Remember when I went to Kyrgyzstan last winter? You don’t?! Hey, that’s okay, I don’t blame you. Anyway, it was last February—about two weeks before political unrest escalated into full-blown riots there. We went snowboarding and had a grand time, and now you can read all about it in Transworld—in Transworld Snowboarding’s 200th issue ever made, to be exact. Exciting, no? All pics were taken by the talented Frenchman Eric Bergeri. Stop by a newsstand and peep it!
Thanksgiving often leads to feasting, which often leads to sitting on the couch watching movies, which in its way eventually leads to digestion. In observance of this, we watched The Shining last night. I’m not drawn to scary movies simply because they scare me, and why put that kinda stuff in your brain, right? But I’m willing to make exceptions for exquisite works like The Shining. I’ve seen it many times now, so many that I’m beyond getting scared and am now free to notice other things about the movie, like Shelley Duvall’s amazing sense of fashion.
I wish I could find more examples of what I mean, but trust me, she’s killing it throughout the entire movie, outfit-wise—taking gaudy/resourceful 70s mom to the absolute limit.
While I was looking for snapshots of her kits, I found this little interview with Ms. Duvall about what it was like to work with Stanley Kubrick on a movie like The Shining. Sounds traumatizing.
Generally speaking, shit’s getting cold around here, but I just spent two days in Palm Springs for the annual Transworld editorial meetings. As you know, I love the desert, and Palm Springs is in the desert. However, this town is very strange, a kinda twilight zone of senior citizens and other odd LA-folk who got caught out there like a pile of wayward tumbleweeds.
It didn’t help that we were staying at the Ace Hotel, which is ground zero for vacationing Los Angeles hipsters. Thus, while the other hotel poolsides were packed with polyester leisure suits, ours was awash with deep-V tees (to better display chest tatts)—and everyone in Ray Ban sunglasses.
The Ace Hotel grounds—very retro modern.
The Ace diner serves coffee from a French press, which is great and all, but we were rolling 9 people deep and there was never enough. “Can we get another French press?”
Before flying home, I stopped off to visit the Koerner-Anson’s in Huntington Beach. Wouldn’t you know, the entire SoCal coast was in the midst of a “winter storm warning.” Brrr. No tan for me this time.
Bo-Bo has taken to boxing. Check out his fight stance.
Am escaping for a few days in California. First stop, Venice Beach. I dropped in on Sierra at her cute tiny bungalow off Abbot Kinney. I had the most fun just wandering the streets and studying the humans here.
This is the California dream right here, isn’t it?
Not sure where you’re at but it’s certainly November ’round here. In honor of this and all the blizzards to come, I’ve delivered a behind-the-scenes snippet from Deeper.
Jeremy Jones is an ass kicker—I used to travel around with him and his cousin back when I was a young lass trying to make it in the game. Since those days, Jeremy’s assault on haphazard, death-is-certain natural terrain has continually amazed me. When folks I know (skateboarders) try to be all, “Snowboarding is easy!” I pat their heads and refer them to Mr. Jones. Pay particular attention to the helmet-cam footage. Terrifying.
A song for you. Actually, this one’s for Tricia, who first told me about it at a bar in Sedona as we sipped cocktails until tipsy in celebration of life and all those other things. I remember what we were drinking: gin and soda with fresh lime, ginger, and sage. It’s like they’d bottled the desert and served it up in a highball glass. But I digress.
Maybe this song is famous, old news, you already heard it a thousand times and I’ve had my head in the sand the whole time. Who knows. I’m not even sure if it’s a good song.
What’s interesting, though, is that the vocals are an essay written by a woman named Mary Schmich. It was published in the Chicago Tribune in 1997, and then, according to Wikipedia, “The column soon became the subject of an urban legend in which it was alleged to be an MIT commencement speach given by author Kurt Vonnegut in that same year (in truth, MIT’s commencement speaker that year was Kofi Annan).”
Sometimes when the weather says, “100% chance rain,” you still wake up to a day like this. In Oregon, November can be a little touch and go when it comes to your sanity. There’s the nice days, but then there’s also entire weekends where the sound of rain pelting the bricks outside never stops, and suddenly it’s 4 o’clock and you never even changed out of your pajamas. A network of coffee stains works its way down your front. It’s not pretty.
Anyway, my point is that when you wake up expecting flooding gutters and actually see sun, you better go for it. We drove out to Beacon Rock, a giant outcropping on the Washington side of the Columbia River. Highway 14 through Camas was awash with autumn clarity. The maple trees sprinkled yellow leaves down onto the black road. The sun catching ripples on the inlet waters dazzled our eyes. It was quite a thing to see at a time when I needed beauty in my life very badly.
As stated before, Portland is serious about Halloween. Me, personally—I’m only semi-serious, but I did get dressed up this weekend, twice. On Saturday night, although it was dark and wet with piles of leaves choking the gutters, Lance and I donned our pioneer garb and headed west. Our destination: the Nemoween party. It got weird as all good parties do—packed to the gills with freakshow people, and an unfortunate broken toilet incident that only served to enhance everyone’s merriment.
A picture of the group picture we took. Check out NWA!
As it often is, Sunday was a day of rest. I put on a pair of devil horns and rode bikes down to Burnside, where people were celebrating Halloween and the park’s 20 year anniversary. We watched the antics until the smell of urine and trash drove us into the parking lot, where the sound of Pissboner (the band) was almost as overwhelming. Just before dark, I rode back up Stark street 57 blocks through hordes of roving toddlers going from door to door with pumpkin-shaped buckets held before them.
Sweet group shot via Dee Dee—or should I say, Black Mamba?
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