Fall Sunset

Frame of Reference

'62

Yacht

Thank sweet baby Jesus I have a low-pressure day at work today, because Yacht started late and went hard.  They sailed the seven seas of dance rhythms (hooray for apt metaphors!) and demonstrated why it is so worthwhile to find and enjoy obscure bands; the immediacy, spontaneity and personal nature of the experience cannot be matched.  The band ventured into the crowd and the crowd ventured up onto the stage (including Jaime and Sarah, as you can see if you look closely at the back of the first video below).  It was not a point-someone-out-in-the-crowd-to-dance sort of thing; just an open invitation to get up on stage, if you felt like it.

Part concert, part dance party, all that fans have come to expect from a DFA records act.  And, of course, Jaime got me a setlist.

Week in Review

Photo courtesy: artdatabank.blogspot.com

Touchstone, one of the Seattle area's busiest developers, has acquired another South Lake Union block, dominated by the Troy Laundry building, a former commercial laundry built in 1927 and used mostly for storage since The Seattle Times bought it in 1985.  The building's brick and terra-cotta façade is a historic landmark and must be integrated into any new development.  Nearby, Vulcan Development, the company of Microsoft founder and sci-fi fan Paul Allen, announced that it has partnered with ECOtality to bring 24 electric vehicle charging stations to the neighborhood.   Mayor McGinn said of charging stations: "We'll do all we can to make sure Seattle is eco-ready."  Meanwhile, the US Energy Information Administration was reporting that the top two sources of electricity in the US are coal and gas.


Washington state was reported to lead the nation in parents opting out of vaccinating their children.  A cat in Prineville, OR was diagnosed with bubonic plague, the fourth case reported in Oregon among people and animals since January of last year.  In northeastern Washington, Authorities were trying to track a pack of dogs that has killed about 100 animals in nighttime forays - attacks that have claimed goats and a llama and raised alarm that people could be targeted.  Crows were reported to be attacking cops in the parking lot of the Everett Police Department's north precinct station. Tippi Hedren, the actress attacked by birds in the phone booth in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, appeared for fans at a Sheraton in New Jersey.

Bret Easton Ellis Reading

There was a Bret Easton Ellis reading and book signing last night at the Elliot Bay Book Company and, after a leisurely meal at Oddfellows Cafe, which is next door, Jaime and I joined the crowd in the bookstore's basement. The host said it was the largest turnout they'd had for a reading in their new space, but most of the crowd didn't show up until right before the reading began, so we found seats in the second row (we were seated just beyond the guy in the lower left with the receding hairline).

BEE read briefly, then there was about a half an hour of Q&A (neither of us Q'ed). After the first rambling question, which began with "You probably don't remember me"* and just went on and on, BEE made a couple of artful attempts to re-state the question, surrendered to the apparent ridiculousness and wrapped up his answer with "... just (pause), get over it." That got the audience laughing, although the questions didn't get much better after that. The highlight of the night was the insight he gave into the tripartite inspirations for American Psycho**.

If you haven't been to a reading/signing, it is kind of a tense*** experience, in that there are always a few people in the audience that you can tell are creepily-earnest fans, which can be distracting. On the other hand, if you have any sort of nerdish tendencies it is a great place to go and show your girlfriend that compared to at least one demographic you are more like a post-coital Steve McQueen in terms of "cool".

After the reading and Q&A, there was the signing. There were Post-It notes available for you to put in the front of your book with your name spelled correctly, in case you wanted the book personalized. I opted out, but Jaime filled one out and stuck it to her book. When we went up to get our books signed, BEE directed the conversation at my companion, mostly.

When BEE asked her if she wanted the book personalized, she said "no, that's ok."

"Oh, I just saw the stickie in your hand," he said.

"Yeah," she replied, in her typical casual, affectless manner, "I just wanted to keep my options open."

To summarize, for those just joining us: life imitates art.

* I suspect people who say this frequently are, in fact, remembered less frequently by others - whether it's causative or correlated is another matter.

** Stated briefly: frustration with the realities of growing up (i.e. reaching late 20s), the unexpected results of following a bunch of Wall Street guys around and one particular person who, in a moment of revelation, seemed to BEE to be a serial killer. There's more to say about this, but I won't for now.

***In my experience; which is to say, in a life already pretty well-provisioned with tension.

Sunday Evening

Silent night concrete, cold for isolated cross-town motorists
Going to too-bright living spaces
Where light reflects off the glass
The little stirrings of those getting ready for another day.