Category: Uncategorized

Ever since I started the Froz-T-Freez, I’ve wanted to get a picture of some old derilect drive-in. Derilect primarily because I didn’t want to take a picture of a currently operating business and try to claim it as my own. At any rate, I finally found one on my most recent trip on the highways and byways of Utah. These sad remains were found on UT-28 in Elsinore. It goes at the top of the page now. Sometime later I might mess around with cropping it to make it fit better.

I took several different shots, but I kind of regret now that I didn’t go right up to the window for close-ups of the artifacts and instruments of ice-cream treatmaking entombed within. The soft-serve machine can clearly be seen in this shot, though, which is partially why I chose it.

So, I might start actually using this blog now. I know I’ve threatened that a lot of times, but you never know when I might start actually keeping my word.

I hate photography. I hate it because I often see potential photographic images, but I rarely am able to get them to actualize into real photographs. I don’t have the time or opportunity at that moment to stop and take a photograph. I can’t get to the right location to get the right view or framing. My little camera gets too shaky and blurs the image. I don’t have the right lenses or equipment. The equipment I do have I am uneducated in how I can use it to effect the outcome of my photographs. My reasons and excuses for failure run on and on and on.

This weekend I went on a trip with my family, up to Grand Teton and Yellowstone. I had become frustrated with my camera, and I sort of decided that I would try to not take any pictures during this vacation. I would just be there and enjoy the moment and not let myself get consumed with these urges to document anything that looks interesting to me. Great things rarely come from following them, anyway, and there are enough pictures of the Tetons already, right?

So, I did good with the not taking pictures thing all afternoon of my first day in the park. I walked around on a shore trail on Jackson lake and it was perfect in real life but the light was so bright on the lake and the mountains so backlit that I knew it wouldn’t be worth taking any pictures. This made it easy to stay with my goal. But later, driving to a different area of the park, my dad stopped the car at a certain point and started taking pictures of the mountains, and I looked over at Mount Moran and I liked the way the light looked on it and the way a little sagebrush ridge came up in front of it, and I wanted to take a picture of it, even though I knew it wouldn’t turn out the way I wanted it to turn out. I hoped the feeling would pass, but my dad kept taking pictures (I think he has the same problem I have, but he hasn’t yet recognized or admitted that it’s a problem). Trouble. Finally, I succumbed and I brought out the camera and took the picture. Then I tried it like six different ways, none of which were that great. Oh well.

As the trip went on I only fell into the trap a few more times. I had to play with the way the mountains were reflecting on String Lake. I had to take pictures of the Tetons and Jackson Lake and the surrounding valley from the classic spot on Signal Mountain. I became mesmerized by the water in Yellowstone Lake, and the only thing that broke my trance was the thought of what the waves and ripples of water would look like if I took pictures of them. And then I had to snap photos of bison in Hayden Valley. And then I had to take pictures of Yellowstone Canyon. But other than that, I was good with my goal.

I think my problem is I want to be a good photographer, but I don’t or can’t put in the time for it. You can’t be a photographer and a tourist. When you are a tourist or sightseer, you get to places when you get to them, and that is your chance to take a photograph, and if its not the right time of day or if there are five hundred people there that is just what you get. Usually there are the other people in your group to consider as well. You try to make it work, and usually you fail. Photography requires a special trip all its own. A certain place must be chosen and studied. The luxury of waiting for the right moment must be provided. You go to a place because it will provide good images at the moment, not because it is convenient or the next on the list. You then achieve the usual postcard image.

However, there is part of me that feels that documenting things as they really are is of value, even if it won’t sell postcards. I looked back at my pictures tonight, and I actually liked a lot of them. Many of the skies you would think were too bright and distorted against the mountains, and yet it expresses what it felt like to look at it exactly. It almost hurts to look into the sun, and in these photos it almost hurts, too. I looked back through some of my other photographs and realized that a lot of my favorites are the mistakes. They are interesting to me, even though they don’t follow the “rule of thirds” (whatever) or they are blurry, or whatever it is. They didn’t turn out the way I had hoped they would, but that doesn’t mean they are not of value. The ones that do turn out the way I expected are sometimes actually quite boring.

So now you can see why I hate photography so much. I hate it because it takes over my mind if I let it. I hate it so much that I am going to have to get a Digital SLR camera and learn how to use it.

[I refrained from including any of the images from my trip on purpose, because I am just kind of a jerk like that. I think I will start posting my photographs on here randomly whenever I feel like it, not in any type of groupings by location or subject. I have threatened to to do it before, but this time I think I will really do it. It will be a help in blogging consistently.]

[I wrote this last night (9/4) on my laptop while the power was out from a windstorm, so I couldn’t post it until today.]

1) The Road by Cormac McCarthy. If you didn’t want to read it because Oprah told you to read it, now you can go ahead and read it because I told you to read it. I was already a huge fan of the Border Trilogy before this book even came out so I feel that I have a little bit of C-Mac cred.

2) Diet Dr. Pepper ice cream floats

3) pandora.com – it works best if you give it some specific songs rather than just a band name, and have a little bit of patience.

4*) sitting in a chair all weekend instead of going hiking or camping

5) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the N64 (or in my case the sixtyforce emulator for Mac)

6) Chicken Curry plate from Curry in a Hurry, Beef Brisket sandwich from Sugarhouse Barbecue Company, Torta from La Palapa Juice Bar

*I actually wish that I was able to do without #4, except for the fact that that would also do away with #s 1, 2, 3, and 5.

This morning I drove downtown and stood in a parking lot and watched a 20 story building explode, then drove back home and went back to bed. I went to the library and picked up all my holds, the music I feel duty-bound to document. I fell asleep reading John Ashbery. I finally decided to buy the more expensive mountain bike, but I can’t bring myself to go to the bike store and buy it. The new Smashing Pumpkins album is better than I thought it would be, but still not all that great. Right now some people I know are water skiing, along with some people I don’t know. A stranger wrote a kind comment on my blog, which made me feel embarrassed, and she left me no way to reply. My life never really changed. The blind date was better than I had feared it might be, but still not all that great. The new Interpol album sounds like sitting in a new Mercedes that is stuck in the mud, spinning out the wheels and splattering it everywhere. I’m starving, but I don’t feel like going to any of the restaurants and all I have at home is junk food. It is a beautiful day, but what would be the point of driving up any of the canyons? I need a new pair of shoes for work. I wish someone would get out of the car and push.

The silent alarms start going off in your head, because it looks like it’s going to be prog rock before you even listen to it. The cover fits squarely into the surrealist landscape prog rock tradition. A cursory look at the tracklisting reveals a closing song entitled “Knights of Cydonia.” The sounds coming out of your speakers during the opening moments of the album do nothing to dissuade you, as they feature a synthesizer figure which bears more than a passing resemblance to the theme music from Dr. Who.

And then something incredible happens. Over all of this prog rock pomp, the band get all pop on us, aping the likes of Prince, Coldplay, Timbaland/Timberlake, and New Order. But its still all firmly bolted to that solid Queen/Rush/Radiohead prog base. I think this is the first unabashed prog-pop album I have ever heard. It sounds like what Marillion have been trying and failing to do for the past 15 years with all their attempts at “mainstream” singles, and it sounds like what I think a lot of people wish Radiohead had done since Oklahoma OK Computer. Whether you agree with that or not I don’t care. All I know is that the anti-prog rock processing chip that was interfaced with my brain a few years ago (I think maybe the Strokes put it there) finally malfunctioned, and at long last, thanks to this album, the loop is broken and I am deprogrammed. I suddenly have this aching desire to listen to prog and quasi-prog. I’m going to get my Marillion albums out. I’m going to get all the Catherine Wheel albums I can get my hands on. I’m going to jam Permanent Waves and Grace Under Pressure. I’m going to give The Mars Volta another chance. I going to listen to everything Pink Floyd ever did. I may even dig out that old vinyl copy of Tarkus I found in the 99 cents bin once. O, most wonderful world of immaculately produced, melodramatically delivered and sometimes pointlessly complex but delicious music: why did I ever turn away from you in 2001? I’m no longer worthy to be called by your name, only let me be your servant.

I actually have no idea if this is true or not. I was just curious about how many hits I would get if I put a title and tag like this on my blog. Ha ha. Sorry to disappoint you.

So basically the only hits I get on this blog (other than just random hits) come from the keyword search “Joshua Clover.” A month or two ago I wrote a post explaining that I had started reading Clover’s collection The Totality for Kids. Since then I haven’t ever looked at that post, but I have the feeling it was somewhat ignorant, and I am embarrassed when I see traffic from servers such as “The Office of the President at UC Davis,” being specifically drawn to that post, because it’s not all that academic up in here. But really, I am going to advocate that there is nothing wrong with that. Really, I find it a kind of sad commentary that contemporary poetry, even in comparison to other sub-cultural nitches, is so-little-blogged about that my little Joshua Clover entry from a month or two ago is still up there in a noticeable place on the search results. Of course, there is the possibility that, since I share a first name with said Clover and my blog is called Josh’s Froz-T-Freez, at least one of the visitors to my site thought that maybe they were happening onto Joshua Clover’s actual blog (he does have an actual blog by the way, called Jane Dark’s Sugar High. It’s worth checking out.), rather than the semi-destitute blog of a substitute teacher/temp secretary/possible aspiring school librarian from Utah.

At any rate, if you go ahead and google or technorati any contemporary poet’s name, you’re not going to find all that much being written on the blogoteca. Certainly less than they deserve. Maybe a couple of biographical blurbs from some institutional websites, maybe their name included on a reading schedule for some university or organization. That’s about it. You just don’t find that many people casually geeking out about Haryette Mullen or Frank Bidart on their blogs, the way you may find people doing so about Daydream Nation, scrapbooking or almost any other subject. Even Extreme ironing. Don’t we who love poetry love our poetry as much as those that love other things love their things? I think we do. Contemporary poetry needs more fanboys. Poetry needs its own Pitchforkmedia to enthusiastically report on things like when Craig Arnold’s next book is going to hit stores, W.S. Merwin’s public reading itinerary for 2007 and every time Jorie Graham has a poem published in a literary magazine. So I, for one, am going to try to post more about poetry on here, to help fill up the internet with a quantity of nonsense about a new subject area.

And as for Joshua Clover? I got sick of his book really quick. Too many references to things I didn’t know about and had no desire to investigate. So I read Star Dust by Frank Bidart instead. Insofar as you can consider a collection of poetry a pageturner, Star Dust was to me a definite pageturner. Bidart always is, in my opinion. Need to read more Bidart. Right now, I’m re-reading Mullen’s Sleeping With The Dictionary. I read it several years ago in college after one of my professors name-dropped it semi-sneeringly, and I liked it then, but I’m getting a lot more out of it now. Before, I don’t think I ever really got past the “fun with words” veneer to the subtlety and subversiveness beneath. But you don’t have to take my word for it: de-Doot-DOOT!

Yay for poetry!

p.s. It turns out Joshua Clover teaches at UC Davis, so it’s possible he’s googling himself, which seems kind of sad, but then I’d probably do the same thing. So, if it’s you, Hi Josh! No, I won’t accuse him of that. It’s more likely to be one of his students or colleagues. Or I guess the President of UC Davis? I’m starting to feel more and more that I might get into a little bit of trouble with this post. Probably not though.

I first heard Daydream Nation in 9th or 10th grade (circa 1994 or 1995). There was no super-hip older kid that told me to listen to it or anything like that. I was just an aspiring record geek and a Rolling Stone magazine article told me that if there had been no Sonic Youth, there would be no Pearl Jam or Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins. I loved Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins, and I sort of liked Nirvana. I think I listened to part of the album at a music store that used to be in Salt Lake where they would slice open CDs and let you listen to them. I remember the guy behind the counter seemed sort of amused at me listening to it, and asked me if I liked it. I said yes, even though I wasn’t quite sure what to make of what I’d just heard and I didn’t buy it. Eventually I ended up with a copy of Daydream Nation on cassette rather than CD, I’m not exactly sure why. Actually, I do know why. It was a special request Christmas or birthday present from either my grandma or my uncle, and they bought me the cassette. I love the fact that I got this album that way, they having no idea what kind of volatile substance they had just distributed to me. A kind of musical Improvised Explosive Device. “What kind of music is that?” I now remember someone in the family asking.

I found it frightening and beautiful. It sounded like back-alleyways, trashcans, drug freak-outs and the crazy grimy city, but at the same time interstellar, sometimes oceanic. My closest touchstones were Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland (particularly the epic “1983”) and Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring. It was definitely far beyond Pearl Jam, but I could see the watered-down influence. Getting smashed in the face by kids playing basketball, going home and blowing another amp. To me it sounded like about a million amps must have been blown out just to record the album. I think Kim Gordon scared me the most, with all her yelling and grunting and her “Come on down to the store”s. I never listened to that very last track. I thought she must be a prostitute or something. Remember I’m a Mormon boy from Utah, somewhat sheltered. But those ringing guitars and storms of feedback always kept me coming back for more.

I remember one time I was listening to it on my Walkman in World History class, and I had my friend listen to a bit of it. It was in the middle of one of those waves crashing/pastoral moments from “The Sprawl” or “‘Cross the Breeze.” I thought he might appreciate it, he’d gotten me into orchestral rock heroes Yes. But he just told me he thought it was boring. Obviously I played him the wrong moment. Oh well. You could easily accuse this album of being a lot of things: harsh at times, atonal, confrontational, grating at moments, inaccessible. But boring? No. But after that, I never shared this album with anyone ever again. Until today.

Coming soon…

my adventures in Canyonlands.