the emerald city through the eye of my emerald-ish camera phone

The Seattle trip was great I even smiled sort of...A couple of times. And when I was sober, too. that's some shit right there. That one of the left is over looking the Puget Sound and the Alaskan Highway, Highway 99, which I assume goes to Alaska eventually. You have to cut through Canada, though, but I think they're working on building a bridge over it so Americans won't get freaked out by all the polite people. I think that's just a rumor.

I'm writing this on my friends computer, because I'm out of town again. This time for the holiday. And I always feel weird about using other people's things, but I haven't been writing that much lately, and I kinda obsess about stuff like that. I'll clear out the cache if I decide to look up any pornography. That's only common decency, right?

So, yeah, there was a story too. Seattle was great and I got to meet a lot of cool people from all over the place. The last night we were in town, Saturday night, we were left to our own devices. My interviews were done. Photos were taken. The only thing left to do was enjoy the city, more than we already had been.

A couple friends of mine came into town, the married couple whose wedding gave me the name "Charles," and my photographer knew someone who lived in Seattle and another friend was passing through town that same weekend. We all got together on Saturday night and rolled out with a decent-sized crew.

The Wife stayed back at the hotel to take a nap, so the rest of us had a couple drinks at the hotel bar and then hit one of those peep show strip club places before grabbing food and more beer at the Brooklyn. By the time we got back to the hotel, where we were planning on doing some drinking before going out, Frances Farmer's Revenge hit my intestines with a fierceness, so while everyone was getting drunk in the room next door, I was sitting in my bathroom, groaning on the bowl.

My stomach settled just when everyone started getting antsy to leave. We shambled down through the lobby and grabbed a cab on the corner. I'm not sure where this guy was from, but he was nice enough to take us all in one cab. We headed over to Charlie's on Capitol Hill, which was a bar/pub/restaurant type place that I'd visited the first time I'd visited Seattle with the married couple. It's a nice place, and it had pretty decent food. I figured we'd just start there and go somewhere else, but things deteriorated pretty fast. My photographer and his friend were wasted, the friend moreso than the photographer. The friend was hitting on the waitress even though he could barely sit up, not that I can blame him (hot), and she did her best to take it with good humor.

A table of old rocker looking dudes started to take notice of our drunken debauchery and I'm not sure when it happened, but my photographer shouted, "hey, everybody. It's the Sex Pistols!" to the shock and confusion of many, myself included. I'm not much for making a scene, or talking to anyone, really, but the old dudes at the other table just laughed it off and after my friend bought them a round (I guess to diffuse any ill will, if there was any, and I don't think there was), our two tables merged into one loud, sloppy mess.

Turns out they weren't the Sex Pistols, but one of the dudes was the drummer from LA Guns, some shlocky cock rock band back in the day whose members actually made up the "Guns" in Guns N' Roses. I think he was the drummer. Anyway, It was really surreal. One of the dudes was a comedian named Edsel and he did this really cool magic trick with a cigarette and then showed us how he did it. In actuality, it may not have been that cool, but the pretty waitress kept asking me if I'd like another rum and coke, and who was I to say no to such a nice, pretty lady? With all the talking and yelling and introducing and basically helping to carry the photographer's friend out of the back of the bar, I started to lose track of how many I'd had. People kept proclaiming they were buying rounds, I think, and when I spied over at the computer cash register, I thought I saw that our tab was well over $100 bucks, which wasn't bad considering how many of us there were and that someone had ordered food.

Another one of the old rock dudes called himself "Southside Johnny." I said that I'd heard the name before, but at the time I couldn't place it. After I'd gotten back home, I did a search for him and remembered...the dude from the Asbury Jukes. The dude who'd played with Springsteen; but the pictures I saw didn't look like the dude we met at the bar. I'm not denying that he was in a Southside Johnny, but he definitely wasn't the one I'd said I'd heard of. I got to thinking that there must be a lot of Southside Johnny's in the US, considering that every town, no matter how small it is, does, in fact, have a south side. And John is a very common name.

We never did go anywhere else. My friend told them that I work for a music magazine and kept talking us up, which was really nice of him, but it kinda caused the old rock dudes to suck up to me a bit. That kinda bummed me out for whatever reason. That's never really happened to me before, and after a couple days of having to talk up the magazine, I was just looking to forget about it and relax. I did end up giving out my card, though, because I'm a fucking whore. Southside actually called me on Monday and said he had a great time hanging out with us, and I told him the same.

I like instances like that, when you meet people you're probably never going to see again. It was kinda like my experience on the train. All your stories are new and fresh, you laugh and drink it up, then say goodnight and that's that. I'm sure there's some kind of insight there, but whatever. Here's some more pictures, and they're really really blurry.

• Disco night with bad ass DJ.
• More blurry disco madness.
• DJ spins and sings a great set of soul music.
• Old dude rocking anti-establishment, counter culture folk songs at Pike's Market. He had a great voice and good lyrics. I couldn't afford to by his CD, because the man really does got us down. I listened to his song and shook his hand instead. I guess that gives me another reason to go back.
  

frances farmer will have her revenge on my bowels

Seattle is an amazing city. It reminds me a lot of New York, but manages to stay totally different too. It helps if you go there and you're put up in a really nice hotel, though.

The trip went really well. I had a great time. I don't feel like going into too much detail, but I'm going to put up shitty pictures that I took with my cell phone camera, and they're all brilliant works of art, but it went a little something like this.

1. It only costs us $2.00 to get downtown from Seattle/Tacoma airport taking the regular city bus. The trip took all of 15 minutes--well maybe a bit longer. This was a good thing, because Seattle is pretty expensive. Not San Diego expensive, but I don't think anywhere is. But then again, everything's expensive when you don't have any money
2. Hung out at the Sub Pop office. They had a really cool dog, who the publicist I work with said "is a lot like Eeyore." We shared a deep, spiritual bond.
3. Had a loose, fun, but still awkward interview with Mark Arm and even got to meet Dan Peters, who in addition to rocking with Mudhoney, also played drums in Nirvana for a bit and was featured in the recording of "Sliver," which is one of my favorite songs. He has a kid now and that rocks too.
4. Met people from all over the world, and even "networked" with out feeling like a slimebag about it.
5. Received two free lunches and two free dinners, which was good because of the reason stated above.
6. Everything in town was in walking distance from our hotel. Well, everything we needed to go to. The weather was nice and cold, but it never rained. I don't think it got out of the 50s. I walked all over town and didn't get lost once.
7. Went to a bad ass independent book store on Capitol Hill that sold independent comics pretty exclusively. I picked up the latest issue of Optic Nerve, a book called Hey, Wait... and a couple of books by local artists.
8. Thursday night was one of the most fun nights I can remember having. Some old school New York dance music DJ was spinning as well as some kids from the event we were covering. Heard a lot of good dance and soul music and the old school DJ from New York rocked such a killer set that everyone in the room was moving. You couldn't not move. Even I was moving and I can't abide by such things.
9. Happened upon this oyster bar called The Brooklyn. I don't like oysters, but the place had killer fried calimari that came with a dipping sauce that was a secret recipe. It was real good. We were dipping bread, french fries and whatever else we could into it. It also had killer strong microbrew like evil Old Rasputin on tap. It was also really cheap.
10. I had a real Washington apple for breakfast every morning. They were free at the hotel's front desk. And the bed in the room was so nice that coming home to my bargain basement twin sort of depressing. There was also a really nice bathrobe, that I really should have stolen.

The only thing that sucked was, for whatever reason, as soon as I got off the plane pretty much, I couldn't hold down any food. I spent a good portion of each day on the toilet bowl contributing to the Seattle septic system. I think me and the water up there didn't get along. Luckily, it wasn't too debilitating. I'm still getting readjusted to being back, but tomorrow I'll post some pictures and partying the last night with some old school rock dudes. And anything else I can think of.

over 12,000 served

I should be asleep, but that's okay. I'm getting pretty tired. I'm supposed to leave here around 9am tomorrow, and it's pissing me off to no end that it'll take us longer to drive to the airport than it will to fly to Seattle, but that's the way things go when you live in cow town.

The Mudhoney interview got chopped and screwed. It's still going to happen but we're not going to be able to get the full band together for pictures. I'll be talking to Mark at his job, and I'm pretty excited. I spent all night tonight reading interviews spanning back years. It was funny to read one from 1990 and one from 2004 back to back. All those kids were such immature punks back then. Too cynical and apathetic for their age, maybe. I guess we all were like that. I don't think any of us thought we'd get to be this old.

I think R's right about the 29 thing. It seems like every day I get more depressed, and I don't have anything to be depressed about, except the inert mass of my body type and the impending, crippling doom I feel everytime I go to pay bills. I'm thinking the change of scenery for a few days will do me good, even though anything remotely work-related stresses me out to no end. I pulled a long day today to ensure things got done. I did an interview with a small-time director I really like, transcribed it and finished the feature all in one day. I should have felt more accomplished than I did. Afterwards, I realized that I didn't have a recorder that I could take for my interview tomorrow, and that caused a mini breakdown. It's like I've got PMS.

I have no idea what I'm going to talk to Mark about. I definitely don't want to say, "so you guys are still around and all the other bands you used to play with aren't. What's that like?" because that was in every recent interview I read. I suppose because it's a good question. And the few people who remember they were that band Nirvana liked were probably wondering the same thing.

I went out to Wal-Mart and bought the snazziest (really the cheapest) digital voice recorder I could find. They didn't have any of the regular tape ones. They had one of the small cassette ones, but it was just as much as the digital gizmo and they didn't have any of the cassettes it required. The digital's nice--small and light--and when I tested it out, the sound quality was really good. Afterwards, I went to In-N-Out, because it's right across the street.

So, I guess that's it until Sunday. With any luck, the gloomy cloudiness of Seattle will help me realize how good I have it hear in nauseatingly sunny California.

hypocrite

Despite my whining to the contrary, I voted on Tuesday like a good American (or bad American, depending on your interpretation). I'm kinda glad I did, too, because there was some really lame anti-abortion proposition on the ballot and it almost passed. Good thing almost doesn't count. The only thing I'm pretty vehement about when it comes to politics is the whole pro-choice thing. In a past life, I was probably burning bras.

I voted. Yay. I walked 14 blocks to get there, and then decided to walk halfway back across town to go to my favorite Chinese place to grab a fat bowl of chicken wonton soup. The place was packed, which made me happy, and if the tranquil movie score music and killer food for low, low prices weren't enough, they now employ a bevy of beautiful young Asian women who barely speak English, replacing the grouchy white dude who used to have the dinner shift. Thusly, the place will heretofore be known as Heaven on Earth, even though the men's room is one of the most frightening and aromatic bathrooms in town.

The rest of the week involved treating occupational stress with a rum 'n' coke a day. Three belated birthday gifts--a bootlegged copy of Sky High from my sister and Sonic Youth's Murray Street on vinyl and a gift certificate to the best Italian restaurant in town from my coworkers--were great pickmeups.

Tonight, I saw that MirrorMask was playing at the local arthouse movie theater, so I busted out of work early to go see it. It was good. The story was kinda shaky at times, and it was kinda obvious that Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean were still feeling out the whole making a movie thing, but considering that they only had $4 million to make an effects-heavy film, I think they did a good job. There were enough moments to make it worth the money, and it was cool to see Dave McKean's artwork come to life. The sphinxes and the Bobs ruled.

And of course, there was Lost, which was really intense this week. It definitely came back with a bang after an aggregious three-week lay off. I mean, seriously, three fucking weeks? And the week after next, the night before the most holy day of Thanksgiving, Lost will be pre-empted again for a fucking Kenny Chesney concert. Are you serious? I mean, I guess that's a big travel day and stuff, and since I'll probably be traveling myself, I can't complain. It's just...ugh.

Speaking of travel, though, I'll have to miss Lost this coming Wednesday, because I'm going to Seattle so that I may, among other things, interview one of my favorite bands in-person. I've been listening to Mudhoney forever, but still, I have no idea what the hell I'm going to talk to them about. I'm hoping divine inspiration takes hold of me in the next couple days. But I really want this one to go well. I'm not going to half-ass it. I even started doing research for it weeks ago. I'm that stoked. Still, I'm going to miss sitting on my couch watching Lost on Wednesday night, nursing a pint of Guinness, for all the obvious reasons.


Happy Thanksgiving, Evie.

look, i really hate goodbyes, so...

I'd been putting it off for a while, but tonight I finished the last disc of Season 2 of Dead Like Me. God.

I'm kinda bummed. Season 2 was really good, but nothing really gets wrapped up. I kinda got to know those characters really well. I just hope there's a wrap-up movie or something, because I feel like I'm owed an explanation.

It never ceases to amaze me that shitty shows stay on the air forever, but good stuff usually gets canned after a couple of seasons. And it was on fucking cable, so it's not like they have to worry about advertising dollars. I pay for that shit! I pay for Shotime. I'm writing my damn congressman and getting this stupid show back.

I guess we're supposed to vote tomorrow. I think the Governator called for some ridiculous special election. Honestly, I don't even know what it's all about. I'm living proof that democracy doesn't work. It's a type of government that requires a certain amount of participation by the governed, in this case me. I think politicians nowadays are banking on people like me, to be honest. They don't want me to get involved. In fact, they don't want me to show up to the polls. They want me to sit on my ass and bitch about my favorite shows getting cancelled. They want me to watch Lost and post pictures of women I'm drooling over on my blog. That's fine, I guess, because that's really all I want to do. I don't want to participate in something I don't believe in.

I don't believe government works. Not on a mass scale, anyway. Even if the majority think one way, there's still a good number of folks who get screwed. What everyone wants isn't always what's best. I dont' even know what's best, and I'm sick of the commercials trying to convince what I should and shouldn't vote for. Or even better yet, the commercials about the commercials that tell me what to vote for.

Judge Wapner of the old court show, and I believe one of the first proto-reality shows, the People's Court told me that I should vote no on Prop. 77. There are four propositions in this "special" election. The other side has a commercial that shows clips of the Judge Wapner commerical that says--basically, honestly my brain shuts off--that the Honorable Mr. Wapner is full of horseshit and that he's just talkin' crazy talk. Then John McCain, who seems pretty nice--for a republican--comes on and says we shouldn't let politicians decide what the districts are, but we should let judges draw them up, implying that politicians are not to be trusted. I totally agree, but an interesting conundrum arises from a politician telling me not to trust politicians. Judge Wapner has never steered me wrong before.

It's like that old riddle. It used to bug the shit out of me. I think it was in the movie Labrynth, but I'm sure they didn't make it up: There's two doors, one door leads to all the life and happiness you can handle (in my case, endless strip clubs full of nubile young Asian women and free lap dances--and pizza...and y'know world peace and shit like that) and the other leads to certain painful death (assumably by watching political commercials). There's one guard stationed at each door. One guard always lies, and the other one always tells the truth. Of course, you don't know which one guards which door. You only are allowed to ask one question to one of the guards to determine which door you should choose (assuming of course you'd like to follow the door that leads to endless strip clubs and world peace and not death by political propaganda).

The answer used to boggle my mind. I thought about it long and hard, but I've never been one for being able to solve such things. I love riddles, but more so when I don't know the answer and have to wrack my brain to figure out how to solve it. I always though riddles were kinda creepy and mysterious that way, which I guess they're supposed to be.

The answer to this riddle, my favorite riddle, is pretty simple. You just go to whichever guard, it doesn't matter which, and ask him (or her) which door the other guard would tell me is the door to eternal strip clubs and world peace. You then choose the opposite door. The logic behind that is if you asked that to the guard who always lied, he'd make it seem like the other was the liar, and if you asked the truthful one, he'd tell you truthfully that the other one is trying to condemn you to the tedious chattering of attention-starved politicos. Always choose the opposite door.

I'm sure there's some kind of analogy I can draw from all that, but I'd rather not bother. I'm kinda disenchanted by the whole process. I don't see how the majority of a country could vote for obvious criminals. Putting the power of who gets to make decisions that affect millions of people who al have different wants and needs in the hands of people like this, or me for that matter, seems about as logical as divine providence. At least then you can blame it on God.

mountains of madness

I took it easy this weekend. I traded bars for movies, and that was a pleasant change of pace from the last couple weeks of debauchery. Y'know, I still had booze and stuff, and I went to the bar for a drink, but that's the be expected. Otherwise, it was really low key.

I started the movie marathon off with Iron Palm, a comedic Korean melodrama pretty par for the course with other comedic Korean melodramas, which seems to make up 80 percent of all movies that come out of South Korea. Iron Palm was good because it made me laugh sometimes and it starred Yunjin Kim from Lost, who, as luck would have it, was just as dreamy off the island as she is on.

It's about this guy who has this hot and heavy and seemingly mostly physical relationship with a woman, who quite suddenly moves to Los Angeles. Five years later, dude's still torn up about it, so he learns English and, when he finally passes the TOEFL exam, gets a visa to come to the States to find her. In so doing, he leaves everything Korean about him behind, even his name, and speaks only broken English throughout the film. He finds her (Ms. Kim, of course, and a good thing he does too 'cause she fine) and hilarity and bittersweet moments ensue. It's pure cheddar, but I was kinda in the mood for that. I like a good love story, and in the absence of a good one, I'll settle for a mediocre one. Yunjin was pretty good in it too. She was raised in my hometown hood (Staten Island, bitches) so she's fluent in the English, but her facial expressions say a lot more, I think. And y'know, she fine.

I followed up this harmless piece of starcrossed fluff with Marebito, which was directed by Takashi Shimizu, the guy who directed Ju-On and its American counterpart, The Grudge.

It wasn't a horror movie in the traditional sense. Instead, I think it was more about the feeling of horror. This cameraman guy is obsessed with fear, but hasn't felt fear himself. Instead, he films people who are afraid of stuff and pines over what they're feeling. So, I guess in Japan there are these urban legends about beings that live deep in underground passages beneath the cities, and this film kinda banked on that. Being unfamiliar with these urban legends, I guess there was a bit of a cultural barrier to cross, but there usually is with Japanese films.

So cameraman guy goes down into the depths and talks to a crazy homeless dude, then has a conversation with some other dude he filmed committing suicide, then happens on to "The Mountains of Madness" where he finds a cute lil' naked woman suspiciously chained to the rocks. He brings her home, because it's only right to bring home a cute lil' naked woman you find chained to the rocks at the Mountains of Madness, and he ends up treating her like a pet. Of course, cute lil' naked women chained to rocks at the Mountain of Madness require blood for sustenance--they'll take animal blood but human blood is prefered. From this situation, absolutely no hilarity ensues, but though it might sound ridiculous, the film was really well-made and worked the whole symbolism angle to a T. It wasn't perfect, but definitely one I'd like to watch again to see if I could pick up on more clues. But it was pretty damn disturbing. The story is that Shimizu made the film in the eight days he had between finishing up Ju-On 2 and starting work on The Grudge. It seemed really personal, like a director hashing out personal demons. Pretty trippy.

I capped off a Sunday of football (and another Giants win) with The Glass House, which I bought from the Wal-Mart clearance bin. It was pretty good--entertaining and vaguely thrilling. I wish it wasn't 3:22 am, or else I'd find something else to watch.

well. at least that's over.

I turned 29 on Tuesday. It was about as unexiting as it sounds, but I tried to spice it up with a variety of events and managed to have a very good time.

I took Sunday off from my epic bender. I didn't leave the house. I had a chicken cutlet parmeggiana hero and a tray of rigatoni and meatballs delivered to my house. I had the sandwich for lunch and half of the pasta for dinner. I moped around the house. It was beautiful.

Halloween was just about the most unproductive day of work I've ever had. And that's saying something. I went to lunch at my favorite breakfast/lunch place and had my first french dip, though. I can't believe I've never had one before. Another thing to check off the list, I guess. That night, though, I went out to the bar down the block to watch a bunch of shitty punk bands and they put on a really good show. The last band that played was a Misfits cover band, and I ended up carrying a coffin with the lead singer inside into the venue. We stood the coffin straight up, he emerged, we set the coffin down and they opened with, of course, "Halloween." It seems like a lot of hoopla for a cover band, but damn they were a good time.

They kinda suck, but the Misfits kinda suck. It's a good thing they wrote such killer songs. Songs so killer, the shittier they sound, the better they are. I sang a lot and pumped my fist and raised my pint glass and howled and, for a change, let myself get really excited.

On my birthday, my desk was covered with sheets of paper wishing me a happy birthday, and my chair was wrapped in a red ribbon. I went in late and left early so I could pick up a keg for a party. I've never really picked up a keg before. I've been to plenty of keggers, but usually, I'd just get a variety of alcohol for a party. The keg was free, though, thanks to my job, so I figured why not?

A keg is an awful lot of beer, but I guess that's a good thing because the people who came ended up drinking an awful lot. So did I. One of my friends DJ'ed, we made a huge ass dinner, and people stayed till about 3am. Given the week of debauchery everyone I know has seemed to be involved in, I was happy that people actually showed up and had a good time on a Tuesday night. For gifts, I received a bottle of Bacardi bowl of bruschetta, three loaves of garlic bread, a refridgerator full of Guinnes and an adult DVD featuring Autumn Austin. Not a bad haul.

Last night was another coworker's birthday, so it was time to go out again. I had a velvet hammer, which is kinda like a black and tan made of Guinness and champagne. The first sip was just about the gnarliest thing I've ever ingested, but it got much better after that. The rest of the night was pleasant and I got home just after midnight.

Today, I'm happy that I don't have anything to do for the rest of the week. Halloween's over. My birthday's finally over. I can just sit in the house and relax. Alias was pre-empted for the Pirates of the Caribbean, but I still haven't watched the one I taped two weeks ago. I'm watching a rerun now. I don't know how old it is. But Sloane's super evil and he's not wearing turtlenecks.

a message from our lord

I got this spam e-mail in my work's inbox today. I get about 30 like it a day. It came under the subject line "Fear God and Give Him Glory," and it should be noted that it concluded with a banner for Shaadi.com, an Internet marriage arrangement site. Which sounds like human trafficking to me, I think. Enjoy! [Italicized comments are mine.]

Dearest one in the Lord,


It is my Pleasure to write to you after considering your profile [I am kinda hot from the side]. My name is Elizabeth Bine a nationality of kuwait. I am married to Mr. Lobi Bine who worked with kuwait company in Ivory Coast for nine years before he died in the year 2003. We were married for eleven years without a child [Even Tom Cruise managed to impregnate a woman. And he's totally gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that]. he died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. Before he death we were both born again Christians. When my late husband was alive we deposited the sum of $8.5Million (Eight Million five hundred thousand U.S. Dollars) [I heard you the first time] with a BANK here in COTE D'IVOIRE.

Presently, this money is still with the bank. Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last due to cancer problem [That is a problem]. Having known my condition I decided to look for some one who is a man of God, a christian individual that will utilize this money the way I am going to instruct here in. I want a a person that will use this fund to churches, or phanages, Research centers and widows propagating the word of God and to ensure that the house of God is maintained [What about strip clubs and drinking myself into a coma?]. The Bible made us to understand that Blessed is the hand that giveth.

I took this decision because I dont have any child that will inherit this money and my husband's relatives are not Christians and I don't want my family hard earned money to be misused by unbelievers. I dont want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly manner. Hence the reason for taking this bold decision. I am not afraid of death hence I know where I am going.

I know that I am going to be in the bossom of the Lord [Is it me or is that a bit presumptuous...and kinda kinky?]. Exodus 14 VS 14 says that the lord will fight my case and I shall hold my peace. I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because of my health because of the presence of my family relatives around me always. I don't want them to know about this development.

With God all things are possible [Even spam scams...]. As soon as I receive your reply I shall give you the contact of the bank where the money was deposited for you to contact them and request them to transfer the money to your account.I will also issue you a letter of authority that will empower you as the new beneficiary of this fund. I want you and the church to always pray for me because the lord is my shephard. My happiness is that I lived a life of a worthy Christian. Whoever that wants to serve the Lord must serve him in spirit and truth. Please always be prayerful all through your life [Hey, I try...]. Any delay in your reply will give me room insourcing for christian in dividual for this same purpose. Please assure me that you will act accordingly as I stated here.

Hoping to hearing from you with this email address above.

Remain blessed in the name of the Lord.

Yours in Christ,
Mrs Elizabeth Bine