Bumbershoot '03: Fri, Aug 29

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A seagull on the International Fountain

Allrighty then — home from the first day of Bumbershoot 2003, pictures are downloaded to the ‘puter, and I’ve sorted through today’s set of 91 to find 10 to toss up here. Let day one begin…

I got to the Seattle Center around 12:30 or so, not long after everything got started, and spent the first couple hours just wandering around the grounds, figuring out this year’s layout. The International Fountain hadn’t been turned on full blast yet, and there were some seagulls hanging out on top of the globe drinking from the jets. I tried for a few shots of them, and I think this one with the Space Needle in the background was the best.

Le Petit Cirque

Le Petit Cirque is performing multiple times a day, with small fifteen minute shows throughout the day. This was the only one that I sat and watched, though I caught bits and pieces of other shows as I wandered around all day long. For this one, the pole in the center was constantly rotating around while the two performers worked their way up and down it. In this shot, the guy sticking out sideways was actually holding himself like that for one full revolution! Amazing to watch what these performers can do.

Wading pool

I think that this little wading pool has become one of my favorite places to kick back for a few minutes and cool off. Last year I didn’t come up this way, as I was only at Bumbershoot for one day, and the year before the pool was closed for renovations, so this was my first time actually seeing it in operation. It was quite a pleasant surprise to come across it, too — the water ranges from about six inches to maybe two feet deep, just right for wading around in (or swimming, if you’re young enough). I stopped by here a couple times during the day, both to wade around and to watch kids playing in the pool.

The first band I actually sat and watched some of today was Blues Orbiter. Not bad at all, good solid blues, but nothing really mindblowing, either. Made for a very pleasant time sitting in the grass and getting a little sun while I figured out what to do and where to go next, however. I ended up making a run through all the vendor booths and picking up a nice purple and black vest from one of the many imported goods stands. I’d been wanting a decent looking casual vest for a while, and this one is perfect — leaving it open leaves me cool and lets me get a little sun, but it’s heavy enough that later on in the night I buttoned it up and was quite comfortable.

Dragon!

Every year Bumbershoot has a giant puppet parade, and I’m always impressed with the imagination put into the creations. This dragon turned out to be quite friendly as I was taking the picture!

By this point it had gotten to about three in the afternoon, and I was getting fairly hungry. Rather than grabbing food at the festival, I caught the monorail into downtown Seattle and came home for a couple sandwiches, with a quick stop to pick up some shorts on the way. The day just kept getting warmer, and apparently the weather is supposed to hold throughout the weekend, so I wanted something a bit cooler than my standard black pants or jeans for my wandering. After eating, I caught the monorail back in, and took a quick peek at the odometer — the train I was on has clocked up 984,965.6 miles! As it’s roughly a one mile jaunt each way, that means that just one of those monorail trains has clocked up nearly 500,000 round trips. Blew my mind.

Jambalassy feat. Alex Duncan

When I got back into the Seattle Center, I showed up just in time to catch Jambalassy featuring Alex Duncan. While I’m not normally a big reggae fan (I don’t dislike it, but it tends to be a bit too downtempo to really hold my interest for very long), I walked up to the show just in time to catch two really good dancy upbeat numbers that were an absolute blast. Really good rhythms, a strong four-piece horn section, and Alex does a really good job of getting the audience involved and having fun with the show. After those two numbers they moved into more standard downtempo songs, and I wandered off again. I’m so damn fickle sometimes. ;)

Kids playing in the International Fountain

The International Fountain is one of my favorite places to kick back for a while on a sunny day. If you haven’t seen it before, it’s a huge area with a large dome in the center that has multiple outlets for jets of water that are constantly randomly changing how powerfully they send water out. Kids (of all ages) love to play in this, running in and out of the streams of water, dodging around them, and trying to run into the center and touch the dome itself without getting soaked (which they’re rarely, if ever, able to do). Being a sucker for watching kids play, this is perfect for me — and besides, a good breeze will often send some spray my way!

Kids playing in the International Fountain

After watching kids soak themselves for a while, I headed off to find the Bagley-Wright theatre for the Pizzazz! talent competition. On my way there, I passed a group of five girls, all about 17 or so, standing in the center of one of the pathway intersections. One of them had a fresh henna “tattoo” on her lower back that said “KISS THIS” with an arrow pointing straight down, which gave me a laugh. They were all laughing and cheering one one girl in the center, who was wearing a shirt with “BIRTHDAY GIRL” hand lettered on it. As I came up to them, they were saying, “Seven! That’s seven — we need eight!” Then one of them saw me as I passed.

“Wanna be eight?”

“Eight what?”

“Kisses for the birthday girl!”

I laughed. “Oh, sure, why not?” I leaned in, gave the birthday girl a kiss on the cheek as her friends cheered, and then headed off again, hearing them continue their search — “That’s eight! Hey, wanna be nine?”

Holly Chernobyl

Eventually I found the theatre, and after waiting for about half an hour, they let us in. Apparently this is a fairly popular event, as they were able to almost completely fill the theater before the show started. The show itself was a blast — and while my friend Holly didn’t win, she did get some of the biggest laughs from the audience with a combination stand-up and burlesque routine extolling the virtues of having a fat ass. Besides, I think that anyone who comes on stage in lingerie and immediately addresses her audience as “twatwaffles and cockknockers” is bound to get a few laughs!

I have to say, though, that the winning act was well worth it. Opera Diva came out and sang an operatic piece with supertitles projected above her that were flat-out hilarious — and, of course, being a bear of very little brain, I can’t remember any of them well enough to get them written down here. Typical, eh? In any case, it was a great performance, and she definitely deserved her first place win. Apparently she’s one of the performers for local performance-art-circus-burlesque-dinner-theater Teatro Zinzanni, which I’d really like to check out one of these days.

The International Fountain and the Space Needle

The sun went down while I was inside watching the talent show, and at night, the entire Seattle Center area is absolutely gorgeous, especially during an event. My camera doesn’t do incredibly well with low-light shots, but I keep trying, and occasionally manage to get something that I think is presentable — such as this shot of the Space Needle behind the International Fountain. Someday I’ll be able to afford a better camera, but for now, this one serves me fairly well, and shots like this aren’t too bad.

Maktub

My last band for the day was local funk/rock group Maktub. I’d read a lot of extremely good press about this group, but until now, hadn’t managed to catch any of their shows, so I was looking forward to seeing what all the fuss was about. Turns out that the good reviews were spot on — these guys were great. Very danceable funk/rock combination, incredible stage presence, and they were obviously having a blast and loving every moment of the show. The crowd was really good, too — I definitely got the impression that I was the only one there who hadn’t seen them before! Strongly considering grabbing one of their CDs before the weekend is over, but as I’d already done some shopping earlier, I didn’t want to blow too much money in one day.

Once Maktub finished up, I caught the monorail back to downtown and walked my way home — and that concludes day one of Bumbershoot 2003 for me. Three more days to go!

Four day weekend!

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We’ve been really slow at work for the past week, so they were kind enough to let me take today off so that I could use all four days of my Bumbershoot ticket. So, I’m about out the door to start a four-day weekend jam-packed with sunshine and good music. Expect lots of pictures and babble over the next few days, if I’m not too exhausted by the time I get home each night!

Holly Chernobyl

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My friend Holly, whom I’ve known since we both lived up in Anchorage, is going to be performing in tonight’s Pizzazz! Talent Show at Bumbershoot! She’s performing under the name ‘Holly Chernobyl’ — here’s her mini-interview from the Stranger:

Holly Chernobyl / Queen o’ burlesque

When did you first realize that you had Pizzazz!?

I burst from the womb singing “Life is a cabaret” through a mouthful of Quaaludes.

Who do you count as your influences/inspirations?

My mother Judy Garland and my father Mae West. And drag queens.

If you could have one talent besides the one you’re showcasing in Pizzazz!, what would it be?

Talent, schmalent. I have mutant fucking powers. I’m a superhero.

When you get to be rich and famous, what will be your biggest extravagance?

I will buy an island and create “Perfect Holly World,” where the sun shines every day and you get a tiara at the door.

Can art change the world, or just make it prettier?

I can do both, so pooh pooh on art.

J.Lo: Good or evil?

Evil. But God bless that ass.

Go Holly! The Pizzazz show starts at 7pm in the Bagley Wright Theatre — I’ll be there!

Korea ready to go nuclear?

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How long until Bush’s utterly ludicrous “cowboy diplomacy” results in some real casualties? Bad enough that we’re still averaging one or two soldiers a day being killed in Iraq, but now it looks like North Korea is about ready to start testing nuclear weapons.

…officials in Washington told CNN that North Korea was preparing to publicly declare itself a nuclear power and had threatened to prove its capabilities by conducting a nuclear test.

What would it take to stop this? According to North Korea, not much at all.

The package of solutions includes the U.S. signing of a non-aggression treaty with the DPRK (North Korea), the establishment of diplomatic relations with the DPRK, the guarantee of DPRK-Japan and inter-Korean economic cooperation, the completion of light-water reactors,\” Xinhua said in a dispatch from Pyongyang.

“In return, the DPRK will not manufacture nuclear weapons and allow in inspection, realise the ultimate dismantlement of nuclear facilities and stop the export and experiment of missiles,” it said.

The US, however, continues to treat North Korea as if it were a snotty nosed kid on the playground making empty threats.

…the White House tried to play down the North’s warnings saying it was getting “excellent” cooperation from its partners in the talks and that North Korea has a “history of making inflammatory comments that serve to isolate it from the world.”

The question from the U.S. administration standpoint, the official said, is “whether this is a serious and irreversible statement or part of their past pattern of starting every conversation by being threatening to see if it wins them something.”

At this rate, we’ll be seeing mushroom clouds again before we know it. If we’re lucky, they’ll be confined to test sites — if we’re unlucky Bush’s steadfast and stubborn intransigence just may score a body count the US hasn’t been party to in decades.

(via Daily Kos)

Military accounting

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We keep hearing more and more about how much the reconstruction and rebuilding of Iraq is going to cost (on top of the billions already spent so far for the invasion and occupation). Wouldn’t it be nice if we could cut those costs a bit? Oh, but to do that, we’d have to be fiscally responsible, which wouldn’t allow us to pass out fat government contracts to US companies…

One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we’ll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who’ll listen.

As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn’t too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- \$300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.

Let’s pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let’s pretend he hasn’t been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let’s pretend he didn’t work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let’s pretend he’s wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let’s pretend it will actually cost \$1,200,000. Let’s just use our imagination.

A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- \$50,000,000 !!

Given all the mid-80’s ruckus about thousand dollar hammers, screws, and toilet seats, I probably shouldn’t be surprised at things like this, should I?

(via Atrios)

Interview Me III: From Jonas

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The third of a few interviews with me, this one with questions courtesy of Jonas. Rules come first…

  1. If you want to participate, leave a comment saying “interview me” (or something that gets that point across).
  2. I will respond by asking you five questions – each person’s will be different.
  3. You will update your journal with the answers to the questions.
  4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
  5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

…the interview comes next:

Which was the first, and the most recent, live concert you went to? Any plans for the near future?

My first: Bon Jovi. I was in Jr. High, I think. At the time, my mom was working for Covenant House, a shelter for runaway and abandoned children that Jon Bon Jovi supports. When the band came through Anchorage, Covenant House was given some number of tickets so that some of the residents kids could see the show. Enough were left over that my entire family was able to go — Mom, Dad, myself, and my little brother Kevin. I would have been 12 or 13 at the time, so Kevin would have been 9 or 10.

I remember having a lot of fun, even moving down out of the seats and onto the main floor to get into the press of the crowd in front of the stage. Bon Jovi put on a good show, and the next day at school, I was informed by one of my female friends that I was incredibly lucky, as I’d just gotten to see “the best ass in the world.”

Most recent: A couple months ago, a bunch of friends and I went to see Bile, Zeromancer, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and Pigface at the Catwalk here in Seattle. Bile and Zeromancer were good, but not great; MLWtTKK sounded good but had disappointing stage presence, and Pigface tore the place up.

Coming up: This weekend is Seattle’s yearly Bumbershoot music and arts festival — four days, 20 stages, 2,500 artists. Some acts I might be able to see (I won’t be able to see all of them due to scheduling, but I’ll do my best): Modest Mouse, Maktub, Dub Narcotic Sound System, Macy Gray, Bonnie Raitt, Maxi Priest, Dusty 45s, Blind Boys of Alabama, The Catheters, The Dandy Warhols, Black Eyed Peas, De La Soul, Cold, Evanescense, American Hi-Fi, Supersuckers, Nickel Creek, Wilco, R.E.M., Daniel Lanois, Carissa’s Wierd, The New Pornographers, Pedro the Lion, DJ Donald Glaude — and more as I run across them, those are just the ones that I’ve heard of enough to know that their shows might be worthwhile.

The web-logging question: how do you see your weblogging? A way of communicating, navel-gazing, or evangelizing? A bit of each? Or completely different?

All of the above, probably. When I started weblogging (back when I didn’t even realize there was a special word for what I was doing), it was primarily a way for me to keep my family updated on what was going on in my life. A static HTML page, hand-updated every time I wanted to add something. After a while I found a package called NewsPro that allowed me to run my page through a script, archive entries — cool! After a while, I found out that I was a “blogger”, and things kind of took off from there.

I still haven’t settled on any particular format for what I post, nor do I really expect to. Some communicating with whatever catches my eye or ticks me off, especially as I’ve gotten more into paying attention to the world around me. Some evangelizing — I just can’t quite pass up a good dig at Microsoft when I find one. And, of course, the occasional requisite introspective navel gazing. In the end, it’s a mishmash — but I’ve had people tell me it’s a fairly readable mishmash, so I suppose I’ll just keep going with it.

Boxers or briefs?

Briefs. Unless I’m lazy and just toss pants on without bothering with underthings, but that’s fairly rare — usually restricted to weekend when I’m doing laundry. Two pair of boxers kept around for decency’s sake when someone is crashing here, as I normally sleep in the buff, but I’ve never liked wearing them as underwear — too much material to bunch up.

Comic books? Do you read them? Which series is, or was, the epitome of good comic writing and inking?

Actually, I’ve never been a huge comic fan. Nothing against them at all, it’s just not a medium I ever really got into. I’ve picked up and really enjoyed a few collections and graphic novels (the two that pop into my head immediately are Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns and Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell manga), and I’m a big fan of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.

The one comic series I did get into for a while was The Tick. A friend and I were browsing through a comic store, and I saw this odd looking blue face smiling at me, so I picked it up and started browsing through — and proceeded to crack up right in the middle of the store. I ended up collecting the first ten issues (2nd printing of number one, but first printings of 2 through 10), and then got frustrated when Ben Edlund was taking forever to get the next issue out, and quit collecting them. That’s the extent of my comic book knowledge, however.

You just won a million bucks. What’s the first thing you’ll spend some of the money on?

Hrm. Knowing me — two of these. :)

'Stay away from MS'

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According to the Register, the Department of Homeland Security is being urged to avoid using Microsoft products.

THE US Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) has urged the US Department of Homeland Security to avoid using Microsoft software.

The Washington based association, which represents members that generate over \$300 billion, has issued an open letter to Tom Ridge, Secretary of the department, urging him to review his decision to choose Microsoft for its desktops and servers.

It claims that last week’s events relating to the Blaster and SoBig worms, have highlighted problems in cybersecurity.

(via MacBytes)

Howard Dean, rock star

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The last time I got to see Henry Rollins do a spoken word performance, I picked up his most recent spoken word album, Talk is Cheap (Vol. 1, Vol. 2). About halfway through the track titled “Getting Snippy With It”, there is a section that I keep thinking about whenever I see people getting really excited about Howard Dean, or when I see articles such as the Stranger article I linked to earlier describe him as a “rock star”.

And wouldn’t it be great, every country has the same problem, wouldn’t it be really bitchin’ if you had a political leader who was running for the big office, if he or she — I don’t care, whoever has the best idea, I don’t care about the sex — where you could like them as much as you like your favorite musician? So instead of like, “Okay, time to vote,” you could be like, “Fuckin’ A, this guy fuckin’ rocks! This guy’s awesome!” It would be like if you were voting for Ozzy, or Bob Dylan, or someone really bitchin’, “This fuckin’ guy is so cool, I can’t wait for this, it’s gonna be bitchin’!” I’d love to be stripped of my political cynicism for just one time, it would be so refreshing to be so into somebody and to trust them and know that they want to do the right thing.

This is exactly what’s going on, and this is exactly why people are gathering around Dean in such staggering numbers. I think that the wish that Henry expresses here is a wish that many of us have had for a long, long time, and Dean’s straightforwardness, charisma, energy, and fire have tapped into that.

Bitchin’ indeed.

That hurts

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So…I noticed that you’ve been an American Express cardholder since I was two.

— Kristin, our 21-year old receptionist, to Fred, our boss