Hello Goodbye

2007's Leafy Green top 10:
1- getting married on a hot August day
2- a loud-ass jam session in Austin
3- the cherry tomatoes from the garden
4- a loud-ass jam session in Chevy Chase
5- Sunburned Hand of the Man at Wave Farm
6- getting cut loose from the shackles of the IMF
7- bringing tamales up to Connecticut for xmas
8- every one of Jenny Otto's classes (and Douglas Brooks)
9- learning about Allen Ginsberg
10- swimming in the ocean off Copal with the moon and stars above

Solstice

Ice forming on sea near Lauttasaari.
Originally uploaded by HyperBob

we've arrived at the shortest day. it's been a fun round trip. now we're heading out of the darkness back towards summer.

Street Hassle

Dupont Circle & 19th Street, Thursday 12:15 pm:

Lady Panhandler: Spare some change? I like you!
Me: Sorry, no change.
Lady Panhandler: I don't like you. Fuck you!

Two blocks further south...

Male Panhandler: Merry Christmas, spare some change?
Me: Sorry, no change.
Male Panhandler: Asshole!

Majick Community Radio Airplay

Sean at WRYR (97.5 FM in Annapolis -100 watts of power!) played track 4 off disc 3 of the CD-R set...an inspired choice! it's one of the most abstract tracks we've recorded...I love to think of our stuff floating in the airwaves over the "Eastern & Western Shores of the Mid-Chesapeake Bay Region".

Sean's show is every Friday night from 9 til 1.

Thanks Sean!

Cassette Culture

Just signed up for my second year of Tape Club, the Plastic Crimewave effort that puts a mix tape of psychedelic sixties unknowns in your mailbox every two months. I've written about this before but I wanted to plug it again because I'm a huge fan of Steve Krakow's stuff. His Galactic Zoo Dossier zine is totally awesome (here's an interview with the man).

I listen to my cassettes on a $25 boombox. This is the optimal playback mechanism for tapes. The Tape Club tapes sound great on a boombox. Most 60's music was recorded in mono, meant to be heard through the single speaker of a handheld transistor radio or a crappy AM car radio.

The Tape Club tapes got me to go back through my old tapes. I've heard a few where some drunken finger pressed "record" instead of "play", creating a few seconds of what is today called a "field recording". And even if you punch out those two little tabs, tapes degrade. So the tape you hear today won't sound the same years from now. Degeneration baby! It's cool.

Takoma Crime Map

View Larger Map
Stereogab created this very cool Google Map showing the latest wave of muggings in our neighborhood. It's cool that DC shares their data but if one concerned citizen can build an effective map using Google, why are we paying for stuff like this?

UPDATE 12.12: Found the MPDC Crime Incidents KML file and their Google map but they don't show many of the incidents mapped above. Is MPDC not adding every incident to their database?