first, the food, because that’s what i said i’d post. i started off with the chilies and yak cheese served with bhutanese rice. the red rice is the bhutanese rice; i gathered from other sources that the white rice was added as filler. all in all, it was pretty good - a bit like queso dip, actually. only somewhat runnier. i ate almost all of it, and was still hungry.

so then i meandered down to the viet-tex fusion tent (”texas noodles,” i think is the name of the place) and ordered some steamed pork buns. they were the spitting image of dim sum pork buns, but the filling was a bit more western barbecue-like. also yummy.

but what was really neat to see at the folklife festival was the buddhist monk working on a sand mandala:

so if you’re in dc, go check it out the festival. it’s pretty cool.

today’s the first day of the smithsonian folklife festival, so i headed down to the mall (america’s front yard, apparently) for a sampling of bhutanese cuisine. and i have one thing to say: yak dri¹ cheese - pretty good.

photos to follow.
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¹ i have been informed by a highschool classmate that you can’t get cheese from a yak, b/c yaks are male. the female of the species is apparently a “dri” or a “nak.” why he knows this, i have no idea.

dennis hopper is doing financial investment ads.

but now for something completely different. last night i went to the opening ceremonies of the 10th dc independent film festival.^1a there was definitely something amiss with primped, polished women talking about how important it was to buck the system, follow your dream, and ignore those who told you you couldn’t do something.

and then there was alex cox.

tall, lanky, leatherfaced, orange-parka clad alex cox. who bends in ways that would make a gumby proud. who said (wittingly? unwittingly?) that digital media let you “control the means of production”¹ and waxed on (and eventually off) about the evils of american copyright law.² all this after the u.s. premiere screening of searchers 2.0 (careful, that site has music), which showcases the lyrical strength of film trivia and the weakness of production values when you don’t have studio backing.

but before alex cox, yes, even before the hysterical (and likely intended to be some sort of social commentary) animated short dust off and cowboy up by laurence arcadias,³ there was david amram.

“who,” you ask, “is david amram?”

quite possibly the freakiest (and i say that in the nicest way possible) 77 year old washingtonian i’ve ever heard speak. he scored splendor in the grass and the original manchurian candidate, worked with ginsberg and kerouac and thelonius monk. and after a hep show’n'tell of woodwinds from around the world, he performed pull my daisy (the video at this link quite fittingly filmed at the 2007 lord buckley birthday bash, but the sound is nearly inaudible), doing the intro and exit scats and managing to work in a reference to philip seymour hoffman as truman capote and other totally random bits.

david amram was awesome.
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^1a i only paid for the movie, but after making a general nuisance of myself - while honestly only trying to figure out where to go - was instructed to go up to the VIP reception (i think they sent everyone up there, as the jack morton auditorium doesn’t really hold that many people anyway) and wound up watching the entire opening ceremonies with james and justin (who tells me “amram” was both moses’ father’s name and a missile developed by israeli scientists).

¹ one of the characters in searchers 2.0, the daughter of the main character, apparently read only two books, repeatedly: no logo - which appeared yesterday on stuff white people like, and atlas shrugged. funny!

² my only gripe with this was that the 95 years + the life of the author is disney’s brainchild, not jack valenti’s. at least, that’s what i learned in my IP overview course. but i could be wrong.

³ arcadias is female. i’m pretty sure.

saturday sunset found me in the back seat of eddie (g in the front passenger seat, more on that later), bumping over FR19 and FR75 in west virginia on our way to dolly sods. we stopped at a beautiful scenic overlook, and continued on to bear rocks, where we watched the sun go down.

the scenic overlook was something like this:

with views along the trail, so:

dolly sods path, dusk Close

flowers on dolly sods path, dusk Close

dolly sods path, dusk Close

and overlooking the valley, the remains of the summer:

berries on dolly sods overlook, dusk Close

branches on dolly sods overlook, dusk Close

vegetation on path to dolly sods overlook, sunset Close

then, continuing on to bear rocks, walking along the bones of the earth. once entirely forested, dolly sods had been clear cut during the civil war. the sun dried out the peat moss, which eventually caught fire and burned away. what’s left is cranberry bog (in west virginia, no less, something that tweaks what little rhode island nature i have), blueberries, and a host of other berries. we saw little, as the sun was setting.

the wind blows in only one direction Close
sunset and moonrise over bear rocks Close	bear rocks, fairy rocks Close	fir and rocks Close

later i’ll put up the photos taken during eddie’s adventure on the canaan loop road. including parking in a stream to snap some shots. ah, eddie. so happy to have been lifted, winched, re-geared, and god knows what else has been done to him.

i took my camera to the national book festival. (of course you did, you say. you take your camera everywhere.)

i put a circular polarizing filter on the lens. i still need to look at the results. i think it did some odd things to the blue-blue sky.

oh! and i sat in line for an hour just to have mercer mayer sign my 1974 edition (first printing? dunno, i’ve had it since 1974) of one monster after another. which he did. and it made me happier than a typhoonagator.

more photos as i get around to editing them.

How Much Do You Know About 80s Music?

You Scored 90% Correct

You are an 80s expert You never confuse New Order with the Pet Shop Boys You know which classical musician Falco rocked When it comes to 80s music, you Just Can’t Get Enough!

and from a quick glance through, i can’t figure out which two questions i got wrong. the horror! the horror!

today’s the happiest day of the year.

it’s the summer solstice! yay! fifteen-plus hours of daylight in these parts. eighteen, in denmark. lucky bastidges.

photos from the road trip to acquire snuffy - veterans’ day weekend, 2004. james & i decided to see as many roadside attractions as we could find. these are all between northern virginia and lower alabama.

that was a half hour i wasted browsing that damn site. thanks, james.