Brisk - Airhead (SMD remix)

I’ll talk about San Francisco later.

Made it to Ukiah, the biggest town in Mendocino. Came up through Napa, which is beautiful, and then around Lake Clearwater. I’d heard of it as a hippie town, center of the marijuana growing industry.

Ukiah is the sketchiest fucking place I’ve ever stayed, and that includes several cheap motel districts, South Central among them.

My first thought was “wow, for a hippie town, that’s a lot of signs advertising assault rifles”.

My second thought, driving down the street was “wow, there sure are a lot of institutions that deal with abandoned children”.

Then I checked in at my motel, and walking across the parking lot there was a normal-looking couple in a normal-looking truck, and the woman waved me over and asked, all friendly, “hey, do you happen to know where I could find-” and her voice here dropped like 15 decibels - “some crack?”

I didn’t, but she went knocking on other doors at the motel and I guess someone did, because a while later she was back out in the parking lot very loudly imitating a chicken.

The internet told me the bar one way down the road was a meth den with cheap drinks, I tried the other way and there was a microbrewery with a reggae band playing and young people with dreadlocks dancing. So that was a bit better, but you listen to the conversations and their lives had an absurd amount of violence in them. Not even related to criminal enterprises or feuds or anything, just absolutely pointless violence between friends and lovers. One girl was complaining about how this guy was avoiding her after she beat him up after he threatened to blow her foot off with a shotgun. One of the stories on the front page of the local newspaper was a 27 year old man who was arrested for - while driving! - severely beating his passenger girlfriend in the head and attempting to force a knife sharpener down her throat.

Also I had random people driving by yell at me on the way to and from the bar. One called me “fatass”, one called me “faggot”.

Dude I don’t even know. Apparently it’s still harvest season, when hippies and drifters from all over flood in to trim the marijuana crop for pretty good pay. And judging from cowboys and sailors when a bunch of transients get their pay all at once things get wooly. Maybe it’s different the rest of the year.

Finally, passed by a bunch of tents in a park on the main drag. From experience in Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and San Francisco, I assumed this was #OccupyUkiah. Turns out it was a Boy Scout camping event for the Pumpkin Festival.

Vinylgroover - Freedom

Force & Styles - Field of Dreams

PinkiePieSwear - Sunshine and Celery Stalks

this is the guy who did Flutterwonder. respect.

I was reading a local newspaper at dinner tonight, saw this comic from a strip called Crock I’d never heard of, and was like

wut

Is this supposed to be some surprisingly dirty double entendre? It can’t be, because the “innocent” meaning MAKES NO SENSE.

Apparently this strip also caught the attention of The Comics Curmudgeon.

I assumed this was a new strip, terrible like all the new ones, apparently it’s an old one, terrible like all the old ones. It debuted in 1975, and it’s about the French Foreign Legion. These two characters are prisoners.

wut

Sy & Demo - Devotion (Sy & Demo ‘98 remix)

LP - Dreams

Oh man this was a tough one to fact-check. Discogs had nothing and I had to do some detectiving. Made harder by the fact that the line sampled has been used in like a jillion different dance tracks. Ended up doing some Wayback Machine work.

So the story goes like this: in 1970, Tim Buckley released a track called Song to the Siren. In 1983, Cocteau Twins did a cover released under the banner of the This Mortal Coil project. In 1992, Messiah sampled this version for a choon called Temple of Dreams that became a big rave anthem. From there on everyone covered/remixed it. This version by LP was only ever released on mp3.com from late 1999 to mid-2001. We’re talking about this LP, for the record.

Nakatomi - Sing (happy gabba mix)

Until I checked Discogs just a few minutes ago, I thought this was the goofiest, most cringeworthy thing Nakatomi ever released. Turns out no.

Nakatomi is Alice Deejay.

And also Vengaboys.

Wut.

Ashland, Oregon is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which means that in the off-season the downtown is a little over-swanky and there are a lot of stores with Shakespeare puns or references for names. Seems nice enough. Kinda small.

Best road trip story of the road trip:

So I’ve been having some electrical problems with the bike. First noticed it coming out of San Francisco. Lower deck of the bridge, they said turn your lights on, I did, and then when I came out of the bridge the bike died. On I-80. Luckily enough, I glided to a stop *directly* in front of a CalTrans tow truck helping someone else, he gave me a jump and I kept on from there.

In Ukiah I realized I just couldn’t run the bike with lights on or it’d die. Fine enough, it ran okay with the lights on and I’d just drive it in the daytime. In Eureka I had a mechanic check the battery - it was low, and the voltage didn’t change when I revved it, so it seemed like the charging system was dead. So he charged it up, and I thought I’d just take it up through the daytime until I got to Portland, which had enough of a vintage scene that someone might actually have parts and expertise for a ‘68 Honda.

So I’m heading from Ashville to Eugene today, and of course instead of taking the straight route up I-5 through populated territory, I take the scenic route that crosses the mountains east then heads north through a huge forest and then crosses the mountains back west.

Daytime, lights off, I’m driving through the forest, and the engine starts to fade out. 13 miles after I gassed up, so not that. So I kick it down to 4th, and get a bit further. 3rd, 2nd, and then it conks out and I can’t even kickstart it. And I’m like “well, shit”.

So the last civilization I saw was 13 miles ago, and the sign says 12 to the next place, so I start pushing. Drop it into second on a downhill but it doesn’t even try to turn over. But then this pickup truck towing a trailer passes me and pulls over to the side, and when I get there this guy waves me over. His name is Graham, and he’s a 30-year-old fireman who’s going my way towards Bend to pick up his brother and old chief to go deer hunting in Montana, and he offers to give me a lift out of the forest. He doesn’t have a ramp, but lifting together we manage to git-r-done the thing up into the bed ('cause he’s a fireman), where he has some tiedown ropes ('cause every guy between 12 and 40 north of San Francisco seems to drive dirt bikes).

So we head down the road and he makes some calls to a friend in Bend to ask about mechanic, and the friend tells him this guy they knew in high school lives in Bend and works on motorcycles and is, in fact, listed on couchsurfing.com as someone who puts up motorcyclists for the night for free, so he drops me off there. Eventually. On the way, we have some good discussions on the way, he tells me about firefighting and the story behind each roadside cross we pass, I tell him about ridiculous politics back in LA.

So I get to the dude’s house, his name is Keith, and he’s friendly in your standard gruff bike mechanic way, we pop the seat and check the battery… and it’s fully charged. But the thing won’t start, headlight won’t come on. We check a lot of things, then finally think to check the ignition fuse, turns out that’s blown. So we pop in a new fuse, and the thing runs fine. We even test the voltage across the battery terminals and when I rev it it goes up to 13, which means it’s charging. So the alternator’s working.

He actually tweaks a lot of little things I hadn’t even noticed, gives me some advice about what to do with my oil leaks and some other things. So I ask him, you think this’ll make it to Eugene, and also you know the best way? And he’s like well I dunno, wouldn’t recommend it this time of night (it’s like 830 at this point), but I prepaid for two nights at a hotel there so he gives me a bunch of 20v fuses to take with me.

So the route from Bend to Oregon is about 120 miles over a mountain pass. I get gas and a Subway sandwich and layer my clothes up at the last stop before the run. Like Jersey, all the gas stations are full service, only for motorcycles they don’t actually handle the pumping, which means that someone just comes out, swipes my credit card through the pump, and then watches me pump gas, which is kind of weird. So there’s this guy there shooting the shit with the attendant, and then he asks about the bike, and I tell him I’m heading to Eugene, and he’s all “aw dang, this time of night?” and insists on buying me a coffee.

So I go about 80 miles just fine, and my light’s brighter than I remember it being and the throttle’s more responsive too. And then it starts to die just like it did earlier, and I’m like “yep, this is happening”.

So I try switching fuses again and okay, it starts, but only lasts like 30 seconds. Through trial and error I realize that it’s not that, it’s that I just leave the bike to sit, it’ll work again, and I can run it forever, but only about 1 minute of lights for every 5 minutes of sitting. And that’s not going to help much.

So then I remember that I have two keychain AA flashlights and a handful of zip-ties in my backpack.

So I strap the flashlights onto the bike, and together in the middle of the pitch-black wilderness they’re just enough to see the white and yellow lane lines, and I drive at about 35 the rest of the way to Eugene like that, saving my headlight for when there’s a car coming. At some point I actually *do* blow another fuse and have to replace it.

Eventually close enough to the city I can’t keep the lights up for everyone, and everyone I pass is telling me my light is out, and I’m like yeah, I know. And eventually some undercover cop or one of those rapey fake cops, 'cause he’s got lights in a '90s Isuzu with a Reagan sticker on the back flashes me over and same as everyone, he’s like “your light is out” and I’m like “oh man, I know” and tell him the story, and he puts on his lights and escorts me to the motel I made reservations at, where I showed up at 1:30 AM.

So maybe the regulator’s shot? That’s the only thing left, and I guess it might explain why the same problem could both drain the battery (too low voltage to charge properly?) *and* blow a 20v fuse (too high voltage)? Or something’s acting as a capacitor that shouldn’t be, which might explain why I can make the bike work again by leaving it to sit (and discharge).

Or gremlins.

(COMMENT: 10/26/11: 11 out of 18 paragraphs here begin with “so”)

limegl0wstix:

Vinylgroover & Trixxy - Can You Feel It
Prime Recordings, 1999 [PME001]

Trixxy - Sunrise
Blatant Beats, 1999 [BB-10] 

It’s like they made a song and Trixxy said, “You know what would be really cool?  If we put Tubular Bells in there.”  
And then Vinylgroover was like, “No dude, that’s totally gay.”  
And Trixxy was like, “I bet if I put Tubular Bells, it’s gonna become a massif rave anthem and popular as all shit.  It’s going to be the song that signifies the end of the decade and welcomes happy hardcore to the new millennium.”  
And then Vinylgroover was like, “Psh, whatever.  Go make your own track then.” 
Then Trixxy was all, “Fine then, I will.  Same echoing vocals, same strings, same chords, same synth.  I’ll even put the little chiming bell thingies. Just, y’know, Tubular Bells.” 

And then Trixxy did, and then all of his prophecies came true.

nedhepburn:

I’m glad we finally got back at the Libyans for killing Doc Brown all the way back in 1985. That’s why we’re doing this, right? I forget why we’re involved in Libya. I’m assuming it has something to do with Back To The Future. 

DJ Seduction - Sub Dub (Storm remix)

The vocals come from an English folk song called “Bushes and Briars”:

Through bushes and through briars I lately took my way;
All for to hear the small birds sing and the lambs to skip and play

The internet attributes this particular sample to either a Maddy Prior recording of the song, which I can’t find online, or to Bumble’s West In Motion (Haunted Mix), which sounds right but might be a Prior sample for all I know.

pinkiepieswear:

kevinsano:

puellamagikonekomagica:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Is this even possible!?

This is just ridiculously awesome…