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April 30, 2008
Categories: I'm Working . Tags: cats . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment
What Happens In Vegas Goes on Flickr
Here are some pictures from our recent Vegas excursion.
I really loved the MGM Grand lions, especially since I learned they didn’t actually live in that tiny habitat.
Common children’s names which warrant license plate production.
What kind of nerd would pretend a garbage can was a Dalek?
Music in Pictures
As evidenced by my pictures from the Raconteurs show, rock shows are hard to photograph unless you are right up close.
Luckily, there was more going on at Tuesday’s Yelle show at The War Room than just fun French pop. The Brunswicks delighted in tormenting a passed out man whose reserved booth we pilfered, with hilarious results.
I had a great time at Yelle for not knowing most of the songs and not being able to understand any of the words apart from “garcon” and “merci bouquet”. Naturally, she spoke with a cute French accent, which, for some reason sounded a little fake. Especially when she said things like “Do you know how to zsnap your fingeaurs?”. She also smacked the hell out of her giant drum. It was pretty enthralling.
The crowd was pretty eclectic, but it did have the overwhelming feeling of being in an American Apparel showroom. SO MANY T-SHIRT DRESSES AND BELTS!
If you’ve never heard of Yelle, check out her retro-tastic video for his biggest hit which she played twice.
I know I don’t normally like dance music, since I am such an atrocious dancer. But I definitely had fun shaking my uncoordinated tush to Yelle.
BAM!
Pilfered from Slog. I wish I knew how to make these things. I could add the ones from The Brothers Solomon and The Devil’s Rejects.
I Done Text Yo Bitch Ass
On Valentine’s Day this year, B. and I went to a cabaret/variety show at the Jewel Box. One of the acts was a drag queen named Ultra lip syncing to a hilarious song I’d never heard before about what to do if you suspect yo man has been out carousing with hos. Now there is a video for that song and it’s totally viral. To aid in the efforts of spreading the Riskay virus, I present to you… “Smell Yo Dick”:
Name Your Price, My Good Man
On Saturday, B. and I attended a birthday party/engagement party in the back room at the Spitfire Grill in Belltown. Even though it’s a sports bar, I have always loved the art in that place. They have this amazing ginormous painting of a dead sparrow, killed by an arrow to the heart, is being eulogized by anthropomorphic insects and other birds. It’s fascinating.
Anyway, I’d never been in the back room, but there was more interesting art back there including a trio of paintings of Ian Curtis.
I loved them immediately. I couldn’t stop staring at them. Out of happenstance, B. mentioned the paintings to the bartender; a chap named Zeb Ringer who was also the artist. Not only that, but the paintings were for sale. When B. told me this, I couldn’t help myself. I HAD to ask.
They were pretty reasonably priced, but still art prices. I asked the artist if he would sell one of them. He told me he couldn’t do that because they were actually a unified painting. He asked me to stand far back and look at the gray areas as one picture. I did. They were Ian Curtis’ face formed in the Manchester smog blanketing each painting. Incredible. I was sold.
Luckily, whatwith the poor state of my accounts, B. offered to buy them for us. He’s picking them up on Sunday. I am so excited! We have the perfect place for them in the front room. Come on over and see ’em!
Rock of Love: An Analysis
Even though I watched most of “Rock of Love 2” (I started the season late), and was well aware all the while that I was witnessing some horrible portend of doom, I didn’t really figure it all out until last night, when I watched the “reunion special”. This post-season wrap up was a concentrated dose of R.O.L. in which Riki Rachtman (good to see you!), fresh from the Ricki Lake Training Camp, psychoanalyzes every member of the “cast”. This lasts approximately 5 hours. At one point the old one sings. It is perhaps the most surreal television program I have ever seen.
New shit has come to light, man. And that is the fact that Brett Michaels, formerly thought to be just a lame ex-butt rocker, is actually the world’s biggest misogynist. And no, I am not one of those neo-feminists who sees gender bias in everything. He truly hates women and loves to see them suffer. It helps that he, as he admits on more than one occasion, LOVES crazy girls. This helps because crazy girls are more than willing to do whatever he says, including, but not limited to, giving him lap dances, allowing him to photograph them scantily clad, playing FOOTBALL in the MUD and then HOSING EACH OTHER OFF, and taking turns making out with him in the back of his Hummer limo. If he were just a normal 46-year-old doosh, they would not fall for this. I mean, the guy plays acoustic air guitar. But he is Brett Michaels, former lead singer of one of the most inexplicably popular butt rock bands of the year most of these girls were born. For some reason everyone involved thinks that makes this OK.
In a way, Brett Michaels is a genius. An eeeeviiiil genius, but a genius nonetheless. He has found a way to find large groups of his type of lady (crazy strippers, both professional and amateur…and TV HOSTS, also crazy) and assemble them in his fantasy environment (a mansion littered with pictures of himself and stripper poles, no shortage of booze or motorcycles) and make out with them and/or sleep with them, sometimes in FRONT of the other girls, but always in front of America. Every week he is allowed to dump one of them without any of the real-world recourse (i.e. they continue to call him and stalk him and throw drinks in his face when he is on a date). Eventually, he settles on the one that he feels he can sleep with about 15 more times before quietly dumping her and gearing up for the next season of the show.
I’m not letting the ladies off the hook either. It’s pretty clear that each of them wants something from this show other than “love”. Some of them want to “break in” to the biz. (Megan being the newest career reality show slut. I am so angry at myself for ever rooting for her bitchy ass on “Beauty and the Geek”.) Others just want attention (Daisy) or to be told they are pretty on national television (also, Daisy). Their success is pretty much directly proportional to how good they are at convincing Brett that they “are here for him”. Yet I hear the word “competition” at least 250 times per episode. So perhaps some of them are really just tired of their amateur volleyball league and want a new hobby.
If you had shown me “Rock of Love” in 1990, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have thought you were showing me an extended scene from Paul Verhoeven’s new film, or something penned by Margaret Atwood about a dystopian future. I would have laughed. Sure, I laugh when I watch “Rock of Love” now. But it is that hysterical cry-laughing that you do when you can’t fully process the horror that you are witnessing.
Cheers, Brett Michaels. You really have reached your full potential. You are not only allowed to be a total cad with no social consequences, it has become your job.
The Uncommonness of New China Express
I passed by it a hundred times without a second glance. With a name like New China Express, what could possibly be unusual about it? It sounds like the sort of bland Chinese you would find in the food court at the mall. But one day, But when I got a menu in the mail, I added it to my delivery menus pile. And then the day came that I was too hungover to leave the house. I needed food brought to me STAT! I thumbed through my menu stack. Indian, Thai, pizza…none of these would do. Chinese was the way forward.
So I called up Snappy Dragon only to learn that there was a 2 hour wait on deliveries. (I guess I wasn’t the only person needing the MSG cure that Sunday morning). And then I saw it. New China Express. Free delivery. Well, why not? What’s the worst that could happen? I ignored exploring the answers to this question and picked up the phone.
25 minutes later, a modern-day apothecary arrived on my doorstep carrying the Tofu with Soft Egg rice and some golden egg rolls. It smelled amazing and tasted even better. It was a miracle cure in a Styrofoam box.
I’ll be honest. I haven’t ordered from New China Express under ordinary circumstances. But I can personally attest to their usefulness after an errant Saturday night.
4232 University Way NE 98105
(206) 632-5833
Menu available online at Husky88.com.
What restaurants in 98105 serve up your favorite hangover cure? Answer in the comments!
X-Posted from 98105.net
In the Company of Greatness
A couple of months ago, my department was hiring Quality Control Assistants. It’s a fancy title for one who watches our content from start to finish and tells me if there’s anything wrong with it. I couldn’t believe my luck when a gregarious fellow named Chas walked into my office. He was gregarious as hell, enthusiastic about the job and, more importantly, didn’t blink an eye when I told him the embarrassingly paltry sum he would receive in exchange for his services. It helped that when we got to talking, I learned that he was originally from the east coast and had not only heard of all the Richmond punk bands I grew up listening to, but was a fan of them as well. What a find!
What I didn’t know until later, was that Chas was also fast becoming a local celebrity. Every week he would invite me to the shows he put on at Re-Bar and every week, I would, sadly, have other plans. I finally made it to one event, a Homecoming-themed fundraiser for Barack Obama, and had a blast. But I still haven’t been able to make it to the real breadwinner event, Get Loweded. Well, this week, my dear Chas has been profiled in the Stranger. The article reveals still more fascinating details about this unique and precious snowflake and I feel very unfortunate, indeed, to have not been able to make it to prior Get Loweded events. I STILL can’t make it to the next one, but I’m definitely going to the one after that. By then, however, it will probably be the hottest ticket in town. At least I can say I knew Chas when. Even if it was only seconds before he exploded like a supernova.
Don’t Be Scared of Scarecrow Video
X-Posted from 98105.net.
It’s true. It can be a bit intimidating to rent videos at Scarecrow Video, whatwith their two stories of rare and imported DVDs on top of all the usual fare. More intimidating still is the staff that actually has to take a test as part of their employment application. Perhaps it is passing this trial that gives some of the staff a bit of an ego.
I will always remember my experience when attempting to rent the Monkees movie…
As a general rule, I dislike asking staff in shops for help, so I first looked for it myself in the music section next to the Monkees TV show. It was not there. I slunk downstairs and located an employee. I knew what the movie was called, but I felt weird asking if they had “Head”, so I opted for what I deemed to be a less risqué, more informational method of inquiry.
“Do you have the Monkees movie?”
The man behind the counter scoffed (yes, scoffed). “You mean “Head”?”
“Yeeees.”
Without hesitation or the aid of the store’s database, he responded “That would be in the Bob Rafelson section.”
We blinked at each other for a couple of seconds and then I headed to the directors’ section.
Now, I am a bit of a movie geek myself so I was familiar with Rafelson, who also directed “Five Easy Pieces” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice”. But forgive me if I didn’t think the man warranted his own section in a video store. This particular employee did not forgive me.
This experience is certainly not typical at Scarecrow. Most of the employees are helpful and enthusiastic. But there are enough encounters like this to give myself and others I’ve spoken to pause when they want to rent a silly Hollywood movie like, say, “Hot Rod”. If you don’t have a specific film in mind, however, or you have a very specific RARE movie in mind, the folks at Scarecrow (mostly) can and will be more than happy to help you out.
Check out their blog for recommendations, news about new releases and sale announcements.
5030 Roosevelt Way NE 98105
(206) 524-8554
www.scarecrow.com
Do you have a Scarecrow horror/help story? Tell it in the comments!
Effed by the Wind 