Yet another day off. I know it seems like I’ve had more days off than on lately, and it’s true, I have. But that’s a very important part of traveling, I think.

However, much of yesterday was spent mapping out my upcoming route through Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. I leave on Friday. My stops will be:

Jackson, WY
Mountain Home, ID
Baker City, OR
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA

I’ll be camping in Jackson and Mountain Home, staying in a motel in Baker City, with Ashley in Portland and with Jeff, Ryan and Jaime in Seattle.

The route looks like a good one and I’m really excited to ride it.

I am a little worried about the back breaks. The folks at Scooter Lounge couldn’t find any in time (Vespa seems to be out of a lot of rather important parts). So I’m hoping that my next stop – Big People Scooters in Seattle – can be as helpful. I emailed them yesterday and it seems doubtful, but I hope that they can fit me in.

Like I said yesterday, The Scooter Lounge in Orem, UT was great, especially for fitting me in with such late notice. If every scooter shop could be run like that, scootering would be a much better thing, and it’s already pretty amazing.

Oh, and about eating. We ate at Addicted Cafe, which is a mostly Vegan (all vegetarian) cafe in SLC. I ate there last year and it was delightful. This year, it was every bit as good. I got an Italian Sub. Hooray for Addicted!

For those wondering, Sarah made it safely back to the desolate lands of central Pennsylvania. She seemed to have a good enough time, PT Cruiser considered. Thanks, Sarah!

The PT Cruiser was returned. Thank god. I won’t rant on about how much I hated the evil that it was, but I’m glad to be rid of it. Fox Rent a Car, the folks from whence it came, seem to only have HUGE cars. I don’t get it. People who rent usually want small, economic cars, not portly gas guzzlers. It’s sad the the PT Cruiser seems to get the best mileage out of their SLC fleet. Lame, Fox, I’ll never use you again!

I should have taken some pictures today. But no, I did not. Mostly I hung out with Earl and talked about music. Earl is an electronic musician and produces some pretty cool stuff. We were up late watching videos on YouTube. Like this:

Enjoy!

A few days ago, I promised to upload some of the new stuff.

First, here are the Monks with “Higgle-Dy-Piggle-Dy”

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And how about some Mrs. Miller doing “These Boots Were Made for Walking” – Mrs. Miller was born in the Route 66 town of Joplin, Missouri!

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And about the Song-Poems, here’s “Do You Know the Difference Between Big Wood and Brush?” Listen to the amazing lyrics.

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I’ll definitely be posting some of the song-poems again, but I thought I’d post a song by Flight of the Conchords. Lyrically, they seem to be really influenced by people who have no business writing lyrics. Here’s “I’m Not Crying,” one of the finest examples of such things.

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I’ll put up more from each of these soon.

Mandy makes her own pasta. She uses an attachment for her avocado green KitchenAid mixer. It’s pretty spectacular. And today, I was the pasta maker! Well, I helped. A little.

Yes, folks, today was another day off in sunny Salt Lake City! But the pasta was fun. I’m not sure if this is how big companies make their pasta, but it was pretty great. The attachments for the mixer are sort of pricey, so I can’t really imagine myself doing this, but Rati has this kind of mixer, so I wonder if she’ll be jumping to do it.

We found out that with nonegg pasta (which is what most pasta is, but Mandy mostly made fettuccine, which is eggy) all you have to do to cook it is dip it in the boiling water for a few seconds. Not for a few minutes. No no.

In other news…

A few days ago, I had a new MP3 player sent to Mandy’s. I was in ABQ when I ordered it. It’s the Cowon iAudio D2. First, I had to overlook the iAudio thing. I’m come to hate almost anything that starts with “i,” iPod especially.

I learned about the Cowon D2 via Anything But iPod. I was looking for an MP3 player that would be treated as an external drive by my computer.

See, I run Ubuntu and finding an MP3 player that doesn’t require incredibly crappy software to load songs onto it is a tough job. The iPod has iTunes and it’s iAnnoying and iCrappy and only available for iMac and iWindows. I could load stuff onto it using a program made for Linux, but then I wouldn’t be able to load stuff from other peoples’ computers.

So I got the D2 and love it. It’s holds 4GB and allows for SD cards. I have a 16GB card in it, bringing the total storage to 20GB. Not bad. I’ll be picking up a 36GB card when they’re cheaper. It’s supposedly got 52 hours of battery life. Seriously, skip the iPod thing.

I loaded all the music I had on it and even some of the new stuff.

And yesterday I said that I’d post some more music. Here you go.

Let’s hear from the Monks again! “Boys are Boys”! This is from their demo. On the demos they used a church-sounding organ (get it – the Monks?).

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Hey, how would you like another Monks song? This is also a demo. Here’s Space Age!

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And again from Mrs. Miller doing the smash hit “Downtown.” A reviewer at allmusic.com said about her: “Her renditions … exist somewhere between opera, yodeling, and the blood-curdling screams of Guantanamo torture victims. It’s still better than your average Toby Keith record, but not by much.”

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And another Song-Poem, here’s “Jimmy Carter Says ‘Yes’” Listen to the amazing lyrics.

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Oh heck, how about another one, my favorite, “Beat of the Traps”.

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I’m feeling pretty giving today. Here’s a track from Flight of the Conchords. “Bowie” – It’s basically amazing if you’re into Bowie. Otherwise, you won’t care. Oh, and a bunch of fun on the end.

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Hello, and welcome back. Ready for a few more random hip hop videos from my past?

I’m still in Seattle and to pass the time (for you, not me – I’m actually rather busy!), I’m posting some videos of hip hop songs I dug when I was in middle school (circa 1986-1990ish).

Around that time YO! MTV Raps was on for two hours on Saturday mornings with Fab 5 Freddie.

It was Run DMC, however, who hosted the first show. So here’s RUN DMC’s “It’s Tricky” to start things off.

You’ll have to click here to see the video since Sony doesn’t allow embedding. Go figure.

Hey! It’s Penn & Teller when they weren’t freakishly right-wing and annoying.

The first group to have their video on YO! wasn’t Run DMC, it was Eric B. & Rakim. The first song I heard of theirs was “Follow the Leader,” which was also the first video on YO!, but my favorite cut was from the albums after that, called “Paid in Full.”

I was really getting into remixes and “Paid” had an amazing seven minute remix. This is the single version.

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YO! MTV Raps gave exposure to a bunch of groups I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. And while this caused what I (and apparently Madhava Gosh) see as the downfall of rap and thus the hip hop culture.

One of those groups was EPMD. Now, I never really got into EPMD, but I dug their song “Strictly Business.” Great use of samples.

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Rap started to change with the increased popularity and shifting of styles from the carefree Run DMC type stuff to the more overtly political Public Enemy type stuff. I followed it up until the NWA album came out. After that, it opened the floodgates to “gangsta rap,” something that I really couldn’t relate to and didn’t care for.

One of the last acts I saw on YO! was Audio Two. MC Milk’s style was a bit off beat (literally) and that’s what a lot of rap artists are doing today. I’m not sure where he got that idea from or if he influenced anyone else to do it, but I always dug “I Don’t Care”…

YO! fans will notice that the intro to the show was largely taken from this video.

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That’s it, folks. I hope someone’s interested in this.
I realize that this is mostly a scooter / Route 66 sort of blog, but really, it’s my blog, so I get final say.

Which is why I’m now going to play “Angry White Boy Polka”

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And this…

I liked rap and I liked metal. Go figure. But how could I combine the two? Rap and metal were light years apart.

One of my favorite metal bands was Anthrax. And one of my favorite rap acts was Public Enemy. Now, here’s a funny story – when I was in 9th grade, I bought PE’s “Fear of a Black Planet” (already owning “It Takes a Nation of Million…” Almost immediately after that, my parents found it and read the lyrics and promptly took them away from me.

Of course, about a week later, I found them, copied them, and again was the happy owner of the second and third Public Enemy albums. Go me!

They didn’t seem to have too much of a problem with Anthrax. I had their State of Euphoria album and dug the crap out of it. I also had the album before that, “Among the Living,” which had the song that really put them on the metal map – “Indians”

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I also had the “I’m the Man” EP, which was Anthrax’s tribute (?) to rap (which my parents, thankfully, never discovered). However, I was never sure if Anthrax liked rap or was just making fun of it. And with “I’m the Man,” how can you tell?

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But in 1991, Public Enemy and Anthrax got together and rerecorded the song “Bring the Noise,” a 1987 Public Enemy song I first heard on the Less Than Zero soundtrack that actually mentioned Anthrax (“was is for Anthrax”). I was pretty well in heaven.

By 1991 I was pretty well out of rap, diving fully into hardcore punk – even joining my first hardcore band that summer. Even so, I still listened to it a bit, especially Public Enemy. I don’t think I ever stopped listening to Anthrax. But this mixing of rap and metal really thrilled me and I still have a great time listening to it.

And, hey, I hope you did too!