Enjoy Every Sandwich

From me to the CEO of Meyer Sound late last night:

I was wondering what happened at the Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco this past weekend. I was so excited to go see my first Tom Petty concert and was disappointed when the sound cut out twice on Friday night during Radiohead, but I figured for sure it would be fixed by day two of the festival. Then it happened again during Tom Petty! What gives?

Thanks,

Kirsten

From Helen Meyer, Executive Vice President of Meyer Sound sometime today:

I appreciate hearing from you. To answer your question, the technical difficulties that came up during the headliner shows Friday and Saturday nights at the Outside Lands festival were related to frequency irregularities in the power signal from the generators. The sound reinforcement system provided by Meyer Sound and ProMedia/UltraSound was functioning properly throughout both shows.

Although there is, of course, an incentive for Meyer Sound to claim it is not at fault, I tend to think this explanation is plausible. The speculation in the comments of a previous post that it was due to the bands having their own sound people misusing the equipment did not make sense to me because it would have been different people each night and you would not expect the same problem to be repeated. A hardware failure of some sort would be more consistent with repeat failures of the same failure mode. The only thing that does not really make sense to me is why these frequency irregularities would only show up during the headlining shows each evening and not during the preceding shows during the day and earlier evening.

Anyway, thanks to Rich for poking at me to dig a little deeper. I’m going back to amend my previous post and link it here for more of the story.

It snowed here on 11 June, the day I left to go back to Tucson to get the rest of my stuff. Then it snowed here this week on 1 September. It didn’t stick to the ground down here in town, but it piled up a bit up the mountain:

That is a total of about 81 snow-free (except maybe leftover on the ground) days. I’m calling that summer. If it is snowing, it can’t be summer. Everyone knows that.

Friday morning E. and I went downstairs for breakfast in the kitchen of the Hosteling International Downtown hostel that we were staying at. The people watching and eavesdropping was interesting. The kitchen hygiene was not so good. I got a glass of orange juice and sat there drinking it with decreasing enthusiasm as observation of the signs and people in the room suggested to me that my glass was not necessarily very clean. It’s a wash-your-own-dishes and who-knows-who-washed-you-dish kind of place.

We also took a spin around the second floor to check out the laundry facilities which I was planning on using later in our visit. Those were pretty nice with a good balance- two washers to four dryers. And the laundry room was clean with two bottles of shared detergent (I assume- it didn’t look like it belonged to anyone) and a soap machine if you didn’t have your own.

Then we went down to the street and hit Walgreens for some sundries, a camera memory card and a purse. I wanted a purse with a strap to carry around instead of my Monkees lunchbox purse. I didn’t pay very much, and I got slightly less than what I paid for. But it worked for the weekend without completely disintegrating.

We probably also got something to eat (Cafe Mason?) before heading out to meet E.’s friend C. at the Powell Street BART station. Here’s a view up Powell Street from the station:

While we were waiting for C., I gave some thought to quitting my whoring, but I never figured out what was in it for me to quit fornicating:

When C. arrived, we headed over to the bus stop looking to hop a Number 5 bus to Golden Gate Park. It stopped well past the crowded stop and we decided not to fight everyone else for it. But after a few more buses came and went and the crowd at the bus stop did not get any smaller, E. decided that we were going to take the next Number 5 come hell or high water. Thus began our Muni ordeal which I won’t get into right now.

We did finally arrive after a long ride at Golden Gate Park, hopped off the bus where most other people appeared to be getting off, went through the poorly organized entrance process and tried to find a map or program of some sort with no success. We wandered about the venue a little bit trying to figure out how to get to the shows we wanted to see- E. and I were leaning toward Beck while C. wanted to see Manu Chao. After we accidentally went past the stage Beck was playing on and seeing hoardes of fans flocking in that direction, E. and I ended up going with C.

Manu Chao was our first concert of the festival. I’m giving this one a thumbs down. The most notable characteristic of the Manu Chao concert was the extensive leftist political preaching. I wasn’t there for that; I was there for the music. I couldn’t understand most of the non-English lyrics so I truly was focused on the actual music and found it very repetitive. It turns out that this was not just my imagination. According to the Wikipedia entry:

Chao also has a tendency to reuse music or lyrics from previous songs to form new songs. The hit single “Bongo Bong,” in contemporary French style, takes its lyrics from the earlier Mano Negra hit “King of the Bongo,” which owes more to The Clash. The musical backdrop for “Bongo Bong,” in turn, was used in several other Chao songs, including “Je ne t’aime plus” from the same album and “Mr Bobby” and “Homens” from Próxima Estación: Esperanza. The music from that album’s “La Primavera” is used in several other songs on that album, while lyrics for a few songs on Sibérie m’était contéee are repeated several times with different music, leading the lyrics to be interpreted in various ways depending on the mood of the track. Several musical themes and clips from that album also appear on Amadou & Mariam’s Chao-produced Dimanche à Bamako, which were being produced at approximately the same time.

I was not into this and was very happy to move on to our second concert after this was over.

The headliner for Friday night and our second and last concert for Friday was Radiohead. This was a fascinating experience. I will state right out, though, that the music quickly got boring. I liked it at first, but it was very hypnotic/trancelike/sleep-inducing after the first couple of songs. I ended up sitting down on the grass amidst a sea of thousands of Radiohead fans and napping sitting up. The light show on stage was very cool, but we really couldn’t see much of what was happening on stage. The video on the Jumbotron was some kind of artsy-fartsy four-panel presentation showing things like a supercloseup of the back of the drummer’s head and that sort of thing. Most of what was interesting was the experience of being packed in with thousands of Radiohead fans in the dark and cold in Golden Gate Park. It may be that we were closer to the front than we were at other concerts that weekend, but the people around me were very serious and intense. They were insistent on capturing every moment possible on their digital recording devices of various sorts which made it pretty much impossible to see anything much other than heads, bodies and cameras. They were much pissier than the Tom Petty fans when the sound went out. None of them actually looked happy at any time during the concert. Actually, they reminded me a little of people sitting at slot machines in casinos. It was very strange, and not what I was expecting. Very interesting, but I’m also giving this concert a thumbs down.

After Radiohead finished at 10:00 pm (I believe the ridiculously early curfew was some sort of city ordinance), we were hungry and happy to see that the food booths were still open. The three of us each got slices of pizza which were quite good. We found out from the pizza booth staff that originally the festival had wanted the food booths to close at some ridiculously early hour like 7:00 or 8:00 pm. What a mistake that would have been! I would not be surprised if they actually did most of their business post-headliner shows when thousands of people passed from a pot smoke-filled concert environment directly by the food booths on their way out of the festival.

We made our way out of the festival venue and got on somewhat less packed and more organized buses for the ride back to the BART station where we bid C. farewell and arranged to call her on Monday to meet for dinner before we left San Francisco on Tuesday. Strangely, although I was not into the music at all on Friday, I had a blast and was looking forward to Saturday. The cultural experience of the music festival was really new and exciting and really a lot to take in all on its own. That would happily continue on through the entire festival.

I am going to kick off the reporting on my recent Outside Lands Music Festival with a report on the general bad stuff. Then I will do my day-by-day reporting on the music, people-watching, etc… which was overall very good. There were two big villians of the first ever OLMF.

Villian #1: The Fucking San Francisco Muni and Whoever Failed to Schedule More Buses to Meet Need

That is a picture of the booth at OLMF where you were supposed to be able to buy muni tickets. I have to think that it was already out of business by about mid-day on Friday. Playing the green card was a big gimmick of OLMF and a huge part of that was pushing people to leave their cars at home. Fine. It’s San Francisco. I have friends who know their way around by public transit. I’ll give that a go.

What a complete fucking disaster. It appeared on our way to the concert that they had not scheduled any additional buses beyond the normal schedule and there were no express buses. After watching a couple of buses go by, our standards for what was “too full” dropped dramatically. My concert buddies C. and E. hopped on through the back door of a bus after E. announced we were taking THAT BUS NO MATTER WHAT and I shoved my way on as well. All three of us committed at least two legal offenses in doing so- getting on through the back door of the bus and not paying for our bus ride. Turns out everyone on that route was riding free because there was no possible way to pay as the buses were packed way too full.

Upon hopping on the bus, I experienced the tribal mentality that had developed and continued all the way to the park. I was standing in the stairwell because there was no room anywhere else, but the doors won’t close if anyone is touching the doors or standing on the stairs. If the doors are not closed, the bus driver will not drive. People were screaming for me to get off the bus, but I wouldn’t because I knew if I lost C. and E. I’d be completely fucked. I managed to squeeze off of the stairs and stop touching the doors and the bus proceeded amidst cheers from the passengers. By the next stop I was now one of the tribe.

This whole process repeated maybe twenty or twenty-five times as the bus kept stopping to let people off and new passengers tried to squeeze on. At one stop, the tribe tried to banish a little old Asian lady whose regular route this seemed to be with no success. By the next stop, she was herself yelling at college boys to get off the bus and they were obeying. The ride was just horrible. I cannot sufficiently express what a mess it was, and it was repeated bus after bus and stop after stop until we finally made it to the park. There were a few times I was worried we would tip the bus over.

The situation on the way home was only a little better. The buses were still full, but there at least seemed to be more of them and they had people there to control how many people got on the bus. By the next day, E. and I decided we’d give the car a go. We got to the festival early both Saturday and Sunday and had no trouble finding free, on-street parking just a few blocks from the park. You want me to play your green game? Then do not be complete fucking morons. Work out the logisitics in advance. Otherwise, you will find me tooling around San Francisco in my SUV and not feeling bad about it.

Villian #2: The Unforgivably Bad Sound GlitchesService from Meyer Sound Laboratories, Inc.

Update 5 September: It turns out that the sound problem, while likely a hardware failure, was not with the Meyers Sound equipment. Details here.

It’s the first year of the festival. It’s the first day of the festival. The sound cuts out three times during headlining band Radiohead’s show. Fuck you, but alright I suppose I will grudgingly forgive that. Get your shit together for day two, though, ‘mkay?

Day two- Tom Petty takes a five minute break because the sound guys have told them that something is about to blow and they need to take care of it. Motherfucker. That sucks. But at least they’re being sort of proactive. BUT THEN WHEN THE SOUND CUTS OUT ANYWAY LATER DURING ONE OF TOM PETTY’S SONGS, THAT IS A HUGE, HUGE FOUL. E. and I will be writing to OLMF asking for part of our ticket money back because we did not pay $225 a pop to watch Tom Petty silently on the Jumbotron. That’s just so fucking wrong. I hope Meyers Sound (based in Berkeley) will have a hard time finding work in that town for a while.

Motherfuckers.

I just spent the weekend running around the San Francisco Outside Lands Music Festival. A big part of the weekend consisted of hearing and seeing people pimping out Obama for president. This is particularly funny at a music festival with lots of anti-RIAA, anti-FBI, pro-privacy, etc. folks in attendance. Look who Obama has chosen as his vice presidential running mate:

Joe Biden’s pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record

Nice work, douchebags. Can you please stop pushing this guy now?

It seems like it is more hip to be FOR SOMETHING than to go to the trouble to make sure that what you are pushing is something right.

Posting from: San Francisco, CA

I just spent the last two days driving from Montana, Land of the Right Wing Gun Nuts, to San Francisco, Home of the Pinko Commie Freaks. Politically right to left. Country to city. Fresh air to the stench of pee wafting up from the street to my fifth floor window. One street to eight bazillion one-way streets. It has all been very exciting.

I am here for a few days for the San Francisco Outside Lands Music Festival in Golden Gate Park.

Priority #1: My first MATT NATHANSON concert! whose CDs I have been listening to in the car for approximately 50% of my drive (and XM 50 The Loft for most of the other 50%).

Priority #2: Tom Petty- on my list of legends to see in concert before they kick the bucket, and he is getting up there a bit in years although I’m betting he’s fairly well-preserved.

Sadly, they are scheduled one right after the other on different stages. Stupid Outside Lands scheduling fuckers. Any other folks on this list that you recommend I go see? (Favorite sister, please inquire of the ever-so-hip Professor M.)

It has been a while since I’ve done a Week in Review post, but I have some miscellania collected so it seems like a good time to revive it.

Two good ones from B.W.:
‘Ordered liberty’- oxymoron?- I’d say so.
Even dog people like me can learn something from Cats.

Hot Swede Johan Norberg has a short segment on reason.tv discussing Swedish Myths and Realities. Among others, he makes an excellent point about how the socialist healthcare system in Sweden is free-riding off of technology benefits from (relatively) free enterprise.

Here are some Shiny, Happy Things you don’t have.

Mr. Bill shares a link to an old Economist article on the function of hard sterotyping and categorization in generating and perpetuating conflict: Don’t dare put me in a box. Yeah, not me either.

Jorge says this is about Religion and Freedom, but it has a broader applicability to all choices and freedom.

And finally, it would not be a Week in Review without some random features:

Recipe of the Week
I have a darn good tortilla soup recipe here. However, it is a MAJOR project to make. This one is a lot easier and still tasty enough that someone recently asked me for the recipe for it. In summary- the other recipe, tastier but hard; this recipe, easy but not quite as tasty.

Tortilla and Lime Soup Without Tortillas
(adapted from Solo Suppers)

chicken, shrimp, whatever sounds good, sliced, shredded or cubed
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup onion, diced
1 tsp minced garlic
about a half a chopped up chipotle, or canned green chili or jalapeno to taste
1/2 cup peeled, seeded and diced tomato (fresh or canned)
3/4 cup corn kernels (canned or about 1 ear fresh)
1 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1-2 Tbsp lime juice
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 avocado peeled, pitted and diced

Most of the above is optional if you don’t have it and the measurements are all very forgiving if you change them. And you can make substitutions as you see fit. The lime is great if you have it- it really amps up the flavor- but this would still be good without it.

Saute the onion in oil until translucent.

Add garlic and chili and saute a couple minutes more.

Add stock and bring to a boil.

Add tomatoes, corn, cilantro, lime, salt and pepper. Simmer for a couple of minutes.

Add meat and simmer either long enough to heat it up if already cooked or long enough to cook it if raw.

Eat as is, or pour soup over avocado. Cheese or sour cream is also nice with this if it’s handy. Next time I make this, I will probably throw in some canned hominy.

Drummer of the Week
This week’s drummer of the week is hot, bald drummer Kenny Aronoff. Kenny just did a drum clinic in Bozeman which I blew off. That drive just seemed a little long that day. I should have sucked it up, though. Look at him go!

He is so being added to my Hot, Bald Man collection as soon as I get it reattached here.

Why do they build such big, inefficient, expensive houses?* They could save time and money and be much more environmentally friendly by building tiny houses.

Even those are a fair bit overpriced. My favorite man, Kel, who took me up to Hungry Horse Dam also showed me around his place which- without a plumbed bathroom but on what someone I used to work with would call “some modest acreage”- has so far cost him much less than any of Tumbleweed’s offerings. He has graciously allowed me to share a few pictures of his marvelously efficient and cozy abode.

Here’s the place- all 8 feet by 8 feet of it- from the outside. The front door is the exact same style door I had going out to my carport on my old house. The doggie door is big enough for a 65 pound puppy. Eventually the porch is planned to have a rocking chair and a little stairway up from the ground.

The house is not wired into the grid. Instead, four little recycled solar panels provide power. A handy side-effect of this setup is that he was able to jumpstart a dead car battery from his house.

Here’s the very cozy and efficient seven feet by seven feet indoors. You do the math on the insulation. He lived in it in northern Montana all last winter with no problem.

To the left you can see one of two bookshelves, some food storage, a countertop (no sink) with a little stove, some hanging pans, and more storage space under the counter. On the back wall you can see a bed that comfortably fits two people who like each other on the bottom plus a second bunk (currently being used for storage) up top. There is more storage space under the bottom bunk. The front wall which is not shown has a mirror, pictures, and some toiletries hanging between the window, doggie door and front door. On the right side which is also not shown you can find the propane heater which he tells me runs for about one minute every hour in the winter plus a carbon monoxide detector for extra safety. He keeps a window open at night in the winter for ventilation.

Future plans, I am told, include finishing the porch and ceiling over it, adding a septic tank so he can have some plumbed bathroom luxuries, and a satellite internet connection. It’s a pretty awesome habitat for a human.

*Habitat for Humanity says its US homes average a cost of $60,000 and 1000 square feet.

I meant for this to be a nice Monday morning photo essay sort of thing, but it was a very busy weekend.

Last week, I had the great pleasure of visiting my favorite man up near Kalispell. The drive was a little painful- four hours each way, lots of construction and a couple of campers that refused to pull over causing me to drive 15-20 miles per hour under the speed limit for long distances. But I did get to see many little towns and attractions that I’d like to revisit later, the scenery was beautiful particularly near Flathead Lake, and I saw all manner of coffee drive-throughs and fresh-picked cherry stands that I’ll need to get back to this summer.

We drove out to tour Hungry Horse Dam- a dam on the South Fork of the Flathead River in northwestern Montana and the eleventh largest dam in the United States.

Here is most of it. You can see the powerplant at the bottom. Upstream from the dam is a very large reservoir largely used for recreational purposes.

Here’s a view from the top of the 564-foot dam looking down on the powerplant.

Here’s a better view of the powerplant. It provides a billion kilowatt-hours of power each year, but that’s only a fraction of the power production the dam contributes to. Water is stored in the upstream reservoir during flood season and released later to help power downstream powerplants for a total of 4.6 billion kilowatt-hours annually.

Of course, you don’t want the reservoir upstream to get too full. Here is the glory hole- basically a big drain which dumps excess water that spills over the top of the hole down to the river below.

Here’s where it goes- the south fork of the Flathead River from the top of Hungry Horse Dam.

The Hungry Horse Dam tour, preceded by a cheeseburger and cheese fries at Syke’s and followed by a huckleberry milkshake, makes an awesome nerd date.

Next post, I’ll go from the exceedingly large to the incredibly tiny.

This highlights a question I have had for a long time now:

Doctors: Third babies are the same as patio heaters
Writing in the British Medical Journal, John Guillebaud (emeritus professor of of family planning at UCL) and Pip Hayes (a GP) raise the spectre of global population explosion, and suggest that the children of the developed world are a particularly severe carbon burden.

So as someone who is not having children, why should I hear any flack or lecturing or moral superiority bullshit about my choice to drive one reasonably efficient SUV (~24-25 mpg) with low emissions from anyone who has had children, especially more than one or two?