The Black Angus Steakhouse in Rancho Mirage is closing. Not that I’m really torn up about it, as I have not been there in probably ten years or so, but we used to go there a lot when I was a kid. I think my grandma really liked that place. Anyways, during one of our family excursions to Black Angus, the waiter asked me (at the time I was probably in kindergarten or thereabouts) what I wanted for dinner.

Well, I wanted one of my favorite meals, and something I always ordered at Black Angus.
“Bones!” I replied.
The waiter, of course, was absolutely puzzled. “Bones?”
“I want bones!”

Finally, my mom interpreted my order for the poor guy: “She’ll have the baby back ribs.”

BONES

And yes, I still get teased about that.

I can hardly believe it myself. It’s been almost ten years since we graduated from high school. Ten years since we “acquired” several orange traffic cones.

Godspeed, orange traffic cone. Enjoy your freedom.

I gotta say, I was really surprised to find Russian Standard vodka for sale at our local grocery store (the one off Hwy 111 in Palm Desert).

- Ate In-N-Out
- Ate a TON of Mexican food. Seriously. A ton.
- Saw a bunch of friends
- Took the Mosin M91/30 out to the desert to shoot a few rounds
- Toured the “wind farm” in the San Gorgonio Pass
- Completely ignored this blog and most e-mails
- Etc, etc.

It was good to be home for an entire week, but it’s back to the grind tomorrow.

This ad came up while I was reading an article on The Guardian:

Wow, “life = fun”? Amazing. I think a third grader designed this.

Have I ever told you how my parents love to talk about polar bears? Oh, yeah, I have. Almost every time I talk to them on the phone, they are bringing up some story about polar bears swimming 60 miles to find food, or polar bears cannibalizing each other, or whatever.

Anyways, when I arrived home on Thursday morning, I was greeted with this:

As I stared in disbelief at my polar bear Christmas decoration, now floating in our pool on several pieces of styrofoam, my mom remarked, “Gee, Lindsay, I hope the poor polar bear doesn’t start to eat himself.”
(Despite all this, they claim to be very proud that I work for “Big Oil.” Really, I think they are just glad I managed to find a job despite spending five years studying a country that no longer exists.)

But the real question is, what to do with a hungry polar bear that is roaming around your backyard? Well, shoot it, of course, and have it promptly turned into a rug to be placed in front of your fireplace.

(This photo was actually taken several years ago, and there is a story behind it that I’ve just been too lazy to write about. I will eventually, I guess.)

Kidding, of course. The polar bear is safely ensconced in front of our house, opposite the penguin decoration. Yes, our front yard resembles a real life Coca-Cola ad.

Three years ago my grandmother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Since I was living in either London or DC, I wasn’t able to see her much over the past few years. I always stopped by her house during my short visits to California, but each visit grew more painful. She had always been a very active woman, simultaneously involved in the community and maintaining a full social calendar, but she spent much of these past three years lying in bed.

I called her a few weeks ago. We talked about the weather, family, work, and my recent trip to Ukraine and Poland. She asked if I liked it out here in Washington. I told her no, not really, and that I was planning to move back to California next year.

She passed away on Thursday, August 9th. I was prepared to write a long post, but it’s still too hard. Perhaps another day. I did find this past article from the Rancho Mirage Chamber of Commerce newsletter, however. It’s how she would want to be remembered, anyways.

I flew back to California for a few days to attend the funeral. Afterwards, over 60 of our closest friends and family members gathered at Las Casuelas Nuevas, the site of numerous past family celebrations, for huge plates of Mexican food and free-flowing margaritas. She would have loved it.

Whenever I fly into Palm Springs “International” Airport, I am consistently amazed at the amount of development that is proliferating throughout the Coachella Valley below. Huge housing developments, resorts, big box stores, and golf courses now occupy land that was mere sand and desert scrub several years ago. As more people move to the desert, the demands on the valley’s infrastructure multiply – more roads, more water, more electricity. As noted in the WSJ.com Energy blog and re-published in the International Herald Tribune and Houston Chronicle, my hometown of Palm Desert is apparently leading the way in energy conservation and serving as a model for other cities throughout California:

In many ways, Palm Desert is the epitome of environmental excess.

Tourists and homeowners live in air-conditioned comfort in this desert golf resort where the mercury can climb past 110 degrees for days on end. And though the city gets no more than a trace of rain per year, it has lush green fairways, turquoise swimming pools, manmade waterfalls, and an artificial lagoon so big that hotel guests are taken across it in gondolas.

And how, exactly, are we doing this?

It has banned drive-through windows at fast-food restaurants to reduce pollution from idling cars. Public buses run on fuel cells. And residents are encouraged to commute in electric golf carts along designated lanes.

OK, I have to take issue with this. Palm Desert has never had drive-through windows at its fast food joints in the 20+ years I have lived there (unless they are out near I-10). While the other desert cities (i.e., Cathedral City, Palm Springs, La Quinta, etc) allow drive-throughs, the Carls Jr., Del Taco, and Starbucks in Palm Desert all require that you actually get out of your car (I know, what a novel concept) and enter the restaurant to purchase your food. It’s nice to see, though, that the city was able to spin its blatantly aesthetic drive-through ban as an environmentally positive step towards reducing “pollution from idling cars.”
Green is, after all, the new hotness. Someone give the city’s public affairs manager a raise!

The golf cart lanes have been in use for quite a while as well (I’m guessing 10+ years). We have lots of old people who like to golf and would rather drive their golf carts down El Paseo than regular cars, so it’s to be expected. We also have, I kid you not, a golf cart parade, where you can see the latest and greatest (and pricey!) custom golf carts drive down El Paseo.

As for our bus system, yeah, our buses are pretty impressive. Sunline, the local transit agency, converted its entire fleet to compressed natural gas (ooh, that safe, clean, and efficient fuel) in 1994, the first transit agency to do so in the ENTIRE United States. And now we have some zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell buses, which is cool, but how many people actually ride the bus in Palm Desert?

California regulators have committed $14 million to an energy-saving demonstration project, on top of more than $50 million the city already receives from the state for various efficiency projects. In return, regulators are asking that Palm Desert devise a model to apply to communities across the state.

“It’s a pretty progressive move,” California Public Utilities Commission President Michael Peevey said of the city’s drive to become more efficient. “This is not exactly Berkeley or Santa Monica with tofu-eating environmentalists.”

Palm Desert, famous for its celebrity golf tournaments, is a well-to-do, politically conservative community with a large number of retirees.

That’s right, no Birkenstock wearing, tofu-eating hippies here. (I wear flip flops and hate tofu). Oh, and the plan is called the “Estonia Protocol.” Seriously.

The story of how Palm Desert wound up at the forefront of California’s energy-efficiency push had an unlikely beginning: Palm Desert officials made the pitch to state regulators while steaming across the Baltic Sea from Estonia to Sweden after a 2005 energy conference.

Some scoffed at the idea because desert cities are notorious electricity hogs. Undeterred, city officials drafted the Estonia Protocol, which sounds more like a spy novel than an energy-efficiency plan.

The PUC approved it 18 months later and in December gave Palm Desert $14 million for the project’s first two years. Palm Desert officials must present a progress report in 2008 and hope to receive additional funding.
“I don’t think I said, ‘This is ridiculous,’ but I certainly was astonished,” recalled the PUC’s Peevey, who was on the ship when the pitch was made. “Here’s the point: If they can do it or come close, most communities in the U.S. can do it.”

[...]

Six months into the project, Palm Desert has shaved consumption by about 7 percent. Only 200 million kilowatt hours to go.

So far, I’m actually pretty impressed by the results of this program. Lead the way, PD.

What kind of people decide to bring up children in Palm Springs anyway? As the resident satanic charmer explains to the newcomer in town, “It’s all retired grays, gays and streets named after dead people,” he says. “People come here to die.” – some lame NYTimes critic (Gee, what kind of people decide to bring up children in New York City anyways?)

Hidden Palms: a shill for the wind power industry?

When “The O.C.” first premiered back in 2003, my friends from Orange County couldn’t wait to rip it apart for its ridiculous portrayal of life in their hometowns. Who the hell calls it “the OC” anyways?

Well, now it’s my turn. A new teen drama has hit the airwaves, this time set in Palm Springs, California, the lovely resort area where I was born and raised. It premiered Wednesday night on the CW (you know, that network you never watch that was a merger of UPN and the WB, those two other networks you never watched?)

The show revolves around Johnny, a young fellow clad in preppy attire who lives in depressing as hell rainy Seattle. While Johnny is trying to study trigonometry, his drunk father rambles on about poetry and numbers and then proceeds to blow his brains out right in front of the poor kid. Johnny spends some time in alcohol and drag rehab and one year later finds himself moving to Palm Springs with his recently remarried mom and seemingly harmless stepfather (although Johnny dislikes aforementioned stepfather because his mom was having an affair with the dude which partially led to Johnny’s dad’s suicide, natch).

Johnny still seems rather depressed, or maybe he’s just a typical, brooding teenager with a penchant for always carrying his camera everywhere (a “creative outlet”, he claims). Look Johnny, you got a huge new house! And a pool! You live on a golf course! Your stepfather has a Mercedes! Palm trees everywhere! Sunshine! Your mom has amazing interior decorating skills! It’s 115 effin’ degrees! Welcome to Palm Springs, man!

From there, the show devolves into typical melodramatic teenage BS that is too painful to describe. It’s like “The O.C.”, but without a beach.

A few things in the show that make say WTF?:
- The characters constantly complain about the blazing summer heat (“it drives people crazy”), yet continue to wear jackets and multiple layers of clothing. HELLO?! You are not in Seattle anymore! Ditch the army surplus jacket, long sleeved shirts, and sweaters!

- Cliff, the first local kid who Johnny meets, is the epitome of (l)east coast prep. With his pink Ralph Lauren polo shirts (and oxford shirt worn over polo shirt – WTF?), popped collars, and boat shoes, the dude looks like he just stepped off a sailboat in the Hamptons. No flip flops? No Quicksilver or Hurley t-shirts? Does this show take place in Connecticut or Palm Springs?

- The men at the country club party are wearing suit jackets! In the summer! You rarely see men in Palm Springs wearing suit jackets, much less in the middle of the summer. WTF is wrong with these people?!

- The show takes place in Palm Springs, but any desert native can recognize that Johnny actually lives in the rich enclave of Indian Wells. Palm Springs is old and busted. Go to the east end of the valley, young man. Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage are the new hotness.

- Johnny does not have a driver’s license and thus must ride a bike everywhere. I am especially impressed that Johnny managed to bike the 15 miles from Indian Wells to downtown Palm Springs in the 115 degree heat.

- We’re supposed to believe the mayor’s daughter works as a waitress at the country club pool? Yeah, right.

- None of the characters appear in a Starbucks, the epicenter of teenage life in the Coachella Valley. And no iceblocking? Come on, it’s the summer and you live on a well-manicured golf course. WTF else are you supposed to do? (Ice blocking, for you newbs out there, is when you head to the local 7-11, purchase several large blocks of ice, find yourself some nice grassy hills aka golf course, sit on said block of ice, and race your friends down to the bottom. In other words, the perfect night time summer activity).

- A main character lying down on a golf course and crying? Jesus, D-R-A-M-A. And she wasn’t even crying over a horrible drive on a par-4…she was just…crying…in the middle of the golf course.

A few things the show gets right:
- “It’s all retired grays, gays and streets named after dead people.” True. I can’t really tell you what Dinah Shore, Buddy Rogers, and Fred Waring did, but they were famous, are now dead, and have streets named after them. I do know who Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra are, though, so I am not completely ignorant (Frank Sinatra was a singer, right?!).

- It is truly a bizarre place to grow up. Did you run around a lot of golf courses when you were a kid? We did. They were everywhere. I was particularly fond of the sand traps. They were like giant sand boxes. The groundskeepers at the Marriott Rancho Las Palmas were not so fond of us, however, especially when we would steal balls from the driving range and ride our bikes down their really step hills screaming at the top of our lungs. Ah, those were the days.

The show didn’t garner very positive reviews or pull in large viewership numbers, so it’s doubtful that it will emerge as the hot new summer show. I have it set to tivo, but am not sure how long I will be able to watch it. For one thing, it sucks. And secondly, while the show’s pilot was filmed in Palm Springs and Indian Wells, the rest of the episodes were filmed in Arizona because it was cheaper. Apparently all desert communities are interchangeable. A show about Palm Springs but filmed in Arizona? That’s almost too easy to mock.

The reason I never write about concerts is because, in general, I suck at reviewing them. I have to write about Coachella, though, so forgive me if this totally sucks or if I use the word “awesome” way too much. Pictures will be up later. I’m liberally sprinkling YouTube and professional photos throughout this post to give you some eye candy.

Day 1 – I’m not drunk, I just haven’t slept
My flight out of DCA left at 6am. I thought it would be quiet and relaxing – I mean, Jesus, who flies to Houston at 6am besides businessmen? Unfortunately, I was inundated with annoying middle schoolers in matching maroon sweatshirts, all of them on a simultaneous caffeine and candy high. I switched planes in Houston and landed in Palm Springs before noon. Kat picked me up and we met up with Lindsey and Danielle at In-N-Out. It’s a tradition that my first meal upon arrival in the Great State of California has to be a double double – been that way since I was a freshman at GW.

Danielle and I headed out to the Empire Polo Fields in Indio (location of Coachella) shortly thereafter. The traffic was a nightmare, compounded by the fact that my hometown had been inundated with idiotic East Coast drivers. (“New Jersey? WTF are you doing here? Hell no we’re not letting you in our lane!”) By the time we got there, the temperature was hovering around a balmy 100 degrees (oh, trust me, it gets much hotter there). Teenagers roamed the fields and scavenged through recycling bins in search of ten empty water bottles, which they could exchange for a full one. Personally, I opted to spend the $2 per bottle.
That night I saw the Arctic Monkeys, Interpol, and Gogol Bordello. The Arctic Monkeys and Interpol were good…nothing to really write home about. Gogol Bordello, however, put on an amazing show. They were playing opposite Bjork, but the crowd was much larger than I expected. Gogol Bordello, if you have never heard of them, is a punk band composed of immigrants from Eastern Europe. A Slavic Flogging Molly, if you will. The lead singer, Eugene Hütz, is an absolute madman who enjoys crowdsurfing on a large drum. Check out the video below:

If you get a chance to see these guys live, jump on it. The music has a Slavic twist to it with an accordion and violin that will have you dancing around like a fool in no time. They were the last band of the night, which was great, because by then I had been up for 24 hours straight with three hours of sleep the night before, and was subsequently staggering around like a drunk without the benefit of actually being drunk ($7 for a Heineken?! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!). Trying to leave the concert was an absolute clusterfuck, as you had thousands of cars trying to get out and no cops directing traffic. It took us TWO hours to get out of the parking lot. WTF?

Day 2 – it’s not hot, you’re just weak
The first band I saw was Jack’s Mannequin, a solo project of Something Corporate’s lead singer Andrew McMahon. Something Corporate, which is now kinda defunct, was one of my favorite bands – nice SoCal rock with some piano thrown in. Jack’s Mannequin’s performance at Coachella was solid, and I loved hearing them perform “Bruised” live (“Vacation’s come and gone too late / There’s so much sun where I’m from”).
Next up was Travis. I had never heard of these guys even though they have apparently been around for quite awhile, but Olga raved about them so I decided to check them out. They were pretty damn good, although I could barely understand a word the lead singer was saying, his Scottish accent was so thick.
Saw the Decemberists next. Gotta love a band that’s kinda named after the boys of 1825, although I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t play 16 Military Wives. In between the Decemberists and Arcade Fire we met up with my friend Kim, who was lucky enough to be covering the concert for WORK. I shoulda been a journalist.

I started listening to Arcade Fire a few months ago at the suggestion of my roommate, Mike, and they put on an amazing show. Definitely a crowd favorite. The final band we saw that night was the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There’s not much to say about the Chili Peppers. As expected, they were awesome live. And yeah, they played “Under the Bridge”, with a crowd of 60,000 singing along.

Flea, with RHCP

Day 3 – THE DAY RAGE REUNITES! “What better place than here? What better time than now?”
First up was Kaiser Chiefs. I became quite familiar with these guys while living in London, as it seemed every third song played on the radio was “Oh My God” ( “Oh my god I can’t believe it / I’ve never been this far away from home”). I love Kaiser Chiefs, but they just didn’t sound that good live. Whatev.

Ryan and headed over to the main stage a few hours early in order to get a decent spot for Rage Against the Machine. We had to stand through Crowded House, some Australian band I’ve never heard of. They were alright, I guess…I wouldn’t buy their CD or anything. No idea why Coachella put them so close to RATM, though. Really effin’ idiotic, as the hardcore RATM fans in the front were throwing bottles at Crowded House and chanting “RAGE RAGE RAGE!” I felt kinda sorry for those poor Aussies.

Manu Chao with Radio Bemba Sound System played after Crowded House. Oh…My…God…these guys were amazing. I’ve never heard any of their music before, but I was impressed with their entire setlist. Intense mix of rock, reggae, ska, a few foreign languages thrown in…these guys really blew me away. I had no idea what they were saying, but they kept screaming California, so that’s gotta be something.

FINALLY, the last band of the night, the last band of Coachella 2007, the only band I would fly 3,000 miles to see reunite…RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE.

Ryan and I had a decent view…we were probably about 30 feet in front in front of the soundbooth. I found myself surrounded by half-naked, sweaty men wearing bright orange “Drive out the Bush regime” bandanas, shouting “RAGE RAGE RAGE!” RATM walked on stage and Zack shouted “Good evening, we’re Rage Against the Machine from Los Angeles, California!” The crowd went nuts. SEVEN LONG YEARS WITHOUT RAGE! Abandoned in our time of need! With everything that has been going on these past seven years, we could have had five new, angry albums!

They opened with “Testify“, the Battle of Los Angeles anthem railing against our runaway oil consumption and subsequent military intervention in the Middle East (“Mister anchor assure me / That Baghdad is burning”).

All hell broke loose when Morello started on the main riff. The crowd was packed so tightly where we were that I was literally picked off the ground and moved 10 feet left then 10 feet right, then 5 feet front, and 5 feet back – my feet weren’t even touching the ground. It was like some sort of bizarre tug of war using human bodies. The heat was suffocating, and I managed to take a knee and elbow to the head from some crowdsurfer. A few guys were being carried out, all bloodied up. It was freakin’ intense. After the first two songs, I moved back about 15 feet where it wasn’t as packed, and the air was a bit, uh, fresher. A moshpit formed to the left of me, and to my right, three guys climbed on top of the soundbooth, with security following soon thereafter.

That’s gotta hurt

Setlist:
01 “Testify”
02 “Bulls On Parade”
03 “People Of The Sun”
04 “Bombtrack”
05 “Bullet In The Head”
06 “Down Rodeo”
07 “Guerrilla Radio”
08 “Renegades Of Funk” (my current ringtone, ooooh yeah)
09 “Calm Like A Bomb”
10 “Sleep Now In The Fire”
11 “Wake Up”
12 “Freedom”
13 “Killing In The Name” (with a little improvisation thrown in “Some of those who hold office are the same that burn crosses.”)

At one point, during “Wake Up”, the crowd cheered loudly as Zack called for the Bush administration to be “hung, and tried, and shot”:

“A good friend of ours said that if the same laws were applied to U.S. Presidents as were applied to the Nazi’s after World War II, then every single one of ‘em, every last rich white one of ‘em from Truman on would have been hung to death, and shot. And this current administration is no exception. They should be hung, and tried, and shot. As any war criminal should be. But the challenges that we face, they go way beyond administrations. Way beyond elections. Way Beyond every four years of pulling levers. Way beyond that, because this whole rotten system has become so vicious and cruel, that in order to sustain itself, it needs to destroy entire countries, and profit from their reconstruction, in order to survive, and that’s not a system that changes every four years, it’s a system that we have to break down generation after generation after generation after generation after generation. Wake up!”

I was like, whoa, did he just say that? And poor Jimmy Carter, what did he ever do to deserve that fate? And aren’t you supposed to try a person BEFORE hanging and/or shooting them?

The last song of the evening was “Killing in the Name.” It was like seven years of pent up anger exploded at the end, with a crowd of 60,000 screaming “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” over and over.

I was so amped after that set I wanted to put on a bandana and start throwing molotov cocktails at Wal-Mart. The only “raging against the machine” I managed to accomplish that night, however, was pushing my way past a security guard who was yelling “This exit is for wrist bands ONLY!” But that exit was closest to where we had parked, and we were in no mood to walk all the way around the polo fields. Allllll hell can’t stop us now!

The very next morning I was on a plane headed back to DC. Back to reality, working for Big Energy, filling up the 14mpg SUV, and thinking, hmm, business school…maybe I’ll give that a try.

There are very few things I regret not doing, but I have the feeling that if I did not go to this concert I would have really regretted it. I saw one of my favorite bands reunite after a seven year hiatus…and yeah, I’ve got the “Battle of Coachella” shirt to prove it.