Sara Ryan

I learned two new words: bershon, circuitously via YPulse (by which I mean that YPulse linked to something and that linked to something else and somehow I ended up clicking on this, and rickroll, via Jessamyn. I do not anticipate engaging in rickrolling, but I expect I’ll dig up a bershon photo or several one [...]

Veda Hille’s new album, This Riot Life, just came in the mail. She’s been one of my favorite musicians ever since VJ introduced me to her work, gosh, yikes, I guess it’s been about a decade ago. Here’s an article about the album. If you’re not inclined to click, this phrase gives a good summary: [...]

“If I say a band is “dedicated to their craft,” that sounds boring and staid, right? Well, fuck you, then, Jack, with your antiquated half-recycled notions of how craft and intensity are somehow at odds. Craft is the path to the damn palace, and the palace’s windows are all ablaze with the fire that’s constantly [...]

There was one of those guys at the gym this morning.
One of those guys for whom every rep of every set must be accompanied by a long, high-volume groan.
The sort that typically goes along with…other types of activities.
Now, lots of people, including me, find that some kind of forceful exhaling when you’re lifting weights is [...]

Thanks to my fine, responsive brakes, the lady who blew through the stop sign at full speed, talking on her cell phone, did not end up slamming into my car.
I honked, and she sort of glanced back at me with this odd expression.
Immediately, I started wondering, wait, did I have a stop sign? Was it [...]

So we’re getting ready for a much-anticipated, delightful group of houseguests to come in for Stumptown, and we’re trying to get the place to look like somewhere they might want to sleep.
We need music of course, and it’s been a while since we listened to All Hail West Texas, and it has so many great [...]

I came home for lunch today. There was a car, parked but still running, across the street, and the stereo was cranked.
Cranked, specifically, with the soothing sounds of Mr. Al Green. It was so nice to hear unexpectedly that I felt compelled to share.

The law of unintended consequences: now that the super new website design is up, I feel like my posts need to be somehow worthy of it. This does not, of course, guarantee that they will be. Of course, a bunch of you read me on LiveJournal anyway and do not see the website design — [...]

Read Coyote Wild with especial attention to Prolegomenon
Listen to the Harvey Girls

Never let it be said that I fear public humiliation. This was taken after one of the two performances of “Intimate Acquaintances,” one of Pioneer High School’s Student Productions in the year of our Lord 1988. I’m the second from the left. Also in [...]

You know how sometimes you haven’t heard one of your very favorite musicians for a while, perhaps for a reason as dumb as “oh, yeah, I keep meaning to get those tracks into iTunes,” and then something serendipitous happens, like you’re cleaning your desk at work and find that 2002 live album, and you figure [...]