aka the South Lake Union Trolley.
Oh god this made my morning. I would totally wear a ‘Ride the Slut’ t-shirt. How did they not notice this before?
Maybe they could go back to calling that area ‘Cascade’ and then they could call it the Cascade United Northwest Transit System.
Oh, Seattle. I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed. And dying of laughter.
On Wednesday, I accompanied delicateman to the Puyallup Fair, where the motto is ‘Happy is Good’, which is pretty much equivalent to saying that ‘Fire Burns’, ‘Earth is round’, and, my particular favorite, Safeway’s brand new, ‘At Safeway, a dozen is twelve’.
But I wasn’t there for motto-mockery, or mockery in general for pretty much the first time in my entire life. I was there for WEIRD AL.
I came to be invited because delicateman‘s father was involved in an unfortunate incident involving a raccoon, a tiny dog, and some ferocious mauling of his leg and was therefore unable to attend. His loss (of a mouthful of flesh or so) and my gain!
Even though I’ve liked Weird Al for forever and a day, this is the first time I’ve seen him perform–he was performing at Summerfest one year when I had tickets to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Foo Fighters with grey_jedi, so I got to hear a snippet as I walked by, but I couldn’t stop and watch. That’s my biggest gripe about festivals in general–if there are multiple stages, generally the only two acts I’ll want to see will be performing at the exact same time, whereas in a perfect world, everything would revolve around my schedule.
Al is an incredible entertainer; between nearly every song there was a costume change to reflect the style of the artist he was parodying. Sometimes he’d change costumes WHILE SINGING. Sometimes I wonder if his entire career is constructed around the idea of wanting to be paid to play dress-up…
And then I see him in a silver lame suit and I know it’s the truth. I’m just jealous that I don’t get to play dress-up every night.
One of the reasons I left so impressed might’ve been that I could actually see the entire show–most shows I attend, some basketball-playing bodybuilder makes a point of standing directly in front of me, regardless of where I am. Why didn’t that happen this time? It wasn’t incredible luck–it was that everyone stayed seated until the encore. What the hell? I’ve never seen that before. The family behind me actually MUTTERED AT ME when I got to my feet as he got onstage. SIT DOWN, YOU’RE RUINING IT FOR EVERYONE! Seriously, what the hell?
More dress-up. In between songs, they played clips of ‘Al TV’ and various TV shows and movies that have name-dropped him over the years; not only does he comment on popular culture, but he’s become quite a slice of pop culture himelf!
This was my favorite costume of the night, because I’ll be goddamned if I don’t love fishnets and tutus, and the combination is particularly awesome. Spongebob is merely the icing on that cake of awesome. This one was worn during a rendition of ‘You’re Pitiful’, a take on the horrid James Blunt song ‘You’re Beautiful’, a song that apparently Atlantic Records will not allow him to release on a record…so it’s available for download on his website.
delicateman and I wandered around the fair a bit, watched some baby pigs being born, talked about how carnies who operate rides may or may not be amazing drunken scientists, and then made our way back into the grandstand to see if they were selling any ‘white and nerdy’ sweatshirts; no merch, but we saw a few people who looked like they were waiting around with some purpose in mind–they were hoping to meet Al/get autographs/whatnot. It wasn’t more than 10 people, so I was surprised when he didn’t at least poke his head out; it wasn’t exactly an intimidating, ‘rip your shirt off’ crowd. Once again, if everyone just did everything *I* wanted them to, life would be even more awesome. For me.
Speaking of fun musicians, my favorite musical crush and the future father of my incredibly talented babies, That 1 Guy, is playing at the Tractor Tavern in Ballard tomorrow, at 7pm. If you haven’t seen him perform, I can’t reccommend coming to the show highly enough.
How could you say no to that face?
All pictures of Weird Al taken by delicateman.
On Sunday, Jez had invited me to attend the Wooden Boat Festival in Port Townsend. On the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston, I finally became alert enough to notice my surroundings, and goosezilla‘s necklace.
With the super-sensitive sixth sense every woman has regarding when people are staring at her chest, Katy noted my drooling, early-morning half-lidded gaze, and hurriedly explained that the center bit is a toe. A TOE, damnit!
Our first stop was in Port Gamble, at the Sea and Shell Museum. The downstairs bit is one of those stores they have in every crappy, low-population, tourist-oriented town–full of stuffed animals and mugs with cutesy, treacly sayings. The upstairs, however, is pretty much the world’s most dilapidated museum.
The googly eyes totally make this fish awesome. I’m pretty sure that ANYTHING is made more awesome by the addition of googly eyes.
Here are a bunch of jars of preserved…things that haven’t been preserved super-well; I’m pretty sure that the fluid isn’t supposed to evaporate. From left to right on the bottom row, I’m guessing: Shark, fish, jellyfish, eel, The Blob.
When they ran out different kinds of shells to display, but still had extra cases left over, that’s when the magic happened. Shell handicrafts, shell stamps, things with shells embroidered on them…it goes on and on. Of course, the very best one is the CRUCIFIED JESUS SHELL.
This crab has a masturbation problem, and he’ll kindly thank you not to make fun of his one overdeveloped giant crab arm. He blames all of the scintillating material made available to him by Arrrdor, Inc.
As we left, Jez noted that one of the flags on the museum was upside down. Distress call, mistake, or prank pulled by the Masonic house across the street?
We arrived in Port Townsend just in time to board the good ship Adventuress; a historic schooner at nearly 100 years old, originally owned by ‘gentleman’s adventurer’ John Borden II, who commissioned it to travel to the Arctic to collect bowhead whale specimens. I was delighted to learn that this was a ‘working’ tour; we’d all be working together to haul the lines to raise and lower the sails.
Captain Kate, taking control of the ship when the Lady Washington challenged us with her cannons. For all the bragging in Pirates of the Caribbean–“This is the fastest ship in the Caribbean”; “There’s no real ship as can match The Interceptor”, we smoked it. That’s because with her square rig, she can’t sail into the wind the way Adventuress can. 
OWNED. After a while, I got to play captain for a bit, steering the ship, while deckhands goosezilla, James, and Jez hauled lines at my whim. Muahahahahaha! My turn was up all too quickly, but it was said that I wore a shiteating grin the entire time I was behind the giant wooden wheel. I’ve got soft hands, city hands, so by the end of the day, I had some twinges of rope burn on my fingers, but actually helping work on the ship was incredibly satisfying. Jez ended up giving me the cd he won in the on-ship raffle, and suggested I could have it looping continuously in the pirate bathroom. This I considered to be a fantastic idea until I actually heard the cd, at which point I determined that it’s close to, if not THE worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life. There’s a whole track of SNORING. The people singing the chanties don’t actually know them, so they screw up words. People are coughing in the background on the track that talks about the ship’s history. This is an item they SELL. WOW. …Maybe I should just loop it when I’m gone, in the hopes of driving out the upstairs neighbors.