Density of Ice

I spent the past two weeks on a family vacation to Alaska, with one week on a cruise, and one week exploring the Alaskan Interior. The parents were excited to see the scenery and to get the cruise experience, while I was excited to see the scenery and the birds. I had extremely low expectations for the cruise, but I was really pleasantly surprised by it; things ran very smoothly and it never got painfully dull. The highlight had to be playing Ping Pong in high winds during a stormy day in the Gulf of Alaska. From my side, you could hit the ball off the table to the right, and watch the wind slam it all the way over to the left edge of the table, just over the net, for a perfect shot. Shots from the other side would just blast right by me, and I had to chase a few errant balls all the way down the length of the slippery deck, narrowly avoiding a few dives into the frigid arctic waters.

But really I was still more interested in the birds I could potentially find, as Alaska is a treasure trove of hard-to-find species that I may never get another shot at in my lifetime. I'd been hoping to pick up murres, murrelets, loons, and other ocean-going species on our first full day in the Inside Passage, but I saw absolutely nothing but gulls en route to other destinations. Birding in the open ocean is always a bit difficult, as I learned many many years ago on a whale-watching excursion in the San Juan Islands of Washington, and a few years ago on a ferry across the Pamlico Sound in North Carolina. But even on those trips, I could count on a few interesting sightings per hour at the least. Here: nothing. On the ocean, I saw nothing but gulls until our third day, on another whale-watching excursion coming out of Juneau.

On land, I was hoping to find many of the boreal species that only rarely venture in the Lower 48, but I was again met with surprising disappointment. In Ketchikan, I spent the morning in the Tongass National Forest, and heard nothing but crows, gulls, and a single Bald Eagle, with no songbirds to speak of. An afternoon exploration of a wooded hillside on the edge of town yielded two Townsend's Warblers, which was nice, but again, I was completely unaccustomed to the absolute silence in the woods. On the next day's 5 mile hike through old growth rainforest outside Juneau, there were still no birds to be heard, which had me very downtrodden. At least the hike was possibly the most amazing I've ever done.

Townsend's Warbler, one of two species of western yellow-faced warblers. I picked up the other, Hermit Warbler, while at the 2004 YBC in California. Photo by Peter LaTourette.

I would eventually pick up a few of my desired seabirds in Glacier Bay, with a single Kittlitz's Murrelet being the undoubted highlight, but many of the more common species (such as Marbled Murrelet!) still eluded me, which was incredibly frustrating. Glacier Bay was my last chance on the ocean birds, as the Prince William Sound's avian populations were still recovering from the Exxon Valdez oil spill almost 20 years ago, so it was time for me to move on and try my luck with the landbirds.

On the land portion, extensive time was spent at the Alyeska Prince Resort south of Anchorage, and at Denali National Park, the latter of which I expected to be a gold mine of birds. But again, at both locations, birds were few and far between. Reading a book on the Birds of Denali while in the visitor center's gift shop, the author made a note that due to the area's extreme northern latitude, the density of birds was extremely low, which the author claimed made any encounters all the more magical.

The passage really struck me. Indeed, I'd just spent 3 hours climbing the 3,000-ft Mt. Healy, and only came across three species of birds, with no more than 4 individuals of each. Of those three species however, all three were completely new to me until this Alaskan expedition. All in all, I spent one full day and significant portions of two other days in Denali National Park, yet I totaled a list of only nine species of birds in that entire span. In a comparable period of time at a place like Huntington Beach in South Carolina, I could likely approach eighty species. Yet those nine species in Denali were all incredibly unique birds that I rarely get the chance to observe, if ever. Birding in Alaska was most certainly a case of quality over quantity.



So which would I prefer, a single Spruce Grouse foraging on a trail in Denali, or a massive flock of Starlings nearly blocking out the sun? Well, both, really. I enjoy the small pleasures of birding enough to see the beauty in both. But I must say that it's far easier to bird in a quantity-rich environment, as the constant movement and sound is enough to keep your senses in shape. Birding in Denali was such a desolate experience; staring over miles of open tundra with no sounds except that of the wind and the rain, and no movement except that of the taller grasses leaning with the wind. I did treasure the few birds I found, but it still remained an incredibly numbing experience. I could imagine spending years and years in Alaska slowly building up my lists, and I would find that extremely enjoyable. But I only had a short amount of time to spend, and to spend that time wandering around an empty landscape was anything but fulfilling. Nonetheless, though the birding was disappointing, it was a memorable trip in many other different aspects, and one I would be eager to repeat sometime in the future.

Birding highlights:

• Kittlitz's Murrelet - single bird dove in front of the ship in Glacier Bay
• Spruce Grouse - male foraging on the trail only 20 yds ahead in Denali National Park
• Willow Ptarmigan - family group foraging on the side of the Park Road in Denali. Probably one of my favorite birds ever now, ptarmigans are so gosh-darn cool.
• Townsend's Warbler - female feeding juvenile in Ketchikan
• Tufted Puffin - several individuals in Glacier Bay (but no Horned Puffins!)
  
• Varied Thrush - small groups seen at Alyeska and Denali
• Trumpeter Swan - several pairs along Seward Highway and Alaska Railroad
  

Non-bird organism highlights:

• Dall's Porpoise - common throughout Inner Passage
• Humpback Whale - common throughout Inner Passage
• Steller's Sea Lion - common in Juneau and Skagway
• Harbor Seal - several seen in front of glaciers in Glacier Bay
• Sockeye Salmon - many in Juneau and Skagway, with best observations coming from kayak on beautiful Chilkoot Lake in Haines
  
• Chum Salmon - many swimming upstream in Ketchikan
• Black Bear - fishing for Sockeye Salmon on Chilkoot River in Haines
  
• Moose - Denali
• Grizzly Bear - Denali
• Dall Sheep - Denali
• Caribou - Denali

Non-trip linking highlights:

• A waterfall in Penn Station.
• Beautiful libraries of the world.
• The 100 most-viewed pages on Wikipedia. Kind of disturbing, really.
• John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats list his top of albums of 2006 so far, including no metal sadly. That's for a different list, sez he. It's an interesting list.
• If you need more bling, get this iced-out refridgerator to round out your presentation.
• And finally, some rare Calvin and Hobbes art, including an unreleased strip, by the reclusive Bill Watterson. Endlessly fascinating.
  

Mt. McKinley, also known as Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, on 8.24.2006 as seen from near Highway Pass in Denali National Park. The mountain itself was still 30 miles down the road, but this was the furthest we would go on that day.

Deerhoof etc

Went to the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro last night to see Deerhoof play, along with openers The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and Pleasant. I'd only heard rave reviews of Deerhoof shows, and was eager to see how crazy things could get. But first, there were the openers.

Edit: Now with great photos courtesy of Josh, thanks. For the full set, see Mr. Behrend's facebook albums.

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade took the stage first, a band comprised of two tenor saxophones, an alto sax, a guitar, and percussion. The group looked at each other, lifted their horns, and just blew the roof off the Cradle. This was completely chaotic free jazz, Interstellar-Space-style, cranked up all the way to 11, with the three saxes just blasting through. Halfway through the first song, the tenor saxes leaped off the stage and started wailing their way through the stunned crowd. Truth be told, I was blown away, pretty much literally and figuratively.

Once the raucous din finally subsided, the group revealed that the piece they'd just performed was actually a Deerhoof cover. Go figure. The crowd was likely split between those who were impressed by their technical prowess but not the impenetrable wall of sound they created, and those who were more pretentious and pretended to really get into them, like me. Their original material was possibly even more chaotic than the opening cover, culminating in the final song. At one point, each of the sax players put down their horns and just screamed at the top of their lungs, and later in the piece one of the sax players played a tenor and an alto sax at the same time, Rahsaan-Roland-Kirk-style.



I feel that these guys were the absolutely perfect opener for Deerhoof, illuminating many of Deerhoof's free jazz elements, in that both rely heavily on organized chaos and a tight group dynamic. Really, Deerhoof are just a melodic free jazz group who play rock instruments instead of saxophones, while The Abraham Lincoln Brigade are just a textural spazz rock group who play saxophones instead of guitars (plural). I went ahead and bought their self-titled album, curious to hear their studio sound. I was really surprised to find that it's extremely similar to their live show in many respects, giving me a nice little memento of their unique and excellent performance.



Next up was Pleasant. I didn't think there was any way these guys could top The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and I wasn't really proved wrong. As their pedestrian name implied, the group was a fairly pedestrian indie pop/rock band, featuring a nerdy male guitarist harmonizing with a female bassist over late Sonic Youth guitars. I was a huge fan of the drummer though, who looked like a middle-aged office drone who just drove straight to the Cradle from his cubicle, but completely rocked his kit with incredible intensity. Mr. Behrend also tells me that he's one of the few rock drummers he's seen using a classical grip on his sticks.

By far the most unique aspect of the group was the old cello player they had on stage for a few of their songs, playing his parts from sheet music on a music stand. But you couldn't hear him at all. Even when Mr. Behrend ventured up to the very front, he reported that you still couldn't hear the cello. Tragic. It reminded all of us of the Cary Academy All-Stars, one of the more embarassing aspects of our esteemed academic institution, in which a prodigal conservatory-bound cellist was somehow involved in a boring high school stoner-rock band.

And for two songs, Pleasant was joined by a trumpeter and another sax player, not from the ALB. Both looked incredibly awkward on stage, looking down at the floor while nervously fingering notes and checking for sticky pads or valves as the rest of the band played yet another song that sounded like the last. But when they started playing, oh man. Pleasant suddenly became this incredible band, worthy of any and all praise possible; it was a glorious sound. I've never seen/heard such a dramatic transformation in quality; a boring indie rock band suddenly emotionally transcended music itself in the space of a single song. But as Bill Simmons eloquently stated with regards to the SNL Lazy Sunday skit, it was probably just a case of context. If you had to sit in a gym watching a basketball dunk contest between area hipsters for about three hours, you'd probably be lulled to sleep, but if Josh Smith somehow entered the building and then dunked blindfolded from the free throw line, the place would probably riot. I feel that's an accurate representation of my feelings towards the wind entrances for Pleasant.



Sadly, it just lasted for just one song. The trumpeter left after that one song, receiving a solid amount of applause from the crowd. On the next song the saxophonist just played some long trills, nothing fancy, but it still blew away the rest of the Pleasant material by a good country mile. The band only played for about half an hour, but it seemed more like five, and not in a good way. I just stopped listening to their music after the wind and cello exits, and watched the faces of the band. They looked tired, and resigned to their fate as indie rock also-rans, never destined to reach any sort of stardom or fame. They all seemed to know it too, and that struck me as really...sad, I suppose. So why were they trudging on, or touring much less? For the fun, the enjoyment of making music in a band? I suppose so, and I guess that's what counts, right? Maybe.

So then finally Deerhoof took the stage. As expected, it was completely ridonkulous. Tightest band I've ever seen perform live. Somehow they pulled off every arrhythmic start/stop absolutely perfectly. They were incredibly fun to watch too, as each member had such unique personalities and styles, obviously led by Satomi Matsuzaki's bizarre hand gestures in the middle of songs.



The between-song banter was hilariously awkward as well, with Greg Saunier leaving his drum kit just to clumsily trip over to the mic and say "Thank You" and return to his kit. It was sort of fitting, coming in the organized chaos of their set. The all-too-short setlist was dominated by the recent Runners Four material, with just a few older songs thrown in to keep the diehard fans content. I don't really have too much to say about Deerhoof, the show went off exactly as I thought it would, as a louder and more jagged take on their studio records, which was absolutely fine by me, as it was one of the better shows I've ever been to. Please see this band if you ever get the chance. They are truly one of the few innovators in rock music today.









Nothing's been going on back home, which is sort of nice actually, it's incredibly relaxing. The flipside to that is this massive cache of links that I've been stockpiling. I usually try and sequence my links in some sort of semi-cohesive flow, but that's just not gonna happen tonight, sorry. Hopefully this will be enough to last for my few weeks away. I hope the rest of your summers go well! This is my Sandanista!:

• Fit this "wrench" inside your wallet
• Follow planes flying around major airports, in real time.
• Door handles that give off a pleasant scent when turned, including an opium-scented handle. Hooray!
• Ford is planning to get rid of those slightly-annoying gas caps.
• Possibly the greatest theme park of all time, and by greatest I actually mean worst.
• Tips for building those elaborate sand castles at the beach.
• Most definitely the greatest exit strategy for Iraq. Follow this all the way through, it's so worth it.
• What it's like to go mountain biking with W. Bush, who's apparently a physical beast.
• Always look on the bright side of life. If you're genetically predisposed to do so, at least. Maybe.
• Gallery of fascinatingly unique musical instruments, with sound samples included. Also in this category is a stunning 42-stringed guitar.
  
• The ten best songs about the beautiful state of North Carolina, according to Greensboro's YES! Weekly. NORTH CAROLINA C'MON AND RAISE UP.
• Awesome video of a car blazing past...underground subway stations...on the tracks...
• They're making a video about Helvetica. Yes, the font.
• This girl took a photo of herself every day for three years, and here's the results.
• A nifty folding bike. This is what Floyd Landis will need as he runs from the law, lol. Actually, I'm really on the fence regarding his innocence, maybe I'll have more on that later.
• The 50 highest-grossing movies in the US that were never in wide release.
• 11 secrets that men keep from their wives, and vice versa.
• An interesting way to take notes and stay organized at school. Any Swatties on this yet?
• Pretty ridiculous pixel art from Taiwan.
• Really fun and old map of Los Angeles. Warning: huge file, but worth it.
• The perfect fishing lure for those of you workin the bling-bling.
• Shipwrecks in the Sahara revealed on Google Earth?
• I'm no romantic, but this is a really sweet way to propose. Also really touching are these year-by-year photos of a family growing up over the years.
  
• And finally, here's some photos of Ronaldinho's house. Pretty good.
  

Championship Vinyl, The Inner Workings Of

The inimitable Hipinion is running a challenge at the moment to list your top five songs from your top five artists of all time. Piece of cake, I thought. Wrong. I had enough trouble coming up with my five favorite bands, much less singling out five songs in their catalogs. But I've got a list now. I want my efforts to come to something, so I've decided to post it here. Feel free to post your own list. Here's mine:


Yo La Tengo
1. Today is the Day (fast version)
2. Detouring America With Horns
3. Drug Test
4. The Lie and How We Told It
5. You Can Have it All

Destroyer
1. Beggars Might Ride
2. The Bad Arts
3. It's Gonna Take an Airplane
4. Self Portrait With Thing (Tonight is Not Your Night)
5. Mercy [We Had the Right]

Wilco
1. I'm Always in Love
2. Muzzle of Bees
3. At Least That's What You Said
4. When You Wake Up Feeling Old
5. Pot Kettle Black

Mountain Goats
1. Game Shows Touch Our Lives
2. Jaipur
3. Song for the Julian Calendar
4. Tallahassee
5. Grendel's Mother

The Replacements
1. Androgynous
2. Alex Chilton
3. Answering Machine
4. Can't Hardly Wait (Tim version)
5. Left of the Dial


So there it is. Looking over it, I've picked five fairly canonical indie bands, nothing unique about that aspect of the list at all. Destroyer is probably the only unique touch in there. I like to think that I got some pretty deep cuts within the artist lists though, check out that unreleased Replacements studio outtake, or the super-early Mountain Goats and Yo La Tengo tracks.

The Replacements list was unbelievably easy; they're not the most consistent band out there, so the hits just stand out like a sore thumb. I had a really tough time with Yo La Tengo and The Mountain Goats, mostly because I feel YLT is a better albums-band than a singles-band, and The Mountain Goats just have a such a vast and uniform discography, much of which I still haven't heard.



I'm surprised that I've finally admitted that Pavement has fallen off my radar. They'd been my favorite band since...10th grade or so? I think my embarassing love for them culminated in my painting of the Wowee Zowee cover art on my senior square. I haven't looked at that thing since I graduated. So yeah, it's been a good ride Pavement, thanks for all the good stuff, but it's time for me to move on. It's not you, it's me. I'm the one who hasn't worked hard enough in this relationship; I wasn't able to give enough of a commitment, and that's all my fault. But we can still be friends, right? Malkmus?






Top 5 links of the past few days:

• Make a laptop case out of an old t-shirt.
  
• Some info on the Tromba Marina, a bowed string instrument that sounds surpisingly brass-like.
• Ridiculously elaborate pot-growing operation.
• Very messy networks.
  
• I'm pleased to report that I gave Mr. Behrend nightmares from showing him this caterpillar infestation of a Swedish town. Reportedly they are probably the larva of Yponomeuta evonymella, the Bird-cherry Ermine.

Oh Sicks

We're now around 2/3 of the way through the year twenty oh six (woah!), so it's about time for me to reevaluate the year's music releases. I thought about listing my favorite albums thus far, but decided that would be too elitist, so I've decided to list my least favorite albums thus far, which is possibly even more elitist. Personally, I believe that you learn more about a person's tastes by hearing them describe what they hate, rather than what they love. Whether or not you'll use this list to gain any psychological insights into my mind remains to be seen, and remains to be slightly creepy as well. But at least I hope you'll find this list entertaining, enraging, or simply enchanting, like Disneyworld or something.



I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - Fear is On Our Side



Their self-titled debut EP had a really unique and addicting sound that I loved almost as much as their incredible band name. So I was really disappointed by their debut LP, which is filled entirely with boring alterna-rock rather than the hip indie rock I was expecting. Seems like they've been listening to a lot more Foo Fighters than Interpol lately. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, the Foos were my favorite band in middle school (haha, more incriminating ammunition for all the playa hataz out there), it's just that ILYBICD do the post-grunge thing extremely poorly, and they seem so earnest about it too. Truly disappointing.




Aceyalone - Magnificent City (accompanied by RJD2)



Basically what happens on this album is that RJD2 comes in with this ridiculously sick groove that I start bouncin' to, but then this boring person decides to start talking for some reason, and I begin to fall asleep, only to be roused once more by another ill RJD2 beat. By the way, isn't it fascinating how the words 'sick' and 'ill' have become synonyms in a second, entirely different sense from their original intended meanings? Are there any other examples of this in the English language? Absolutely fascinating. At least, more so than this "Aceyalone" punk. Stop talking, plz.




Built to Spill - You in Reverse



So Built to Spill, you guys were quite popular in the 90's, riding on the success of three of the most critically acclaimed albums in all of indie rock. But you really haven't changed since then. Ten years ago, this would get a PERFECT TEN BEST NEW MUSIC from the fledgling P4k, but the world has moved on in the past ten years, and nobody cares about this sound anymore. To have any sort of longevity, you've gotta learn to evolve, just look at Yo La Tengo, or Tom Waits, or David Bowie. Those guys have managed to stay relevant over careers spanning decades, leaving their poseurs in the proverbial dust, and sadly Built to Spill, you are now caught in said dust. It's time for you to put out a DFA-produced dance-rock album. Actually, now that I think about it, that'd be pretty sick, or ill as you may or may not like it. Either definition of the words would work, really.




Danielson - Ships



You've got to be kidding me. How have hipsters bought into this junk? I just can't take it seriously at all. The little chorus of kids slays me every time.




Beirut - Gulag Orkestar



Another album that the hipsters are going ballistics over, and I don't understand it at all. So let me get this straight, this teenager plays trumpet over some poorly-written, but dramatically-performed songs, and it's Album Of The Year? It's the trumpet, isn't it. Well, trumpet isn't as cool as clarinet. If the superior instrument had been used instead, I'd probably like the album. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. So, the album gets killfiled.




Flaming Lips - At War With the Mystics



I've been thinking over a Modern Classics review for The Soft Bulletin, and I can sum up my thoughts on it by basically stating that if you stripped away all the lush production, you get a poorly written and aimless album such as this one. Does anyone actually like this album? Anyone? My feeling is that this is the Flaming Lips at their essence; it's the same album they've been making all along, but nobody's noticed because of all of Fridmann and Drozd's studio trix.




Grandaddy - Just Like the Fambly Cat



I'm not really sure what I used to see in these guys; at one point they were something like my fourth favorite band. Ever. In all of history. Absolutely unfathomable. This is such an embarrasing record, and a really poor way to ride into the sunset of retirement. Even the title and the cover art are bad. I try not to judge books by their covers, but sometimes those judgements are just absolutely correct. I stood up for Grandaddy when they released Sumday, in fact I still think that's an underrated album, but there's no way I'm standing up for this junk.




The Walkmen - A Hundred Miles Off



I'm having trouble thinking of another band experiencing such a catastrophic collapse in quality between albums. Interpol comes to mind, for one. But even Antics has a small handful of entertaining moments; this on the other hand, is just garbage through and through. After hearing songs like 'The Rat' or 'No Christmas While I'm Talking' coming through the speakers, 'boring' would probably be the last word I'd ever assign to this band. How wrong I was. What a disappointment. This is another album I'm having trouble finding any supporters for.



Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones



Okay, I guess here's another shocking bomb coming after a brilliant album. I like 'Gold Lion' on this record, and that's about it, really. I suppose the mindset of the YYY's was that the success of 'Maps' indicated that they should focus on a softer and more melodic angle to their music. Really though, the only reason we liked 'Maps' was because that beautiful jagged mess of an album surrounded it and put it into context. I mean, 'Maps' does sort of stand up on its own somewhat, but there's no way they could've penned another ten or twelve songs of Maps-like quality, and they should've realized that. I have to say that I'm just not interested in this band anymore, I doubt I'll check out there next album. Sorry.




Band of Horses - Everything All the Time



Is this not the most boring album of all-time, ever? I really like the first track, but after that it's a calculated mashup of The Shins and My Morning Jacket. The blandness is just fatal to me, knocks me right out, even better than a tranquilizer.



Well that was fun and depressing, wasn't it. Feel free to flame me in the comments section, I'll actually enjoy reading your perspectives on it, seriously. Just try to avoid the caps lock key, or the emo path.


Links, just for you, and No One Else:

• Ken Jennings of Jeopardy! fame blogs about his hatred of the Cocoa Puffs cuckoo, among other things. If I had a Hall of Fame of my personal heroes, Ken Jennings would likely be a first-ballot induction.
• Excellent interview with John Darnielle of Mountain Goats fame, another likely hall of fame inductee.
• Microsoft unveils their new Windows Vista Soda.
• If you want to reach Customer Service and can't find the phone number anywhere, try this database.
  
• This looks like it could either be incredibly fun or paralyzingly terrifying, whereas this similar-looking device looks very handy indeed.
• I hate the world.
  
• Most ridiculous airport runway in the world, you must check out the photos.
• Make a brand new wallet out of playing cards.
• Good beginner's intro on how to make a DJ mix for a party, with another good take here.
• Pierce Bush, nephew of W. Bush, is on Facebook, with some obvious implications. Someone at UT-Austin needs to get more lowdown on this situation, it really has tremendous upside potential.
• Good quotes by atheists, worth reading if you sympathize or not.
• New York Times article on the influence of Alchemy on Chemistry. I still maintain that Alchemy would be such a cool class to take in school, you'd just perform sweet reactions without worrying about theoretical yield, refractive index, etcetera.
• The longest-running scientific experiments in the world, including a bell that hasn't stopped ringing since 1840.