More pics back from our Death Valley trip, and I have to say, I love this little town called Yermo.
I’ve been through there many times, it’s near the tourist ghost town I like to visit called Calico. Yermo is a very depressed little town. LOTS of abandoned buildings everywhere.
Which is good stuff, people!
I have a thing for the derelict. And the insane.
When I uploaded the rest of these photos to Flickr, I was listening to a Cat Power song. So I used the lyrics as titles.
I gave my brother one of these cameras for Christmas, and after he used the Hello Kitty film up, he reloaded it and discovered it keeps the circular shape to the exposures. Which is when I knew I had to get one! Here’s a pic from my first test roll:
Cool, huh? I’m gonna have fun with this camera.
Sunday was Worldwide Pinhole Day, which is when you’re supposed to take pictures with a pinhole camera. Well I missed it but did it on Monday instead. I have a couple pinhole cameras my parents got me for my birthday that I don’t use enough. The film inside them is bent, which gives the image a distorted look. Here’s a train car in Seal Beach:
Daniel through the pinhole:
Some other random pictures…The latest addition to my on-going series, “Liquor Stores of Orange County,” the Newhope Discount Liquor store:
Awhile ago I picked up some expired black and white film. Well, a little more than just expired—this stuff is like 50 years old. Here’s a picture of a statue outside a Sports Chalet store that I took with it:
See the marks that look like big scratches on the film? That’s where the film just sort of flaked off while I was developing it. I assume it’s just because of how old the film is. This film does remarkably well for how old it is, though. Usually old film will have fogging. Sometimes this film will but mostly it comes out very clear. (The liquor store picture was also taken with this film.)
Last Saturday, Nathaniel, Dillon and I went to Santa Ana and wandered around taking pictures. I like this one:
The reflection is of a church.
On our trip out to Death Valley, we stopped at a thrift/antique store where I picked this up:
It’s an old 126 film camera. I just happen to have some 126 film. The first roll through it came out fine, however my scanner tends to choke on the colors and they come out all weird:
But I like it!
And here’s Nathaniel and Cat during a hike we took in Death Valley:
And last but not least (ok, maybe it’s least), some junk at the swap meet:
I meant to do a post about a bunch of my favorite Mountain Goats songs, but I so often just get stuck on one that it’s hard to spread them out all at once.
This is the one I’m stuck on now, called “Hast Thou Considered the Tretapod.”
The singer, John Darnelle, is this fabulous lyricist with a voice that is rather annoying. So I’ll understand if you can’t stand him. But read these lyrics.
hast thou considered the tetrapod
you are sleeping off your demons
when I come home.
spittle bubbling on your lips,
fine white foam
I am young and I am good.
it’s a hot southern california day.
if I wake you up, there will be hell to pay.
and alone in my room,
I am the last of a lost civilization.
and I vanish into the dark
and rise above my station.
rise above my station.
but I do wake you up, and when I do
you blaze down the hall and you scream.
I’m in my room with the headphones on
deep in the dream chamber.
and then I’m awake and I’m guarding my face,
hoping you don’t break my stereo.
because it’s the one thing that I couldn’t live without
and so I think about that and then I sorta black out.
held under these smothering waves
by your strong and thick veined hand,
but one of these days I’m going to wriggle up on dry land.
A tetrapod is a four-limbed vertebrate, yes I had to look it up. Amphibians are tetrapods. When people talk about creatures evolving from living in water to living on land, they’re talking about tetrapods. When John Darnelle is talking about tetrapods, he’s talking about escaping his stepfather’s abuse. (The song is auto-biographical.)
OK, one more song. This one is a big fave from Tallahassee, which is a concept album about a self-destructive married couple. Brilliantly written.
No Children
I hope that our few remaining friends
Give up on trying to save us
I hope we come up with a failsafe plot
To piss off the dumb few that forgave us
I hope the fences we mended
Fall down beneath their own weight
And I hope we hang on past the last exit
I hope it’s already too late
And I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here
Someday burns down
And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
And I never come back to this town
Again in my life
I hope I lie
And tell everyone you were a good wife
And I hope you die
I hope we both die
I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow
I hope it bleeds all day long
Our friends say it’s darkest before the sun rises
We’re pretty sure they’re all wrong
I hope it stays dark forever
I hope the worst isn’t over
And I hope you blink before I do
Yeah I hope I never get sober
And I hope when you think of me years down the line
You can’t find one good thing to say
And I’d hope that if I found the strength to walk out
You’d stay the hell out of my way
I am drowning
There is no sign of land
You are coming down with me
Hand in unlovable hand
And I hope you die
I hope we both die
So funny to hear it as a sing-along.
PS there’s another name that tune up over at Kulturblog.com today. This time it’s photography-related songs.
1. Who else would start singing a Yeah Yeah Yeahs song in the middle of covering a Kelly Clarkson song?
Or cover a Kelly Clarkson song, for that matter. With an acoustic.
2. These lines from this song:
Me and Timory holdin’ hands -
I was shaking hers, ‘cause she said she was a fan
There was an awkward pause, and something that should’ve began
Just passed us by.
But I watched her sing along with every word
In the prettiest voice that I never heard
And I still see her dancing, wearin’ my shirt
Right there.
3. What male do you know who can sing about eating disorders and not sound stupid?
His song “Me and Mia” is all about eating disorders. “Me and Mia, Ann and Ana”—”Mia” being slang for Bulimia and “Ana” being slang for Anorexia. What’s more than not sounding stupid, though, is that he gets it right.
Fighting for the smallest goal: to get a little self-control
I see it in your eyes, I see it in your spine
He’s very pro-women and seems to make a point of having bands with women open for him when he’s on tour. At least, every time I’ve seen him, he has. And he has a song called “Hearts of Oak” about how hard it is for women in the music industry.
4. He scores big literary points
I had a college lit class once where the teacher pointed out that in Walt Whitman’s poem Song of Myself, the very first word was “I,” and the very last word was “you.” This is significant.
On Ted Leo’s Shake the Sheets album, the very first line is “I was walking through a life one morning.” The very last line on the album? “There’s a whole lot of walking to do.” (He actually uses the whole walking reference in other songs on the album as well.)
Yet he doesn’t take himself seriously at all. In one song he pokes fun at his own “morbid verse.”
5. He has a song in which he says the phrase “It’s alright” 149 times.
How do I know? I counted.
6. He’s rather informal when he performs live.
Once he was having some equipment trouble during a show, so he asked if anyone had any jokes to share. He had audience members come up on stage and tell their jokes into the microphone while he fixed his guitar.
Another time there was a woman up front dancing and singing to every song, she stood out in the crowd a bit because she had short-cropped white-blonde hair. He recognized her from the show he’d done the night before in San Diego and invited her onstage during their last song to sing backup and play tamberine. It was so cool.
Here’s video I got of the entire thing:
The song is a cover of Chumbawumba, btw.
7. His song “Shake the Sheets.”
There’s no chorus to it. It has a whole ton of words in it. I’ve memorized the whole thing. It took me hours and hours of listening to it (during my commute, back when I was working fulltime). I just love what it has to say.
Last week when my parents were here we went to the Long Beach Aquarium. We were originally thinking about going to the San Diego Zoo, but the Aquarium is closer and cheaper. Me and Elijah had been there before, and Cat had a prom there, but no one else had been.
Daniel was really excited to be able to pet sharks and sting rays, so we went to the Shark Lagoon first.
This is a tiger sharK, I think:
Or maybe it’s a nurse shark. I forget.
Cat next to a giant sting ray:
They do *not* look friendly:
I was using my mom’s camera and most of the shots came out too blurry (it was pretty dark in there) to post. But here’s one of the jellyfish:
And one of my parents:
It was really fun, if crowded. We saw the 3D movie about creatures of the deep sea, which are the craziest looking things you’ll ever see. I’m still not completely convinced they aren’t totally made up.
