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…played mini golf?

Nathaniel, Dillon and I rode over to Boomer’s, a little amusement park (emphasis on little). You know, one of those places with go karts, a ferris wheel, and mini golf. For some reason I’ve been craving mini golf. Fortunately Nathaniel loves mini golf.

Unfortunately he’s really good at it. He totally creamed us. Well, me anyway. I think Dillon was pretty close to winning.

But that’s ok. I mainly wanted to take pictures there.

It was getting dark so the pictures didn’t turn out as well as they could have. Some didn’t turn out at all. I took these with this camera, I flipped the lens on it for that blurry effect.

I do better at the long shots than I do the putting. I think if we owned a house with a yard I might want to make our own mini golf course. Then I could become the Tiger Woods of mini golf.

Hey. I can dream.

It was fun. I was actually in a bad mood that day, but generally, me in a bad mood isn’t any different than me in a good mood. I’m pretty even-keeled. And I don’t take my bad moods out on people around me. (Generally. I’m thinking of the other day when I was really grouchy and Daniel had Patch Adams on the TV. Nathaniel teased me because it was a chick flick, just assuming I had been the one to turn it on. I practically bit his head off. “I hate that stupid movie! It sucks! Your dad’s watching it!” That’s about as bad as I get when I’m grouchy. Stupid Patch Adams with the stupid butterfly on the hillside in the stupid sunshine.)

I remembered when we were riding our bikes home that I had to get Elijah to his guitar lessons, which started at 6. I raced home (Nathaniel would laugh, he and Dillon totally left me in the dust, even after I’d gotten a head start on them) and got there right at 6. Fortunately Daniel had gotten home in time to get Elijah to his lesson, so he wasn’t late. I think the cost of the lessons comes out to about $7 for 5 minutes. Every minute is precious. When it costs more than a dollar.

Now for some reason I’m craving a laser light show. Remember those?

On the heartless streets of Huntington Beach.

Some cower in fear, not knowing which way to turn.

They find themselves seeking out companionship in questionable places, turning their backs on their true friends, not realizing they’re headed only for sorrow and despair.

Until, lost amongst unfeeling strangers, they fall into a drunken stupor of spiraling shame and degradation.

Don’t let this be you.

I don’t really have any. MCQ, someone I know from blogging at KB, is in town this weekend, so I might try to meet up with him. Other than that I just want to go bike riding and photo-taking.

Yesterday I took Nathaniel and his friend Dillon into downtown L.A. We went to the Disney Concert Hall to take pictures. I don’t have any developed yet. It’s one of those crazy buildings designed by Frank Gehry, it looks like a piece of crumpled up garbage from the air. (We just saw Get Smart and there are scenes filmed there, which is what made me want to go take pictures there.) Here’s a picture Dillon took of it. It’s cool because you can actually walk up inside the structure, and you’re outside, but you’re hidden from view. This shows you what I mean.

After that we walked over to MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art. There is a big sculpture there all made from industrial metal parts, like pipes and pieces of airplane wings and stuff. Basically a bunch of trash all wired together.

Then we went to Olvera Street, which is the oldest street in LA and seems like a little piece of Mexico right in the middle of the city. It’s pretty cool. There are these little shacks full of vendors selling shoes and Luche Libre masks and hand puppets. We got tacos and took pictures, hoping the light hadn’t faded too much for my film to turn out. The sun was going down.

So that was yesterday. Here’s a bike ride from the day before on the Santa Ana River Trail (again). About the ending: Well, I’ll just say Nathaniel doesn’t take direction very well. His understudy came to the rescue, though.

Soundtrack: Ladyhawk - “S.T.H.D.”

I just googled that song title to see if I could figure out what that abbreviation stands for. Some possible meanings:

Stored Heading
Sheikh Trust for Human Development
Southern Tier Harley-Davidson
Student Technology Help Desk
Strap Tie Holdown

Any other ideas? Shut The Hell Down?

And happy birthday to Dillon. (The only one of my kids who actually reads my blog.)

The secret? Ruin their habitat.

The concrete rivers all over southern California really trip me out. Everyone’s seen the LA River in movies, right? The Terminator most quickly springs to mind. I’ve always felt weird even calling it a river. It’s like, a giant ditch.

There’s a river closer to us called the Santa Ana River that is also made of concrete. I looked up what it’s called when they pave a riverbed: channelization. (Or river engineering.) I thought this was mostly unique to California, but apparently it’s been done heavily in other parts of the US, too.

The Santa Ana has a biking trail along it. Like, the whole way. You can ride from the beach to the mountains and back again. I took Nathaniel and Dillon over to it yesterday for a quick bike ride. I’m sure everyone’s getting sick of my videos by now but I’m still enjoying them, so you’re stuck with it.

Song: Pride Tiger - “The Lucky Ones”

Man, I love that song. If you pay attention, you can see Dillon taking pictures as he’s riding. When Nathaniel disappears for awhile, he’s actually down in the riverbed.

We ended up at a railroad bridge that is no longer in use. (Well, it’s in use by a homeless person—there was a mattress and some things down underneath it. That’s gotta be some prime real estate.) So we took some pictures and then headed back to the car.

Nathaniel’s smiling at me, Dillon’s taking a picture. Dillon was taking his in black and white so I thought I’d try converting some of mine.

That’s Dillon above, Nathaniel was already up around the bend. I kept stopping to take pictures and they’d get way ahead of me. Plus I couldn’t always make it back up the inclines and would have to walk my bike! The trail is slightly uphill on the way back, and that combined with the headwind did me in.

Nathaniel and Dillon waiting for me to catch up. I told them they didn’t have to wait for me, they just had to come back and find my dead body if I didn’t show up after awhile. Nathaniel said if they didn’t wait for me they’d already be back at the car waiting there.

There were some hawks down in the river bed, which is what they’re looking at. The birds looked weird to me. Had huge bunches of tail feathers—almost more like a vulture or something. But I didn’t stop to check them out.

Dillon brought along his new camera and got some excellent shots, which I’d link to if he’d set up a flickr account, but he hasn’t.

Been kinda crazy around here. I have a big review to post for the Opeth show but I think that’ll wait until tomorrow. I haven’t been doing much bike riding lately, been too busy working. But I went out today, even though it is quite literally 90 degrees out.

The first ride (video below) is from my apts to a closed down Levitz. I kept having to stop to adjust the camera because it wasn’t secured very tightly.

Song: Jose Gonzalez - “Down the Line”

The second ride starts at the abandoned Levitz and shows me (and my big butt) stopping to take some pictures and then heading towards home.

Song: The Mountain Goats - “Lovecraft in Brooklyn”

Yes. Daniel got a beach cruiser.

I tried videotaping our first bike ride together but it didn’t come out. The camera was zoomed in and kept bouncing around, believe me you don’t want to see it.

So Nathaniel tried out the bike and we went out at sundown. I wanted to see how the camera would do at twilight—came out pretty cool, I think:

Soundtrack: Ladyhawk - “I Don’t Always Know What You’re Saying”

That’s Daniel waving at the beginning. And me waving at the end.

I have, but only once or twice. The one dream I can remember having a lot of music in was one where my older brother and I went to see this band play. It was like back in the 60s, and everything was in black and white at first, like if you’d seen it on an old tv show.

The band was playing in a park. There were a few singers, sort of dressed like choir singers. Only they were all Satanists and were singing songs about evil things. The music didn’t sound evil, but I can’t really remember exactly what it sounded like. Probably 60s pop music.

I do remember the singer wanted to kill me. Like, really wanted to kill me. A recurring theme in my dreams—someone wanting to kill me.

And here’s today’s bike ride, this time featuring both Nathaniel and his friend Dillon on their way to Sam Ash (a guitar store). Dillon’s on the skateboard.

Soundtrack: Built to Spill - “Goin’ Against Your Mind”

Extra points if you can guess what band tshirt Dillon is wearing. Psychic points if you can guess what band tshirt Nathaniel is wearing.

When I say, “me,” I mean my brain
And when I say, “Give me the cure,” I mean to kill the pain
And when I say, “Kill the pain,” I mean to get the devil out
And when I say, “Devil,” I mean all manifestation of doubt

– Ted Leo

It’s amazing how much better I feel after I ride my bike. Even on days when I’m totally worn out from working on the computer all day. Or horribly hormonally depressed from PMS. If I can get out for 30-60 minutes on my bike, everything’s good.

I think maybe the days when I ride and work up a bit of a sweat are the best days, though. I mentioned this to Daniel and he said, “Oh yeah, you’ve gotta sweat. It gets the demons out.”

I ride really lazily. If I work up a sweat, it’s not because I’m riding really hard. It’s because it’s hot out. That’s what’s nice about a beach cruiser—you just cruise.

I have to laugh every time some really old person passes me on their bike, though.

One thing that surprised me about my bike rides is how completely empty my brain seems. I mean, if I were to go for a walk, I’d be thinking and pondering all kinds of things. I guess riding a bike takes too much of my attention (maneuvering around stuff, looking out for cars that might kill me), because my thoughts during a bike ride are completely scattered. Often I find myself with just a lyric from a song I’d been listening to running through my brain over and over.

One day it’s Sam Cooke, “You Were Made For Me.”

The next day, Ted Leo.

Anyway, here are a couple videos from my bike ride today with Nathaniel. I purposely waited till late in the day to film so we’d have long shadows. The first is of us starting at a small park near the kids’ high school and going down McFadden St:

Soundtrack: Admantium “Electric Chill”

In the second, I turned the camera towards the street, so you could see my shadow as I rode. It came out kinda cool:

Soundtrack: RJD2 - “Ghostwriter”

Dang, the youtube compression looks horrible!

Daniel conked out early and I couldn’t sleep so I went out to the living room and kicked Elijah off the XBox to watch TV. After watching Project Runway, Elijah and I stayed up for another hour talking. Here’s some of what we covered:

• Why people want to talk about and remember 9/11, when more people died in World War II
• Why we invaded Iraq
• Why the Black Plague was called the Black Plague
• Has any disease ever been cured, or just eradicated and prevented via vaccinations?
• What exactly is a virus, anyway?
• Why the world will end in 2012

I know there was more than that, but my brain is fuzzy today. I’m sure metal or music came up in there at some point. It always does.

–

For instance, the next day, I was giving Elijah a ride to band practice. (His friend has a drum kit in their garage and some amps, they have a band going.) I asked him how school was. He’s just started high school and has met some new friends, a group of metalheads.

He said, “I found out one of the people I’ve been hanging out with had never heard Iron Maiden before.”

Me: “How does that happen?!”

Elijah: “I don’t know!”

Me: “So what’d you do?”

Elijah: “I had him listen to two songs. Can you guess which two? And they’re NOT going to be the ones you think.”

Me: “The one about the execution?”

Elijah: “Yeah.”

Hallowed Be Thy Name. The other song? Phantom of the Opera.

–

Here’s Friday’s bike ride:

Soundtrack: Brant Bjork - “Defender of the Oleander”

Extra points if you can spot:

1. The LDS church
2. The old guy with his butt sticking up in the air in his driveway
3. The stop light I miss when it changes green because I was spacing out
4. Me going to the ATM
5. The flock of school kids that pass by me

And don’t miss the surprise ending.

There was someone driving by when I was stopped on the corner who totally gave me a big smile like she recognized me. She did look sorta like someone I know, but I couldn’t see her clearly. I felt kinda stupid. Is she smiling at me because I look like a dork on a bike on a street corner, or because she knows me? Or is she listening to something funny on the radio? How to react? I just curved my mouth and left it at that.

My first attempt at videotaping a bike ride. It starts in Central Park (in Huntington Beach) and ends a about a block away from my apartments. (My memory card ran out of room, which is why it stops so abruptly.)

The original video was about 30 minutes long but I sped it up and shrunk it down to 3.

Any guesses as to the soundtrack?