Mu-major times.

This weekend we finally got a table at How to Cook a Wolf and I spent the day Saturday recording with Nate Hill. I feel like a winner merely for not losing these last couple weeks as I watch the markets crash - yes, I said it, crash - while my cash cools its heels in a money market. More time in the studio on my own this week, trying to master the mu-major and the slash chord. The weather is cool and fall-feeling without raining much at all and I like the windy and clear days. I joined the South Sound Sailing Society today. I have determined not to go to Palm Springs for Thanksgiving for lack of funds to pay the premiums the airlines are asking right now. I am really thankful for having discovered the "band" known as Owl City.

White and Hill

The storied recording duo of White and Hill are at it again. This is a new take on one of the songs we wrote for our college band:

click on this link and download "Home" at the bottom of the page.

Old Rocks

(This picture is only marginally related, but I love it. Everything is awesome about it. A creationist triceratops...obviously.)


Bucking the trend, something good came out of Alaska today: rocks.

in the air

Today was the first day when there was no heat in the sun. Winter is coming. The wind was blowing steadily all day and although the day was beautiful it also had that sense of something heavy in the air.

CERN

The collider is running.

Life is good.

Things are busy and exciting at work.  Today I worked from home.  I walked to Starbucks for breakfast and Phuket (Thai) for dinner.  The weather is perfect.  I have been working on music at home for the past couple of nights and it is wonderful.  I have found a new Pinot Noir I like for under $10.  My orchid is blooming on my desk at work (and a couple of my orchids at home look like they are getting ready to produce spikes).  I am going to Crescent Bar this weekend.  I paid the deposit on the house on Oahu I am renting for two weeks in March and April next year.  I discovered the band Architecture in Helsinki this week

Stereoscopy.

These are cool.

Japanese Street Food is Cool

Kushibar is a new "Japanese street food" restaurant on 2nd between Blanchard and Bell. Until now I thought "Japanese street food" was just something your girlfriend lets you do on Valentine's day and your birthday.

We had dinner there last night. It features a very large selection of grilled meats, fried foods and noodles in a great simple setting. We had fried oysters, fish cakes, spicy udon noodles with fish and grilled stuffed squid. All were awesome. They serve complimentary popcorn to you before your meal - with Japanese spices - and offer Sapporo in pitchers.

Seating offerings include communal-style tables in the dining room, two separate eating bars and a semi-covered outdoor section where you can sit at picnic tables and enjoy the people watching on 2nd Avenue. It was not crowded at any time on a Friday night from 6:00 to 7:30, but I suspect this is because it has only been open about a week. I picture Black-Bottle-style crowds in no time. Happy hour runs from 4:00 to 6:30 and includes a generous food menu and $11 Sapporo pitchers.

Kushibar is really the Japanese answer to the new gastro-pub trend and it is as good as any of the American offerings.

Awesome

I really do not get much involved in political matters (I do not vote), but this pro-life abstinence-only former-beauty-pageant broad with a pregnant daughter that McCain picked for VP is just too good to be true. The fact that her daughter's baby daddy is named Levi, attended an alternative high school and lists "shoot some s- - - and just f - - -in' chillin' I guess" as his pastimes is just too good to be true. I am just gleeful at the prospect of this guy being a guest in the White House.

Articles here and here.

Man...too funny.

selectron

I updated my music Web site with some old tracks. I am looking forward to adding new music in the near future.

Speaking of music, Bumbershoot was going on just down the street all weekend. Despite my best effort to find any acts I was excited to see, I only found Beck and he was playing at a time that did not work with the rest of my schedule.

Jaime and I went to my friend Jesse Hollowell's wedding this weekend, which was at The Canal in Ballard. It was a nice small venue for a wedding and the evening featured an open bar that turned out a sufficient number of Manhattans to get me dancing and a kitchen that turned out a sufficient amount of prime rib to keep me full. Jesse made us all laugh a couple of times during the ceremony and the recessional was "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey - it was a fitting marriage for my old friend. My good friend Nels was in town for the event, which made the weekend a little more intrinsically entertaining than average.

Trigger: pulled

I have been hemming and hawing for months about buying new recording and production hardware - I have been out of business since moving out of the Alki House. I finally pulled the trigger and $2,200 later I have the basics for a new home recording setup. I settled on:

• M Audio 49-Key Axiom

• MOTU Traveler

• Macbook 2.4ghz/2MB
  

I'm going to get a site set up and post some of my old stuff and put up some new stuff as soon as it emerges.

Birthday Weekend

Jaime bought 14.5 pounds of various meats for my birthday. At the time, I think we had 13 RSVPs. That exemplified a theme of this year's celebration - excess. She prepared everything herself (except the excellent carrot cake) - lamb souvlaki, shrimp and chorizo skewers, skirt steak with chimichurri sauce, grilled chipotle hot wings, potatoes with goat cheese...

Other features of the evening included RW trivia, hosted by Dawn. Trivia included my first car and which year I took my earrings out. We ended the night by walking over to the tiki bar across the street for some karaoke.

So cool...

This is a huge deal.

Wedding Photos

I got some wedding photographs from Mackenzie's wedding. Here are a couple.

Seafair

Seafair is a combination of water-going NASCAR and a massive military recruiting drive. It is not seemingly compatible with Seattle. That said, people love it. I love it. Fast boats and fast planes are cool in an enduring way. It is as close as adults can come to equivalence with a childhood fascination with firetrucks or bulldozers or something.



Jaime applying sunscreen, Adam applying sandwich.

The weather was fine, but cool with the wind and the lake was very choppy. Last year we spent most of the day on a boat, but this year was the year for dry land.

The girls, most likely talking about what good boyfriends we are.

Adam and Jordan like to cuddle.

Adam, probably suffering acute gout.

After a year, she still pretends to like me in public.

I like this one because Jaime had to bend down to hide her towering 5'5" height.

The Dude abides.

Jaime's Birthday

We went out for Jaime's birthday last night, which is on August 5th. Yesterday was also our one-year anniversary. Along to celebrate were Steve (Jaime's older brother), Amber (Steve's gf), Sarah, Adam, Dahlia, Ameer and Jess. We went to the Pampas Room for drinks, then dinner at the Black Bottle and finally to Twist.






Jaime was pulling at my cardigan with her teeth. It made a certain kind of sense at the time.

Stuff White People Like

I first came across this blog a while ago, but I have decided I love it now. How much do you know about Stuff White People Like? How much do you want to?

Kyte

I think Internet Explorer is the problem for those of you who have had trouble viewing the Kyte slideshows on this page. I can only attribute this to Microsoft's products' usual ability to underwhelm. I recommend downloading and using Firefox as your browser. It seems to work.

Surveillance

I went to the 16th Annual David Lynch Twin Peaks Film Festival last night. It was largely a disappointment.

The high point was a three or four-minute short by David Lynch, presenting the film festival and welcoming the audience. It used his classic technique of shooting the scene with the actors playing the scene and saying the lines backwards (in this case, Lynch himself was the only actor), and then playing the film backwards (by turning the backwards, backwards, you get a frontwards). Inevitably this gives an extremely off-kilter quality to the scene.

The central feature of the festival was originally supposed to be one of Lynch's classics - The Elephant Man, Eraserhead, et al. Unfortunately, the producers decided to screen Lynch's daughter's new film, Surveillance. Jennifer Lynch has made one prior movie, 15 years ago, called Boxing Helena, which was poorly received. Surveillance is likely to follow suit. Although it was billed as a "psychological thriller", it was really little more than a slasher film. The production design and the cinematography were fine and Bill Pullman was fine, but the "twist" could be seen so far in advance that it might as well have been no twist at all and J. Lynch failed to take the film's genre into new territory.

Anyway, apparently the film has been picked up for distribution, but it is largely junk and should be avoided unless you are a junkie of the slasher or psychological thriller genres. I think I will have to see Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight this weekend, just to get Surveillance out from under my nails.

There were a number of Lynch acting alumni at the screening, including the short receptionist with the high voice from Twin Peaks. The people watching was great. I think my "favorite" was the guy from the AARP set across the aisle - a string of actually funny jokes in the film: silent as the sphinx; some totally unfunny, uncomfortable string of dialogue: the guy is in stitches. At the end of the show, I made sure he and I left the theater by separate exits.

What I'm listening to:

In the mood for New Wave? I am. Put an ear to my "Talking Heads" radio station on Pandora.

Live-Photo Blog

I've added a new app to my phone, so I can now take pictures and immediately upload them to this page --------------------->

If a Cloverfield monster attacks the city, it might get interesting.

Iraq's Milkshake

How apropos that I would make this post on the same day as the one below.

This is probably not surprising to anyone. It may not even be bad. But, it is something of which everyone should be aware.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html?scp=1&sq=oil+companies+Iraq&st=nyt

Happy Birthday, PTA

Today is Paul Thomas Anderson's birthday. He is 38, which is amazing to me in light of the fact he has been nominated for either best screenplay or best director for three out of four of his films. That is young to have so many masterpieces behind you.

In honor, a favorite clip, which I probably have no legal right to post here:

Gerontius

Found a couple of pictures of the boat I used to race on when I was going to UH. It has been sold to a new owner since I was on board, but it is still moored at the Hawaii Yacht Club.

3 years

As of last night, I have been out of law school for three years. It is an anniversary of special significance because it marks the date I have been out of law school for longer than I was "in" law school. I think I have almost recovered.

I miss almost nothing about it. I do not miss my $12-per-week food budget. I do not miss living in my 250 square-foot basement apartment. I do occasionally miss walking to Pearl Street to get Starbucks, being able to see great live music on any given night and a couple of the friends I made.

Jaime made me my favorite meal last night to celebrate: a 10 oz. tri tip, skin-on garlic mashed potatoes, asparagus and some Cotes du Rhone. As good a way as any I know to mark the occasion.

More of the Family Tree

I got over my dinosaur fascination many years ago, but I will always be fascinated by the specific details of the evolution of species; e.g. T. Rexes and Ostriches.

78

I just now realized I hadn't made a blog appearance since Hawai'i.

We had absolutely unusual weather this weekend. My first choice was to go out on Chris' new boat, but it is broken already and awaiting a part, so I decided to take Jaime over to the Beach House for the day. After a small mishap on the ferry (my battery went dead from listening to the Beatles all the way over on the boat), we had lunch at the Hardware Store in Vashon and then took a walk on the beach down to Point Robinson light house. It was beautiful, warm and windless. We got back to Seattle in time to shower and walk through the sculpture park to the waterfront and have dinner at Anthony's, where we sat outside as the sun set in empty, clean skies.

...simple pleasures.



Watching the sea lions - we could hear them barking out on the channel buoy the whole time we walked on the beach.

All the forest understory that usually looks drab in summer was in bloom and covered with purple flowers.

I like the little blue balloon sitting on the beach, which matches Jaime's pashmina. This could be a painting, but it would seem improbable.



Blue, blue, blue; a theme of the day.