Fascinating, frightening, and touching: eyewitness accounts

by

Blogs from ground zero: Eclipsed (New York), Saranwarp (New York), East/West (New York/Oakland), UltraSparky! (New York), Andy’s Chest (New York), A Fire Inside (New York) (at least I think it’s from New York), Everlasting Blogstalker (New York), Fredosite (Washington, DC), Toothpick Girl (New York), World New York (New York) (this one looks really good), Lightningfield (New York), Mr. Barrett (New York), Mike Daisey (New York). I wouldn’t have had time to search all these out, many thanks to Blah Blah Blog Big Pink Cookie for originally posting most of them.

(11/25/2019 Update: In the time since this post was made, most of those links have gone dead.)

Political cartoons

by

Lady Liberty in distressIt’s interesting. There’s a feature over at Slate with a lot of different political cartoons responding to yesterday’s tragic attacks. Most share a few obvious common themes — Uncle Sam being surprised/distraught/enraged by the attack, terrorists looming over the US, and so on — but there’s one theme that struck me as I kept seeing it come from the pen of so many different artists. That is the theme of Lady Liberty in distress as she witnesses the city she stands over in turmoil.

Lady Liberty stands tallHowever, there is one cartoon that I found to be much more effective — and to my mind, a much more welcome sentiment. Simply clouds of smoke, with Lady Liberty’s torch still held high, cutting through the destruction to continue casting her torchlight across America.

I’m not normally exactly rabidly patriotic — I’ve had more than my share of differences with the directions that this country and her leaders have taken over the years — but it still stirs something in me to see expressions of hope and optimism such as this one. I only wish there were more — it may be sorely needed in the weeks to come.

Still can’t really believe it

by

First off, a brief recap of life since last Thursday.

Friday after work I got a call from Alex — turns out that it was his 23rd birthday, and he invited me to go out with him. Sounded cool to me, so at about 10pm I met up with Alex and his friend Melanie (who remebered me from The Lost Abby and Gig’s in Anchorage) at The Vogue. We hung out there for a bit until Nate showed up, then we all went over to The Mercury, a tiny little members-only goth/industrial club underneath an auto shop. I’d heard about it from Chad before, but this was my first time there — turns out it’s just about three blocks away from my apartment. Cool little place, too.

Friday night Alex and Melanie slept at my place, and we ended up spending all day Saturday bumming around town. That evening we went over to Casey’s place, and while neither Casey nor Chad were home, we spent a pleasant evening talking with Dez and ended up crashing out there.

Sunday I got dropped off back at my apartment (after a wonderful waffle breakfast compliments of Dez), and spent the rest of the evening doing laundry and relaxing at home. I did make one jaunt out to a local used book store and picked up Gödel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hoftstadter. I’d tried to read dad’s copy years ago, and it was way over my head — now I’m trying again.

Monday was fairly uneventful all the way around — just another workday.

Today, however, has been all sorts of bizarre, for reasons which should be fairly well known by now.

At about 9am EST this morning (just as I was getting up, at 6am here), in an amazingly coordinated terrorist attack, hijackers took control of four commercial airline flights. While one apparently missed its mark, crashing in the Pennsylvania countryside, one plowed into the Pentagon, destroying much of one side of the building, and the other two were piloted into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, which both eventually collapsed.

Only nine hours later, reports are still coming in. The President addressed the nation about half an hour ago — I’m not sure I’m too thrilled with his speech. While not too terribly ludicrous, it was a little to militaristic in tone, and it’s too easy for me to see this escalating until we could be looking at a major war, if not handled carefully. This whole things got me extremely worried — it’s definitely going to be fascinating watching how events unfold from here on out.

My neighbor just got home — I’m going to see if I can watch the news on his TV as soon as he’s off the phone.

It’s almost 9pm now — about 15 hours after the first strike. I spent the past few hours next door watching the news reports with Damon. Scary, scary stuff — there was one video taken by a cameraman that just happened to be at street level and caught the second plane hitting the WTC. It’s amazing — you can watch the plane fly into the building, and at first (except for the speed), it looks like it’s just flying into a hangar as it disappears into the building. Then the explosions rip through the walls of the skyscraper and debris comes tumbling down to the street.

The video continues and cuts to the point when the tower started to collapse. At first there were the flames that had been shooting out of the floors that had been hit by the plane, then suddenly more dust clouds started shooting out as the top section of the building started collapsing into the lower floors. From there the building just fell floor by floor onto itself, sending huge roiling clouds of dust and debris into the air.

The cameraman kept filming until you suddenly saw dust clouds coming towards him just a block away, when he put the camera down and started running. The camera was still on and pointing behind him as he carried it, though, and you can see the conflagration literally chasing the camera’s view down the street. It looked for all the world like some of the destruction scenes from Independence Day — only all the more horrifying because you knew that it was real.

Current rough death toll estimates are upwards of 1300 at the very minimum — an estimated 800 killed at the Pentagon, 266 among the four hijacked airplanes, and there were around 200 fire, police, and rescue workers in New York that responded after ther first airplane hit, and were lost when the buildings collapsed. And adding those numbers up to roughly 1300 doesn’t even include the thousands of possible victims from the two WTC towers.

For the first time in history, the FAA today ordered the grounding of all airplanes within the United States. They did this as soon as it became apparent that the airplanes were being used as weapons in the attacks. It may be noon EST (9am here) tomorrow before planes are allowed to fly again. In addition to the thousands of stranded passengers across the nation, the disruption of shipping may create additional problems for the already struggling economy, and no-one seems sure what long-term effects that may have.

All and all, it’s been an absolutely incredible and tragic day. The single biggest terrorist attack the world has ever seen, with repercussions that can only be speculated about at this early stage, and only the weeks to come will show where things go from here.

And on that note — it’s time for bed. I’m sure I’ll hear more about this in the morning.

How far is this going to go?

by

Well, I’m sure you’ve all heard the news by now about today’s attacks in New York and Washington, so I’ll refrain from rehashing it all (though if you’d like a refresher, or want to check for any new information, here’s a link to CNN’s Special Report on the events).

What’s really starting to worry me is just where this is all going to end. Too much has happened in too short of a time, and I’m starting to get mildly paranoid about seeing it all blow up in our faces — maybe a little more literally than I’d like.

First off, the mind-numbing attack, involving coordinated hijacking of four airplanes, three of which found their targets, severly damaging the Pentagon, and utterly destroying three buildings of the World Trade Center (and a fourth looks ready to go as I write this). Then, just about 45 minutes ago, reports started hitting CNN’s TV feed (though I’ve not yet seen much mention of this on their website) that there are explosions in Afghanistan, a country known to have harbored bin Laden — the terrorist most strongly suspected of masterminding today’s attacks. The U.S. is currently denying that these are U.S.-led counterstrikes (which makes sense to me — it seems a bit soon for us to be retaliating in force, without clear and definite knowledge of who we should be retaliating against), but it’s certainly not helping the international situation in the least.

Popular sentiment is rather ugly at the moment, also. Understandably enough, given the strength of the emotional response this soon after the attack, but if left unchecked for long, it could get really frightening. I’ve been following two threads on the Home Theater Forum, and it’s taken some work on the part of the administrators to keep it from degenerating into revenge-motivated hate mongering.

Even some articles I’ve found links to around the web make me nervous — for instance, while I have no idea what the general stance of the site The Ornery American is (I have yet to dig through their site), their article Can We Win This War? starts out with statements I had no problem agreeing with (“America’s leaders are calling for patience, for a measured response to the acts of war we suffered on 11 September. They are right.”), but by the end of the article, they seem to be crying out for an all-out dive into World War III. This is the kind of thing that really starts to get me scared.

Is this the proverbial beginning of the end?

I certainly hope not, it’s just far to easy for my (possibly over-)cynical mind to see retaliation after retaliation build up until we’re far past the point of no return, never having noticed when that point arrived and we passed it by.

My thoughts and prayers certainly go out today — not just for the unfortunate victims and families of victims of the attacks this morning, but for an, if not peaceful, than at least less-than-cataclysmic resolution to this entire affair.

Nano-nano!

by

Just something that I find all sorts of nifty. According to an article in today’s Seattle P-I, Washington is going to house the hub of one of the centers for nanotechnology research. Nanotech has been one of the recent sci-fi concepts to really spark my imagination, especially after reading Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer.

Stephenson burst upon the sci-fi scene with his second book, Snow Crash, which I babbled about a couple weeks ago when I was re-reading it. In The Diamond Age, Stephenson does for nanotechnology what he did for the internet and virtual reality in Snow Crash — takes today’s best existing ideas and theories and extrapolates them forward into the future to explore where the technologies can take us. It’s a fascinating read, and with the current apparent stagnation of the space program and George Bush’s restrictions on genetic research, nanotech seems to be one of the few sci-fi concepts with near-future possibilities. Going to be a lot of fun to see where all this could lead in the next 10 to 20 years.

More about this cruise thing

by

Looks like I’ve got a couple days to catch up on here. Well, let’s see — start with Wednesday. I did call the guy from Carnival Cruise Lines — “JB” — as soon as I could in the morning. He wasn’t available then, but I set up an appointment with his secretary for an 11:30am (2:30pm their time, they’re based out of Florida) call. That was something new for me — nothing really groundbreaking, I realize, but I’ve never had to make an appointment for a call before.

Anyway, work went on from there about the same as the day before. Of course, by the time the tech came by, the machine that had been giving me all the grief the day before was behaving fine. Typical — they can be pretty ornery beasts sometimes.

So 11:30am rolls around and I give JB a call. We talked for about 15 minutes, and while it wasn’t a yes, it certainly wan’t a no, either. Apparently at the moment he’s putting together a list of prospects, and expects to be doing the hiring in a month or two. He did give me the basic rundown on what the situation would be, though.

The cruise lines has 16 ships in operation now, with two more being built. The two things he stressed most about the DJ position is that they need to be able to work from a large variety of music, due to the wide range of customers on the ships, and that they are comfortable relating to people and taking requests. I was sure to let him know that I’ve always been a request-based DJ — finding way to work in what people want has always been a lot more fun for me than just working from a set playlist. That always seemed a bit boring to me.

All the music and equipment would be provided by the club, so I wouldn’t have to worry about bringing any of my stuff along. From what I understand, the clubs are decked out, too — from the pictures on the website, they look to be top of the line. Lots of fun toys, in other words! :D

The clubs run seven nights a week, and all contracts are for six-month stints. The contracts can be renewed, too — he said he’s got one DJ on his seventh contract (three and a half years!). I’d be assigned a cabin, most likely with a roommate — a mild bummer, as I like having my own space, but it would be worth trying, at least. Meals are provided, too, so it’s basically room and board included with the contract. Additionally, the DJ’s get $300 a week in cash. After three months, if things are going well, it can go up to $325/wk, then if things go into a second contract it can go up to $350/wk. I’m not sure if it continues to go up after that or not. There are also occasional private parties that can pay a little extra.

As entertainment staff, the DJ has his days mostly free, and is allowed access to areas of the ship that some of the other shipboard staff apparently don’t. There are spas and fitness clubs to work out at, pools to swim in or lounge by, shows by other entertainers, bars, it’s possible to go ashore when the ship is in port somewhere, and they’re even (according to the website) outfitting their ships with internet access.

Basically, it sounds like a dream job. Get paid to take a 6-month (at least) cruise, spinning in a top-flight dance club every night. The pay is slightly less than what I’m making now, but when you factor in the provided room and board negating the need to pay rent, utilities, and meals, I’d be holding onto a lot more money than I’m able to now. Should this all actually come through, I figure I can just put all my stuff in a storage unit here in Seattle and be good to go until I’m ready to come ashore again.

So at this point, I’m just going to put all but absolutely necessary spending on hold for the next couple months and see if I’m lucky enough to get a spot. If I don’t then I’ve got a decent job and apartment already going here. If I do — I’m going to be on that ship and loving every last little minute of it.

After that call, work was really difficult to pay attention to — I kept daydreaming about opening the door and seeing a sea of water, instead of a sea of office cubicles.

Once work finally ended, I caught the bus out to Casey’s place to check e-mail and type up all my Bumbershoot ramblings and Tuesday’s journal entry for the weblog. Between getting all that typed in (I talk a lot, don’t I?) and getting the pictures sized to post also, I didn’t make it out of there about 11pm. After that it was a half hour wait for the next bus, as I’d missed the previous one by just a matter of minutes, and it was about midnight by the time I made it home. At that point I was very glad I’d decided not to start babbling about the call with JB that night, but to leave it for the next post. Went to bed, and crashed hard.

On the way to work Thursday morning, I got to chatting with the girl that I’ keep seeing every morning on the bus. Turns out her name is Kerry (Kelly? Kate? Ergh…damn my faulty memory), and she and her boyfriend just moved down here from Cold Harbor, Alaska, just a month or two before I came down. Small, small world.

Work was pretty obnoxious again, but I think I finally got caught up with things. It helped that I had another pair of hands, though. XBS keeps a supply of ‘floaters’ trained and available in case a post needs extra help or coverage, so they’d sent Loren over for the day to brush up and make sure he remembered all the procedures. Having him there helped a lot — I don’t think I’d have been able to get through everything myself.

Came home and grabbed a bite to eat, then wandered down to the Temple of Avarice (Pacific Place, an almost ridiculously ostentatious shopping center with a 2-story movie multiplex on the top floor) to catch The Others, a thriller with Nicole Kidman. Very cool ghost story — I’d been wanting to see it for a while, and wasn’t dissapointed in the least.

And that’s it up to Thursday night. Now I just have to “hurry up and wait” for the next couple months to see if this DJ position comes through. Wish me luck — I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed, that’s for sure.

More cruiseship daydreaming

by

Work more or less blew today. It wasn’t really all that busy, but one of my machines went down about 9am and threw the whole day out of whatck. Didn’t help that I couldn’t get a tech in to save my life — eventually had to ask to elevate the service request to the managerial level. Theoretically I should be getting a call from a tech first thing in the morning — I just hope it’ll happen this time.

Was planning on heading over to Casey’s to toss all my Bumbershoot ramblings onto the webpage, but was tired enough after work that I just came home. After going strong all weekend, taking an evening to rest sounded like a good idea.

Ended up spending most of the evening hanging out on the porch (okay, it’s not really a porch, but that’s what I’m going to call it), talking with my neighbor Damon and his friends Erin, Cory and Patrick. Most of the time I was chatting with Erin while Damon and Cory wandered off to find Patrick. It’s been pretty cool — they’ve all been drinking since early afternoon, so Erin had a pretty good buzz going. Ended up being one of those free-form, rambling, everything-and-nothing conversations that go perfectly with a good buzz. I was sober, but I’ve been in enough of those conversations (both sober and not) to follow pretty easily.

After the drama queen hysterics of my other neighbor, Cody (the one that just bailed to Hawaii), Damon’s a pretty damn cool neighbor. Gotta say, though — and this is one of those horrid statements that just makes me feel old — he and his friends remind me so much of myself and my friends over the past 10 years or so. They’re all about 18-20, just a year or two out of high school, and fairly new to the “real world” of living on their own. This is Damon’s first apartment, and he’ll be starting school at one of the local colleges pretty soon here.

So, here we have a guy out on his own for the first time, away from parents (he’s from Billings, Montana), with a bunch of friends (also from Billings) also about to start school here, enjoying the last few weeks of summer. Up all night, joking around, tooling around the city during the day, taking advantage of every possible moment of minimal responsibilities…

…man, I miss that. :)

Of course, I have no idea how things are going to go for me in the near future. Every time I had to place another call to Xerox to see if I could get a tech to fix my machine today, the idea of spending six months — six months! — getting paid to spin for a club on a cruise ship sounded better and better. How many times is a chance like this going to come along? Many people pay hundreds to thousands of dollars to take a cruise for a few weeks — I might have the opportunity to get paid to be on cruises for half of a year, going who knows where, relaxing and touring during the day, and dj’ing for an upscale dance club at night.

Even if (assuming I am offered a contract) I do blow this chance at getting in good with Xerox, copy jobs and office jobs will still be around when I get back, and I’ll still have the experience to get one somewhere, if I decide that that’s what I want to go back to. The more this runs through my head, the more I think that I’d be a complete moron not to at least try for it. I’d spend the rest of my life wishing that I had.

So much of what Kevin’s done over the years I’ve been really jealous of — his seeming ability to just pick up and go, take a summer and go tooling around the states, take another one and go tooling around Europe. I’ve always been so paranoid/frightened of losing stability — be that an apartment, a job, a group of friends, or whatever — that I could never convince myself that I could actually do it. It wasn’t so much that I was tied down to where I was and what I was doing, but more that I let myself get tied down, and was scared to see what would happen if I let the ropes go.

Over the past couple years, though, those ropes holding me in place just didn’t seem as strong as they used to. And whaddaya know — after doing a whole lot of talking about it for years, I finally got the guts to pack up, turn my back on all the stability I’d built up for myself over the past years, say goodbye to my family and friends, and finally strike out on my own. Sure, I’d been out of my parents house almost constantly since I was about 18…but even with the slight ‘safety net’ of knowing a few people down here and having their help in the form of a couch to crash on until I found my own place, this move to Seattle has me much more own my own than I’ve ever let myself get before.

The best part is — I’m loving it.

And now, this possibility comes along. There are few times in my life that I’ve been as truly happy as when I’ve been in the booth of a club, looking out at a packed floor of people having fun, and knowing that I’m part of that. Watching people stagger off the dance floor, dripping with sweat and sportin grins wide enough to split their face because I’ve just worn them out. Feeling the enrgy flow through the room as a club full of people having fun thumps along through the night. Getting the grins, hugs, props, and accolades of people, both in the club during the night and on the streets during the days — some from people who didn’t know me beyond, “Oh, he’s that DJ,” and some from people who came out because they knew I was spinning and knew they’d have a good time.

If I never get to do that again, then the years I spent doing that will be some of the fondest memories for the rest of my life. But the chance to do it again has been a dream for a while now — and to do it like this? Cruising from port ot port, seeing places I’d quite possibly not otherwise see, and playing for people whom I’d most likely never get a chance to meet any other way?

I would be a fool not to do my damnedest to try and do this.

I’ll call the guy tomorrow.

Bumbershoot ’01: Monday, Sep. 3rd

by

Just something amusing — just got back from getting breakfast and batteries for my camera. Turns out the drugtstore has to store Lithium batteries behind the counter because they can be broken open and used in the production of crystal meth. Bizarre.

On my way into the Center, I stopped off at the blues stage for a moment. The Northwest Connection Community Choir was performing — good gospel music. Got one picture, but then they went from uptempo, soulful, hand-clapping gospel to a slower devotional tune, and I wandered off again.

Now I’m sitting in the balcony at the opera house. There’s a comedy/revue performance that looked interesting — the Madcap Cabaret, with Kevin Kent (drag queen and MC for the show), Bill Dana (comedian), Kiki & Herb (drag cabaret and musical comedy), and the Tiger Lillies (Gothic folk trio — whatever that is). Should be starting soon — it’s about 15 minutes past showtime, and the natives are getting restless.

Kiki & Herb are in their encore now. I can’t really say that I’m impressed, though from the sound of the crowd on the main floor, I may be in the minority. Loud and obnoxious, for the most part, and not much of the humor has really been that funny, though there is an occasional laugh. Not something I’d ever pay to see again, though.

Kevin Kent’s MC’ing isn’t bad, if it weren’t for the ultra-annoying falsetto voice he uses for his “Cookie” persona. He’s back on now — Kiki & Herb finally finished up.

At least the opening act was good. Bill Dana’s a comedian who is most famous for his Jose Jiminez character. His section started with an ‘interview’ between Jose and Cookie — quite amusing.

“This says you were a doctor.”

“Yes, I was a Geneologist.”

“Oh, my notes say you were a Gynecologist — a Geneologist is someone who looks up people’s backgrounds.”

[Pause…] “Wasn’t my way of saying it nicer?”

He went on for a bit, then Cookie introduced Kiki & Herb.

Right now we’re waiting for the Tiger Lillies — apparently there’s some sort of sound problem with the accordion. Cookie had spent the stage change time wandering through the audience and thoroughly embarassing a young man named Adam. He took it pretty well, though. When they were given the okay the Tiger Lillies came onstage — and discovered the accordion glitch. Hopefully this won’t take too long. It’s already 3pm, and this show is scheduled to end at 3:30pm. If it takes too much longer I may take off — Taj Mahal starts in the stadium at 4pm.

I gave up waiting for the Tiger Lillies to get started — aside from an announcemnt over the intercom apologizing, no apparent action had taken place by the time I left. Grabbed some pizza on my way to the stadium, then found myself an open spot on the field just as Taj Mahal & the Phantom Blues Band was coming on stage. Just a couple minutes later, I realized that Casey, Jen, Tim, and someone else were sitting just about 20 feet in front of me, so I moved up and am sitting with them.

The sun finally came out while I was in the opera house, too. What started out looking like a grey, drizzly day has turned into another gorgeous late summer day. I just know I’m going to get a bit sunburned again after this weekend.

More pot smoke drifting through the air. Pity I don’t like being stoned, since I’ve always liked that smell.

Bumbershoot 2001, Seattle, WA

Well, I’m a little dumb (maybe it was that pot smoke?), but it’s not all bad. I forgot which stage I was aiming for and ended up at the rhythm stage, where WOFA is doing traditional African drumming. Got a picture of them and of the finished Bob Marley painting, but now I want to head over to the blues stage for the Zydeco band I was actually aiming for.

Good, good Zydeco. C. J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band — thought about picking up a CD, but I’ve spent way too much this weekend as it is, so I’ll look into it later. I’d also like to pick up one of the Bumbershoot shirts — will check their website soon to see what they’re not sold out of.

Back at my usual spot in the bowl of the fountain again. Some momo just dropped his pipe — a nice glass one, too. It didn’t break, but he did lose his bowl as it bounced down the slope. He didn’t seem to thrilled.

I’ve got roughly an hour to kill before Nikol Collars, the last artist I’ve got marked as a possibility for today. I’m thinking I’ll go ahead and head home after her. Since i’ve been here all weekend long I haven’t had a chance to do laundry yet, which would be a good idea before the work week kicks in.

This has been a hell of a weekend, though. Managed to hit most of the shows I wanted to see, and enjoyed everything except that Kiki & Herb cabaret this afternoon. One sub-par show over four days isn’t bad at all, though. Definitely need to thank Kevin again for the ticket when I get a chance.

Just ran into Ogre (the doorman for local goth/industrial club The Vogue, who Chad and Dez introduced me to when I first got to town), his wife Mickey, and a couple friends of theirs, Adam (?) and…well, a lady whose name I can’t remember. Chatted with them for a few minutes, then headed over to the northwest court stage for Nikol Collars.

Unfortunately, Nikol has apparently cancelled. Nina Hynes is playing instead, which is fine — I’d had one of her shows marked as a possibility earlier in the weekend and hadn’t made it. Guess I get a second chance.

I’m sitting at the bus stop to go home now. Nina was good, and very pretty — pretty girl, pretty voice, and pretty songs — but a bit more mellow than I was really hoping for. Watched about half an hour or so, then wandered off. Swung by the fountain to sit and check my schedule to make sure there wasn’t anything else that I really wanted to catch, and since there wasn’t, I figured it was a good time to head out.

So that was my Labor Day/Bumbershoot weekend. Not bad, not bad at all. This journal (and eventual post on my webpage) can’t even come close to capturing everything that went on, or even everything I saw and heard, but I tried to get as much as I could down. Very cool — going back into the workaday week tomorrow is going to seem almost depressingly mundane, I think.

Interesting — there’s a guy on the opposite corner of the intersection with a boombox, just jamming out to whatever’s on the radio — and he just switched it from buttrock to madrigals. Interesting combination, that’s for sure. As long as he’s happy, I guess.

Bumbershoot ’01 – Sunday, Sep. 2nd

by

Just hopped on the #2, heading back out to the Seattle Center. According to my schedule, the DJ (group?) in the Electrodeck before the Black Crows was just called BPM. Well, whatever, it was fun to dance to.

There’s a few acts I’ve got marked out that I’d like to catch, but as is inevitable at a festival this size, some of the performances overlap. I’ll see who I end up catching eventually.

Anyway, possibilities I’ve got marked out for the day are David Lee Roth tonight in the stadium, Maria Muldaur on the blues stage, the Reverend Horton Heat at Key Arena, 5 Fingers of Funk and Critters Buggin’ at the rhythm stage, the Red Elvises (again), and Joe Matt & Sol Calderone and DJ Logic in the Electrodeck. The earlier shows don’t overlap too much, but the evening’s going to be kind of tricky. I’ll just have to see how it goes.

Writing on the bus is getting to be a pain in the butt, though, so it’s time to stop.

Bumbershoot 2001, Seattle, WA

I’ve got some time to kill before the first acts I’ve got marked, so I’m sitting in the bowl of the fountain again. There’s a giant puppet parade that goes through a couple times a day that I grabbed a few pictures of. And I do mean giant puppets — the dragon takes five operators from the looks of it. The smaller puppets only take one person — but they’re about 15 feet tall.

This looks like it’s going to be an absolutely gorgeous day. It’s about 12:30pm now, and we’ve got nearly cloudless skies with the sun beating down. Feels great, and it’s making for some cool rainbow effects in the fountain.

Sitting on the lawn at Maria Muldaur now. Not much better for a sunny Sunday morning than the blues! Where I’m sitting, I can get an occasional glimpse of her between the people standing up in front of me — I’ll stand up and try to get a pic or two in a minute.

Bumbershoot 2001, Seattle, WA

On the way from the fountain, I stopped off to watch a kid doing a juggling act. Had a very impressive finale that I got a picture of: balancing a spinning plate on a stick in his mouth and juggling three machetes while standing on a contraption of boards and blocks balanced on a rolling tube. Crazy, but he pulled it off — a far, far braver man than I.

Back at the fountain again. Hit the Electrodeck after Maria Muldaur and caught the end of Joe Matt & Sol Calderone and the beginning of DJ Logic. Stopping off here on the way over to check out 5 Fingers of Funk. Took a panoramic series of the bowl of the fountain — with the weather so nice, there’s a lot more people both at the festival in general, and playing in the water here. Gave me a chance to get a shot of it during a busier time than my first set of shots. Now, time to wander off again.

Nice — 5 Fingers of Funk put on a nice, sweet set. Once they were done I jumped offsite to get something to eat, and have been hanging out at the fountain for a bit now. I’m not hot enough to take a run through, but a breeze has come up that keeps blowing mist across everyone — a nice complement to the strength of the setting sun. I figure there’s only an hour or so of real daylight left, so I’m enjoying it while I can.

I’ve got a little over an hour before the next show I want to hit, so will probably kill that either sitting here or wandering around and peoplewatching.

Okay. Wandered around for a while, basically just people watching and following the flow of the crowd. Found a good spot for the Critters Buggin’ show, I think — as long as I don’t get too much of a contact high from the clouds of pot smoke that keep drifting by me. Can’t really say I’m surprised — most of the festival is kept pretty free of that, but the area around the rhythm stage has been given an “island” atmosphere in decor. Between that and the fact that the majority of the acts on this stage focus on funk, reggae, and similar stuff — it’s a haven for much of the crowd (hippie, rasta, etc.) that’s more likely to be getting a nice pot buzz when they can. Not a big deal, really — just hope I don’t get hit for a random drug test at work anytime soon. I don’t know if they do that beyond the initial screening or not — and a contact high probably wouldn’t be enough to show, anyway — but hey.

Bumbershoot 2001, Seattle, WA

Caught another of the random street performers on the way over. He’d laid three kids down side by side on the ground, and proceeded to make three attempts at doing a skateboard jump with a 360 degree twist in the air over them. While he made it over the kids each time, he never quite managed to land without falling down — but the last time he at least kept his feet on the board and got back up, which was good enough for the crowd (and probably for the parents of the kids, too). I did manage to get some good shots of him in the air over the kids, too.

Critters Buggin’ got off to a late start. They were supposed to start at 7pm, but didn’t really get going until close to 8pm. Apparently there was some sort of problem with the sound system — which, unfortunately, continued during their show. Every so often all the speakers would go dead for a few moments, then kick in again. Was kind of a bummer for the crowd, but the band either didn’t notice — or (my guess) didn’t care, as they just kept right on playing and let the sound guys fight with it.

Other than that, it was really good — and, typically for Critters Buggin’, bizarre. A couple of brothers from Morocco opened the show with a set of about five traditional Moroccon pieces. It was good, but after an hours wait to get started, one guy on a Moroccan pipe and his brother on a drum wasn’t quite enough for some of the crowd, who took off. Fine with me — it let me work my way forward through the crowd.

When Critters got on, it was great. They’re a pretty powerful band anyway — two drummers, a bass player, and Skerrik (sax, electric sax, keyboards, lots of distortion, and a lot of noise). Then they bring on a host of additional people to keep the stage interesting.

First off, a little girl (maybe Skerrik’s daughter?) ran onstage and helped Skerrik with the keyboard for a bit, until her mom (I’m guessing) came to take her back off to the side of the stage.

Next the Cheeze Family came on — four drag queens with grossly exaggerated anatomies built into their outfits. After they left, Skerrik brought out the “Farther” (kind of like a Catholic Father, just different) to cleanse and bless the audience with what appeared to be a pair of rubber handcuffs.

For a while after that, there was some sort of mimed business between Pan and a woman in a Hironymous Bosch-style mask and a wedding dress, both of which she eventually stripped off (she was wearing a white bodysuit under the dress).

I’ll have to finish this on the bus — the police are kicking us out.

Back at home now. Next to join Critters was a figure wearing a red cape and a Charlie Brown mask, until he ripped off the mask to reveal — well, another mask, this one somewhat satanic. I’m not entirely sure who he was supposed to be, except that he was trying to shut Critters Buggin’ down. Of course, this didn’t work, as he was shouted offstage by the audience chanting, “No more smooth jazz!” while Skerrik assaulted him with blasts of noise from his sax. All very entertaining.

Not too long after that, I decided to head to the stadium. Because of the late start to the Critters Buggin’ show, I didn’t get to see the Reverend Horton Heat, which was a bummer, but I did want to check out the last part of the big show for the night — Dimond Dave himself, David Lee Roth.

Rather than staying twards the back as I had for the Crows, I decided to see if I could find a way toward the front — the better to immerse myself in a sea of true buttrockers, and the best Dimond Dave experience possible. I cut off to the right hand side of the stadium and worked my way up along the side, then when I got close to the front I started working my way in. I ended up a bit off to the side of the stage, but only about three “rows” back (though “rows” is a fairly loose term at an arena-rock show such as this). In any case, I had a pretty good view, and was buried far enough in the crowd to go ahead and break the no cameras rule and snap a couple shots off. I figured that even if security noticed it would be hard to track me down — and even if they did, they can’t exactly confiscate the film from a digital camera. No need to worry, though.

Anyway, whether or not you’re a fan, I gotta say that Dave is one hell of a showman. Lime green suit, white suspenders, no shirt, long blonde hair flying all over the place, and all the screams, jumps, and high kicks you’d ever want. Was actually a really good show, and he finished it off with a couple old Van Halen tunes that even I knew — the last song of the actual set was “Ain’t Talkin ‘Bout Love,” and his encore song was “Jump!” I tell you, the opening synth cords of “Jump!” brought me right back to high school. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, but it was a hell of a lot of fun.

After Dave was done, I started working my way to the exit to catch the bus back home. As I passed the fountain there was still a big drum circle going on down in the bowl, so I stopped off there to sit, listen to the drums, and write things down — that’s where I was when I wrote that the police were kicking us out.

There had been a drum circle going on at the fountain all day long. It had started with just five guys and had been picking up more and more drummers as they day progressed. By the time I sat and was writing until the police came by and started herding people out, there were probably at least a good hundred people down in the bowl — a good half of them drumming, and the other half dancing or just hanging out.

After being told it was time to go home, I wandered out to the bus stop. Ended up getting into a conversation with a guy named Paul, who was there from one of the smaller papers in the area (I’m afraid I forget which one), and was covering some of the shows. We chatted during the bus ride, mostly about various kinds of music, pros and cons of the festival, and such.

As I got off the bus, a girl got off who I see most mornings on the same bus on the way to work. We joked that things were backwards, as we were getting off the bus at night, rather than getting on it in the morning. Turns out she lives in the same apartment building I do, up in 405. One of these days I should probably figure out what her name is.

So that’s it for Sunday. The batteries in my camera finally died during David Lee Roth (not bad, considering I bought the camera in late May), so I’m not sure if I’ll be taking any pictures tomorrow. I’ll look into how much batteries cost tomorrow morning, hopefully they won’t be too expensive — but since I need Lithium AA’s instead of standard Alkalines, I’m not sure.