Quarter Size chunk of my knee missing.... I'm fine though.

So I was out in Moab Utah this past weekend on a fantastic field trip for a strucutral geology class.... great trip and great people as always. I feel priveledged to be able to take such amazing classes where I'm getting collegecredit to hike around and explore one of the more spectacular places in the world. On this trip, we spent the first day of the trip looking at the Moab Fault in it's exposure along the highway outside the Arches NP visitor center, trying to decipher a very complex and intrigueing series of normal faults with associated drag, longitudinal flexure, and other nerdy terms I won't bore you with. In the afternoon we drove quite a ways out into the desert to look at a Graben [down-dropped block of rock bounded by normal faults, resembling an elongate valley with vertical sides] near the Green River. The next day, we drove up Onion Creek in the Fischer Valley north of town, to look at some salt structures. Onion creek is a spectacular and rather hauting landscape of eroded finds, spires, and towers of Cutler Sandstone, a rock mostly resmebling petrified mud. The creek cuts through a series of rocks leading down to the Paradox Formation, an evaporitic caprock on overlying halite beds which have pushed through the denser, overlying sandstone in a phenomena known as diapirism, breaching the surface and erdoding into surreal, multi-hued badlands type slopes. On Sunday, we took an hour and a half scenic flight over the Moab region, which is one of the more memorable experiences I've had lately... the scenery from the air is indescribably vast, beautiful, and strange.

Postscript.... I also hit up the annual Moab Gem & Mineral Show, which I had forgotten was this past weekend as well, and despite the vast predominance of petrified wood and plishjed dinosaur bone-type dealers, did manage to find 2 fantastic, very reasonably priced specimens. The first is a very nice Aquamarine Berly crystal from the Erongo Mountains in Namibia, and is about 5 x 4 x 4.5 cm., it's an etched crystal on the back but has a perfect, very lustrous, gem termination, with really good dark blue color for Erongo... a steal at $100.
The Second is a beautiful 4 xd 2 cm. indicolite tourmaline crystal embedded in the termination of a quartz crystal; at first it looks almost black, but hold it up to the sun and it is in fact totally gem dark blue; was $9o originally and I got it for $40; so stoked!! Photos to come.


Ok, now that I have you all on the edge of your seats, hah, I'll explain the rather ominous post title. So while the weather in Moab was perfect [mid-70's and sunny all weekend], the weather a mere 350 miles away in Boulder was predictably atrocious, with temp's getting down to the 20's(!!) and around 3 inches of snow, highly unusual but not unheard of for this time of year. Biking to class this morning, I was in a rush to get to the library, so that for once I could have my morning Latte in less than a rushed 8 minutes[If I'm paying 4 dollars for a fucking latte, I want to be able to sip it casually and people-watch/pretend to do homework for a good half hour at least, ya dig?] Anyways, so was cruisin up the 13th st. bike path past Arapahoe when BAM! black ice patch!! I must have been going a good 15 at least, so I slid quite a ways and ended up taking a pretty good digger.

Perfectly fine except a 2-inch hole ripped in my red vans jeans.... fuckk.. I liked those jeans too.... perhaps god's way of saying stop wearing super skinny jeans? I though all was fine when I realized my knee under the rip now resembled the color of my jeans... just a bad scrape though, a couple bandaids did the trick just fine. [side tangent, what's whith the bandaids at Wardenburg Health Center on campus that read "I bleed gold?" last time I checked I bleed pretty effing bright red, and I coukld care less about CU athletics. So, there's my morning.... guess I look pretty "hardcore" now with my big rip in my pants and multiple bandaids.... wasn't there something a while back about the "cool kids" applying bandaids to non-existant wounds to look badass? Well there ya go. Go me! Photos to come?


On another unrelated note, here's some music I can't get enough of lately:

1.) ok, so this is going to sound really lame, but there's this now-defunct electro-punk collaborative between this Russian chick and a British producer called "Salon Boris" thats actually pretty good.... check out their song "Everybody's talking about retro", kind of like a slightly edgier B-52's.... is that bad!? Oh well, I like it.

2.) DFA Record's stuff that nobody has heard of, see: Waldorf, Soulwax remixes, 33 Hz, The Ones, and Xavier. Ok, so some of this borders on shitty dance music, but the beats are way more bangin than anything I've heard DFA counterparts The Juan Maclean or even LCD Soundsystem make. Also slightly less dripping in elitist hipster approval.

3.) Hudson Mohawke. Nobody makes beats like them. Seriously. Like if you locked Onra, Flying Lotus, and J.Dilla in a room together and gave them some drugs and a sampler, this is what you would get. Their new album "Butter" is getting ready to drop in a few weeks on October 27th [my 23rd birfday!] and I am pretty excited for it. Their last album, "Polyfolk Dance", is a real trip. "Overnight" would be a Billboard hit if Kanye was rhyming [does he still do that?] over it. Thank god he's not!

**Upcoming Show's I'll be attending [time/money willing] in the Denver/Boulder Area**

10/22: Zion-I at the Fox Theater. Based on how they played when I saw them at Cervantes in Denver last April, it will be worth enduring the small army of bro's and associated ho's that will descend on the Fox Theater for this show. Not a huge fan of their new album, but regardless they are one of the best live act's in hop hop today.

10/25: Kraack & Smaack with Fort Knox Five at the Fox Theater, Boulder. This is going to be a great show. These guys are conveniently under the bro-dar but have deservingly been compared to Mark Farina and even the more danceable/eclectic Thievery Corporation tracks, and have a great mix of trip-hop acid jazz and retro funk samples, guaranteed to maker people dance.

11/6: Del is apparently playing a *free* show at the Larimer Lounge in Denver at midnight?! Sounds too good to be true.

11/4: Deadmau5 at the Ogden: due to recent bad experiences with 16+ shoes at the Ogden, and the fact that I'm not really into ecstasy and glow sticks, I don't know if I'll be in attendance at this one; but I will tell you it id guaranteed to be a damn good time.

11/12: Ghostland Observatory and DJ Boyhollow [of lipgloss fame] at the Ogden, Denver. Not sure about this one either. Ghostland is good, but it just depends on how much it is. plus, I can go see boyhollow spin @ lipgloss on any given Friday for 6 bucks.

11/8: The Dirty Projectors at the Bluebird theater in Denver. Probably the most pretentious thing that's happening all fall in Denver music. will I be there? Probably.

11/7: J-Live @ the Marquis Theater in Denver. I lover J-live. Finally a show I'm genuinely excited for!!

That's all for now kids. Much love, Phil.