Daily Miltonian

Saturday: who doesn’t love a Saturday? Usually best spent with the M&M’s (Museum and a Movie), your humble narrator decided to flip the script and head out to a park instead. Portland’s exemplary Forest Park, to be exact. And maaaaan, what a park it is. Over 5,000 acres and over 70 miles of trails, this place is big — beating Philly’s massive Fairmount Park by about a thousand acres. (For the record, Central Park in NYC is 843 acres.)

The place is totally impressive, a magical world submerged beneath a high-up canopy of trees…Douglas fir, western red cedar, western hemlock. Fallen trees are covered with more moss than I’ve ever seen in my life. Balch Creek is populated by Cuthroat Trout which roll in from the sea via the Multnomah Channel. How cool is that? Stuff from the ocean, found in the woods. Wild.

70 Miles of trails means one thing for your humble narrator: I got horribly lost. Not like Blair Witch Project Sun Going Down Oh Shit Now What Lost, but a little turned around. No thing, because I stumbled upon the Audubon Society of Portland, which is where we discovered our New Best Friend In The Entire World: Julio, the Great Horned Owl. The Audubon Society seemed completely abandoned save for two old men sitting on the porch arguing about salamanders, so I crept around back and found the cage where they keep Julio. As you may recall from previous posts, ever since my arrival in Portland I have been dying to see an owl. Although caged, Julio will do just fine. There he was, imposing and looking like a total menace in his cage, perched on a piece of wood, sleeping. Except not sleeping — Julio opened one eye just to check me out, before closing it again. If I made any noise he’d open just the one eye — like I wasn’t good enough for both? Or else this was reverse winking? — and then he’d close it again, not even interested in the plate of dead mice located below him. Goddamn he’s one beautiful bird! Julio! My friend!

Friend indeed. What struck me totally daffy was the fact that since my apartment is close to Fairmount Park this means I live within walking distance from a Wowl. Meaning that any time I want, I can put on a light jacket, lock up, shuffle down the steps, jump out the door and onto the sidewalk, head up the street, enter the woods, and be face to face with a GREAT HORNED OWL within minutes. This is amazing. This is fucking mindblowing. My life: now complete.

The sad thing was reading the story about Julio. Apparently he was found in a nest next to a cut down tree, without parents. The Audubon Society took care of him but by then it was too late — he had been around humans too long and so could no longer go back to Regular Owl Society. The line that got me was “Julio did not know how to be an owl.” Maybe the saddest sentence, like, ever? Well it’s okay, Julio, if you don’t know how to be an owl. You can still be my friend.

Aw! Julio!

Pictured: Our Intrepid Reporter

So the numbers of goons in International Organizations are seemingly
endless, but I graduated from a high end school when employment
opportunities seemed to be limited. If I’d seen an ad for “Foreign and
Occasional Interstellar Employment, World Domination Potential” I might
have sent my resume over. I mean, I’ve always been a socially conscious
guy, but you never know what a guy might do if the organization were
really, really big. Really, really exciting.

I mean, if you watch the average rally for a Ku Klux Klan march or look
at the comings and goings of Gun Shows for paramilitary types, they
seldom appear to be the most fit and capable among us. Yet, somehow
groups like Ultimatum and Hydra are able to recruit hundreds and
hundreds of people. Men who are not only capable soldiers, but blindly
loyal to whatever half-baked caused nutbags like Vixen, Mandarin and
Flag Smasher happen to be espousing that week. Fu Manchu’s guys in the
Marvel world each had a different weapons mastery and special skill, for
God’s sake! Wasn’t A.I.M. led by MODOC there for a while? I mean, this guy
has a head bigger than a Volvo, and people are following him around.
Following him up against The Avengers, for God’s sake!

“Sure, Boss… I’ll fight Thor. That’s what you pay me for, right?”

It just boggles the mind that people actually show a willingness to join
organizations like this. They must have a way to pay mad cash, mind
control or a lot of serious babe-a-liciousness that we are missing off
camera. I can’t figure it out!

So let’s through it out there to the Daily Miltonian community… and
the whole damn Internet while we’re at it…

HOW DO BIG EVIL ORGANIZATIONS RECRUIT THEIR CANNON FODDER?

I’ll start!

A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics) - the scientists of the world
domination trade. My guess is that A.I.M. is actually the international
sponsort of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). You know, the
guys who dress up in suits of armor and beat the crap out of each other
and marry the awkward chicks. Them. My guess is that SCA started as a
program that they would introduce on the campuses of second and third
tier engineering schools, like Rensellear Polytechnic Institute and etc.
They’d get the nerdy, weird kids (and, just to be clear, we’re talking
about the nerds among engineers) to join SCA, then when they found the
ones with the right level of dejectedness and predisposition toward
wanton violence, an AIM rep in disguise would pop the question: “Want to
rule the world?”

Okay, your turn. Name your favorite evil international gang of villains
with endless followers and tell us how you think they recruit their goons.

Holy 90’s Batman, it’s Sloan! Bringing the Canadian Bacon since ‘91, Halifax’s finest bring the pop to Doug Fir tonight. You, on the other hand, bring a scarf.

Like your songs long, dark, gloomy, and fucked up? Yeah, we do to, which is why we’re excited to experience Portland’s Grails tonight, in Portland. Someday Lounge, to be exact. Matthew Korfhage says: “Like a meaner Grateful Dead.” Perfect.

Then again there’s also the Oh Man What a Lineup Show going down at Holocene…ADULT, Parts & Labor, and Erase Eratta! Fuck we wanna go to this too! Noise, pop, no-wave, dance…this is Too Much Avant-Fun in one room.

But wait, wait. You say you have no cash? And all you want tonight is summery-jangle-fuzz? You know, like a sweet, ripe peach, only audible not edible? Well here you go pilgrim: The Shaky Hands, at Berbati’s, FREE! Tonight, man it’s just your night.

ITEM: This morning, parking the bike next to the coffee shop, prepared to get that morning coffee, a van drove by. There was a dog hanging his head out the window. Upon further inspection I realize there are more dogs in the back. There’s a dark-haired woman with sunglasses driving the van and the van was filled with dogs. The sign on the van said “Daycare Camp For Dogs.” Woah this made my day. All these dogs in this van looking like they were flipping the fuck out, like “Wooo! Yeah! Roadtrip! Hoooo! We’re dogs! We’re dogs yo! Hoooo! We’re in a van! We’re in a van because we’re dogs and we’re on a roadtrip because this is a van and we’re dogs! I said we’re dogs! YEAH!“

ITEM: Philebrity Intern Kelly White wrote us to say that our blog sounds like it is written in a treehouse on a wooden laptop. To which we say: it’s true, our new offices are snug, and outside of our window you can see trees. Also we’re fairly convinced we’re next to a mountain range. You walk up the street, and you see the houses and you point and say “That’s my neighbor. And that’s my neighbor!” And then the next house is like fifty feet above you and you crane your neck up and point at all those houses dotting the side of this insanely steep — we’ll call it a mountain — and you say “Those are my neighbors too!”

ITEM: We’re listening to this today, and it’s a lot of fun.

ITEM: Last night we saw the Walkmen, and with them, Mickey Walker. It was really good seeing the old Walker, man. What a dude. The show was in the Crystal Ballroom, which looks exactly like it sounds. It’s nice there. We’re going to see Dinosaur Jr. at the Crystal Ballroom in a few weeks!

ITEM: We’re nearly through watching the first season of The Wire. Hey, everyone was right — this is a great show! I tell you though, if you had a drinking game where you had to do a shot every time Jimmy McNulty said “Avon Barksdale” in that wild accent of his, you’d be wasted in ten minutes. I mean I know that Barksdale is a character and he has to mention his name to discuss him, but I dunno, it’s like he just keeps saying it all the time because he gets a kick out of the way the words “Avon Barksdale” make his mouth feel. Of course then Wild Al has to ruin things for me by telling me that McNulty is actually British and now I can hear the accent come out every time he gets mad and yells. I hate when people ruin stuff like that, don’t you?

Does it get any better than this?  It’s a soft spring afternoon where I’m standing, and when things feel this Right the only something else that edges that fuzzy perimeter is a kind of intangible longing that can only be made manifest by an easybreezy/lazyhazy tune like this one.  Have an iced tea, take a deep breath, sigh, and click this perfect performance, Dylan with Cash, doing what they do best: feeling it.

Enough, we say.  Enough.  It’s hard to pinpoint when the PBR thing finally went fullblown, but just for fun this morning we’re going to invent a theory and see if it works.  There are other theories: Joey Sweeney posited that the macrobrew explosion was a direct backlash against the microbrew explosion: we got tired of “complexity” and just wanted something simple.  We wanted our Dad’s beer.  (In my book, the instant downfall of any movement/revolution/generation is when they finally accept their parents world — viz. 60’s music/clothes, or just their beer.  Again: Parents are the ENEMY!  Don’t dress like them!).

Our nutty theory (for today) is this: after 9/11 we started dressing like our fears.  America’s main fear was terrorism (duh) and the Hipsters living in the cities of America feared not only terrorists but the rest of America as well.

Children dress up like Frankenstein or Dracula to overcome their fears of said monsters.  Thus the hipster contingency spawned two new styles: the Beardo Weirdo (uh, hi) and the Trucker/Redneck Chic.

It still hasn’t gone away.  Look around you: this is the summer of the ironic mustache.  We’re deathly afraid of what goes on outside of cities, on porches, at backyard BBQs, in trucks, where people are hunting, swimming in inflatable pools, wearing actual truckers caps, growing real mustaches, and yep, drinking PBR.

The above show is a great, great example of our fascination with this shit.  And also an attempt to make our fears cute and cuddly.  God forbid we run into the real Earl, strung out on meth and truck fumes, a case of PBR in his gullet, wondering what freaky longhairs like our hipster selves are doing in his neck of the woods.

But back to the beer.  This is our final word on it:  stop drinking it.  You have a 3000 dollar laptop, an iPod, and Nike Dunks: we KNOW you’re not drinking it because it’s “cheap.”  PBR gives you a headache, weird gas, it doesn’t get drunk, and makes you fatter faster than most beers.

Some stats.

A PBR has 5.0% alcohol, 153 calories, and 12.1 grams of carbs.  Now this one is just at random, from the top of a list: an Anchor Porter has 5.66% alcohol and 43 calories!  Father Gibbs actually tipped us off to this: darker the beer, less the calories.

But this isn’t about losing weight or calories or anything, it’s about the fact that a night of PBR ruins your morning.  Who wants that?  It’s Springtime — don’t know about you, but we’re sleeping with the windows open, and in the morning we wake to clear, mountain-crisp air, fluttering curtains, and fat beams of sunshine, and we roll out of bed, crank the Mozart, put on the coffee and sigh and say goddamn this is a good feeling, this good good morning.  THIS KIND OF LIFE-AFFIRMING MORNING IS IMPOSSIBLE ON A PBR HANGOVER.

That’s all we’re saying.  The money you save at night drinking Crapbst you pay for in the morning, and we just can’t afford to pay in the morning.  So the night before we throw in the extra buck and we buy something with quality, natural ingredients, something brewed not far from where we’re sitting, and we sip it and we smile and say cheers.

Cheers!

1. Marvel’s Big Event this summer is called WORLD WAR HULK. Basically this: the Hulk got exiled into space. They tried to put him on a peaceful planet where he wouldn’t hurt anyone but the ship went off course and instead crash landed on an extremely violent planet of slaves ruled by dictators. Guess what: Hulk beat the shit out of everyone and took over the planet. Now he’s coming back to Earth and he’s going to fight, well, everyone. What more do you want out of a bloated, epic, Summer Crossover? Like Wild Al put it: “Marvel rules. They kill Cap, put Tony Stark in charge of everything, and have Hulk come back from space to fight the whole planet. Awesome. Summer”
2. 
3. DC’s follow up to the weekly 52 is called Countdown. It’s also weekly. And it’s got Mary Marvel. Oh hell yes.
4. 
5. Is Captain America really dead?
6. Our favorite bridge so far, here in Portland, is the Fremont Bridge. Because it looks very serious and majestic and when you drive in a car across it you feel not so serious but definitely majestic, and below you see the Willamette River and the city and ports and hills and homes and light and it all feels really good.
7. We really gotta quit Myspace but I think we all gotta quit together.
8. We’ll all exchange addresses and buy Star Wars stamps and just write each other all the time.
9. 
10. Wild Al suggests you pop on a baseball hat, toss on your fave players jersey, toss a glove underneath your arm and head out to left field.
11. Personally I’m not sure what to do about following baseball this summer. Should I give a fuck about the Mariners?
12. More from Al: “Nothing like being caught up in the madness of an night game in the upperdeck…sold out…you get it…take me out to a ball game bro!
13. What are your plans for summer? Are we too old to have “plans” for summer?
14. Or rather, are we just too poor. Like if we were one of those Old Money couples, we’d “summer” somewhere, right baby? Like hey honey, should we “summer” in the Cote d’Azur this summer?
15. Maybe we should all “summer” this summer, regardless of how much cash we have in our pockets. We’ll call it the Summer of Summering.
16. If it was around 2100 BC, we would be Sumerians, and thus we would Summer in Sumer. How cool would that be?
17. “Now, I swear by the sun god Utu on this very day — and my younger brothers shall be witness of it in foreign lands where the sons of Sumer are not known, where people do not have the use of paved roads, where they have no access to the written word — that I, the firstborn son, am a fashioner of words, a composer of songs, a composer of words, and that they will recite my songs as heavenly writings, and that they will bow down before my words……”
18. That was King Shulgi, regarding the future of Sumerian literature.
19. “…after the boys of Sumer are gooooone…!”
20. Ok I’ll stop.
21. Every Monday I meet with a couple of fellow literary practitioners and drink affordable beer. They call this event the “Fools Cap Excelsior.” They’re good dudes, great writers, and a fine reason to look forward to Monday.
22. I gotta get a bird book. There are so many cool birds here that I’ve just never seen before, and dammit I don’t know the name for a single one.
23. 
24. Gotta figure out the names of the native plants too.
25. 
26. Trying to quit smoking isn’t easy, but you knew that already. I’m still puffing on a few a day but goddamn are my nerves rattled. I got in a nasty fight over G-Chat today with Loren Hunt, and man do I feel bad about it.
27. Holy shit do you even realize that we’re like THIS close Spider-Man 3??!?!?!? DO YOU?!?!
28. If we’re pals it’s no secret how much I flip over Summer Blockbusters. All winter long it’s dark, dense, deep, only showing at a small theater, and often has subtitles. But when summer comes along all I want to see is shit blow up.
29. Five Most Important Things When Seeing a Summer Blockbuster:
30. 1 — Buttery popcorn.
31. 2 — Soda, preferably Cherry Coke.
32. 3 — Goobers, which (trust me) go with buttery popcorn better than anything on the entire planet. Just try it before you say anything else.
33. [Quick side note: is it me or are movie theaters the only place you can even get Goobers these days?]
34. 4 — The moment when the room goes dark right before the previews come on.
35. 5 — The previews.
36. Also this summer! Fantastic Four 2! Transformers! Hell, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, why not?! Summer Blockbusters!
37. Sometimes, at night, riding my bike down a perfect decline, past flowers that smell like bubblegum and trees so minty-fresh that it feels like air itself is brushing my teeth, I get this crazy free feeling that I can’t even explain, although I wish I could. It’s like if I pushed a button on the bike I could actually fly up into space towards that big old silvery crazed moon. A la E.T.
38. Jenn P. thinks we’re Soul Mates thanks to the Last Unicorn. She’s probably right.
39. 
40. My mom sent me the rest of my clothes in the mail yesterday (99% of my possessions are currently in her basement in Wilmington, DE). The clothes smell like my mom washed them. How is it that no matter how old we get, or how good we get at using the right amount of detergent or fabric softener or whatever, that we can still never get our clothes to smell like our mom washed them? Anyhow my mom hasn’t washed my clothes since like ‘92. So I put on a clean shirt and then I put on “Nevermind” by Nirvana and opened up an old copy of Uncanny X-Men and oh yeah, I was there.
    
41. I’m on a plain. I can’t complain.
42. You know what bothers me? When you run into someone you knew from Philly, but you run into them here in Portland, and dude is like all nonchalantly “Oh hey man.” I mean, the coincidence that we’d run into each other 3000 miles from home, goddamn I can’t tell you how much this bums me out. Get excited! Coincidence! The happenstance, serendipity, pure Fate of this Magic Life that we’re Living. Get into it asshole! Or get off my Planet!
43. What made me say I’d write 50 of these things. 50 is a lot. I’m running out of ideas. More coffee.
44. Goddamn this is good coffee. Stumptown I love you.
45. Can you believe that years and years later, the McSweeney’s site is still there? And it looks exactly the same! Is that brave or just dumb? Does anyone read it any more? Remember when you did? Oh come on it’s years later, you can now admit that you did. Everyone did, then. But now? Who?
46. People tell me you can see owls around here. What I wouldn’t give to see an owl right about now. Once, with my friend Laura, I saw a hawk flying over downtown. Saw a vulture too. That was cool alright. But an owl! I wanna wanna wanna see an owl. Make it happen, please.
47. The new Dinosaur Jr. is actually pretty damn fun.
48. 
49. Finally! Only one more to go, better make it good.
50. Good. I mean goodnight!

Lots of tough decisions here people. Let’s look at the spread.

Real Fun: minor dude from Preston School of Industry did a book of Polaroids called “Real Fun” featuring other dudes from other dudes from Indie Rock bands. Sounds cool enough, and other publications more esteemed than ours are writing about this elsewhere.  But he thing that caught our eye is that frickin’ Scott Kanneberg aka Spiral Stairs — yeah, from Pavement!

– is DJing the event, which is free. Just for the weirdness of saying you went to this, is why you’d say you went to this. At the Office, 2204 NE Alberta St., 7pm.
Konono #1 over at Alladin Theater. Too pricey for any of us, but who doesn’t like salvaged-car-part-amplified thumb piano dance/political polyrhythm phreakout Kinshasa wildness? Yeah it’s rad alright.

Over at the Crystal Ballroom yeah it’s the Kaiser Chiefs if that’s your kind of thing but look who’s opening up — nice, the Walkmen! This is where FSD will be not only because we actually Believe in the total blackhole romantic negative neo-noise-soul vibe that the Walkies have been dropping since the starting gate but also because our great pal LONG TALL MICKEY FRICKIN’ WALKER (Lilys/Mazarin/Philly &c., and pictured below) will be along with them! Hoooooooo!

If you needed things to be louder though, you could just go to see the Blood Brothers at the Hawthorne Theater. I mean if you needed it louder, that is.

Sorry guys, but FSD just got over strep throat, is now working full time, and exploring with his free time.  Also still furnishing the new offices.  Check in tomorrow.  Alex?  Where are you man?  I can’t do this all by myself!

Like Molly Bloom says: YES.

And yeah, that’s frickin’ Chris Corsano on drums!