Stomp, clap, move back–so deadly!

November 9, 2009 4 Comments read Live Shows, Reviews

The Swollen Members show was amaaaaaazing. Or at least they were. Their openers? Well, let me tell you about them.

Bliss n Esso at least gave an honest performance; they’re Aussies making their first foray into the States and they seemed genuinely excited about being here and performing. During their performance, there were a couple of people from Yakima that could not stop jawing about Big B, who was up second, and let me tell you, this pair were perhaps the whitest people who were ever white. Ever. I wish to christ I’d taken a photograph. The gentleman of the group was decked out in a checkerboard beanie with a flipped-up brim–the only thing that was missing was the propeller. Additionally, he sported a great big baggy shirt and a great big (presumably) fake gold chain. The lady was completely tweaked out, and had blue eyeshadow allll the way up to her eyebrows. Actually, the whole AUDIENCE was full of people whom I would like to take the opportunity to publicly mock–the guy in the front row who was carrying a gut so large that it completely distorted the letters on his ‘I AM HIP HOP’ t-shirt and it took me a good ten minutes to figure out what it said. The dudes with pants down to their knees. The chick in the wifebeater who was able to rest her gut onstage. All the TOTALLY ‘hardcore’ dudes wearing bandanas and attempting to swagger. Black people, we are not co-opting your culture. It is impossible, because we look like utter fucking jackasses. Thank you, Neumos, for providing over-21 individuals such as myself a balcony from which to look down upon the masses with scorn.

Anyway, Cletus and his girlfriend went down to the main floor when Big B came onstage with a hoodie up over his head. It soon became apparent why Cletus was so fond of him, as Big B is best described by the term I have just now invented, “Hillbilly-Hop”, what with not just one, but SEVERAL songs about being white trash. At first I was perplexed as to why someone would come onstage with a hoodie masking the sides of their face, and a hat below that casting them into shadow, but I instantly and totally regretted this observation as I fear that it was by my powers of thought alone that caused him to not only take off his hoodie, but also the shirt beneath that. I talk a lot of talk about fat acceptance but frankly do not walk the walk as a fat fatist. Basically, I want people to accept ME as I am because I put an effort into being presentable–clean, neat, never ever wearing sweatpants or pajamas out into public or any of those other negative steretypes that are commonly held about fat people. This guy? GROSS and clearly proud of it, blowing his nose at people, spitting onstage, and walking around with an oily sheen that lets everyone know that if you get close to him, he will certainly smell. Even if he wasn’t totally gross, I hated his music and it seemed the rest of the audience did as well, with the exception of Cletus and Brandine, who were going fucking NUTS. I’m fairly certain Cletus creamed his pants when Big B fist bumped him, and for some incomprehensible reason, Brandine took to waving around a fluorescent light tube. Not a lit tube that was serving any purpose, no, just waving a tube for waving a tube’s sake.

Common Market are local, and I couldn’t stand them, either. At first, I thought they’d given a homeless man a microphone and sent him onstage. But what sort of homeless man raps while waving around a latte? How Seattle. Yawn. Before they FINALLY left the stage, they kept making sure that everyone knew it was their job to get everyone warmed up for Swollen Members, and if we weren’t pumped up, they hadn’t done their job. You know what would pump me up? NOT MAKING ME STAND THERE FOR THREE HOURS THROUGH A BUNCH OF BULLSHIT WAITING TO SEE ONE OF MY FAVORITE BANDS. Huh? How about that? How about not making me wait so long for the goods that I have to cut out during the encore to catch the very last bus heading anywhere near my home?

So anyway, they were beyond awesome, they played almost ALL of my favorite songs which I never would’ve expected since the majority of my favorites are on their oft-neglected B-side album. They were super-energetic, and Prevail made sure to pay a lot of attention to the balcony which mostly gets ignored by artists onstage. It was definitely worth the three plus mile walk home from the Renton transit center, though honestly not much WILL be worth that walk as it’s pretty much straight uphill and I am so very, very lazy and it was so very, very, very difficult to get out of bed three hours later and be mentally/physically ready to hoof it to work. Also, for some reason, my bus ride home was free. I tried to pay when I boarded, but the driver covered the bill acceptor with his hand, so at first I thought I must be in the ride free zone and I’d need to pay as I got off the bus. Nosir. So, to Seattle and back for a buck seventy-five? I’ll take it!

F’d in the A

November 7, 2009 21 Comments read Everything is Terrible

For a lot of people I know, 2009 has been a less-than-stellar year. For amazoni, it’s been worse than most. Early in the summer, she fell down some stairs, fractured her leg, needed emergency surgery and some pins to put it all back together, was bedridden and missed her high school reunion and san diego comic con, has been unable to drive and has had to rely on others to get her where she needed to go. This week, she ACTUALLY got to drive her car, hit some road debris on an exit, the car rolled UP the embankment and she ended up next to a guardrail facing oncoming traffic; miraculously, she wasn’t injured, but the car was totaled.

I posted on her Facebook page that I was calling out whatever witches had placed a hex on her to knock it the fuck off, and suppose I have brought their wrath down onto myself.

It was amazoni‘s birthday today, and we planned on having one of our obnoxious lady get-togethers at Carolina Kitchen in Redmond at 6:30. I, deciding I was going to be clever and leave early for once to beat traffic, found myself driving through a torrential thunderstorm. I ended up deciding that since I was SO very early, I would stop and have a drink at Pegasus and maybe let the worst of the rain pass. It was at the precise moment that I turned into their parking lot that my power steering went out. You know how, when people get into accidents, they talk about how time slowed down and everything seemed so very clear? My mind doesn’t do that. I skip right over into the denial portion of the grieving process and then it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump straight to anger. My first thought was that my steering rack had gone out again, my second thought was “No, no, this right here is not happening” and my third thought was “Goddamnit, that was a thousand dollar repair!”

It was then, and only then, that I realized it was not just the power steering that had gone out. Oh, no. The engine had ALSO died. The lights and radio and fan were all merrily doing their thing, but it didn’t matter how desperately I pushed the gas pedal, hoping against hope to direct the car into a parking spot, it was just not advancing any further.

And as the rain pounded down all around me, I knew that I would have to shift the car into neutral, get out, and try to push it into a parking spot. I was immediately drenched the second I stepped out; lightning exploded around me with all the surprise of undesirable plumber ass peeking out of the top of a pair of pants–CRACK! It would have made for an excellently overdramatic movie scene: perhaps an overhead shot would have been appropriate, so you could truly witness all the rain pelting the ground as I fell to my knees and cried “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” whilst shaking my fist at the sky. I was able to push the car to the point where it was no longer directly blocking someone but after I struggled to turn the wheel and pushed to get it nearer a parking space, I couldn’t get the leverage I needed from the door frame and had to give up for the moment. I retreated into the bar, recruited someone’s help, and we were both soaked to the bone as we maneuvered the car into two parking spots. Hell, the car was dead and the nearby business was closed for the night, I wasn’t about to be overly picky about the push-and-shove parking job we just did.

We went back inside, Marija brought us towels to dry ourselves with and mugs of hot tea while I sent out the obligatory “oh hey, car is dead” text messages to the girls, asking if someone could drop by and pick me up on their way to Carolina Kitchen, and I’d just deal with the frigging car after dinner–it’s not like it was going anywhere, and if it did, it would take a pretty damn dedicated thief, and more power to them. Enjoy!

Emily came to pick me up, and the gentleman who’d helped me move my car had sneaked out at some point so I didn’t get a chance to thank him again for his assistance. Not to worry: my chance to pay it forward came more quickly than anticipated, when two miles down the road, there was a car with its flashers on stuck in the middle of an intersection, with a man getting in and out of it anxiously while traffic just drove around him. I know what you’re thinking, and no, this man did not steal my car. Emily exclaimed that she couldn’t believe no one was stopping to help him instead of just driving around him, and so I hopped out of the car, dashed across the intersection, and pushed his car while he steered it into a nearby gas station. Any drying off that I had done with towels in the bar was instantly negated.

When the waitress came by to get our drink order, I asked her for some water, or perhaps just an empty glass and I could wring my hair into it. Thus began one of the lesser-known stages of grieving: Wisecracking As A Means To Deal With Frustration To Keep From Outright Cursing A Blue Streak Or Perhaps Sobbing. I noted that it was ironic that the car that GM had kindly taken the time to send me a note informing me that one day it would explode into flames and was subsequently unsafe to park in or near buildings had instead died in a deluge of water. I noted my anger at losing the twenty bucks worth of gas that I had JUST PUMPED into it; thereby doubling or even trebling its value. I made a lot more jokes that my friends were kind enough to laugh at even if they weren’t particularly funny; I WAS ON FIRE.

Well, actually, I was freezing, seeing as how my clothes were soaked and I was sitting in an air-conditioned restaurant. In November, guys? Really?

We were there for over two and a half hours, talking and swapping stories and jokes; the waitress, as usual, found us to be both hilarious AND adorable, and sent me home with some of their amazingly delicious vinegar bbq sauce which I will hoard like Gollum since they’re shutting their doors permanently in a week or so.

After we got to Pegasus, I called Tristan, and he agreed to meet me and take a look at the car to see if he could suss out what was wrong. At night. In the pouring rain. This makes him a strong contender for The Best Person In The Universe Award. We spent a while hunched over the engine, he tapped things and attempted to wrench things and poked things while I held the flashlight and attempted to not be in the way if not directly helpful. After a while, he admitted to being stuck since it seemed like the engine SHOULD turn over, we were both soaked, and even my shoes had given up the battle, exclaiming “BITCH, we are WATER-RESISTANT, NOT WATERPROOF” so my socks had started to squish and my whole body had begun the pruning process, so we closed the hood and pushed it into a non-reserved spot to sit for the night and get a fresh look at it tomorrow.

I suppose I am extremely lucky in that if my car HAD to die somewhere 20+ miles from home, it was at my home away from home, a place where everyone knows my name and won’t tow me if I keep my car at the lot overnight, so I’m LESS screwed than if the car had pulled this act somewhere in downtown Seattle, or Cthulhu forbid, on the freeway. Also, I’m lucky in that now I live close enough to work to get there on foot AND I’m closer to public transportation, so if this car ends up needing more in repairs than it’s worth, I can hoof it until I figure out what I’m going to do. It will just be inconvenient and sucky in the meanwhile.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go roll in a pile of dessicant packets.

Devil nights! Devil nights! Nights with the devil, driving around the city!

November 5, 2009 22 Comments read Uncategorized

On Friday, Justin and J had a party for a few purposes:

1. It was Devil’s Night and thus basically a pre-funk Halloween 2. They wanted to keep their house from being arsoned 3. They wanted to get their rat bastard arsonist friends off the street 4. Oh yeah, and Justin was turning 30 or something

Since it was a Devil’s Night party, it was requested that we dress up as the devil or one of his minions; my Halloween costume not yet complete, I didn’t have time to put together anything else, so I slapped on some clay horns, red eyeshadow, and the reddest, glitteriest lips EVER and called it a costume. The glitterlips were a mistake; no matter how cool I thought it looked at home, I was nervous all night about it getting onto my teeth as I talked and drank so I spent about a third of the night obsessively licking my teeth which I’m sure looks about as attractive as it sounds. I was apparently not so concerned about the look AFTERWARD as when I got home, I passed out on the couch within ten minutes of my arrival in full makeup and woke up with so much glitter in my mouth that it appeared overnight I had changed into a hobo costume with a bad case of red glitter gingivitis. When it comes to glitter, I’m bad at learning my lesson.

Justin had dressed up as the Morning Star; we contemplated adding a flaming sword of vengeance to his costume but figured that since part of the point of the party was NOT to burn down the house, playing with fire and booze would probably not be one of the wiser courses of action.

Speaking of wiser courses of action and booze, one of the party guests had pretty well overimbibed by the time I arrived and kept drinking; I was chatting with someone else and we both looked up right at the precise moment that it was deemed prudent that we drag Drunky McDrunkerson outside IMMEDIATELY, who rewarded us by hurling in the bushes bare seconds after we got him on the porch. This guy was in a whole new league of drunk–he sat outside on the porch for nearly the rest of the evening, alternating drinking water and vomiting. At one point, we called a cab for him and the cab driver refused to take him since he couldn’t walk unassisted. At some other point, he crapped his pants but was still too drunk to notice.

…I think I’m getting too old for this sort of party.

J had some super-awesome horns and wore furry pants which gave her the illusion of goat legs, and Deq turned her star tattoos into pentagrams and the whole thing was quite impressive and made me feel a bit ashamed of my hobomouth and horns combo.

All in all, it was a good time hanging with some folks I hadn’t seen in a while, Justin successfully turned 30 AND managed to avoid burning down the house, so it was a win on all counts.

Particularly since I didn’t have to be involved in the clean-up process, which I hear involved rubber gloves.