Favorites 9.29.15
Blood Moons: Lucky for me, the moon rises right outside my front door. On Sunday night, it arrived a deep, dusty red. In a time before social media, what we did was simply look at the lunar eclipse—some of us wondering about its dark celestial mysteries. Now, we can take pictures with our iPhones! (P.S. I borrowed this pic from my friend Kurt. I doubt it was taken with an iPhone. And for the record I deem astronomical happenings to be plenty worthy of a tap or two.)
Toasted sage: I didn't know that you could chop and cook sage until it was crisp and then sprinkle it on such things as squash and spaghetti to add fragrance and crunch. I mean, did you?
No roommates: I had roommates all summer and the last of ’em just left. Now the house is super quiet and warm with fall light. I love having the place filled with people, laughter, etc.—but then eventually it's so nice to be totally all by yourself.
Backyards of Portland: Perfect for the kind of fall days when you want skate and be with friends but make very little effort and deal with zero skatepark undesirables.
This Time Last Year
This September isn't last September. It's different in ways and better in ways. For some reason, though, I found myself looking through photos from last September. It was nice seeing all the faces and the places and the way the light was soft and gold, angular, like it is today.
This is the old Bracewell mini ramp. It wasn't much to look at, but I loved it dearly.
Watched one of my bests get married in the old fashioned way—outside in the fresh air in front of a bunch of good people under the high-country Colorado sun. During their vows, a wind whispering of fall set the aspen leaves a'clicking. Hooray for love!
On the way to the wedding, stopped off in Denver to see nephew Pat and Rocket the puppy—who gnawed on my knuckle with pin-sharp baby teeth.
Hiked up Eagle Creek Trail for the first time: Heat. Haze. Big roving rain clouds. Trails carved out of cliffsides. Waterfalls that drop loudly into deep, green pools.
Used the rest of my garden tomatoes to make a galette. Kinda like a pie, but messier and lazier and in my mind more delicious. Rolling pinned the crust, threw great foodstuffs in the center, and then wrapped it up like a lil baby. It was the oven, really, that did all the work.
Favorites 9.3.15
September: I always do spectacular things in September like burning stuff in backyard fires and turning my back toward the cold of night, like drinking beer and eating chocolate birthday cake. It's my month. Razor blue skies and the season pulling at you like a tide.
A homegrown cucumber: Cucumbers are cucumbers. Except they're not. The good ones taste like perfume.
A Winter's Tale: A fantastically long book by Mark Helprin (that was made into a lackluster movie starring Colin Farrell). It's a vivid dream of grit and magic in turn-of-the-century NYC.
Bloodline: A slow burn. Takes you 4 episodes to get hooked—but then you are. The music. The storms. The heat. The faces. An unflinching family drama set in the sun-bleached Florida Keys.
August 27th
I took this picture of Justin years ago. Shitty quality, but I still love it so. Mainly because it sums up my feelings about skateboarding in the fall. How great it is. How empty the parks are. How the air's all crisp and alive. How you can skate for a few hours and get really tired, and then as the last light and warmth disappear from the day, you can go eat some grand, savory meal at a place like Dots (the Gentle Ben with fries) or Free House (the mac and cheese, obvi) and not even feel bad because, like, hey, you're stock-piling calories for winter and stuff.
Anyway, yeah, I'm ready for that.
Three Things
Love & Mercy: The genius and madness of Brian Wilson. You get to watch Pet Sounds come alive in his mind and in the studio. You get to comprehend, finally, why all those songs are so pretty and yet so sad.
Homemade pizza dough: I'm not gonna go into great depth about pizza. We all know it. We all like it. But let's talk pizza dough! When you or someone you know makes it from scratch—makes it light and toasty and soft and flakey and crunchy all at once—well, it's pretty much a game changer.
Sorry Jamal Williams for running into you at vans and sorry for liberating the background noise: A Beatrice Domond video. "A largely self-filmed montage of non-spot tricks," as it's called in the interview with her I first saw it on. This chick does WTF she wants, in life and on her skateboard. Should we all be more like her and like that?