Snow Day

The Knoxville area doesn't usually get a lot of snow, so when we got a few inches yesterday and today, it shut down most of the city.

These first few photos are from Sunday, it's pretty tame by Wisconsin, or Montreal standards:




This morning I took a quick walk around downtown Knoxville and took these photos.

Here's a guy using a broom to clear the sidewalk in front of a grocery store in the Old City. I suppose most people around here don't have snow shovels.



This outdoor seating area at the Crown and Goose pub is protected from the wind, so this probably gives a good measure of how much snow we got.



If you look closely, you'll see a sprinkling of snow on top of the Sunsphere.








Here's Rachmaninoff's statue covered with snow.



The above train tracks run north-south and separate downtown from the University of Tennessee student ghetto aka Fort Sanders; in these next photos the train tracks run east-west and mark the northern end of downtown.

On the left side of the next two photos you can see the historic Southern Railway passenger station. This used to be one of Knoxville's busiest areas (that link goes to a document describing the history of the neighbourhood just north of the station), now the station is mostly empty, and Depot Ave. sees very little traffic. Caught just north of downtown, and just south of the interstate, and in the triangular region between Central and Broadway, this part of town is not particularly nice. The Greyhound station is a block northeast, and that area has been known in the past as for prostitution problems.

Prostitution in Knoxville

On Saturday I drove around north Knoxville. It's not an area I know well, but there are several interesting businesses up there, so I thought it would be fun to explore.

It was fun, but I also saw some prostitution in action on north Central street, not too far from downtown, near the Knoxville National Cemetery, and my favourite local cupcake shop, Magpies.

Here's how they work, apparently: This woman probably just sits at a busstop all day, then when someone stops at the stoplight, she sashays across the street in front of them, trying to make eye contact with the drivers. She was like 35, not in good shape physically, and wearing surprisingly frumpy clothes. It was pretty depressing.

On a related note; if you're move to Knoxville I recommend not living in the area west of Central, and east of I-75.

Photo Dump: Chili Cook-Off, Farmer's Market, Birds, Roller Derby, Football

My friend J and I went to the 5th Annual East Tennessee Chili Cook-Off about a month ago.

I didn't really take any good photos, but in this one you can sort of see the chili stands on the left.



There was so much chili that we left for a couple of hours and came back for a second helping. We managed to taste 17 of the 22 chili's.



***

Knoxville has a pretty great Farmer's Market. Sometimes they also have other events in Krutch park at the same time: they've had a biscuit festival, some sort of history fair... A few weeks ago they had this:

I never really found out what was going on, but it seemed like fun.

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In the evenings in the fall you can often see a huge flock of birds flying from tree to tree, in downtown Knoxville, and then sometimes just swerving through the sky.

That's them in the bottom right part of this photo.



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A few months ago I went to see the roller derby just a few blocks east of downtown.

It was interesting.



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I went to a Vols game, Neyland stadium fits about 20,000 more fans than Camp Randall.

Photo Dump: Ijams Nature Center

Ijams is a park in south Knoxville that recently expanded to add two old quarries.

I visited on the day that the new trails were officially opened.

They also have some new biking trails that I'll eventually check out.

Photo dump: hiking the Alum Cave trail

Cool Aid: Scritti Politti

Scritti Politti is pretty cool.

I heard about them thanks to popdose, and got my hands on their supposedly classic 1985 album Cupid and Psyche '85.

It's great, and I've been listening to it a lot lately. At least 4 songs are top quality.

I find it kind of interesting to go back and hear these songs that were made while I was alive, but that I'm only now finding out about. But it's also kind of weird, like revisiting the places you lived as a kid, only to find that they don't match up with your memories.

Cool-Aid: Catching up with Weezer

During grad school, I fell behind with friends, movies, music... math... the list is quite long.

I missed several albums by some bands I had previously quite enjoyed: Supergrass, Weezer, The Tragically Hip, Belle and Sebastian, and Of Montreal to name just a few.

Recently I've been playing catch up. Two weeks ago I caught up on the three most recent Belle and Sebastian albums (they're good). This week I picked up the two latest Weezer albums; Raditude, and Hurley. Last time I bought a Weezer album I was also playing catch up. I got Maladroit and Make Believe just before the Red Album came out. It didn't get much love from music mags but Make Believe is probably my favourite Weezer album. It's got at least three songs that should be on everyone's top-ten-Weezer-songs list. *

Anyway, the new albums keep up the quality. Check out Kenny G helping out with Raditude's best song:


The other George Michael joins them on Hurley's best track "Hang On." The only minor quibble I have with this song (and, I admit, the reason I wrote this post) is the lyrics. If you're a Weezer fan, you probably don't mind silly lyrics. Even so, this line is just not right:

Over and over we swore it was over
but just like wild clover
love grows at light speed

No, it doesn't. Not even close.

The song is still great though.


*(or top 11)

Life in Knoxville: terrible parking edition

I remember a winter's day in Montreal, when I saw a Quebecer park his car about a half meter from the curb. He got out, walked around, and evaluated his handiwork: "quel tabernac de stationnement." Then he walked away.



People in my neighbourhood aren't much more careful about their parallel parking. When a spot opens up, often the next car will park slightly further out than the surrounding cars... after a couple of cars have done this, you get a situation like the one in this next photo.

Life in Knoxville: Hiking in the Smoky Mountains edition

About a month ago I hiked Mount LeConte, and stayed overnight at the LeConte Lodge. (About a month ago, as of Oct. 17th... Apparently, since I started writing this post a couple of week ago, blogger has timestamped it from Oct. 4th.)

It was pretty amazing.

It threatened to rain on the hike up the Rainbow Falls trail, but fortunately we just got drizzled on. (This was especially fortunate as my water-resistant backpack managed to keep my stuff mostly dry - I'll be buying a proper pack soon.)

Once we got to the lodge, I drank a bunch of hot chocolate and we played some card games while we waited for the slower members of our party to arrive.

There's several cabins, most have queen size bunk beds. Mine also had a single bed (that I slept on).


At the start of the season a helicopter brings up supplies (or so I'm told), including canned beef, which we were served for our surprisingly good dinner.

I met some interesting people while hiking, including a guy that grew up travelling around the country "showing" cattle ... at cattle competitions, I guess? Maybe at rodeos and that sort of thing.

After dinner the clouds started clearing up a little, so a bunch of us ran up to the summit to catch a cloudy sunset.





I also took video of the sunset, and I'll try to post it soon.

The next morning I skipped out on breakfast to hike down at 7:30 AM. This time we got completely soaked. It was raining so much, that I didn't get a chance to take pictures - but it was by far one of the most beautiful hikes I've ever been on. We had the trail (the Alum Cave trail) to ourselves, and at the Alum Cave the entire rim of the outcrop had water pouring off it. I just rehiked part of that trail today with my parents. I will post some of today's photos shortly.

Life in Knoxville: Nazi Edition

Apparently we've got a white supremacist rally tomorrow. Unfortunately they're going to have this rally in my neighbourhood. We'll see how that goes.

I guess this is the kind of thing you have to tolerate no matter where you live. I remember a few years ago we had one in Madison.

In other nazi news; I saw a guy with a swastika tattoo in the parking lot at the Oak Ridge Walmart. We parked at the same time, facing each other, and I was just getting out of my car at the same he was.

If you had asked me before, how I would react to a hypothetical nazi tattoo sighting, I would probably have told you that it would seem quaint, and pathetic to me. But actually, in real life, it was mostly terrifying. In a nice neighbourhood, you just don't expect to see shirtless guys with swastika and knife tattoos prominently displayed. Maybe I'll see him again tomorrow.

I'm older now

I just had a big birthday last week. Goodbye 20s.

Here's some music.

Cool Aid:They've still got it edition

I got a bunch of new cds recently from bands that I've been a long-time fan of. My verdict: they've still got it.

Spoon, The Tragically Hip, The New Pornographers, and Apples In Stereo, all put out albums in the last year or two that are among their best.

Spoon's Transference is their best since Kill the Moonlight. Someone called it their "spooniest" album, and I think that's pretty accurate. If you've never heard a Spoon album, this is a good place to start.

The Hip return to form with We Are The Same, after 15 years of so-so albums.

The New Pornographers have never made a bad album, and this one is as good as any other. On their latest, for the first time, the Dan Bejar songs are among the highlights (e.g. "Silver Jenny Dollar").

Apples in Stereo's latest album, like all their previous albums is good clean fun for the whole family.

Here's 3 of my favourites from each of these albums.

Diego's Cool-Aid

I've been listening to a lot of dream-pop lately. Some new bands like Beach House, and Air France, and some classic bands like M83, and Saint Etienne.

Here's 12 songs that are good. You will become cooler just by listening to them (make sure you listen to "Bicycle" all the way through).

New digs.

I moved into a new apartment this month... Here's some photos from the day I started moving in. Not much has changed since then, I still have almost no furniture, no TV, no internet...
It's nice though, in the heart of downtown Knoxville.





I've been trying to get to know Knoxville and the surrounding area better. Last weekend I went to "Ye Olde Steak House" which was a pretty great experience. The place looks not too promising from outside, but on the inside it's surprisingly large, and full of people - many dressed in their finest orange.

Today I decided to drive around south Knoxville. Knoxville is all hills and ridges, and I'm always being surprised by all the things that are hidden just around the corner and up a steep side street from where I've been before.

There's a hill behind Knoxville's only decent-ish record store, and I've always been curious as to what's back there. It's Fort Dickerson Park, a Civil War "earthen fort." There's not much to see... just a couple of cannons on a hill. Anyway, I think I found where Knoxville's gay men go cruising.

The Hurt Locker

I still remember a film review that Roger Ebert wrote 5 years ago. It was for an Afghan film called "Osama":

Who will go to see "Osama?" I don't know. There is after all that new Adam Sandler movie, and it's a charmer. And "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" is opening, for fans of campy trash. I'm not putting them down. People work hard for their money, and if they want to be entertained, that's their right. But brave dissenting Islamic filmmakers are risking their lives to tell the story of the persecution of women, and it is a story worth knowing, and mourning.

It's been on my to-watch list since then. I keep putting it off because it will probably be depressing, but I also feel like I should watch it, so I keep it near the bottom of my netflix queue, along with a bunch of documentaries.

My reaction to The Hurt Locker was similar. It came out months ago, but I kept putting it off, and only just went to see it yesterday. You should go see it too.

It's a brutal film. Over two hours of minimalist tension. There's essentially no plot: the movie skips over most of the characters' between-mission activities. The team start a mission, risk their lives, and then if all goes well, the mission ends... and then the movie skips forward to the next mission and repeats essentially the same story. This happens maybe 8-9 times. For almost the entire duration of the film, everyone on screen is under lethal danger.

The film follows a bomb disposal team. Other characters move in and out of the story, without really coming into focus, like John Travolta, and George Clooney in The Thin Red Line. Unlike Malick's masterpiece (one of my all-time favourites), the Hurt locker is focused on actions not thoughts. It is primal where The Thin Red Line was cerebral.

People die, and the tension comes from not knowing if/which characters will survive each scene, and from the slow pace of the narrative. I kept wanting the movie to go faster, to tell me how it will end. Watching the main character wipe pebbles off of an explosive device, or a sniper swat flies from his face left me squirming uncomfortably - and why shouldn't it? I'll probably never be in a war zone, a film like this is the closest I'll ever get. If a film aims to depict the wartime experience, it probably should realistically convey the fear and uncertainty that (I assume) soldiers experience.

This movie is full of basic, animal truth. It's hard to compare a film like this to other movies that have completely different goals. So, I'm not necessarily saying that this movie is "the best" of the year (Ponyo, was amazing). I just hope that, in a year where movies like the Hurt Locker exist, they don't go around giving Oscar's to yuppie-baiting garbage like Crash, or Babel.

One final comment: I recommend you watch this while it's in theaters. If you watch it on DVD, you'll almost certainly pause it, or watch it in bits and pieces, just because it's unsettling, and because you can. It won't be the same experience as being subjected to the full film all in one go, a captive of the cinematheque.

Testing Grooveshark playlist embedding

I think the internet may have finally provided a good mixtape service. (The lala playlist feature that I tried earlier is useless - you have to be logged in on my account to hear some of the songs.)

Here, hopefully, are some songs that I like.

You're so vain, you probably think this facebook status update is about you.

In the past couple of weeks, I've been discussing the various uses of facebook, blogs, and twitter with some friends, and family. It seems everybody has different reasons for being online and apply different combinations of personal filters to their various online presences.

One of the frustrating/weird things about facebook/blogs/twitter is the temptation to overshare personal information. Usually I'm cool with that, even if I don't personally like to share too many private thoughts. Standards are changing and sharing the details of one's life is becoming more common and acceptable - and since that's the case, who am I to judge where people should draw the line?

Well... that's what I used to think until earlier this week: A high school acquaintance of mine posted on facebook that he's getting divorced, then - and this is the part that I take issue with - his grandmother commented on his status, asking: "is this true [name of friend]?" (I think it was his grandmother... because of her gray hair in the tiny little picture next to her comment... but possibly it's his mom or an aunt.)

However blurry current standards for online profiles are, there's no way this is anything but gauche. (The guy took the post down a few days later.) And, I'm pretty sure that, no matter what the future holds, there's no way it can ever be ok to announce a divorce to your family in this way.

Would I feel differently if he had a smaller circle of friends on facebook? Maybe - although, if that were the case, I would certainly not be one of them. In fact, the funniest thing about this is that I didn't even know he was married until his divorce was announced on my facebook newsfeed.

My friend CL recently turned me onto some really cool music (i.e. tUnE-YaRdS). So now I'm going to try to write about some music that I think people should check out, sorted (kind of) by genre. I still haven't found a good way to share streamed music, so I'll use youtube instead.

Electronic wallpaper:

Tim Hecker is a cool Montreal artist that constructs intricate and intimate sonic landscapes. I like to listen to this while I'm studying. It's not too distracting, so I can focus on work, but then when I need a break, it's so full of interesting sounds and textures that it can easily hold my attention for a bit while my brain recharges. If you like this, you might also like Fennesz (Fennesz uses guitars more prominently, even though it doesn't really sound like guitar music).

Arovane is on a whole different vibe. Much closer to a "music for yoga moms" thing.

Tim Hecker - 100 Years Ago

Arovane - Goodbye Forever

Indie cred:

Ok... on to the music that you'll actually like.

Malcolm Middleton used to be in the downer-rock group Arab Strap. Now he makes depressing music as a solo artist.

Beirut is a young New Mexico artist. His latest release saw him combining his Old-World melodramatic crooning with rural Mexican music.

Malcolm Middleton - We're All Gonna Die

"You've got to laugh into the dark"...
This one's a couple of years old now. A life affirming existentialist ode to the cold hard truth.
I particularly like this Christmas-y children's choir version (the original is here).

Beirut - La Llorona

"Pop" rock:

I discovered Marshall Crenshaw thanks to Amazon: I bought a Love greatest hits album, and amazon suggested that I might like to buy Crenshaw's hits album... turns out they were right.

Puffy AmiYumi (or in Japanese: パフィ) make the kind of fun punkish music that Avril Lavigne should be making (think Hanson, when they were fun). They had their own TV show on the cartoon network, which was hilarious.

Marshall Crenshaw - Cynical Girl

Puffy AmiYumi - That's The Way It Is

It was really hard to find videos for these guys, and most of the videos I found were just awful. This is a great song, but they've got better songs - I just couldn't find videos for them.

Oldies:
Emitt Rhodes sounds like Paul McCartney in need of a better producer. He made some great music though.

The Honeys were a Beach Boys affiliated girl group. (Brian Wilson's ex-wife was one of the members) Don't make the mistake of buying their hits album - the only good stuff they put out was the stuff Brian Wilson produced, and you can find that on the "Pet Projects" compilation along with other interesting stuff like a weird teen-pop single from soon-to-be pop-country legend Glen Campbell.

Emitt Rhodes - Really Wanted You

Honeys - Tonight You Belong To Me

After the Honeys split 2 of the 3 girls formed the group American Spring, which Brian Wilson also was involved with. A whole bunch of the Wilson produced songs for both groups are great(especially American Spring's "Falling in Love," written by Dennis Wilson). This particular song is a cover of an early 20th century song. (Other great versions are here, and here)


Country-rock

I discovered The Hacienda Brothers thanks to Knoxville's non-NPR public radio station WDVX. Member Chris Gaffney recently died of cancer, and a tribute album was released earlier this year which features a great read on their song "Midnight Dream" by none other than Boz Scaggs. I couldn't find a video of it though, so here's the Hacienda Brothers version.

The Hacienda Brothers - Midnight Dream

That seems like plenty for now. Hopefully there's something in there that you like and that you hadn't heard before.