Breathnaigh

Filson Italy.

Like Woolrich, Filson has an Italian arm that takes the brand's outdoors-y American aesthetic, grinds it finely, tamps it into a filter basket, then forces very hot water through the grind to produce Italianized versions of traditional Filson garments. You don't see these much at retail in the U.S., but past seasons pop up on Yoox often.

Filson Italy's flickr stream shows off the factory in Forlì as well as some styled shoots, where you can see the garments in the eyetalian context--maybe a little slimmer and a little more playful than the Seattle standard.

Match point.

Vintage, engraved Zippos have good stories to tell, but if you're not a smoker or outside city limits often they may not be the most practical every day carry. Another pyro accessory is a decent alternative--the match safe. Designed to keep your firestarters dry and together, they're small, often waterproof, usually made from metal, with one surface textured for striking. Depending on dimensions, match safes can stash small change, business cards, or other personal minutiae (or matches). Specialist in unnecessary rugged gear Best Made Co. sells new makes of a classic model, but eBay is a good source for antique versions with a little more color. Of course, you're competing against some American Pickers types, but the prices tend to stay in the <$100 range, with some going quite cheap.

Pabst match safe on eBay.

English sterling silver pictogram match safe on eBay.

Midcentury bakelite model with compass.

Match safe at Best Made Co.

An original of the version Best Made is selling.

Mountain Research ash container / match safe (no longer available).

Light in my head, you in my arms.

My uncle Tom has enigmatic musical taste. He's an avid golfer and a professional financial planner, an Irish, Sopranos-loving, Jersey guy, so as a kid it was always weird to find, like, Cocteau Twins and New Order in his CD rack. I remember him driving me and one of his buddies, Chris, to a golf tournament, putting a Waterboys CD on in his Wagoneer (probably "The Best of"). Chris signaled approval and told me that "This, this is music"--implication being that the Bouncing Souls or whatever I was Discman-ing at the time was not. I was eyeball deep in my "punk rock; adults' taste is inherently terrible" phase, but I could still feel the tug of the Waterboys' expansive, folk-rooted sound.

I couldn't get into it, though. The Waterboys catalog is famously varied, and I didn't have the patience to sort the synthy, 80s stuff from the mandolin and violin pub-session stuff, let alone evaluate either. A few years later, I discovered Elliott Smith, whose music made up most of the Good Will Hunting OST. The Waterboys' Fisherman's Blues was one of the few non-Smith tracks on that album, and it resonated with me--at that time I was reading a lot of Yeats and was self-identifying a little with the Pogues. In London, I spent some time pounding cans of VB at an Australian expat bar where everyone sang along to Whole of the Moon, Mike Scott's tribute to C.S. Lewis. So I backed into liking the Waterboys.

I'm not sure what led Ted Leo to Fisherman's Blues, but as he alluded to before he pulled it from his DEEP bag of thoughtful covers at his solo show in DC last Saturday, it falls in line with his "Celtic emo" type material. At its root is a love song, a hymn to the possibility of living an honest life with the one you love. Maybe a little condescending to fishermen and engine drivers, but surely something most of us wish for at one time or another. Ditching the bonds of the cubicle and the chains of, uh, chain restaurants for some manual labor and the love of a good woman is the basic premise of Office Space, right?

Ted plays it solo on electric guitar live, adding some flourishes and slightly different phrasing to the chorus (the version linked below is a little less electrified). He does Mike Scott's barbaric yawp well, and I'm not ashamed to say I tried my hand at it myself on Saturday. It's a great song that could be a traditional, and may well become one.

 

 

Download Ted Leo--Fisherman's Blues (The Waterboys)

 

Man, fuck Fleetwood Mac.

Browsing the latest Urban Outfitters catalog (we get two at my address, so there's plenty to go around!), it's pretty clear that the kids today are moving Mac-ward. Lacy sheerness and witchy hair abound, photographed through a gross 70s haze. UO's trend for summer? "Midnight Moon."  Stevie Nicks herself has a new album coming out, and Sasha Frere-Jones doesn't hate it. A few weeks ago I sat at one of my favorite coffee places, a spot that reliably plays a barista-curated mix of musical obscurities, and suffered through almost the entirety of Rumours. Matthew Perpetua at fluxblog recently did a whole series of well-considered posts on the evolution of Buckingham/Nicks and FM. As usual, Chuck Klosterman was a few years ahead of the curve and talked about Rumours' place in his personal / the pop canon in 2004. I don't like to be in disagreement with Chuck but we'll have to disagree on (1) Rumours and (2) being a fan of a team vs. being a fan of a sport. (I also don't like to share a lot of common ground with Bill Simmons, but that's another point altogether.)

Photo of Fleetwood Mac in concert in 1977 courtesy flickr user Affendaddy.

Add it up. People like Fleetwood Mac again. And not just our parents. Which makes me wonder, is there nothing in our culture we can't rehabilate? That we can all agree is a regret and just not bring it up again except maybe in the context of a mean-spirited drinking game? What a shitty pony-tailed soap opera of a band. If there's any reason we should appreciate Fleetwood Mac, it's not Lindsay Buckingham's AOR-friendly guitar wizardry, or Nicks' husky intonations of coke-laced poetry, or whatever Mick Fleetwood is supposed to be bringing to the table, it's that the universal popularity of a band this lame in the 1970s helped generate the counterpoint of punk rock and new wave.

Does popular rock get lamer than "Don't Stop"? It's flatly produced, allegedly written about a specific relationship (like we're supposed to give a shit about how a band can't stop making out with itself) but written so broadly it could be about a getting over a bad meal at Jack in the Box. The essence of a good pop song is to express a sentiment the audience can establish a connection with, which requires a wide-angle lens, but the lens here is too wide to focus (I don't really know optics, bear with me). It's as calculated as a Boston song, and no one has the balls to claim Boston is art. You can only sand down the edges on something so much until it's just a smooth, shapeless ball of crap. There are more and less ear-offending songs in the FM catalog, but "Don't Stop" can stand for the whole thing.

Point being, don't fall for it, kids. Fleetwood Mac is all the awfulness of the 70s in America etched into a few acetate discs. The self-seriousness; the sexual politics; the fauxhemian drug use; the studio tricks masquerading as sophistication; the illusion of depth; the Los-Angeles-ness. Maybe if we finally ignore them they'll go away.

The hangover.

It should be unsurprising that interesting stories and interesting architecture often intersect. The house at 31172 Ceanothus Drive, Laguna Beach, California, manages to incorporate ahead-of-its-time modernist design, worldwide adventure, philosophically debatable fiction, cultural taboos, and the recent real estate bubble into a Coldwell Banker listing. The home, known as Hangover House, allegedly for its precarious perch, was commissioned by Richard Halliburton in the 1930s. It was completed in 1938, just a year before Halliburton, an adventurer and writer of worldwide renown, died on his final adventure: crossing the Pacific on a Chinese junk, in the company of his partner, journalist Paul Mooney. The man crammed several lifetimes worth of experience into his 39 years, having swum the Panama Canal, flown with Amelia Earhart, and spent time at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

Hangover House is not huge, designed by William Alexander Levy with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Its construction of concrete, steel, and glass, would become familiar later in the century in the work of van der Rohe and others, but at the time it must have looked quite alien. The architect was friendly with Ayn Rand, and thought she based Heller House in The Fountainhead on his design.

And it's for sale. And has been for some time--it's now priced at $2.5 mill, about half what it was originally listed for.

Decent view.

 

Important things: pancakes.

I don't really understand google's "knol" site. It seems to be a better-edited version of the content-farmed, weak-ass answer sites that have proliferated over the last couple of years (e.g., "How to pick lint from your bellybutton"). But knol gets credit for one thing: teaching me how to make pancakes from scratch, which is absolutely worth it.

Maybe for mom this weekend?

Scott Jenson's buttermilk pancakes knol article is a solid read--clear, concise, with asides that imply he's a great dad, particularly at breakfast. Jenson's full recipe goes deep on how the batter should look, how to cook and flip the pancakes, how to eat them, and what add-ins/ons work. The abbreviated version is below, and after making them once or twice, you'll barely need to consult the recipe.

Buttermilk pancakes

Ingredients

Wets
1.5 cups (350ml) buttermilk
1 egg
3 Tablespoons (50g) melted butter - use microwave 
2 Teaspoons (10ml) Vanilla (add 1 more for kids!)

Drys
1 cup (125g) white flour
3 Tbsp (40g) sugar
1/2 tsp (3g) baking soda (make sure it's not 3 years old... ;-)
1/2 tsp (2g) baking powder
1/2 tsp (4g) salt

Directions

Put the wet and dry ingredients into separate bowls. Whisk each one lightly. Add roughly half of the dry mix into the wet and whisk smooth, not too long. Add the remainder of the dry mix and barely whisk together. Make sure all of the flour is mixed in.

Heat a nonstick pan on low. Either put a few drops of oil or a little butter in the pan and wipe it out with a paper towel; it helps the batter release easier. Drop a 1/4 cup scoop of batter onto the pan.  You should hear a *slight* sizzle when you pour the batter. Cook pancakes slowly, 90-120 seconds per side.

Serve with butter and syrup. Really, the dressing is barely necessary--the pancakes are perfectly sweet and buttery alone.

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Although this takes a little longer than mixing up some Bisquick batter, the results are really not comparable. Instant mix, especially year-old instant mix, leads to flat, papery pancakes, whereas Jenson's recipe delivers airy, silver dollar pillows of awesomeness. And the more you do it, the quicker you get at throwing together the batter. Best to take it a little slow, though. Pancakes are a sleep-late breakfast food, why rush the process? Let the batter sit for just a little while, so the ingredients react, and don't rush the cooking.

Dress ethics.

A handy and veritably dandy one-pager courtesy Men's Wear magazine, Nov. 8, 1905. They tell you what gloves to wear when "wheeling." Worth viewing full size.