The television show Bones comes through again with another great song and another great artist. This time it’s more of a hip-hop piece, although you can’t quite tell that from the short bit that’s played on the show. No, what grabbed my attention was the singing and the beautiful sample played in the background.
The song is “Sea Lion” by Sage Francis. Enjoy:
I love the opening melody, but the song quickly goes from there as Francis starts speaking/singing. The man has a great sense of rhythm and can certainly keep up. The lyrics are full of metaphor and are worth at least few listens (and a read-through or two). The full YouTube pages for both of these videos contain the lyrics to the songs as well.
Paul “Sage” Francis (born November 2, 1977 in Miami, Florida) is a hip-hop artist based in Providence, Rhode Island. Sage Francis’ style blends a varying tone and delivery with subject matter that focuses on intricate sequences of widely varying imagery, metaphors, the occasional pun, absurdism, word play often times in the form of phonetic mix-ups and rhetorical excursions, and pop culture references, while including touchstones of traditional hip hop such as storytelling and self-promotion. -Wikipedia article on Sage Francis
This has everything I love about hip-hop. It’s the stories, the rhyming, the metaphor, and the visuals that have always appealed to me. Sadly, I got tired of the “bitches and hos” and money talk pretty early on and drifted away from the genre. It still has a lot of appeal, and artists like this renew my interest in the genre.
Unlike my last article on music found on this show, this artist’s works are quite available on the usual sources. Amazon is still my dealer of choice, and a couple of the albums have made it to my hard-drive already. Damn you, Amazon, for making high quality DRM-free MP3s so easy to obtain.
Actually, it’s more like the tortoise and the other tortoise, but I took some artistic liberty.
Last week when the temperatures were soaring to the upper 90s I went for my semi-regular run at the local Sugarloaf Mountain. On the weekends Sugarloaf is home to an excessive number of otherwise exclusively urban explorers out looking to have a little fun in the wild unknown. During the week, however, it is a local treasure that I’m overjoyed to have been able to live near for the past year. This (relatively) small park is home to some awesome running trails, climbable rock, and a lot of wildlife. All within just about 10 minutes fun drive for me.
This last time, despite the heat, I decided to reenact an old fable. The contestants:
This was taken post-run. It was hot.
Sadly, I think my opponent won, but I can’t be entirely sure, as I saw him only after I finished.
These were all taken with my Canon SD870. I am having a really hard time getting it to focus on macro shots. The last picture, for example, is focused really well, just not on the object I want. I guess I should get a DSLR, but I don’t remember it being quite as difficult with my old SD800.
Still, these were some good shots of a very photogenic animal.
I’ve been riding my motorcycle a lot more recently. Logically I can attribute this to the rising gas prices, but I don’t want to complain about that. Honestly, it is lot a more about the enjoyment I get from riding it. Riding the bike is so much unlike driving a car that it’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it. You’re not just traveling along through the landscape, you are part of it. The weather affects you directly (there’s no avoiding it), and the road is just mere inches away from your feet.
In the car, the transportation is something you participate in. In the motorcycle, you are the vehicle. In the car turns and bumps jolt throw you around, but on the motorcycle you and the machine move as one over the bumps and through the turns as if you are a single entity. It’s easy to step outside and look at the entire endeavor as simple thrill-seeking, but it’s not as simple as that. It’s liberation, it’s power, and it’s wonderful. Riding a motorcycle through the countryside through the turns and hills, it must be like what a bird feels.
Commuting on a bike isn’t quite as nice as all of that, but it’s still a lot better than driving a car. Even in the oppressively hot summer, the drenching cold rain, the deluge of dusk-released bugs, and the occasional fear-inspiring lightening blasts, I’d rather be on the bike. That’s not to say there aren’t challenges…
Take, for example, transportation of items other than yourself. Space on my bike is very limited. This morning, I wanted bagels. I had to resort to desperate measures.
People are often offended by motorcyclists. The few bad apples are remembered, and so people resent all of us. Perhaps there’s a twinge of jealousy behind the resentment as well. This arrangement at least gives me an opportunity to spread good will. Maybe I will toss bagels at people who give me cross grumpy morning stares… I will NOT attempt to spread cream cheese, though - that would be unsafe.
I really need a better luggage situation. Laptop, clothes, climbing gear, and a five pound bag of rice stress the limits of that Nelson Rigg bag…
Yesterday I rode to lunch without anything on the back for the first time in a while. If you commute daily, unload sometime and just go have fun. It really is a different beast without the load. I don’t know how people enjoy riding with a backpack - especially the long distance - and especially in the twisties:
I was recently going through some backups I created back in early 2000, when I discovered some pictures I’d taken with my first digital camera. I have no idea what the model of the camera was, but it was very much first generation. My grandfather loved technology, and I would often get hand-me-downs from him, one of which was this camera. It’s shocking how far the technology has come since that time. The pictures below are not spectacular, and were at full resolution only 420×240 (.1008MP) pixels, 24bit color, and only about 30kB in size. In comparison, my current phone takes pictures many times larger than that (5MP), with better color depth, and with a bigger lens.
The pictures are all from, I think, Cypresss Gardens (SWAMP), a place my mom and I visited on one of our many trips to Folly Beach, SC. I have many fond memories of going to the beach with her, and it’s a shame these are the only pictures that I know of. Neither of us is actually pictured, as I think we both felt about the same way about cameras.
I’m pretty sure the location where these were all taken is somewhere around here: Cypress Gardens Information
