C Ya

Now that the cat's out of the bag at work (and has been for a while—Friday was my last day!), it can now be told: I am moving to Seattle at the end of the month. For those of you who didn't already know, I've been planning this for a quite a while. My trip to the Emerald City back in June was in fact part vacation and part reconnaissance mission. And having checked it out as thoroughly as possible, through my visit, personal recommendations, and reading through several books (namely, this and this), I have decided to give a whirl.

As for my reasons for moving, I won't get into the details. It's just not that interesting. DC isn't doing it for me anymore. That's basically it.
And I picked Seattle because, in all my years as a so-called “army brat,” I never spent any time in the Pacific Northwest. So why not?

I'm flying out tomorrow to find an apartment. I've got three solid days of looking and hopefully securing a place to live and then it's back to the east coast to pack my stuff, sell whatever else I can, and then get the hell out of here on the 1st. Oh, and I guess I've got some hanging out to do before I go. I'm heading to the beach to spend some time with my brother and his family for a few days next week, for one. And then there's the going away party that's supposed to happen here at the house. More on that later, though.

I'm pretty fucking excited—I've never lived in my own place before. And I wanna do it right. It's supposedly a renter's market out there, but they go quick. I have only a few neighborhoods in mind and what I want is pretty specific (old building, 1BR, hw floors, cats allowed, in hip-but-not-too-hip neighborhood). Still, I am cautiously optimistic.

Wish me luck.

With or Without Darwin

Seven Words You Can't Say in Kindergarten [maybe NSFW]

RE: Creationism, intelligent design, etc. Save it for church why don't you? Remember that place? It's God's house. Why, in Sunday school, you can teach kids all sorts of cute fairy tales! Here in reality, on the other hand, evolution—a scientific theory which has about a shit ton of evidence to support it—is what we subscribe to.

Evidence...? I see you're a little confused, my little faith-based friend. Evidence is what people who care about the truth use to support what they believe in and usually consists of things that can be observed and that follow logic and stuff. Shhhh. It's OK. I know it's a lot to take in. You just go on back to pretend land now. (Eat some body of Christ. You look famished!)

I'd much rather discuss a different sort of evolution, anyway. Broadcast, a rock band from England, is set to release their third album, Tender Buttons, on Warp Records September 19th (the 20th in the US). And in the spirit of Karl Rove, the CIA, and matters of national security, the album has been leaked recently. So I've taken a few listens and would like to offer my first impressions to you. Quickly, before there's a cover-up.

For a band who, according to at least few short-sighted individuals, started out as a mere imitation of Stereolab, Broadcast's sound has progressed rather nicely. From the spacey 60's sound of The Book Lovers EP back in '97 to the more electronic, even spacier (dare I say otherworldly) debut album, The Noise Made By People, to their great follow-up album (and best record yet), 2003's Haha Sound, they've been honing their sound ever closer to that wonderful line between synthetic and organic.

It's this balance between warmth and coldness that's kept me interested in the band over the last eight years. Unfortunately for me, with Tender Buttons Broadcast has tipped the scales heavily in favor of an electronic sound. Turns out they are down to two members and the amazing drummer featured on Haha Sound is not one of them. And so goes the aforementioned warmth that was provided by a terrific acoustic rhythm section. What the new album is lacking is what previously gave the buzzing and the bleeps a place to live. Sure there are still some guitars in there. One or two tracks even feature live drums, or maybe what I'm guessing are leftover drum tracks from the sessions of the last record. And one track, the sad and serene “Tears In the Typing Pool,” is mostly guitar strumming and Trish Keenan's lovely vocal melodies. Still, the majority of these tracks feature simple drum machines and square wave synth sounds, a combination which reminds me at times of early Lali Puna or, more accurately, a little group called Tree Wave. Trish's vocals do help a little, of course, but her voice can be pretty cold—almost icy at times. To make matters worse, the band has thrown in a lot more of the digital distortion they're so fond of (see roughly any Autechre record from the 2nd half of their discography).

Don't get me wrong—it's not as if I dislike electronic music. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad album (in fact, it's been growing on me), but I suppose I'm just slightly disappointed by this new direction. It almost feels like a step back in a way. Maybe this is a progression and I'm being too close-minded. At any rate, if this is the sound of progress, I'm not sure I'm ready to move on.

MP3 - Broadcast: “Corporeal”

Closer to home, in a town to my north called Baltimore, there is a band called Wilderness. They released their self-titled debut album, which incidently happens to have been recorded in my backyard (no—not my actual backyard), on JagJaguwar back in July to some critical acclaim. They're being described as sounding like Johnny Lydon fronting Explosions In the Sky or Savage Republic; even the label says so. I can hear the Explosions connection, in those soaring guitars and in the rhythm. But instead of all the snare drumming of EITS, you get lots of tom. The Lydon thing, with vocals that are more bellowed than sung, is there too, and it almost turned me off to this band. On my first listen, I found myself thinking um...you gonna keep doing that? I got over that, though. This record is awesome.

MP3 - Wilderness: “End of Freedom”

Getting even closer to home, there is my new favorite DC band. They're called The Antiques and I'm predicting that they're gonna be huge. OK, maybe not huge, no one can predict that, but they certainly have what it takes to make some noise.

I first heard of them back in January, when I met Gregg (guitar, vocals) and Theresa (keyboards) at a show at 611 Florida. Months passed. I then learned that a friend of mine (John Rickman - Eggs, EBSK) joined the band on drums. This piqued my interest a bit, and I always try to do my best to support my friends' projects, so I made it a point to catch one of their shows. Unfortunately, it wasn't until a few weeks ago when they played a show on the back stage of the Black Cat that I finally really heard them.

And whoa. I've slept on this band way too long. How many shows had I missed? Why did it take me so long to come out and see them? This is what was going through my mind. The show they put on was just great. I was hooked from the first few songs. I'm not sure how to describe their sound, but comparisons have been made to bands like the Smiths and Felt. The guitar is jangly and tremelo-y and the vocals low and almost monotone. The rhythm section is adept—very active basslines and some incredible drumming. [When everything else dropped away during one of their songs at the show and left the bass and drums to do a sort of solo, I almost freaked out and ended up giving a yelp of approval.] The organ sounds of the keyboards compliment everything else nicely, filling out the sound a bit. Man, it's so exciting to hear a band at this stage. They only have a few singles and demos out and have just been playing shows here and there, right around town. Word is they're finishing up work on a new EP which features the updated line-up. Best thing to do is try to catch them live. The recordings I've heard so far don't quite do them justice. Still, check out one of my favorites so far, from their split single with Unlucky Atlas, and take a look at their website and MySpace page for more.

MP3 - The Antiques: “There's Nothing To Explain”

Roberts Schmoberts

Hey Karl, didn't you get The Memo? You did, didn't you, you big fat lying piece of shit...

From today's headlines at Democracy Now!:

Memo Identified Plame as Undercover
Now to the Karl Rove/CIA scandal. The Washington Post is reporting that a classified State Department memo central to the federal investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame's name as an undercover CIA operative contained information about her in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret. The Post calls it a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified. In the memo, Plame is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson. Almost the entire memo is devoted to describing why State Department intelligence experts did not believe claims that Saddam Hussein had in the recent past sought to purchase uranium from Niger, as Plame's husband Ambassador Joe Wilson asserted after his fact-finding mission to the African nation. The memo was delivered to Secretary of State Colin Powell on July 7, 2003, as he headed to Africa for a trip with President Bush aboard Air Force One. Plame was unmasked in a syndicated column by Robert Novak seven days later. Prosecutors are reviewing the phone records from that trip and have questioned several of Bush's staffers who were on that trip.

Oh, and here's that Post article. [Login with BugMeNot]

Work Makes Me Do It

Red Rover

There's a great little bio summary here (with a timeline) of Karl Rove and his political games, up-to-and-including the Valerie Plame stuff. Best of all, this page is the first thing that comes up when you Google “turd blossom.”

I do hope you know about this already, but the short of it is: Karl Rove (aka “Bush's Brain” and, yes, “turd blossom”) Bush's top advisor dude and all-out eggheaded nerdboy revenge-fantasy, leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent named Valerie Plame to reporters. Plame just happens to be married to Joe Wilson, a former US ambassador sent to Niger in 2002 by the CIA to investigate the possibility of Iraq buying uranium (for nuclear weapons) from them. Wilson found no such evidence and reported this back to home base. The Bush administration ignored his findings and used the lie (that is, that Iraq did buy uranium from Niger) as one major reason to invade Iraq. Wilson spoke out about his findings when he heard this, which in turn prompted Rove to speak out (albeit very super secret backgroundishly) about Wilson's wife's indentity as pay back. Oh, and it's important to note that knowingly outing an undercover agent is a felony. Although he didn't point to Plame by name (haha), the Bush twins could have figured out who was talking about. So here you have Rove enacting revenge on a WMDs naysayer and trying to discredit a credible source by bringing his undercover CIA wife (who actually specializes in finding WMDs, btw) into the story.

Why is Rove not saying anything? Why hasn't he been made to sit his fat ass down in front of Congress and the television camera and explain what the fuck he was thinking? What can't these people get away with?

I Got Nothin'

In lieu of a writing up a summary of my visit to Seattle (which I'm feeling increasingly ambivalent about doing), I give you this:

Jen recently tagged me for this meme where you list six of your current favorite songs. You're also supposed to tag six other people, but I only know like two or three.

Rainy Day: “Flying On the Ground”
Malcolm Middleton: “No Modest Bear”
Pernice Brothers: “Dumb It Down”
Linda Perhacs: “Chimacum Rain”
The Cure: “Secrets”
Colin Newman: “Not Me”

Since that thing came out about Nike ripping off a Minor Threat album cover for their ads [see here and here], people here have been Photoshopping corporate messages into classic (and not-so-classic) album covers, sometimes with hilarious results. Here are a few of my favs:

From Seattle

Just a quick update here, since I'm currently at this coffee house on a free 20 minutes of Internet.

Seattle is amazing. It's all hills, trees and water. I never knew, but it actually rivals SF in steep inclines and houses built on crazy angles. Huh. It rained for the first time today. Otherwise, the weather has been gorgeous everyday since I got here on Saturday. Sunny, low 70s. Fucking beautiful. And here's a factoid for all you Seattle naysayers: it actually rains less here than in New York. That is, Seattle gets fewer inches of rain per year. What makes it seem worse is that it rains more frequently here, especially in the winter. So, yeah. It's not as bad as you think, sucker.

I've been doing lots of fun shit, trying to balance touristy stuff (Space Needle, Pike Place, etc.) with less typical things. Jennifer and Kevin (my roommate's sister and her bf) took Jason and I out for a great night of seeing some really oddball/out-of-the-way stuff (the Museum of Mysteries, for example), so I got to see a few things I probably never would have otherwise. I saw Apostle of Hustle last night at Chop Suey and they were surprisingly really fucking good. I have their record and am pretty ambivalent about it, but man—the keyboardist was doing this crazy flamenco dancing on this platform and their drummer was brilliant. And there was hardly anyone there, but the club was cool. The openers were some local band called Slender Means who reminded me at times of the Pernice Brothers. They were actually really tight and made for another great surprise.

Speaking of music, Seattle has a plethora of awesome record stores. Sonic Boom, Easy Street (amazing, just went there today and had to force myself not to spend too much money), and Wall of Sound, just to name a few.

I've been taking a ton of photos, editing as I go to save room. I'll definitely have plenty to flickr when I get home.

Well, that's all I have time for. I'll post a full review when I get back to the east coast. Ugh—the east coast.

Say hi to Wally for me, Tim.

Vacation

I guess I forgot to check it earlier this week, but there are a couple of interesting inteviews over on the Onion AV site in their Animation Issue: the creators of Aqua Teen Hunger Force discuss the origins and success of the show, as well as an upcoming project called Squidbillies, and they talk with Billy West (of Ren & Stimpy fame) about working on Futurama, a possible Futurama movie and the demand for classic voice actors being replaced by big name Hollywood types. Excerpt:

The minute they mention a CGI film, they're already looking to see what Renée Zellweger is doing. They're already looking to see what Billy Crystal is doing. This doesn't make sense, to do what they do—spend zillions on visuals, and then have this totally fucking flat-lining voice track. You know, "Hey, I'm Will Smith, I'm a clam! I'm Will Smith, I'm a kangaroo!"

Anyway, I'm leaving for the other side of the country tomorrow morning for a week-long vacation. Having never been to Seattle (or any part of the Pacific Northwest for that matter), I'm really pretty excited about it. A friend recently visited and says I will love it. I think so, too. After reading through a few travel books, it seems like a very interesting town.

I still have a little packing to do, but what I'm really trying to get straight is how to handle having nearly a week to myself without any sort of agenda. I have few people to meet up with while I'm out there, and there is certainly plenty to see and do, but I don't have any real plan. On the one hand, it's ok; I can be as leisurely as I like and just roll with it. On the other, I want to make the most of my visit. In a way, it's actually kind of important that I do so. Well I'm sure it'll be fun, no matter what.

In the meantime, hold all my calls. I may try to do a few audio posts while I'm away. Forgive the mess; AudioBlogger tends to wreak havoc on my formatting. I'll fix it when I get back. I'll leave you with a few interesting music links:

Lemon-Red has a 30-minute+ mix from DJ/rupture available for download. Booty music from the likes of M.I.A. and some ragga jungle stuff. [via Pitchfork]

And speaking of M.I.A., KEXP in Seattle has an in-studio live performance and interview with her available here (WMA unfortunately).

To the West coast...

Hello Shirt

Just a quick update, before a pre-Seattle post in the near future. I added a few links to the sidebar over there. It was getting a little weak. I also updated my vital stats (i.e. what I'm listening to). I still have to do something with the music page and redo my photos (post-Flickr). Ay.

I shall now direct your attention to the first link on my list. Thas right—I've jumped on the del.icio.us bandwagon. I have just a small collection of links so far, but go ahead and check 'er out.

One neat thing I added today is this flickr photo album site. You enter a flickr username and a tag (descriptive words flickr uses for searching photos) and it generates a virtual book with turnable pages and everything. Each photo is clickable, of course, and takes you to the flickr photo page. Pretty nifty.

You could, for example, leaf through an album of photos of my friends, or take a look at my buddy Tim's Harper's Ferry photos.

Sno-Ball's Chance

I go through the same thing every year. As the weather gets warmer, and the swampy DC summer rears its ugly armpit, my thoughts turn to a favorite childhood treat I once enjoyed while staying at my grandmother's house in suburban Baltimore.

The idea is simple: a cup of finely-shaved ice coated in a flavored syrup. It's slushier than a snow cone and thicker than a Slurpee. You can't drink it through a straw; it must be eaten with a spoon. They call them sno-balls. They come in many different flavors, from the standard fruit flavors (grape, cherry, lime, etc.) to more creative/weird varieties (e.g. wedding cake, bubblegum)——all of them artificial, of course. There are also usually toppings like marshmallow cream and chocolate syrup. Are sno-balls healthy? Not very, no. Do I think they're delicious? Yessiree! In fact, they're so damn tasty some people are prepared to kill for them.

The problem with sno-balls, aside from having to choose which of the dozens of flavors to get, is that they don't seem to exist outside of certain parts of Maryland. In the suburbs of Baltimore, for example, you'll find them in roadside shacks set up for the summer. [The one I remember was in a corner of the parking lot of the A&P just outside my grandmother's neighborhood in Woodlawn.] My coworker, who lives in Annapolis, says they have sno-ball stands everywhere up there. Sadly, DC and Virginia have none. I'm not sure about Delaware.

Anytime I speak to a friend who happens to be unemployed during the Summer months, I recommend opening a sno-ball stand in downtown DC. The permits might be a bitch, and it would certainly take a little bit of cash to get started (I hear the ice machines they use go for around $2k), but the first enterprising individual to open a stand would likely make quite a bit of money once word got around. Actually, I think that person would make a killing. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening anytime soon.

There is a bit of hope. Although I haven't yet confirmed it, I hear there are true sno-balls available at a corner market at 14th and W in DC. You can bet that I will soon investigate. In the meantime, if anyone from Baltimore can point me to a good sno-ball stand (maybe somewhere in Hampden?), I would appreciate it. Even in the city of Baltimore, they're hard to find for out-of-towner. Don't bother suggesting that thing in Fells Point, either. Those aren't sno-balls.

Further Reading:
About Sno-Balls
Baltimore Area Sno-Ball stands