SST: Making Apple Cider

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

Don't get me wrong - I love that it was 75 degrees outside yesterday and I never tire of the sight of palm trees. But I feel pangs of nostalgia every time I log on to Facebook and see my Michigan friends all tagged in a photo like this one:

They are participating in one of my favorite Midwestern autumn traditions: the cider mill trip. There are lots of places where you can get fresh apple cider, but as this photo illustrates, there are three key components to a classic Midwest cider mill trip (romanticized ever so slightly):

1) A scenic drive with friends out to a sequestered, barn-red mill situated on the edge of the woods near a lazy stream where laughing children feed the ducks.

2) Apple cider, of course, which is so fresh and pure that it tastes like you are drinking a liquid apple.*

3) Homemade donuts (regular, pumpkin spice, and apple flavored) fried up so fresh that you have to let them cool off in the crisp autumn air before eating them at the picnic tables out under the blazing red and yellow leaves.

Well, if I can't actually go to a cider mill, I'll have to settle for the next best thing - spying on my Michigan friends' cider mill trips on Facebook. Or I could settle for the third best thing - this old Sesame Street clip about how to make apple cider:



*Line borrowed from a similar post by a fellow Michigan expatriate who has experienced similar cider mill pangs.

Jazz Forum

We've almost made it. We just need to hang on until Wednesday.


The 2010-2011 NBA regular season cannot begin soon enough for me. I hardly know what to do with myself during the four-month gap between the NBA Finals and the beginning of the new season. I'm always fascinated by the Utah Jazz, but this season in particular, after such a major roster overhaul (bye-bye Boozer/Korver/Matthews, hello Jefferson/Hayward/Bell), there are so many juicy storylines to follow.

I watched all of the preseason games that were televised and have been really excited by what I've seen, although I'm not putting too much stock in an undefeated preseason - after all, the lowly Memphis Grizzlies were undefeated too. Nevertheless, I saw plenty of promising things in the preseason, such as the sight of Al Jefferson going straight at Pau Gasol without hesitation. After three consecutive playoffs exits resulting from the Jazz getting steamrolled by the three seven-footers on the Lakers' front line, I was pretty stoked about having a player big and strong enough to push back against Gasol, Odom, and Bynum.

Another thing I'm really looking forward to - being a Jazz fan in the Pacific Time Zone. Being a Jazz fan in the Eastern Time Zone is a rough gig. Their nationally televised games usually have a 10:30 ET start time, so you're likely not getting to bed before 1:00 am (especially if you're like me and you like to hear every word that Ernie, Kenny the Jet, and Charles Barkley have to say about the Jazz on the postgame show).

And my favorite off-court Jazz subplot: Will Kirilenko ever find a haircut that works for him? The quest continues this year with the look in the upper left corner:


So, if there are any other Jazz fans out there, what do you think about the Jazz heading into the new season? Which storylines (i.e. "How will the Deron and Big Al tandem work out?" "Will new lottery pick Gordon Hayward contribute anything?" "When's Memo coming back?" "Will the Jerry Sloan darling Jeremy Evans be the latest overlooked Jazz rookie have a breakout season, à la Paul Millsap or Wesley Matthews?" etc.) intrigue you? Leave a comment!

New Dream Blog Post: "Follow Them to the Edge of the Desert"

Check out the latest post on my dream blog: "Follow Them to the Edge of the Desert"

Back in February I had a dream that I wanted to post on my dream blog, so I went ahead and drew up an MS Paint illustration (a pretty dang good one, by my standards at least) and made a rough outline of the text. For some reason I forgot all about it (perhaps it had something to do with all those dissertation recitals and whatnot) and it sat unfinished until today. Better eight months late than never, eh? I find it amusing that my co-star in the dream was known back then as Stephanie Harris, but she has since morphed into Stephanie Frischknecht. She and Adam didn't even start dating until much later than that.

P.S. - In case you were wondering about the title of the post, it comes from Gilmore Girls:



1,000 bonus points if you knew the reference without the explanation.

SST: Capital I

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

My friend Kara suggested this clip, which is one of my favorite Sesame Street songs:



When I was in high school I made a homemade demo recording of this song, featuring me singing the vocals, playing acoustic rhythm guitar, playing an electric guitar solo, and playing a little mandolin lick to begin and end the song. I didn't have any type of multi-track mixing equipment, so I had to get creative with one dinky little cassette recorder, a second cassette player, and two blank cassette tapes:

TAPE 1: Using the cassette recorder, I recorded myself playing the acoustic guitar part for the whole song, sans vocals.

TAPE 2: I put Tape 1 in an adjacent cassette player and pressed play. I then quickly hit record on the cassette recorder, which was loaded with Tape 2. The prerecorded acoustic guitar part started playing in the background and I played the opening mandolin lick on top of it. I then sang the first verse while silently putting down the mandolin and strapping on the electric guitar. After the first verse I played a little electric guitar solo and then sang the second verse while silently putting down the electric guitar and picking up the mandolin, just in time to play the mandolin lick one more time to close out the song. I then hit stop on both cassette players.

Pretty ghetto, right? But I thought the final recording turned out pretty cool and the balance between the prerecorded acoustic guitar and all the other stuff was pretty decent. I never really played it for anybody and now I have no idea where that tape is (it's probably with the lost tape of "The Fugitive 2").

Proof, or: "Oh no you don't, that trampoline is mine!"

About two and a half years ago I visited my sister Julie in Seattle, and one evening the whole family went out to jump on the trampoline. I hadn't been on a trampoline in years, but much to my delight I found I could still do all my old tricks. Whereas my twelve-year-old self could effortlessly spend hours at a time flipping around on the tramp, I unsurprisingly found that my late-twenties body lacked that same stamina and flexibility. After dismounting the tramp, I mused to my brother-in-law Lance, "How much longer do you think I'll be able do my tricks?" His answer was blunt: "Until you're thirty."

Trampolines are very dear to me - I estimate that I spent roughly 70% of my childhood on our trampoline. It was my neighborhood's default social activity and nearly every day (especially during the summer) the doorbell would ring and a gaggle of kids would ask, "Can we jump?" When we were younger we'd just bounce around, get it wet and jump, have sleep-overs on it, or play silly made-up games like 'Apple Scramble' (I can't remember the rules or the gameplay, but it involved rolling around a lot of apples that had fallen our the trees in the backyard).

As we got older it was all about tricks and daredevil feats. We would push the tramp over by the apricot tree and jump down off a branch. When that was no longer a challenge, we jumped off the top of the gazebo. Then off the deck. Then through the kitchen window. That left only one higher place - the roof. We would wait until we had at least an hour-long window of time with no grown-ups around, push the tramp over next to the house, pile up blankets and sleeping bags on the tramp to minimize unpredictable ricocheting, and go nuts. The first jump was rather bracing, but after that it was fun and the landing on the sleeping bags was like a Snuggle commercial. However, one day my mom came home earlier than expected and put an end to our roof jumping because she seemed to think that hurling our bodies off of the roof was a bad idea (go figure).*

Ever since that conversation with Lance I have felt the clock ticking on my trampoline days as I race towards thirty. A few weeks ago I was watching some old home movies of me showing off on the trampoline, but I was young enough that the best tricks I could muster were lame bounces off my back and not-quite front flips. I then panicked: what if I turned thirty and there was no video evidence that I could ever do any trampoline tricks?

So last night I went with my brother-in-law Tom and his kids over to his friend's house, who turned out to be the owner and proprietor of a trampoline. I begged Tom to indulge me and film my once-mad trampoline skillz. So I ask that you too, fair reader, kindly indulge my inner twelve-year-old for 37 seconds and enjoy my trampoline tricks clip. I ran through my repertoire of tricks for a few minutes before taking this video, and you will hear that my nearly thirty-year-old self is huffing and puffing a little as I list off the tricks as I perform them. So for clarity's sake, here's a written rundown:

1. Front flip
2. Backflip
3. Front aerial (front flip with a twist - like a cartwheel without hands)
4. Back aerial (backflip with a twist - you should land facing 180 degrees away from your starting position)
5. Another backflip



I couldn't hit the aerial or the back aerial all night, but the trampoline was on a Sport Court-type surface and it kept shifting around as I jumped, so I blame that.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself until a twelve-year-old spectator usurped my spot on the tramp and did all these physics-defying-sideways-spinning-backflip moves, putting my humble tricks into perspective. But hey, I had fun and I've now got the proof that I wanted, so I can grow old and decrepit in peace.

*Somewhere in my parents' house there is footage of us jumping off the roof, in the form of a short film my neighbors and I made called "The Fugitive 2." Made in the immediate aftermath of "The Fugitive," I starred as a man wrongly accused of killing his dog (turns out it was really the one-armed man). It all led to a standoff with the detective (my neighbor Nic) on the edge of my roof. "I didn't kill my dog!" I yelled. His obvious retort: "I don't care!" I then jumped off the roof to escape. The detective followed suit. We both hit the ground and died. The End.

The way we shot the jump was pretty tricky for a bunch of kids - we had a shot of the jump from roof-level, then we cut to a low-angle shot of me falling from the roof (with the trampoline hidden from sight), and finally we cut to me hitting the ground (from a fall of only a few feet). The same sequence of shots was then repeated for the detective character. The film was only a few minutes long and its whole raison d'être was so we could film ourselves jumping off the roof. I never labeled the tape (for fear that it would get us in trouble) and I have no idea where it's hiding now. Note to self: next time you're in Bountiful, try to find that tape.

P.S. - The subtitle of this post comes from The Simpsons:



"Oh no you don't, that trampoline is mine!" wins the title of "Brian's Most Quoted Simpsons Line" in a landslide. Only "Sure I love you baby, like I love Fresca!" even comes close.

The Tree Adjacent to My Parking Space

New Dream Blog Post: "Tramps Like Us"

After nearly seven months on hiatus, I finally have a new post on my dream blog: "Tramps Like Us." It is pure folly to try to explain away most of the random things that pops up in dreams, but in this case I can say quite authoritatively that it was partly inspired by this clip from the Emmys:



I'm not a big Glee fan, so I don't know why this would snuck into my dream, although I love me some Tina Fey, Jorge Garcia, and Jon Hamm (the latter two both have some pretty rockin' voices). Also, I have no idea why so many of the dreams I've chronicled on my dream blog have scenes set in malls (such as "A Mall and the Night Visitors" and "ZCMI India"). I haven't gone to a mall in years, save for the dollar theater at Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor, and a vast majority of my dreams are strictly mall-free.

You know, one of my favorite things about writing on my dream blog, besides drawing illustrations in MS Paint, is giving my dreams a title. There's something about a title that makes an amorphous and fleeting thing like a dream feel more concrete and real, like a movie or a short story. Next time you have an interesting dream, try giving it a title - it's fun to think it up, and I guarantee you'll remember the dream better.