SYP Says

Best Songs of 2008: Week of 5/19-5/26: The Bones of You by Elbow

"The Bones of You" by Elbow 

Guy Garvey rocks. He's been the frontman for Elbow, one of the UK's best and most innovative bands, for over 15 years. Plus, he has a very nifty radio show on BBC 6 Music called Guy Garvey's Finest Hour. Feel free to listen to it here.

Elbow's latest, The Seldom Seen Kid, is only their fourth studio album and it was self-produced, mixed and recorded. While Elbow hasn't gotten the commercial success they deserve, their dreamy, atmospheric alt-rock sound has brought them a devoted cult following and reams of critical acclaim.

Here are the obligatory links to their official site and MySpace page.

Elbow live in Hollywood earlier this month--can't believe I missed them. Major bummer.

Organic Vodka by Cascade Peak Spirits

My landlord, Diane Paulson, is a cool chick. She and her fiance, David Eliasen, recently opened Cascade Peak Spirits, a micro distillery brewing organic vodka in my current home away from home, Ashland, Oregon.

Cascade Peak Spirits is the first organic distillery in Oregon making the first organic vodka, gin and whisky in the state.

Their first product is called Organic Nation Vodka and everything is handcrafted from the bottling to the labeling. When I went to renew my lease, I got to try it out. In a blind taste test vs Grey Goose and Square One (another organic vodka...albeit far inferior), we found Organic Nation Vodka was way better. No joke--it was smoother and more refined.

Right now, Diane and David are getting their pure spirits from a distillery in Idaho and then filtering it about six times. However, they've planted two acres of rye that will be ready for harvest in the fall.

For more info, check out their Web site at CascadePeakSpirits.com or email them at [email protected] . Send them ideas for new flavors too (my fingers are crossed for a Yuzu-flavored vodka which would totally rock). You can also read the May features on their new enterprise at Ashland Daily Tidings and The Mail Tribune.

Most importantly, buy their vodka! It's Oregon's first organic liquor, so support it. It's available, upon request, at all Oregon liquor stores and coming soon to Washington and Northern California. You can also request it at a bar or restaurant.

Locally, it is available at Ashland Liquor Store (40 Lithia Way, 541-482-4258) and West Main Liquor and Stevens Street Liquor stores in Medford. In Portland, Organic Nation Vodka is available at Pearl Specialty (900 NW Lovejoy, 503-477-8604). 

Mail-In Voting in Oregon

What was previously a somewhat little-known fact about Oregon, is suddenly front page news. Oregon is the first and only state in the U.S. to do all of its elections by mail. (And for once, Oregon's vote actually counted!) This totally makes sense to me. Oregon is very independent and likes to do its own thing. It has a low population relative to the size of the state, so not only would mail-in voting save money, but given the wide expanse, it's much more convenient (who wants to drive 2 hours through the mountains to place their vote?).

This was a new experience for me though. I have always gone to a voting booth and in NYC, the lines are always crazy long. While it was admittedly a bit of a pain, I also liked the interactivity of that process--leaving work early, grabbing a coffee, talking politics while standing in line. So it was really strange to find out a few weeks ago that I would be required to mail in my vote.

Filling out the ballot was sort of like taking an SAT test. While it took away some of the fun of the process for me, it also made me much more diligent about voting for offices I would have frankly ignored in the past. (Granted, even with the booklet I was sent, I did have to pick a couple of county candidates based on their hair in the picture and how funny their name sounded, but I swear I only did that twice. C'mon, don't tell me you've never done that.)

Anyway, I was proud of how it all turned out. Medford actually went to Obama!

Per the Associated Press, with 94% of the vote counted in Oregon, Obama was winning by a 59-41% margin. Obama won Oregon with the support of men and young people, but also found plenty of votes from blue-collar workers who have been the staple of Clinton victories in other states, according to surveys of voters. As a group, only those making less than $30,000 a year and those over 65 favored Clinton. Women were evenly divided between Obama and Clinton, but men voted for Obama 2-to-1.

Best Songs of 2008: Week of 5/12-5/19: Many Shades of Black by The Raconteurs

"Many Shades of Black" by The Raconteurs 

Consolers of the Lonely is the latest from The Raconteurs, a band featuring Jack White of The White Stripes, singer/songwriter Brendan Benson (whose song "Emma J" has been a fave of mine for years), and Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence, the drummer and bassist from The Greenhornes. I've got a soft spot for their debut, Broken Boy Soldiers, because I played it a lot when I first moved to Oregon from NYC. Although it probably had catchier singles, their latest holds together a bit better as an actual album and mixes different genres brilliantly--from blues to rock to garage to piano pop.

Check out their official site which is a throwback to the old days...you'll see what I mean when you get there.

Here's a video of The Raconteurs performing an acoustic version of "Many Shades of Black" for the Jools Holland BBC site.

New York Bagels in Southern Oregon!

Finally! Real New York bagels in Southern Oregon. Ahuva Bagel Company recently opened in West Medford (2386D West Main Street in the Albertson's Shopping Center, 541-776-2245).

We drove by a few months ago and were intrigued, but dubious. We stopped in this past weekend and immediately upon walking in, grilled the owner.

So...what exactly makes your bagels real New York bagels? They're boiled, he says. OK, he passed the first test. Then, when I asked him if he was going to have bialys, he said it was definitely possible. He got points just for knowing what bialys were (although he dropped a point for not having an everything bagel). If he had a true "regular coffee" and was using NYC tap water, we'd really be in business.

No offense to the Little Shop of Bagels and the Key of C Coffeehouse, but in general, I have had some truly god-awful bagels since I left NYC and moved to Ashland, Oregon. (Steamed bagels...what is this world coming to???) So, all hail Ahuva. This displaced New Yorker suddenly feels a little better about her current home away from home.

Best Songs of 2008: Week of 5/5-5/12: You'll Find a Way by Santogold

"You'll Find a Way" by Santogold 

Yes, I'm jumping on the Santogold hype bandwagon. Brooklyn-based Santi White went solo after doing a lead singer stint in the punk band Stiffed and the sound on her first album which I totally love is a cool mash-up of dub, '80s New Wave/Ska and alt-punk. Love her voice too which is reminiscent of Karen O's from Yeah Yeah Yeahs. White has been compared to M.I.A., but I actually like Santogold WAY better. She's also been getting a lot of attention for being one of the few black women in the alt music genre. Here's to her.

Check out her MySpace page for tour dates.

Here's a video of another great song by Santogold, L.E.S. Artistes. For those of you non-New Yorkers, L.E.S. stands for Lower East Side. :)

Star Wars According to a 3-Year Old

In honor of Mother's Day and my own lovely mum, here's Star Wars According to a 3-Year Old--proof that sometimes being a mom is worth it for moments like these.

Here's the 2 min. version.

Here's the 2 min. version interspliced with clips from the movie.

Thanks to Armen for sharing these with me. I told him I needed a laugh and he gave me more than one. :)

You say projector, I say projector

Recently, I had some vendors in for important presentations at work. Our office didn't have enough room given the number of participants and the duration (I had six four-hour presentations over several days), so I decided to book a conference room in one of the local hotels. We chose the Ramada Convention Center in Medford and when we made the reservation, we had a pretty simple request--just a speakerphone, a projector, and an internet connection.

We showed up an hour ahead of time  and found that the speakerphone was from about 20 years ago (it was basically an '80s home phone that happened to have a speaker) and there was no projector. I called the manager and she said she hadn't been told we needed one.

By this point it's about 15 minutes until the meeting needed to start and I'm panicking. The vendor is there, participants are starting to show up and call in (of course, we can hardly hear them).

The manager then says she does have a projector...an OVERHEAD projector. All talking in the room ceased. Long pause.

"...What's an overhead projector...?" I ask.

She gives me a strange look. "It has this arm and a lamp and you put transparencies on it."

"Like from when I was five?" I say incredulously. "Don't you have a projector that, you know, plugs into a laptop?"

"No, we don't have any like that."

"Well, I don't think we can put a 20G powerpoint presentation on transparencies!"

We ended up calling the office in a panic and getting a video projector from work. We also brought our own speakerphone the next day given the entire first presentation probably sounded like we were talking into a tin can.

Lesson learned. When you live kinda in the middle of nowhere, never assume anything.

On a positive note, the people at the Ramada were really lovely and helpful the entire time. I would use them again...I would just bring my own equipment!

If you are actually looking for a projector (the real kind), check out Projector Central or any electronics store.

Or, find out more about projectors because they are just that fascinating.

Best Songs of 2008: Week of 4/28-5/5: Postcards from Hell by The Wood Brothers

"Postcards from Hell" by The Wood Brothers 

Brothers Oliver (of King Johnson) and Chris Wood (of Medeski, Martin & Wood) performed their first public concert in 2005 at one of my favorite NYC venues, Tonic, which sadly closed last year. I know that now, but I didn't know anything about The Wood Brothers until a couple weeks ago when I got an email from bassist Carl Paradis who randomly found my blog by typing in his wife's maiden name "So Young Park." (Great name, I know.) He recommended The Wood Brothers  and I really like their laid-back, rootsy folk/blues/country style. Jeff & I recently got new lounge chairs for our top floor deck and these tunes from The Wood Brothers' latest album, Loaded, have been great for enjoying late at night when we're chilling with a beer under the stars. Thanks, Carl (and the other So Young)!

Couldn't find a video of "Postcards from Hell," so here are The Wood Brothers performing "Luckiest Man" at the Pickathon Roots Music Festival in Portland, OR.

Phil in Chainmail (aka The Lost Spartan)

This morning, I woke up to a message from my friend, Phil Terry.

I had a chance to visit the offices of ThinkGeek last week.

They put me in some chainmail, a helmet and gave me a sword and took some photos (with my long-sleeve shirt, watch and suit pants on!).

The helmet I wore was real metal and very heavy - and the chainmail was also real metal and hard to get on and off. But once it was on, it was very cool. I was ready to join the Spartans at Thermopylae. ;-)

I suppose most people nowadays know the Battle of Thermopylae from the recent movie 300 which was based on Frank Miller's graphic novel of the same name. You educated types would know it from the Greek historian, Herodotus, and his book The Histories, widely considered to be the first work of history in Western Literature. It tells the story of the war between the Persian Empire and the Greek city-states in the 5th century BC. Book VII (Polymnia) details the story of Leonidas I and the Battle of Thermopylae.

For those of you who know Phil, you know he is a HUGE student of the classics and ancient history. He is also quite the persuasive fellow and a year or two ago, he got me to re-read The Odyssey, as well as The Histories. The first time I read the former, I was in school and translated it from Latin to English. On the one hand, I got to know some of the key passages very well. OTOH, I never really enjoyed the full story end-to-end. I had actually never read the latter until recently and I highly highly recommend Robert Strassler's version, The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories. It is perfect for the modern reader who is not a scholar with wonderful maps and simple, clear translation. We met Mr. Strassler at The Met when we read his Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian Wars--he is a very cool guy who is devoting his retirement to making the classics more accessible. (A pic of us at our Met dinner is here.)

If reading something a bit lighter is more your fare, try the Latin poet, Catullus. His work is short, often humorous, and quite shocking and explicit in its day, focusing mainly on matters of love, sex, and everyday life.

For more pictures of Phil Terry, The Lost Spartan, Phil in Chainmail pix are on Flickr. You are also welcome to join Phil in reading the classics. For more info, check out The Reading Odyssey.

And if you must have that chainmail shirt, get it on ThinkGeek.com (hint: check out the guy in the Action Shot!).