Summeresque

Is it at all possible for there to have been better weather in Seattle in April than we had last night? I think not.It was definitely happy-hour-on-a-patio weather. Sadly the War Room was closed, and service at Bill’s Off Broadway was surly to say the least (we can’t sit outside because you don’t want to walk outside to take our order? Even though there are already four tables seated there? You’re kidding me…). Luckily, King’s Hardware in Ballard came to the rescue, and while we couldn’t fight our way to a seat on the patio, we got a nice corner table near the door, complete with breeze.

And there’s certainly no lack of things to do for the rest of the weekend. Sakura Con is happening as I type this, so we’ll be going out to people watch at some point this evening I’m sure. We missed Lightning Bolt at Vera last night, after hearing discouraging rumours about a line forming at 7:00 for the 150-capacity venue, but finding out that the Americas are playing at Atlas Clothing on Sunday almost makes up for it. I’ll see an insane rock duo at some point this weekend!

Oh, and I just bought my plane ticket to San Francisco for APE later this month. Should be a good palette cleanser after the tights-and-capes fest that was Emerald City Comicon. APE is the only reason I’ve been back to California for two years in a row, and this year Bryan Lee O’Malley and Hope Larson will be in attendance, making it especially enticing.

I think that’s about it for now. Time for a trip to the library, perhaps. More later…

A Busy Month

This month has barely started, and already it feels full. I’ve got so many events to go to and projects to work on, it’s hard not to feel excited an overwhelmed.

First up is my impending trip down to San Francisco tomorrow night, to attend the 2006 Alternative Press Expo, meet up with California friends, and just generally live it up.

Then, as soon as we get back, we’ll be heading to Neumo’s to see Subtle, Fog and Jel on the 11th. Then there’s a free Calexico in-store at Easy Street Records in Queen Anne.

That weekend I’ll be heading up to my hometown of Abbotsford, and then on to visit family in that area of BC, some of whom I probably haven’t seen in over a decade. Sadly, I’ll have to miss the baby shower that Serene organized for Tracy that weekend though.

After about a week of relaxation, we’ll be hitting up a records number of shows, seeing Mates of State, Pinback, and the Books. We would’ve gone to see David Sedaris too, but that sold out immediately.

While all this is going on, I’ll be scrambling to get my latest EP mixed down and mastered (panicNow is working in mostly analog for the mastering process now, so I’m excited about that!), and get artwork done. I’m hoping for a release on Belladonna Records by the end of the month…we’ll see. I also need to have a new track ready for a compilation on that label by May 15th. And I still haven’t settled on a new artist name…

Oh, and I’m also working on a ground-up redesign of this site.

So, if I seem a little out of breath, that’s why.

More later…

Split Personality Blogging

So there’s a new blog on the block. I give you now: the Successless Comics Blog (temporary title). Just a way to separate out the comics-related content from all the personal/musical/random content here, and give it a dedicated space of it’s own to live in. If you’re into that sort of thing, check it out. If not, well, the main blog will now be pretty much comics-free. In case you cared.

Day Six/Seven

More Cheese Blintzes and hash browns for breakfast. Good times.

Serene went off to visit her Grandpa on Friday, and Joey needed to get some work done for his latest web client, so Emily and I went out to the University district to do some browsing and shopping. I finally found a new CD store (you’d think it would be easier here), and an all-used CD store, and picked up the new Sleater-Kinney (limited edition with DVD), Daedelus’ Exquisite Corpse, and Jawbox’s Jawbox and For Your Own Special Sweetheart. Also went over to the University District branch of Zanadu comics and snagged a copy of Penny Century #6 and a bunch of Palookaville comics.

University Street in Seattle is packed with little boutique clothing stores, and I could easily go broke shopping at them. Well, if I was the type to spend $62 on pants and $112 on a sweater. But it seems like there’s tons of outlets for small-run designer t-shirts in a variety of styles. One shop we stopped at even had a few Tokidoki shirts in stock. There are also some pretty cool used/vintage stores in the area, and I snagged a Duck Hunt T-shirt at the Buffalo Exchange.

Later in the evening, it was back to Blue C Sushi for another excellent meal. There was a bit of a wait for a table tonight, so we went upstairs for some cocktails first. I had a Kappatini, which is essentially a cucumber martini. Soooooo refreshing. And we chowed down on the seemingly endless supply of sushi and tempura and noodles and puff pastries, and more cocktails (of course) before picking up a couple bottles of champagne and heading back home.

Saturday was the Sasquatch festival in George, Washington, at the Gorge Ampitheatre. Basically, the Gorge is a large stage set against the backdrop of the Columbia River gorge, and incredible view of dropped into the middle of some flat, ugly badlands in central Washington. It’s a pretty amazing place to see a show. We ended up arriving at about 2 or 3, after the first few bands had started, but we got there in time to catch the Arcade Fire’s set. They were pretty cool. I hadn’t heard them before, and they’re probably not something I’d listen to on my own, but they were inventive and energetic (especially the guy running around banging a crash cymbal wildly). Wilco came on shortly after, and played a long set with lots of songs ending in prolonged washes of noise and feedback. It was weird to see them in such huge venue, but it worked pretty well.

There was a bit of a break between bands we wanted to see, but the next act was Joanna Newsom at 7:00. I was excited to see her, but I was afraid this venue wouldn’t do her justice at all. Fortunately, she was on one of the smaller side stages, where we could get up pretty close and the sound was nice and clear. She opened her set by walking to the front of the stage, past all the mics and monitors, and singing as loud as she could into the audience, making eye contact with a lot of the crowd and getting everybody to clap along for her. Then she sat at her harp and played “Bridges & Balloons,” to overwhelming response. She proceeded through most of her album, as well as a B-side (from the “Sprout & the Bean” single) and an amazing new song that seemed to go on forever. The crowd was great, and everytime she asked what we wanted to hear, there were all sorts of enthusiastic shouts from the crowd.

The final stretch of the evening was Modest Mouse and the Pixies. I missed about half of Modest Mouse’s set due to being stuck in a food line for about an hour, but I could still hear them from where I was standing. I was surprised to them as a 6-piece band when I finally got back to the green with my cheeseburger. Whatever happened the good ol’ power trio days? Although the added cello and 2nd drummer were kind of cool…

Amazingly enough, there was a bit of a mass exodus after Modest Mouse’s set. Philistines. The setup for the Pixies took forever, and I’m convinced the front-of-house engineer was just showing off by directing the mixing over the PA (”OK check….check…Uhhhhhhhh….We can take down 250 a bit in channel 9….and boost about 2db at 1200 on Kim’s monitor….”). It was worth it when they finally took the stage though, sprinting through a tight set with hardly any full stops between songs. The setlist was a Pixies fan’s wet dream, with all the big hits you would expect, and a few great oddball songs. Nothing too out there though.

The 2-hour drive back to Seattle at midnight was a little daunting, but we pulled it off, mostly with Serene behind the wheel. We staggered back home exhausted, dehydrated, and totally spent and collapsed on the floor.

Not sure what’s in store for today. Serene & I apparently slept in until 2, and Joey and Emily had taken off somewhere. Not sure what they’re up to, or when they’ll be back, but we’ll see what the day brings, I guess. Might go see John’s friend Kyle do a broadcast for KEXP sometime later. We shall see….

More later….

Day Four/Five

Day Four passed mostly in a blur of borderline heat exhaustion. We went a few blocks from Joey’s, to the Hi Point Cafe for a late breakfast, followed up with a trip to Verite Cafe for coffee and cupcakes. (I’m totally becoming the need-three-cups-before-noon type here). Reed had to leave for the airport early in the afternoon, so he departed and then the rest of us napped and lounged around the house for a few hours.

After we were somewhat recovered and mobile, we headed downtown to the Honey Hole for dinner and a start to the drinks. The Honey Hole is an interesting, tiny little bar/grill type place with huge portions. I wasn’t feeling too hungry, so I stayed with the artichoke dip, and everyone else had garden burgers (two patties! Jesus!) and sandwiches of various sorts. From there it was over to Bar?a, a nice chill little lounge, sort of pseudo gothic, with huge pimped-out velvet booths, for a few drinks.

From there it was another exciting night of card and dice games and Hefeweizen at the homestead. Not too shabby for a low-key 26th birthday.

Today we went for a walk around the neighborhood for a while, ending up down at the Arboretum swingset. It was a pretty hellish walk back, due to the huge Seattle hills and California-summer-esque weather, but the heat has been a worthwhile tradeoff for how beautiful it’s been.

Joey and Emily went to see Star Wars this afternoon while Serene and I walked around Pike Street and the surrounding area (but not the eponymous market). I picked up a Ubiquity Records T-shirt reading “Music is the weapon of the Future” in a nice hand-drawn font, cream and brown, and some Forlorn Funnies comics down at Zanadu on 3rd. Went on a fruitless search for a CD store, with the goal of picking up the new Sleater-Kinney, and whatever else catches my eye of course, but we didn’t end up finding anything. So we just met Emily and Joey back at the car and picked up lasagna fixins’, which we are now preparing. Dinner tonight is gonna kick some fucking ass!

More later….

Odds and Ends

I’m officially busy for the next couple weeks. Like, leave me the fuck alone busy. I’m looking for a new place to move into within….oh, a little over 14 days. I’ve committed myself to some remix work which is due in the same timeframe (which I’m very excited about, but don’t want to talk about too much). And of course, the usual work and social business. But I’m feeling a little stressed.

On the remix topic…I got my first remix back from the Apparel remix kits, and mailed out the last two of about 14 that I sent. Now I just have to wait for them to trickle in. I’ll probably do up the first batch as a release for my Airliner website, complete with cover art, etc., and post the rest as they come in. I’m hoping to post those up in a month or so? We’ll see. I’d like to do it before I go visit Joey in Seattle, or shortly thereafter.

Did I mention that I played the first ever Airliner live set a while ago? I busted out my Ableton Live versions of Jacket and Skirt at North Light Books & Cafe’s open mic night. It went well…relatively well-received, considering the crowd consisted of everything from jaded indie rockers, college poets, old folkies, and bluegrass dudes. I still need to set up the rest of the songs in Live, but I’m not sure yet how I’m gonna do some of the drum tricks I’ve come to rely on in Buzz. But I haven’t really scratched the surface of Live’s abilities yet either, so I’m optimistic.

Picked up Flight Volume Two yesterday. I meant to grab it at APE (see previous post), but I’d all but spent myself out of house and home by the time I found out they were selling it there, and at that point, it was either Flight or my Cloonan original. I’m happy with my choice. I read through the book cover to cover last night though, and it was excellent. Over 400 pages of comics from relatively established and totally unknown artists, with stand-out efforst from Hope Larson, Kazu Kibuishi, Becky Cloonan, Jen Wang, Kness, Doug Holgate….jesus, there’s too much quality in this book.

Well well…more later, I suppose….

APE 2005

I spent a lot of time and way too much money at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco yesterday. But it was oh so worth it.

Highlights:

A Becky Cloonan Original, page 10 of Demo #11. My first piece of original comic artwork.

2 Color guides by Steve Oliff from the Epic edition of Akira. Pages 309 and 310 from Volume 6. These will be framed and hung next to each other soon.

And the rest of the haul: From top to bottom, left to right: Berlin #9 and 10, by Jason Lutes; Street Angel #5 by Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca; Slow News Day #3 and 6, by Andi Watson; A promotional print by Jeffrey Brown; Cerebus: Latter Days, the Last Day, and Rick’s Story by Dave Sim and Gerhard; Acme Novelty Library #6 and 12, by Chris Ware; Sparkle, a beautifully printed mini-comic by Frank Stockton; My Love is Dead/Long Live My Love by Paul Hornschemeier; I Am Going to Be Small and Miniature Sulk by Jeffrey Brown, both customized with small sketches; Hey 4 Eyes!, an amazingly detailed zine about all things glasses related (with cover by Derek Kirk Kim); the Snakepit Book by Ben Snakepit; and Daisy Kutter: the Last Train, by Kazu Kibuishi.

Sweet Jesus…breathe in….

Also, I got signatures from all three Hernandez Bros. on my copy of Love and Rockets Vol. 2 #10, from Daniel Clowes on my copy of David Boring (including some art customization), and on my copy of Clumsy by Jeffrey Brown (with more art customization).

Goddamn, that was a trip. I also picked up assorted pins and stickers, and saw sooooo much eye candy it was unbelievable. As fun as APE is, I’m glad it’s only once a year. My bank account couldn’t handle any more than that.

More later…

Asplode

Explosions in the Sky at Cafe du Nord on Friday was pretty awesome, even if I was subjected to some pretty boring self-help-core by the opening act, Lazarus. Explosions are one of the crispest sounding live bands I’ve heard, just really beautiful and clear and together. Absolutely gorgeous. I couldn’t see them at all, what with the low stage, and the jam-packed crowd, but I didn’t really need to.

By the way, this is my first post from my new laptop. It’s about time. The clicking noises my hard drive was making have been really bugging me, and they were especially worse this morning, so I decided to a quick back-up…and I’m glad I did, since I got my favorite error message (Operating System Not Found) shortly thereafter. Oh me oh my.

Finished reading From Hell yesterday, and couldn’t help but think of Libra, another fictional tale based on actual events that I recently finished. Both are fictional “what-ifs” centered around historically significant murders (the Jack the Ripper killings, and the JFK assassination, respectively), that stay very close to historical records, while introducing elements of narrative invention to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. From Hell includes some extensive annotations, detailing departures from historical record and the author’s speculation, as well as a short epilogue describing the evolution of our knowledge of the events as filtered through successive generations of theorists, and the inevitable distortion and loss of the primary sources, through time, distance, and misplaced authority. That short read was almost as interesting as the story proper. I wish there was a set of annotations or meta-narrative for Libra as well. Maybe there is….I’ll have to track it down….

More later…

My Exciting Life, mk. 182

I’ve been a bad boy and downloaded more music than I can listen to for a while. I think I’m pretty set for tunes, as I’ve been grabbing a wide variety of stuff off of slsk. Highlights: Make Believe, Explosions in the Sky, Do Make Say Think (playing at Bottom of the Hill soon…hmmmm), the Minus 5, the new Venetian Snares album, Giant Sand, This Bike is a Pipe Bomb, and tons more. I’ve also been trying out Tag & Rename, which has quickly become an indispensable program. I love it.

Been reading a lot of Daniel Clowes comics too. I found a copy of Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron at Tree Horn a while ago, and I downloaded Eightball #22 (the Ice Haven issue, which I haven’t been able to find a physical copy of), and picked up Twentieth Century Eightball at Clark’s. Since I’ve read so much of his stuff lately, I’m pondering a big ol’ post with thoughts/interpretations/impressions of all of it. But of course, that woudl require time and motivation. So chances may be slim.

Went to another Left of the Dial show at the Last Record Store, this time with Life in Braille, Hanalei, Santiago, and the New Trust. I’m shocked that Life in Braille is still around, although somewhat changed, but they sounded pretty good tonight. Still living up to their glammed-out math rock heritage. Santiago was great also; it was my first time seeing them, and apparently, their last time playing. Nothing like being the last one to the party, hmm? The New Trust was the New Trust. They’re good. I skipped out on their set last weekend, to spend some quality time at Volpi’s, since I knew I’d get to see them again soon anyways. And tonight I did. Yay me.

I’m supposed to fix my parents’ computer tomorrow. I think I’m going to have to quarantine them from using Internet Explorer from now on. I already removed tons of viruses and spyware a few months ago, and apparently it’s already in bad shape again. Thinking about going to see Donnie Darko in the evening too…we’ll see how that works out.

More blah de blah coming soon kids….

Dizzle Fo Shizzle

Sweet Jeezy Chreezy, it’s back in the Hizzy, yo! Broadband in the Hizzouse, G!

Ahem.

So yes, I’m back from dial-up purgatory, and once again basking in the sweet nurturing nectar-y goodness of broadband. Which means that now I can blame my sad state of internet addiction for my lack of any productive activities, and not just my own lack of motivation. See, I’m a victim! It’s not my fault now!

So yeah. I did roughly jack shit for the past couple weeks. Sue me. I tinkered away with Buzz, but didn’t really get anything going to far. I read some comics. I read more of Libra. I played some music. I started learning how to do the ultra math-rockin’ two-handed tapping stuff that I like so much (except when done by wanky hair-metal guitarists).

But yeah, other than that, noting. I read Eightball #23 a few times, and feel like I should read it a few more. Next time I’m in Berkeley, I’m going to make sure to pick up as much Dan Clowes as I can carry. I already had Ghost World and David Boring, and already loved both of them, but this cements my love for him. If I feel real ambitious I’ll post some thoughts. I’ve been entertaining the notion of returning to some sort of regular review format here, but we’ll see how I do with that. There are impending and continuing distractions that will probably kick that idea to the curb.

More later, suckas.