[context]

we only had a few submissions this round, but we finished a full year of trying to put out a quarterly magazine! hope you all enjoy!

please click the photo to open the pdf

acl = austin city [love]

it's amazing how easy it is to conform to an easier way of life.....

last week i ventured down to austin to attend the "austin city limits music festival". my first three day music festival. for a few days i traded my desk chair for a lawn chair, door schedules for concert schedules, and my itunes for live tunes.

after spending thursday driving down, we enjoyed a little bit of the austin night life with our austin friends, watching the famous bats depart from under the bridge, and enjoying some amazing mexican food. that night we planned. our itinerary was light on the details and heavy on the music. the only "for sure" event would be crashing at the house of our friends, boyfriends, parents, who just happened to live close to the festival, and who also ended up being incredibly gracious hosts.

with so many bands and so different taste in music, it was almost impossible to stay as a group. we would meet up to hit the bands we all enjoyed, but then would spit off to take in a band that full filled our own personal liking. my own personal play list for the festival seemed to be a mix of indie folk, "beard rock", electropop, and 90's alternative

day 1:
what made milwaukee famous
vampire weekend
jamie lidell
m. ward
mates of state
hot chip
jenny lewis
thes swell season
the mars volta

day 2:
fleet foxes
jose gonzalez
back door slam
css
erykah badu
spiritualized
john fogerty
iron & wine
beck

day 3:
octopus project
flyleaf
stars
neko case
okkervil river
gnarls barkley
band of horses
foo fighters.

as with anything there were a few disappointments, but also a few surprises. some performances that stand out in my mind were jenny lewis, the swell season, mars volta, css, iron and wine, and the foo fighters. also running, into an old friend from college, out of 75,000 people and eight stages was a pleasant surprise.

there was however an event that trumped all other experiences at the concert. in my program i read neko case would be signing autographs at 6 p.m. on sunday! this time was constantly in the back of my mind. about 1 pm on suday i decided it would be wise to pick up a cd at the festival store, giving me something to have her sign. at the store i found her "autograph time" had been moved up to 2! wow! how easily i could have missed it. the time came, i took my turn in line, which gave me time to think about what i might say! something like,

"thank you for providing the soundtrack to my life!"

.... nope too weird. how about..

"your music makes me want to sell my car and ride a horse!"

...nope weird, and not true. or i could ask if she remembered the moment we shared back in april of 2007 when she played lawrence! written about here. nope, too weird, and a little "stalker-ish".

with all these thoughts in my head! i felt a little like ralphie in a "christmas story" on his way to see santa! before i knew it, i was at the front. my mind froze. somehow i managed to sit down, hand her the cd, and utter the words, " i love your music". she smiled and signed the cover. before i could even think, it was done. walking away i looked at what she had wrote, and smiled, i think she remembered lawrence. (see cover below). later that afternoon neko performed. it ended up being the only concert where i left the comfort of my folding chair and fought my way to the front of the stage to enjoy it.

the whole festival was amazing. the music was enjoyable, but the real real treat was being able to take some time off work to spend with friends!

[gin blossoms] and [applesauce]

several small things have happened in the last few weeks that stirred up memories in my mind that all remind me of fall. some of them are purely seasonal, but some seem to have been brought up from deep in the storage vaults of my subconscious.

a few of the more standard memories are fairly easy to place. the cooler mornings forced me to bring my plethora of jackets our from the summer hiding places to find a more accessible location on my coat rack. i've also been enjoying riding my bike to work, reminding me of the days before i had a car, or living near campus. i also recently took a revit class. having to follow along in a text book, only to be quizzed at the end of chapters was eerily similar to my grade school days. the couple with an 8 am to 4 pm schedule, and i felt like i was in home room again. two memories, however, took a little more time to figure out their connection to the season.

at the store the other week, i had a mad craving for applesauce, but not just any applesauce, cinnamon applesauce. now this is not standard on my shopping list, so my craving struck me as a little odd. i however brought a pack home and dug in. i was enjoying my first couple of spoon fulls, when i thought to myself, " this feels life fall". upon saying that a rush of memories came back to me. years ago, me and a group of friends would head out into the country, one of their grandparents farms. on this farm were a cluster of apple trees. we would spend the day up in the branches picking apples and dropping them down to our mothers, waiting on the ground. by the end of the day, we would have bags and bags of fresh apples! our mothers wouldn't then spend the next couple of days making batches of cinnamon applesauce and canning it into jars. the rest of the school year, a staple item in the paper bags of our lunches was cinnamon applesauce. although we enjoyed it year round, it was in the fall that it was really enjoyed. i came close to satisfying my craving with the store bought sauce, but nothing beats the homemade stuff i enjoyed as a child.

the other memory took a little longer to figure out. while at work on day, the "gin blossoms" found their way through my speakers. once again, i thought, "this is perfect fall music!" however i couldn't figure out why i thought that. why were the "gin blossoms" fall music? i pondered this for several days.

whenever i hear the gin blossoms, i'm reminded of my middle school years, right around 93 or 94. it was about that time that girls went from being people you wanted nothing to do with, to suddenly being somewhat of an interest. i remember specifically thinking that thought the first day of seventh grade. all of a sudden there were girls in my class, and they were kind of cute! that fall semester, the conversations between my friends quickly switched from discussing the latest episode of the teenage mutant ninja turtles, to something like the following:

"whoa, she's hot, do you think she'd 'go with me'?"

"i don't know dude, i think she likes someone else"

"really? you don't think she'd go for a guy like me?"

"i don't know dude, she's in volleyball, and you're in the marching band."

"true"

simultaneously, this was also about this time that i really started paying attention to and appreciating music, mostly because it seemed like it started to relate to my life. a very popular band at this time was the "gin blossoms". you can play just about any song from their catalog and see why this was the perfect soundtrack for this time in my youth. i'd like to think that i've learned a lot since then and relationships have become easier, but i don't' think that's the case.

i also think just about everyone feels this way too.

so zip up your jacket, turn up the "gin blossoms", enjoy your applesauce, or anything else you can think of to put you in a "autumn" mood, and sit back and enjoy the season.

blogging [old school]

i have no idea why this cracked me up so much tonight...

i was catching up on some news, when i came across this article stating that a diary found in england, mentions the game of baseball 50 years before it was ever referenced in the united states. now, when and where baseball was "first" mentioned, didn't' crack me up, what got me rolling was the actual diary entry!

here's the excerpt:

a mr. william bray writes:

“Easter Monday 31 March 1755"

“Went to Stoke Ch. This morning. After Dinner Went to Miss Jeale’s to play at Base Ball with her, the 3 Miss Whiteheads, Miss Billinghurst, Miss Molly Flutter, Mr. Chandler, Mr. Ford & H. Parsons & Jelly. Drank Tea and stayed till 8.”

now is it just me, or could that be a blog entry! i know that isn't much of a stretch, since blogs are basically on-line diary's, but for some reason, while reading it, i pictured a very well dressed man, in a wool suite, white wig, and buckle shoes, sitting in front of a macbook writing this entry out.

i think it's the "tea" and the "stayed till 8" that really get me! william and his friends had some crazy night! also the names are epic! "miss billinghurst", "miss molly flutter"! they sound like names right out of a jane austen novel! also, am i reading this right? does william have a friend name "jelly"?

if you haven't read it in an english accent yet, please do. it makes it so much better!

[off] the interstate

a few weeks ago, i took a weekend trip to the lake to meet up with some friends of mine. being that i had never traveled to this lake before, i was sent directions. google maps quickly and graphically showed me that i would not be taking the interstate there, instead it had me driving down ol' highway 54 the whole way there. i was less then thrilled. five hours of highway driving did not sound that relaxing to me, but alas, it did look to be the quickest way there. i packed some clothes, got in the car and headed out. immediately getting onto highway 54.

"well, five hours on this road and then turn right" i thought to myself.

it didn't take long before i had ventured farther on highway 54 then i ever had before. it was just about the time i stared thinking that to myself that i began noticing something i had over looked. i was now traveling down an old highway, a popular path during post war america, and what was used during that time to attract fun-loving fifties-era families out of their ford fair lanes and forgo faring any farther? non other then GOOGIE motel signs!

they were everywhere! every small town forcing me to slow down, greeted itself with some form on space aged sign directing me to a motel. towns that may have felt slighted not being graced by the interstate system, now little jewels of americana, uncluttered by the commercial development that seems to grow well at off-ramps. watching and waiting to see what the next town had in store made the trip very extremely enjoyable.

after spending a very relaxing couple of days at the lake, i headed home, camera in the passenger seat. stopping in a number of small towns, i photographed these road side relics.

their atomic forms, standing there, on the side of the the road, faded by decades of sunlight, as a reminder to a simpler time of life. a time where the journey meant just as much as the destination.

something i think we all say we'd like to do....but something very few of us achieve...