Scattershot

Goddamn. The Capitol Hill Block Party. Or, as the chalkboard behind the bar in the Comet Tavern referred to it, the Capitalist Hill Block Party. Whatever you call it, it was a blast. For 24 measly dollars, I saw a ton of bands, including local faves Band of Horses, Sera Cahoone, Common Market, and Minus the Bear, plus out-of-towners like Silversun Pickups. Sure, some of the acts weren’t my cup of tea (Himsa, Murder City Devils, I’m looking at you!), but overall, it was well worth it. You take the good with the bad at these festivals, and in there was way more good to be had here than otherwise. I even took some pictures, although it’s somewhat telling that most of them are of us inside a bar…Serene has some better pictures up too.

Blogging has been slow here, though I’ve been blogging up a storm over at Vox. There’s something very easy and inviting about it. I think I’m hooked. I have an invite if you’d like to try it out…e-mail me. My first name at this domain.

Still planning on souping this site up a bit….eventually. I started a design I liked, and have since fallen out of love with, although I learned a few things while doing it, so it wasn’t a total waste. But I have a new idea to try out, soonish. I need to get the Adobe suite re-installed on my PC soon, so I can do some of the scanning I’ll need to do to make that design happen. Oh, and I picked up O’Reilly’s Programming PHP at Half Price Books last night, so that gives me some more tools to play around with (assuming I can find some time to sit down and get my hands dirty).

Blah blah….more later, as usual.

Holiday Crawl

Last night was such an amazing blur. For starters, it was Mojito Monday at the Broadway Grill (AKA Gay Denny’s) on Broadway. $4 Mojitos are nice, but even cheap Mojitos should be better than the ones we were served. They were a little weak and limey for my tastes. And besides, after the amazing, crisp and balanced ones we had at Havana (which, with that name, you would expect them to know their way around a Mojito) during Pride weekend, it’s hard to settle for an inferior mix.

But that was just the beginning. Since the Holiday comes mid-week, our Monday was essentially Monday and Friday all rolled into one, and Mondays are $2.50 well drink night at the infamous Cha Cha lounge. Cha Cha is probably my favorite Capitol Hill bar, for several reasons. Namely: Stiff drinks, cheap happy hour, and amazing people watching. Cha Cha is hipster heaven, and tonight was no exception.

Our first encounter though, was a loudly, obnoxiously, humorously drunk trust fund baby from Mercer Island who challenged us on our comics nerd credentials (with Marvel references only, sadly…he was in over his head). But between Valarie zinging him on Jewishness and me calling him out on owning an Audi (a burst of intuition on my part), he was out of his league. The 40 of PBR didn’t help him any, especially when he started accusing people of LARPing (an activity I take pride in having NEVER participated in, despite my other geek cred).

After our 2nd round, we decided it was time for a quick snack to keep us on our feet (literally in some cases), and headed over to Hot Mama’s pizza. Much to our dismay, they closed early, despite the holiday bar crowds on the streets. This gave us a chance to try out Juliano’s, the tiny new pizza place next to the Baltic Room. Juliano’s is the shit…freshly made pizza by the slice with your choice of toppings (none of that pepperoni-pizza-under-a-heat-lamp bullshit here, thank you), with vegan pizza options. Super dope.

Since the night was still young, we slipped back into the Cha Cha for a final round, where we saw the most incredible displays of hipster “fashion.” The guy in the black-and-white striped shirt was a beret away from a full-on faux French shtick, but the prize for the evening was taken by a couple who came in, him in tennis shorts and molester mustache, her in a Studio 54 style, way-too-short brown velour jumpsuit and gold belt (at navel height, no less), topped with a horribly unkempt mullet of the worst white-trash variety. That was too much for us. We either had to leave, or risk getting beat up for making rude comments, so we chose the former.

We could have chosen to continue the evening at Crescent Lounge, but decided we’d hit our limit and headed home. Nothing beats a midweek holiday when it comes to debauchery, I tell you.

Capitol Hill Tribute

This past Saturday, a party was held at the Seattle Center (site of the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project, for non-locals), a benefit and celebration dedicated to the victims of the recent Capitol Hill Murders. While the idea of seeing the victims’ community pull together and put on a communal display of remembrance and PLUR, I have to admit that the main attraction was the live performance by breakcore messiah Venetian Snares.

The day got off to a worrisome start though, as rain put a damper on the outdoor stage, and forced events inside. We came down for the kick-off, but the rain drove us away during happy hardcore DJ Jimni Cricket’s set (which wasn’t really my cup of tea anyways). Sadly, this meant we had to miss Calvin Johnson’s set, but we really weren’t prepared for the weather, and made plans to head back later.

By the time we returned, the event had been moved indoors, to the Food Court building, which was a rather surreal experience. We waited through a few DJ sets, including DJ Dan (with an accompanying three-person balancing act that was pretty breathtaking) and the incredibly animated Donald Glaude, and ran into fellow Em411 members The Square Root of Evil and Sohcahtoa, before the main (as far as we were concerned) event.

Venetian Snares was taking the stage as we returned from the nearby bar (yes, we got to drinking a liiiiiiittle early that day, sue me). The anticipation from the crowd was exciting to see…There had been a shift in the demographic of the crowd as the evening wore on, with the candy rave set slowly being replaced by an older, hipper (for lack of a better word) group, although the rave kids that were still there seemed equally excited. After a slowly building intro, featuring one of the orchestral tracks from Rossz Cillag Allat Sulletet, the breakbeat madness began in full effect. Instant chaos. splintered 240bpm Amen breakbeats echoed of the walls of the nearby Orange Julius and Starbucks, possibly the first and last time such a scene would ever occur. Security guards took to the front of the stage as an honest-to-god mosh pit broke out. The pit actually threatened to shut down the show (apparently they’re illegal in Seattle? WTF?), but the bewildered rent-a-cops didn’t bring that hammer down, fortunately. Aaron Funk, the twisted genius behind Snares, didn’t appear to care about any of that though, calmly fucking over the output of his CD turntables with a variety of digital effects and pitch-mangling.

Doormouse had the unenviable task of following up that devastating set, and was totally hamstrung by an unforgiving sound setup and a thinning crowd. He pulled of a workmanlike set full of interesting twists (live vocals and looping, lots of audio processing, and weird, weird songs), but didn’t seem to live up to his potential at this moment.

It was all over too soon, but the good news was delivered shortly thereafter: there was an after show featuring Doormouse and Venetian Snares (and KJ Sawka, who had been bumped for time reasons) at the Capitol Hill Arts Center (the venue that housed the infamous rave the evening prior to the shootings this event commemorated).

That show turned out to be the real main event of the day. The Lower Level section of CHAC is a 21+ venue in a tiny, low-ceilinged room, with an adjoining bar (where we ran into SROE and Sohcahtoa again, along with Umami and John). KJ Sawka started off by playing intense drum n’ bass with live drumming (Ho. Ly. Shit.) and triggered electronics. Watching him was amazing, sitting at a drum kit with a narrow, raised kick drum, two snares, and a multitude of small cymbals, all of which was draped with cables connected to a handful of percussion trigger pads, a laptop, and other gear. The crowd absolutely insisted he play an encore, and he obliged with a flurry of drum rolls and fills that sounded like a cavalcade of funk breaks played in double time.

Doormouse was much more at home in this setting, with much clearer sound and a more receptive audience. He also played a much harder set, with far more breakcore elements that his earlier set, and many other crazy non-sequitirs, like his spastic Tom Jones cover and sampled elements of Nightmare Before Christmas. The volume in the small room had also been cranked to a pummeling level by this time, contributing to the harsh feel of his music.

Even Venetian Snares topped his earlier set, playing harder, faster, more chaotic, and much darker material than he had at the Seattle Center (where he had apparently been forced to self-censor his more confrontational pieces), blazing through track after track with no breaks, and whipping the dancefloor into a total frenzy while he worked through a series of Heinekens handed to him from the crowd. Breakcore at it’s best is the death metal of the electronic world, and Aaron Funk made that comparison completely obvious and valid that night, by virtue of sheer extremity.

We left at 2am, ears ringing, and strolled home through the post last-call crowds on Capitol Hill, a melange of drunks from all social circles and sexualities scrambling to make that last-minute hook-up happen, or just trying to walk straight to some after hours party and avoid the vomit on the sidewalk. Something about that end to the evening just seemed to accentuate the life-affirming aspect of an evening at the extreme dark ends of the musical spectrum.

Nerd Patrol

So we have this place in Downtown Seattle, I’m sure they have them in other cities too, called GameWorks. It’s basically a video arcade, with a couple of distinguishing features. First of all, all the game machines are rigged to take a refillable swipe card instead of quarters. Instead of dragging pockets full of change, or tokens, from machine to machine, you just keep your card with you and swipe it to play. Which, of course, makes it really convenient to spend a lot on gaming, since you’re not spending the money directly. Works sort of like casino chips do in that sense, and I’m sure it ends up costing more in the long run. I haven’t had the courage to do the math yet…

Anyhow, the second distinguishing feature is the upstairs bar. I don’t think much elaboration is required there. Drinking and video gaming, two activities that go great together and were previously limited to being a home-based entertainment. Need I say more?

So Serene and I are heading down there on Saturday night, to kill a little time (I know, how romantic, right?), and walking past the bus stop on Olive, we see a girl with cat ears. And suddenly it hits me…this weekend is Sakuracon. The giant anime convention. At the Washington Convention Center. 4 blocks from my house and almost directly across from Gameworks.

With a sense of impending doom, we press onwards. It’s pretty obvious at this point that Gameworks will be crawling with anime nerds, but we want to check it out, for confirmation, and for the sheer spectacle of it all. As we round the corner on Sixth and head South to Pike Street, a gaggle of costumed otaku, giddy and smelling of alcohol, stumble onto the sidewalk in front of us and rush off to the convention. The two blocks surrounding the convention center are a mixture of confused locals and oblivious cosplayers (my particular favorite being the topless guy with two six-foot long plastic axes and a huge red collar obscuring the lower half of his face). We catch a glimpse of neon-haired princesses and warriors hanging out in a classy hotel lounge.

When we make it to Gameworks, there’s a line out the door, and we can see through the windows that even the lamest games are in use. I guess I’m not getting my Mr. Driller and Tekken 4 fixes tonight. But at least it was an entertaining walk.

Undependence Day

Happy belated birthday America. I spent the fourth hanging out in Middletown, which is not somewhere I would normally be excited to go to, but it was fun nonetheless. Especially with Serene and Joey and Emily and Erin and Morgan and assorted friends and relatives and pets thereof. And of course, copious amounts of Corona and Hefeweizen, a ping-pong table, and a pool.

Back up a day. July 3rd kicked July 4th’s ass all over the place. Didn’t do a whole lot during the day, other than hang out with Joey and Quinna at Aroma’s, and play some geetar with Joey, but when Serene got off work, we went down to Berkeley for a visit to Comic Relief (my first time at their new location). I picked up books to fill a couple gaps I’ve been waiting to fill, and also got the Collected Sequential and Goodbye, Chunky Rice.

Then we made our way into the city, to meet up with Nicci, Sherri, Matt, and Rachel at Cobb’s Comedy Club in North Beach, to see Hal Sparks do a stand-up set. The opening act, by local comic Kevin Katoaka was damn funny, followed up by a mediocre set by Chris Bono. Then Hal came out and pretty much rocked the house for at least an hour. It was a nice long set, with surprisingly fresh bits on a lot of topics that get a lot of stand-up play.

The sets at Cobb’s ended pretty early, and we made our way to….dare I admit it? Yes, a gothic themed strip show. It was pretty disorganized and ghetto, with a rickety looking pole on the stage and some pretty shoddy DJ work, but whatever. Tellingly, the most interesting person there was the guy who looked like a pudgy Andy Warhol in vinyl pants, who had a good 20 years on everyone there, agewise. It was a very young, very mixed crowd though, male, female, gay, straight, you name it, which I’m guessing is rather uncommon….(We even invited Hal Sparks, since he was wearing a Suicide Girls belt buckle that evening, but alas, he didn’t show).

Mmm….what else? Not a lot, really. I’ve got tons of comics on order that should start trickling in to my mailbox. More about those as they arrive. The Airliner/Mixedtape split EP is coming along nicely, but probably won’t be out for a while still. Nothing’s finalized, mixwise, but we’re getting pretty far along with our respective tracks and remixes. I’m also thinking about freshening things up around here. This design is over a year old, and while i still rather like it, I’d much prefer something new. And a new design might bring some structural changes I’ve been considering….but more about that as I come to it.

More later.

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….

Day Three

Woke up yesterday, had a mammoth dose of coffee and finished off the hash browns, and cruised on over to a game shop at 85th and Greenwood. From there we cruised over to Fremont, just to take in the sights and have some food. We had an awesome lunch at Blue C Sushi, a Kaiten Sushi restaurant with a pricing system based on the Tokyo subway lines. We’re definitely planning on heading back there in the next couple of days.

Next, we cruised on back to Joey’s place, hung out for a while, and then headed out to look at a job site Reed had worked on a few blocks from Joey’s. It was a cool little house with super spacious rooms upstairs, in a pricey looking little neighborhood. Just down the street was a pretty unique house with windows up the entire front face, strangely angled sides, a spiral staircase, etc. More hanging out out at the house commenced, Joey worked on his new web project for a bit, and me and Reed played some games, read, etc.

At about 7:30, we cruised on down to Neumo’s for the Sam Prekop show. Doors were at 8, but the show didn’t start until 9:30, so we made our way up the hill to the Elysian Brewing Co., for some Mojitos, microbrews, and meals disguised as appetizers. It wasn’t the best Mojito I’d had (which was my first, at the Tradewinds), but it wasn’t too bad. It was more syrupy and sweet than light and minty.

Anyhow, back at Neumo’s, Pit er Pat opened the show with some quirky, sort of dancy, sort of spastic indie pop. The mix was a little weird for them, and you had to move around the room to get the full effect. Joel showed up after their set, and hung out with us for the rest of the evening (this brings my em411 real-life- meeting tally to 5).

Sam Prekop took the stage shortly and played a very crisp and mellow set of light, jazzy pop, back by Archer Prewitt on guitar and a tight rhythm section. The drummer was excellent, never overbearing and always with an inventive groove. He even played without sticks for one song.

So we rolled on back to the homestead around midnight, and started in on a slightly sloshed game of Fluxx, until Emily and Serene showed up, ready to raise hell. More drinking commenced, and lots of loud laughter, jokes, games, and fun followed until the wee small hours, when we all pretty much passed out.

Today starts with coffee and Greed. Breakfast follows soon, after the wait through 5 showers. Then….who knows?

More later….

All Hat, No Cattle

Halloween was more sedate than I expected. I think it being on a Sunday had a lot to do with that. Everybody must have got the partying out of their systems on Friday and Saturday. But it was a fun Halloween nonetheless. Early in the day, I went to see Primer with Joey and Reed and Nicole (more on that later…go see it for yourself now!). Then I went back home to suit up in my cowboy gear (leather chaps, leather jacket with fringe, etc), picked up Michelle in her lovely geisha outfit, and we headed back up to Reed’s place, where we all hung out for a while. Reed and Joey and Nicole were playing this pirate themed card game that looked pretty interesting, while Michelle, Kelly, and I decorated Nicole’s sugar-skulls with icing.

Michelle and I headed out to Guerneville for a cool benefit Haunted House, We were originally planning on hitting the Guerneville downtown (Reed advised me to not get raped…so helpful), but things were pretty dead down there, so we headed back into civilization, and ended up at the Tradewinds due to lack of better options. There were some great costumes there, and a pretty tight little funk band was playing, so it was an alright time. I haven’t actually dressed up for Halloween in a while, so that was cool, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with these chaps now….

Well, the subject of cowboys has been raised, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to make an election segue (or does it?). Better, more thoughtful writers have expressed anything I would want to say elsewhere anyways. So I’ll just say this:

FUCK.

Right. So then. I traded Emily my extra wireless card for a home cooked meal the other night (and another meal again this evening), which is a pretty good deal for me. Most of the home cooking I consume involves the microwave or comes out of boxes in foil packets. I have no patience for prearing food. I demand instant gratification. But I’ve certainly got nothing against letting other people make me food. And Emily’s generally good to hang out with anyways.

What else is happening in my life? Not a lot. I’ve got two Airliner tracks in progress that are pretty far along, but I’m feeling somewhat stalled on them. It doesn’t help that I still don’t have Buzz up and running perfectly on my new laptop. Such a fickle little program…it has so many quirks and workarounds. It’s the program I dread installing most on new computers, because there are so many little details that can cause it to crash. I think I’ve got it figured out now though. Which means as soon as I find my inspiration again, I can finish up “Sweater” and “Skirt”. I think that’ll be it for my clothing EP, except that I’m toying with the idea of a remix or two also. Either by me, or others. I guess that’ll depend on if anyone else is interested in remixing one of my songs. I’d like to do a really hip-hop remix of “Panties”, but I haven’t actually started working on that yet.

I’m also re-reading The Crying of Lot 49. I’d like to re-read Gravity’s Rainbow at some point also, but that’s such a time and energy investment. Worthwhile, though. I’m on such a Pynchon kick lately….I’ve been reading what little biographical and critical information I’ve come across on the web, and becoming further and further fascinated by him.

Blah blah. More later, kids….

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…