10.31.06
Posted in Whatever, Me, Seattle Stuff, Reality is Weird, Writings at 10:37 pm by Spencer
Monday morning. Ugh. Feel like I’ve been sleeping on sticks. I spent Sunday cocooned — didn’t leave the house, no radio, no TV (except for a DVD or three), no newspaper, no email (I don’t think)…just coffee, the muse, and later some spaghetti. I don’t even bother with 60 Minutes.
As I’m falling asleep, I remember I have to go to the bank. Crap. That means being Late For Work, and lately my employer is a stickler about that. Now suddenly it’s 8:30 and for NPR, Shea Stevens is telling me the headlines. Snooze. Man, I could use another hour of sleep. Radio again. Crap okay okay I stand up, bump into a couple walls, then call in to my boss. Except, huh that’s kinda odd, no one’s at the switchboard. (Am I awake yet?) Well, receptionists need late, too, so whatever. Ain’t the first time. I use the spell-finder whatsis and leave a message for my manager. “Hi, it’s me. It’s, er, ten to 9 and I’m afraid I have to go to the bank. Everything’s covered…” etc. The radio’s all election blah blah, so I shower and while shaving there’s another top of the hour.
And there’s this “public service” story during the local headline news slot about how now that we’ve lost an hour, to be extra careful driving in the dark.
Oh. Right. Fall back. Fuuuuck.
The whole time change thing remains strange and jarring to me even though I’m now 40 and have spent more than half my life in places where the time changes twice every year. I guess everyone feels about the same about it (bearish), but I grew up in central Indiana, where the time never changed — never had, never would. What was the point? The days were still shorter or longer or whatever. Big deal. All that corn still grows in rows. Since there was no time change, what time shows were on TV would shift an hour one way or the other, depending on the season. It was like school that way, what time the Muppet Show and Emergency were on. A sure sign of impending winter. I remember when I moved to Chicago at the age of (only just) 19 and the utterly bizarre and hard-to-describe-and-despite-myself thrill of the first time I experienced a time change. It was ridiculous in its pomposity, especially sitting next to a small inland sea. Perhaps not coincidentally, the local PBS affiliate later showed Dr. Who during late night.
So…anyway, an unexpected hour until the bank opens, and me all dressed up with nowhere to go. Fug it. Have me some big breffast. I buy a paper and stroll into my neighborhood breakfast franchise establishment. Get seated. Hm. Kinda chilly in here. Oh hi, yeah I’ll have the Western skillet thing, that sounds good thanks. Coffee arrives, I’m sipping the paper, and I smell that early season furnace smell of gently roasting dust and settled cat hair. Sense memory takes over, and I feel peripherally transported to a dozen previous autumns of my life all at once.
Gradually, between sips, I become aware that the slightly chilled IHOP dining room is slowly filling with an increasingly dense carpet of white smoke from, oh, about mid-thigh on down. It’s like my dad’s pipe smoke when I was a kid.
Looking around, the few other tables are all taking no apparent notice, and then I see the one waiter climbing up on the ticket station and fiddling with the beige (once white) box at the base of the beige (once white) vaulted ceiling, then climbing down and walking briskly in seemingly random ellipses. There’s a cell phone flourish and then back up again. That thermostat looks like it’s probably kinda greasy.
“Yeah, I cranked the heat and this is what happened,” he answers my Customer’s Brow as he shuttles past in the now rather endearingly Scottish moor-like white fog and opens the exterior door-to-a-pit near me. “Sorry about this, but I’ll close this in 5 or 10 min.” Yeah man, it’s all good. Sip. The business casual guy on the other side of the floor chortles for some reason.
Breakfast arrives with precisely 15 min. until the bank opens, as the chill smokey breeze wafts through with the sound of passing morning traffic.
Sip. Reminds me I’ve been meaning to dig out my gloves. Mm, I’m glad the pancakes come with after all.
I tip the waiter extra well when I leave, smack on the dot. Turns out the other guy who was supposed to work hasn’t showed up. Figures, don’t it, hang in there man. As I walk out the door, I’m suddenly 23 and working in a coffee house again.
Permalink
10.29.06
Posted in Whatever, Me at 9:51 pm by Spencer
My friend Lora recently opened for the Beastie Boys in Las Vegas. It seems there was a last-minute semi-secret show there, at a maybe 2,000 capacity venue and on a Monday no less. The opening act, if you will, was karoake and Lora got up the gumption to sing a Joan Jett and the Blackhearts song. She was wearing an early-’80s Beasties t-shirt that says “Get off my dick” on the back.
There was also a recent convocation of the League of Intoxicated Gentlemen, this time in the Ballard orbit. All I can really say publicly is that there was a secret ceremony and afterwards we were wearing fezzes. (”The secret to wearing a fez is maintaining an air of utter dignity.”) During our second stop at the Ballard Smoke Shop, I had an unexpectedly intense conversion with a drunk elemental, one of those pickled shamans you find occasionally in real working class bars. He asked piercing questions. Things entered a different orbit. Of course, this was after the repeated visits from boisterous pirates while drinking whiskey at Hattie’s Hat, so I suppose that might have tipped me if I’d paid attention.
Permalink
10.26.06
Posted in News of the World, What I'm Reading, Spooks, Covert Action, Politics at 11:06 pm by Spencer
On Monday, Oct. 23, 2006, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (a sad pale shadow of its former self) ran a front-page, above-the-fold article with large color photo of none other than 1970s CIA figure Edwin P. Wilson.
“Former CIA spy branded a traitor wants to clear his name” by Tracy Johnson is a portrait of Wilson today, released in 2004 from the maximum security prison at Marion, IL, the asshole of the solitary confinement prison system. A Federal judge decreed that the government had knowingly withheld vital evidence damaging to their case and, worse, presented false testimony. Reporter Johnson traces Wilson’s impossible-but-true history, while following him around his Seattle office and his home somewhere around Edmonds.
Surrounded by great stacks of boxed documents, Edwin Wilson seeks to clear his name through lawsuits against individuals in the CIA that he says know the truth about Wilson’s relationship with the Agency. This is an important point, of course, because Wilson was sentenced to national security prison for trading arms with the Libyans, which was indeed a very serious crime at the time. However, Wilson has maintained he was making the deals with the approval and even encouragement of the CIA, in an effort to gain more intelligence inside the network. The US government has always steadfastly disavowed any such sanction. Evidently, the judge in 2004 saw it a little differently.
As I say, Wilson’s story is a complicated one. In addition to the arms trading and espionage, he has also been convicted of paying to hire a hit man to kill a prosecuter and others involved in his case. The key payment to the hit man was actually handed over by one of Wilson’s sons. He, too, was convicted and sentenced to prison, though he was later released. According to Johnson’s account, the two have not been in touch since the trial.
And even that is only the tip of the ice berg.
Permalink
Posted in News of the World, Nifty Links, 3D, Space is the Place, Natural Wonders, Science at 10:20 pm by Spencer
I know you’ve heard about NASA’s STEREO mission to take 3D pictures of the sun, but you also know I have to post about it. I mean, come on…space and 3D?
They’re launching 2 satellites because in order to create stereoscopic imaging of the sun, they need to establish, basically, a left and right eye. The distance between these eyes — the camera lenses — is called the interocular.
When filming on your average movie set, the interocular is usually set at about 2 1/2 inches — the distance between the eyes of an average person. But by changing the interocular, you can also play with the sense of depth. Sometimes its necessary to shoot with an extremely wide interocular in order to create the filmic experience of depth for the viewing audience. For example, one director mounted left and right cameras on the opposite wing-tips of a small airplane and flew it over a large city. This produced a much greater sense of both depth and detail than a standard 2 1/2 inch interocular would in the same scenario. In essence, the director simply enlarges the viewer’s head, giving them bigger eyes wider apart to view the world.
Or the sun, as the case may be. To get a get a good interocular, to get the eyes wide enough apart to show us a stereoscopic image of the sun, NASA has to send them thousands of miles into space in opposite directions.
Of course, what this means is that NASA will eventually be able to create stereo images of the solar system. Now imagine that.
Meanwhile, dig these photos of solar flares at Space.com.
Also:
A July 2004 NASA news story about the creation of “the first three-dimensional (3D) view of massive solar eruptions called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). …The researchers analyzed ordinary two-dimensional images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft in a new way to yield the 3D images.” Link includes downloadable Mpeg video and hi-res TIF images.
The Mars Rover 3D Image Gallery @ NASA — anaglyphic 3D images from Spirit and Opportunity, which are both still hanging on long after they were expected to keel over.
Permalink
10.15.06
Posted in Music, Events, Avant Experiwhosis at 2:18 pm by Spencer
Conspiracy Records in Belgium has released a new LP by Climax Golden Twins as part of the label’s 12-LP series celebrating their 10th anniversary. Pressings for the series are limited to 200-500 copies (depending on the title), and are on heavy, 180 gram vinyl. The CGT release sports what Rob describes as “beautiful labels and hand screened covers.”
It’s only available directly from the label, so visit the link above if you’re interested.
In his recent spam about the album, Rob also said it “contains some songs, some collage, 78rpm records, hillbilly acoustics, an ambient caveman number featuring Erin Sullivan from the mighty A Frames…and more…” Thoughtfully, Conspiracy Records has posted a sample track MP3 on their page about the release.
Update: This Saturday night, Oct. 21, the Twins and three other bands are playing “an ear-bending evening of avant psyche freak out” at an artists space in a converted boat warehouse. Check it:
Enterruption and Le Vide present:
Suishou no Fune
Climax Golden Twins
Du Hexen Hase
Datura Blues
October 21, Saturday, 8:30pm, All-Ages, $5
@ the S.S. Marie Antoinette
1235 Westlake Ave N., Seattle, kind of across from Rocksalt…
The S.S. Marie Antoinette folks also have a MySpace page if you’re into that.
Permalink
10.10.06
Posted in Whatever, Cinema, Funny Shit at 10:45 pm by Spencer
Courtesy of YouTube, one Bryan Boyce has created an excellent and funny video mash-up entitled Special Report. It uses Clutch Cargo-esque mouth overlays to combine dialog and declamations from classic ’50s sci fi B-movies with actual footage of newscast anchors from all the networks. Comes complete with Robot Monster reference. If only the real newscasts were this accurate.
(Thanks to Micki S. for the refer.)
Permalink
Posted in Whatever, Music, Avant Experiwhosis, Funny Shit at 10:16 pm by Spencer
Just in time to help ameliorate my throbbing stress-levels at work, the ever-wonderful WFMU Blog today posted MP3s of the 1969 Permanent Damage LP by The GTO’s, a classically odd Zappa side-project featuring groupies in his orbit at the time telling stories, performing several fine Zappa-penned songs (backed by a sort of freak super-group including the likes of Ian Underwood and Ry Cooder), and engaging in typically Zapped audio strangeness. (The post also includes a number of other choice groupie-related MP3s and videos.)
A must-have, and I don’t mean scabies.
Learn a little more about The GTO’s album.
Permalink
Posted in Music, Avant Experiwhosis, Funny Shit, Online Video at 10:02 pm by Spencer
Thanks to the rapidly impending doom of Tower Records, I recently obtained three albums by the one-of-a-kind Scottish avant songwriter and humorist philosopher, Ivor Cutler (born January 15 1923; died March 3 2006). I’d seen the name on Fred Frith’s discography (as he contributed some viola to Velvet Donkey), but I first checked him out thanks to a video clip of him performing “Shop Lifters” with harmonium on The Old Grey Whistle Test posted on the WFMU Blog.
Here’s some links about him.
Official site
www.ivorcutler.org
Video
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ivor+cutler&search=Search
A Discography
www.issue.demon.co.uk/poetry/cutler/record/
Obituary
www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1725211,00.html
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Cutler
“I’m Going in a Field” from the album Ludo (1967):
I’m going in a field,
I’m going in a field,
I’m going in a field,
To lie down.
I’ll lie beside the grass,
I’ll lie beside the grass,
I’ll lie beside the green grass,
I’m going in a field,
I’m going in a field,
I’m going in a field,
To lie down.
Yellow flower,
In the grass,
Yellow flower,
In the grass.
I’m going in a field,
I’m going in a field,
I’m going in a field,
To lie down.
My lovers eyes are blue,
I’m going in a field,
To lie down.
Green grass,
Yellow flower,
My lovers eyes are blue
I’m going in a field.
Permalink
Posted in Whatever, Music, Punk and Hardcore, Funny Shit at 9:01 pm by Spencer
Required reading. The impossibly entertaining concert rider for Iggy and The Stooges has been making the rounds since The Smoking Gun posted it last week.
It was apparently written by Jos Grain, who is The Stooges’ drum roadie. My pal Hell’s Donut House informs me that Mike Watt (who’s playing bass with them, ya know) posted to the Chugchanga list about it, saying “I don’t have a bass tech or assistant hair tech or anything - I’m just watt trying to help these guys out and not there to make demands I think jos was just trying to spook some promoter people into getting good amps, I guess.”
“I’m really lucky to be doing this w/the stooges (big time) and am not at all picky,” Mike continued. “the only thing I kind of wish for rider shit is a little really hot chili salsa, like stuff w/habaneros to go w/tortilla chips but it ain’t all that critical.”
Thoughtfully, Mike also provided a link to an HTML copy of the rider at Jos’ site.
Permalink
