Behold, the future

I'm gonna post on the weekend we all spent outside Willits, Calif. on a Boy Scout camp there -- it was surprisingly fun. But I'm going to wait until I've got pictures I can add. Oh, you can pretend you're not excited for it, but you know you are.

In other news, I'm going to predict the future. This will be fun because we can come back to this post in the fall and see how wrong I am. We'll call the feature "Rob Predicts the Future!" and you'll have a good time (that's my first prediction).

1. Gas prices will hit $4.50 a gallon this summer -- At least. And I'm guessing they'll bounce up to five bucks a gallon if we have anything that even closely resembles a hurricane anywhere near the Gulf Coast.

2. "Pirates" will be the biggest blockbuster of the summer while simultaneously taking the title for most abysmal use $200 million of the year -- Seriously, they should have stopped with one. And that should have been trimmed by at least 30 minutes. And after the second one? I can't imagine how bloated and overwrought this one will be.

3. I will be vaguely disappointed with "Transformers" and "The Simpsons Movie" and love "The Bourne Ultimatum" -- Only because I'm really looking forward to both "Transformers" and "Simpsons." But I know deep down the "Transformers" can't match what I built it up to be in my head as a kid and the "Simpsons" just can't work as a motion picture.

4. I will lose 10 pounds this summer -- I imagine what I don't sweat off this summer I'll work off being out and about with Becky and with the girls. Plus, I'm off soda for the time being -- I rule -- and I'm cutting way back on my candy consumption. This makes us all happy.

5. Erick and I will form a band after blowing away the Boulder Creek crowd with our trumpet/guitar/6-year-old vocalists rendition of "Ring of Fire" -- That's if we can get it together. Because if we do that, there will be no stopping us. Unless we suck together. That might stop us.

So there it is. We'll check in over the summer and see were the predictions are at. And in a couple days I'll give you the run down of the Willits Weekend. Willits. I can't say it enough.

Oh, and a quick reminder. Wilco's new album "Sky Blue Sky" is out today, go pick it up -- you owe it to yourself. They'll also be on Letterman tonight.

Pure gold

It's time for another visit to Show and Tell Music. (Past trips can be found here, here and here.) These fine gentlemen you see here are the Royals and this is their album "Music." It's possibly one of the finest do-it-yourself album covers I've ever seen. To quote SaTM, "I could stare at this image for hours." And really, you can. It's surprisingly and completely captivating. So let's do another.





He's Father Robert White and he's the "Reverend in Rhythm." Dig him, baby! I like to imagine that he's a smooth, lounge jazz act that just melts the doors off the chapel. Let's do one more. Question: Who's nature's secret?





Answer: Michael Cassidy, that's who. Sitting in the forest glenn, dressed like Friar Tuck and holding a rabbit. No one's putting stuff out like this anymore. And it's a shame.

It feels like I have to write something

Kids are fun. Don't get me wrong, they can be a pain in the butt, too. But they can also be fun, which makes the whining, the fighting, the arguing and the general chaos that forever seems to surround them easier to bear. You know, a spoon full of sugar and all that.

Leigh, our four-year-old, for whatever reason -- age, preschool, new sibling -- has begun to verbalize her feelings. Which is a remarkable thing when you think about it. I mean, when was the last you verbalized your feelings? Or maybe I'm impressed because I'm a guy. I don't verbalize my feelings much at all. But Leigh has started doing it all the time.

But what's fun with Leigh is that it's never "I feel sad" or "I feel angry" or "I feel good," it's "It feels like I have to laugh" or "It feels like I want to cry" or "It feels like I need to run." There's something about expressing it in the passive voice that is hilarious to me. As though she's sneakily shifting responsibility for her actions.

A couple weeks ago she and Claire, my six-year-old, were fighting, as is their wont. There's really no in-between with the girls -- either they're at each other's throats or playing like the bestest friends and bosom buddies who have never not seen eye-to-eye their entire lives. I can't recall what brought on this particular argument, but it ended with Leigh just fuming. With the meanest, surliest little face she could muster, she turns to me and says, "It feels like I have to punch her in the stomach."

Becky and I just died laughing. And really, who hasn't felt that singular emotion at some point during their day?

Disco, as I remember it

This isn't meant to turn into a love-in of any sort, but when you reconnect with old friends, it's hard not to get misty about the good times.

Jayson, who you'll remember from two posts ago, is an old friend who recently got in touch with me (he and his wife are having quints). Anyway, he remanisced about our disco-dancing past. And it got me thinking about something I'd long taken for granted: that there was a time when I didn't know how to disco dance and then a time when I learned. You have to understand, for many years it was a major part of my identity as I used it to much aplomb at dances and gatherings and the like.

And when you begin to break out disco moves, after having done it for so long, you don't think about it anymore. It's as if you've always been able to do it. And of course, you haven't always been able to do it. Only very few, very select people are born able to disco.

So take a walk down memory lane with me as I recall those halcyon days of the early 90s when records were becoming obsolete, disco was funny and anything was possible.

Like many of my generation, I grew up mocking disco. Who didn't? It's still one of the most attrocious and aggregious musical movements perpetuated on our species. So you can imagine my confusion and subsequent delight when Jayson showed me he had found an instructional disco dance-by-the-numbers record. I don't remember quite when that was. Maybe 1991? Jayson, Alicia and I met -- well we met years ago. Alicia actually attended my third birthday party. But when we were young impressionable teens, we got reacquainted during a summer musical producation of "Fiddler on the Roof" that our stake was puting on.

As I recall, it was a pretty fast friendship. I spent a lot of time at the Wilkinsons' and it was one of those times, hanging out in the basement, that Jayson showed me his find. It was a full-on instructional record with the black footprints to show you what to do. As I recall, he had already worked out most of the moves (he's a natural dancer and, you can correct me if I'm wrong, Jayson, but he eventually landed on BYU's folk dance squad). I was entranced and we got a whole routine worked out. It wasn't long before we were busting it out at church dances. You remember, someone would get going, busting a move to C+C Music Factory, and a cricle would form. Everyone would stand around watching as some kids in parachute pants showed everyone how to get down. It like a siren call to us. We'd eventually slip in and start the mad, hot disco and people would go wild.

The irony of it was beautiful. With the disco, we were able to, in one fell swing of the hips and raise of the hand, simultaneoulsy mock those taking the dance too seriously and impress the ladies by not playing by the rules. It was genius, really. It was also a lot of fun.

Well, a year later I had moved to Utah and as I raged against cookie-cutter fads and gimmicks in the culture there, disco became the way I set myself apart from the other jokers, eventually making a video of a routine with a couple friends. That video still exists -- in fact it was the video that eventually convinced Becky I had enough personality for her to marry me. And to think where it all started. I can't imagine how different my life would ahve turned out had Jayson never found that record.

Guilty as charged

Guilty pleasures. You see, I'm not always all about being the earnest, snob-driven, gold-standard-in-music consumer. I have guilty pleasures just like anyone else. Guilty pleasure songs and guilty pleasure bands.

So today, I honor the most embarassing music I listen to. And, to make a point, some of the music on the list might be technically or even legitimatelly good, but it's still embarassing that I listen to it. And remember, the operative word in the phrase "guilty pleasure" is "guilty." It's not a guilty pleasure if you don't sweat a little when you tell people you dig it.

So, first, my guilty pleasure songs in no particular order:

1. Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird" and "Turn Out the Lights" -- Sure they're great dance/pop songs, but Rob Rogers does not listen to dance/pop. At least he doesn't if anyone comes asking.

2. Neil Diamond's "Love on the Rocks" -- I blame this on my sisters. We grew up watching Neil Diamond's movie "The Jazz Singer" a lot. The song plays over the climactic break-up scene where Neil's life comes unraveled as he tries to deal with his new-found fame. Very emotional. And yes I loved it, alright? I loved it! I also blame this movie on H.L.'s open and unabashed affection for the Diamond. We should all be ashamed.

3. In the same vein, Barry Manilow's "Ready to Take a Chance Again" -- This song opened the Chevy Chase/Goldie Hawn vehicle "Foul Play," another movie we wathced over and over as kids. I learned to really dig the song. Sue me.

4. Jennifer Lopez's "Waiting for Tonight" -- I'm really going out on a limb here, because I don't know how this could get anymore embarassing. But this song is total eurotrash dance club and I really dig it. Maybe it's because it reminds me of the dance music I heard while living in Mexico (where every song, including the Police's "Message in a Bottle," gets a dance remix) or maybe it's because I just dig the tune, but I secretly really, really enjoy this song.

5. Garth Brooks' "The Thunder Rolls" -- I have no excuse for this one. But when I was a 14- or 15-year-old idiot kid the song gave me chills the first time I heard it. And I still secretly like it.


And that's probably enough for now. So on to my guilty pleasure bands and/or artists. The songs above are individual anomolies. I hate the artists but love the music. Following are the artists I love that I probably shouldn't. Again, in no particular order:


1. Billy Joel -- I know, for some this amounts to heresy listing Billy as a guilty pleasure. But let's be honest with ourselves: he is. While he's a great singer, songwriter and pianist, he's still the guy who wrote and performed songs like "Uptown Girl" and "She's Always a Woman." I love almost all of his stuff, but try to listen to "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" loud and proud outside of your house. You can't do it.

2. Emerson Lake & Palmer -- Great progressive rock band, one of the best in fact. But their music leans towards the grandiose and then the operatic and before long you're flirting with self-parody. I bought and listened to "Black Moon," their last, real studio album in 1992 when I was in high school and that's embarassing enough. With songs like "Romeo & Juliet" and "Farewell to Arms" it's about as overwrought and earnest as you're gonna get. But their musical genius mustn't be denied. And so I will continue to listen

3. Huey Lewis and the News -- Again, for some I'm flirting with heresy here, but I would argue that it's hard to take the band that recorded "Hip to Be Square" seriously. But man, no one turns out a pop/rock song like Huey did back in the day. Better than most '80s pap that came out in that decade, Huey Lewis and the News put out an embarassingly good catalog of music. Go back and listen to "Heart and Soul" now. The arrangement, the syncopation of the rhythm and the lusty lyrics are down-right impressive.

4. Queensryche -- Classic late '80s/early '90s hard rock, they were a Seattle rock band before it was cool or even advantageous to be a Seattle rock band. And they're not as bad as say Poison or Ratt -- they were never a hair-metal band -- but they're music still sounds blushingly overproduced and deadly earnest. And c'mon, "Silent Lucidity"? I still can't listen to it without laughing out loud. But when the band got rocking -- "Jet City Woman," "Another Rainy Night" -- they could do no wrong.

5. Speaking '80s hair-metal bands, Def Leppard -- Now, I don't embrace their entire discography, but who are we kidding? The band's drummer only had one arm at the end of their run. How hard core is that? And looking at 80s rock albums, there are few better than "Pyromania" with the classics "Rock of Ages" and "Too Late for Love." They also introduced the world to the phrase, nay, the command: "Let's get rocked!" Oh they're shameful, ain't no two ways about it. But man, they rock. Or at least, they did.


There it is. Fun, but a little painful. Feel free to share your own guilty pleasures in the comments below. I shouldn't be the only one to suffer humiliation.

The legacy of young Nathan Arizona

It's fun to catch up with old friends. My Mom dropped me a line today telling me Jayson Wilkinson, a close friend from my Colorado days was trying to find out where I ended up. It seems he and his wife just found out they're having quintuplets. As in five babies. Five. All you need is one two-year-old in your house to know what kind of will-crushing, ear-splitting, mind-numbing and sleep-depriving experience this will be for them. But Jayson is better than that. He always has been. He's sees it more like this:

Can you imagine 5 little 3 year old kids crowding around to give mommy and daddy a group hug? That just sounds like it would all be worth it.

Anyway, he's set up a blog to detail the whole ordeal and it should be interesting to watch this unfold. After Elsa's birth, my heart goes out to him and his wife. And I can't begin to imagine what it must be like trying to mentally prepare yourself for all of this. And apparently I'm not the only one. In one of his posts, he writes that he runs into a lot of people who really have no idea what it means to give birth to five babies at the same time. His wife kept getting calls from the local blood bank asking her to donate. After several times of explaining that his wife his pregnant and can't donate blood, the final phone call when something like this:

Lady: “Hi, this is the blood and tissue center, is Rachelle Wilkinson available?”
Me:“No, she isn’t and I don’t think she will be able to donate blood for a while. She is pregnant with quintuplets.”
Lady: “Oh, I see. Well, when is her due date?”
Me: “Well, her real due date is in September but she will probably have them in July.”
Lady: “Well, you know, she can donate about 6 weeks after the delivery.”
Me: “Did you hear what I just said? She is having 5 babies. Do you know what that means?”
Lady: “Well, can you give me an email address that we could use to let her know about our blood drives?”
Me: “No. Do you realize that we probably won’t even be able to leave the house for 6 months after this happens.”
Lady: “Well, thank you for your time anyway.”

Anyway. It'll be fun to catch up with Jayson -- and his whole family for that matter. The Wilkinsons were like my family away from family when I was a young, silly and not-so-smart teenager in Arvada. Alicia and I ended up at Ricks together which was great and the family, still in Indiana, even made it to my wedding in St. Loius. So, here's to reconnecting with old friends.

Que Onda, Guero?

Well, I think we've sufficiently mourned Larry. It's time to get on with life.

It's amazing how quickly time can pass. I know at some point, I'll be an 80-year-old man sitting on a porch somewhere and wondering where my life went. Not in a bad way, just in a sort of it-all-happened-so-fast kind of way.

But let's get on with things. Becky and I went up to Klub Klondike over the weekend to see the mighty Jim Dyar Band play. It was a blast. The band sounded great, the atmosphere was killer and it was fun to spend alone time with Becky. I love the girls and all, but man, you just gotta get out of the house sometimes. And to do it with live music makes it so much better. We both enjoy the rote dinner and movie, but live music is just so much more invigorating. We've haven't been to a live show together since we saw Wilco play in Portland like four years ago.

It's been a busy couple of weeks. I was heartened to see some of my fellow Cougars stand up to Dick Cheney. I was also heartened to see the Anti-Defamation League stand up for the Church. I know there are stories to tell and things to write that will entertain, but I can't think of a single one. I've been on cold medication for four days straight. It's killing me. So I'll probably be back tomorrow with more inane and pointless writings. But I at least promise to make them more entertaining.

Goodbye Larry

It's been over a week. Man, time flies. And then yesterday, word came down Calvert DeForest died. You may remember Calvert, he, of course, was Larry "Bud" Melman on Late Night. My love of Letterman is no secret here. And so we remember Larry. In honor of the great little man, a few clips from Late Night when he was in his prime.

On and on and on

Just a quick note to take care of some Rob Report business. The out-of-staters should finally be receiving their Perfect Pop Songs Vol. 2 CDs in the next few days. For those who might not be following the action down in the comments, Janelle quickly figured out how to use the internets and cahnged her name from Anonymous to J-Bell and thus gets the fourth disc. H.L., unfortunately was too late getting there. And despite his logical and reasoned argument that J corrected herself in the wrong comments thread and thus is ineligible to recieve the CD, the judges hastily and emotionally ruled in her favor. But H.L. is smart and his powers of persuasion are legendary, going all the way back to an 8th-grade GT when he successfully argued against some poor, ill prepared classmate in open debate that plastic surgery was morally wrong. H.L. will get his disc.

And, Becky and I watched "The Prestige" over the weekend. Wanting to get back into the review game, I'll post my take on the movie before the end of the week. So there ya go. TTFN, faithful readers.

Outtasite, outtamind

I sometimes forget I have a third child. I know, I know, that sounds terrible. But I swear I'm not a bad father. Really. It's just after having only two kids for four years, I forget we've got that third one. I mean, she hardly makes any noise.

It started shortly after we brought her home from the hospital. Becky and I had the girls and we were going grocery shopping at WinCo. We started walking inside and halfway across the parking lot, Becky realized I wasn't carrying the baby. I had left her in the car.

Look, we take the girls to WinCo a lot. I was used to it only being the four of us.

Then, a month or so later, it was Sunday and we were going to church. Which is always a production, trying to get the girls dressed, ready, in the car, out of the car, across the parking lot and into the chapel. We walk to the front and sit down on our pew when Becky, suddenly near-shouts, "Where's the baby?"

Yes, I had once again left her in the car. So I walk back past the entire congregation, out the doors, across the parking lot to the car and retrieve Elsa, who was as happy as could be sitting in her car seat. That was, like, last fall. I haven't forgotten Elsa in the car since. I'm now used to pulling three kids out of the car when we go somewhere.

But I'm not always used to having her at home.

Last Saturday, Becky had left to go run some errands and the girls were taking naps. The weather was nice and as Claire and Leigh awoke, we decided to go try a little visual science experiement I'd picked up the night before at the County Office of Education. You have a picture of the sun, roughly the size of your face and this tiny image of the earth, roughly the size of a pen tip. You stand 75 feet apart and, to scale, replicate the distance of the earth to the sun (96 million miles, in case you were curious).

Well, to do this, we had to leave the apartment and walk across the parking lot to a patch of lawn near the swimming pool. It was fun. Both girls took turns holding the sun and waving at each other from really far away. We walked back to the apartment and got the bikes out of the garage so the girls could ride. At about this point, Becky comes home and sees us milling around in front of the garage and asked how we were doing. All fine, I say, happy to be outside with the girls. She then asks if Elsa is still sleeping, obviously seeing that she's not with us.

And I realize, Elsa's not with us. She is in fact still upstairs sawing logs. I smile at Becky and slip inside like I know what I'm doing and like I've known what I was doing for the past 20 minutes, to check on Elsa. She of course is fine and slumbering peacefully in her crib. Which she continues to do for, like, the next hour.

I'm telling you, the girl is too quiet for her own good. Anyway, needless to say, I'm now really getting used to having a third child. And I'm sure I'll never forget about Elsa ever again. And did I mention my parents once left my youngest sister home alone as the rest of us drove off in the station wagon to spend a week with some relative in some neighboring state? And Becky's parents once left alone her at a park? I'm just saying.

Sky Blue Sky

It would seem we've gone from laborious U2 posts on the Rob Report to laborious Wilco posts. I guess you can't say I'm single-minded. Or maybe you can. Because we live in America and you can still say whatever you want. For now.

Anyway. On to my point. Wilco's new album "Sky Blue Sky" leaked onto the internets this week and, thinking May all of sudden sounded really far off, I tracked it down and downloaded a copy. And, so far, it's pretty good.

The album kind of follows the natural progression started on "A Ghost Is Born." It's more organic and connected than "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and it tones down, even more than "Ghost" did, the sonic experimenting and exploring in which they've been engaged since "Being There." And for the most part it works.

One the band's endearing qualities, which I've hit on before on this blog, is their ability to go in a million different directions with their songwriting, their arrangements and their production and still sound like Wilco. I'm guessing that's Jeff Tweedy's influence, but they can stray pretty far afield and still not lose the melody, the lyric, the essential feel that makes Wilco what it is. Elasticity like that is to be commended and I think it's what makes Wilco one of the best American rock bands out there today.

That being said, "Sky" is a little more mellow than what you'd expect from a band that always to seems to crank out two or three loud, disjointed and imaginative tracks on its past albums. Here, Tweedy and Co. just stick to the basics of rock song composition. They take the loud, disjointed and imaginative elements that were whole songs in the past and now just use them to puncuate songs here. For the most part it works, but unchecked, it could get pretty boring pretty quick.

What's interesting is Tweedy takes very noticeable risks with his voice on "Sky." A lot of the songs are in a bit higher range than what he's done in the past, and like the rest of Wilco's experimenting, it works wonderfully here. I mean, Tweedy's vocals are part of what makes the band's sounds so inviting and enjoyable. The guy's just got a great voice.

Semi-new comers Nels Cline's and Mike Jorgenson's influence can definitely be heard here. Which is part of what makes this album sound relatively different than past albums. Jay Bennett, who left the band while they recorded "YHF," was a world-class jerk but he had a great rock sensibililty and great ear for melody. With "Sky" you get a lot more guitar deconstruction and bouncy, R&B inspired rhythms and just plain soul. "Walken" is great example. "Side With Seeds" sounds like a long lost Rev. Al Green song with some Sonic Youth grafted on at the end. Surprisingly, it works. "You Are My Face," "Impossible Germany" and "Hate it Here" are a few other stand out tracks that seem to just get better the more I play them.

The album's title "Sky Blue Sky", which is also the fourth track on the album, is a play on a literary device Tweedy has become enamored with since the "Summerteeth" days when he was singing he needed something in his veins bloodier than blood. So overall, I'm digging it. I'm just not loving it the way I thought I would. So I'll be eager see how it ages.

School lunch

I visited Claire's school yesterday and had lunch with her in the cafeteria. I don't when you last ate lunch in a school cafeteria, but, let me fill you in on a little secret. At least at the elementary school level, they're still basically serving up nameless, formless and unnatural food concoctions in school cafeterias. We were served chili.

And to be fair, it wasn't as bad as you'd think lunchroom chili could be. But still, there's a deep chasm between edible and enjoyable. And obviously, I wasn't there for the food. I was there to see Claire, you know, before school visits embarass her and I become her geeky old man.

For the time being, I'm Elvis. Young Elvis, I'd like to think. But I'll get to that in a minute. It was fun sitting with Claire and her friends in the cafeteria watching them all interact and be kids. They're first-graders and Claire, three months past her sixth birthday is the youngest. It seems like all they did was laugh and tell incomprehensible knock-knock jokes and bounce around the lunch table. Claire, from time to time would just look up at me and smile. It was very endearing.

We had to wait for the aide to excuse us to go out to recess and Claire showed me how to bus my tray. Walking out, she excitedly showed me the shortcut to the bars (which was more of a longcut) and the whole time we had her little gaggle of friends in tow.

Once we were outside, I put on my sunglasses -- cheap mirrored shades that just barely function as sungalsses. I still haven't gotten over busting my Wayfarers. Anyway, we walked over to tetherball and Claire's friend Sophia looks at me and just starts calling me Elvis. Pretty soon, everyone's calling me Elvis. And they all think it's hysterical. Which it kind of is.

Anyway, we played on the bars, we played tetherball and we played on the swings. It was a lot of fun. And it's just amazing how much energy these kids have. They never stop moving, never stop talking never stop playing. It's incredible. It's also exhausting. Youth is indeed wasted on the young.

So, if you get the chance, I highly recommend sitting down and eating lunch with a first-grader. The food will suck, but it'll be invigorating.

Smokin'

I smoked four pounds of pork this weekend. To middling success. This is news to no one, but I love meat, especially smoked meat. The obsession reached its nadir when my parents were mission president and wife in Independence, Mo. We went to Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City for lunch and I've never tasted anything better in my life. Anway, I recently read an article in the New York Times about smoking food stuffs at home inside. Smoking food inside, you say? That's just crazy. No, no it's not and I'm living proof that it can be done and and done well.

All you need is a big metal roaster -- the kind you'd cook a Sunday roast in -- a meat rack, tin foil and hickory (or whatever) wood shavings. I had the roaster, fashioned a meat rack from an inversted pie tin to fit inside and went on the hunt Saturday for wood shavings. These are different from wood chips. You need the shavings because, to smoke indoors, you're placing the wood at the bottom of your roaster and basically smoldering them on your stovetop.

So how hard is it to find wood shavings in Redding? Surprisingly hard. That may simply be becuase I've never smoked food before so I don't know where to get the proper supplies, but after calling around, the only place I found that had shaving was Kent's Meat Market halfway between Redding and Anderson. And they had shavings because they smoke their own meat there. And as a result they buy the shavings in 90- and 300-pound bags. But the guy I talked to said to come on by and he'd pull a little out for me. So, address in hand, I set out to Kent's. I show up, they take me back behind the butcher's counter and the guy with whom I spoke on the phone, pulls out a brown paper grocery bag full of wood shavings. I only need a handful. The man explained he usually smoked 350- to 400-pounds of meat in one session. Holding up the bag, he said that's about how much wood it took. I explained I had four pounds of pork I was smoking. He smiled and said I could keep the rest in the garage for when I was smoking something else. Indeed.

So I took it home and tried it out. It was surprisingly simple. I placed the handful of shavings in the bottom of my roaster, set a drip pan on top of it and then placed my hand-fashioned meat rack and finally the roast itself. I covered the top with the tin foil, making sure it fit tightly on top so as not to let the smoke escape, set the whole thing on the stovetop and turned the heat to medium. For the next 30 minutes the apartment filled with the wonderful aroma of hickory smoke. And no smoke actually escaped my set-up. So far, so good. After about 35 minutes I turned off the heat and got ready to finish cooking the roast in the oven.

That's where it went downhill. The directions were vague when it came to the question of covering the roast or not. I opted to cover it lightly. It then said to cook the meat 40 minutes per pound or until a meat thermometer read 190 degrees. I cooked it for the requisite time but my meat thermometer only read 160 degrees. It was already getting late, so I decided my thermometer was probably wrong, the roast had cooked the specified time and thus, must be done. Looking back now, I think that was a mistake.

After pulling the roast out, you shred it with a couple forks or your fingers. This proved next to impossible. The meat just would not come apart. My thumbs are still sore from pulling the pork apart. It was amazingly tough. Which was disappointing because it tasted so good. And it wasn't tough to chew. So I keep going. I start to prepare the sauce listed in the recipe. It's a North Carolina-style barbecue sauce, which I mistakenly thought would be a close relative to the Carolina Honey sauce you get with a certain type of ribs at Tony Roma's. Yes, I'm an idiot.

And no, this sauce was nothing like the stuff from Tony Roma's. It was, in essence, two cups of vinegar and a half cup of ketchup, with some pepper and crushed red pepper thrown in for good measure. I like tang, I love vinegar, but when it comes to barbecue, I'm more a fan of the smokey than the tangy. But I soldier on, thinking it will be surprisingly good. And it wasn't bad. It was surprisingly hot and had a strong tang. But after a while, it got to be overwhelming. And by the end, it just wasn't what I had wanted it to be. Eating some more of it for lunch today, the meat was rubbery and difficult to chew, reafirming to me that I probably should have cooked it longer. There's also a question of whether or not I bought the right cut of meat.

Regardless, I've showed myself I can smoke food at home and in my kitchen. Rather easily. So I'm doing it again and and next time I smoke a pork roast, I'm going to cook it longer, we're going to ditch the Carolina sauce and use my mom's barbecue sauce which is the perfect mix of smokey and tangy. And the next time we cook up my mom's brisket, we're going to smoke it first. And if anyone else wants to try it, just give me a call. I've got plenty of wood shavings.

And now I'm salivating.

Perfect Pop Songs Vol. 2

So that it's all in one place, here's the final line-up:

1. "Saving Grace" -- Tom Petty
2. "Sister Jack" -- Spoon
3. "The Late Greats" -- Wilco
4. "Back to the Party" -- The Pushstars
5. "Til Kingdom Come" -- Coldplay
6. "Disappear" -- INXS
7. "Collarbone" -- Fujiya & Miyagi
8. "Talk Amongst Yourselves" -- Grand National
9. "Black Magic" -- Jarvis
10. "Feel Us Shaking" -- The Samples
11. "No Ha Parado de Llover" -- Mana
12. "Satellite" -- Guster
13. "Waiting, Watching, Wishing" -- The Pushstars
14. "The Way We Get By" -- Spoon
15. Bonus Track


Yes, we got our four winners yesterday, but until anonymous sister gives her name, there's still room for one more person to get a CD. H.L., that means you better get moving because I'm calling on all you lurkers to drop a note -- it's free music, what have you got to lose? Anyway, to our three winners already out there, I'll be sending out your discs shortly.

Wilco wonder

Hey, a couple tracks off Wilco's new album have been leaked onto the internets this morning. And, no surprise, they're pretty dang good. So hurry on over to Idolator and check 'em out before they get pulled.

El fin

For the past three days I've had that song, "Breakfast At Tiffany's" stuck in my head and I don't know why. I don't own the song, I don't even like it -- well, frankly, I hate it. And yet, there it is. Replaying over and over. I've listened to a lot of music over the last three days in the hope of forcing it out with something else and yet, when I'm sitting, staring into the ether and my mind begins to wander, I suddenly realize, I'm singing "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in my head. I'm getting close to where I'd be willing to put a bullet in my brain to stop it.

But instead, I'm going to try this: the final installment of Perfect Pop Songs Vol. 2. With the expanded readership, I'm expanding the winners. The first four people to post in the comments section gets a CD of all 14 songs featured in the Vol. 2 roundup, plus a bonus song thrown on for good measure. Here is the lineup as it now stands here currently. If you wanted a refresher, here's the final lineup from Vol. 1.

So with that, let's get to business:

The Pushstars' "Waiting, Watching, Wishing" -- One of my all-time favorites from the band, "Waiting" is a little darker, a little edgier than the Pushstars' usual fair and it's all the better for it. The understated anger that surges through song keeps it moving along a great clip so that it never it gets old. The chorus is instantly singable and, like most other Pushstars songs, the melody and arrangements are accessable without being predictible and overwrought. The band is famously from Boston so it's interesting to hear a song from them that trades in suburban angst, but it definitely works. Ultimately it's a song about getting out there and living your life. "On and on and on we go/We got no radio/We're singing songs we know/For miles and miles of open road/Get up, get up, let's go."

Spoon's "The Way We Get By" -- This is possibly Spoon's catchiest song. It's incredible. Like a lot of Spoon songs it tends to be a little bit social commentary, a little bit party romp. "We get high in back seats of cars/We break into mobile homes/We go to sleep to shake it off/Never wake up on our own/And that's the way we get by" juxstiposed with "We found a new kinda dance in a magazine/Try it out it's like nothing you've ever seen/You sweet talk like a cop and you know it/You bought a new bag a pot/So let's make a new start/And that's the way to my heart." And like most Spoon songs, musically, it comes at you from a direction you really don't expect, and you're surprised that it works so well. The lead guitar in the song has been replaced by piano but the bass and drums keep it coursing right along, pumping into your ears til you find yourself involuntarily tapping your feet and nodding your head. It's the perfect pop song if ever there was one.

So there it is. I'll post the whole list of 14 songs later today or tommorrow. You know, when I'm not feeling lazy. The die-hards may notice there's no U2 on this volume, which was more or less intentional. The bonus song, while not a U2 song, should please those fans nonetheless. I won't say anymore. I don't want to spoil the fun. So, what are you waiting for. I've only got four copies, so get commenting.

Livin' lodge

It's been almost 13 years since I was last in Seattle. Which is weird, 'cause that means I'm old. Anyway, Becky and I took the girls up to the moss-covered city last week to see some long-lost family. It was a good time.

My sister Janelle and her hubby Nathaniel -- or Natty Bumpo as he's known to James Fennimore Cooper -- invited us up to spend some time with them in the shadows of Mount Ranier. They take their four kids each winter to a little cabin at Camp Zarahemla near White Pass so they can have a few days of snow intead of rain during the cold months. Anyway, this year, they got more cabin than they knew what to do with. So they invited along any and all family members who wanted to join in. Obviously, we took them up on the offer.

Becky's brother Spencer and his significant other Heather also live in the Seattle area, so going up was like hitting two birds with one stone. We stayed a day and half with Spence and Heather -- they took us out to dinner at the Revolution Cafe, next door to the Experience Music Project, pretty cool -- and then we headed over to Janelle and Nathaniel's. All in all, not a bad way to spend a week.

The lodge at Camp Zarahemla was HUGE. It comfortable sleeps like 40 people. There were 12 of us, not counting the two babies. My sister Diana and her husband Spencer came up from Salt Lake. Anyway, we sledded, read, built and stoked raging fires in this massive wood-burning stove. Janelle and Diana did most of the cooking in the lodge's industrial-sized kitchen and I didn't shower the whole time I was there. It was pretty great.

Coming home, however, was another story. Oregon, in case you didn't know, is retarded. We lived there for two years, so we had a good idea of this already. But, of course, driving home this was reaffirmed. The mountain pass over which the Oregon/California border lies, Siskiyou Summit, got a couple inches of snow that day. So in classic Oregon fashion, the State Police went into emergency mode and required chains on all vehicles driving over the summit. That meant we got stopped on I-5 just south of Ashland in backed up traffic for two solid hours. We were litterally parked. Maybe six miles from the pass. There was no snow on the road, nor was it snowing. We ended up having to stay the night in Ashland. Which by itself isn't a bad thing. But we were ready to be home, we didn't want to add another day to our trip.

Now, let me give you some context. Siskiyou Summit is one single mountain pass and the only mountain pass on Oregon's sttretch of I-5. It snows there every year. So, one would think, Oregon. You have one 10-mile stretch of interstate to keep clear each winter. You know it's going to snow there every year, so it shouldn't be too hard to prepare. And you don't have to worry about keeping other places on I-5 clear of snow, because no other place on the western side of the state gets snow.

And yet, every year, when the snow comes, Oregon Department of Transportation turns its head, eyes wide in disbelief and screams, "It's snowing! Sweet merciful crap, it's snowing! On Siskiyou Summit! I don't believe it. OhManOhManOhManOhMan! What do we do!? What the hell do we do!?" To which the Oregon State Police responds, "Snow!!?? Oh crap. Ummmmmm. I hear there are chains you can put on your car to give you traction in the snow. Tell everyone to do that. There's already an inch of snow on the ground!!!"

Let me just put this out there. I'm not boasting, I'm sharing. I've driven through some pretty bad snow storms across Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho. Just a few years ago Becky and I drove through a blizzard in Idaho where the snow was blowing so hard it was coming at us horizontially and you literally could see only a couple feet in front of the car. One October when I was driving through Wymoing, I-80 at Rock Springs got so bad they actually closed a gate and shut down the freeway. But this is Wyoming where you get three feet of snow in an hour and the wind then blows it into 10-foot drifts. By all means, close the interstate.

In fact, in all the years I've been driving in the Mountain West, I've never once had to use chains. I've never once been required to have chains. These states, with their hundreds of miles of freeway and seemingly numberless mountain passes manage to keep their raods, for the most part, open and clear, every winter. Oregon, with it's one pass on I-5, which sees snow regularly enough that you can plan on seeing some each winter, can't. To road-weary travelers, ready to be home, this is just obnoxious and frustrating.

So to Oregon I say, "I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time."

Or, if you'd like to see the Transformers acting out that particular scene from "Holy Grail," then just click below (you won't be sorry):

I sincerely miss those heavy metal bands

For those of you keeping score at home, Wilco has a new studio album, "Sky Blue Sky" coming out May 15. Just today, the band released the track listing:

1. Either Way
2. You Are My Face
3. Impossible Germany
4. Sky Blue Sky
5. Side with the Seeds
6. Shake it Off
7. Please Be Patient With Me
8. Hate it Here
9. Leave Me (Like You Found Me)
10. Walken
11. What Light
12. On and On and On

Am I excited? Does the Pope wear a funny hat? "Being There" is still my favorite album with "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" running a very, very close second. Their last studio album, "A Ghost Is Born," while still very good, didn't move me like the other two. So if were ranking, I'd put it on par with "Summerteeth."

Anyway. I'm really curious to hear where they go with the new one. Part of what makes the band so good is they don't repeat themselves while still injecting the music with a thorough Wilco-ness. Does that make any sense at all? I wish there were a way to post mp3s on Blogger 'cause I'd leave you all with a parting shot from the band. Oh well. This will have to suffice:

"She fell in love with a drummer/She fell in love with another/She fell in love."

Nothing says "I love you" like the heart-shaped pizza

It's Valentine's Day, I guess. Anyway, Roundtable Pizza, the inexplicably popular local pizza chain here (seriously, Red Baron makes a better pizza) is advertising heart-shaped pizzas available today. So let me say, if you're buying your special lady a heart-shaped pizza for Valentine's, then, well, let me say first, congratulations on having a special lady friend. You've clearly beaten the odds. But secondly, if you do get her a heart-shaped pizza, and you think that's OK, you may want to sit back and evaluate things.

In other news, having a family is surprisingly entertaining. Fun story this, Elsa spit-up in Becky's mouth a few nights ago. As you can imagine, it was pretty funny. She's a spit-uppy baby. Does it a lot. And Becky, ever the doting mother, spends a lot of her time showering the baby with kisses. Well, Sunday night I think it was, Becky was giving Elsa little kisses on her cheeks and chin when Elsa erupted a resonably-sized glob of half-digested breast milk. Right onto to Becky's mouth. I don't know how much actually got past her lips and into her mouth proper, but it was enough to shock and surprise her. And make me laugh.

In fact, it might be time for an update on little Elsa. You may recall her rocky start back in September when she was delivered six weeks early by emergency c-section. It was pretty intense. Well, last week she rolled over for the first time from her stomach to her back and can almost roll from her back to her stomach. In other words, she's hitting those delevopmental milestones and growing up like a healthy little baby. We're amazed. And constantly grateful she's doing so well. When you consider how touch-and-go it was that day at the hospital, it's just miraculous. Anyway, we'll some photos up later.

Radio ga-ga

I've got some good stories about the girls I need to post. But first I need to get this off my chest.

I've long had a problem with commercial radio. If I were a rich man, I'd follow in Thom G's footsteps and get on the satellite radio band wagon. Which I'm sure will happen eventually.

Anyway, this little quote, from an AP story on the Dixie Chicks' big win at the Grammys on Sunday serves as a case in point. (You'll remember, the band, in trouble for criticizing Bush while on tour in Europe in 2003, was shut out of the Country Music Awards earlier this year):

The Dixie Chicks peaked at No. 36 on the Billboard country charts with "Not Ready to Make Nice." That ought to disqualify them from winning best country album, said Jacobs, the Alabama radio station owner.

"How do you win country music album of the year, when country music radio is not playing you?" he said.

I love it. It's like he's arguing radio play weighs more than quality if your handing out awards with names with the suffix "of the Year".

See, country radio is a microcosm of the all the ills afflicting mainstream commercial radio. Country radio, as everyone knows, plays nothing but crap all the time. Redding has like 15 country stations on the FM dial. The ones that aren't are evangelical Christian stations. I've never lived in a place like this before.

Anyway, there's great country and there's crap country. For some reason it's crap country that gets the air time. For example, Johnny Cash? Not on the radio. Rascal Flats -- basically a glorified high school cover band? On the radio all the time. The mavericks and innovators of the genre are completely shut out. Artists like Alison Krauss, Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams, Old Crow Medicine Show and on and on. Instead, you've got Toby Keith with his brand of country music -- which has appropriately been dubbed "Amerigasmic" -- choking out the radio.

I don't know why it bothers me so badly, but it does. I don't understand why so many people chose terrible music over the good. I don't want to sound snobbish, but stop and think about it for a minute. When was the last time you heard a good song on commercial radio? Maybe you have in the last little while. Maybe I have, too.

But even if it's a station dedicated to a genre you like, playing bands and songs you like, they'll only play the same three songs by the same 10 artists over and over and over and over. You know, "Whole Lotta Love" instead of "Traveling Riverside Blues," "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" instead of "I'm Only Sleeping" or "With or Without You" instead of "Do You Feel Loved." You get the idea. Add to that that you'll never hear an independent band and probably drown in a deluge of one-hit-wonders. It's all wrong and bass-ackwards.

I've never been a big fan of the Dixie Chicks, but I like to see people stand up to the establishment. That's always worth applauding. And when it happens, you got to point it out:

But it is not clear that the support [at the Grammys] was uniform. Mr. Ayeroff, who founded the voter-registration group Rock the Vote, said a man sitting behind him in the Grammy audience snickered each time the Dixie Chicks received another trophy. “Finally,” Mr. Ayeroff said, “I got so disgusted, I turned around and said: ‘Dude, you’re in California now. Even our Republicans are Democrats.’ ”