fun fact #37: i used to have a subscription to "metal edge" magazine, back when rock bands had hair so big that you could practically smell the aquanet wafting out from the centerfold posters.
i was reminded of this first during last week's cleaning binge, and again just a few moments ago, when i ran across a photo of a truly awful motley crue tattoo. (i can't remember exactly where i found the thing, otherwise, i'd include the link. the only good part of it was that mick mars did not resemble the cryptkeeper wearing a black wig in any way whatsoever....a minor feat.)
since the new vacuum showed up about a week and a half ago (a refurbished dyson....very un-rock n' roll of me, i know), i have had the urge to not only vacuum the apartment, but to actually move furniture to do so, as opposed to the "straight up the middle" treatment i used to engage in with the old hoover, which smelled like a leather pants after one concert too many (for the past couple of years) and recently began screaming like axl rose during waxing session. furthermore, i'm doing a little decluttering before moving furniture back to where it belongs.
round one, a little over a week ago, resulted in the rescue of approximately eight balls and a dozen mice (i took apart the living room), as well as a sizeable donation to the vietnam vets. (sorry you missed it- i had a box full of 80s and 90s countdown cds, as well as two vacuums- the one mentioned above, and a handheld, multifunction vacuum whose only actual function was as a paperweight.)
a few days ago, after a less than stellar week, i spent my friday evening vacuuming my apartment (i swear, i dumped another cat's worth of fur out of my vacuum's bin) and semi-reorganizing my bedroom. admittedly, i was not very thorough in my decluttering (remember when michael hutchence died? no? really? would you care to look through the entire freaking box of printed material i got off the internet that weekend? no? well, let me know if you change your mind, as i still haven't sorted through it and weeded out all the sappy poetic tributes fans left in the guestbooks of the websites i visited.), though i did manage to finally purge the majority of the demo tapes from unsigned bands (early to mid-90s- mostly folks who hadn't gotten the message that seattle had pretty much killed metal and that their chances of getting record deals were about equal to that of the original metallica lineup getting back together) from my collection.
i started out with three boxes of cassette tapes....three! i managed to get it down to two, not counting (now that i think about it) the additional box that might still be sitting in my dad's garage in kansas city. some bargain hunter may soon be the proud owner of classic nonhits by bands like "pandora's lunchbox" (or maybe that was the title of the demo. given the fact that the tape was copied on someone's boombox and the insert was handdrawn and photocopied onto hot pink paper, it was kind of hard to tell...), "stinky* fetus", and a whole pile of stuff by david la duke.**
(my copy of "heart of a killer" by winter's bane is staying, due to its cultural/historical significance. i don't recall it getting heavy airplay in my house, but lead singer tim "ripper" owens did go on to replace rob halford in judas priest for a while......)
true, i suppose i could have thinned my collection even more, but that would have meant saying "goodbye" to cassingles (red hot chili peppers, mr. big, damn yankees, gerardo, right said fred- what can i say? i had pretty diverse musical tastes in the 90s), homemade mixtapes (oh, like you never sat by the radio, blank tape in the deck, fingers poised above "play" and "record", waiting for that hot new song the dj promised was "coming up next" about twenty minutes ago......), and little-known releases (undoubtedly plucked out of the bargain bin at sam goody's) from winger, every mother's nightmare and little caesar.****
i'm just not quite ready to take those treasures to goodwill. however, they are more than welcome to my copy of some random cassette by kix (not the cereal), which featured the timeless classic....uh.....uhm...now, i know there was a sticker on the packaging that motivated me to buy it.*****
perhaps i'll revisit those boxes around the time i clean out my closet and tackle the pile of posters ripped from metal edge (trixter, anyone?) that i suspect lurks within.
*i'm not sure it was really "stinky fetus". i know it was "(something) fetus", but i'm at work and the tape is at home, so we're just going to go with "stinky", which, as i recall, is pretty much what i thought of their demo.
**which i might be taking out of the box, as i vaguely recall that his stuff was actually pretty decent. then again, it has been a good fifteen years (at least) since i last listened to him, so i could have him mixed up with one of those semi-decent 90s metal bands, like arcade***.
*** i must share, as it's been a while since i last threw a video up on the blog:
****you've never heard of them? i am not surprised. however, i'm keeping the cassette, as they did pretty good covers of "chain of fools" and "i wish it would rain".
*****oh yes, now i remember. it said "$1.99".
Showing posts with label unsettling music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unsettling music. Show all posts
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Sunday, September 06, 2009
is that a banjo i hear?
i'm moving a little slowly this morning, but it's for a good reason- SO and i went hiking yesterday on the winding stairs trail, near walhalla, sc.
(we thought a hike might be a good idea because, for his upcoming 40th birthday, SO and i are going to visit his family in phoenix, arizona. as usual, there is a strong possibility that sooner or later, we will find ourselves enjoying the local terrain on foot. since most of our daily exercise is limited to walking on flat land, clearly a little conditioning is in order.)
this 3.5 mile trail (which, according to this link, apparently features a bonus waterfall, secret falls, which we somehow managed to miss completely) was done as an out-and-back hike, totalling 7 miles.
the parking area for this hike was pretty easy to find, and not just because we overshot it and wound up at the entrance to the cherry hill recreational area. we actually parked in the same pullout we used a couple of years ago, when we hiked the big bend trail (which i didn't blog about, for some strange reason). however, a lesson was learned after our last hike in this area- ticks are abundant. so, before heading out on the trail, windows were rolled up, the sunroof of SO's spiffy new chariot was closed, and we doused ourselves in mosquito/tick repellant.
we started our hike from the northern trailhead, on sc 107, which, according to hiking south carolina by john clark & john dantzler, is the easier way to approach the hike. after a slight incline just past the trailhead, the trail descends over a thousand feet, mostly through a series of switchbacks- which, i suppose, inspired the name of the trail.
our first stop was fairly early on- a photo op along the west fork of townes creek.
(forgive the blurriness. this was the best of six....by a fair bit, i assure you.)
the trail was pretty flat along this section, and we marveled at the variety of mushrooms along the trail. there were huge yellow ones, smaller red ones, oddly shaped large white ones.....the smurfs would have been proud. i would've snapped some photos, but was excited about the waterfall and wanted to get to it as quickly as possible, so pictures would have to wait until the hike back to the trailhead.
miuka falls can be heard after the first switchback along the trail. there's a little bit of a scramble to get a decent view of the waterfall, but i managed to stay on my feet without the assistance of too many trees. i believe SO even managed to stay upright, which will spare me the prospect of having to presoak his shorts in oxyclean and half a bottle of shout.
miuka falls is a 75-foot cascade waterfall....it reminded me of oconee station falls, which i visited about 10 years ago, before moving to south carolina. like oconee station falls, i had a serious desire to have my photo taken at the base of the waterfall.
(this was taken at oconee station waterfall- 1998 or so, i think)
however, my plan was foiled on two counts:
1. SO was highly squeamish about the idea of yours truly walking around on slick rocks.....i believe he may have said something about "plunging to (my) death" or something like that
2. my camera battery, which was just charged my next-to-last day on st. john, decided to give up the ghost while SO was squatting down in an attempt to achieve the sort of angle that would catch both myself and the waterfall in the photo.
drat.
so much for that new facebook profile picture, though i managed to get a couple of good shots before the battery gave up the ghost.
in retrospect, it's probably just as well that we somehow missed secret falls, as i wouldn't have been able to capture it on film (or is it "in pixels" these days?) anyway....just another reason to go back sometime.
beyond the waterfalls, the trail seemed to be far less traveled. at a couple of points, we wound up on alternate paths, skirting around the edges of fallen trees. thankfully, major scrambles weren't involved, and we were able to continue our hike at a fairly decent pace. (i figured we should be able to handle 7 miles in under three hours- a shorter period of time was preferable, given that we didn't hit the trail until 4pm.)
wildlife encounters were limited mostly to yours truly walking into spiderwebs (which would be one of the ways i figured out the section of the trail beneath the falls wasn't nearly as well traveled as the section above the falls), which generally wasn't a problem....except for the one that left me with what seemed to be a ginormous tarantula on my shoulder. (in retrospect, it was probably just a small, harmless arachnid, no bigger than a dime. i was too busy shrieking and flicking it off to really check it out, though.)
about an hour and fifteen minutes into the hike, just as i was wondering when we'd reach the southern trailhead, on tamassee road, SO commented that he heard music.
this was a good sign. music meant we were getting close to the road.
at the southern trailhead, the source of the music became clear. since i have no photos to share with you, i will have to share my artistic rendition of the scene we encountered:
1. yes, matisse would be proud. and by "matisse", i mean john matisse, the half-blind homeless man i saw talking to himself last week downtown.
2. there are multiple reasons for SO's exclusion from this drawing:
2a. as you can see, i only draw handless, anorexic nudists, which SO most certainly is not, by any account.
2b. upon realizing that banjos were, in fact, featured in the music we were hearing, SO turned around and headed back up the trail faster than i've ever seen him move before.
time to get from northern trailhead to southern trailhead (over 1000 ft. descent in 3.5 miles, with photo stops): 1 hour, 20 minutes
time to get from southern trailhead to northern trailhead (over 1000 ft. ascent in 3.5 miles, without photo stops): 1 hour, 15 minutes.
i believe the numbers speak for themselves, folks. clearly, this boy has watched deliverance.
the trip back was fairly uneventful. SO realized that having a towel in the car might be a good idea, as he didn't really like the idea of his sweaty t-shirt stinking up the driver's seat of his new chariot. since he didn't come to this realization back at home, where we have an abundance of towels, he made do by using my spare sweatshirt as a barrier between his sweaty back and his seat.
a couple of swigs of warm gatorade later, we were heading back toward greenville on sc 107, which ran into sc 28- the road that heads into walhalla, where we pick up 183, which heads into greenville, where it runs into 385, which runs into I-26, which gets us most of the rest of the way home. it's a fairly simple route, and not long after reaching 183, i instructed SO to stay on the road and closed my eyes.....opening them about 45 minutes later, expecting to see the sights of northern greenville.
(our planned route)
funny thing- one does not expect to see the sign for issaqueena falls in northern greenville. in fact, one expects that sign along sc 28.....not far from where sc 107 splits off toward cherry hill recreational area.
needless to say, i was a little surprised.
about two miles from where i closed my eyes, there's a stoplight along 183. one must turn left to stay on 183. otherwise, one winds up staying on whatever road merged with 183 a few miles back, and, as my trailblazing SO discovered, if one stays on this road and doesn't make any turns whatsoever, one winds up back on 28, bound for the georgia and north carolina borders.
(our actual route)
i pointed out a few (i thought so, anyway) memorable sights and asked if he'd seen them before, but it seems SO takes the whole "keep your eyes on the road" line of thinking to heart, as he responded that he hadn't noticed anything unusual.
to his credit, he turned around fairly quickly, and about twenty minutes later, when we made the turn onto 183 again, he realized his mistake.
i did not close my eyes again until we were safely on 385. during the intervening time, SO apologized multiple times. i pointed out that it was no huge deal to me- after all, i was planning on sleeping on the way home, and i did not have any sort of interest in the college football game of which he'd now be missing the first hour.
maybe for his 40th birthday, i'll teach him how to make sense of a map.
(we thought a hike might be a good idea because, for his upcoming 40th birthday, SO and i are going to visit his family in phoenix, arizona. as usual, there is a strong possibility that sooner or later, we will find ourselves enjoying the local terrain on foot. since most of our daily exercise is limited to walking on flat land, clearly a little conditioning is in order.)
this 3.5 mile trail (which, according to this link, apparently features a bonus waterfall, secret falls, which we somehow managed to miss completely) was done as an out-and-back hike, totalling 7 miles.
the parking area for this hike was pretty easy to find, and not just because we overshot it and wound up at the entrance to the cherry hill recreational area. we actually parked in the same pullout we used a couple of years ago, when we hiked the big bend trail (which i didn't blog about, for some strange reason). however, a lesson was learned after our last hike in this area- ticks are abundant. so, before heading out on the trail, windows were rolled up, the sunroof of SO's spiffy new chariot was closed, and we doused ourselves in mosquito/tick repellant.
we started our hike from the northern trailhead, on sc 107, which, according to hiking south carolina by john clark & john dantzler, is the easier way to approach the hike. after a slight incline just past the trailhead, the trail descends over a thousand feet, mostly through a series of switchbacks- which, i suppose, inspired the name of the trail.
our first stop was fairly early on- a photo op along the west fork of townes creek.
the trail was pretty flat along this section, and we marveled at the variety of mushrooms along the trail. there were huge yellow ones, smaller red ones, oddly shaped large white ones.....the smurfs would have been proud. i would've snapped some photos, but was excited about the waterfall and wanted to get to it as quickly as possible, so pictures would have to wait until the hike back to the trailhead.
miuka falls can be heard after the first switchback along the trail. there's a little bit of a scramble to get a decent view of the waterfall, but i managed to stay on my feet without the assistance of too many trees. i believe SO even managed to stay upright, which will spare me the prospect of having to presoak his shorts in oxyclean and half a bottle of shout.
miuka falls is a 75-foot cascade waterfall....it reminded me of oconee station falls, which i visited about 10 years ago, before moving to south carolina. like oconee station falls, i had a serious desire to have my photo taken at the base of the waterfall.
however, my plan was foiled on two counts:
1. SO was highly squeamish about the idea of yours truly walking around on slick rocks.....i believe he may have said something about "plunging to (my) death" or something like that
2. my camera battery, which was just charged my next-to-last day on st. john, decided to give up the ghost while SO was squatting down in an attempt to achieve the sort of angle that would catch both myself and the waterfall in the photo.
drat.
so much for that new facebook profile picture, though i managed to get a couple of good shots before the battery gave up the ghost.
in retrospect, it's probably just as well that we somehow missed secret falls, as i wouldn't have been able to capture it on film (or is it "in pixels" these days?) anyway....just another reason to go back sometime.
beyond the waterfalls, the trail seemed to be far less traveled. at a couple of points, we wound up on alternate paths, skirting around the edges of fallen trees. thankfully, major scrambles weren't involved, and we were able to continue our hike at a fairly decent pace. (i figured we should be able to handle 7 miles in under three hours- a shorter period of time was preferable, given that we didn't hit the trail until 4pm.)
wildlife encounters were limited mostly to yours truly walking into spiderwebs (which would be one of the ways i figured out the section of the trail beneath the falls wasn't nearly as well traveled as the section above the falls), which generally wasn't a problem....except for the one that left me with what seemed to be a ginormous tarantula on my shoulder. (in retrospect, it was probably just a small, harmless arachnid, no bigger than a dime. i was too busy shrieking and flicking it off to really check it out, though.)
about an hour and fifteen minutes into the hike, just as i was wondering when we'd reach the southern trailhead, on tamassee road, SO commented that he heard music.
this was a good sign. music meant we were getting close to the road.
at the southern trailhead, the source of the music became clear. since i have no photos to share with you, i will have to share my artistic rendition of the scene we encountered:
1. yes, matisse would be proud. and by "matisse", i mean john matisse, the half-blind homeless man i saw talking to himself last week downtown.
2. there are multiple reasons for SO's exclusion from this drawing:
2a. as you can see, i only draw handless, anorexic nudists, which SO most certainly is not, by any account.
2b. upon realizing that banjos were, in fact, featured in the music we were hearing, SO turned around and headed back up the trail faster than i've ever seen him move before.
time to get from northern trailhead to southern trailhead (over 1000 ft. descent in 3.5 miles, with photo stops): 1 hour, 20 minutes
time to get from southern trailhead to northern trailhead (over 1000 ft. ascent in 3.5 miles, without photo stops): 1 hour, 15 minutes.
i believe the numbers speak for themselves, folks. clearly, this boy has watched deliverance.
the trip back was fairly uneventful. SO realized that having a towel in the car might be a good idea, as he didn't really like the idea of his sweaty t-shirt stinking up the driver's seat of his new chariot. since he didn't come to this realization back at home, where we have an abundance of towels, he made do by using my spare sweatshirt as a barrier between his sweaty back and his seat.
a couple of swigs of warm gatorade later, we were heading back toward greenville on sc 107, which ran into sc 28- the road that heads into walhalla, where we pick up 183, which heads into greenville, where it runs into 385, which runs into I-26, which gets us most of the rest of the way home. it's a fairly simple route, and not long after reaching 183, i instructed SO to stay on the road and closed my eyes.....opening them about 45 minutes later, expecting to see the sights of northern greenville.
funny thing- one does not expect to see the sign for issaqueena falls in northern greenville. in fact, one expects that sign along sc 28.....not far from where sc 107 splits off toward cherry hill recreational area.
needless to say, i was a little surprised.
about two miles from where i closed my eyes, there's a stoplight along 183. one must turn left to stay on 183. otherwise, one winds up staying on whatever road merged with 183 a few miles back, and, as my trailblazing SO discovered, if one stays on this road and doesn't make any turns whatsoever, one winds up back on 28, bound for the georgia and north carolina borders.
i pointed out a few (i thought so, anyway) memorable sights and asked if he'd seen them before, but it seems SO takes the whole "keep your eyes on the road" line of thinking to heart, as he responded that he hadn't noticed anything unusual.
to his credit, he turned around fairly quickly, and about twenty minutes later, when we made the turn onto 183 again, he realized his mistake.
i did not close my eyes again until we were safely on 385. during the intervening time, SO apologized multiple times. i pointed out that it was no huge deal to me- after all, i was planning on sleeping on the way home, and i did not have any sort of interest in the college football game of which he'd now be missing the first hour.
maybe for his 40th birthday, i'll teach him how to make sense of a map.
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