Monday, January 31, 2011



The CLASS OF 1984 is a strange hybrid of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS, & THE WARRIORS. I've really never seen such an evil representation of punk rockers, & Michael J. Fox plays the young band nerd, his first movie!

Sunday, January 30, 2011

I finally saw GONE WITH THE WIND, & I never expected it to be such a racist, misogynistic, and twisted movie. The colors were real pretty though!
A while back I developed a rule that was supposed to discourage me from buying records that I hadn't intended on buying before getting to the record store, in an effort to save money & to not end up w/ any stinkers (which had happened one too many times).

Luckily, I am not known for my self-control and I ended up buying this record by the late 60's group Los Robbins, from Honduras. Even more than the rule, the fact that this record is a 10" made it even weirder that I was walking up to the cash register with it (I have very few 10" records because they don't fit w/ the 12" records and I never think to listen to them because they're at the very end of the shelf)... but I did give it a quick listen, and it had elements of rocksteady, flamenco, garage rock, and weird Joe Meek sounding synthesizers... and what the hell, I've been going batty for all this South American Pop & R'n'R lately & I figured I love to hear what Honduras' most famous band was all about. Los Robbins were the first band to put out a 45 in their country, and most of their recordings were done in El Salvador.

I guess it helps that I've always been curious about Honduras because my Mother's family lived there for a few years after my Uncle Daniel was born. My grandfather Wesley Simmons II was a scientist working in the banana fields... testing stuff. I've always tried to figure out exactly what he did there but he's the hardest person to get answers out of so it's always been a mystery. Even my Mom & Uncles thought he was a secret agent for most of their lives, when in fact he was worked at a cancer research center in Maryland and often was traveling around the world. Anyways, my grandparents split up in Honduras and that's why my grandmother caught a boat and decided to move to Fort Worth with no money & three kids. To make a long story short, I'm so glad I forgot about that stupid rule and bought this record... because it's golden.

Friday, January 28, 2011

These kids covering Ariel Pink's "Round & Round" is so heart-warming I can hardly stand it.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

The GUITAR MOOD 2 LP that I picked up last week has this incredible cumbia by my personal favorite Peruvian all-stars Manzanita Y Su Conjunto!!! The guitarist on this song is amazing, and I really enjoy his work starting around the 2 min. mark. Also, the picture of the band members as old dudes hangin' out next to the BBQ grill is pretty rad.

Today was my group's scheduled seminar to facilitate and provide activities & entertainment in what is called "First Words." I think it went over rather well, it was especially easy since it was about Nanook Of The North by Robert Flaherty, which claims to be the "first documentary" but is actually just a big phony staged lie (but it's a beautiful film!). It was also about the mis-representations of Eskimos and Inuit people as well as the tragedy surrounding the American Museum of Natural History and the Polar Eskimos of Greenland. In particular, the young Minik. Going Native by Huhndorf is a really interesting book and it's hardly repetitive, which is a nice change of pace from the last couple of assigned readings.

If you've ever been the the A. M. of N. H. in NYC, I recommend researching this part of the museums history, because it might give you a different sense of the darker sides of Anthropology... and museums.

In seminar today, I had the idea to experiment with an activity called "The Snowball Effect," something I had never seen in seminar but read about on the world wide web. You ask everyone to anonymously write a question, statement, or quote (& I asked everyone to push boundaries (this is Evergreen, after all)) and then everyone crumples up their paper into a ball and at the sound of "GO" throws their snowball at someone across the room. I figured it was way too dumb of an activity to pull in a college setting, especially with the strictest prof. of all times, but it seemed to go really well and filled the complete 2 hour time allotment, and F. V. Rains really liked it! Not everyone got to read their paper because discussion was so lively, and we had to go around just reading out the papers, allowing everyone to get a chance to speak... it's amazing how many people never say anything.

I hit my head really hard on the bathroom mirror a couple of hours ago and I'm feeling really loopy, and doing everything I can not to fall asleep because I heard when people want to sleep they never wake up! Not that I like waking up or anything... but I'd like to continue to wake up for as long as possible.

On a completely different note, for some reason I got to thinking about all those Louis Malle documentaries that I watched about 4 years ago that the Eclipse series put out in that box set. Most of them are about India or France, but GOD'S COUNTRY was filmed in Glenco, Minnesota throughout the mid-1980's and is soooo good. I like Malle's films, but his documentaries are so much better in my opinion. They're so beautiful and the way he represents his subjects are (seemingly) completely honest. This one is especially interesting because Malle's accent sounds so funny in the upper mid-West. Anyways, the entire film is on youtube... but I recommend renting it from the library.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Oh Batman, you don't actually believe that anyone is funnier than the Joker!

Joey & I are gonna watch some ALF this weekend.

As of today, I am starting research for my final project studying Coast Salish! I am going to a Pow Wow in February! Potlatches in summer time on Vancouver Island!





What a great BUSH TETRAS music video! Thanks to Issac Mayes for sharing.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

REAL SUPERHEROES
Sitting Bull & Geronimo.




















I just read Geronimo's autobiography (edited by S. M. Barrett) and it really blew my mind. I've only read a bit about Sitting Bull, but his story is equally amazing/depressing.
Apparently, this past Christmas, Brian Formo smoked out of Sitting Bull's pipe... because they're related! Maybe it's the same pipe pictured above? If I get his permission I'll post his story about his Christmas Peace Pipe experience... it's pretty great!
It also turns out that Walter Hill directed a movie about Geronimo, got that in my queue. Well, shit I gotta get back to my homework... so much time, so little to do... wait, strike that, reverse it.


Friday, January 14, 2011

Here we have Teezy, Olympia's coolest lady & #1 Volunteer at the Olympia Film Society. This night was actually the night when Ness & I walked out of the film HOWL, starring James Franco... it was just so bad. There's a reason the trailer doesn't include all the horrible animation.

These other pictures are of Nisqually Bird Refuge on New Years Day 2011.




The years just keep getting fluffier & fluffier!





Letterpressed dice by Bryan Baker at the "ROLL" art show curated by Formo, & the piece at the bottom is by Sarah Shebaro. Formo has left for LA,CA & we're all hoping he's able to "break into the business." Adios to my mustached friend in Tequila, Hot Dice, Dominoes, Film, slow talkin', and goofy dancin'.






Wednesday, January 12, 2011

I found a copy of SHOLAY at Orca Books! If you haven't seen this epic masterpiece of Bollywood cinema, stop what your doing and check it out!

Thursday, January 06, 2011



"A powerful confluence of traditional rhythms from Luanda’s islands, psychedelic guitar sounds imported from neighbouring Congo, Latin grooves, old school Caribbean merengue and the hard beat of the Angolan carnival bands conspired to create the modern music of Angola." - http://analogafrica.blogspot.com/

This record is like a dream come true (as far as Cumbia-sounding African music goes).

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Such a great intro.

Very excited to have this 2xLP in my life!
One more reason to love Colombians.