Beehived: Part 1

The Summer is over. Or will be, soon. I don't know what the calendar says, but I've always felt that Summer runs from the first baseball game to the last. Okay maybe I haven't always felt that. But I'm declaring it now, this idea I had eighteen seconds ago when I started writing this post.

This has been one of the best summers I've ever had. Maybe the very best. Which is good, because it could have been awful. I've had some moments of darkness (suffocating darkness) but those moments were smited (not a word) by plenty of nice life affirming experiences, and I didn't even need to eat my way through Italy or pray all over India or love the crap out of Bali. Except for a Northwesterly interlude I just bumped around Utah. I took a lot of pictures and I'm going to go through them all and write about the happenings that happened, bookended by a couple of old ballgames.

This was mid-April. Summer's Eve. (I don't get it).


This was yesterday, my last game of the season.


Now let's get to everything in between.

The day after the home opener was the Scofield Adventure.

I've already written about that but here's an American Flag from that day.

FACT: if I see an American Flag flapping against the sky, I will stop to take a picture of it. I have dozens of pictures exactly like this. When I'm taking these picture I don't think I realize that they're redundant. I think "Well there's a striking image. I should preserve it for the historical record."

I searched this blog for the word "Taggarts" and came up empty. I'm amazed that I haven't mentioned Taggarts before. It's a restaurant called Taggarts in a town called Taggarts where the only thing in the town is the restaurant the town is named for. It's sits in the shade in a little bowl in the mountains, across the highway from the Ogden River.

You bet I threw rocks into that river. I threw rocks across that river. I threw rocks into the air and watched them descend as if pulled by gravity into that river.


We'll come back to Taggarts later.

Plans to open May with a camping trip were thwarted by unruly weather systems so a trip to Tooele was opted for instead, by way of Magna.

Magna is Magna. This fact cannot be called into question. But it has a cool old Main Street. I love an old Main Street.


Tooele is one of three places I claim as my ancestral homelands (trivia contest: name the other two!) Tooele County is a wasteland. Vast emptiness, salt, skulls, nuclear waste, toxic dirt. It's one of my favorite places to go. I like to drive out there and get hopelessly lost in the sagebrush canyons, driving down the long straight stretches of road unsure of where they lead. I always come back from Tooele wanderings freshly inspired.

Tooele City has grown up a lot since I was a kid. Not in a good way. It's a magnet for McMansions and McBig Box stores. But the old part is still there. Like this place where we stopped for breakfast, the seafoamiest place I've ever been in.

I worked for The Ritz-Carlton for six years. It was exactly like this.


I bet so many miners have been stabbed in this hotel.


Wandered into one of the few open businesses, a store that sells weird random crap. Like these super-gay things aimed at children.


So of course I bought that postcard of Namor. I also bought a Tiny John Adams and a Tiny John F. Kennedy. I didn't even know they made Tiny Presidents but now I want to collect them all.

Eventually I hung Namor up in the Podcast Room. Oh, did you know I do a weekly comic book podcast? Well I do. It's way nerdy. Deal with it.


Here's one of those canyons I like to get lost in. I believe this is actually the Old Lincoln Highway.

The road fed us into Skull Valley, through something called Terra and past the Dugway Proving Grounds (top secret UFO research facility).


Long road, past this murder house...

...took us to Iosepa (right).


Iosepa is a foreign word meaning "I bet these Hawaiians would like living in a treeless desert with terrible summers and worse winters."

The settlement lasted from 1889-1917. Not much left of it now, but the scent of Poi still hangs in the air.


On the way back home, spotted this sign under an overpass.


This interests me because of this AWARD WINNING FILM I made a few years ago.

Untitled from Bryton Sampson on Vimeo.

You don't actually have to watch it, just know that it exists.




(end part 1)

skakapelli

The fusion of traditional Native American music and Ska is long overdue. Who wants to join my new band? I need a drummer, a flautist, and someone who can make really awesome sand paintings. We'll play gigs around Moab. We'll get a track on Pure Moods vol. 5. It's gonna be huge!



Suggestions for names? I'm thinking Skavajo Nation but I don't think Kokopelli has anything to with the Navajo.

earnestness, sincerity, dancing hippie indians

I was gonna go to bed and I was like "waitaminute isn't there a Pink Floyd song called Learning to Fly and didn't I used to like that song and doesn't the video have a flying Indian?"

The answer to all that is yes. I looked up the video on YouTube and the video is a Pure Moods style time capsule of early '90s hippiedom. It's ridiculous in a wearing-a-dr.seuss-hat-around-campus-while-looking-for-your-lost-hackey-sack way. Also the song sucks.




Or does it? It's a good song but Pink Floyd ruined it. Which is weird because it's their song. What I'm saying is, someone wrote a good song and then Pink Floyd, or should I say "Pink Floyd" since it's actually some corporation made up of three guys that were in Pink Floyd, three backup singers, a percussionist playing soul-less synthetic drum pads, a dumb looking bass player with a dumb looking bass, four extra guitarists, and months of production. "Learning to Fly" at it's heart is a good song, but it was ruined by layers and layers of ultra slick production, stripped of any feeling or emotion it may have had.

So I set out to find a good cover version of it.

If you've ever looked for a song on YouTube you've no doubt run across countless cover version of that song, performed in someone's bedroom with their crummy-sounding electric guitar, the reverb turned up too high, a distant look in their eyes as they concentrate so hard, trying not to screw it up. The framing on the camera is always bad, and when they're done you see them stand up to turn the camera off. Those videos are the exact opposite of these videos.




Mrs. Pretty Barbie is saying to the world "look at me aren't I so hot aren't I so great you're so lucky to even see me" while the amateur musician videos are saying to the world "I have worked so hard on this I have spent so much time alone practicing will you please just acknowledge me and let me know I'm not alone."

Er, that's my interpretation of them anyway. I have a weird fascination with these amateur cover videos. They're so earnest. I admire earnestness and sincerity.

I finally found that cover of "Learning to Fly" that I was looking for, performed by my new favorite musician, Robert Che Hoyer.



Why do I like this guy so much? Well,

a) he's weird looking
b) I love his voice! It's so unique. His voice is the audio manifestation of the burning sensation in your esophagus after downing a shot of cheap whiskey. Best as I can tell he's a Frenchman trying to sound Irish
c) he's almost painfully earnest and sincere
d) how old is he do you think?
e) how often does he water that cactus?

He has some 180 songs on his YouTube channel, and I really think he's got something good going. He's putting a whole new angle on these songs that you've heard a million times, and revealing a side to the songs you may never have considered. Take these two for example. These are two of my favorite Beatles songs. There's no denying that these are happy little tunes, but what makes the Beatles versions so special to me is that even though they're happy and bouncy tunes there's a sense of wistfulness and melancholy hiding inside of the melodies. They manage to be optimistic and mournful at the same time. Robert Che Hoyer is able to really bring that out within the songs.





His wild strumming, his strained, unusual voice, and the fact that he sometimes makes mistakes give these songs an immediacy and an expressiveness that you'll never find in the original studio versions.



His description of this one:

"The Biggest Speedball I see cames here and say Hey I make the tube and then was THE PASSENGER"



You said it, man.


Robert Che Hoyer

okay

what turns up in the dark?

Whaaa what is this it's too bright!


There we go. Why that looks like Modest Mouse.

So, every summer Salt Lake City hosts the Twilight Concert Series. Apparently it's been going on for 23 years but I only became aware of it in the last three years or so. Probably around the same time the Twilight books became popular. They bring in these big-time (well, big-time for hipsters) bands to play free shows. Up until this year I'd never been so I'm telling tales out of school here but I had heard bad things. Because it's free, the shows just become a thing-to-do. Which is cool, but it means if you actually like the band playing you'll have to deal with a million people that just want to drink beer outside and show off their beards. You'll also have to deal with punk-ass tree climbers.


This year the lineup is the most exciting one yet. Two of my favorite bands, Modest Mouse and the New Pornographers were coming, which meant I finally had to go to some Twilight Concerts.


The venue this year is Pioneer Park. Sounds nice right? I guess it is a nice park on its own but it's full of bums and drug deals and broken bottle fights. My whole life there have been efforts to clean it up that have failed.

Modest Mouse! Wow what a bad experience this was. 40,000 people showed up! That's too many people for anything. The park was fenced off so there were only two entrances. I was in that line for ninety minutes. Then once I got inside the park the setup was such that all the masses of people were funneled into a funnel not big enough to hold them and I spent half an hour being all squished! I was ready to bag it when Natali heroically found me and took me to a safe place.

I guess the show was cool. I really liked Modest Mouse last time I saw them but you know, it was just them playing their songs. I guess that's what live music is. Maybe I was just in a bad mood, but I felt like something was missing. Then I went to Hires Big H and it was also too crowded.


So I was way nervous about seeing my favorite band, the New Pornographers. I don't want them to be ruined for me! I got to the park way early but sauntered right in, and found maybe two dozen people milling about the stage. Perfect!

The band had the full line-up and blasted through twenty-three songs in just under two hours. I was worried it would be an abbreviated show because of the 10pm curfew.

Usual the band has a lot of stage banter but this time they stuck with the songs.


A miserably hot day turned into a lovely night.





Fourth time I've seen them live, and definitely the best. Or at least, the most fun I've had at one of their shows. Great set-list, mixing in the favorites from all five or their albums.

And then it was over.


And then I accidentally punched Michelle in the face.

But then I went to Maverick and my favorite the Peanut Butter Twix was on sale four for $2 THAT IS UNPRECEDENTED!!!

Wow what a great night.

kicking my heart in the ass

This is how I picture myself, all the time.



But I've been wrong. I'm really this.


When really, I need to be like this.

(but not gay)


I dunno. I've just been thinking a lot about Scott Pilgrim lately.

Behold! The Grandeur!

I went camping.

If you want to make my brain malfunction, tell me that this happened three months ago. Three months! That's a fiscal quarter. It feels like it's been a couple weeks is all. I only looked at these pictures for the first time a couple days ago. I cannot believe how fast time is going. If anyone knows a way to slow it down, let me know. I am being serious.

Anyway, camping. This was a weekend back in May. I grabbed a sleeping bag, filled up a satchel with underpants and Elin, Becky, and I loaded into my rugged Scion and headed for the deserts of Zion National Park. In the last ten years I've been camping exactly twice before this. 50% of those times were with Elin and Becky, so they're like, my camp buddies or something. I actually enjoy camping. I just never do it because of circumstances.

We got on the road quick and finally stopped in Beaver for a controversy-free Sit Down Breakfast at the El Bambi Cafe.


The El Bambi reminded me a lot of a cafe/truck stop in a small town. I felt like people there were looking at us. Maybe it was because my car didn't fit in.


Also I ordered "buckets and gravy" and the lady had to correct me and tell me they're called "biscuits and gravy." Like I know anything about such low-brow cuisine.

Outside of St. George is the ghost of a mining town called Silver Reef.



There's an old ore bin there where reefs of silver would reef along ever so reefingly.


Lots of un-mortared sandstone structures still stand among weeds and rusted equipment.



"Falling Junk" would have sounded weird.

Thing about Silver Reef is that brand new rich-guy houses are being built right up to the edge of it. Like this one with the weird princess tower.


Zion is one of the five great National Parks in the state. I've never been before. I was completely unprepared for how amazing it would be.


I can't stress this enough: Zion is an awe-inspiring wonder. As soon as I got into the park my jaw slackened and my eyeballs got hit by lightning.

I'm probably the last person in Utah to have visited Zion, but on the off chance you haven't been, go there, now. Or wait until the weather cools down.

After quickly setting up our tent, we went for a hike.

Hiking can be very dangerous. For one thing, you could fall. Worse than that, you could look really foolish when falling. Worse still, coins could come out of your ass.

It's deserty and also woodsy so you can't lose.

The sandstone mountains stand tall in a way that my feeble mind couldn't even comprehend, vanishing into the sky.
Near the top of one of the trails it was time for one of my much sought after lectures on grandeur, and how you should sometimes turn off your ipod and listen to the sounds of nature. If you ever get the opportunity to hear one of these lectures you should jump at the chance.


There are many places where water literally falls down a mountain. I think Zion is the only place where this happens.


I took a dip in this pond. It was shallow so I had to do a lot of rolling around in order to get fully damp.


More falling water.

A woman shouted to her children, "this is like Disneyland!" I think it's better than Disneyland, because it's actual.


I bet Elin and Becky were glad to have me along, so they could take all in and really understand the grandeur. Unlike past times they may have been, where they probably thought "It's like Disneyland."


OMG A DEER!
I'm weirded out by deers. I don't know what they are. Horses? Rabbits? Walking Kangaroos?

A river.

I think I was most stunned by The Court of the Patriarchs.

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
This led to an Old Testament Q&A with the girls that eventually led to my conversion to Judaism.

I was being kind of a brat about having to watch the Jazz/Lakers playoff game so we went into the town of Springdale and found a sports bar overrun with fat hockey fans. I don't want to talk about the result of the Jazz game. It still hurts. Then we wandered Springdale for a while. O, the times we had!



The next morning we shook the rocks from our underpants and packed up the tent.

Okay fine, our tent was a hotel. A nice one.

One more hike before heading back.

Running parallel to this is the Watching the Watchman Trail.

I'm not completely certain, but I think we went to the very top of that mountain.


Depth perception is messed up here but I wanted to show how far we've come. On this trail, and in life.

The Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel connects the West and East sections of the park. It's over a mile long and looks like this inside.


When you get to the other side of the park everything looks completely different. Much more wavy and dune-like. Yellow, instead of red.

Then back through the tunnel because you have to get home in time for Mother's Day Dinner.


L'Chaim!