Nonsense dispensed in fits and starts
Hullo! Yes, I’m still alive. For further proof, come to play trivia tomorrow night at the Hopvine on Capitol Hill, 8pm or so.
I’m just sayin’: you probably want to know a bit of British naval history and a bit about the Nicaean council. Oh, plus stay up late watching Bob Fosse choreography videos… Not that it will help, just that it’ll put you in my frame of mind!
Hope to see ya there.
Watching the fireworks tonight, I was reminded that the last time I had a girlfriend on July 4th was in… fucking 2004. Jesus H. Christ at-a-taxi-stand-with-an-expired-AmEx, that’s some lame, weak, unforgivable sauce right there!
Men approaching 40 with spotty dating resumes — and I’m certain that there are more than a dozen of you reading this blog — will feel me on this one: there are times when one must fish or get off the pot. My problems with dating are manifold, as I’ve doubtless spat about here previously. But shall we count them, you and I, just for the meadow-strolling loll-aboutery of it?
Hold on, I need another drink. 1.5 oz vodka, .5 oz triple sec, .5 oz creme de menthe. I shit you not! This is a special “project drink” I’ve crafted that will enable me to plow through a bottle of shitty vodka I bought in a moment of ill-advised thriftiness some years ago and have regretted since. People come over and say, “Vinny! Whip me up a screwdriver,” until they spy the jug of reprehensible vodka and quickly switch to straight whiskey, mezcal or whatever civilized liquor I have on the rack. Keeping foul vodka in your liquor cabinet is a slap in the face to a distinguished guest — it obviates so many beverage choices — so I’m hell-bent on drinking my way through the squalor of “Bartlett’s Bulbitation”.
I’m back, toting a vodka ‘n’ creme de cassis ‘n’ bitters payload. Not horrible, but nothing I’d serve to someone I love. So, let’s take a look at that obstacle course, yes?
I live in it, anyway. There’s 4+ bullet points to go, but they will wait for another night of shoddy vodka and creme d’ cassis.
Remember that post I made yesterday about how we’re gonna replace the viaduct with a tunnel? And how stupid the idea is, and how it makes my blood run black with white-hot rage? (Look it up, by the way. This happens all the time in the big city when effete liberals get P.O.’d: our blood actually turns black, and we become untrifleable-with.)
Anyway, today I’m happy to provide a link to HugeAssCity, one of my favorite blogs, where Dan Bertolet calms me down by asking a few questions like, “How likely is this to actually happen?” Answer: it’s far from a done deal. Take a look. Dan has black blood syndrome, too, but actually knows what he’s talking about, unlike Uncle Vinny.
Have I written about this already? Who cares! I’m still furious at Frank Chopp, Jamie Pederson, Ed Murray and Christine Gregoire for pushing this horrible tunnel option on us. It’s gonna cost billions. It won’t give buses priority over cars, and it won’t move light rail at all. It will tear up downtown for years. It spits on the grave of a perfectly sane surface-street option. And the money we burn on it could be used on hundreds of useful projects.
Chopp, Pederson, Murray, Gregoire: You are all to blame for this (Chopp more than others, as I understand it). You should all be yelling nonstop about reversing this horrible decision before you waste time on any mere million dollar problem we have in this state. You’ve blown a colossal hole in our budget on a shitty idea. The sooner you start yelling, the happier I’ll be. And when you actually undo it you’ll be back on my good side. Until then, stop sending me mail (ahem, Gregoire) asking for money.
Oh, and Greg Nickels? Jan Drago? I blame you, too. McGinn is the only mayoral candidate I’ve heard loud and clear on this. He might be a little sketchy on other his campaign priorities (um, citywide wireless, tell me you’re kidding) but he understands how much the fucking tunnel will warp other projects for the next decade.
I weighed 192.4 pounds this morning, a new record for me. I hit 190.6 a few days ago, that was a new record, too. “What gives?!”, you might be wondering, and you’d be right. Wasn’t it just a few months ago that I was pondering my rock-ribbed future? Indeed, that future has been nudged out a month or two, but it’s still coming.
You see, I’m signed up to start a circus class next week, and I’m gonna start ramping up the Pilates to a fever pitch next week, too. I might even start going to the gym again. The fattiness is just a phase, a dalliance, a dabbling in the ways of Lard.
That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.
Circus class should be awesome. I’m starting with “acrobatics”, which may include some tumbling. If I like that, I’ll try trampoline class, followed by aerialist classes. Or (more likely), I’ll get bored and flit off to some other thing. One of my trivia questions from Tuesday night was about the definition of “dilettante”; any quiz contestant could have easily just pointed at me…
Trivia was a little stressful on Tuesday. Usually the bar kinda clears out a bit by the 3rd round, so it gets quieter and easier to deal with. But pretty much everyone stayed through Round 5, and four teams were basically tied for first place throughout. Thus there was a lot of yelling and freaking out, which detracts from my mellow mood. I make mistakes now and then about answers, or giving points to people… and this understandably bewoeifies ‘em. But the arguing and such really brings me down, and it’s harder to sort out when the place is so noisy.
I can’t seem to write any questions that have less than 60 words, multiple dependent clauses and bonus “gravy” trivia stuffed in gratuitously. Sample: “Olivia de Havilland in ‘Robin Hood’ rode the same horse as the ‘King of the Cowboys’ did in his movies, a golden palomino. What was this horse’s name?” I could just ask: “What was Roy Rogers’ horse’s name?”, but that would bore the hell out of me. It’s far more fun to mention that Maid Marian rode Trigger, but the long questions are tougher for people to hear.
Anyhoo, I’m a little burnt out on trivia right now. I have plenty of other fun things to do, you know? Like gaining 15 pounds.
| Name | Artist |
| You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go | Madeleine Peyroux |
| God Knows (You Gotta Give To Get) | El Perro Del Mar |
| Do Not As I Do | Hanne Hukkelberg |
| Traffic | Chad Vangaalen |
| Tobiume | Susumu Yokota |
| Three Faces of Lécuona: La Comparsa – No. 3 | Chucho Valdés |
| Raça Negra | Virginia Rodrigues |
| Ol’ 55 | Tom Waits |
| Roscoe | Midlake |
| Rivers Of Babylon | The Melodians |
| Enlightenment | Sun Ra |
| My Moon My Man | Feist |
| House Full Of Time | Guitar |
| Time, forward! (Film score, 1967) | Moscow New Choir |
| No Regrets | Aesop Rock |
| Rosies | Amon Tobin |
| Moonshake | Can |
That’s what I came up with for tomorrow night’s Capitol Hill Seattle CD swap. I tried to pick awesome tunes that people might have missed, but honestly… all of that stuff could be played on KEXP. Some of my music collection is kinda obscure, but Cap Hill has a lot of well-informed listeners so maybe it’ll be met with yawns.
The CD starts out kinda quiet and pretty, and gets louder and weirder as it goes along. Isn’t that the oldest trick in the book? Makes me appreciate a good DJ… I’m guessing some of those segues are kaput!
Whaddya think… too safe? Too pretentious? Too Bothell?
A few of my trivia questions from the Hopvine this week were about New Year’s. One of them was “What year are we in, according to the Jewish calendar?”
Some teams had no clue, but a few got reasonably close. The correct answer is 5769, and the team that got the closest chose 5397. They laughed pretty hard when I told ‘em they won, because you know how they picked that number? If you spell out J-E-W-S on your phone, you get 5-3-9-7!
One of my Vanadu buddies sent me a link to this really neat site that lets you visually compare the 8 major Viaduct rebuild scenarios. I am embarrassed to say that I really haven’t been following this much. My instinct says “assume people are going to be driving less”, and “get freeways out of the city” and “people want to see the water”.
Go take a look!
Ducklings, do you go to the theater? If not, why not? Here’s my excuse: I am a slug about leaving the house. That’s not even an excuse, it’s just an explanation. Oh, and also, I don’t like going out by myself. I have fun once I’m there, but buying one ticket for anything makes “onnnnne is the loneliest number” start playing in my head, then I’m cranky.
There are two shows this weekend that I’m interested in, both at the Annex. One is by Mike Daisey, who I’ve been curious about ever since I saw the crazy people walk out on him:
(If you haven’t seen that YouTube, it’s an exhilarating 9 minutes and 36 seconds.) It really made me curious about his work, but I haven’t gotten out to see any yet. And that’s a problem, cuz live theater ain’t doing so hot. In Seattle, or anywhere, really. People aren’t going, artists are withering on the vine, etc., even though there’s stuff playing that looks really cool.
I mean really, check this out (Eating Around the Bruise, by Barret O’Brien, which has gotten great reviews here in town):
In a series of skillful monologues that blend comedy and pathos, two actors portray a spectrum of frustration and yearning. The vivid characters range from a liberal civics teacher trying to lift his students out of apathy to a woman struggling to deliver an effective video-dating pitch to two strangers in an elevator conducting an unexpressed romance.
It’s only 9 dollars! Live actors! How can this not be packed with people? Maybe everyone is a slug like me…? To find out, I’ve added another POLL, whee!
Just a quck reminder, ducklings, that you should pencil in this coming Tuesday at 8 p.m. to get your trivia on at the Hopvine on 15th. I’m feeling mighty damn patriotic, so there will be a lot of America America USA USA! type questions… should be fun!
Rah! Rah! RAH!!!
Trivia starts around 8, but you probably want to get there early. Order some soup (the onion garlic is my favorite) and some beer (the Hale’s Cream Ale is my favorite), put up your feet and stay a while.
See ya there!
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