Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Voltaire at the Vogue

by

Just a few quick impressions, because it’s way past my bedtime on a weeknight (and having to say that before it’s even 1am is so depressing…).

Excellent show.

Wandered up to the Vogue at just a tad after 9pm and headed in. Got to say hello to some of the few people I know — Ogre, Mickey, and Kayo — and then ran into Richard just a few moments later. Ended up getting a table right up by the side of the stage, with a perfect view.

The Arid Sea opened, who I knew pretty much nothing about. Not bad at all, though admittedly, not so good that I’m going to be rushing out to pick up an album. A good opening show.

Voltaire came up shortly afterwards. While on his albums he has backing musicians, his performance was simply him and an acoustic guitar. He started by walking up to the mic and saying, “Hi! I’m…Rammstein!” and then proceeded to do a tongue-in-cheek cover of “Du Haßt Mich” (“You / You love / You love this / Even though you don’t know what I’m saying.”)

The next song was “Ex-Lover’s Lover”, and then he went through a good number of songs that I didn’t know (as The Devil’s Bris is the only album I own — something that will have to change), but were all very entertaining.

He prefaced a song about being eaten by cannibals by talking about how he’d just done a show in Japan the week before, and while he was able to do his between-song chatter in Japanese, the songs themselves were in English, so the Japanese audience didn’t pick up on all of the puns in his songs. He did say that the show in Japan went really well, though, and so he’d decided to do the exact same performance, since it went over so sucessfully — and then proceeded to speak in Japanese.

Between two of the songs he took a moment to read a few short passages from a small book he’s just put out, What is Goth?, commenting that “the surest way to a girls…(long pause)…heart…is suck-ass Goth poetry.”

There was actually a lot of fun between-song banter, and since much of the music I was hearing for the first time, that’s much of what I’m remembering. He told a story about going to the PTA meeting for his six-year old’s school, a fancy private school in New York, and realizing that both Dave Gahan (the lead singer of Depeche Mode) and David Bowie also had children in the same school (“The parent choir is going to rock!”).

Also, just before a very sweet (if disturbing) lullabye “written to scare my son to death, apparently,” he told another short story about his son. Apparently he came home and heard one of his son’s friends talking to the nanny, and declaring that, “that coat smells like his dad.” At his point, Voltaire paused, hiding around the corner to find out just how bad he smelled.

“What does his dad smell like?” asked the nanny.

“Evil.” (Much laughter here from the audience.)

Then the nanny followed up on this. “And what does evil smell like?”

And then, very matter-of-factly, the friend just said, “Pretty good, actually.”

He ended up finishing his show with “When You’re Evil,” only with a slight twist to the final lyrics:

It gets so lonely being evil.
What I’d do to see a smile,
Even for a little while,
And no one loves you when you’re DJ Eternal Darkness…

All in all, much fun, and well worth staying up past my bedtime for.

iTunes “Anniversary” by Voltaire from the album Devil’s Bris, The (1998, 4:35).

P2P: Germany, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, Greece

by

In the summer of 1990, just after my junior year of high school, I was accepted into the People to People program as a “student ambassador” and got to go on a six-week trip across Europe. Starting with a few days in Washington, D.C., we travelled through Germany, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, and Greece.

Going through boxes the other night, I found my photo album for the trip, and have just scanned them all in and posted them online. There’s a small selection on Flickr, and the entire collection in our family photo gallery.

It’s both funny and frustrating to look back on these now, for a variety of reasons. One of the most frustrating is that I ran out of film in Austria and (being my ever-absentminded self) didn’t manage to get traveller’s checks cashed quickly enough to have the right currency to pick up more film until we hit Italy, so I’m missing the middle few weeks of the trip (it’d be so much easier these days with the proliferation of networked ATMs worldwide, but this was in the dark ages of the early ’90’s, after all).

Often what really strikes me when I look back on the trip is the simple fact that with the jaunt through Hungary and Yugoslavia, I’ve visited countries that doesn’t exist anymore, or at least don’t exist as they were back then.

We were only in Zagreb, Yugoslavia for one night, but a small group of us decided that we didn’t want to just sit around the hotel room and ended up going out to a discotheque. About eight or ten of us went, and I quickly got frustrated with the group — they were slightly freaked out at being out and about in a Communist country, and just bunched up with each other. I thought this was more than a little silly, and ended up striking out on my own, wandering around the club, and peoplewatching, the same as I’d do in any other club. Far more entertaining for me.

I don’t know what Budapest, Hungary looks like these days, but I will always remember it as being one of the most beautiful cities that I got to visit in Europe. The city is actually two old cities on either side of a river, Buda on one side, and Pest on the other. I don’t remember anymore which side we were on, but our hotel sat high on a hillside overlooking the river and the city below, and I spent one very pleasant night sitting out on my balcony, listening to my walkman and watching the city below. I even knew when it was midnight (or possibly one in the morning), as that was when the lights on all the government buildings automatically turned off, suddenly letting those landmarks sink back into dark anonynimity with the rest of the city.

The pictures themselves aren’t the greatest quality, between being taken with a fairly cheap point-and-shoot and being fourteen years old (yikes!). Still, it’s fun for me to have them around. Feel free to browse through either the short version or the whole shebang.

First Timer

by

Good night last night. My friend Richard is in town for a week, vacationing from Anchorage, and I met him outside the Vogue just a little after 9pm. We hung out outside for a few minutes until Valindria came out, harassed me (I didn’t realize she was there already, so we had been waiting for her to show up), and we headed in. She’d brought Ross, a gaming friend of hers, so the four of us settled in at the table closest to the entrance.

I always have fun introducing someone to the Vogue for the first time, as I always end up stepping back a bit mentally and trying to look at the club from an ‘outsider’s’ point of view. At one point, I just started laughing a little bit, Valindria asked what was up, and I had to take a moment to try and explain that I wasn’t really laughing at anything — rather, I was just enjoying the club itself. The dark club, good music, pretty people, seeing the colored lights flash across the face of a pretty brunette in a full-length black vinyl dress, my arm around Valindria as she stood next to me, watching Richard dance (and then proceed to come back to the table and half-seriously bitch because he hasn’t been out dancing to decent music in far too long)…I just love the club, the atmosphere, and the friends I have there.

It’s a good thing.

Eventually we all wandered off (aah, the joys of working at 8am) — Valindria and Ross a little after 11pm, Richard and I just a bit before midnight — and now the week begins again.

Richard and I have plans to hang out today after I get off of work. We’ll probably wander around downtown Seattle for a bit and see some of the sights that are within easy walking distance, do general catch-up and all (and if we’re lucky, this fog may lift enough to actually see some of the city by then…though, of course, the sun will have gone down by then, so we’ll just have to see what happens). Should be fun to play tourist for a while.

iTunes “We Are Free” by Doof from the album Return to the Source: Deep Trance and Ritual Beats (1995, 7:19).

Four More Years of…

by

Last night, while I was standing outside the front door of the Vogue to cool off and get some air, there were a couple guy standing around and chatting with Ogre (the doorman). Talk had turned to the election, and various doomsday scenarios were being bandied about. One of the guys was laying out possibilities for World War Three, the subject of moving to Canada came up, all the usual stuff. As they were chatting, a group of people coming into the club overheard them and tossed a few equally cheery opinions of their own out.

Ogre looked around at everyone, leaned back against the wall of the club, and said, “You know what I’m not looking forward to?”

“Four more years of listening to this!”

I think I’m in the same boat right now.

iTunes “Casino (Solid State)” by Eckart, Tommi from the album Run Lola Run (1998, 5:44).

I pledge…

by

Apparently, Jeff Jarvis is proposing a ‘Post Election Peace Pledge‘.

After the election results are in, I promise to:

  • Support the President, even if I didn’t vote for him.
  • Criticize the President, even if I did vote for him.
  • Uphold standards of civilized discourse in blogs and in media while pushing both to be better.
  • Unite as a nation, putting country over party, even as we work together to make America better.

Hmm. Working my way backwards, up the list.

“Unite as a nation….” Sounds good. Not sure if it’s possible. Bush, while billing himself as “a uniter, not a divider,” has done so well at tearing this country apart that I fear it’s going to be a long, long time before the wounds really start to heal (and I doubt they’ll have much chance to start healing if Bush stays in office).

“Uphold standards of civilized discourse….” I’ve done my best to do that for a long time now. I may not always agree with everything I read, and the people who come here may not always agree with everything I say, but I’ve done my best to keep things civilized around here. Easy to sign on to this one.

“Criticize the President….” You bet your sweet bippy (and I’d do this were Kerry to win the office, too).

“Support the President….” This is where I have problems. I can certainly recognize and accept the final results of the election, even if I don’t end up liking them. But should Bush win (as looks likely) — support? How can I support someone whose ideology is for all intents and purposes diametrically opposed to my own?

How can I support someone who wants to declare some of my closest friends to be second class citizens merely because they love someone of their own sex? How can I support someone who cares more about lining his pockets and those of his cronies than doing anything to help the millions of poor and homeless in this country? How can I support someone who actually thinks cutting trees down is a viable way to save them from forest fires? How can I support someone willing, even eager, to plunge us into a war that, contrary to the Republican propaganda, was not connected to 9-11, and has cost over 1,000 American lives and as many as 100,000 Iraqi lives?

Answer — I can’t.

Later, Jeff updated his post after people asked him about this “support” issue.

Commenters ask me what I mean by “support.” Right question. I do not mean blind support, love-it-or-leave-it support, with-him-or-against-him support. I mean acknowledging that the president is the president and especially in a time of war, we need to stand together against our enemies — namely, Islamofascist terrorists — and not act, as too many have during this administration (and the one before it) that the enemy is in the White House. No, we’re on the same side.

At this point, I’ll turn the reins over to Shelley, who responds to this far more intelligently and rationally than my first impulse was to do.

That’s a little like the logic of saying to a person, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” Jarvis has framed the question so that it reflects what he considers our most dangerous enemy: Islamofascist terrorists. I can’t agree with his call for support, because I can’t agree with the definition of the enemy.

You see, I consider our worst enemy to be intolerance. Intolerance on the part of some Muslims about other non-Muslim people from the west, true. But also the intolerance demonstrated in this country towards gays, towards women, towards people of color, towards those who don t follow what others deem the One True and Right Way.

When Jarvis says will I pledge to support the President as he combats the enemy, my answer has to be, yes, if we can agree on what is the enemy.

And there’s the rub — if we work on the assumption that Bush will be keeping his hold on the Oval Office, than we’re in a Catch-22, for if the President agreed with me on what the enemy was, than Bush wouldn’t be the President. In many ways, Bush is the enemy, preaching his message of bigotry, hate, intolerance, and America über alles.

I don’t doubt that Jarvis means well with his pledge. But this is one pledge I won’t be signing on to.

Puppy playtime

by

At the dog park, Seattle, WA

Sunday afternoon, Prairie and I went over to visit Prairie’s sister and her boyfriend to visit, celebrate Prairie’s birthday, and visit their new puppy, Loodie.

We ended up heading out to Magnuson Park and letting Loodie romp around at the dog off-leash area at the park, a huge (nine acre) fenced-in area for dogs to run wild and play.

While I’ve never been a huge dog person — much more of a cat person, in fact — I’ve got to admit that the day was a lot of fun. Loodie’s a really cute puppy, and she found quite a few friends to roughhouse with.

On our way back towards the car, this golden retriever decided that it wanted to be my friend (to the point of nearly knocking me over a couple of times). Prairie grabbed the camera, and these pictures stand as evidence that while dogs may not be my favorite critters on the planet…well, they’re not all bad.