TEACH ME TO FORGET

I started this tape at the beginning of September 2011 because I had already gone months without making a fun mix tape, but at that point I was not comfortable with making tapes around any other people so I waited... and waited even longer.  On November 1st songs were removed and added and removed again until I had enough wine that I just went with it.  Most of these songs are a bunch of favorites, which is quite unusual for me.  This tape has some funky transitions and I wouldn't expect anyone else to like this, especially for the random songs of deep heartbreak, but that's OK because I made this tape for me. I'm funky, heartbroken, & I've always been a fan of bad transitions in music.

I DJ-ed the Olympia Record Show last night and found Juju by Siouxsie & the Banshees, as well as the SON OF DRACULA soundtrack by Harry Nilsson (even came with the iron on!  BITE ME!) which has my favorite song by him, "Daybreak."  I was happy to add these songs to the B Side.  I was supposed to get a lot of reading done on my GYPSIES OF EASTERN EUROPE book that I have to write a paper about, but instead I just distracted myself with something that's far more important to my well being.  Making tapes is an important therapeutic event in my life.  I hope I never stop.

I just got the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook in the mail!  So many pastas, soups, salads, stews, stir-fries, etc!

Tonight I made my 3rd batch of pico de gallo in 2 weeks.  I'm obsessed, ritualistic, and rather healthy living this way.  I feel my body beating all the sickness I see in Olympia.  This is the cure, the answer, and the future.  Maybe I should make pico de gallo commercially?  What else am I going to do with my life?  Professional cat-petter?

This Sunday makes two weeks of zero social networking in my life & I already feel a lot better, more curious, and more optimistic.  Now I just need to get back into running, stretching, & doing my push-ups and stuff again.  I went swimming at TESC and that was pretty nice.  Routines!  The ROUTINES!

Prepare for: Presentation on COMMUNIST ALBANIA!

It's nice to find an article about lovely owls in the news a midst dozens of articles about various occupy movements and seemingly constant police brutality against free speech.  Elderly women, college students, & a young woman in Portland all caught on film getting a blast (from what looks like a fire extinguisher) of pepper spray in the face.  Who knows what kinds of things photographers aren't capturing that cops are allowed to get away with.  Even when the cops are handed consequences, it's usually something like losing vacation days.  Vacation days!

These are 2 scenes from the 1960 documentary film JAZZ ON A SUMMERS DAY, filmed in at the Newport, Rhode Island Annual Jazz Fest.  There are lots of greats in this movie that were nice to see perform, particularly Big Maybelle, but I  was most excited to learn about the Chico Hamilton Quintet by this one scene below.  Chico is the drummer & that's Eric Dolphy on the flute.  At the 2:00 minute mark the guitar section makes this some really interesting jazz, especially in 1960.  The precision and delicacy all the musicians create envoke a quiet power that builds and builds on the circular and constant rhythm section.  I was completely moved & my cats were licking each other.  It's also humorous that this scene is right after a pretty rockin' and off-key Chuck Berry tune.  This movie is so relaxing. I've been watching it over the course of weeks now, bit by bit.



I was surprised to find that someone had uploaded this Nathan Gershman clip from the film as well, a really nice interlude in the movie that is away from the bop & rag jazz, in the neighborhoods of Newport, & just really beautiful at the end.  This style of film-making must have really inspired people like Les Blank & D. A. Pennebaker.
  

Something amazing is happening in Ghanaian cinema.

I made this tape May 3rd, 2009 in an attempt to make a tape that is completely lovely.  There are many more tapes I would like to make with this theme.  I never had a tracklist or sleeve for this tape so I just made it.  Obviously not all the songs are filled with romance, but I do love every song selected.   Love can go in many directions.

This picture really blew my mind.  A young Kevin Stanford back home from college (Denver) on his mother's east Jackson Ranch, myself about age 10 (?), & Dad with dark hair & a fresh face doing what he does best.  Around this time my Dad had rebuilt Nancy Jackson's house & lived alone on her 700+ acres.  The boulders on this ranch down in the draw are so enormous.  That live oak behind Kevin makes me really homesick.  I miss those trees.  I miss this day, & these feelings.  I'm so happy my Dad is still alive & that we get along better than ever.  I feel so lucky to have such a strange family.  I love steak.

Why does this remind me of David Weinberg?

There are some people that do not look real to me.

Some people on 5th Ave.

BEST GET WELL MESSAGE EVER:

J.B.!

Get weller, please.

I hate the fucking Eagles,

Calvin

Today I woke up at 9:30AM to a dream that found me stuck on one-way bus that wouldn't return to the old hotel by the sea where I was trying to get a room. I was carrying about 100 tapes in an open-faced cardboard box that was really difficult to dream-hold, & everyone on the bus kept trying to take them.

Last Friday, I went out to CCI Solutions in Tumwater & bought 100 blank PC092's & then Sunday at my co-op shift I went out side & found hundreds of free casssettes that were all part of various books-on-tape. Overall I gained hundreds of tapes, which is great because I had been buying new tapes at Rite Aid/Walgreens for years... why am I so lazy? But anyway, back to the bus...

....uhhh I wanna say there was some fighting involved on the bus but really all I can remember is the incredible pain I felt when I woke up. Something had happened & I couldn't move because a vertebrae in the upper-right part of my spine got twisted & I also thought I would vomit on my bed... so I went back to sleep. Wait a second, this story just gets worse & gross so I'll just stop right there & say that I've been watching Season 1 of Star Trek: The Next Generation & I realize that I'd never seen it before, because I only watched "TNG" when it was on TV when I was a kid because my ex-step-Dad Russ loved this show when my Mom first married him. I remember him laughing all the time, especially at Data & Picard & I never thought it was funny. Maybe I just didn't like Russ. But now I'm laughing right along w/ my memory of Russ at all of the antics in this show! What a show! & the costumes are so bad for all the "aliens!"

Last February, I broke my right pinky toe while walking back to my room in the dark while watching DR. ZHIVAGO & I was out of the running game for a while. Last night, I was watching S:1;E:4 of Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was walking back to my room w/ some juice and chocolate corks when I ran into a crate full of records on the floor and nearly broke my left pinky toe! Luckily, I don't think it's broken... maybe fractured though, it's not feeling too good. Anyways, I couldn't fall asleep because I didn't have any pain killers so I decided to watch the "most romantic movie of all time," according to the American Film Institute. AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER really was a nice movie and I was surprised to find that it was in color. I watched the whole thing & didn't go to sleep until about 3:30-4AM.

But, this morning the last bit of my long & horrible dream consisted of me loading up a 9MM pistol to fend off some intruders in a "house" when my gangster pal tossed me a solid white Colt .45 & I fired at the first person who walked through the door. That person happened to be my father & I hit him first in the neck, the gut, and then the right arm before I realized who he really was. I started flipping out & rushed him to an emergency room in some crazy future city hospital where elevators and were made of glass & my Dad just walked around behind me slowly bleeding out... until I woke up. I was extremely angry when I did wake up & when I called my Dad up he said the night before his ladyfriend had broken up w/ him over the phone because she was too afraid of the wonderful times they had shared. I'm not sure where a rendezvous at the Empire State Building & a crippled woman factor into any of this... so I think I'll hobble my freshly smashed toe over to the co-op & cut some cheese before it gets too late in the day to do anything else.

Padre also said that almost all of the ranchers out in West Texas had sold off ALL OF THEIR LIVESTOCK. Floyd West had been spending $500 a week on feed before he sold all of his cattle & goats. When my cousin Scott was visiting the ranch a couple of weeks ago he shot a bobcat that had wandered over to smell the BBQ cooking in mid-day. The cat walked up on them & was standing only about 50 ft. away, the poor thing. All the fauns this year have died because of the drought and all the does & bucks are starving to death. Texas is already seeing signs of the apocalypse.

Yesterday I went to Mt. Rainier w/ Rhett & Harper Jean, and it was very pleasant. Harper loves throwing snow balls at her Dad & hiking with a stick. It's hard to imagine moving back down to Texas after enjoying the NW summers for 8 years now.

Two days ago I bought 100 blank cassettes at the Olympia CCI Solutions. If there are friends who want a cassette w/ music on it please send me a message. I can't keep all of this music to myself.

Nilsson's "hit" from the film he made w/ Ringo Starr called SON OF DRACULA.

I really need to see this someday.

I feel like I've lost my mind, not that I ever really had it though?

But all the same, I like myself just fine.