Stuck in my head explained

So last February my wife bought me an Ipod. I had held out for some time, but I wanted a personal device that I could watch movies and listen to music on and the 80 gig video Ipod fit the bill. So now I have my whole music collection and some movies ands tv shows and music videos and still enough space for more.

It has caused me top listen to some new music that I might not have. But that also means I have a big mess of little bits of songs whirling thru my head all day. I can't listen to the Ipod all the time (which might stop the songs from being stuck in my head) or I would be even more anti social. So instead I will spread the love by posting some of the songs here. Sometimes.

stuck in my head as well

3 Inches of Blood

Jucifer

stuck in my head

Tokyo Police Club



The Dresden Dolls

Viaduct stories

So most days I drive to work from West Seattle to Queen Anne on the viaduct. Most of the time when making this morning ride I take the Western St. exit. The last stretch of this trek is directly below a park in the Pike Place Market area. The edge of the viaduct below the park is always littered with odd items. I wish I knew the stories of how they found their way to sitting on the edge of the viaduct. Shoes, coats, and a cane are all items I have seen in the last year. How do you lose your cane over the edge of a highway?

I will be sorry when the viaduct is taken down, or rebuilt, or whatever. I have always thought it gave Seattle character. Raise your glasses to the Viaduct.

The other side

I like looking at doors. I think when I was younger if I didn't know what was on the other side of a door, it led to a magical land, like in some of the books I read. As I have grown I still have some hope that doors hold secrets on the other side. Not all doors, but ones that pop up in places that seem incongruous to their location. I think subconsciously that's why I like to take photos of doors.

Bring in the clouds

remember the smell

Some times I miss my old practice spaces. If think hard enough I can remember 9 over the years. Some were in dirty basements of punk houses. Smell of rats and cat piss. Buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead. Not enough power outlets, so we had to string extension cords from the next room.

Then moving to the space shared with a couple of other bands. Crazy guy who manages the building living in the room across the hall, filled with electrical equipment. G trades for a bass amp he built. Toilet doesn't work in the building and he sets up a plastic wading pool for people to piss in.

The next place closed at 2:30am, and the room was small. Loading in after show sucked. But the bathroom worked.

They all had character.

The Can't See

So I drag my ass off the couch at 11:30pm to head out and see my friend's band play at Chop Suey and when I get there they are already done. The show was over. I was totally confused. But I did have a nice conversation with someone I hadn't seen in a while and the drummer told some funny stories about being drunk at Thanksgiving. I need to get out more often.

Go see the can't see next time they play, I dare say it will be well worth it. Maybe I will even make it on time.

Quinn's

So today is my wife's birthday and we went out to dinner at this new place she told me about on 10th and Pike, across from Nuemos. I will keep this short, they have the best hamburger I have had in months. Go try them out if you know whats good for ya!!!

Lunch

I think I want ribs for lunch. MMMmmm ribs!!!

Garbage

So, the middle of the week can be frustrating. Not only does it signal the approaching weekend, but the arrival of the garbage-people. You might ask who is that, well I have posted earlier about the garbage pickup, and that hasn't happened yet today.

Please let me explain. It is 6:05 am on Wednesday morning and I was just woken up by people who climbed the locked gate to dump garbage in our dumpsters. It has been a problem since before my wife and I moved into our condo, and will apparently be a problem after we leave. Not that we are leaving, I just think it will never end.

It wouldn't concern me, but the noise wakes me up. I mean, I do also feel a sort of animal need to protect my property, so after it wakes me up I try to stop them, but most of the time they are gone before I can do anything. Maybe I will start to take pictures of them and post them on my blog, like some kind of crazy neighbor (Gladys Kravitz). Or, maybe I will just continue, waiting to catch them in the comedic criminal act of dumping garbage, so I can threaten them out my window, "hey you kids get off my lawn"(making me feel like an old man at 38). Maybe I will follow them home, and dump garbage into their garbage cans, but they must not have any since they have to put it in my dumpster, making the dumpster full, so other tenants leave the lid open, and the smell of hot garbage wafts up so we can't leave the windows open in the summertime. I know its winter, but if I let them do it now, they do it in the summer too.

Oh well, I had better get ready for work. I mean I should be happy, its a holiday week and today is really Friday. Later.

Choosing grindcore

I have been reading a book about the history of Grindcore and Death Metal. When it was first appearing I listened to some of the bands. Most of the time I wrote it off as a mess. Grindcore was too fast and grunted vocals that were indiscernible. Death Metal was the same with lyrics about zombies and cannibalism, I couldn't look any further into the music, I didn't believe any message.

As time passed, I grew to appreciate some of the bands. My interest in Justin Broadrick and Godflesh brought me back to Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror. My stint on the Ozzfest tour renewed my appreciation of extreme metal. But the question always haunted me about the vocals, if you can't hear them why write lyrics?

I don't regret my choices, I still think grunted vocals don't make sense, though I do understand why some bands chose them. The vocals are what made me start to explore that part of musical history. So take a look at the shortest song ever according to the Guinness Book of World Records, "You Suffer" by Napalm Death.

Movies this weekend

Went to see two great movies this weekend, "Gone Baby Gone" and "No Country for Old Men".

"Gone Baby Gone" is a story about a couple investigating the disappearance of a young girl in South Boston. It stars Casey Affleck, Ed Harris, and Morgan Freeman. We missed the first couple of minutes, and I was able to catch up quickly. Not having been Boston too many times, I don't know their accent well, so I don't know if everyone sounded correct. But I thought they did. I liked the interaction between Casey Affleck and Ed Harris. Michelle Monaghan was great as Casey's girlfriend/ partner. I also thought the feel of the neighborhood came across very well. Go see in the theater if you can.

"No Country for Old Men" is a thriller set in Texas. Its an adaptation of a book by Cormac McCarthy by the Coen Brothers. This movie was perfect. The scenery in Texas was impeccably filmed and the locations were just right. As most of the reviews I read for the film before seeing it, I thought the acting was amazing. Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones were on fire. I could list all the actors, because I liked every one's performance in this movie, down to the extras in the background. See it in the theater for the complete immersion needed to experience this film.

non verbal

I haven't had anything to say this week. So I thought I would post some older photo work of mine.

Useless News of the Day

So I opened Internet Explorer today and the MSN homepage had this news story . I won't mention the person's name as I don't think anything she does is news and the media should quit giving her headlines.

I do think that if this is what passes for "improve her bad-girl image ", I think all the people I see picking up garbage for comunnity service need to get her judge.

Skylark November 24th

So, I haven't been in a while, but the breakfast at Skylark is great.

I have only been to a show there once, as I don't drag myself out of the house as much as I should these days.

I wanted to put up something about a show coming up in a couple of weeks. All the bands have old friends of mine in them. It should be a fun evening. I hope I can make it out,but even if I don't and you should. An added bonus all the shows at Skylark are free, if money is a concern.

Support local music.

my favorite snake story

A few years ago I was working at a club on Capitol Hill as a sound engineer. this is a little story about the weird things you can see at work.

Anyone who has worked in a club that hosts music knows the end of the night always moves slow. First you have to get the audience to leave, then you have to get the bands to leave. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it happens very smoothly, but most of the time musicians want to linger, take their time, even if you want to get home. It happened on one of those nights.

After the band finished playing the bouncers cleared the house and I tried to get the band to get their gear off stage. After killing as much time as possible, I checked to make sure they didn't leave anything and cleaned the stage of beer bottles and set lists. Off to the side of the stage we had a stack of cinder blocks used to hold bass drums in place. On top I saw a toy snake. I could still hear the band loading out, so I reached down to grab it and it moved.

Now I can't completely describe the hallucinatory effects of the realization that the snake I thought was rubber was actually real, but believe me when I say it was trippy.

I gathered my composure and asked the bartender what he thought I should do. He wanted to see it for himself, then we put it in a bucket from the kitchen. I later found out someone had lost the snake a couple of weeks before and it must have been living under the stage until it came out to say hello to me.

Just another day on the job.

Was Radiohead online album a failed experiment?

Radiohead released their latest album "In Rainbows" on Oct. 10th.

An article in E! online says " The findings were announced Tuesday by comScore, an information company that provides real-time measurements of Internet usage through a database of nearly 1 million Netizens. The company has permission to track all the users' Web activity. And according to comScore, approximately 62 percent of the people in its focus group who downloaded In Rainbows didn't kick in a single cent to what's been dubbed Radiohead's "honesty box.""


I'm not a fan of Radiohead, but I was glad to hear they are helping to change the business plan of how music is provided to the public. I don't think CD's are going to be phased out. I do think digital downloads are still going to happen and if musicians provide them to the public like this I think it will work to their advantage in the long run. The change will only happen if more artists with wide appeal like Radiohead embrace new techniques. Only time will tell....

Odd Warnings

The other day someone left some packing materials in my office at work. This is a copy of one of the warnings on a bag used to wrap a computer.

On first glance I was curious how Casper the Ghost had gotten caught in the computer screen. I know its a bag, just kidding.

Then I thought, if you just bought a computer, shouldn't you know not to put your head in the bag it was packed in and hold it closed? If your head is in the bag do you have to look in the mirror to read the warning, and shouldn't they print the warning in reverse making it easier to read in the mirror?

Why are Casper's eyes closed? If they were open he might be able to see the visual warning. It also might be easier to read without the bag on his head as well.

Pay attention to the warning labels, they might save Casper's life, if he wasn't already a ghost.

Hawaii

I felt after a week of relaxing in Hawaii I should post something about the vacation.


It was the first time my wife and I have been to Oahu. We went to Kauai for our honeymoon and also went to Maui with my side of the family to spread my grandparents ashes on the volcano. But other than landing at the Honolulu airport, we had not spent anytime on the island of Oahu.


A few observations:

If you have to be homeless, Hawaii is a decent location. In cities like Seattle, New York, Chicago, etc, it gets cold in the winter. We saw several tent cities on the beaches of Oahu, they seemed to be tolerated by the locals and they won't get cold. Not that I 'm saying being homeless is a good thing, but not as bad in a location like Oahu.

Even in Paradise the big city is busy. We stayed at our timeshare on the western side of the island most of the week. On the last day we stopped in Waikiki for a burger. It was insane, I couldn't see wanting to go there for vacation. It was like Los Angeles and Las Vegas combined. Too busy for me.

Teddy's Burgers are great. Hand formed and delicious.

Hot Tubs are cool, only when they are hot.

I like Sea Turtles.

I like the Poke Stop.

We had lots of fun in Hawaii. Now we have to wait 4 years until our turn with the time share comes up again.

Don't forget to vote

Tomorrow, get out and vote!!!

We have some important races and issues that need to be decided. So go vote, unless you already have like me. I voted before I went on vacation last week. So mines already in the hopper. But if you don't vote by mail, which I love, than go to the polls tomorrow.