A little B.O.C. for the day

Elections

Oh another election almost over. Today is like looking over the edge of a cliff, you know its going to hurt when you jump off the ledge and yet you are compelled to jump anyway.

bumpy

Bad Cat

bleaker

bleak

Go see phase3 Friday Sept. 24th at the Rendezvous

"Fellow Seattle duo phase3 tap into a more disjunctive anticompositional style, and are head-wrecking in a slightly less overwhelming manner. Fear for your equilibrium. "DAVE SEGAL

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/up-and-coming/Content?oid=4940651

Check out this article in Wired

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/justice-department-piracy/

I can't believe them.

Movies I saw last week

So over the weekend I went to "The American" and "The Town". The previous Monday we saw "Machete".

I guess thats all I have to say on that. None of them stood out as amazing. "The American" was very deliberate, I would say it was being sold as a different movie than it really is. Unless you didn't see the trailer. It was a good flim.

"The Town" was very depressing and had a shawshank ending with Ben Affleck gazing off into the sunset. Other than that it was a good time as well.

"Machete" was exactly what I expected and we saw it at the Big Picture theater under El Gaucho, so we got to have a couple beers while watching the movie.

Some new shots I took today

Mendenhall Falls

note on pole

Fuzzy view of fan

Dr Laura, Sarah Palin and the paradox

So I've let Dr. Laura Schlessinger's mistake (How is saying a word 11 times in a conversation a mistake?) marinate for a while before I put in my two cents, just to see if anyone else had the same reaction I did. Today I found this article at Forbes.com. I felt this quote from the last paragraph, "It's the paradox of free speech," said Julia Holak Tew. "She has a right to vocalize her thoughts in whatever poorly chosen words she wishes, but the public and the media also have a right to criticize her speech.", explains how I feel the best. Sarah Palin came to Dr. Laura's defense saying “Does anyone seriously believe that Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a racist?”. It is this type of spin that keeps the public from remembering that we all have a responsibility to defend free speech. Sure Dr. laura had a right to say what she said on her radio show, but she also has a responsibility to welcome criticism of what she said as well. She also should expect to be called a racist, if she uses racially charged language. She could have not used the word and still had the conversation with the woman she was talking to, she chose to use the word and all the power it carries. Ever heard the saying, "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight"? I think public figures like Sarah Palin and Dr. Laura forget that we all have to play by the same rules.

Here is another link to a Wall Street Journal article I read about the word and its origins.

She's Tight

Ahhh Alki!!!

Music rights and small business

Was surfing the news yesterday and came across this article in the New York Times about the people who enforce the music publishing rights for artists. It points out that not everyone has lost money in the changing of the music business.

The mayor in the alley

So I was in my bathroom this morning and I looked out the window to see the mayor of Seattle walking down the alley behind our condo. I neglected to get a photo. I hope there wasn't any graffiti on our building.

Sliversun Pickups and other gigs last week

So Saturday night we went out to the Silversun Pickups show at the Paramount. Some friends picked me up and we waded through the traffic that was being caused by the construction/Seafair parade. After finding parking and stopping to pick up tickets at will call we convened at Dragonfish for some food before the show. We hadn't been there to eat in quite a while and found some dishes we liked. I drank some sparkling sake that was just sweet enough for me.

When we arrived at the show the second band Against Me! was setting up. I thought they sounded like a updated version of Reo Speedwagon and the light show they set up was distracting. But that is just me. The band won over the audience and had people chanting their Anthems, which were also written on the amp/speaker stacks if one needed to reference.

The Sliversun Pickups played an amazing set. The show was subdued, but energetic. Sound was a bit muffled, but very good for a room that size. I have waited for some time to see them live, having missed them playing in Seattle before now and the wait was worth it.

We also saw the Flaming Lips in Central Park, NYC. They were better the last time we saw them in Marymoor Park, but a bad Flaming Lips show is better than most other events , so we had a good time.

phase3 playing at Rendezvous 10pm Fri. Sept. 24th 2010

toon

"Snookered", the media and WTF is up

So I had a rant I was working on earlier today about how it is unacceptable to me that a blogger could post a video on the Internet and everyone takes it at face value. No checking the source, no asking others what actually transpired, just soak in the truth from the video clip and take action. This is straight out of the Steven King movie "The Running Man",when Ben Richards (California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger)is wrongly accused of a massacre he tried to prevent, the frame is done by editing the footage the media airs. I mean Shirley Sherrod said one thing and Andrew Breitbart made it look like she was saying something else and he is still saying he was right.

Then I watched this clip from Rachel Maddow, which helped me calm down. NBC also had this to say about the incident. I'm glad that media figures are hitting back against the kind of shady reporting happening on "the network who will not be named" that helped to start this fiasco.

Msnbc says "Facebook hated as much as airlines, cable companies'

Check out this article . I just shut off my facebook page a couple of weeks ago, for the very reason that I have been unsatisfied with what social media provides. I did reconnect with some friends that I haven't seen in a while. I know it helped make getting the word out about musical projects easier, but I think it was more trouble than it is worth.

So its back to the iphone maybe...

Or maybe not. Instead of thinking about it I'm going to wait it out for another month or so. Steve Jobs said they will be revisiting the antenna issue in November. The Samsung Captivate looks good, it is fast , but the iPhone 4 looks good as well and I won't have to change all my music/video content or buy too many new apps.

Dude Rock

If you have time check out my friend Ron Austin's blog DudeRock .

Ron and I met at college when we attended The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wa. This was back in the 1990's. Then we reconnected during my year or so stint on Facebook. After that Ron and his friend Louise collaborated with myself and my band Phase3 to make the short film Making Noise. That lead to them working on some new films together and will be blogging about it at DudeRock . I added them to my blog list for easy access.

Disco Party 2.0 look at the itchy wig.

The party was fun. Debbie had a good time dancing, while I tried to not sweat too much in my wig. Take special notice to the wicked chain I borrowed from and old pirate costume.

Disco Party

So tonight I'm going to a disco party. I won't be posting any pictures. Most of the time I try to steer clear of costume parties. Though I did dress up last year for halloween. tonight I will have a wig. I'm sure it will be itchy as well as hot. Disco sucks!!!

I forgot to post this for the 4 of July

So we got to watch the fireworks from a good vantage point this year and I took a couple of good shots with the iphone. Here is one of them.

Go ahead make my day, try and break my back

spacey needle

Iphone killer qu'est-ce que c'est, maybe not, but close enough

Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa.

So ever since I updated my iphone 3g to ios 4 it has been performing slow. Then yesterday I thought I would see what new phones ATT had that I might want to change to. The Samsung Captivate looks the most promising to me. I think I'm going to have to visit the ATT store and take a look after it is available on July 18th.

ps. I just got done looking at the Android Marketplace and found several of the apps I use on the iphone. The playing field just got a little more even Apple. I have had several Samgung products and they have all performed well in the past. I still need to see what kind of cases they will have for it, but I'm already leaning heavily towards it.

pps. I looked at the phone in the ATT store this weekend and it looks pretty cool. Weighing the options between iphone 4 and the Captivate and still can't decide. I think I will have to forget about them both for a while.

looking out of the shadow

To delete or not to delete

The other day I deleted my facebook account and this blog. In hindsight I decided to bring the blog back to life and start again. I will not be returning to facebook as it is becoming one big ad. I will not be a slave to ad campaigns that are marketed as video games, I get enough of that treatment just trying to read the news online.

KFC Double Down

With a name like Double Down the new sandwich from KFC should have had a Power themed ad launch. Instead they are playing off the fact that it has no bread. The amount of breading on the fried chicken pieces that make the bulk more than replaces the lack of bread. The cheese seems out of place, and the sauce is ok. I think it would be better wrapped in a tortilla and over $5 seems costly.

Fucking Broken DVR

So our cable company, they who will not be named, informed us we had to replace our DVR. Not until after they sent someone out to replace without mentioning we lose all recorded content. Well since we have 6 episodes of Lost and the rest of the shows we haven't watched this week, we have to keep using the broken one. I wish they would just tell us that info when we call them on the phone.

Better Off Ted

So a few months back we bought the DVD of the first season of Better Off Ted . Then we caught up with the 2nd season, until suddenly it stopped. After a few weeks when the other programs had all started up I check it out and it looks like one of my favorite shows might be on the chopping block. Cest la vie.

Showtime

So a little about me. I like to watch television. I always have, from when I first viewed the magic box until now. I used to have the full cable package, well not porn channels, but just about everything else. Then a ways back we decided to save some money and one of the heads on the chopping block was the cable package. My wife being the smart one said lets see if we can just keep some of the movie channels. So we did and HBO won the battle against Showtime.

Some time passed and I became used to the channel package. I started to watch some network shows like CSI, the Law and Order family, Monk, MI6, Iron Chef, 24, Alias, the list goes on. Then the writers strike a couple of years ago happened and suddenly it came to a screeching halt. We began to watch shows on DVD and added some more to the list. This pattern of watch show on DVD continued after the strike ended and soon we came back to some of the shows on Showtime. Then the sneaky bastards called my wife after we got hooked to their shows and now we have Showtime again. I wonder who will win the next cable skirmish?

Cluster Flies in my office

So a few years ago we pressure washed the building I work in. This caused all the dust, dirt, and grime that was holding the paint on. later that fall we became infested with cluster flies. As you can see above they are ugly, and large (not as big as the picture). One positive is they are slow, I can kill them with my hand (with has caused me to wash them every 2 minutes). Though it is getting a little old. Until tomorrow when the pest man shows up.

Making Noise gets into Seattle True Independant Film Festival

Making Noise is a short experimental film featuring some northwest noise musicians, including my group phase3. It was just accepted to the STIFF festival, as well as the NW Projections Film Festival in Bellingham.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

This was a great book that has been made into a great movie. We checked it out yesterday and it was well worth it. The scenery in Sweden is amazing and I felt even though they changed some of book to fit in movie form, the story still worked well. The subject matter is quite creepy and the movie as a whole is very dark. If you don't like subtitles you are out of luck as it is in Swedish.

World's Greatest Dad

So the other day my wife and I were driving by a video store that was closing. They advertised a crazy sale, getting rid of everything. We needed some new movies so we took a look.

We picked up, "World's Greatest Dad" with Robin Williams. If you have ever wondered what a dark comedy is, you can use this movie as an example. Over the past few years that title seemed to be used with reckless abandon. Describing anything that was off beat and funny as a dark comedy. Well watch "World's Greatest Dad" and you will know what you've been missing.

Public not private

The people in this bar create a sound not unfamiliar to my ears. The band plays, some connect, but most are taking up space and making me mad.

Bliptronic 5000

I was waking up today and saw a post on Synthtopia about the Bliptronic 5000 synth . At $49.99 I think I might have to pick one of these up.

phase3 at Chickenhed Church 011010

iPad

So with the announcement of the new Apple device the iPad, I didn't want to chime in, saw someone post about using it a synth and realized I might like a larger surface to control the synths I use currently on the iPhone. OOOPPS they hooked me all sneakylike. Apple takes something I don't really need and makes it appealing.

State of the Union

Anything special, not really. We need more action and less talk. Get back to work people!!! I don't have voters remorse, but I'm on the way to grumpytown if things don't change both locally and nationally.

Publicola 1 year party at The Crocodile

Last night Publicola held their 1 year anniversary party at The Crocodile. We didn't stay for the headliners Thee Satisfaction, but we had a free drink, called the informal poll they were pimping and had some dinner at Via Tribunali. So much to talk about, lets start with The Croc.



I started going to The Crocodile Cafe about a year after it opened. I had moved back to Seattle after living for a year in Newberg, Oregon doing an internship at a mobile recording studio. Friends from college had started bands in Seattle and were playing at a new club that had a connection to the old Central Tavern in Pioneer Square. Not long after I started a band with some other friends from college and we were playing the same club. I was also a live sound engineer and befriended the house sound engineer. Years later I would take a job working for him at The Crocodile. Long story short I spent some quality time in the club.



The new design is quite different from the club it takes it name from. The sound system sounds a little muted, and the club looks like a smaller version of Neumos on Capitol Hill. I only heard half sets from 2 of the bands last night so I won't go on too long about it. Onstage monitor system looks great and the stage has about the same amount of space, with what looked like an ample dressing room, something that was missing from the Croc before. I did see a poster advertising one of my old bands shows on the wall, so that was nice. The entrance has moved which causes a bit of a back up getting to the bar/showroom. The upstairs bar made for easy drink access since no one was going up there. Overall its not the club I grew up in, but it look a whole lot prettier now.



Via Tribunali has some good pizza. We had the Salumi misto for an appetizer and the Quattro Formaggi pizza. The Grana Padano cheese was amazing in the misto, and the salami was quite good as well. The pizza cheeses complimented each other and wasn't too greasy. The crust was very tasty as well. I like the Quattro at Tutta Bella better, but Via Trib's is a close second. The only problem is it is so dark in the room I couldn't read the menu at first. Not to mention the wait staff was dressed all in black like ninja servers, appearing at our table out of the shadows.

Publicola ran a poll with questions about how often you visit the site and some others I could barely hear because they were asking people to call a poll in a loud club. Goofy? Yes!!! After we had some pizza we caught the end of CMYK. Reminiscent of Black Kids, they are a fun dance band. Thumbs up for sure, if you like that genre you need to check them out. Then Josh Feit got up and talked about stuff, the only part that stuck with me is, everyone hates Erica C. Barnett. Its almost like in pro wrestling, she plays the heel. I agree I didn't agree with her when she wrote for The Stranger, but I still come back for more. I like her style a little more now and though we don't see eye to eye, I respect her views.

I don't think I will be going back to The Croc any time soon, but I hope Publicola is around for years to come. Listen to CMYK and visit the ninjas at Via Tribunali if you get a chance.

AVTR thumbs neutral

So we went to "Avatar" last night and I can say I wasn't impressed.