Never use a cruelty when a joke will do in its place

My head is full of Pixies songs.  Last night we worked on "Hang Wire", "Tame", and "Where Is My Mind?", which I'll be playing guitar on.  Chris gets stuck doing the keyboard-bass thing.  Then we finally decided on a track order and a name for the CD, which will be revealed at a later date.

Afterward, 3/4 of the band stopped for pints at Conor Byrne's.  Ran into Jen and Tomo there; they played, but we missed it.  Jen's blonde now, which conceptually is weird, but looks ok.  Strangely, the background music consisted of The Pixies, Tom Waits, and the Postal Service.  

Gave the finger to work yesterday. It snows like this once every six to eight years, so I was gonna enjoy it. The weather seemed to create a party atmosphere in the streets. There were about 100 people at the corner of Bellevue and Denny sledding down the hill, and a resident of a nearby apartment building put big speakers in his windows and blasted Bob Marley into the air above the crowd.

Elizabeth and I ended up going and seeing Lord of the Rings III at the Cinerama. I liked it, but was distracted by the schizophrenic drunk behind us who kept muttering to himself, hocking loogeys, and kicking the back of my seat. The manager came in and told him to cool it a bunch of times, but it wasn't until the last 15 minutes or so of the film that he actually told him to leave. I think the manager was scared of the guy. I suppose that if I was only getting paid $7.50 an hour, I wouldn't try too hard either.

After the movie we walked up to Bill's for dinner. There was a table of four - two men, two women - sitting next to us. I'm fairly certain they had been there drinking all afternoon. The one they called Molly at one point began channeling Jennifer Beals, and was Flashdance-ing in her chair, on the table, and on her friends. Then she moved into a little bumpin' & grinding with one of the fellows, and then pulling up her shirt and showing the restaurant her tits. Put those guns (pea shooters, actually) away! They left to go to another bar, apparently.

The weather today suxxxs. And no drunks either. But yesterday...yesterday was magic.

Resigned myself to sleeping in when I went to bed last night. Too bad I was up after 5.5 hours. Got domestic on my apartment's ass, and then went and ran some errands. Went to Belltown to find food, leading me to Sit & Spin, where, in a weird replay of last night, I ran into huntingtonforge. We sat and chatted fer a bit, and then I took my loser ass to see Lord Of The Rings (no, I hadn't seen it yet). I think I might have to go read the books now. I tried to find them at Twice Sold Tales, but no dice. Came away with The Agricola and The Germania by Tacitus instead. A short jaunt down Broadway landed me at QFC for some extra h0tt XXX gr0c3ry shopping. Got about half done - will get all the produce at Pike Place in the morning.

Is it just me, or are the most interesting parts of Olympic events the crashes?

Dear LiveJournal,

I've been neglecting you lately. I've just been busy recently.

Tonight. Bryan's going away party at the Nightlight. Mostly Speakeasy people, many of whom I have met before but remember not their names or LJ userIDs. ya see, the Nightlight is one of Seattle's few remaining dive bars, and tonight, the crowd in attendance took full advantage of that. The booze flowed freely, as did the love - huntingtonforge and I stood and watched contentedly from the sidelines. Mr. Huntingtonforge (who I finally met for real tonight after a year and a half of LJing, AIMing, and near missing) stood and talked for most of the night, as we were not part of the swarming SPKZ hordes.
At one point I was accosted by this gnarly Bremelo-looking woman named Brandi (I can only assume that it's spelled with an i) who A) told me that she thought I was a shy guy, B) that she was an art-critic-in-training, and C) that she would make me famous. Now, understand, I'm not used to strange people approaching me in bars. I am even less used to messing with said strangers' minds. Within about a second and a half of her talking at me, I determined that "Brandi", in her Long Island Iced Tea induced innebriation, was in need of some messing with. She mentioned being friends with famous people no less than four times - when I called her on this, she claimed to have only said it once, and that famous people didn't matter. She also failed to tell me which famous people she was friends with. She eventually wilted under my grilling and was rescued by a more-sober friend. Good riddance.

I said my goodbyes to Scott and Bryan, and now I'm here, warm, dry, at home, and in good spirits.

More about my day later.

And it's name is Pancho Villa.

Yes, as in Pancho Villa brand tequila.

Now, normally I wouldn't touch the shiz with a long stick, much less put it to my lips. But last night I asked Suzette to make me a drink with creme de cassis in it. What I got was a Diablo - cassis, lime juice, tequila, and ginger ale. And you know what? It actually tasted pretty good. So I had a few of them.

*note to self: never again will you commit such a transgression against yourself. Dummy.

Well, at least last night I had an excuse. I was trying to talk a friend out of doing something really, really stupid - even more stupid than me drinking cheap tequila. Nothing life threatening - at least not in and of itself - but really rash and not very well thought out. Regardless of what I was telling him about mistakes I'd made and dumb shit I'd done because of other people, he had it made up in his mind what he was going to do. He would have felt like an ass if he had actually gone through with it. He emailed me this morning to let me know he was ok and didn't do what he said he was gonna do.

Phew.


I'm at work now, chillin' with my big ass bottle of Glacier Freeze flavored Gatorade. I've been here for 45 minutes and have done exactly zip. 'Spose I should do something, eh?

Sooo....I'm pretty sure I fucked up my computer at home. Kam hooked me up with a copy of Mac OS9 the other night. I tried to install it yesterday, only to find that I don't have enough memory to install or run it. I did manage to replace a driver or something. Now my browser dosen't work. Which means I can't LJ from home. Which sucks. Bah.

Anyway, I went out with Bryan and Lehanna and Johnathan (Fuckstick) (who has an LJ but I can't remember what his name is) and Sean. Spent some quality time at Linda's, drinking copious amounts of Black Label and Makers. After we got kicked off of the patio, we ventured up to the almighty metal lovin' Bad Muthafuckin' JuJu lounge. I hadn't been there in forever and a day. We air-guitared & -drummed to some Metallica, Pantera, Slayer, etc. For joy. After a stop fer some fish & chips, we went our separate ways (hello, Journey reference).

Today: woke up on the Lay-Z-Boy at about 10:00. Did some laundry and watched the Lakers make asses out of the Spurs. Then went out with Brian & Pat. Made a sojourn up to the Hill (Orpheum, specifically), where we ran into Tasha & Betsy & Jenny & Jamie. After a brief chat, it was off to the Shoreline Central Market for supplies for the BBQ tomorrow and to pick up Chris.

Next: Dad Watson's in Fremont for some grub & cold brews. We were joined by Damon and Michaela. We split from there and went to El Camino for more boozeriffic activities.

Now we're back at Kalthoff Manor, continuing our escapades.

I think there's some wrestling going on in the living room. Yowza.

So i didn't go to the show last night. Instead, I went up to Machiavelli to get food. To my surprise, Suzette was bartending (I thought Jason had Fridays). I sat, and ate, and drank, and talked, and drew pictures on drink coasters. All of a sudden, I hear someone say my name - it was Jordan! Eeeee! (Not that any of you know this person, but whatever.) She was there with her friend Sara...they were supposed to have gone to the show as well. Funny, that. Then Andy, Jordan's bf (and a friend of Anna's from back in Bellingham) showed up, and we had a rollicking good time. The ladies left for awhile, and Andy and i discussed the current state of indie rock, or something...I don't remember really. We ended up at their apartment, where i got to play Andy's coral '65 Fender P-Bass. Mmmm, that was nice. The neck could use a tweak, and the pickups are a little beat up, but overall, it was very nice. I tried my damndest to keep up with the bassline on the Amon Tobin CD that was playing, but it proved to be too much for me. I left at around 2:00, maybe? All I know is that I wound up waiting in line at Taco Bell on Broadway...why the hell did I think Taco Bell was a good idea? Ack. Then i walked home. I tried to post last night, but someone was doing something to the LJ DEV BOX (I think that's what it was), and a long ass comment I wrote out is now lost. Damn that's annoying.

Give me waffles or give me death. Or a backrub.

Ahhh...so I'm back in Seattle, back at work. Ex-fucking-citing. Vancouver was a hoot. Here's a rundown of what we did:

· Left Bellingham at about 11:30 or so. Smooth sailing till we got to the border. We stopped at the duty-free store and bought tax-exempt cigarettes and changed our money from boring American green to vibrant Canadian hues. When it came time to cross the border, they started playing 20 questions with us, which led to us making a little pit stop in the immigration office, where the questions continued. They checked us out, made sure we weren't felons on the lam or anything, and then let us go. Aaaack.

· Once across the longest undefended border in the world, we made good time up into Vancouver. Check in wasn't until 3:00, but they had our room ready early, so we were rapidly whisked into our abode for the weekend. We unpacked all of our shiz and left to get food. We walked down Robson St. and ended up eating at Red Robin (which was a TGI Friday's last time we were up there). It was either that or Hooters, for none of the other restaurants around there looked too interesting at the moment. Plus we wanted to start drinking.

. A random observation: it's tight pants season in Vancouver.

· After eating, we did some window-shopping, and then some real shopping. We went to some mall they had downtown and we bought three pairs of shoes between us. (I got 1 pair). Then we headed back to the hotel for a brief respite. By this time it was time to recommence drinking. We had to wait for a while to get a table outside at the Cactus Club (I think Vancouver is like California - no smokin' indoors, anywhere.) We sat, and ate, and drank, and didn't even feel it. Back to the hotel, and then to Earl's On Top - nothing like Earl's on the Ave in Seattle. This Earl was much nicer. I had a rum & coke and three shots of Johnnie Walker Red Label (generally the available whisk(e)y selection in Canada sucks; hence I was drinking this, a blended Scotch. Eeek.) Anna had 4 vodka sours. The moral of the story? Thanks to the overwhelming use of measured pours, each drink we had was about half as strong as what we're used to. Most bartenders in the Emerald City don't use shot glasses to figure out how much booze yr getting.

· We left Earl's to walk the one block back to our hotel, where we quickly fell asleep in the big ass king size bed. I want one now.

· Saturday: Woke up around…I don't know what time we woke up. We were going to try to go see the Vancouver Memorial Police Museum, as we wanted to do the last time we were up, but discovered that in the winter, it's not open on weekends. So scratch that.

· Stopped at one of the two Starbucks that are kitty-corner from each other. It hurt my ears to hear them call out the drinks: Ameri-KANE-oh, Gran (rhymes with "man") DAY lahTAY, etc.

· Got on the SkyTrain to go to Science World (that big golf ball looking thing that they built for Expo '86). The SkyTrain fucking ROCKS. It costs the same as the bus, it's clean, and it's fast. Seattle has no fucking excuse to not have one of these things. But I digress...

· SCIENCE WORLD: I think this attraction is a little past its prime. Many of the displays were sorta run down looking. And there was very little supervision by either parents or staff. There were young'uns running rampant everywhere. We watched an Imax film about the sun. It was tres groovy.

· Took the SkyTrain back downtown. Got some bomb-ass pasta at Da Pasta Joint (yes, it was "Da", not "The", and yes, it was "bomb-ass"). Began drinking there.

· Fearing that we wouldn't get sufficiently toasty that night, we needed a little insurance. So after dinner, we went to the liquor store. I bought this cute little bottle of Black Bush for something like $3.50 U.S. Anna ended up not getting anything.

· Went back to the hotel, where Anna took a nap, and I drank half the bottle of Black Bush and watched the Thin Lizzy Behind The Music. At about 8:30, I woke her up; we got ready, and went out to...
· The Alibi Room. Yep, the same folks who opened the one at the Pike Place Market have ventured into Canada. The Vancouver Alibi Room is a lot more spacious, but thematically similar (dark, wrought-iron racks, a library of movie scripts, etc.) This was the mother lode here: they had Maker's Mark! This was the only place we went to the entire weekend that had it. So I had three or four of them on the rocks. They measured the shots, but we developed a rapport with the bartender, so he was a little more liberal with his pour. And another thing that excited me: the bathrooms were called "bathrooms" and not "washrooms". Don't ask why this was so exciting. It just was. We hung out there for a while, and then had to go wait for our cab outside. We ended up talking with this guy from Ontario about prohibitive smoking laws. He was nice. We were dunk. The cab took forever to get there. Oh yeah - here's another difference between the U.S. and Canada: the cab dispatchers and drivers are actually nice. Imagine that.

· Back to the hotel. Got into bed, watched Saturday Night Live, and passed the fuck out.

· Sunday: Woke up at 8:30. I watched some Punjabi Public Access channel and part of some English children's movie dubbed into French. We finally got ready and checked out at 11:00. Had breakfast at the hotel. We then took an hour to go off on our own. Anna bought clothes. I went to the Virgin Megastore and found almost nothing there that I couldn't get in the States. Notable exceptions: Bjork's "Gling-glo" CD that is nearly impossible to find nowadays, and an …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead video single from England. Outside of that, not anything too special. There were lots and lots of local (meaning Seattle-area) bands in the racks there (Death Cab, Sleater-Kinney, 764-Hero, etc). All the "explicit lyrics" labels were in English and French. Woo.
· We stopped at Safeway to pick up some stuff for Anna's mom and then left for home. We managed to totally miss the Duty Free Store (and thusly cheap liquor) on the way back. Oh well. No problems getting back through the border.

· Went back to Anna's parents' house and had dinner. Then back to Seattle.

So there you have it. And the entire time, not once did I hear anyone say "eh?" !

Yeah, I know - no more Kingdome. I guess all the monster truck rallys have to go tp the Tacoma Dome now. Oh well. When I was a senoir in high school, I tried to sponsor a class trip to the monster truck rally. It didn't fly.

I'm going over to my brother's crib this afternoon to drink shite beer and watch the Super Bowl. The whole thing is more about drinking shite beer than watching football. Neither of us are big sports fans. I don't really like either of the teams that are playing. I guess I'll root for the NY Giants (event though they play in New Jersey). The one cool thing about the Baltimore Ravens, though, is that they were named after the Edgar Allen Poe poem The Raven. It's nice to see that art and literature has some influence on the machismo-drenched juggernaut that is professional sports.

Anyway, I went out to T.S. McHugh's for Chris & Michaela's joint birthday shindig last night. Much merriment was made by all in attendance.

Word. I'd keep writing, but I gotta go potty.

(PS: Stacy - I spaced and forgot to email ya like I said I was gonna. Please accept my apologies. I thought I'd tell ya I found a used copy of that Neko Case CD. It's very...um, country. Good tho'.)

Left work, came home. Fucked around here for awhile. Anna & I were going to go see Chocolat, but we ended up meeting up with Chelsea and going to this little hole-in-the-wall bar in Ballard. It was nice - unpretentious, somewhat cheap drinks, polite waitstaff, decent music. All in all a good time. I'm home now. I'm really hungry. Tired, too. I suppose I could make some food, but that would involve doing dishes. and at midnight:57, I'm really in no mood to do such a thing. I think I'm going to check my friends page, smoke a cigarette, and go the fuck to bed.

VV0rd up d00d. h4X0r5 !|\| +h3 h!zz0u53.