Eclecticism

Bumbershoot ’01 – Saturday, Sep. 1st

December 10, 2019September 1, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

The day started on something of a sad note — Dad called to let me know that Grandmother died early in the morning. It’s sad, but hardly tragic — she died peacefully, got quite a few more years of life than we all expected a few years back, and we all got to visit last November. Due to timing and finances, neither Mom, Kevin, nor myself will be able to be at the funeral, but Dad will be in Indiana this week for that.

And with that start to the day, I headed off to Bumbershoot….

Walked in and watched Jason Webley — very cool. Accordion, percussion via coins in a plastic bottle, gravelly voice. I know I’ve heard the style before, but don’t know the name — think Tom Waits. Going to go ahead and spend some money picking up his CD’s.

Jason’s drinking song:

When the glass is full, drink up, drink up
this may be the last time we see this cup
if God wanted us sober
he’d knock the glass over
so while it is full
we drink up, drink up!

Drumming workshops go on all day, every day. Now this is a drum circle!

Took a 3-shot panorama of the fountain and the people around it (I don’t have the panorama stitched together yet, however, so it’s not getting posted up here just yet. I’ll be busy enough tonight just getting all this typed in).

Wandered out for a few minutes for some cheap food.

Back in, sitting at Meshell Ndegéocello in the stadium. Sun’s finally starting to break through the clouds — been grey and cloudy all morning until now.

Lots of eye candy out today.

Can’t get any pictures here — no photography allowed in the stadium. No biggie — lots of other chances to get good pics.

Meshell just ended — time to wander around a bit. Loretta Lynn will be on here in the stadium in an hour and a half, planning on being here for that.

Sitting and watching kids play in the fountain. Darting in to try and touch the base without getting drenched. Doesn’t work very often. The spouts keep turning on and off, getting stronger and weaker. Makes it very hard to predict where the next open spot is going to be. The kids love it. Got one picture of a girl trying to use an umbrella to stay dry — that didn’t work too well either. Umbrellas are good for rain — not streams of gallons of water suddenly dropping onto you.

Nice background noise coming from the drum circle off somewhere behind me.

Sun disappeared again, though. Looks like it might stay cloudy the rest of the day — but with Seattle weather, who can tell?

Just saw a kid — couldn’t have been more than 18 or so — lie on a bed of nails. Then his partner put a cinderblock on his chest, and smashed it with a sledgehammer. The block broke, the kid survived — but he had a look on his face like eve he’d been surprised by the hit. Kind of amusing.

Listening to bagpipes now.

Wandered into the Electrodeck (the area focusing on dj’ing and electronic music) to see what was going on in there. According to the schedule, I hit the end of Brian Lyons’ set. I didn’t have a clue who it was at the time, it was just some decent house music. Since I still had some time to kill before the next performer I wanted to hit, I danced there for a few minutes.

Was a pretty interesting atmosphere. Since it’s in the middle of this huge music festival, even though it had the general ambiance of your standard rave, there was a much wider range of people wandering through than you’d normally see in that kind of environment. It was mostly the kids you’d expect to see gravitating towards it, but you also had everything from “normals,” hippies, even whole families checking it out — mom and dad standing against the wall or sitting in the building’s beer garden while their kids bounced around to the music.

After about 20 minutes or so I wandered out again. Went back across the center to the stadium to catch Loretta Lynn’s show. Sitting here just slightly over halfway back on the stadium field, I can’t really see the stage — it’s a little far away, and there’s a good sized crowd standing between me and the stage — but I can hear it fine, which is good enough for me at this point. If I hadn’t brought my backpack I might have tried to work my way through the crowd, but with the day looking grey when I left the house, I wanted to be sure to have my umbrella and a sweater along in case things got chilly.

I’m glad I did, too — I started off wearing the bowling shirt I got while I was at TimeFrame, and it’s been on and off all day as the sun appears and disappears. Haven’t had to break out the sweater yet, though.

It’s funny. I just brought this little journal along to jot down some quick notes of what I did, who I saw, and what pictures I took to help me get it all posted on the webpage next time I make it over to Casey’s. Friday’s notes are just that — barely over a page of quick sentences jotted down, and only about two-thirds of that even deals with Bumbershoot.

Today started out the same way, but each time I’ve stopped to put something in here, it’s been less and less just notes and more straight prose. Maybe it’s not quite ‘natural’ for me to just keep quick notes like I started to. Probably an outgrowth of my inability to say in less than 50 words what can probably be said in 5 — a tendencey I definitely get from Dad.

Since I dont have daily access to my computer to keep up the weblog there, maybe I’ll just keep carrying this book around. It’ll let me keep better track of what I do each day for when I do get to Casey’s to post on the page. I’ll have to see whether or not I actually keep up with this, but I may actually have started keeping a journal again. Every time I’ve done something like this in the past it’s been on a trip of some sort, and I’ve never kept it up much beyond the length of the the trip, if I even make it all the way through without letting the journal fall by the wayside.

You could probably see starting this one during Bumbershoot weekend as the same basic idea as starting one on my various trips, but maybe the fact that I’m not actually on a trip this time will prompt me to keep scribbling in here. Don’t quite know yet — guess I’ll find out in a few weeks if I’m still going.

Just got done watching the Red Elvises, and am sitting at the fountain again. It’s proving to be my favorite between-show spot to sit, scribble in this, and figure out what I’m doing next.

The Red Elvises put on a great show. Theoretically, they’re from Siberia (though I have no clue whether that’s true or not), and play a kind of rockabilly/surf combo. Very cool, and lots of fun. The three of them are constantly switching off who’s playing which instrument (bass, guitar, and drums), and they’re all equally proficient at each. During “I Wanna See You Bellydance” they brought a line of bellydancers onstage, and at one point a couple songs later, they all grabbed drumsticks and split the drumset in thirds — made for a very cool percussive section.

Anyway, great show — good enough that I hit the Wherehouse music stand afterwards and picked up a 2-CD live album from them.

I’ve got some time to kill now, and am thinking about wandering off to find some food — it’s coming up on 7pm, and the last show I want to hit tonight won’t be over until 11pm or so. Time to wander….

I’ll see how legible this is later. I’m sitting on the field in the stadium waiting for the Black Crows to start, and there’s not a whole lot of light. Hopefully I’ll be able to read this.

Before I went off to find food, I watched some of Clinton Fearon and the Boogie Brown Band’s set. It was good, but downtempo raggae is more Kevin’s style than mine, and it was relaxing enough that I was starting to yawn. Decided that would be a good time to get moving again.

The Black Crows just got onstage — better see how quickly I can get through this!

Anyway, wandered off-site for food again (much cheaper than in the festival). Since the stage that Clinton Fearon was on was right on the outside edge of the festival grounds, I got to hear more of their set while I was walking. They picked up the tempo towards the end — good stuff.

Since I still had about 40 minutes before the Crows, it seemed like a good time to check out the Electrodeck again. Like before, I didn’t know who was spinning — and it’s too dark for me to try and look it up now — but the music was good. Better than the first time I stopped in today, actually. Dancing kept me occupied for about another half hour, then I wandered here to the stadium.

I had sat down next to a family in the stadium field, and they’ve been kind enough to let me squat down on part of the blanket they had spread out.

So now — time to quit babbling and watch the show.

Okay — last time I could hardly see what I was writing. Now I’m trying to write on the #2 bus back home. As if my handwriting isn’t bad enough already.

Kinda cool, though –the #2 bus goes from a block away from my apartment to a block away from the Seattle Center. Makes getting back and forth amazingly easy.

The Black Crows put on a great show. They’ve been playing long enough and have enough albums out that filling an hour and a half plus a bit for an encore is easy to do. Since the only album of theirs I’ve ever picked up is their first, those were the only songs I really knew, but even when I don’t know it by heart, straight-up blues-based rock-n-roll makes for a good show. “Hard to Handle” came in about halfway through, and “She Talks to Angels” was the first song of the encore, so I got to hear both of the songs I was hoping they’d play.

After they got done I started heading for the exit that is next to the stop for the bus, but then ran into Jason Webley giving another performance. This guy is rapidly becoming one of my favorite artists here, and he’s not even one of the main acts. Just a born entertainer, with great songs and a gift for working his audience. I’m hoping to run into him again tomorrow — he got shut down by the event staff before he had time to finish off with the drinking song, to the great disappointment of his audience.

After Jason stopped, I headed for the bus stop again, and on the way ran into Serafina/Amber, one of Anchorage’s old rave kids. Apparently she came down here about a year ago and is a preschool (or did she say kindergarten?) teacher, and mixing in her spare time. Unfortunately, we didn’t get much time to chat as the police were shuttling everyone off the grounds as fast as they could.

Eventually, I made it to the bus, and am working my way home now. Time to get some sleep and rest up for another full day tomorrow!

Bumbershoot ’01 – Friday, Aug. 31st

December 24, 2019September 1, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

I took off from work and walked up to the Seattle Center and made it into Bumbershoot at about 5:30pm. Spent most of my first day just wandering around and getting the feel of the place — the only band I caught any of was The Dusty 45’s, a decent blues/rock-n-roll band.

I did run into my friend Adri there, which blew my mind for a couple reasons. First off, just running into her was surprise enough. Secondly, she was there on her honeymoon! Apparently she and her boyfriend Jory (I have no clue if I’m spelling that correctly or not) had just gotten married the week before. Completely caught me off guard — was not something I was expecting to hear — but hey, congratulations to the both of them.

After a while I decided I wanted to head home, change out of my work clothes, and head back, but I never made it back. While I was at home, Chad and Kim stopped by to kidnap me, and we all ended up heading out to The Vogue, a goth/industrial bar just a couple blocks up the street from my house. Ended up being a very cool night — ran into two more friends that I hadn’t seen in a while, Nate (who I’d last seen not long before I left Anchorage, he just moved down here a couple weeks ago), and Alex (who I haven’t seen in years, and is planning on heading back to Anchorage soon). This world just gets smaller and smaller all the time….

After we all finally decided we were done, we hit IHOP for some grub, went to our respective homes, and crashed.

Temptation!

December 24, 2019August 31, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

Ooers…talk about a (potentially, at least) agonizing decision.

A while ago, a guy I was talking to online about dj’ing pointed me to a webpage advertising positions for DJ’ing aboard a Carnival Cruise Lines ‘Fun Ship’. I figured what the heck, and sent off an e-mail. Yesterday when I was checking my e-mail, I finally got a response, inviting me to call if I was still interested.

So, now comes the question. Seeing as how I just landed this position with Xerox/Andersen, and that I know they’d like me to commit to at least a year, do I stay with the safe bet with good future opportunities? Or do I chase a dream to see if I can get a spot on the cruise ships? Ergh…I’m at least going to call the number I was given to talk to the Carnival people to see exactly what the deal is — talking can’t hurt — but until I know more about it, I’m not sure.

It sure sounds like a great opportunity, though. Get a six-month contract to go tooling around on cruise ships to who knows where, and have a blast doing it. Here’s a blurb from the webpage linked above:

The Carnival Disc Jockey entertains in the Dance Club each evening and at private events. During the light of day, he can visit beautiful tropical ports, relax at any of the deck swimming pools, or exercise in the fully equipped health facilities.

Sounds rough, doesn’t it?

Well, there’s no way I can make a definite call until I talk to the people.

Suicide isn’t painless

December 24, 2019August 30, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

I did want to take a moment before I went home to comment on the recent suicide attempt that has, apparently, been making national headlines (see Suicide attempt draws nation’s attention, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Aug. 30^th; and Commuters’ mood turns ugly as suicide try snarls I-5 traffic, Seattle P-I, Aug. 29^th).

Now normally, suicides — or suicide attempts — aren’t really newsworthy events (unless, of course, they happen to be by some already-noteworthy personality…and even then, I often question if it’s really that newsworthy an occurrence). However, this event has been garnering national media attention not because of the suicide attempt itself, but because of the depressingly horrendous way that people here reacted to it.

In a nutshell, an unidentified woman decided to at least appear to want to commit suicide during the Tuesday morning rush hour. Pulling her car to the side of the Ship Canal bridge, she got out her car and sat on the railing overlooking Lake Union 160 ft. below. Someone called the police who quickly arrived to try and talk her down, but by this point, the mood was already getting ugly. Someone sitting on the edge of a bridge is sure to draw attention, and the arrival of police officers drew more. As traffic was slowed by the gawkers, people frustrated by the slow pace started yelling at the woman, telling her to jump. Eventually, the comments and obscenities from the passing traffic were causing enough problems with the police officers’ negotiations with the woman that they found it necessary to close down I-5, causing a huge traffic jam in the middle of the morning rush.

About two hours later, the woman jumped. Surprisingly enough, she survived the fall into the lake, and was taken to a hospital, where her condition has gone from critical to serious over the past day.

The thing that gets me about all of this — and what has been getting to many people — is how horrendously people acted. When I-5 was closed down, it was not closed down because of the possible jumper. It was closed down because so many people felt that they had to insult and verbally abuse an obviously already distraught woman, to the point of purportedly yelling, “Jump, bitch, jump!” as they drove by. For a city that has an image of being one of the nicer areas in the northwest to live in, this seems to have taken quite a lot of Seattle — and the nation, from the ongoing stories — by surprise. It’s a sad commentary on things when something like this happens. A freeway full of people, and not one would pull over to try and talk to this woman, or to see if something could be done. Instead, they did their best to urge her on — because as she had the temerity to try to commit suicide in a public place during a high-traffic time of day (now, is it just me, or doesn’t that scream out “cry for help?”), she was inconveniencing them.

Right.

Anyway, there’s not much I can really add to the general onslaught of reaction to this travesty. I’m surprised and somewhat disheartened that it all played out like this, of course. It’s not at all what I would have expected to see happen. Hopefully the next time something similar happens (though, admittedly, it would be best if that weren’t to come to be), people will think a little less of themselves.

I’m not sure I’m too optimistic about that, though.

Kev, drama queens, and Bumbershoot

December 24, 2019August 30, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

Okay. So what’s gone on the past almost two weeks in my little corner of the universe? Hm…lots of little bits and pieces. This may not be my most fully-fleshed out post, as I’m pretty tired, braindead, and ready to head home…but I wanted to get at least a summary up here, and knew that I most likely won’t make it here this weekend. So — here goes.

Work-wise, things are plugging right along. John (the gent I’m replacing) has left his post to bigger and brighter things within Xerox, so this was my first full week on my own in the printshop. I think I handled most of it fairly well…about my only real headache was dealing with end-of-the-month inventory today. John’s a great guy, but not the most organized out there, and trying to track down where everything is stashed took a bit. Anyway, last Friday was his last day there, and we ended up having a nice little office party towards the end of the day as a combination “Say goodbye to John and meet the new Xeroid” shindig.

It’s outside of work where things have been more interesting of late.

First things first — my bro was in town! Kevin’s fiancee’s parents had given the two of them a Suburban, on the condition that they get it to Alaska. Since Emily is off in Ghana, Africa with the Peace Corps at the moment, it fell to Kevin to fly to Tennessee, then drive the beast up the Al-Can to Fairbanks. On his way north he stopped off in Seattle for a couple days, and we got to hang out and visit Saturday and Sunday evenings. Was all sorts of cool — what with him being a back-woods hick and me being a big-city boy (grin), we don’t get to hang out all that often.

Most of the weekend we spent either wandering around the streets of Seattle or kicking back in the ‘porch’ area outside my apartment, talking, having a few drinks, and watching the world walk by. Was a really good weekend, and to top it off, Kevin was kind enough to spot me the $40 for a 4-day pass to Bumbershoot, Seattle’s annual music festival that will be going on this weekend. Should be very cool — take some time to poke around their website and see if they’ve got a schedule up…it’s just amazing how much is going on.

By far the most entertaining aspect of the weekend, though, was my next-door neighbor, Cody. While I’d known that he was a bit of a drama queen (it’s pretty obvious, really), things apparently got too out of hand for even him to deal with — and so he decided to skip town. So, this weekend I was treated to watching Cody kick in his own door when he forgot his keys, toss what little clothing he was taking into a few duffel bags, and bail to Hawaii (at least, that’s what he told us), leaving everything else in the apartment to be cleaned up and parted out by his friends. It was pretty entertaining, actually — and I managed to snag his futon off of him before he bailed, so I’m not sleeping on the floor anymore! It’s a full-size futon, and isn’t in the greatest shape in the world…but hey, it was free, and it’ll do quite nicely until I decide I want something better.

So that pretty much wraps things up for now. Oh, last Friday I did get a chance to see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back — very funny, and a fitting end to this era of Kevin Smith’s career. This weekend, I’m off to Bumbershoot to see what can be seen…fun fun fun!

Laters….

A few more movies

December 24, 2019August 25, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

I added three more DVD’s to the collection over the weekend. Here’s what they were:

The Black Cauldron: Based on a series of books I enjoyed as a child (The Prydain Chronicles, by Lloyd Alexander), this was one of Disney’s least successful animated films, but it always had something of a cult following, and was one of my favorites. Interestingly enough, the reasons that it failed are most likely the same reasons that I enjoy it — it is one of the few animated Disney adventures that is not a musical, and it’s more intense than most, to the point that it was Disney’s first (and, I believe, is still their only) animated ‘family’ film to earn a PG rating. It’s a good one, though, and this DVD was something of a revelation, as the original aspect ratio of this film is 2.35:1 — the really wide “scope” format. In other words, with the full-frame video that I’d had for years, I was literally only watching half the film! Only a few Disney animated films have been made with this aspect ratio, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this was one.

The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover: While not exactly a well-known film, this has been a favorite of mine for a few years now — and goes solidly in that classification of “oddball, screwed-up, disturbing” films that I enjoy so much. Much of the premise of the film can be inferred just from the title, but what that won’t tell you is just how visually stunning this work is. There are five major sets to the story, and each set has its own dominant color scheme to set the mood of the characters and action in that room — to the point that as the characters move from room to room, their costumes will change colors to match the theme of the room they’re in. Fascinating stuff, though not at all a movie for the masses — it was decried as pornography as much as it was hailed as genius when it came out. Ah, well…either way, I enjoy it.

From Dusk ’til Dawn: Just an absolute blast of a film. I’ll leave arguments as to whether it’s really “good” out of this — it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and that’s all I want sometimes. Besides, the first time I saw this (in the theater), I went in not having seen any previews for it, so the sudden change in tone halfway throught the flick caught me completely unawares…made for a very cool show. This edition of the disc is nice, too, as it is a two-disc set that includes a full-length documentary on the making of the film called “Full Tilt Boogie”. FTB’s just packed with fascinating stuff — as it’s an actual documentary, rather than just a 20-minute promotional fluff piece, it gives you a ton of detail on what it takes to make a film like this. Very, very cool.

Dub-yuh’s at it again

December 6, 2019August 23, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

Okay, let’s see if I’ve got this straight.

Dub-yuh and his financial people take a look at the budget a few months ago and see that we’ve got an apparent surplus — $281 billion or so, $122 billion once we set aside a chunk for Social Security. He then introduces his famous tax cut/rebate program, which not only reduces the amount of money that the government will gain through collecting taxes, but sends a huge chunk of the surplus out to the American public (and I’m still convinced that this $300/person ‘rebate’ check was nothing more than a bribe to get his tax-cut package through as easily as possible — kind of a ‘spoonful of sugar’ technique, only with poison instead of medicine going down in the end).

Then, when the economy (as it is wont to do) does something other than as predicted in the most optimistic forecasts, the government suddenly realizes that it’s got a whopping $600 million surplus — instead of $122 billion — and is surprised?!?

Ah, well. At least I’m not the only one with tight finances these days. But at least I didn’t blow $121.4 billion dollars to get there.

Creative test answers

November 25, 2019August 22, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

I know these things bounce around the ‘net from time to time, but I hadn’t seen this particular set before it made the rounds at work (I’m posting this from work on a quick break).

In any school district, one must give credit to the creative minds among us. These are actual test answers from various schools in the Huntsville, Alabama metropolitan area.

Q: Name the four seasons.
A: Salt, pepper, mustard, and vinegar.

Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink.
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep, and canoeists.

Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.

Q: What is a planet?
A: A body of earth surrounded by sky.

Q: What guarantees may a mortgage company insist on?
A: If you are buying a house, they will insist you are well endowed.

Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.

Q: What happens to your body as you age?
A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.

Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A: He says good-bye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery.

Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes.
A: Premature death.

Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
A: Keep it in the cow.

Q: How are the main parts of the body categorized? (e.g., abdomen.)
A: The body is consisted into three parts — the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels, A, E, I, O, and U.

Q: What is the Fibula?
A: A small lie.

Q: What does “varicose” mean?
A: Nearby.

Q: Give the meaning of the term “Caesarian Section.”
A: The Caesarian section is a district in Rome.

Q: What is a seizure?
A: A Roman emperor.

Q: What is a terminal illness?
A: When you are sick at the airport.

Q: Give an example of a fungus. What is a characteristic feature?
A: Mushrooms. They always grow in damp places and so they look like umbrellas.

Q: Use the word “judicious” in a sentence to show you understand its meaning.
A: Hands that judicious can be soft as your face.

Q: What does the word “benign” mean?
A: Benign is what you will be after you be eight.

Q: What is a turbine?
A: Something an Arab wears on his head.

Q: What is a Hindu?
A: It lays eggs.

Pie, ghosties, scots, and naked girls (kinda)

December 10, 2019August 19, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

Sunday rolls around, and another week has done and gone. Been a good week, though.

The work week was pretty uneventful, for the most part. It seems that the opinion is that I’m catching on to things rather quickly there, however. John (the person I’m replacing) has decided that this week he’ll only be working half-days, and will make this Friday his last day…then I’ll have the shop to myself. Pretty cool. I also talked with Shelley (my boss within Xerox), and the impression I got is that while I’m not using my DocuTech training at this position, there are good possibilities for that in the future. This was great to hear, as it makes it sound even more possible that I will be getting hired on by Xerox on a permanent basis at some point in the future. It may be a while before that happens — as I understand it, they’re currently in the midst of a hiring freeze right now — but with any luck, I might be officially part of Xerox sometime after the first of the year.

Earlier this week I went out to see American Pie 2. I’m not entirely sure why that ended up being my choice, as I am no great fan of the first one, but that was where I ended up. Pleasantly enough, it wasn’t that bad. I wouldn’t label it a classic by any stretch, nor will it be a ‘keeper’ for me when it comes out on DVD, however it was surprisingly funny in spots, and I ended up enjoying it much more than I did the first installment. Much of it was a rehash of the original, but it felt to me like it held together better this time around…more of a real story connecting the characters, rather than merely placing a bunch of misfits in screwball (and often disgusting) circumstances one after the other. And, I gotta say, Alyson Hannigan (as Michelle, the ‘band geek girl’), was great — stealing the film, in my eyes, at least. So, all in all, not as bad a film as I thought it might be.

I also went out Friday night for the midnight show of Poltergeist. Very cool…it had been years since I’d seen this film, and along with many other horror films that were beat to death with sequels, it’s always pleasant to revisit the original and see just how good it actually is. Probably very much due to the production (and uncredited co-direction) of Steven Spielberg, the film is much more along the lines of what I like to see in a horror film — a slow build that allows you to make some connection with the characters before things start getting freaky, followed by truly innovative ideas as these unexeplained events start affecting the family. Quite nice.

I’ll try and get around to at least moving these mini-reviews into the Movies section of my messageboard soon…kind of tired now, as I’ll explain in the moment, so didn’t do that part yet.

Saturday, I headed out with a full crew of people (Casey, Dez, Chad, Don, Karl, Tim, Jenny, and Wendy) to go see the Barenaked Ladies in concert out at the Gorge (a gorgeous [no pun intended] outdoor amphitheater by George, Washington). Casey had bought me the ticket before I had even made it down to Seattle as a ‘welcome to Washington’ present, which I thought was all sorts of cool. We all loaded into three cars Saturday afternoon, and undertook the roughly 3-hour drive to the Gorge. We eventually made it out to the campsite at Potholes State Park — apparently, it was the closest one available, even though it took us another 45 minutes or so after passing the Gorge to get to it — and set up camp there. Admittedly, it was a very pretty little campground.

After getting everything set up at the campsite, we packed ourselves into two cars, and headed down a quicker route back to the Gorge for the show. The way there was fascinating — currently, huge amounts of the state of Washington are on fire, and there were amazing clouds of smoke from the fires just 40 miles away or so in the sky. The smoke turned an otherwise clear night to a completely opaque murk. Just fascinating to see — and the smell of burning pine in the air was an added reminder that all this stuff wasn’t that far away.

We got to the Gorge during the first opening act (who, unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of), found a spot and got settled during her last couple songs. The second opening spot was The Proclaimers! All sorts of cool…though I’ve only ever picked up one of their albums (Sunshine on Leith), I’ve enjoyed their music since I first heard “1000 Miles” in the movie Benny & Joon. They played a short (or so it seemed to me) but very clean set, with a nice mix of songs, some that I recognized, and some that I didn’t. After a short break while the stage was slightly rearranged, BNL came on.

This show was great. While I’ve never known much of BNL before this (most of my exposure has been their radio tracks — ‘If I Had A Million Dollars’, ‘One Week’, and ‘Pinch Me’, all of which I’ve liked), so didn’t know many of the songs, these guys put on an incredible show. They obviously have a lot of fun with their music and their concerts, and spent a good amount of time between songs joking around and generally having a lot of fun (from the lead singer while relating a story: “We were celebrating Christmas. Sure, I’m Jewish, but we’re big fans of presents…we’re not big fans of a kind, benevolent God. We like the Old Testaments wrathful, vengeful God. So now we celebrate Easter, too.”) Bouncing back and forth between their songs, with frequent jaunts into random snippets of other music, plus three encores, the show was an absolute blast.

After the show ended at about 11:30pm, we all went back to the campsite, and ended up sitting up and talking until sometime after 2 in the morning. We started out just sitting and talking, still pretty jazzed from the show, then Karl, Casey, Tim and I got into a discussion covering everything from Economics to Politics to whether or not the human race is breeding itself into extinction, and didn’t realize how long we talked until someone actually thought to look at a watch. The night was absolutely beautiful, too — I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Milky Way as visible as it was last night.

This morning we all got up, slowly got ourselves ready to go, packed up, and headed back into town. Now I’m back at Casey’s just long enough to put this post up, then it’ll be time for me to head back to my apartment and crash out before it’s time for me to work tomorrow morning. Very good weekend, though…was a whole lot of fun, and a nice change from kicking around my apartment. So, this is it for now…until later….

A good view, a picnic, and naked women running up and down staircases

November 25, 2019August 11, 2001 by Michael Hanscom

Okay – back to the weekend, and I made it back here to the ‘puters.

Most of the week has been pretty uneventful — amazingly uneventful, in fact. John — my trainer at work — was gone this week, training for his new position in Xerox, so there was a floater who’d worked in the Anderson XBS office before to help, since I’m not fully trained yet. As it turns out, I probably could have handled the week by myself, as the workload was slow to the point of being almost nonexistant. While it was pretty relaxing, and Loren (the floater) and I were able to chat a lot, it made for a really long, slow, boring week. Maybe a good thing, as I’m still learning the ropes, but not exactly very stimulating.

During my lunch break on Friday, though, I hiked up a couple blocks to the Bank of America tower on 5th and Columbia. Seattle’s tallest building, at 1,049 feet above sea level it’s roughly twice the hight of the Space Needle, and is the tallest building (by number of stories) west of the Mississippi. 76 stories high, it has an observation deck on the 73^rd story, and I decided to wander up and check out the view for my lunch. I’ve got to admit, it’s quite a view — especially on days like we’ve been having (more unusually gorgeous weather, Seattle is in the middle of a heat wave, with temperatures topping out yesterday at 87 degrees). I took a few shots, two of which are posted in today’s update.

During the day Friday, I’d gotten a call from Shelley (my supervisor at Xerox) letting me know that there was a Xerox get together on the campus out in Tukwilla that evening that I was welcome to come to — even though I’m a temp — if I could show up. I figured I might as well…my schedule isn’t exactly full to bursting these days, and it could be good to meet some more people within Xerox. As it turns out, while I did meet a couple people, I also ran into Chris and Donna Bennet, who I knew from Anchorage. I’d worked with both of them at Kinko’s and at TimeFrame over the years — they were working at Kinko’s when I started there, each of them moved to TimeFrame before I did, then they left TimeFrame not long after I showed up there. They spent some time up in Fairbanks, then came down to Washington a while ago, and are both now working for Xerox. So the picnic ended up being a much more entertaining experience than I’d expected it to be.

That lasted until 9pm, then I grabbed the next bus back to Seattle, and got home around 10-ish. I spent the next couple hours working on a new mixsession, which came out pretty good. I can’t post it to my DJ propaganda page yet — rather than running my equipment into my computer, as I had before, I recorded directly to my MiniDisc recorder — but as soon as I can get it .mp3‘d, I’ll get it up. Anyway, just a bit before midnight, I headed out to the only movie I treated myself to this week — the midnight showing of Showgirls. Had a blast watching that…it’s a horrid film, but that’s a lot of the fun.

And that pretty much covers things for this week. Until next time….