Here’s my first blog on the experimental film Crock, which I warn you, is a bit vulgar.

iPhone in hand, I’ve been taking some pictures. Here’s two and a video, more soon.

The Sugar Shack, created with on site materials found in the closed school.

Local artist Ethan Rose's synchronized music boxes

Alex Marco, The Bike. Via BikeSnobNYC. It looks like those cool Peugeot checkerboard jerseys were only made from 1963 to the 80s. Too bad.

Shelia, l’ecole est finie (school is out)

Bonus: This doesn’t involve bikes, but it’s a strange, strange song:

Made by a friend of my coworker. Pretty funny stuff. If you want to see some obnoxious fixie videos, you tube it or look at Prolly. Oh here, I’ll do it for you, Bootleg Sessions.

The kicker was that it was warm. Other entries ranged from a tempe salad in the shape of a pentagram with blinking red bike lights underneath to a breakfast salad which–hold onto your panties–consisted of waffles cut along the squares, breakfast link pieces, and egg pieces (frittata like) mixed with maple syrup and butter. I ate like three pounds of that. At least three dissenters went the metal/punk route:

No word yet on whether we won the category “most metal.”

From there, we rode just over 6 miles up to St Johns to her friend Brent’s house, where a backyard sing-a-long was happening around the firepit. This was extra good because he’s in the band Menomena and other musical people were there, so they could do all the songs on two guitars, a drum set, and keyboards all set up around the fire. Audrey performed Warren G’s regulators, we sang Talking Heads and Phil Collins, and Portland love filled the air. Summers here cannot be topped.

Back when my little sister was in town, I wanted to show her what Portland is like. My friend Audrey called with the perfect offer—paper maiche-ing (how do you spell that?) masks for this video.

We went to an apartment off Powell and squeezed into a living room with four other people, including the director Daniel. Each of us had a tub of goop and a stack of torn up grocery bags. The whole kitchen was filled with previously papered molds with hairdryers stuck in them. They said they were working in morning and night shifts for multiple days to make about 60 masks…and that’s before painting each!

These look like they’re coming out at you, but they’re indented.

The woman who made the plaster molds for the masks did really detailed work, so filling places like the nostrils and the wrinkles around the face took some real patience with tiny strips of paper and the end of a pencil.

I can’t remember why we were asked to write our names in them. They credited us in their official video, as mask makers, so nice of them! It’s one of the top google hits for my name now, ha.

I get the big sister award for introduction to Portland awesomeness! She didn’t know Blitzen Trapper, but I bet they will hit remote Colorado soon.

Via Bakfiets En Meer

What closet did this fall out of? And did I just make your day? I thought so, it made mine.

Via Uppity Stuff, a blog of quirky music that you just have to get into, internet. Just do it, internet. Ha. Blogrolled.

Unrelated: I have iTunes DJ, the overly swanky new name for iTunes Shuffle, enabled, and it put on R. Kelly’s “Suicide.” It’s a groover, with about two minutes of stream of consciousness singing. That guy just does not know when to stop, I love it. He very often gives up on whatever chorus and other structure were loosely holding a song together and just yammers. Sample: “So I’m gonna get up out this chair…and catch me a train…and get wheeeeerrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeee you are.” Oh, Kells.

Right at the door someone in the 150 or so people that didn’t get in, a deep angry stupid male voice, was belting “where are those people that cut?! Where’s that woman?” at which point I discreetly removed my tell-tale pink hat and studied the wall and picked at my fingernails and thought invisible thoughts.

It’s a movie I wouldn’t have seen otherwise, and I’m glad I went. My one big criticism is this: If I was from the future, and had been waiting 25 years for revenge, I would have thought up some killer comebacks and zingers. My dialogue would be fantastic and cutting and oozing evil. Ahem.

But the big news: Spock is a total fox.

True. I couldn’t stop looking at him. Also: Star Trek’s communication device inspired flip phones.

Later that night my friend Audrey talked me into going to see Starfucker, which seemed like a perfect conclusion to the day. However, Holocene had sold out just before we got there so I had to call in a favor to Jess Fucking P, who very kindly got us both in for free. The opening opener was a guy called Mattress, who was lounge-core weird and appealing in a way Audrey aptly called David Lynch-ian.

Super fun day, friends.

There was talk among the guys of going to Enchanted Forest theme park, which I really hope happens.

Wait, one more:

RRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwrrrrr.

There were no plot giveaways. That just seems mean.