Recipe for happiness:

One beautiful 1968 Wurlitzer jukebox:



















A questionable, but free, pool table:



















$1.50 PBRs, and it's not even happy hour:



















Courtesy Servente's.

Blackberry pickins (and what is now my official blackberry picking shirt)



















And courtesy of our bartender friend, the best way to drink gin or rum: the Blackberry Cobbler















I love summer!

Trevor's book, Rarer and More Wonderful, was reviewed by Michael Roberson on CutBank Reviews -- the blog for the literary journal of the University of Montana.

The craft of reviews is something I never really appreciated until Trevor started doing them himself. Michael's review of Trevor's book is a really terrific piece in its own right, seamlessly transitioning from one set of unique poems to another and capturing the book's many themes, then tying this fecund, wild world together by laying each component bare so we can all have a good look at what it contributes to the landscape. Fantastic.

Incidentally, Michael also has another claim to fame: he's from our backwoods 'hood. Tuompton, holla!

Back from a gorgeous, perfect weekend in my hometown. Packed a TON into a few days. Feeling really blessed right now to have such good friends and family, and to hail from such a beautiful place!

We started the weekend off with a drive out Italian Bar Road to take in the sights and spend some time with our good friend J.

Look at this gorgessity:















I-Bar is well known for its active and abandoned mining claims; on our hike we came across a few abandoned and waterlogged shafts:



















We were heartened to see that the PG&E ditches and the Stan were full and free-flowing. Our hike meandered along a tributary of the Stan and ended at one of many spectacular waterfalls:



















And then this being I-Bar and all, J ended up being a good samaritan and putting his tow strap to good use:



















That night we went to the casino with J and his mom to watch a comedy show (more tragic than comedic, but hey free Cokes) and then I won $20 in the nickel slots! Righteous.

On Friday, Trevor and I skied the best snow of our lives at Dodge Ridge:















17 degrees at 9 am! The wind was like ice, but the snow was all icing sugar.

Friday night I cooked dinner for my mom and my man. Afterward, we went to grab a beer with J at our favorite hometown haunt, and found there was, of all things, a rave going on:















Luckily we were able to cheese in just for a drink w/o the cover. Normally we go here to see hillbilly punk shows, and consequently know everyone in the bar; this time we knew not one soul. We just kept thinking: this is Tuompton -- where do these people come from?

Saturday saw us heading home into a traffic backup on 108 that extended for miles. After an hour of waiting where we moved a quarter of a mile, we called CHP and they told us there was a massive accident at LaGrange turnoff. At least a 2 hour wait. Never before have I been so grateful to be a local (and have an iPhone) -- we u-turned and went the back way through the Red Hills. I'd never really driven the backwoods of Chinese Camp before, but I knew we could get past LaGrange turnoff from there somehow. Not only did we discover a new place to hike, but a 20 minute detour popped us right back out onto the highway not but a 100 yards ahead of the accident, and on our way home.

Sunday we went to see Watchmen. I was very impressed. Perfectly cast, and well-edited from the comic. Alan Moore should be proud.

If only all weekends could be so magnificent. Makes Monday bearable!

Tropes.

On this Eve of Christmas Eve -- the day of my departure for my childhood home -- I want to take this opportunity to wish y'all a very happy holiday full of joy.

But, as my blogging moniker suggests, y'all know I am a sucker for bittersweet and sentimental melancholia, so I leave you for the holiday with excellent live versions of two of my favorite saudade Christmas songs.

'Fairytale of New York' by the Pogues:



'That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!' by Sufjan Stevens:



Be well, friends!

This kicked ass this last weekend!
























Take a listen.

Also kicking the booty: seeing The Twins (squee!), Woody, and Kirstyn. Who would've thought our alma mater's Homecoming weekend (unbeknownst to us) would be so fruitful?

god how I miss good old-fashioned hardcore shows. The Bay Area is making me soft before my time! There was no feigned indifference or emo apathy or $10 whiskey shots here -- just pure skanking and moshing, beer and rawk!

I am getting old though. I hate feeling 18 inside but really feeling almost twice that when called to the mat. 3 beers and a few Shermans in and it was already pumpkin time for Cinderella. Boo.

NP: The Pogues, 'Turkish Song of the Damned' (RIP Joe Strummer and Kirsty MacColl)

I just finished a great book, The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred, by Swedish author Carl-Johan Vallgren.

This is Vallgren's most recent book, and the first of his eight previously published in Swedish to be translated into English. He lives in Stockholm. But on page 280, the title character of the novel ends up living in the 4500 person county seat of my hometown county in California.

How about that?

The world is getting crazier and crazier.

I'm starting to feel like I never thought I would -- like my parents, willfully left behind in the technological free-for-all. I suppose it's just another enduring natural cycle, like my increasingly frequent cane-shaking at what tripe the kids listen to nowadays. Tragic.

Crap music and Second Life, that is. :)

Also notable today, from the hometown:

8:46 p.m., Jamestown — A woman on the 18700 block of Highway 108 said her husband's twin brother was tearing their house apart and that she never knew he had a twin.

Hee! Must. Use. Someday.

News of record for July 24, 2007

Published: July 24, 2007

TUOLUMNE COUNTY

Sheriff's reports

Saturday, 9:49 a.m., Jamestown — A woman on Preston Lane says a man bought her a horse in an attempt to seduce her.

:)