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

Links

The Other Bomb Drops [The Nation]:
Jeremy Scahill of Democracy Now! on the Downing Street Memo/Minutes and (basically) proof enough that George Bush should be impeached. Why is hardly anyone talking about this? Am I blind? More on this later. [See also, an interview at DN!]

Joanna Newsom at Birmingham, Nov. 2004: live video of individual songs. [via del.icio.us/successless]

R.I.P. Mrs. Robinson:
Anne Bancroft dies at 73 [Guardian]
Obituary [W. Post]
Appreciation [W. Post]

Dr. Katz

So I got my Dr. Katz DVDs the other day. As I mentioned previously, I'm a big fan of the show and have been waiting for a legitimate DVD release for quite some time. Since this doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon, I went ahead and got a bootleg of the entire series from eBay.

The series is spread across five DVD-Rs, each labeled and packaged together in a single DVD case with printed artwork. I was slightly dismayed to open the case and find four of the five discs stacked one on top of the other, without any sort of protection. Luckily, save for a few minor scuffs, the DVDs arrived unharmed. What a bad idea, though. Also included is a computer print out of the contents of each disc, with details for each episode. The guy definitely used rough draft mode here, but whatever.

The DVD menus are minimal. Each entry includes either a screenshot from the episode or the show's title page and an episode number (which corresponds to the printed episode guide). The background is some default graphic from whatever burner was used. No frills, but it's easy enough to find the episode you're looking for.

The quality of the video varies with each episode; it ranges from OK to pretty piss poor. Granted, I've only watched about five or six episodes so far, but I've already noticed drastic differences in quality. At best, there are obvious digital artifacts visible, probably due to some compression (AVI?) on the source files. Here and there, there is the kind of glitching you see with a weak satellite signal. On the other end of the spectrum, one of my favorite episodes (with David Cross as one of the guests/patients) is pretty terrible. It looks like it was sourced from a worn VHS copy and then digitally compressed. The audio is also pretty bad with this one, with lots of noise and hissing, again likely attributable to the VHS source. The worst detriment by far, at least in terms of annoyance, appears in a few episodes where the audio falls out of sync with the video. This really bothers me. And though it's not as bad as when this happens with live-action video, you'd be surprised at how important it is for animation. Even in “Squigglevision” the characters mouths are pretty tightly timed with the audio, and when it's off it is extremely distracting. Watchable, I guess, but very annoying.

Overall, I'm glad I bought this thing. It's great to see the show after so long, and I'm sure there are at least a few episodes I missed. The quality is not great, but it is a bootleg afterall. Hopefully, if whoever owns the rights to the show finds out that dorks like me are willing to plunk down the cash ($30+) for poor quality bootlegs, they'll wise up and release a proper set of DVDs for this awesome cult show.

There Will Always Be Sadness

I got in free to the Spoon/Clientele show. Lucky me, I owe a debt of gratitude to Shannon, her friend Chris, and some guy Chris met at the bar in DC9. I could've easily gotten in otherwise—there were plenty of tickets and extra guest list spots for sale outside the 9:30—but I'm glad I didn't have to pay. This show was not worth the fifteen bucks.

The Clientele, who were my reason for going to the show, were pretty good. They played well and played several of my favorite songs. [Though I have to admit it's almost all the same song with them, at least it's a very good one.] It was cool to hear them and be able to appreciate it, as opposed to the first time I saw them and didn't really know their music.

So why was it unworthy of my money? Here's why: the fucking din of background noise I had to put up with was enough to nearly drive me nuts. I shit you not, it sounded like I was in a goddamn stadium. Yes, the Clientele are a fairly quiet band, and yes, they were the openers. But really—do these motherfuckers have to talk so damn much? I'm assuming at least some of them paid to get in. And surely most of them realized there was a live band on the stage. Yet there they were, blabbing incessantly throughout the band's entire performance. Spoiled fucking brats.

So yeah, it basically ruined the show for me. I guess I'm getting old. Or maybe I just really do hate people. Who the fuck knows. I hate to say it, but the Iota show was much better.

Pumpernickel Baby

Due to popular demand, I am here to update you on current events. The current events of my life, I mean. The seemingly insignificant ones. BTW, it's fucking June already???

Firstly, I'd like to just reiterate that three-day weekends are the fucking best thing ever. It is my firm belief that all weekends should be three days long. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it. I mean, you need one day to recover from the work week, one full day of having fun (going out, doing stuff, being active), and another day to get stuff done around the house and ease back into the idea of returning to work. Is that so unreasonable? Plus you get the likeable cousin of the three-day weekend, the four-day work week, built right into the deal. Nothing wrong with that. So will you sign my petition?

Now for a recap (short form):

Had a late dinner with Tim and Sarah on Friday. Tried to go to Anita's but they closed early for some lame reason. Ended up at Amphora and had a decent meal and some great conversation about technology, cloning, and death row organ donors. Got home and Bittorrent-ed episodes of Robot Chicken.

Saturday—lovely and relaxing. Took an enlightened bike ride to beautiful downtown Arlington. Visited Ms. Shannon at Olsson's, looked for Seattle books and smoked cigs. Unfrozen caveman pizza for dinner. Should be noted here that CPK thin crust (tomato, basil, moz and olive oil) is actually quite good. Saturday nite hazy. Made a CD for Sunday's roadtrip. Wally given catnip—myself, the human equivalent.

Pinnacle of weekend: Sunday, not usually my fun day. Went to Baltimore with Shannon as planned. Amazing weather. Hit “The Avenue” in Hampden...Atomic Books, True Vine, and that cafe across from Atomic. Really good limeade there. Bought some weird books and the latest issue of the Big Takeover. Big Spender card filled but not redeemed. Stopped by Druid Park for possible photo ops. Null. Continued on to Fells Point. Walked the docks, took some shots, and talked a lot. Stopped by Sound Garden and picked up a stack, put half back. And if yer keeping track:

Stereolab: Oscillons From the Anti-Sun box
Wire: Pink Flag (re-issue)
Mirah: C'mon Miracle
Owen: s/t
Home Movies Season 1
?

Returned to the South. Ate many sushi. Watched R Chicken and screened Tarnation.

Monday: Personal maintenance. Shave and haircut. Cleaned house. [Bedroom still in ruins.] Attended a Czech bbq with Tim, Sarah, various adults, in a swank house near Tenley Town. Delicious kebabs. Surprisingly fun and much better than stewing in my own juices. Four words: the illustrious Julia Ames.

So there that is. Good folks, good food, great fun. What a doozy. And then it was last night, and I introduced a hater (aka Shannon) to Salvadorean/doran food with takeout from Abi's. Bean and cheese pupusas rule, my friend. And their plantanos fritos are badass. Needless to say, she was converted.

So the Spoon/Clientele show is sold out. What the fuck ever. No one sells out the only Friday show in ages that I actually care about attending and gets away with it. I'll get in, all right.

ARE YOU HAPPY NOW???

Eltit On Deen

I found out through this post from Marc that DVD bootlegs of the entire Dr. Katz series are going around for sale on eBay. I used to watch this show all the time in college and have been waiting ever since they started releasing DVDs of TV shows for it to come out. That has yet to happen. A bootleg will have to do for now, I suppose.

Speaking of goofy and wonderful TV shows, I've finally gotten into Adult Swim's Robot Chicken. I've only caught one full episode (#16) so far, but both times I saw it I was LOLing like a madman. Scenes like the Smurfs dealing with an axe murderer, the totally awesome girl bit, and even the robot incessantly trying to hump a dryer had me in stitches. Check it out if you haven't already. It airs Sundays at midnight (and again on Thursdays) on Cartoon Network.

I started my first flickr group. It is based on the fact that I often find my cat, Wally, sitting up like a person (as seen here). It's called Like a Person, naturally. We have 30 members so far.

Ah yes. The three-day weekend. I love it so. The highlight as of yet looks to be Sunday, when I will daytrip up to Baltimore for photo-taking and buying stuff at my usual shopping destinations: Sound Garden, Atomic Books, Normals, and all those other cool shops on The Avenue. [Note to self: Please to not spend all yer money!!!]

Null

I saw Star Wars Episode III last night. Here's my review:

Blah blah blah digital projection blah blah. Wookies blah blah not bad blah blah. Blah I hate Hayden Christensen blah blah [something to justify spending $10] blah.

So there you have it.

My new favorite person on flickr is...naked_college_running.