropped by unannounced, usually with strange men in tow, often enough to keep me paranoid. Oh, and there was the time she demolished the kitchen, leaving me to consume only dry goods for meals for, uh, 6 weeks?  Yeah, that bitch was crazy.

17 moves, 17 roommates. The only upside to this is that I probably have less “stuff” than most people, because I know that I’ll abandon it at the drop of a hat if it’s cheaper to sell it than move it. My proclivities towards throwing things away if I won’t need them within 6 months is more related to this “I will be moving again” mindset, plus some laziness, rather than an intrinsic desire to simplify my life by way of my belongings.

Before we find ourselves in August, I thought I’d force myself to get this post up about my adventures camping over the 4th of July weekend. RV and I and Pony drove up to Lost Lake, which is a tiny lake about 3,000 feet up Mount Hood with absolutely unbeatable views of the mountain and good camping sites. Getting there requires a lovely drive out to the Columbia River Gorge, through Hood River (a disgustingly picturesque town), past lots of vineyards, and eventually up a mountain on 20 miles of stomach-churning winding roads. Let’s start with major takeaways and Lessons Learned:

- Things I like about camping: Being outdoors; hiking; admiring lovely outdoorsy scenery; fresh air. Things I do not like about camping: Everything else. Including but not limited to: bugs; “camp food” consisting of smoke, more smoke, and char; bugs; sleeping on the ground; lack of proper facilities to maintain Western standards of hygiene. And did I mention bugs. As far as I’m concerned, Deep Woods OFF is a farce, and while Oregon is remarkably mosquito-free, there were these teeny-tiny little black bugs, the size of really large ticks, that just covered everything, from our trash bags to our gear to us. Eventually I said to hell with it, and put on a long-sleeved shirt in the 80-degree heat.

- Camp food fail: We had about a 50/50 success/failure rate on food cooked over the fire. Please note that Grand’s Biscuits may not be set on a camp stove and cooked to fruition, unless your picture of success is little golden hockey pucks that are burned on the bottom and dough-molten on the inside. All RV’s idea, by the way.

- Some great hikes, one around the lake itself and one absurd 2-mile, 1400-foot elevation death march to get to a strikingly beautiful vantage point to see both Mount Hood up close and Mount Adams in the distance. Worth it, but painful.

- This is such a First World thing to say, but man, do pit toilets in unlit outhouses ever scare the bejeezus out of me.

- Let’s just ignore the fact that I forgot my regular contact lens solution, instead bringing two bottles of the hardcore stuff that I dip my contacts into, in their little straightjacket case, and thus had to drive down to Hood River the second day to buy the right stuff. Massive failure on my part. I kept cleaning my lenses with this stuff that’s probably pretty close to hydrogen peroxide, then sticking them in my eye, thinking it was neutral saline solution, and, well, that sucked. I’m going to finally get serious about saving up for LASIK. The upside was that I stopped at a lavender farm near Hood River and got to cut some of my very own lavender, and now my car smells beautiful.

- I seen a deer! I think.

- As bad as camping is, it is so, so, so much better when there’s plenty of alcohol involved. This is what I didn’t grok from my camping experiences as a child, and likely why I hated them so much.

Photos galore:

I was reading some throwaway article online about hula hooping being the latest fitness craze — I believe it quoted Beyonce as saying she could hula hoop “literally for hours on end.” That’s when I was reminded of a cold truth: I still can’t hula hoop. Granted, there are many activities I’ve not experienced, let along mastered, skiing being at the top of that list due to the geographic and socioeconomic circumstances** of my upbringing, however! Hula hooping seems like one of those things that most reasonable people should be able to do. I’ll get right on it…after I buy a bike and re-learn to ride it.

**Note: Due to said circumstances, I developed a strange kind of cultural distaste for skiing because I naturally assumed that it was only for rich people, which is basically close to the truth, but still. Same goes for tennis. And yet I myself am stunned when friends admit to me that they’ve never been horseback riding.

Today I got home from work, went downstairs, and saw a line across the carpet. “Hmm, what’s that?” I thought.  Maybe slugs attacked, or the cat couldn’t make it to the litter box, or something equally gross.  Almost.  A half-inch wide trail of ants were making their way from a holl in one wall (which connects some pipes from inside to the hose outside, I assume) to the cat’s food bowl.  Say what you will about ants, but they’re diligent: they made their way from outside to inside, and 10 feet more, for some food.

At this point Splinter looked up at me as if to say, “The hell, woman. Can’t you even keep me in clean cat food?”

But I have four days of no work, starting now, and tomorrow I’m going camping here.  Me and RV (which is to say, Roommate V., not an actual Recreational Vehicle) camping will be a hilarious disaster of epic proportions, but it may also be fun. Wish me luck on driving two hours tomorrow morning with an overly-excitable Australian cattle dog.

(I know what you’re thinking: Her, camping? Listen peeps, I’ve got it all down: got my yoga mat packed for some asana-in-the-woods, and a couple of bottles of wine.  We should be fine.)

Let’s talk about Fun Things That Happen as You Age.  For example: adult-onset lactose intolerance!  Apparently it’s very common to develop this dread condition in your 20s and 30s, and yet this seems wholly unfair.  The universe gave me upwards of 25 years to develop an affection for the finest dairy-based goods in life: ice cream, milk, and cheeses ranging from the sharpest English cheddars to the runniest French Camemberts (True Story , until I went to college in Massachusetts, I never knew that cheddar cheese could be white instead of orange). And now, having developed that dairy-tooth, I’m coming to terms with giving up most of these beloved items.  I’m only slightly-heartened to find out that many others are in the same boat, with lactose intolerance rates being pretty high worldwide, depending on geography and race/ethnicity.

It’s a strange, lonely world, this one without lattés, milkshakes, pizza.  No more cereal with milk in the morning, which means no more cereal period, because I have a mental block about consuming cereal with soy or almond milk.  Actually, I have a mental block about consuming soy milk at all – I just can’t do it – though I do use almond milk in breakfast smoothies.  No more chocolate milk, a favorite childhood treat.  One of my favorite weekend breakfast treats is good cinnamon toast with a tall glass of milk: NO MORE!  No more provolone on my lunchtime sandwiches.  And have you noticed that at finer restaurants, virtually every dessert comes with a scoop of some fancily-flavored ice cream? WTFF is up with that?

Cheese is hit-or-miss, as you generally don’t sit down to consume a large pile of cheese all on its own.  Very small amounts seem to be okay, so I’m trying to limit myself to tiny quantities of the good stuff from Oregon and abroad.

Luckily, plain yogurt seems to be okay, since it’s low in lactose to begin with and comes with billions of delicious bacteria to counteract it.  [*Sidebar, you should all be taking probiotics. In a couple of years, government panels are going to be recommending that people pop these things like candy, as research is building that they’re good for you on a number of fronts].

So I’ve entered this new world of calcium supplements and actually thinking about the ingredients in things before I consume them. It’s weird and I don’t appreciate having to do it. But I do feel much better.  That said, if I ever find out I’m gluten-intolerant (I don’t think I am, happily), I expect to have a full-on nervous breakdown about having to give up bread.

I keep meaning to blog about things besides, say, the minor annoyances that plague my day-to-day existence.  For example, I finally got around to skim-reading the report released last week by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission.  It is horrifically depressing and yet not at all surprising, and as others have noted, what’s striking about the Commission’s recommendations is how mind-bogglingly basic they are.  Things like: Do better background checks on prison guards.  Have clear-cut written zero-tolerance standards on sexual abuse in correctional facilities.  Things that should have been in place long ago.

Minimizing or eliminating sexual abuse in any “closed society,” whether it be a religious sect or a correctional system, is an immense legal and cultural challenge.  In the spirit of, “Wow, I can’t believe we still make jokes about this stuff,”  consider doing as I did and making a small donation to Just Detention International, which seems to be The Organization that is advocating for change on this issue.