SpaceShipOne makes history

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Very cool: SpaceShipOne makes it into space!

SpaceShipOne left the Earth behind on Monday morning and made its indelible entry in the history books as the first private spacecraft to carry humans into space. It touched down safely at Mojave Airport at 11:15 ET.

“It looks great,” said Burt Rutan, chief of Scaled Composites, which built the craft. He gave a thumbs up on the runway as he squinted into the sun at the aircraft he designed.

At 10:51 ET, Mike Melvill ignited the rocket engines and piloted SpaceShipOne into the blackness of space. His trajectory took him more than 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, above Earth’s atmosphere, according to Scaled Composites flight officials.

“It was a mind-blowing experience, it really was — absolutely an awesome thing,” Melvill said after landing.

iTunes: “Armed Forces” by Manufacture from the album Nettwerk Decadence (1988, 4:16).

More on Moon’s coronation

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Kirsten pointed me to a Salon article following up on the bizarre coronation of Rev. Moon. I’m so flabbergasted by this event.

On March 23, the Dirksen Senate Office Building was the scene of a coronation ceremony for Rev. Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative Washington Times newspaper and UPI wire service, who was given a bejeweled crown by Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill. Afterward, Moon told his bipartisan audience of Washington power players he would save everyone on Earth as he had saved the souls of Hitler and Stalin — the murderous dictators had been born again through him, he said. In a vision, Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vouched for him, calling him “none other than humanity’s Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.”

To many observers, this bizarre scene would have looked like the apocalypse as depicted in “Left Behind” novels. Moon, 84, the benefactor of conservative foundations like the American Family Coalition — who served time in the 1980s for tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice — has views somewhere to the right of the Taliban’s Mullah Omar. Moon preaches that gays are “dung-eating dogs,” Jews brought on the Holocaust by betraying Jesus, and the U.S. Constitution should be scrapped in favor of a system he calls “Godism” — with him in charge. The man crowned “King of Peace” by congressmen once said, according to sermons reprinted in his church’s Unification News: “Suppose I were to hit you with the baseball bat to stop you, bloodying your ear and breaking a bone or two, yet still you insisted on doing more work for Father.”

The more I read about this, the more bizarre it gets.

iTunes: “Good Person Inside” by Sobule, Jill from the album Sobule, Jill (1994, 3:12).

Must’ve been a slow news day

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From the BBC:

Up to one in five toddlers can open medicine bottles and chemical containers, even if they have child-resistant tops, safety experts warn.

The Child Accident Prevention Trust stressed parents should store potentially dangerous products safely.

From what I’ve seen, children are often the only ones who can open those damn bottles without the Jaws of Life.

iTunes: “White Love (Psychic Masturbation)” by One Dove from the album Platinum on Black, Vol. 1 (1993, 6:52).

Happy Father’s Day, Dad!

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Happy Father’s Day, dad! I’ll see you in a couple months for your birthday!

Would you look at that — I actually remembered to post this on Father’s Day! Miracles never cease, eh? Of course, it was probably good that not only did I get an e-mail reminder from Prairie, but there was also this Seattle P-I blurb:

The national day honoring fathers got its start in Washington state in 1910. After hearing a sermon honoring Mother’s Day, Sonora Dodd of Spokane decided to create one for men.

Her father, William Jackson Smart, was a Civil War veteran and farmer who raised six children alone after his wife died in childbirth. She wanted the day to coincide with Smart’s birthday on June 5, but ministers needed more time to prepare their messages, so it became the third Sunday in June.

The day was nationally recognized by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, but it was President Lyndon Johnson who made it official in 1966.

iTunes: “You’re So Vain” by Faster Pussycat from the album Rubáiyát: Elektra’s 40th Anniversary (1990, 4:11).

Wartime Censorship

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While taking a look at the pros, cons, and possible long-term consequences of news and information censorship during times of war, Liam Callanan presents this fascinating historical tidbit:

Improbable though it may sound, from late 1944 through the spring of 1945, the Japanese launched more than 9,000 balloons from their nation’s eastern shores. Filled not with mild-mannered hot air but extremely flammable hydrogen and armed with incendiary and antipersonnel bombs, the balloons rode the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean for several days before landing throughout North America.

No, really. Throughout North America. From Alaska to Mexico and as far east as suburban Detroit. Perhaps even more incredible, the balloons themselves were not made of any high-tech, weather-hardened fabric but simple paper panels held together with potato glue.

The entire article is worth reading, both for the historical information and the look at the potential ramifications news censorship can bring about.

(via Danelope)

iTunes: “Macho Man” by Transmutator from the album Saturday Night Fetish (1997, 5:00).

Sister Machine Gun at the Fenix Underground

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Have I ever mentioned how much I love living in Seattle? One of the major reasons (aside from naked people on bikes, of course), is the simple fact that many of the bands that I’ve been listening to (and playing during my DJ career) for years actually come through town every so often, so I can actually see them.

Admittedly, time and budget prevent me from seeing every band that comes through that I’d like to, but so far since I’ve moved down here I’ve seen Concrete Blonde, Pigface, and KMFDM twice each, Peter Murphy — and now, Sister Machine Gun.

(Random SMG trivia: Chris Randall provided vocals for one remix of early 90’s techno hit “James Brown is Dead” by LA Style, making the ‘Rock Radio’ remix the only version of JBiD with actual sung lyrics — and, incidentally, also making it my favorite version of the song.)

The ticket I had said that things were going to get started at 8pm. Since I needed to rest after playing in the sun all morning long I didn’t actually make it to the Fenix until around 8:45, but as it turns out, that didn’t matter at all, as the show didn’t actually get started until around 10. There were three opening bands, and unfortunately, I’ve got to say that none of them impressed me all that much, and I ended up spending most of my time until SMG came on stage wandering around the club.

This was my first time at the Fenix. It’s an interesting place, though I don’t think one that I’d hit on a regular basis. It looks wonderful — all dark woods and brickwork, with the main floor holding one bar and the performance area, an upper mezzanine level with two more bars and a balcony overlooking the stage, and a lower level with another bar and a second dance floor. However, the downsides (as I see them) are that the drinks are overpriced (my usual drink, a Malibu rum and coke, was fifty cents more expensive than it is at the Vogue, came in a plastic cup about a third smaller than the glasses the Vogue uses, had more ice taking up volume, and was mixed weaker than I’m used to) and the clientele is something of an odd mix between the black leather, vinyl, and PVC clad goth/industrial people and the college frat boys and sorority girls brought in due to the Fenix’s Pioneer Square location. Overall, it’s not a bad place for shows (though the floor in front of the stage is pretty small — it seemed to work decently tonight, but I’m not sure how well it will work for next week’s KMFDM show), but definitely not going to be a regular haunt.

While I was killing time during the opening bands, I ended up running into Ron, an old roommate of mine from back at the Pit (my old apartment in Anchorage). We hung out off and on for the rest of the night, making snarky comments about the opening bands, being amused at the odd mix of customers, and swapping stories about old friends from Anchorage.

I also ended up spending some time talking to Kevin and Amanda, a couple from Canada who were in Seattle specifically for the SMG show. We got started talking when Amanda pulled me aside to ask me about my kilt, then just sat back and chatted for a good half hour or so, comparing the various scenes in Seattle, Anchorage, and Vancouver. I may end up running into them again next Friday — when I mentioned that KMFDM were going to be there, Kevin immediately started scheming to try to find ways to arrange his schedule to come back down.

Eventually all the opening acts wound to a close, and I found my way to the floor in front of the stage. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from SMG, as I haven’t heard any of their recent albums since they left Wax Trax records. I had nothing to worry about, though. Once they took the stage — Chris Randall at the forefront, Charles Levi on bass (who I’d seen play bass for Pigface the last time they came through), plus a guitarist and drummer whose names I didn’t catch — while I didn’t know the first few songs of the set, they were definitely right what I was hoping for. Halfway through their set they moved into their older catalog of songs, but not before Chris took a few moments to tell us a story. I won’t be able to relate the exact words — this is not a transcription, merely the best that my fuzzy memory can recall — but it should be fairly close…

Okay, we’re right about halfway through the set now. I tell this story at this point in every show, and I try to make it specific for where we are, but this is something like the fiftieth show on this tour, and I’m running out of witty shit to say.

See, a couple nights ago we were playing at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco when I told this story. Now the guy who runs the DNA is pretty big on the Internet, and they stream live webcasts of all their shows. When I told this story, he thought it was pretty funny, so he put it up on the club’s website. Well, it got around, and word got out, people started telling other people, and now our server is dead. We got slammed — our site, our record label, and every other site that was on that server is gone right now. I dunno, they may have gotten it back up again by now, I could be talking out of my ass here, but a few hours ago, it was dead.

Anyway. Here’s the story.

Everything we’ve played up until now, up until this point in the set, it’s on our own record label, Positron Records. You can buy any of the new albums right over at the kissing booth — two bucks for a kiss, ten bucks for a CD. Everything after this, all our old stuff, that was released on Wax Trax Records. Which is cool…or was cool, back then. See, now Wax Trax is owned by TVT Records [boos and hisses from the audience here], who are a bunch of ignorant fucks that can’t manage their books. So now all our old catalog is owned by TVT…actually, it’s not even owned by TVT anymore, it’s owned by Credit Suisse. Which I guess is kind of cool — my first four records were put out by a bank.

The point is, I don’t get shit for any of it — not one dime, not one red cent, not one wooden nickel. So you can go home, get on your computers, find any of our old Wax Trax shit, and download it for free. We’re not getting paid for it, you don’t have to pay for it.

Okay. Here we go.

Incidentally, all of SMG’s Positron Records albums are available for purchase from the iTunes Music Store. Too cool. And, hey — it sounds like a good idea to me.

Anyway, from here on out we were in familiar waters for me, and the band kicked much ass (not that they weren’t before, I just didn’t know the songs). They bounced around with a few from each of their first four albums, finishing off with two killer tunes — Addiction (probably my personal favorite SMG track) and Sins of the Flesh.

As an added bonus, today was Chris’s birthday! The owner of the Fenix (that was who that was, right?) grabbed the microphone from Chris, announced it was his birthday, and Chris immediately went running offstage in mock embarassment. He got dragged back on fairly quickly, got some birthday cheers from the audience, and then went on with the show. Later on, after the show finished and the band went offstage, the crowd sang Chris “Happy Birthday” before filing out. Quite fun.

Anyway, awesome show. Much fun was had by all.

iTunes: “Addiction” by Sister Machine Gun from the album Sins of the Flesh (1992, 4:16).

Fremont Solstice Parade 2004

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2005 Update: In case you’ve come here from a Google search looking for more recent pics, all my shots from the 2005 Solstice Parade can be found right here.

Read on for my original post about the 2004 Solstice Parade…

I got back a while ago from spending the day at the Fremont Solstice Parade and Festival. I had a wonderful time — the weather was incredible, and the parade was a blast. I’m hot, tired, and a bit sunburnt (next time I head out I’ll need to remember to bring the sunblock with me, rather than just putting some on before I leave), but it was very worth it.

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WAThe Fremont parade has quite a few things going for it that put it a step above most other parades I’ve been to. Specifically, three things: no corporate sponsorship, no motorized vehicles (human powered contraptions only), and lastly, apparently all it takes to be part of the parade is deciding you want to and showing up with whatever costume, show, or gimmick you want. It’s wonderful.

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WAOf course, one of the most notorious aspects of the Fremont Solstice parade is the annual kickoff group of naked cyclists. They were certainly out in full force this year, most wearing nothing more than body paint, and a few eschewing even that minimal level of coloring. The bodypaint work was often incredibly well done, to the point where some of the cyclists looked far more like they were wearing full-body skintight bodysuits than actually naked. Bold splashes of color, racing stripes, flowers, animal prints, or just full-body solid colors abounded.

Of course, the most amusing side effect of wearing naught but body paint was obvious anytime one of the cyclists stood on the pedals. They’d raise up off their seat, and suddenly you’d get a quick flash of bare skin as the bodypaint stuck to the seat of the bike and left their suddenly unpainted rump standing out in the midst of the rest of the paint.

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WAMembers of the Utiliklan were part of the parade, too. A group of seven men in kilts strode down the parade route to the whistles and admiring cheers of the crowds lining the road. Every so often they’d pause for a moment to work the crowd, egging on the cheers and yells, until finally, when they deemed the time was right, they’d line up facing one side of the road or the other, bend down…

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WA…and with a quick flip of the wrist, they quite handily answered the age-old question of just what a real man wears underneath his kilt.

Of course, when I got up this morning and saw the weather, I’d donned my kilt for the day’s festivities. Not long after I’d arrived in Fremont I’d shucked off my shirt as well, just wearing a light vest and my kilt. When the Utiliklan made it down to where I was standing, it didn’t take long at all for them to notice me standing there — and the next thing I knew, I had all of them plus a few of the people around me on the sidelines declaring that I was to join them in the street.

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WAI had to do it. Obviously, I couldn’t get any pictures of my impromptu foray into mooning a few hundred total strangers — probably a good thing, too — but given the number of cameras around that day, I may have some ‘splaining to do should any pictures surface during my eventual presidential candidacy! ;)

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WAAs the parade went on, the revelry, music, and general weirdness continued unabated. A troupe of bellydancers came by, with four dancers preceding them dancing with some long red scarves. Suddenly I realized that one of the first dancers I’d seen before — she’s friends with Don and Chad, and had done a private interpretive dance at last Halloween’s party at Don and Chad’s house. I don’t believe she saw me, and she may not have remembered me even if she did notice me in the crowd, but it was fun to realize that I actually recognized her.

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WAI’m not sure at all what the deal with the dancing bananas was, but there they were, complete with gorilla bounding around from one side of the street to the other. Does there really need to be a coherent reason?

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WASome of the floats that appear in the parade are just incredible to see. As there are no motorized vehicles allowed in the parade, everything has to be either foot- or pedal-powered, and more than a few contraptions used a combination of the two.

Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, WAAnd eventually, after about an hour or so, the parade came to an end. Or, really, the official parade came to an end, as it ended up picking up a huge crowd of former parade watchers tacking themselves on to the end of the line as it proceeded down the street and into Gas Works park. I spent the next couple hours wandering around a good five square blocks (I think, I didn’t explore the entire area) of Fremont had been closed off and turned into a street festival area, then proceeded back down the parade route down to Gas Works Park.

Eventually I decided that I’d had enough sun, and found my way back to a bus route and came back home. Now that I’m showered, slathered down with Aloe lotion, and have tossed this post up, I’m off to grab a nap for a couple hours, as I’ve got a concert to go to tonight: Sister Machine Gun at the Fenix!

The rest of the parade photos are right here (some are NSFW).

iTunes: “Destillat (VNV Nation)” by Das Ich from the album Re_Laborat (2001, 6:08).

Of Course It’s Creepy!

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(Note: the following was originally a reply to some of the questions raised in the comments discussing an upcoming Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version of Roald Dahl‘s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. My response became long enough that I decided to give it a post of its own rather than “bl-hog” my own blog.)

I have to comment on this one : What is it with this movie [Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory] that people love it so much? It’s one of the creepiest films I’ve ever seen in my life.

Obviously I can’t speak for everyone, but as for myself, I think the creepiness is one of the major factors in just why I enjoy it.

I’ve always had a fascination for the dark, creepy, and bizarre — I count H.R. Giger as one of my favorite artists, and William S. Burroughs as one of my favorite authors, for instance — and Roald Dahl’s writing is right up my alley. It’s amusing really. So many people have this image of Dahl writing “children’s” books, born of hazy memories of the film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the stop-motion animation version of James and the Giant Peach, the Jim Henson version of The Witches, and so on. And to be sure, they are children’s books, however, they’re children’s books far closer in spirit to the original Grimm Brothers fairy tales than the pablum that passes for children’s literature today.

For some reason, our society seems to have decided that children need to be coddled, pandered to, and generally sheltered at any cost from the darker areas of life (while at the same time using the television as a babysitter without bothering to supervise what the children are watching…but that’s a rant for another time). Playgrounds are torn down and rebuilt to try to prevent the merest hint of the possibility of injury, classic fairy tales are “Disney-fied” to remove elements that are deemed inappropriate (no matter that they survived unaltered for tens and sometimes hundreds of years before that without our culture spontaneously imploding), toys are re-engineered from good solid long-lasting metal to flimsy plastic that doesn’t have any sharp corners but that breaks in months rather than years, and so on.

Children aren’t stupid, though. They know that life isn’t all sunshine and roses. From the first time they fall and skin a knee, or find their goldfish floating upside down in its bowl, or any number of any other day to day minor tragedies, children are no strangers to the darker side of life. They don’t approach these events in the same way that older people do, though — more often then not, after the initial trauma wears off, they’re curious and want to know the “why’s” behind what just happened — and this simple acceptance is so alien to our over-analytical “adult” minds that we fool ourselves into thinking that the children don’t understand. They do, though. They may not have the finer details and the subtleties down, they may not see it the same way adults do, but they understand.

The Grimm brothers understood this when they wrote their classic stories. Their tales were dark and disturbing, full of violence, abusive situations, scary moments, and everything that we seem to try to shield our children from in this overly “PC” day and age. But the stories had messages and morals to them that were passed onto the children that read them or heard them from their parents, and those messages and morals were probably all the more effective because they used the imaginations of the children, and the innate ability of the child’s mind to accept dragons, beasties, ghoulies, and things that go bump in the night just as easily as they accept rainbows, fairies, unicorns, and cute little gnomes living under toadstools.

Dahl also understands this in his children’s stories. His characters are flawed, rarely ever entirely good or entirely bad. They find themselves in fantastical situations that can be as wonderously exciting as they are chilling. His heroes learn the lessons that they should, but it’s never an easy course. No triumph is ever as sweet as that which carries a real risk of dismal failure, and if that simple truth is neglected, then the audience — whether an audience of one turning the pages of a book, or an theater audience watching an adventure unfurl on the screen — is cheated.

Some of the best “children’s” literature is that which doesn’t pander to the age group that the story is aimed at (and because of this, can often be enjoyed long past childhood and into adulthood). Along with Dahl and the Brothers Grimm, L. Frank Baum’s Oz books often took very dark turns, I’ve heard good things about Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (though I’ve yet to read it myself), J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books keep getting darker and darker (and better, and more popular) as the series progresses…I’m sure there are many, many other authors and examples that could be added to this list.

Yes, both the book and the movie of Charlie and the Chocolate factory are creepy — but that’s exactly as it should be, and that’s one of the reasons I think that the Burton/Depp collaboration could do an incredible job of re-creating the story (assuming, that is, that Burton doesn’t pull another Planet of the Apes out of his hat). I, for one, am hoping for the best.

Rights

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The rich have the right to buy more homes than anyone else. They have the right to buy more cars than anyone else, more gizmos than anyone else, more clothes and vacations than anyone else. But they do not have the right to buy more democracy than anyone else.

— Bill Moyers, “The Fight of our Lives”

iTunes: “Satellite” by Pigface from the album Preaching to the Perverted (1992, 4:11).

Metroblogging

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A potentially interesting and useful new regional groupblog project: Metroblogging.

event listings to general rants, photos to reviews – metblogs are a hyper-local look at what’s going on in the city. a group of regional bloggers give each site a new perspective on daily life. less calendar listing, more friendly advice.

Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco are live; Atlanta, Boston, DC, Miami, Orange County, Seattle, Dublin, London, Tokyo and Toronto are currently on the ‘coming soon’ list; and they’re looking for local writers.

Could be good, could be little more than a regional LiveJournal community with a set list of contributors (though I hope it grows beyond that). We’ll just have to see as they grow and evolve.

Back when I lived in Anchorage and was webmaster for the Gig’s Music Theatre site, I toyed for a while with creating a similar site for Anchorage, keeping track of events, venues, bands, hangouts, and the like (in fact, there’s actually some slight evidence of the project, in a request for a photo of Anchorage to use for a header graphic in the Schedule/News section of the Gig’s site). Unfortunately, at the time my technical skills weren’t up to what I had in mind, and the project ended up falling by the wayside. Metroblogging looks to be fairly similar to what I had in mind at the time, so I’m definitely interested in keeping an eye out on this one.

Years ahead of everybody else, and nobody will ever know. That’s me! ;)

(via Boing Boing)

iTunes: “Higher State of Consciousness (Original Tweekin’ Acid Funk)” by Wink from the album Higher State of Consciousness (’96 Remixes) (1996, 6:16).