So, I just got back from 4 days climbing and camping in the Catskills and Adirondacks. I also just started taking the Pre-Req class so that I can begin volunteering for the local SAR team. I'm also trying to wrap up McGill's back rehab book and will summarize what I've got out of it so far, but first let me finish up some comments on a few odd-ball christmas gifts.FoxPro Skyote Coyote Call: OK, first a disclaimer: my uncle and cousins run FoxPro over in Lewistown. My brother got me this little blue plastic hand held coyote call. I don't know the first thing about calling in coyotes. At least not yet, but I will. What interests me the most is this: Up until about two years ago I didn't really believe there were coyotes running around the woods I play in most often: Rothrock State Forest. Sure, I routinely heard coyotes camping up in the far end of Bald Eagle State Forest (I grew up right on the border between the two) but I spent a fair amount of time hiking and camping in Rothrock and never heard a single coyote yip. It was common for me to just go out for the evening, park the truck, walk a little ways into the woods, lay my foam pad out and sleep in the woods (mainly because I love waking up in the middle of the night and seeing the stars, noting how they've changed positions, then waking up in the morning to all that green... great way to start any day). Surely, if they were out there, I would know it.
Well, my brother is a trapper and so I went out with him early one morning to run his trap line and we tagged along with a friend of his to check his traps as well. My brother struck out, but the other guy hit the jackpot that morning: a fox at one location, and lo and behold, a coyote at another. Well, there was no denying coyotes around here anymore. I'm hoping that now when I go out I'll be able to get an occasional coyote to answer, just to confirm that they're around. It adds a little edge -- a little back-of-the-neck fear -- to know that there is definetely something within earshot that could, if it wanted, sneak up on you and tear your tree-hugging throat out while you're sleeping peacefully under the stars.
Antique Double Shot Glass: I like liquor. Usually whiskey. Typically on the rocks, occasionally sipped warm from a shot glass. I also like to make cocktails. I'm proud of my Long Island Iced Teas and Margaritas, but I'm struggling right now to get my Manhattan's right. Up until now all that I have for measuring are single shot glasses. Now, I live near Penn State, which was recently voted #1 Party School in the country. But do you think you can find a good quality double shot glass with a line on it to show where a single shot is anywhere in town? Basic thing like that? Nope. Sure there's a bunch of thin, low-class single shot glasses with different variations of PSU logos on it but nothing substantial. Nothing that could be put in a sock and used to knock in some loudmouth's teeth. My mother-in-law came through this year. Found this bad boy in an antique shop. This thing is hefty, it's got the line for measuring a single shot and it even has a few small, dull knicks in the lip. I like to think it's already taken out a few teeth. I've tried it out. It works... for drinking, not tooth-loosening.
Henry Rollins' "Get in the Van": I've always considered myself a big fan of Black Flag. Actually, though, I am really just a big fan of the "Wasted... Again" album (because it avoids the long drawn out noise and metal influenced later years) and a few other tracks. My brother turned me on to Black Flag when I was, perhaps, fourteen or fifteen years old and mainly listening to gangster rap like Ice-T and NWA. I swiped the tape from his Nissan Pulsar and listened to it endlessly. I did the same thing with Youth of Today's "Can't Close My Eyes" tape. I wish I could say that those tapes instantly flipped a switch in my brain that allowed me to reject both gangster rap and the hollow pointless whining of popular music and the coming grunge wave, but it didn't. As the CIA might put it: I failed to connect the dots. I didn't recognize that these two bands were just the tip of the iceberg of an entire world of underground punk and hardcore music. I eventually found that iceberg but it took a few more years and some terrible music in the meantime.
Now, I've never been a big fan of Henry Rollins, but I might be changing my mind. I love the State of Alert songs on Dischord's "1981 the Year in Singles" comp, but by the time I really got into punk, Henry had moved onto spoken word, then Rollins Band and Rollins Band does nothing for me. He got muscular and attracted -- at least in the people I knew -- a very football-jock fan base. This point was proven to me at Woodstock '94 when, lacking anything better to do, I wandered down to the "mosh pits" during the Rollins Band set and realized these were not "mosh pits" or "circle pits" as I knew them, but were just big jocks jousting with well-timed punches. There was no pretense of dancing, no change of pace to the energy of the music, just an excuse for violence. Now that's not always a bad thing, so I took a few turns, but was clearly the smallest in the pit and so the target of everyone else there.
So, in my mind, Henry was just a guy who happened to be the lead singer for Greg Ginn's Black Flag. This is still more or less true but I've had a chance to read through about 1/3 of this book so far. I didn't mean to, but it's laying on the kitchen countertop and it's written in short paragraphs like a diary so, while the water is heating or the chicken is broiling, I sneak in a few short paragraphs. In the last few pages that I've read it's begun to take on the same honest, introspective but deeply misanthropic tone that I so enjoy in Mark Twight's writing. Now, given that people are always quoting Rollins' "200 lbs is always 200 lbs" quote to me, and that Twight provided an interesting expansion on the comment, I may have to look a bit more deeply into what Rollins' has to say. "Get in the Van" is clearly demonstrating the commitment he had to punk rock and one of the most important american bands ever, so that's a decent place to start.
SOUNDTRACK: Black Flag "Wasted". Probably my all-time favorite Black Flag song. It might be the best 0:53 seconds of some people's life. It's from before Rollin's time with band, though, so it's Keith Morris on vocals. You can hear Henry kind of screwing it up live here.
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