The Mitchells vs. The MachinesNetflixI don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a long time. Just a really well-executed movie across the board. Seriously, drop what you’re doing and go watch it. I’ll wait… See! I was right!
Into the Mystical and Inexplicable World of Dowsing Outside Magazine In high school I worked on a maintenance crew out at Shoreline park in Mountain View. We planted trees, built retaining walls, installed fencing. One cold morning a contractor showed up with auger attached to the back of his Jeep to drill holes for fence posts along one of the overflow lots for Shoreline Amphitheater next door. Our supervisor got told him where we wanted to drill and the man took out two bent welding rods and proceeded to dowse the drilling spot to determine whether he’d hit anything. 17-year-old paranomal-obsessed Jordy was gobsmacked and pumped the guy for details about what dowsing. He said he does it before every dig just to be safe. He pointed out that back in 1985 when he was hired to drill for extra fencing around Stanford stadium in preparation for the Superbowl that year he told the foreman he couldn’t drill at the indicated site because there was an electrical run underground. The foreman insisted, saying the electrical run was safely a few feet away. The guy shrugged and drilled and hit a power line that blacked out the entire block. This story reminded me of that guy. Science says dowsing isn’t real. I know what I saw – on that hillside he correctly located a gas line safely ten yards away from the proposed fence line. It wasn’t marked on the ground, but our supervisor verified it against a map later. Cool stuff.
How The Pentagon Started Taking UFOs Seriously The New Yorker Wow, first dowsing, now UFOs… Didn’t expect this to get all paranormal themed! A really well written article about, well, how the pentagon started taking UFOs seriously. It’s grounded in real people and no one is written off as crazy. UFOs may or may not be from across the galaxy, but it’s worth looking in to at least.
The Bad Batch Disney+ Okay, I’ll be honest, this was the Star Wars series I didn’t think I needed. I mean, I’ve watched all of Clone Wars – even the continuation that came out last year (where the Bad Batch were introduced). I’ve watched all of Rebels. I even tried to get through Resistance – and maybe that was it. Maybe that was when I felt I’d reached Peak Animated Star Wars. Well, I was wrong. Beginning in the Star Wars timeline right about act 3 of Revenge of the Sith, it picks up at a dramatic time that hasn’t been explored too much (at least in film or cartoons). First two episodes have dropped as of this writing and I’m all in!
Sam Pilgrim YouTube “Sam Pilgrim (born 4 June 1990) is a professional freeride Mountain biker. Known for his missing tooth and his unique style of tricks, he gained international fame with his YouTube channel exposure under his name Sam Pilgrim in which he makes videos documenting his extreme stunts on various courses around the world. He is an FMB World Tour overall winner in 2013, becoming the first European athlete to win the competition since its establishment in 2010.” That’s from his Wikipedia page. I went there after I watched too many videos on his YouTube page. Look, I know absolutely nothing about freeride mountain biking. But I know his videos are a lot of fun to watch. And he comes across as the nicest guy in the world. Seriously, this ridiculously talented guy has nothing but the kindest things to say about everyone else around him. It doesn’t matter it’s a mediocre trick — “That’s EPIC!” “Whoa, living the dream!” Go to his channel and watch a few of his videos. I think this was the first video I watched. Careful, it’s addictive.
Not actually Jasmine. But same model, same year, same color. *sigh*
One of last week’s Five Things was Bring A Trailer and in the description, I mentioned a recent auction they had for a 1974 Honda CB360G motorcycle in practically mint condition. Since watching the walk-around video in the listing and listening to the engine settle into its sewing-machine like parallel-twin cadence, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about my old 1974 CB360T, or, as I called her, Jasmine. Remembering exploits on that thing remind me of the crazy, idealistic, reckless kid I was. There’s the old saying, “God looks out for old folks and fools,” well… I wasn’t an old man, but somehow I survived that transition from teenager to “adult” on that CB360 — which, I will note, had the same birthday as I did: October, 1974.
That wasn’t the first thing I noticed when I saw the motorcycle. Shawn had just gotten off at Orchard Supply Hardware and one of his coworkers was selling it. I noticed the color first – a teal green. It was the nineties, after all, and I don’t know how that color went over in 1974, but in the early nineties it fit right in. I also noticed it wasn’t running. Shawn was confident we could get it running easily. One of the mistakes I’d made was trusting Shawn’s mechanical acumen. I mean, he told us he rebuilt the engine in his Chevy stepside pickup himself and that was a lot more than any of us did, so…
I usually refer to the CB360 as my first motorcycle, but that’s not quite true. The summer after my dad died, I picked up a smaller Honda CB200. That first motorcycle was short lived. It was 1991 and we nicknamed that CB200 “Perot” because you never knew if it would run or not — nothing as evergreen as a 90’s political joke. It wasn’t long, though, until Perot wouldn’t go into first gear. Shawn said we could fix it. It would be easy. We’d have to “crack the cases” to get to the transmission, but that was fine. We started dissembling the bike, then we pulled the engine. To keep track of what nut and bolt went where, Shawn had a great system: everything went into a bucket. One bucket. All. The. Nuts. And. Bolts.
Perot (my Perot) never ran again. We never did crack the case. And knowing what goes into that process, it’s for the best.
But I suspect Shawn was feeling a little guilty for Perot’s fate when we looked at the CB360. “It’s just the carbs – we can rebuild those!” he said. I still believed him. Come to think of it, his truck never did seem to run perfectly. But I didn’t think about that then. We got it back to the garage at the house on Bonita we had moved to not too many months back and started working. True enough, it was just the carbs. Though, I think I managed to mess up the rebuild of at least one. But I learned. And soon enough Jasmine coughed to life.
So a note on the name “Jasmine.” Given when I got her (again, early nineties) I think most of my friends believed I had named the motorcycle after princess Jasmine in the Disney animated movie “Aladdin.” Not true. No, there was a flowering jasmine bush outside my window and in the morning I loved waking up to the smell of jasmine coming in through my (always) open window. Similarly, working on the motorcycle I found myself drawn to the smells of things in the garage – the metallic tang of used motor oil, the stale funk of old gasoline, the acerbic sting of carb cleaner. It wasn’t some kind of “Let’s huff fumes!” attraction, it was more that this was the olfactory imprint of the mechanical world, of a well-used garage and tools, and I was falling in love with it, like I had fallen in love with the morning scent of that jasmine bush. Jasmine. That’s where it comes from.
In high school I had the luxury of not relying on Jasmine as my primary transportation. I had a car (oh, stories there…), and I even acquired an old Spanish moped that my mom sewed a tiger striped seat cover for, I hose clamped a golf flag to the back, and with my Little Mermaid lunchbox bungied onto the front rack I’d mosey to school more often than not with my Birkenstock-clad feet stretched out on the running boards.
Yeah, I was that kid.
But I sold my car to pay for part of the first year at UCSC, and the moped wasn’t going to make it to Santa Cruz, so anytime I wanted to go farther than the bus would take me I had to rely on Jasmine. For a kid born in 1974, I was just coming into my own in 1993. But for a Honda twin of the same age, it was vintage. And I was pushing it way beyond what I should have…
The RA of my dorm that first year, Sol, and his friends were putting together the Cigar Aficionado club. It was their way of sort of putting a finger in the eye of the UC Santa Cruz hippie image, and I wanted in. I told my then-girlfriend about it and she couldn’t have more strenuously objected. She thought it was disgusting and how could I even think about it? That was a long-distance relationship that carried over from high school. She had gone to UC Berkeley, and I to UC Santa Cruz. I cared about her opinion even if she wasn’t there and I told Sol in the dining hall at lunch I wasn’t going to take part in that night’s first gathering. I still vividly remember what he said: “Jordy,” he had this cadence and presence that reminded me of Vito Corleone even though he was from Fremont, California, “I totally understand.” Dramatic pause. “But I’m going get an extra cigar for you in case you change your mind before tonight.” I thanked him, but assured him I wouldn’t be there.
After lunch I decided to take advantage of the gorgeous fall day and go for a ride. I still try to go back to Santa Cruz in the fall because the smell of the leaves mixed with the sea breeze… it’s utterly intoxicating. My mom forbid me to take the underpowered motorcycle on the notoriously dangerous Highway 17, so I knew well the serpentine Highway 9 that ran through the Santa Cruz mountains from Los Gatos to Santa Cruz, meandering through little towns among the redwoods. But on the other side of town ran Empire Grade, a road I’d never heard of (this was way before I could trace it on Google Maps) but looked inviting. I strapped on my helmet, zipped up my leather jacket and pointed Jasmine up Empire Grade.
We passed the West Entrance to campus and the road swept up and carried us out of sight. As the road climbed parts of it reminded me of the roads around Lake Tahoe where, only a few years before I’d ridden my bicycle with the redwoods giving way to pines as the road traced the ridge between the coast and the inner forests. Where the bike was underpowered on a contemporary freeway, this road with its gentle sweeping curves and undulating rises and falls were a perfect match and I was enjoying the hell out of it. I came over a rise and twisted the throttle to gain a little more momentum for the next rise ahead… and the throttle cable snapped.
I coasted to the side of the road and realized, for the first time in my life, I was stranded. The University lay at least a dozen miles back down the road. There were no cell phones back then, and even now there’s relatively no service up there. I was screwed. I locked my bike and tried hitchhiking – I’d already seen plenty of folks around campus hitchhiking into town and even if the notion scared the crap out of me what choice did I have? But it wasn’t a well-traveled road, and the dozen or so cars that passed didn’t even slow.
I went back to the bike and tried to reassess the problem. The Honda CB360 has a parallel twin engine with two carbs behind the cylinders with a little wheel between them that housed the throttle cable. Twist the grip, the cable gets pulled, the carbs open to let in more gas and air. The motorcycle still ran just fine. It just… idled, and that was it. But maybe I could feather the clutch to get a little motion and even if I had to push uphill, there were enough downhills that maybe I could coast it back – I mean it was Empire Grade after all. So I sat astride the bike, kick started it to life (the optional electric starter had long since died), pulled in the clutch, stepped down into first, and tried feathering the clutch. It… really didn’t work. But… you know… if I could get my hand down under the seat just so… between the carbs and the crankcase… if I could move my fingers in there between the carbs and push that wheel….
Vroom!
Holy crap.
Half bent over the right side of the bike, I manipulated the throttle again and, sure enough, the RPMs went up. I experimentally let the clutch out a little as I hunched over and gave it a little gas and… I was moving again! Yes, I only one hand on the handlebars. And, yes, I had the other arm contorted under my seat, but, goddamnit, I was moving again! I could make it home!
I knew it was crazy dangerous at the time. How do I know I knew? Because at some point as the wan light of the ancient Honda’s halogen headlight split the growing dusk descending on Empire Grade that night, my reptile hind-brain decided it was the appropriate time to start singing the theme to “Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark.” As I awkwardly steered the bike around curves with one arm I bellowed, “Duh duh duh-duh, duh duh duh! Duh de duh DUH, duh de DUH DUH DUH!” like a wildman.
I made it back through the East entrance and up the panoramic sweeping Coolidge Drive. I managed to turn in to Stevenson College, and pulled into the narrow motorcycle parking below my dorm. Only then did I extricate my arm from mechanical linkage and flipped the engine kill button. The headlight darkened as I turned the key off and I sat there in the twilight listening to the heat ticking of the quiescent engine and what I just did, the insanity of what I just managed to do swept over me like a cold wave of “What the hell were you thinking?!” The adrenaline that fueled my Indiana Jones bellowing body had drained and I was shaking.
I don’t remember dropping my helmet and jacket in my room, but I must have. I do remember making a beeline for the dining hall where Sol was finishing dinner. I walked up to the table and he stopped talking to someone mid-conversation. “Jordy,” he said, “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
“Sol,” I said, “I’m going to have that goddamned cigar tonight.”
I did, too. A Macanudo Portofino. It was divine.
I’ve got myriad Jasmine stories – the time I didn’t take her to the nude beach, the time I took her rear wheel on the bus over the hill to get a replacement tire, the time Owen and I rode it over the aforementioned Highway 17 TOGETHER… yeah… crazy.
A few years later I got a new used bike and Jasmine languished under a tarp until I could find time and money to properly restore her. As these things do, it never happened. Fortunately, my friend Mark was interested in getting into motorcycling and was wondering what a good starter bike might be. Funny, I said, I happen to have one…
I started my April Mixtape for Kim with “Back to Nowhere,” the title track by the band UV-TV. I’d never heard of UV-TV before despite this being their third album. It was on a list of best new songs and the reviewer mentioned the opening riff reminded them of the opening of the Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary.” Yeah, I can see that… But as soon lead singer Rose Vastola’s melodic voice joins the jangling lead guitar all comparisons to the Cult fade away and it’s just a great pop track.
Many moons ago my friend Kim and I were talking about music and she mentioned she had a hard time finding new music. I responded that I love finding new music and I’ll put together a mixtape of new music for her. Mix tape, not a playlist, thank you very much. Am I dubbing things to a tape like I did growing up? No, no I am not. But I maintain this is the spiritual successor to the mix tape and wholly different than a playlist. There’s more cohesion – a through-line if you will – to a mixtape where a playlist is just a collection of songs. Sure, you could make a playlist with the kind of attention to order and linear listenability (and, okay, that’s what I’m doing), but the majority of playlists, I maintain, have little in common with mixtapes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
But I digress… Okay, look, obviously I’m a little passionate about the subject, but suffice it to say, I put together a mixtape for Kim (I might have even burned it to a disc…) back in November 2009 and since then I’ve put together a mixtape every month, rarely missing a month. Kim lost interest a few years later – life, you know? – but I still put the mixtape together. By that point it had become a mental exercise for me even if I was the only person paying attention.
My criteria has coalesced a bit: about an hour worth of music (sticking to how much I could burn onto a CD), trying to get music from that month or, failing that, that year. Exceptions happened because, hey, it’s my mixtape! There were a few theme collections, like the November 2011 addendum mixtape of tracks I heard on French MTV during a business trip to Switzerland. Or the Christmas music addendum in December of 2014. But by and large the mixtapes drew from whatever 14-16 new tracks struck my fancy in a given month.
All of this, however, ground to an unceremonious halt during lockdown. March was pretty much already in the can when things went pear shaped. April is complete, but I remember it being a real effort to get together. I didn’t even try in May. I rallied over the summer, but by September I was coming apart. There’s drips and drags in October and November, and a few songs across January, February of 2021…
I wasn’t writing much during that time either. Despite the extra time at home, the uninterrupted periods of time in my head, I couldn’t manage to put together stories or, well, Selfie entries or, really, anything.
I was talking with Akilah about this, about how my creativity just shriveled up during the pandemic and I didn’t really understand why. She countered with all the projects I did. She was right (of course). Yes, I did jump on the sour dough band wagon (again, RIP Tina) but also fermented ginger beer! I built an organizer for my kitchen and coffee tools. I built three mobile work tables, and modified a coffee table to be more mobile and useable. I built a bar cart that tucks under a kitchen cabinet, and I built and installed a shelf to display growlers. I’m sure there’s things I’m missing because in that regard I was quite prolific.
But I didn’t write. And I didn’t put together my mixtapes.
The fourth track on April’s Mixtape, “Family Van” by the band cleopatrick, opens with Luke Gruntz playing a fuzzed out alternating guitar riff and talking about when another band ripped off one of their songs. But thirteen seconds in, a kickdrum snare rhythm bursts in and gives order and drive to what started as a loose sonic rant. A little bass guitar dips in approaching thirty seconds providing another bit of structure before the whole thing blossoms into a thrumming punk jam that has elements of late 90’s pop-punk but definitely with a hip-hop vibe to the whole thing. It’s not a track I necessarily would have gravitated to except for the structure the rhythm section brings.
Structure. That’s the thing that fell apart during the pandemic. A giant existential threat to all the routines we’ve developed over the years of our lives. An invisible, silent killer that could strike if you didn’t wash your groceries — I kid, but you remember that whole thing early on about how we were supposed to do that, right? We didn’t know! We still don’t know everything, but it feels like we’ve come lightyears from where we were last year.
Luke Gruntz’s guitar and lyrics wouldn’t go anywhere without those drums and bass and without the drum and bass propulsion of my day-to-day, the esoteric, open-ended creativity behind my writing failed me, as did the drive to collect music from varied sources.
A writer whose newsletter is always a welcome Friday joy, Austin Kleon, described it recently by saying, “I’m not languishing, I’m dormant.Like a plant. Or a volcano.” He adds, “I’m waiting to be activated.”
The second to last track on the mixtape is “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” a cover of the Dolly Parton song by Waxahatchee from an extended version of “Saint Cloud.” That album originally came out in March of 2020 and sustained me well into the summer – into my dormancy. Dolly’s version came out in 1977, and there’s a particularly haunting acapella version by the Wailin’ Jennys that came out just four years ago. But Katie Crutchfield’s plaintive voice singing, “’Cause I can see the light of a clear blue morning/ I can see the light of a brand new day/ Oh, and everything’s gonna be all right/ It’s gonna be okay,” has a special gravity in April 2021.
I finished my mixtape for April. I’ve started regularly updating this blog. I also built a stand for my amps last month. I can see the light of a brand new day, and it’s gonna be okay.
PS: All the above links are to Spotify. If you’re anti-Spotify I apologize, it was out of convenience.
PPS: You didn’t think I wouldn’t put a link to the complete playlist here, did you? I should mention, this is the first playlist done exclusively in Spotify. That in and of itself is a major change for me, and I’m still getting my sea legs in this new paradigm. But, you know, it’s gonna be okay…
