On Sunday, Tristan sent me a message, inviting me to see Ratatat; he and his roommate were not going out to dinner beforehand, but v1c1ous was going to House of Hong with some friends and I was welcome to join them.

I’m really glad I did; Sean’s friends were delightful dinner company, and together we ordered a family dinner. A family dinner that nearly killed us…with deliciousness. We started off strong, all of us digging in enthusiastically. By the fourth course, we’d all started to slow down. By the 9th, we were all groaning and about ready to die. At one point, we had six different courses on the table, and each one was the most delicious thing in the world. HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN? Toward the end, we started commenting on lobster battles and making fun of neighboring tables and anything that would delay us from standing up because we lacked the proper bloodflow to handle walking; we also were unable to form coherent sentences. Tristan called at one point to find out where we were, I think, but none of us really knew what he was talking about, or cared, or could comprehend spoken language.

There is a soup on the menu at House of Hong that costs $350 and is intended for 10 people. At some point, a group will have to be gathered for the express purpose of consuming this soup.

We eventually made our way over to the venue, which was packed with squealing pre-teens. Hurrah for the bar area! Before the opening bands started playing, Tristan offered earplugs around. Oh no, we were all much too cool to protect our hearing. After the first band started playing, Tristan pulled out the earplug package and waggled it, and this time, all of us but one grabbed a set. It’s one thing to lose hearing from rock concerts. It’s another to lose hearing to an awful, awful, awful band. No, I don’t know what their name was. Yes, I could look it up. No, I don’t care to do so. It was fronted by a guy who looked exactly like the Chocolate Rain dude, the whole band jerked around onstage like rhythmless chickens, and they were singing songs about: positivity, jesus, and…running away from home at 16 after being punished for kissing a boy. I was not their target audience.

The second act was even worse. It was a whiteboy rapper, of the ‘look how hard I am trying to be thug’ variety. I am tempted to write a letter to Eminem and ask him to apologize for paving the road for this dude. LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE WROUGHT, MARSHALL. Half-finished, unpracticed songs with titles like “The Chicken Featha Licka” and “Son of a Gun of a Bitch”, and this guy is almost ready to roll with Herbert Kornfeld in the Nite Rida. Shit, maybe this guy is Baby Prince H Tha Stone Col’ Dopest Biz-ook-kizeepin’ Muthafukkin’ Badass Supastar Kornfeld Tha Second!

I am curious as to whether Ratatat purposefully picked wretched openers to make them appear even better by comparison, but they really don’t need to resort to such trickeries, as they’re awesome. AWESOME. Not only did I get to hear some killer music, but I got to enjoy another one of my favorite activities: watching people dance like jackasses. Bless you, Ratatat, for making that happen for me. Bless you.

On Friday, I went to a reading by Neil Gaiman; he is currently on tour promoting ‘The Graveyard Book’, illustrated by Dave McKean. The reading took place in a temple in the U-district, which I loathe with the flaming hatred of 1,000 suns, but even fiery hatred of the venue couldn’t keep me away from Gaiman.

I always have difficulty arriving to early-evening events on time, and this was no exception. After work, I needed to deposit Amy’s rent money into my account, drop off the rent check, take Napoleon for a walk, and consequently, I was not on the road until 6pm, at which time the doors had already opened at the venue. I finally arrived in the U-district and found parking, ran to the venue, grabbed my pre-signed book, and at 6:45 grabbed a seat in the next-to-last pew.

It baffles me why speaking tours are conducted in buildings like the university temple; seated in the back as I was, everything was echo-y and distorted. When the lights were dimmed, there was a Vincent Price impersonator introducing the book and Gaiman, and I could make out most of what he said, but not all. Between the introduction and Gaiman, someone else came onstage and I couldn’t understand a SINGLE WORD he said. Not one.

When Gaiman came out, I found that when he spoke slowly, I could understand him, but when he spoke more quickly, I was once again lost, thanks to accents and echos. As this was the fourth stop on his book tour, he read us chapter four of the Graveyard Book; the longest chapter. Once I pulled out my copy of the book and read along, it became a much more enjoyable experience alltogether.

After he finished reading, there was a short intermission for everyone to get up and stretch, and I think I speak for everyone’s bottoms when I say it was sorely needed. I remember church as being tiresome bordering on torturous, but the hardness of these pews was absolutely ridiculous–if you added together all of the, ahem, hardness formulas that show up in my email daily, they’d still only be a fraction as hard as this pew.

When the lights dimmed again, we got to see a sneak preview of Coraline, which will be released in theaters in January/February of 2009–the movie will be released in 3-D, which I’m pretty stoked about! After the movie clips, Gaiman did a Q&A section which was delightful. He’s a very charming man, even when the questions were less than polite. For instance, someone asked why he chose to do a reading in this ‘impersonal’ format where books were pre-signed instead of interacting with his fans individually. While I agree that face time is nice, like when I met Chuck Palahniuk or John Waters or Jamie Bamber or Kevin Sorbo or Sid Haig and Bill Moseley or Nikki Motherfucking Sixx or or or (there are more, I’m sure, that I cannot be arsed to dig up the links for or didn’t write posts about–Penn & Teller, Joe Walsh, the deputies from Reno 911, Cassandra Peterson (Elvira), Smashing Pumpkins, etc etc etc)–while face time IS nice–Gaiman said that the last time he was in the area, he did a thirty minute reading and then signed books for 7 hours, to the point where people were so tired from waiting in line, they weren’t even coherent by the time they reached the front of the line, and that he felt two hours of reading plus a Q&A AND everyone still had a signed copy to take home was a much better format–and I agree. Hanging around until two or three in the morning to get thirty seconds of face time doesn’t sound pleasant, and when it was framed that way, I would be surprised if the person who asked wasn’t ashamed for doing so.

After Q&A ended, it was past time to go to v1c1ous‘ housewarming party. However, either Mapquest did me wrong, or I simply could not find the street I needed to turn on, but the rain was sheeting so hard I could barely see road signs, and after driving up and down the same road for an hour, I finally gave up and went home.

So, in recap: Neil Gaiman = delightful. The Graveyard Book = delightful. Mapquest = sucky. Rain = sucky. The end.

*edit* You can watch the entire video tour (and thus hear the entirety of the Graveyard Book) here. The end for real.

Photo by GermanCityGirl.

Eddie Izzard recently played the Paramount in Seattle. I rarely stay abreast of performances coming to town, and almost exclusively rely on my network of informed friends to pass along show information and anything else that I can’t be arsed to look up. This is how I found out about John Waters lecturing at Benaroya, for example. It serves a twofold purpose; they would like an opportunity to demonstrate the mobile computing capabilities of their iPhones, and secondly, I don’t have to expend a single drop of energy while they twaddle around with their gadget. Everyone leaves happy.

Well, they FAILED ME this time. The first I heard of the show was when someone posted to seattle trying in vain to get three extra tickets. I sighed and thought “Gee, wouldn’t it be nice to go to that show? Ah well.” I then shook my fist in everyone’s general direction for failing me. Yes, you. Then, I promptly forgot all about it, as I am wont to do.

On Friday morning, v1c1ous sent me a text message asking if I had any plans, and would I like to go to Eddie Izzard with him. Hell + yes.

The order of business that day looked something like this: slack off, slack off, free slurpee, slack off, cut out early, prettify, buy bus pass from my Seagro schmuckythecat, meet v1c1ous and co for delicious frosty beverages, Eddie Izzard, profit.

Or rather, that’s what it was supposed to look like. It actually went like this: slack off, oh hey almost time for lunch and free slurpee, boy am I hungr–FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. GODDAMNIT. FUCK. SHIT. CLUSTERFUCK. GOATROPE. leave work late, slap on another layer of deodorant, leave the apartment looking like shit, meet schmuckythecat late, get fucked by Mapquest, get totally lost and frustrated and misdirected by a group of leather bears on Capitol Hill, Seattle’s building numbering system can totally go fuck itself and I would like to go back in time and hit each and every one of the founders with a sledgehammer straight to the face, stay lost, send increasingly frustrated text messages to v1c1ous, circle the same block about 6 times, and very nearly miss the show.

Eddie Izzard is a delightful, delightful man. I never cease to be impressed at how he can go off on a comedic tangent for an extended period of time and immediately pick up exactly where he left off with no “Um…um, now where was I? Dinosaur Church? No, no, I did that one. Oh wait, yes, man-skirts, um, kilts!” like so, so many comedians do. By the end of his show, my face hurt from smiling! You may interpret this one of two ways: I was amused once or twice and my usually dour face was unused to the exertion, or Eddie was really goddamn funny. I’ll give you a hint. It’s the latter. I’ll be sending him a bill shortly for the extra lines that he specifically is responsible for carving into my face. So, thank you again, Sean! I would also like to thank Sean’s girlfriend, who was unable to attend. And Jesus. But no thanks to the leather bears who hang around outside of The Cuff.

On the way home, my body informed me that in no uncertain terms, it was pissed off that I hadn’t eaten yet, and as I was down to chicken ramen at home, I ended up in the grocery store wandering the aisles like a moron, deep in the throes of the ‘so hungry, nothing sounds good’ trance. Have you ever gone to the grocery store hungry and come home with a bunch of weird shit? When I got home, I realized that I had come home with: a frozen curry dinner, a swirly toothbrush, six bran muffins (? I hate bran muffins), cinnamon bears, toilet cleaner, squirty salad dressing (and no lettuce?!?), and a lady-bodybuilder magazine (I have no idea).

Every time I shove one of those awful muffins down my face-hole, I repeat the mantra that I am not allowed to shop whilst hungry ever again.