seattle « the thing itself and not the myth

[Worth Getting Up For: The Autumn]

* Labor Day weekend of MST3K Gamera & an introduction to Homicide. Not at the same time.

* Dan Mangan & Rhett Miller at the Triple Door. Thank heavens for advance tickets, or I might have talked myself out of going to this at the last minute, and that would have been tragic. Dan played his last song out in the audience, standing on a table in the first row of booths, something I’ve never seen there before. Rhett wound up doing two songs off mic & acoustic thanks to technical difficulties. They were both fantastic.

* The Puyallup Fair for the first time in *years*. The more things change, the more the Puyallup stays the same. Fair food! Rides (including my favorite, the classic wooden roller coaster)! Handcrafts! Random, purely American ridiculousness! And this year, much needed purchases of a grey fedora & a plaid belt for my Cocky buckle.

* Seeing Drive with Joy, & then having to explain the plot on the car ride home because she spent half of the movie with her coat over her head. (I thought it was a great movie. But it is a little bit on the blood-soaked side.)

* Erin‘s reading at Elliott Bay, & finishing the rêveur scarf just in time to show it off. Next goal: writing up the pattern. And I suppose taking photos would also be a good idea.

* My first year attending MIFFF (the Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival), which was a total treat. Click through for my post on that.

* A week in NYC, mostly helping Kat pack up her entire life & move across the world. The only picture I took was of a gluten free cookie label so I could remember the brand. Oops! But in addition to the packing and cleaning and moving we did a bunch of awesome stuff, including eating All of the Tacos and the Gluten Free Cupcakes, checking out Pig: A Restaurant at the UCB theater, attending the Peter Mulvey concert at ChurchKorner (which would be pretty fantastic on its own, but especially because it turned into a mini-Fruhead reunion), the obligatory trip to the Strand, an adventure to New Jersey, finally seeing Times Square, hanging out with yogis, and most of all, forking over the extra dough for the priority admission to Sleep No More. Ask either of us about it some time and we will rave about it forever.

* Then we came back to Seattle & headed to a lovely weekend up in BC, even though everyone was sick. Julie’s house is the best place to be sick at. She takes very good care of us! Kat & I had some Seattle adventures, and now she is off around the world, which will be her Worth Getting Up For for the entire next year or more.

* The new National Theatre Live season, kicking off with One Man, Two Guvnors, then The Kitchen. I’m so glad that SIFF booked the series again this year. The member pass is $75 for… 5 plays? Cheaper than going to London, for sure.

* The Cinerama‘s 70mm festival, with Lawrence of Arabia on the gigantic curved screen. It was the third time I’ve seen it, the third time I’ve seen it *there*, and I can’t imagine seeing it anywhere else. I also finally saw Playtime & Tron, which was great. Playtime I had tried to watch on DVD once and could not do it. If you ever have the chance to see a Tati film in the theater, you must take it. It is the only way to see them.

* Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, where I kicked it up a notch & was volunteer staff, which meant I spent a more time selling tickets than seeing films. Which was fine! I actually quite like working box office & will call at festivals. People tend to be super nice, both the film goers and the other volunteers.

* The reopening of the Uptown Cinema by SIFF. I promptly moved in, as you can all see on Twitter. No really. I am the mayor & everything.

* Halloween awesomeness, including my witch-playing-electric-guitar pumpkin.

* Peter Mulvey again, this time on my coast at the Fremont Abbey, a lovely small concert space. I’ll have to pay better attention to their calendar; sadly I missed Jeffrey Foucault there.

* Muppets! Three weekends of them at SIFF, then midnight at the Cinerama. My crush on Jason Segel is nearly unmanageable.

* Another non-traditional Thanksgiving, with a Friendsgiving on Wednesday night, brunch on Thursday, and Black Friday starting Thursday night. No, really. Judge away — everyone else has — but now I have a Wii. So bite me.

* Cinderella at the Fifth Avenue, mostly because my office got tickets to the final dress rehearsal, and so we got to see many children have their first live theater experience. Super cute!

…and that’s it for now! Stay tuned for Worth Getting Up For: The Winter which will likely include Twilight, the holidays, my birthday, and probably a movie or seventeen.

02Mar

[Worth Getting Up For: The Winter]

Filed in life | movies | quarterly update | seattle | travel 4 Comments

* Figgy Pudding Caroling Competition (as an observer, not a participant, never fear).

* Christmas with family in Quincy (a lovely weekend and a beautiful bus trip across Stevens Pass), New Year’s with friends in Abbotsford BC (finally meeting their new family!).

* Hamlet, Fela!, & King Lear (National Theatre Live at SIFF Cinema is the greatest thing)

* Seattle Shakespeare Company’s Cymbeline (thanks, Seattle Comp Tickets!)

* Cinerama reopening as in independent cinema. So far I’ve enjoyed Harry Potter, the Sci Fi & Fantasy Short Film Festival, Black Swan, and their delicious chocolate popcorn.

* Finally discovering Central Cinema. Die Hard! Earth Girls Are Easy! And cinnamon sugar popcorn! (I detect a theme.)

* EMP|SFM on Free First Thursday for the Battlestar Galactica exhibit. Not, I feel, worth the admission if that’s all you’re going for, as it’s quite small. This Thursday is your last free chance! However, I cannot lie. I may have made a quite embarrassing noise when I saw Callum Keith Rennie’s Leoben Conoy costume. Once a fangirl, always a fangirl. Also, I got a free Adama poster. Win!

* The fifth year of Noir City, a week of hard-boiled detectives, femme fatales, and regular Joes caught up in the inevitable seedy underbelly.

* Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat, even though as usual I took no classes. Also, knitting group starting up again!

…and most of all, visiting Kat in New York for my birthday. Gluten free deliciousness everywhere! Snow & Skype & knitting! The Transit Museum of Awesome! The Strand! My third tattoo! Sadly, the snow failed to cancel my flight & I had to come home. Woe.

24Nov

[Worth Getting Up For: The Autumn]

* Breaking the Code, a play about Alan Turing at the Strawberry Theatre Workshop. Fantastic play, fantastic production.

* Smash Putt, the miniature golf apocalypse of AWESOME. This year it was held in the old INS Building in the International District, and the weekend we went was also the opening of that building as an art space, so after we kicked some miniature golf ass we got to go check out all the exhibits. The most powerful, obviously, were the ones that dealt with the history of the building. Interesting stuff.

* Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, and volunteering for the first time. Why it takes me so long to get involved, I do not know. Better late than never, I suppose, and of course I only started volunteering for SIFF in 2009, so clearly I am running behind.

* Metropolis, the newest, most complete cut to date, with a live score by the Alloy Orchestra. I had never seen it before, and I think this trend of the theater experience being the first experience is an excellent one.

* Harry Potter: the Exhibition at the Pacific Science Center. Costumes! Props! Sets! My favorite was probably seeing so many of the wands. They’re fantastic, each one beautiful in its own way and perfectly suited to the wizard in question. Things I wish the gift shop had sold: posters of the Proclamations (or at least postcards of more of them), the pennant from the Quidditch World Cup, and autographed 8×10 glossies of Gilderoy Lockhart. On the other hand, I spent $18 on magnets and postcards, so perhaps they sold enough things as it was.

* The Rally to Restore Sanity, Seattle satellite edition. Some inevitable snags: rain, trouble with the live feed from DC, but a lot of cool people with clever signs, and just a nice thing to be a part of. Someday I may even upload photos from it. I was the obligatory Seattle xkcd protester, carrying a [citation needed] sign. Yup. I am awesome.

* All Souls at St James Cathedral. Every year they do Mozart’s Requiem Mass, and it’s standing room only. I stood for a while, but then went out and took a seat in the lobby, where I could listen without feeling claustrophobic (and also free of incense!) I was particularly glad to go this year because I saw in the program one of the remembered for the past year was my high school & college opera appreciation teacher, Perry Lorenzo. You are missed, good sir.

* Erin McKeown at the Triple Door for her Distillation 10th anniversary tour. The year of that album was a life-changer for me, no lie. She did the album in reverse order, then a mostly-request show, including “James!” & “Vera” at the piano. And “Single Ladies”! Hee.

* Daniel Handler at Benaroya, with a follow-up Q&A by my boyfriend Sherman Alexie. Valuable information regarding Mr Handler’s tastes gleaned from this show: he is a total fanboy of The Egypt Game, when the Giants won the World Series he was watching Red Riding, and he has a working knowledge of the band Ed’s Redeeming Qualities. I approve of all of these things.

* The Seattle Rock Orchestra performing the Pet Sounds album in full, as well as a bunch of Wall of Sound numbers. The vocals were provided by local artists, which introduced me to a bunch of new bands. Win!

* National Theatre Live began at SIFF Cinema with A Disappearing Number. I apparently love plays about math. Who knew? I bought a series pass, which is exciting, because it’ll give me entertainment through til July. Also exciting because I heart laminated passes. Sad but true. I know that there are a lot of Opinions regarding these sorts of live theatre programs, but for me, I’m still seeing theater in Seattle (thanks, Goldstar!) and this is just more, and productions I wouldn’t be able to otherwise see. Since I’m not in London, more’s the pity.

* #snOMG, Mother Nature’s first volley against Seattle, which enabled me and my death cold to have a half-day work week with much less guilt. Hooray! (Yeah, you read that correctly. One half of one day.)

29Sep

[Worth Getting Up For: The Summer]

Filed in life | music | quarterly update | seattle | theater 3 Comments

As we’re about to roll into October, I am coming to terms with the fact that some stuff I had planned for here ain’t never gonna happen. So to steal a concept from Aggie, I present Worth Getting Up For (Summer Edition):

* Concerts at the Zoo: Carbon Leaf, full of DIY joy and encouraging everyone who has a CL album to make it two, give it to a friend, bring ‘em to a show. Great Big Sea, where we learned that Murray singing bass still makes my socks roll up and down & that Alan must start drinking really early if he thinks (in the midafternoon) that Dick’s makes life-changing burgers. Being out on the meadow in general, warm evenings knitting in the sun, eating Rainier cherries, watching tiny children dancing.

* Concerts everywhere else: The Paperboys at the Triple Door, such a swank room, & Geoff Kelly dancing always makes me happy. Slaid Cleaves at the Tractor, two sets, no opener. Sarah Harmer at the Triple Door from the very front row.

* And, of course, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. Weekend on the happiest beach on earth, Doctor Who paper lanterns, frozen bananas, finally buying a cheesy sun hat, discovering my new favorite artists (Nathan Rogers is my new boyfriend; Tao Seeger provided tough competition until Nathan’s throat singing workshop oh em gee), finally being there for the whole damn festival, the beautiful duo Luluc, Nathan leading the singalong of “Northwest Passage” at the mainstage Sunday night, and so much more. Best!

* Cheap and free theater! Kindred Spirits & Sex in Seattle 18, both free at Hugo House, Much Ado About Nothing (though now I know Seattle Center is a terrible venue for outdoor theater if you’re not there crazy early. Next summer I’m all about Sand Point), & A Doctor In Spite of Himself (hilarious, & still playing, so hit up Goldstar).

* And more! Stitch & Pitch, even though we lost (of course), Greg Proops (even though he was in Bellevue, which is terrifying), the street art exhibit at Bumbershoot (which I still hope to post photos from), and best of all, a too-short visit from Kat, including a trip to Portland for roller derby, Burgerville, and book buying. Huzzah!

…and that’s all for now. Someday I might manage to show you guys all the knitting I’ve done since the last time I posted. Which is. um. Lots.

I hope you all are well!

29Mar

[Everything is uphill in Seattle]

After what felt like endless weekends of nothing going on (not that I really mind that so much: it gives me time to knit & watch absurd amounts of television) I had two weekends in a row when Stuff Happened. Like so.

Last weekend, knitwear designer Stephen West did a trunk show and a shawl class up at Village Yarn and Tea. I’ve been a fan of his designs for a while, but had yet to tackle one, so I signed up for the class, which was an excellent decision. I learned a few new tips and tricks, but more importantly, I got inspired again. We can all use that from time to time.

This weekend, as probably all of Seattle knows, the Alaskan Way Viaduct was closed for inspection. They do it twice a year, and while it’s closed, they do public walking tours. That’s how I found myself, shortly after 9 in the morning, donning an orange vest and a hard hat and walking up the Seneca St off ramp. A very odd experience. I wish that we had been able to explore more of the structure, but we did learn a lot in a brief time about safety measures on the Viaduct as well as regarding the process of taking it down and elements of the tunnel option for the waterfront (of which I am still not a fan, for those playing along at home.)

The whole thing was worth it if only for the chance to get a photo of Seattle’s Ugliest Mural. I saw it every day the three or four months I lived in West Seattle, and I was always horrified. The closer you get, the more terrifying it is.

Two obligatory walking-up-1st-Avenue photos:

Later that afternoon, I met up with Puck & their gran to see the live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion. It was a lot of fun, and I am looking forward to listening next week to see what other Seattle material they can dig up.

After coffee with them, I went up to the Phinney Neighborhood Center to see Ellis Paul. I feel like I could totally live in Phinney Ridge if I was the sort of person who wanted to have babies and dress them in organic clothing and be annoyed that Seattle’s draconian drinking laws prohibit children in bars. Instead I want no babies and I ride the bus and drink coffee, so I live on Capitol Hill. But going to the neighborhood makes me feel like I’m in some weird parallel universe.

Anyway. The point was Ellis, whom I have seen live a lot. He’s probably rivaling the Paperboys & Peter Mulvey at this point. I try to make a point of going to his shows, even when they’re in weird neighborhoods, because as I said on Facebook, I always feel better about the world afterwards. And no, that’s not a given for a concert. For example, a Richard Shindell show is obviously always worth seeing, but for me that’s because his shows are cathartic. I have yet to attend a Richard show that didn’t make me cry.

At an Ellis show, though, something special always happens in a way that it doesn’t happen for any other artist, or at least not with such regularity. The last time I saw him at PNC, Antje Duvekot opened, but late in the show when he wanted to perform “Conversation with a Ghost”, she was nowhere to be found, so he wound up singing with a member of the audience. One half of a couple, by the way, that drove at least 6 hours to be there. And of course she was amazing.

The next time, in West Seattle, Ellis got a deep back catalog request. He gamely attempted it, but soon it was clear that he didn’t remember the words nearly as well as a fellow in the audience, who he brought up to help out.

Tonight at the half, a family pointed out to him that it was Earth Hour, so he came down into the middle of the hall (which in itself was not uncommon) and did “Let it Be” off mic in the dark. I am not a religious person (which is perhaps the understatement of the century) but times like that are transcendental.

…and that’s all for now, folks. Though poking at my Flickr, it seems I have a backlog of knitting to show you. Perhaps later this week.

09Sep

[Labor Day Weekend]

Filed in knitting | life | photos | seattle 4 Comments

Things I still have to post about: movies seen since July, things I did at work this summer, stuff I’ve made.

What I’m going to post about instead: this weekend! Two of my aunts & one of my cousins came over to the coast, which was lovely. Pictures after the jump! Continue Reading

15May

[Tourist in my hometown]

Filed in life | photos | seattle | travel 2 Comments

Last week, my friend Chris visited from New York. One of the awesome things about having company is that I get to do all of the Seattle things I wouldn’t do otherwise. After the jump probably way too many crappy pictures of Seattle & a few of Portland. Continue Reading

02Apr

[I heart Ballard]

Filed in life | music | photos | seattle 5 Comments

Yesterday evening I trekked over to Ballard for a concert. Trekking indeed. It takes an hour to get there from my office. North Seattle Community College is the halfway point, and I finally managed to take a picture of these sweet little houses across the street from the college.

If only Ballard were a little more accessible, I would be very tempted to live there. But then it wouldn’t be Ballard. Also it would be nice if they had a grocery store walkable from the heart of the neighborhood. Though, the QFC is coming back in that condo development, yes?

More after the jump. Continue Reading

23Mar

[The Great Debate]

Filed in books | seattle 1 Comment

Also this weekend was the Harry Potter vs Twilight debate at the library, which was a lot of fun. The auditorium was packed (so at least 250 people), and the audience enthusiastic. A panel of five judges from the library & the school system asked questions of the two teams, each made up of three teen girls from Team Read. On one hand, I’m sorry that there weren’t any boys on the panels, though there were many among the teen volunteers, but on the other, how awesome is it that girls were debating what’s the best fantasy series? Totally awesome, that’s what.

The judges would ask a question, and then the teams were given 30 seconds to discuss it amongst themselves before responding. After each question, the audience would spring into lively discussion too, which was very cool.

The teams were asked to discuss supporting characters (Twilight talked about Jacob, HP about Neville OF COURSE BECAUSE NEVILLE IS THE BEST. Ahem.), villains, prejudice (a missed opportunity to discuss werewolves & Native Americans in Twilight, imho), and the responsibility of having supernatural powers (where team HP made the excellent observation that Twilight is about suppressing desire and not abuse of power).

Finally came the question you KNEW team HP had been waiting for, to discuss how women were portrayed. After reeling off strong & compelling female characters in HP, both heroes and villains, they moved on to smack down Twilight. The quote I took down was that Bella is “a stereotypical weak, dependent girl, and that is not an image to be putting on teenage girls.” The entire auditorium erupted in cheering and applause. It was FABULOUS. Particularly as team Twilight, in their rebuttal, said “I have to admit, that was really good.” They argued that Bella is relatable because we all have friends we want to smack, and that girls can choose to not be like her. It was a creative perspective, to be sure.

The judges tacked on an extra question about why the books deserve such popularity, and the Twilight folks totally failed to offer any reasons to make me read past the first 2/3 of the first book. If you somehow managed to escape knowing everything I hate about it & yet amazingly remain curious, buy me a coffee sometime.

In the final statements, team HP offered the final coup de grâce in a quote from Stephanie Meyer, praising Rowling’s work, and Harry Potter ruled the day, winning judges’ decision and the audience vote.

Good times!

17Mar

[Farewell, Post-Intelligencer]

Filed in photos | seattle 2 Comments

I haven’t been a newspaper reader in a very long time. For the past few years, I only bought a newspaper once a year, when the Seattle International Film Festival schedule came out. I never had strong opinions between the two papers aside from their editorial pages (the Times supported Rossi *twice*). I get my news from the Internet, from local blogs that now have fewer sources to link to.

I might miss the Globe more than I’ll miss the paper. It’s hard to know right now.

So it goes.

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I live in Seattle. I have a BA in English & an MLIS, but instead of using either of those degrees in an obvious way, I work in human services. My top three addictions are coffee, film, and knitting. Sometimes I like to pretend I am interesting. Generally I fail.