Vinyl Report: Holiday Edition

Over the course of the Yuletide season I acquired several new records (not counting the milk crate full of my dad’s records, which my aunt had been holding onto for years – that deserves a post of its own) through some online orders and a fruitful trip to that old mainstay, Half Price Books.

Starting from top-left, working clockwise:

Kraftwerk – Autobahn (1974)

The first of two great finds at Half Price Books, and for less than six bucks! I had previously bought the 2009 reissue of Trans-Europe Express and loved it, so it seemed worth checking out, especially since it came with high praise from Jeff (whose opinion about music I generally trust). The 22-minute title track evokes the feeling of driving on the highway in that strange mechanical, electric, hypnotic way that Kraftwerk do so well, but it never feels like pure background music. The tracks on the other side are nice, though they seem focused more on atmospherics; they end up being a bookend to the title track, as if the listener had driven through the night and into the morning (“Morgenspaziergang”). Autobahn is great, though I think the band refined their direction and took it to another level on Trans Europe Express. If you’re a fan of German minimalism or early electronic music, you should definitely check this album out.

Phantogram – Eyelid Movies (2011)

I first heard of Phantogram on a RELEVANT magazine podcast, when one of the writers was talking about their favorite performers at last year’s Lolapalooza music festival. He gave high praise to their solid show, so I searched them out on Spotify and really dug what I heard (I mini-reviewed them in a previous music post). I picked up a copy at Hastings as a preemptive “end-of-projects” treat. The vinyl itself was pretty roughly-cut and had squarer edges than most records I’ve seen, but it was sturdy enough and sounded great playing on my stereo – definitely an improvement over web-streaming files on computer speakers. Eyelid Movies has fun, danceable moments and a mostly darker, laid-back tone, like if Portishead sampled hip-hop tracks instead of spy movies and lightened up a little bit.

She & Him – A Very She & Him Christmas (2011)

I will very openly admit that I have a huge crush on Zooey Deschanel – her opening vocals on “The Christmas Waltz” make me weak at the knees. The arrangements on the album are simple, sometimes even verging on bare, but it’s nice to hear Christmas songs that aren’t bursting at the seams with choirs, church bells, and other hallmarks of holiday overproduction. The record itself is printed on clear red vinyl, and the album credits come on a little Christmas card inside an envelope. Merge Records really made an effort to have this record feel like a 60s Christmas album – the outer jacket is super-flimsy, with a more solid inner sleeve for the record, just like some of the old Christmas albums I have from my granddad. Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas will always be my top Christmas album, but A Very She & Him Christmas is definitely going to be a permanent fixture of my Yuletide season.

Henry Mancini – Music from the Motion Picture “Charade” (1963)

Charade is one of Savannah’s favorite movies, so when I saw this record at Half Price Books I thought it’d make a fun addition to her collection. Henry Mancini, of course, is most famous for the Pink Panther Theme and various other TV and film scores, and known for that “cool 60s jazz” sound. The score for the film fits the tone perfectly – it’s fun and flighty with a dark edge. Interesting film fact: due to a goof on Universal’s part, the film did not have any copyright notice and thus entered public domain immediately on its release. Anyway, you can check out the opening title sequence here:

That’s all for now. Next up: books!

Back and Kickin’

It’d be lying to describe my job in the lab as a “grind,” but it’s always a little strange to return to the office after any sort of hiatus. We have a couple of projects on the board to be completed before the semester starts and users get back on lab systems in a meaningful way, like group permissions modifications to our internal project pipeline and a few software upgrades. Switching gears from vacation-blogging and rubbing shoulders with Texarkana’s social élite back to shell-scripting and email-answering took the better part of last week, but I think I’m back in the swing of things.

I made little mention of New Year’s resolutions, but there are a few that I’d like to address, after a fashion:

• read more of the books on my shelf. I have several titles from across genres and interests that might serve as inspiration, edification, or even simple amusement in times that I need to take a break from lab work. I might even write about a few of them…which brings me to the next goal.
• write more. Jeff is really good about this, even when our project workload starts to get heavy. It can be hard to convince myself that I have anything interesting to say on a particular day, but I know that every post isn’t going to be a zinger. This goal goes hand-in-hand with the one below.
• create more, curate less. I have a Tumblr blog where I post and reblog things I find interesting or funny. It’s faster than sitting down to write, but I feel like I’ve started to form a habit of curating content rather than creating it. Years from now, I’d much rather have my kids find a blog full of crap that I made than a blog full of crap that other people made. On second thought, maybe not.

In 2010, I started on a project to create a new video each week, which was unfortunately cut short by my car accident and subsequent recovery. I’d like to give that another go as well. Yes, I realize that means I’m already a week late, I’m working on it. If you ever see one that’s been filmed at my apartment, though, I encourage you to berate me and send lots of angry emails.

Mad Dash for Asheville – A Christmas Road Trip Series, Day Six

Monday morning (Boxing Day) would be the final chance to see the Biltmore house and estate. Since we had bought tickets for special tours of the house at 10am, we got up and moving early, packing the rest of our stuff and preparing to load it back into the van. We got down to the breakfast room around 8am to chow down on the delicious buffet one last time, making sure to have our fill of glorious cheese blintzes and crispy-on-the-outside-fluffy-on-the-inside waffles.

After breakfast we loaded everything in the van and drove (for the first time in days) over to the house, so that we could get on the road after our tours with the least amount of hassle. Mom and Dad were headed to the behind-the-scenes “Butler” tour to see the inner workings of the house and take a closer look at the life of servants and staff. Mike, Emily and I were bound for the “Architect” tour, where we would inspect the structure and labor for the house and see parts that were closed off to the other tours – including, most importantly, the roof!

I had the presence of mind to carry my camera with me on this particular day, mainly because we’d be allowed to take photos outside the house while on the Architect tour. As a result, for the rest of this post I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.

The tour started on the ground level outside the house, where our guide (John) told us more about the stone carvings and the skilled craftsmen that made them. Stone carvers were the highest-class workers on the site – the only ones that rode to work inside their own rail cars, rather than on top of a flatbed. They also had a sense of humor, and often took the opportunity to poke fun at their foremen and the architect, Richard Morris Hunt, as well. Here are a few detail examples of the carvings:

We moved on through the house and up the grand, cantilevered staircase (my brother wasn’t impressed with the way they talked it up – “lots of places have cantilevered staircases”) past the four-story wrought-iron chandelier that, John told us, was suspended by a single bolt in the ceiling. Must have been one serious bolt – the chandelier weighs 1700 pounds.

At the top of the stairs, we got to see one of the original scale models of the house made during its planning stages as well as some of Hunt’s copies of the plans. The meticulous attention to detail on both was simply stunning. We were then led through the observatory room, which had a spiral staircase up to a set of large double-doors that opened up to look over the esplanade in front of the house.

Around the terrace was a gargoyle that one of the workers accidentally struck while working on the roof, breaking off its tail. The stone carvers couldn’t really tack on a new tail at that point, so instead they carved some buttocks on it – an example of the sense of humor I mentioned earlier. Apparently, you have to rub the gargoyle’s butt if you go on the roof, otherwise you’ll get lost up there; we were happy to keep tradition alive and take a picture to prove it.

True to form, the ironwork on the roof was very impressive. There is very little wood in the roof, as George Vanderbilt wanted the house to be as fireproof as possible. It’s made almost entirely from iron and carefully-formed slate shingles.

Coming around the back of the house, we were treated to the view of George’s backyard – 125,000 acres at the time he lived there, with the gorgeous Blue Ridge mountains in the distance.

On the same back terrace, John pointed out the only gargoyle on the house that actually functioned as a water spout, “like the ones described in the Victor Hugo novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” He’s the guy stuffed in the corner there:

The view at the back terrace concluded the tour, so we met up with Mom and Dad at the front of the house, where I noticed the festively-decorated lions at the entrance:

Following some final gift-shopping at the stables next door, (I picked up a very handsome pictorial guide to the house, to make up for all those photos I didn’t get to take) we headed back down to Antler Hill Village for one last cup of Biltmore Creamery Ice Cream and a few more pictures.

Our Christmas Trip Architects:

And finally, your blogger:

So at last, we bid adieu to the beautiful Biltmore Estate. The house, the gardens, and the grounds are all true masterworks of engineering and vision, combining technology and aesthetics in ways that were pioneering for their time. This place is an American landmark, and getting the opportunity to see it with my family was a true blessing. As family trips go (and we’ve had some good ones), this has to be one of the best.

This is basically the conclusion of the Christmas trip series; in the next couple of days I may add an epilogue post that has some details about the trip home, or in my case, to Texarkana and then College Station. I hope you enjoyed reading about our trip – please comment below and let me know!

Mad Dash for Asheville – A Christmas Road Trip Series, Day Five

On Sunday morning I was awakened by my brother jumping on my bed shouting “IT’S CHRISTMAS IT’S CHRISTMAS” like a five-year-old driven mad by egg nog and holiday cheer. It was tongue-in-cheek, of course, but that didn’t make it any easier to get out of bed; I’d been finishing an earlier post in this series until the wee hours of the morning and was in no hurry to extricate myself from the warm, plush sheets in which I was encased, no matter how Christmasy a day it was. Eventually I was enticed by the promise of stockings filled with goodies.

My initial bed-clung grinching aside, it was a very pleasant and relaxing Christmas morning. We all had lots of delicious items in our stockings – the traditional Ritter Sport, some Cadbury’s, Haribo – and Michael, Emily and I each got a portable Bluetooth speaker box that sounded more like a mid-size home stereo. The trip to Biltmore itself was the family Christmas present, not just the destination, so getting any sort of toy at all was a pleasant surprise. This little guy is gonna be perfect for backyard grill sessions.

Christmas morning didn’t end there, of course – we still had to head down and eat another delicious buffet breakfast! I was very impressed with the staff that were working on Christmas day; no one seemed unhappy to be there and the service was as excellent as it had been during the rest of our stay. One of the shuttle bus drivers had mentioned to us the previous day that, during peak times (like Christmas), the Biltmore estate employs nearly 2000 people, making them the largest employer in the area. The food was just as delicious as the morning before. We’d need the energy, too, as we were returning to the house to take the audio-guide tour and see the place in daylight.

Following breakfast, we headed back up to the room to read from the Advent devotional book that my grandmother had given us. The Christmas day devotional posited an interesting take on the birth of Christ that I hadn’t thought of before. His being laid in a manger was an act of humility, of being placed on the level of human beings, but the manger holds another symbolism – it’s the place where the creatures of the earth come to get food and nourishment. Jesus, the “bread of Life,” born in Bethlehem (“place of bread” or “bakery” in Hebrew), was born and placed in a manger, the feed trough, on earth. It seems sort of obvious, in retrospect, but it was still a cool way to think about Christmas that was fresh to my ears. We finished our devotional time and got dressed for the day and hopped on a shuttle back to the house.

Biltmore was different during the day, but no less impressive. The audio headsets the staff passed out to us filled in a few gaps about the house that we’d missed the first night of our visit, including a few nice anecdotes about the Vanderbilt family and the daily routines of the servants and staff. I got the impression more and more that George never clung to his wealth or status, but enjoyed both without taking advantage of or belittling others. Workers and servants at Biltmore were paid New York-level wages, which would have been much higher than anywhere else in the area. They had hot and cold running water, electricity, and nice rooms. Mrs. Vanderbilt personally bought gifts for every worker’s child each Christmas. It really seems like the people who lived and worked at Biltmore genuinely admired George and Edith, rather than fearing them.

We had an early dinner reservation time (4:45pm!), so we didn’t waste any time getting back to the Inn at the conclusion of our second walk-through. The Christmas day dinner was the most formal of all the meals we were to eat, so we all dressed our best and then headed downstairs. We were seated in a small room away from the main dining area, and the quieter, more intimate setting made the meal all the more special.

The four-course dinner menu carried a host of stunning options – Dad, Mike, and I started with paper-thin slices of bison sprinkled with blue cheese, while Mom had butternut squash ravioli, and Emily enjoyed some king prawns on a bed of corn pudding. The salad course had three different choices (Mike decided to go for the parsnip and apple soup). When it came to the main course, however, there was only one choice – grilled filet mignon. Four of us (the carnivores) ordered it, and Emily went with the grilled salmon. The meat was tender, flavorful, and perfectly cooked; I have to count it as some of the best meat I’ve ever tasted.

Not to be outdone by the other courses, dessert put in a strong showing on the menu as well – chocolate flourless cake, pear tart, and egg nog cheesecake. We decided to be a clever family and get at least one of each. The sit-down dinner was probably better for me since the portions were limited to what they brought, rather than what I decided I could fit on my plate.

Stuffed with Christmas food and Christmas spirit, we headed back up to our rooms to get a head start on packing for the journey home to Texas. We’d be striving, once again, for maximum trip efficiency, so we wanted to have our act together before we visited Antler Hill Village one last time in the morning. Emily, however, was jonesing for some physical activity, so she convinced Mike and I to head down to the Inn’s fitness room to work off some of our Christmas dinner. The fitness room was sparse and intimate, but it had enough equipment to get the job done. It didn’t even occur to me that it might seem strange or  counter-intuitive to be working out on Christmas day, on vacation, (don’t most people save that for their new year’s resolutions?) until I noticed that we were the only people there! It did feel nice to get some exercise, though, after spending the last week doing little besides eating and walking.

When we returned to the room, we each got as packed as we could and headed to bed. I had spent the last few nights writing posts late, but this night I decided to turn in early. I’d have plenty of time to write in the car the next day anyway.

Mad Dash for Asheville – A Christmas Road Trip Series, Day Four

Day four, Saturday, started at a pretty leisurely pace, but we eventually made our way downstairs to the main dining room for breakfast. And what a breakfast it was – panoramic windows around the tables provided amazing views of the estate below the Inn, and of the cloud-haloed mountains beyond. We were treated to fresh-squeezed orange juice and organic fair-trade coffee before we got to the real deal: a trip to the breakfast buffet.

A more-than-capable chef was on hand to prepare omelets and waffles to order. The omelet he made for me (bacon, mushroom, and spinach) was perfectly cooked and expertly flipped, and the waffles were like crisp puffs of sweet air – golden-brown and crispy on the outside yet fluffy on the inside. There were grits, hash browns, bacon (the same applewood-smoked that I’d eaten on my burger the night before, likely made from a pig raised on the estate), cheese blintzes, and all manner of fresh pastries and fruits to choose from as well.

It was our strategy to load up during breakfast so we’d be fueled and able to make it the whole day until dinner time (more on that in a bit). With such a huge spread available in the morning, I was happy to go right along with the plan. Once we finished breakfast, we hopped on another shuttle that went elsewhere on the estate, down to Antler Hill Village. The village is home to the Biltmore winery, the farm, and an exhibit of Tiffany lamps that were made around the time that the Vanderbilts lived on the estate.

The first stop was the outdoor adventure center, where Emily signed up for a trail ride on a horse. The remaining four of us wandered over to the winery. That building had originally been the estate’s dairy, but when that business moved off the estate, current owner William Cecil (George Vanderbilt’s grandson) converted it into a winery, a process that was completed in 1985. In the basement of the building, we saw some of the old creamery equipment as well as a sampling of George Vanderbilt’s wine library.

Before touring the winery itself, we stopped to sample a few of the wines on offer in the tasting room. Biltmore winery has a pretty wide selection of wines, many of which have won awards in national and international competitions. Once we’d tried several from across the spectrum of flavors, we decided that we’d take at least one of them back to Texas with us. A tour guide led a large group of visitors (including us) through the winery to see how Biltmore’s still and sparkling wines were made. The sparkling wine process was particularly fascinating, because it’s the same labor-intensive, traditional French process that’s used to make champagne – they just can’t call it champagne because they don’t use grapes from the Champagne region of France to make it.

After getting our fill of the wine and the winemaking process, we walked through the Tiffany lamp exhibit (absolutely gorgeous; I wish I’d been allowed to take some pictures) and then made our way to the creamery, where all the ice cream is hand-made using milk from cows on the estate. I was the lone taker on vanilla (traditional recipe used since 1900) and the others went with the flavor-of-the-month: peppermint. Both flavors were delicious, though we felt a little guilty eating ice cream without Emily.

She finished her trail ride shortly after that, so we got back on the shuttle headed for the Inn, which happened to make a stop at the stables as well. With Emily back in our party, we were ready to make another stop by the house to see the extensive gardens on the grounds beside it. Before heading down to the walled garden area, we explored some of the “lawn” on the side of the house that overlooked the land stretching beyond into the mountains. I imagine that this yard must have been used to play a game of stickball at some point.

The “walled garden” itself wasn’t as impressive in the winter time as it must be during the spring when the azaleas are blooming, but the great Conservatory garden held a breathtaking array of diverse and colorful plants. Carefully climate-controlled so that every kind of plant might be seen all year round, the greenhouse Conservatory contained everything from orchids and plumeria to pineapple and cactus plants!

Once we were all plant-ed out (we had to drag mom away), we took the shuttle back to the Inn to get ready for dinner. Our Christmas package included a buffet Christmas dinner in the Vanderbilt dining room, so we took the opportunity to dress ourselves up a little for the occasion.

When we were seated at our table for dinner, we were informed that there were not one, but two, buffet rooms – one for cold food/appetizers and desserts, and one for the hot food. The selection was once again enormous. I started with shrimp cocktail, crab bisque, and fruit salad, and then entered the second buffet room to pick up some roast beef tenderloin, wild rice, roast potatoes, and a well-toasted ciabatta roll. We all went back for seconds because everything was too good to eat just once! Mike and I wrapped up our pre-dessert eating with a meat tour plate – seared salmon, grilled chicken, beef tenderloin, and cured ham.

Fully stuffed and satisfied, we managed to make our way back up to our room before collapsing on our beds in a food coma. And, as if the evening couldn’t get any better, we got to lay out our stockings in anticipation of a visit from Santa while we slept.