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WEEKEND RECAP: THE CONCLUSION

MONDAY

Ben, Dom, Sherrard and I arrived at Seattle Center in reasonably jolly spirits. We parked Ben’s car, paid the ridiculous parking fee, and wandered toward one of the many entrances. Around that time, Ahe called me to inquire after my whereabouts, for she was already at the main stage waiting for the Decemberists to play. Having never had a problem before, I told her I would be there momentarily, right after I picked up my ticket. I had forgotten that Will Call was on the other side of the Seattle Center. So, being the little nerds we are, we made jokes about quests and riddles that must be solved in order to enter Bumbershoot. I definitely found it strange when we arrived at Will Call, and there was a sign which read “Send only one representative up to the window, bring two forms of I.D.”. Funny, I thought I was just picking up tickets to an event, not the dossier of a top secret government official. So up to the window I went, and handed them my driver’s license and credit card. After a few minutes (!), the lady handed me my ticket. Ticket? I ordered TWO tickets. One for me and one for Dom. That, I thought, is why my credit card was charged $36 plus a service fee. Is THIS the service they were talking about? I told her that I definitely bought and paid for TWO tickets. I even got an email confirmation for said transaction which I foolishly did NOT print out because of my pathetic human faith in the robots that run the system. She asked “did you buy the tickets on the 25th?” “Yeeeeeees.” “Oh. Well, apparently, there were some computer glitches with a number of orders that day. Yours must have been one of those orders.” Ok. Any respectable business would have then said “So here’s the other ticket you ordered. Have fun!” She did not do this. Instead, she “offered” to take my credit card and call the “head office” to see if she could find a trace of the other ticket. Meanwhile, some other poor girl was going through the same bullshit at another window. She kept asking them if she could just get in there and check her email to show them she did, indeed, buy her ticket. This, again, should have been reason for them to admit mistake and just fucking hand the things over. But nay. 15 minutes later, I was called back up to the window. “I’m sorry, ma’am, we can’t find the other ticket”. “Um. Ok, how do I get my money back for the other ticket I paid you guys for?” “That’s a matter you’ll have to sort out you’re your credit card company.” “I have to call my credit card company for your computer glitch?” “Yes ma’am”. “Can I buy another ticket from you for the original, pre-day of show price?” “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.” I’m sure you’re real fucking sorry lady. This was my queue to stomp away from the window and begin an impotent string of obscenities as I stormed up the street. I realize it’s probably not that particular lady’s fault, which is why I didn’t yell at HER. But, who’s fault is it? And what kind of dystopia of customer service do we live in when I have to track down retribution for a mistake that Bumbershoot ADMITS to have made?

So, this being the day of the show, the ticket prices have gone up TEN FUCKING DOLLARS. Dom kindly suggested that he just go home so I don’t have to buy another ticket. But I didn’t let him do that. I just bought another exorbitantly priced ticket for a festival that used to be free, and asked the cashier who I should call to voice my outrage about having to buy another ticket. He told me, and we entered into the pit of the hippie and frozen banana hell that is Bumbershoot.

I checked the time and saw that if we tried to see the Decemberists, we could stay for, maybe, one song before having to head over to the comedy stage to get in line. So instead we opted to buy lunch in the Centre House and cut our losses. Or rather, MY loss, and everyone else’s misfortune for being around a crabby Jessica.

By the time we got in line for Patton, I was feeling a bit better. I was still outraged, but Patton is Patton and I knew that, barring any further fiasco that would prevent me from seeing Patton, I would be ok. We were in line at 1:30 for the 3:00 show. That may seem ridiculous, but, trust me, it was necessary. After a while, Chris and his friend (whose name STILL escapes me) showed up, followed by his friend’s girlfriend and about a billion of Ben’s countless acquaintances. A few of us played cards (with my fan-made Serenity playing cards that I procured at Comic-Con. Joss’ face is on the Aces. Yes, I am a NEEERD). Andrew showed up to try and jump the queue. We did not have a problem with this, nor did any of the other hundred of people in line who’s friends were doing the same things. However, since we were at the front of the line, and because Andrew has that shifty look about him (just kidding, Galoo!), a security fellow told him he couldn’t cut. WHAT? Andrew was sent away and we never saw him again.

At 2:45, they began to let people in for the show. It was around that time that I noticed a small gathering of people on the other side of the door. Who are they, I wondered? Well, Sherrard told me. They are people who paid EXTRA for their tickets in order to receive VIP bands that allow them to get into places FIRST, regardless of how many people are in the proletariat’s line. Ah. I see. Bumbershoot is REALLY sticking with the original “music for the people” concept, aren’t they? AAAAARG. Anyway, the special people went in and we filed in after. We still got fairly decent seats, however.

The first comic who came on did not identify himself. It’s ok. He was occasionally funny and mentioned about 100 times that he was from New York. Isn’t it funny how different New York is from other parts of the country? Like, say, Seattle? That guy thought so.

Next up was Paul Gillmartin, who is none other than the Paul of Dinner and a Movie with Paul and Anabell. Yes, he is a twat on that show. Here, he was pretty funny. He did a character (Who’s name…guess what…escapes me), in which he was a Republican representative on a tour of liberal events to field questions. At first, I thought he would be taking questions from plants in the audience, but after a few questions, I realized that these were real questions from well-informed, liberal Seattle-ites, and he was giving off-the-cuff, conservative prick answers like “George Bush doesn’t hate black people. He just doesn’t think about them” and “the reason we care more about fetuses than babies that are already born is because we don’t know whether or not they’re gay yet”. I liked him. But, the whole show being only an hour long, I was eager for him to get off the stage to allow for more Patton time.

Patton. Was. Amazing. He did a few of the jokes from his album, but he always does some new stuff and he always treats each individual audience as, well, an individual audience. He also said he LOVED Seattle audiences because they’re the only ones in which every single person actually gets his jokes. He said Seattle is a beautiful city made of “unicorn tears”. He said that because of this he needed to prepare himself for touring in places like Idaho, so handed out some cards with some heckles on them and had people read the heckles after he finished a joke. Good stuff.

You know, comedy is such a BROAD subject. It doesn’t seem right that someone like Dave Coulier or Ray Romano can be considered a comic because that puts him and Patton in the same field. And they SO aren’t. Patton is more like a liberal unifier with some jokes. When I see him, I feel better about the world. If someone with those ideas can be put in a position to speak to large audiences, and maybe just one little girl or boy in Indiana or somewhere will see him and change their minds about Bush, we just might be ok. After his set, the audience gave him a very earnest standing ovation, and he thanked us profusely and humbly left the stage.

I felt pretty good after that, but I wanted to try and stick around for Eugene Mirman who was up next. For some stupid reason, they required everyone to evacuate the theatre before bringing in the next group of people. Obviously, if I went back outside and got in line, there is no way I would have gotten back in. So we tried something I’d done successfully a few years back. We hung around the bathrooms, pretending to be waiting for someone. It didn’t work this time. The big beefy security guys said that EVERYONE had to leave the theatre. OoooooK. What’s with the tight security? Just as we were giving up on the dillydally, Eugene Mirman walked RIGHT past us. I froze, trying to think of some reason to get his attention. I had nothing and he was gone before I knew it. Oh well. We lost Ben to his other friends and stood around in a daze for a while.

Finally, we decided to kill some time in the beer garden before Okkervil River. Mmmmm. $5 MGD. $6 Mike’s Hard Lemonades. They taste so much better than the reasonably priced versions. After a while, Sherrard noticed Ahe and her friends on the other side of the garden. We stared at her for several minutes attempting to get her attention but it wasn’t working. Finally, I decided to play “creepy stalker” and call her on her cell phone. I told her “I’m looking right at you,” in my best lecher voice. It would have worked better if cell phones didn’t have caller I.D. Eventually, she saw us and headed over. Our group of 15 corralled in the middle of the garden until a table opened up. One of Ahe’s friends was a PERFECT gentleman and insisted that I take his seat because he couldn’t let a lady stand. How often does THAT happen from a young male? Like…never. Unless it’s Dom. And he HAS to do that or else he’ll look bad. This was a guy I just met and it left quite an impression. Thanks, guy. I do wish I could remember names. Eventually, Team Ahe declared that they were tired of Bumbershoot, and headed off back to the Hill. Team Brugos sat in the empty chairs for a while and then it was time for the parting of ways. They were off to see some One Reel (fuckers) short films, and we were to take in some Okkervil River. On our way out of the beer garden, we passed…EUGENE MIRMAN, who was smoking and talking to some people. We paused for a bit but I could still think of nothing to say other than “Hey man, you’re jokes make me feel good inside” and so we departed.

Two songs into the Okkervil River set, we realized that they were drunk and definitely did NOT give a fuck. They were speeding and sassing through their set and, as Sherrard noted, playing their songs in album order. If they didn’t give a fuck, neither did we. Fuck you, Bumbershoot. Mostly. Sherrard is going to email Patton and request that if he comes back to Bumershoot next year, he should also play a venue outside of the ‘Shoot so that his fans don’t have to be subject to metaphorical sodomy just to see him. I hope it works.

We opted, instead, to buy Sherrard a birthday dinner at the best little Pho house in Seattle. After Pho, we pushed it a little too far by getting a drink at the Jade Pagoda, when really, we should have all just gone home and slept. This was confirmed the next day when I realized that I’d left my tab open at the bar when we left. As drunk as I get, I’ve NEVER done that before. And this time, I’d only had ONE drink. That’s how mentally exhausting this weekend was. But fun. Definitely fun.

September 8, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, The Soundtrack . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Feel good concussion (part 1)

WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY

Boss Man decided we needed a little company retreat, so my Friday started on his speed boat with my co-workers. We cruised around Lake Washington and had a grand old time taking turns being pulled in the tube behind the boat. Everyone had a grand old time except for the Lil’est Dictator, that is. She refused to put on a bathing suit because she thought it was “weird”. She also, apparently, can’t swim (file that bit of information away for a rainy day…) and was afraid that the “life jacket” wouldn’t effectively keep her boney, 90 pound ass from sinking to the bottom. Whatever.
Later, I had dinner at Palermo on 15th with Faye, Borgia, Ben, Dom and Ben’s piece du jour. :P
After dinner, we decided to play drinking games with the movies “Out Cold” and “Orgazmo” (the unrated version). Sherrard hated “Out Cold”, which is perfectly reasonable. It’s a silly movie with a cliché plot. Faye and I tried to figure out what we liked about it and the only explanation we could come up with is Zach Galifianakis. So there you have it. “Orgazmo”, on the other hand, was a hit with everybody and there’s no denying its brilliance. All I have to say about the “unrated version” is that I don’t understand what the hell the MPAA is doing. The only new bits we noticed were a few extended humping scenes (how much humping is TOO MUCH?) and a few little noises here and there. Weird, man. Anywho, it got late and Faye was supposed to meet Borgia at a bar with his friend who is deathly allergic to cats, so she couldn’t come to my house. Sherrard, being hammered at this point, challenged Dom to an Atari duel, but it never panned out and he left with Faye. I went to bed.

SATURDAY

Woke up feeling ok. Man, I miss that feeling. Dom and I watched some more Deadwood and Battlestar Galactica (THANK YOU, Ben, for getting us caught up on the new season of B.G.). Then I got a hair-brained idea that I should go to Value Village to look for brown coat. If you can’t guess why I would do that, I’m too embarrassed to tell you. Faye begrudgingly went with me. I didn’t find anything, but Faye found several cute tops that will aid her in her new persona: adorable urban cowgirl. Faye and I split for dinner with our fellas. I convinced Dom to take me to Ballet, a delicious “Asian” restaurant on Pine. Well, it’s delicious to me. Apparently, their meat dishes aren’t as orgasmic as their vegetarian ones (their mock chicken, while resembling unappealing and floppy dark meat, is tender and flavorful). Anywho, after dinner, Dom and I squeezed in one more episode of Deadwood before I rushed off to the Satellite with Sherrard to meet Ryan, Faye and Borgia. And thus the debauchery began. At the Satellite, the normally ok (but NEVER great) waiter was clearly in a bad mood and decided to take it out on our table by, well, completely ignoring it. For the first round, Borgia had to go up to the bar. After that, if we were lucky enough to get the guy to come to our table, he would inevitably leave before everyone got their orders in. I’m sure it only pissed him off further when he would return with the drinks and the person who got left out would then order something else. He only served us too full rounds and we were there for several hours. Meanwhile, he was attending to other tables like they were giving blowjobs for tips. Needless to say, we wanted to stiff him a tip, but without the proper change, we ended up giving him 12%. After that we decided to hit the Comet. We sat at one end of one of the big tables. After a while, a group of people took up the other end. Not a big deal. But then Ryan, Sherrard and Faye, who were all sitting on the same side of the table, got up at the same time to take care of their respective business. Not 5 seconds later, this girl, who already had a chair of her own, sat down in Ryan’s chair. I leaned over and said “Excuse me, that chair is taken”. She kind of glanced at me and then turned her head back toward her friends. She didn’t get up. I leaned further and said, a bit louder “Excuse me! My friend is sitting there. He just got up to go to the bar”. I looked at her friends for help. She was clearly wasted. And frankly, I was getting a bit drunk myself. Her friends looked back at me as if to say “We don’t even really like her. You’re on your own.” Finally, I got Drunk Girl’s attention. She looked at me like I was being the biggest bitch on the planet, gestured to the three empty chairs and said “Fine! You can have ALL the chairs!”. Then she sat in the empty chair on the end of the table and pulled Ryan’s chair right next to her. I tried to explain AGAIN that people were actually sitting in those chairs mere seconds before she sat down. Obviously, she was here when they were here so she would have no reason to doubt me. But she didn’t listen. So I just waited for Ryan to return. He did, and had to pull his chair away from the Drunk Girl and back to our side of the table. I told him what had happened. Later, the Drunk Girl got up and I told Ryan he should pull her chair closer to him. He did and that was when her friends decided it would be fun to fuck with her. They told him to tell her he knows “Brady”. When she sat back down, she missed the subtlety of the fact that her chair was now right next to Ryan, and he began to tell her about how he knew Brady. She believed him right away. Apparently, it was almost too easy. Especially since this girl was hammered at Brady’s wedding as well and wouldn’t have remembered Ryan if they’d made out in a broom closet. For all she knows, they DID. Wacky. By the end of the night, Drunk Girl and Ryan were best friends and she was never the wiser. After last call, we were ushered out by the Comet staff and decided that we weren’t tired enough to go home. Nay. Instead, we NEEDED to go to Faye’s house for a Dance Party right then and there. After a quick stop to QFC for some not-at-all needed beer, we headed over to Faye’s. On the way, Sherrard, who was carrying a 24-pack of bottled Weinhart’s, tripped. As he toppled to the ground, he instinctively held out the box full of glass to cushion his fall. Miraculously, only two or three bottles broke. Sherrard was embarrassed, but honestly, with the state we were all in, it could have been any one of us. At Faye’s, we began the dance party with the classic Nightwish song, “I Wish I Had an Angel”. Fans of the director Uwe Bole might recognize this song as the closing number in “Alone in the Dark”. Next up, Faye put on the ever-popular Brit Pop mix that I believe she made for A.J.’s birthday two years ago in an attempt to make him realize the genius of the English. Somehow, we got on the subject of the classic Disney film “The Electric Grandmother” and the rest of the night turned into a google party. Things got fuzzy. The next thing I knew, I was attempting to take a nap on Faye’s couch, when she clearly just wanted everyone to leave. Ryan and Sherrard convinced me that I could make it home with their help. Once inside my apartment, I saw that it was 4:30 in the morning and I knew that if I attempted to find my jammies, I would surely wake Dom. So, my drunky brain rationalized two options: 1) Sleep in my bed in my clothes or 2) Sleep on the couch in my clothes. For some reason, I decided the latter was preferable.

SUNDAY

Despite Dom kindly relocating me to the bed at 9am, I was still very much in a bad way when I was woken up at 11 with a phone call from Ryan. We had decided the night before that we would have breakfast at the Canterbury and I figured, at that point, that coffee and greasy food could only help a bad situation. Breakfast was great and hit the spot. After breakfast, I was badly in need of a nap, but there was no time. Dom and I had domestic things to do like buy bookshelves and go grocery shopping. We went to Target, but half way there, I realized that the sooner I got home and back into bed, the more likely I would be to actually DO SOMETHING that evening. So we bought a few essential groceries at Target and sped home. I definitely felt better when I woke from my nap. But after dinner, I was ready for another nap. There wasn’t time, however. Karaoke was calling. Dom and I met Ben outside of the Bus Stop, where we sadly realized that it was no longer our little secret. There were NO tables left, which isn’t surprising considering there are only, like, 5 tables in the whole joint. Luckily, we ran into our friend Rob in the street and he tipped us off about a place called Vito’s on Madison where he was headed after he “put [his] face on”. Sweet. We called the necessary parties and made our way over there. It’s a great little bar with a delightfully Mafioso atmosphere. We were met by Elyse, Gene, Andrew, Brugos and his friend who’s name escaped me because I’m an asshole who can’t remember names.
Ben, Dom and I were the last ones standing, and we headed back to the Zookster pad. Ben was staying over to ease the Bumbershoot situation the next day. For some reason, we decided to watch Reefer Madness the Musical in fast forward (i.e. only our favorite numbers) before going to bed. This resulted in me having “Listen to Jesus, Jimmy” in my head for all of Monday.

I will get into Monday tomorrow. I’m having a lot of trouble getting through this update on account of work being busy and because of having to welcome a new Baxter ailment to the fold: unexplained stomach pains! That’s right. Last night, I was getting some sharp pains in my lower abdomen. I assumed it was cramps, but as they worsened, and nothing seemed to dull the pain, I suspected they might be more. I could do very little about it but curl up into a tiny ball on my living room floor. So much for my friend’s birthday party. Sorry, Ryan. Anyway, this morning, they aren’t much better. I think I’m just used to the pain at this point. But it still hurts to walk or breath. So I’m going to the doctor at two. I can say this about my body: it’s never boring. But it does everything it can with each passing year to tell me that I should never ever pass these genes on to another human being.

September 7, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I'm Working . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Your Account Statement is Ready to View buttock

WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY

We began the evening by stopping at the Shitty Market in our old hood for movie snacks, before strolling down to Pacific Place to see The Brother’s Grimm. I was delighted to find not only BOTTLES of Blackthorn’s for sale, but also CANS of Strongbow. I felt like I was back in London for a brief moment. The Strongbow beckoned me and I had to purchase a 4-pack for the movie.
Oh Terry Gilliam. How the mighty have fallen. The movie wasn’t BAD certainly. But one has come to expect more from such a man than a cliché script, fairly ho-hum visuals and a whole bunch of jokes about the French. There were one or two cool Gilliam-esque special effects and I must say that the acting was, for the most part, enjoyable. Matt Damon isn’t terrible, even if his accent is (it’s reminiscent of a region of England that Meep would call Genericshire). Heath Ledger was only as annoying as his lines, though he played his character inexplicably gay. Perhaps he was preparing for his upcoming gay cowboys eating pudding film? Jonathan Pryce was, well, Jonathan Pryce, and therefore great, if not underused. It was delightful to see Gareth, even though he is well on his was to Type-cast Town. Overall, however, the film was a bit of a yawn, and that hurts coming from the man who made Time Bandits. It was almost saved by a hinted-at moment of homoeroticism, but they chickened out. Damn you, PG-13!
Meep, Dom and I all felt similar about our luke-warm feelings toward the film. Borg liked it. Krk, a die-hard Python and Gilliam fan, was pretty devastated. So devastated, in fact, that he could only go home and go to bed. The rest of us went back up the hill for a late-night snack and drink at the Canterbury. I was only two Strongbows ahead of everyone else. The Canterbury was fairly uneventful apart from the French-fry orgy.

SATURDAY

I had planned to go to yoga but I decided to forgo exercise for finishing Season One of Battlestar Galactica. As most of you know, it ended in true That-Carnivale-Guy fashion by making everything very open-ended and effed up. Thanks, guy! Even if you are sometimes mediocre, you really know how to leave your audience hungry for more. Luckily, Ben is going to get us caught up on Season Two thanks to his TeVo.
I did my yoga video, which is in no way as intense as the Bikram, but still reasonably effective, and then we got ready to go to Brugos’ Birthday Dodecacathelon. Oh happy day! We loaded the DDR in the car and the Troika + Sherrard headed Brugos-way for a day of games and drinking!
Well, games for everyone else. For me and Meep, it was all DDR all the time. Some of the games we didn’t participate in included Tang (something to do with speed-drinking), Egg-Tossing, Botchee Ball (sp?), and Keg Stands. To our surprise, Sherrard took part in the Keg Stands not once, but TWICE, consequently propelling him into instant drunkenness very early on. The party was, as Sherrard pointed out, a Sausage Fest. The result of this is many many drunken, shirtless men running around being obnoxious. This isn’t as sexy as it sounds. But I didn’t care. I was playing DDR. Meep and I got in round after round. For a long time uninitiated people would periodically pop their heads in and laugh at us before running to the backyard to binge drink. Eventually, a nice, open-minded couple (of course I’ve forgotten their names) who’d never DDR’d before showed up and were intrigued. They played a few rounds, and before long, they were just as addicted as us. The guy actually turned out to be some sort of prodigy, going from “beginner” mode to “light” (which is a fucking misnomer if I’ve ever heard it) mode with ease. Before long, he was playing everyone in light mode while they stayed on beginner and was KILLING the competition. Amazing. After dinner, Meep and I started drinking. For a while, the alcohol seemed to be helping. But only for a little while…
Things started to get a little hazy after that. I noticed the house was getting pretty trashed. I feel kinda bad for the Birthday Boy, who doubtless spent all day yesterday hung over and cleaning. I know there were conversations in the backyard, people eating raw eggs and running laps, a pie-eating contest, Borg, and some other guy jamming in the basement with Dom on drums. Meep and I sang “El Scorcho”. There was some playing with Brugos’ cat, Lucy. There was a crazy Russian guy who broke all Keg Stand records (I think his best was 45 seconds or something) and then passed out on the lawn. There were some drunk jerks (who were probably jerks sober as well) running around insulting people. There were some drunken declarations of admiration (in which I participated). And finally, there was karaoke on the X-Box. The selection was rather limited but I sang not one, but TWO Skid Row songs and had a fucking blast. I also got in a horrific rendition of “Cum On Feel the Noise”. Luckily, I got help on both that song and “I Remember You”. I need more butt rock on our at-home karaoke system, man. It reminded me of sophomore year of college when I hung out with Beth, Allison, Ann and KT at their on-campus house. Erik would pull out the acoustic guitar and we would sing all the butt-rock favorites until the sun came up. I’m telling you, Warrant is the perfect campfire sing-a-long band.
ANYWAY, at 2 or so (I think), poor Dom had to drive all our hammered asses back to the hill. At least I’m pretty sure he had a good time before people became incoherent.

SUNDAY

I may have had two bottles of Cook’s to myself, but it was over the course of 10 hours (yes, the party was that long. Longer, in fact, as we arrived late. THAT is why everyone was so useless by the end of the night.) That and sweating out the booze as I dance dance revolutioned all night. Furthermore, Dom was an angel with the water-bringing. So all I needed was to sleep in till 11 and I was fine.
Sunday was mine and Dom’s 3-year anniversary. Our big plans started with beginning Deadwood Season One. Then we showered and went to the Interbay Golf Course for some mini-golf. The weather held up nicely. Mini-golf was fun apart from the 4-5 year-old girl and her grandma who were speeding through the holes behind us and chasing us through the course. We would have let them play through but they would finish their last hole when we were ¾ through our hole and so it seemed like waiting would take forever. Instead, we finished the whole course in under an hour. Then we stopped at Fred Meyer in Ballard for a quick, romantic shopping trip, before going to dinner at Louis’ Chinese Restaurant. The food was really good, but about half-way through our meal, it became family hour. After dinner, we decided to drive to the U-District to see if we could catch a movie. We decided on The Aristocrats. See Mark, we DO see indie films in the theatre sometimes! We probably should have picked something else though. In retrospect, it seems like a waste to spend $9 on a mini-DV documentary. Overall, the film was interesting, but really not that funny. It wasn’t OFFENSIVE or anything. It was just kind of mediocre humor. Plus, I’m not a very big fan of most of the comedians they featured. Give me the Comedians of Comedy over Drew Carey any day. Plus, I don’t think I like seeing comedies with American audiences. They are so eager to laugh that they don’t really stop to think if the joke is funny or not. They just recognize the fact that they’ve just heard a punch line and so they laugh right on cue. This is, I think, why Meep, Dom and I tend to find ourselves laughing out loud in a silent theatre and vice versa. We actually LISTEN to what’s being said and, if it strikes us as funny, we laugh. It can’t be that our sense of humor is SO VASTLY different than the rest of the country’s, can it?

And thus endeth the anniversary date and the weekend.

NEXT WEEKED: Meep and I celebrate a finished script, and I take Sherwood to Bumbershoot for his Birthday.

August 29, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, Filmpinions, Hug Your Television . Tags: , , . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

No start he monorail slab

WEEKEND UPDATE

FRIDAY

The evening began at the really delicious Samui That. Faye and I were still suffering from some sort of mental allergy to an overdose of gorgonzola cheese the night before. (I’m only partially joking. Faye and I are both allergic to penicillin. However, we only react to moldy cheeses a fraction of the time. Well, Faye made a lovely gorgonzola pasta and afterward, I developed a small rash and Faye and I were mentally whacked for the entire next day.) So Faye was feeling pretty weird and I was acting silly without the influence of drugs or alcohol. I think Dom was a little freaked. Anyway, we ate a delicious dinner in the company of Ben and, later, Borgia. After dinner, we stopped at the QFC for enforcements. Dom headed home to work. The rest of us were regrettably late arriving to Sherrard’s place to watch one of the performances on the Bill Hicks DVD. When we arrived, Sherrard and Dan were listening to the David Hasselhoff album “Night Rocker”, which, in my gorgonzola haze, sounded to me like Talking Heads. I was overjoyed when Sherrard handed me my very own copy! We opened our booze, marveled at the lovely job Sherrard had done decorating his flat, (we hadn’t been there since he’d first moved in), and set about watching the DVD. It was a performance that I’d never seen before. I had heard many of the jokes, but Hicks is remarkable at making each of his “bits” come off as completely off-the-cuff and organic every time. This is probably because the comedy of Hicks isn’t your typical “do you ever notice…?” act. Instead, it’s Hicks the Profit speaking directly from the heart about all the ways in which the world is fucked up and how easy it would be to fix it all if we just stopped being assholes and loved each other. Of course, this is all delivered using hilarious analogies, characters like Goat Boy, and sound effects galore. So you don’t even realize how truly poetic it is until the end when he signs off with a completely earnest message about love and you notice the tears streaming down your face. I may have listened to his records many times, but Hicks was a performer. He needs to be watched to truly appreciate his impact. It becomes horrifically apparent how true it is that nothing gold can stay. There are many people who think Bill Hicks is funny. I don’t think enough of those people comprehend that he was actually trying to change people’s perceptions and make the world a better place. Thank you, Sherrard, for sharing the DVD with us.
After we dried our tears, we followed Ben to the Canterbury. I had finished a bottle of wine, I believe, by myself. Faye had not yet begun to drink. I’m not sure if it made a difference though. At that point, I was pretty obliterated so the rest of the evening zoomed past and we closed out the Canterbury.

SATURDAY

Dom allowed me to tag along on his date to meet Matt, the Script Reader. We had coffee and Matt asked us questions about producing that, well, only Dom could answer. He then took off to watch the Stranger Amateur Porn contest and Dom and I set about preparing for the Fundue Party! We bought some groceries and then started cleaning. I took a shower and changed into one of my mom’s old dresses from the 70’s. Around 3:30, I chopped bread, fruit and broccoli and then watched The Station Agent, which ended with just enough time for me to start cooking the fondue. I just made a Swiss fondue and a Gruyere and Swiss without alcohol for Dom. I also had some mircrowaveable vegan chocolate fondue for dessert. Meanwhile, Dom put on his brown sharkskin suit. We were ready to party. Brugos and Faye arrived on time and we chowed down. I was a little annoyed that people arrived late, being that it was a dinner party. But, for some reason, a lot of people THOUGHT that it started at 8 (who eats at 8?! New Yorkers?) and so they didn’t think they were late. In attendance at that point were Aiyana, Andrew, and Ben. Aiyana brought a lovely vegetarian fish loaf that looked awesome. Dan and Sherrard arrived around 8:45 and scooped up the last of the cheese. We were already well into a game a Cranium at that point. Kayobi arrived around 9 and, hopefully, got something to eat. Then we broke out the Taboo! Faye and I were forbidden to be on the same team which I still resent. But neither of our teams won. Team Ben proved victorious with Team Aiyana coming in 2nd and Team Cunt (my team), in 3rd. The losing team became the proud owners of a can of “Potted Meat Food Product” which I’d purchased some weeks back for Sherrard at QFC as a joke but neglected to give it to him. Given that Kayobi and I are both vegetarians, the potted meat was Sherrard’s. Fate had brought it to it’s rightful owner at last. After Sherred read the ingredients out loud, (which I found on line!), we HAD to open the can.

The first thing we noticed was the smell. It was similar to, but less pleasant than the Fancy Feast that my kitties enjoy every night. Second, in the middle of a cylindrical lump of “potted meat” was a hole, as if a factory worker had decided to stick their penis in there “just out of curiosity” right before sealing up the can. There was no going back. Someone had to taste it. Sherrard, brave man that he is, and who, as a result of his time in Taiwan, also has a history of consuming the inconsumable, got a fork and scooped up a small piece. He stuck his tongue on the offending morsel and immediately noticed the extreme saltiness. Less than 2% of sodium indeed. Eventually, he worked it into his mouth. The look on his face, after that, was priceless. It also spurred on Ben and Dan to try it as well. No one enjoyed it in the least, but, to my knowledge, none those adventurous souls have yet contracted salmonella.
Ben, Aiyana and Andrew left us. Kayobi made the mistake of mentioning that she had watched the first 4 episodes of Buffy on the DVD that I lent her, and wasn’t as keen on them as she’d been on Firefly (her first foray into the world of Whedon). In a panic, I shoved Buffy Season 3 into her hands, but Faye had a better idea. We should just have her watch “Hush”. It doesn’t require TOO much back story to appreciate, The Gentlemen are scary as hell, and what better way to show a skeptic the genius of Joss than to show them an episode with almost no dialogue. And we think it worked! I also decided to lend her Angel Season 1 because she mentioned that it was hard to get into a show about high school kids at this stage of life, supernatural as their stories may be. When the episode was over, we turned off the DVD player to find Starship Troopers on TV. People began to trickle out the door at that point, but a few stayed on to watch the vagina slug fuck up some dudes and to briefly make fun of Denise Richards.
And that’s a party at the Zookster House.

SUNDAY

It’s amazing how easy it is to clean up from a party when the apartment was actually clean before the party began. There may be something to this whole “keeping your place tidy” thing.
Yoga was good. I’m finally back to my skill level that I was at before my month and a half of laziness. It is really hard to do Bikram when it’s 80 degrees outside though.
Back at home, I made dinner, and listened to my mom tell me some more of her government conspiracy theories. This time she thinks that the ID chips that the pound injects into the animals is another way for the government to find you and invade your privacy. I asked her what the government would want to “find” me for and she said “Anything. Anything at all. It’s just like when Nixon tried to get the government to allow televisions to have cameras installed into them so that they could watch you in your house.” I said “I think that was actually Orwell”. And she said “Exactly!” It’s around that point in the conversation when I stop trying to reason with her and just let her finish her tirade so I can eat dinner before it gets cold.
At 7, Dom and I watched the exciting conclusion to Dr. Who and I was dismayed to learn that it really WAS the conclusion. I guess we’d found it right near the end of the series. Now I really WILL need to buy the DVD’s. Damn.
Dom and I then started in on Battlestar Galactica which, despite the fact that so far they’ve over-explained the simple things and under-explained the more confusing plot points, is really really cool. And 3 episodes in, I’ve got me quite the little crush on Starbuck.

NEXT WEEKEND: Faye and I bring DDR over to Brugos’ house and spend the day alienating ourselves in his TV room!

CORRECTIONS BY DOM
Woah woah… the night didn't end after Hush! We shut off Hush and brought the lights back up. People made their exit, leaving Sherrard, Faye, Brugos and of course Jessica and I. After trying to entice people with my greatest hits of TV from the 70s and 80s – which enraged Sherrard – I was rather loudly berated into manning the karaoke machine. So I did. And for the next hour, despite telling Jessica to sing quietly, everyone did their very best to outsing everyone else. I was shot the evil eye from Sherrard and Jessica who were sure I was purposefully keeping the microphone off or at a low volume. After about 20 minutes, as expected, the allure of karaoke wore off and most folks went into the kitchen and Faye stuck it out and kept singing. It was nearly 2AM at this point and Sherrard rejoined the group, but things were a little more muted and overall we just enjoyed the videos, as usual.

THEN we turned off the karaoke and watched Starship Troopers as people left. My sober eye records all.

Thank you Dom. I can see it all now, clear as day.

August 22, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Of forget to anode

WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY

At Dom’s behest (and with Gadzook money), Faye and I agreed to have “Plight of the Living Dead” read by a professional…um…guy who reads scripts and offers constructive criticism. The process is called “Script Coverage”, but I don’t know what you call one who covers scripts. A Coverager? Anyway, we did it, and we met with the guy on Friday to discuss his notes. Faye and I were very nervous about the whole process. What if the guy just doesn’t understand our humor? What if he doesn’t even LIKE zombie movies? Well, we got his notes ahead of time, and they were mostly positive. But there were a few things in there that made us a little defensive. It’s VERY hard to take yourself out of a script you’ve been writing for 4 years. The guy (Matt was his name) had some good suggestions, and overall, he really liked the script. He said so several times. In fact, he said that if we were to start shooting tomorrow, we would have a good, cult-status movie on our hands. But if we revised a few things, we would have a GREAT movie that may even become a sleeper hit. So that sounds pretty good, right? Well, yes. It is. But like I said, it’s really EXTREMELY hard to step back from your work. So Faye and I, at first, felt like we had just gone to a parent-teacher conference wherein the teacher tells you your child, your pride and joy, is very intelligent but is they are performing below their potential and will need some tutoring or maybe to be placed in special ed. It was extremely traumatic for us. Luckily, we HAD read his notes before meeting with him so we had some time to lick our wounds and sleep on it. By the time we met with him, we had realized that he had quite a few good ideas. So now, Faye and I will do one more draft of the script before the end of August. We spent the rest of Friday evening getting drunk with Matt. He’s a cool guy which, at least for me, made the taking of the critical medicine that much easier. Anybody who loves “Human Nature” and “Swamp Thing” is definitely coming from a similar place. Maybe that was his plan all along…
Unfortunately, I was going on an almost empty stomach. Since we started out at the Coastal Kitchen (what’s up, pricey), I decided to wait on getting a snack, thinking we would only have one drink there. We had two. And then we moved to the Canterbury where I got another drink and a half in me before any food arrived. I was very dipleased with my order of garlic bread. Sorry, dears. Stale bread that’s been lightly buttered and sprinkled with garlic salt before being burned in a toaster oven is NOT Garlic Bread. Matt was kind enough to share his fries with us, however. Regardless, the lining of the stomach with carbs was too little too late, my friend. Too little, too late.

SATURDAY

Horrible raging hangover, check. Wasting the entire morning nursing said hangover, check. While I drank glass after glass of water and waited for the pain medication to kick in, I watched Confessions of a Dangerous Mind again. Great flick. I like that Clooney fellow. I think he has quite a bit of potential. Honestly, his direction harkens back to the 60’s and 70’s when making a movie was more than just filming scenes. It was about telling a story through pictures. Some of the composition is just beautiful. My only criticism of the film (besides Drew Barrymore) is that Clooney didn’t really pick a visual motif and stick with it. He kind of looks, at times, to be experimenting. Overall, however, I’m impressed. Sam Rockwell is an incredible actor. And also one of those not terribly attractive men who can convince you to have a crush on him based on charisma alone. In light of that, who am I to argue with a film that requires Sam Rockwell to be naked for over a third of the scenes? It helps with the pain, I’ll tell you what.

So around 3:00, I was still hung-over, but nursing time was over. I had to get ready to go to a short screening at the Rendezvous (for another Matt. Remember, kids. If you can’t remember the name of a male filmmaker, chances are they are called Matt, Mark or Eric). It being a beautiful day, Dom and I had planned to walk, but because of my useless ass, we didn’t get out of the house until 10 to 4, and we were supposed to be there at 4:15. Thank Christ for the Focus. We sped downtown and found a parking spot fairly easily. Matt was kind enough to show a trailer for “Snow Day” before his short, “Merlot” screened. We got out of there at 5 and had to speed back up the hill to meet the 48-Hour Film Challenge team at Linda’s. Why were we meeting? Because we WON, motherfuckers! Pretty cool. We had dinner and a few rounds there before Faye and I decided we needed to exodus. We aren’t fans of Linda’s and only showed up there because that was where the two fellows who suggested the party wanted to go. Sherrard came with us and Ryan and The Kidd went downtown “for a bit”. Needless to say, we didn’t see them again for the rest of the night. We ended up the Satellite, and I once again attempted to find some satisfying garlic bread. To no avail. This time it was some kind of basil infused tapanade over crustinis. NOT GARLIC BREAD. Kayobi and (yet another) Matt came by and later, Dom, Borgia and Cherry left Linda’s to join us.
When you start your evening at 6:00, coming him at 12:45 doesn’t seem so early. Still, I convinced myself I needed to watch a movie, so I put in Dark City. I fell asleep before Murdoch even meets Dr. Schreber.

SUNDAY

T’was a typical Sunday in many ways. I did some chores and Dom and I went to the grocery store. This time, however, we went to Trader Joe’s. We spent ABOUT the same as we would at Safeway, and we got some really healthy stuff. So we both feel pretty good about it. For lunch, we had Trader Joe’s tomato and roasted red pepper soup and grilled cheese on organic wheat bread and it was a delicious meal. If we don’t get lazy, I think we’ll really be able to pull off this whole “healthy eating” thing.

Kayobi and I have been trying to convince each other to go to one another’s yoga class for a while now. Yesterday, she finally convinced ME to go to HERS. I usually do Bikram Yoga, which is the “hot yoga”. The whole thing takes place in a room that’s heated to 106 degrees. This is meant, mainly, to make you more limber. So my first concern with Kayobi’s yoga was that I wouldn’t be able to do any of the positions without the presence of the heat. Right away, I could tell that these were two completely different schools of yoga. Besides the lack of heat, the studio also has hardwood floors. The class starts off with some meditation (instead of just the breathing at Bikram), and the teacher reads a poem. Then the teacher turns on some New Age music (no music at Bikram) and we get into the positions, which, I noticed all too well, were very hard on my knees. And not just the standing positions. The floor positions are all very knee-oriented as well. At the end of the class, we did some more meditation and the teacher read another poem. I was disappointed that I didn’t feel nearly as worked as I do at Bikram. I was sweating, but I missed that overall weary feeling that Bikram gives me. The feeling that lets me know that I just worked out every single muscle in my body. Maybe if my knees weren’t so weak, I would have gotten more out of it. But I also really like the down-to-business aspect of Bikram. The class lasts an hour and a half and we work out for the WHOLE hour and a half. At Kayobi’s place, we spent at least half an hour chanting or meditating. I can see how that would be good for some people, but I go to yoga to work out, not to meditate. I have never been able to meditate. And it’s not that Bikram isn’t spiritual. It is. But the whole “clear your mind, let your negativity go” stuff happens WHILE you’re in the positions. It’s the ultimate yoga for multitaskers. And, as my resume clearly shows, that is ME, baby!
Today I am sore in places that I shouldn’t be, like my knees and the portion of my spine that juts out at the base of my neck. In fact, I’m less sore and more bruised. I blame the hardwood floors. I don’t think I’ll be going back to that one. That’s not too say that I will never try anything else but Bikram. But I am fairly convinced that Kayobi’s place is not for me. Once again, I feel very fortunate about the circumstances under which I first tried yoga. If I hadn’t gone to the Sweat Box on that day, with that amount of energy, I might have written off all of yoga as something that “isn’t for me”. (Of course, it stands to reason that I really shouldn’t write things off so readily.) Next week, Kayobi’s going to come with me to the Sweat Box. I have a feeling she’s going to HATE it. :)
When I got back, I made dinner and Dom and I watched Dr. Who (which was SO good! It’s all I can do to keep from spending $80 on the whole season at Amazon.co.uk!) After dinner, I did some work and then popped in “Midnight Cowboy”, which I’d never seen. It made me a little sad that so few people try to make movies like that anymore. Movies in which the cinematography is just as important to the story as the script. It also struck me that there were really only two pieces of music in the film. At first, I was put off by it, but by the end, I couldn’t have seen it any other way. Music is another thing that seems to be so secondary in films today. I was struck by that when watching The Devil’s Rejects too. The soundtrack to that film is PERFECT and was obviously very carefully selected. Probably the reason music has taken a backseat in films these days is because it’s so hard to secure the rights to music. Faye and I have a couple songs written into our script and we’ve been told over and over again that we shouldn’t make reference to a particular song because it frightens off investors. But we didn’t just write in songs we happened to hear on the radio at the time or anything. We try and write scenes to Tangents songs just because we’d have more of a chance getting the rights. We chose them because those are THE songs we want there. Still, sometimes restrictions work in your favor. The music in the original Donnie Darko is perfect and a lot of those songs were compromises for Richard Kelly. I still haven’t seen the Director’s Cut to decide if he was right all along. But what he ended up with the first time worked really well.

At this point, I’m rambling. Sorry about that. Boredom is a bitch.

August 15, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I Made Movies . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Blanca

WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY

It was our friend Pam’s 30th birthday, and a lovely evening for an outdoor party. The Troika stopped first at Safeway to get some booze and some gifty-type stuff for the birthday girl. Faye found the weirdest birthday card ever. I will attempt to describe it. On the front is a cartoon dog in the middle of the woods, wildly sniffing the trunk of a tree. Inside the card it says “Whoa! Major dude here!” and then “Happy Birthday”. It was so weird that Faye HAD to get it. The meaning of the card became a topic of conversation throughout the evening. Eventually, we agreed that it must have something to do with the urine. The dog smelled the urine of a “major dude” who had peed on the tree. This was, we suppose, meant to imply that the recipient of the card was a major dude as well. But the whole phrasing was so bizarre. And what the hell does it have to do with birthdays? Who knows. Anywhosel, we wandered up to 27th Ave, which I’m not sure can be considered Capital Hill anymore. It’s definitely one of those strange “suburban” feeling parts of the city where everything is quiet and there’s plenty of parking. The party took place in their fenced in backyard. There was a BBQ going and some hilarious decorations which were very tailored to the birthday girl. There were also a stack of pictures of Pam’s head, on which you were meant to draw the body. That was fun. Later, the piece de résistance…wrestling in whipped topping! Pam had been saying for weeks that all she wanted for her birthday was to have her male friends wrestle in a kiddie pool filled with some sort of dessert item whilst wearing Mexican wrestler masks. And so she had it! Little did we know, Pam had planned to wrestle too. And she became the ultimate whipped topping champion! T’was a site to behold, let me tell you. Faye took some pictures which I will post links to when they are uploaded. But I have a feeling the photos won’t capture of magic of being there, mere inches away from being splattered with cool whip. The funniest part had to be when Pam won her third match. She stood up and said “I can’t see! Somebody please lick my eyes!” And TWO people obliged.

The Troika bailed around 10:00 because the party was headed to the I.D. for some karaoke and we weren’t in the mood. Dom went home, and Faye and I stopped in to the gay bar behind Chop Suey for a quick one. We definitely have to go back there soon. For one thing, they had THE best music. All the 80’s hits you know and love without any of the embarrassing stuff! The bartender was dressed in short-shorts, a reflective vest and a construction hat, and every once in a while, he’d bust a move on his way to serve a drink. Everywhere, people were dancing and just having a great time. No one was trying to impress anyone else. They were just there to party. Why can’t “straight” bars be like that? Why does everyone at Linda’s have to act so cool? And why can’t there be more Loverboy on the juke box?
While Faye and I drank our PBRs, we were approached by a very tall, very drunk man with long-ish curly gray hair and himler glasses. I had my hair up in the two small buns and he said that he had to come over because my hair kept coming toward him. He then launched into a monologue about how he never got hit on when he had short hair, but with his long hair, he does. Every once in a while, he would stop and look at my buns again and say “They’re coming toward me!”
Faye and I were supposed to meet the Nimble folks (I think…the drunky had set it at that point), so we took off ended up going to Bill’s, where they were going to meet us. We thought. But they didn’t. Faye and I drank alone, which was perfectly fine, and enjoyed the always wonderful music and food as served by Lily Taylor. Borgia joined us just in time to eat our leftovers and head home.

SATURDAY

Dom and I were supposed to meet a fellow local filmmaker whom I’d been emailing back and forth with for several months at the Canterbury for breakfast. We waited for half an hour and then ordered. 45 minutes after the scheduled meeting time, he called and said that he couldn’t get over there because of Seafair (goddamn you Seafair!) and we rescheduled for the next day. Dom and I got in the focus (with new windshield) and caught the ferry to Vashon to hang with the family. We picked his dad (Phil) up at the waterfront where he had been partaking in a ham radio contest (he’s WAY into ham), and we drove back to the house. Phil had to go to the ferry dock to pick up Dom’s half brother and family. While they were gone, Dom cleaned his car and I finished “Eleanor Rigby” by Douglas Coupland. (Damn you, Coupland! I can’t get through one of your books without blubbering at some point!). The sun this year must not be that strong (or close or something) because I’ve somehow managed to not only NOT get burned, but to actually procure a little color! Not that anyone besides me would notice. I still look like death warmed over. But I have an honest to god TAN LINE! Take that, Irish genes!
An hour and a half later, Phil and the family arrived with steaks, corn-on-the-cob and pumpkin pie. I make some bakes potatoes for my main course. My potato didn’t turn out so well, but the corn and pie were AMAZING. After dinner, Dom’s brother Eric, his daughter Sarah, me, Phil and the doggies went for a walk in the woods. The doggies were Phil’s beagle, Kirby and Eric’s poodle, Tommy. Tommy was apparently not used to so much exercise, so there were a few moments when he looked a little wiped, but it’s impossible to wear Kirby out. It was a wonderful walk. It’s not often that a city girl like me finds herself surrounded by trees as far as the eye can see. Very peaceful. When we got back to the house, we had a leisurely chat and showed “Snow Day” to the family. They said they liked it and bought a copy. (Of course, what kind of a family would say they DIDN’T like it?)
Dom and I caught the 10:20 ferry back to Seattle and I was so bushed (from doing what?!) that I actually fell asleep on the way home.

SUNDAY

Dom and I made a second attempt to meet our filmmaker friend at the Canterbury. This time it worked! We had a nice breakfast and chat about…filmmaking, and then parted ways. Later, I went to yoga and had THE hardest class I have ever had. I have never been so close to vomiting, and actually had to go to the bathroom in the middle of class to splash some cold water on my face. They say that it’s not uncommon to feel nauseous during Bikram yoga, but since I’d never been effected that way before (and have been doing it for over a year now), I thought I was immune. Not so. And how awful! I attribute it to a few things: not going as regularly as I had been the heat outside and PMS. It seemed like a lot of people were having hard classes, so I think the heat outside had a lot to do with it. I realized how lucky I was that the first time I went to yoga, I was having a good day. I was full of energy and feeling very strong. If this had not been the case, I doubt I would have kept going. Imagine if yesterday had been my first day! Ugh. Though that’s a lesson to be learned, isn’t it? I wonder how many things in life I’ve deemed “impossible” or “not for me” simply because the first time I tried them, the conditions were wrong or my heart wasn’t in it. How can I remember this lesson in the future?
Yoga wiped me out, and I had a nice, quiet evening at home in front of the television (including the new Dr. Who with Christopher Eccleston! It’s being broadcast by CBC! SO GOOD! Must remember to watch every week! Love Canada!)

August 8, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I Made Movies . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Have close of amp delusion

WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY

Faye and I decided to have a nice, mellow evening in and watch one of the free screeners I have from Lion’s Gate. We were joined by Dom, Sherrard and Borgia. We settled on “Cross Bones”, which looked to be about a zombie pirate and “reality TV”. To say it was awful would be a gross understatement. It felt like we were watching just some guy’s really bad independent horror film. But, in fact, we were watching some guy’s really bad film that’s distributed by Lion’s Gate. What? It also, at many times, felt like we were watching audition tapes. That’s how stiff and embarrassing the acting was. Somehow we managed to make it all the way through this thing, but we decided against watching “the Off Season”, which in theory sounds great, but the trailer made it look even worse than “Cross Bones”. Instead, we decided to watch something we knew was good. So we put in “Transformers: The Movie”. I never tire of the non-stop rock and nostalgia of that film. Plus, it’s always great to watch it with someone who hasn’t seen it since they were a kid because it never fails to blow their minds when they see who supplied the voices for the movie. When you’re a kid, you don’t give two handfuls of crap about Robert Stack or Orson Wells. You just want to see some cool alien robots fight each other.

Thus, fully saturated with rays from the TV, we retired.

SATURDAY

Dom and I set out to get his windshield fixed, since it’s still cracked from “The Time I Almost Drove Dom’s Car”. We went to Novus, hoping they could just fit us in that day. No dice. Dom had to make an appointment for later this week. We also found out that the whole windshield has to be replaced and that Dom’s insurance won’t cover it, since their generous deductible is $150 higher than the actual cost of replacing the windshield. Auto insurance is so useful.
After that we had planned to go and see “Last Days” at the Varsity, so we headed over to the U-district to grab some lunch and hit the Buffalo Exchange beforehand. We had a very pleasant meal at Thai 65 and I had moderate success at Buffalo Exchange (adding a red top to my ensemble!). With 20 minutes to go before the movie started, we were about to head to the theatre when Faye called. I had thought she was going to be indisposed for much of the day as her parents were in town. But they had just left to go to a concert so she wanted to do something outdoorsy (this being a gloriously sunny day). I had been wanting to go swimming for ages, so I asked Dom if he minded us bagging out on the movie. I don’t think he really wanted to see “Last Days” anyway, so he said OK. We were just going to check 2nd Time Around real quick-like to see if they had a copy of DDR when we ran into Andrew and Chris Brugos who were…on their way to see “Last Days”. We chatted with them for a few minutes and then scanned 2nd Time Around to no avail. That’s what I get for wanting to save $10 by not purchasing a copy of the game with the pads. Instead, I ordered a copy from half.com and it still hasn’t arrived. Meanwhile, the pads sit in the living room in their boxes taunting me.
Anyway, we went home so I could grab my suit and then we picked up Faye and drove to Magnuson Park (which Mark might remember from his brief Seattle visit) to swim! It was, of course, extremely crowded, but we managed to find a small patch of grass and rock all to ourselves. Faye and I baked ourselves in the sun briefly so we could be warm enough to go into the water. Meanwhile, Dom scouted out the area. Then Faye and I ventured in to the water as well. So, at Magnuson Park, there is no sand. Only rocks. Lots of rocks that tenderize your feet. I suppose you are meant to wear sandals into the water but Faye and I weren’t about to ruin our shoes so we just tried to ignore the pain. And the algae. The water, despite looking very clear from a distance, is actually filled with a veritable forest of algae (undoubtedly cultivated in the urine of children). It’s kind of gross. But we went in anyway. The water was a pleasant temperature and I’m always a fan of playing in the wake of boats. But I never could fully get over the algae and after a while our feet couldn’t bare standing on rocks, so we stumbled back to the shore (or at least, I stumbled) and lay down in the sun for a bit before heading back to the cit-ay. Despite the way it sounds, it actually was a lot of fun. But next time, I reckon I’d like to find some cleaner water and some goddamned sand.
On our way back, we got some Slurpees and made a plan to look for DDR at Hollywood Video. If it was there, we would have a mini, indoor BBQ and play some DDR. It wasn’t there. It also wasn’t at either of the video stores on 15th (On 15th and the Other One), Rainy Day Music, or Blockbuster (that’s how desperate I had become, that I would be willing to rent from that Christian monopoly). So we gave up the ghost, had our indoor BBQ, and instead of doing something active, we watched Upright Citizens Brigade. We were joined by Sherrard. A few hours later, Faye had to go home and meet up with her parents, and Sherrard and I wandered down to the Nite Lite to meet Ryan, the Kidd, Dan and Marie. Somehow, the fact that it was Seafair weekend had eluded us and we actually had to run through a damned parade to get to our destination. Who the hell has a parade at 9:00 at night?
I would like to that this moment to declare how much I LOVE the Nite Lite. It’s really one of the few bars in Seattle where I feel 100% comfortable. The tough-as-nails woman that runs the bar is always so nice to me (and she REALLY knows how to poor a glass of wine). As divey as place looks, I feel perfectly safe there because I’m sure that if any of the bar flies tried to start something, she would dispose of them herself. I also really love the juke box there. Sure, there’s a lot of bad country on it and I haven’t spent one evening there without hearing “Friends in Low Places”, but the classic rock selection can’t be beat. It’s hard to spend a LOT of money on drinks and it’s easy to have a conversation. Of course, there are two sides to the Nite Lite. I’m not sure why that is. But my love of the Nite Lite is entirely for the Left Side. Sometimes the Left fills up or closes early and you have to go to the Right Side which is louder and less intimate. But when you can get a booth on the Left, it’s heaven.
Sherrard and I chatted for a while and waited for our friends who were in various states of delay. Ryan was waiting for some house guests to show up and Marie was lost. Both of them were held up by this Seafair foolery. Eventually, everyone was accounted for and a good time was had by all. Sherrard and I were left alone once again at the end of the evening to finish our last drinks on the Right side, before stumbling back up the hill to bed.

SUNDAY

I woke up feeling a bit despondent and began cleaning. I knew it was time to go to yoga again. I had been neglecting it for far too long. So I cleaned right up until yoga time. Naturally, since I hadn’t been to yoga in over a month, it destroyed my sorry ass. I am so sore today that it is actually impairing my walking. I needed it. After class, I stopped at Madison Market to spend too much money on vegetarian goodies and then returned home to make a nice pasta dinner and relax. I finished cleaning (who knew my bedroom had a carpet!) and watched George A. Romero’s “Bruiser” before retiring early. “Bruiser” is kinda cheesy, and not quite bloody enough for my taste, but it stars the delectable Jason Flemyng so I’m not complaining.

PS: I finally received DDR in the mail today!!! I am planning to have a Saturday afternoon DDR tournament/fondue party soon. I’m tentatively thinking the 13th or the 20th. Who’s in?

August 1, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, Filmpinions . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Mingle Mangle Mix-A-Lot

WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY

Jacob met me at the office around 4:30, suitcase in hand, and we blew on up to the Hill. Dom, Jacob and I got some delicious Thai from a place around the corner from the Zookster pad, and then we met Faye at her place to be really geeky and get to Pacific Place early enough for The Devil’s Rejects. We got temporarily distracted by the broadcast of “Firefly” on Sci-Fi, but managed to tear ourselves away around 7:45 for the 8:30 showing of the movie. We never know what to expect for these things. We’ve been shivering in anticipation for months for this movie, but we have no way of knowing if the rest of American feels the same way. It ain’t Harry Potter. Still, better safe than sorry. When we got to the theatre, there were only about 20 people already seated. However, as 8:30 drew nigh, more and more people (and by people, I mean teenagers) trickled in. One guy even came dressed in a spot-on Captain Spalding outfit. He was talking like Captain Spalding too, which prompted another audience member to tell him to “Shut the fuck up”. We were subjected to the usual billions of commercials, followed by quite possibly the WORST set of trailers ever collected (including “The Cave”, that moto-cross movie and, of course, “The Skeleton Key”, which is quite possibly the WEIRDEST ad campaign for a horror film I’ve ever seen). By this time, the theatre was getting quite full (though still not packed), and we were definitely among the oldest people there. Let me put it this way; to look at the audience, you’d think Hot Topic was the official clothier of The Devil’s Rejects audience.

But then the movie started. Despite the fact that some bonehead left the house lights up until around 10 minutes into the damned movie, we were enraptured and immediately sucked into the world of Rob Zombie. The movie did not disappoint. At all. It was quite possibly one of the most violent movies I have ever seen. It was hilarious and moving and disturbing all at the same time. Now, I HATED “Natural Born Killers” (and not because “it glorified violence” or anything, but because it was supposed to be this big parable, but the main characters were so irritating that I just didn’t care what Oliver Stone had to say), but Rob Zombie made these characters so complex. Sometimes you really did forget that they were cold-blooded killers and you wanted to see them win. Other times, you couldn’t possibly root for them because what they were doing was so horrible. And then he made The Law into the most vicious character in the movie. Kudos, Mr. Zombie, for making a film that was fun and also made you think. Not about “society and media” but about the many levels of these characters that you have created. You have made a damn good, solid film. And when that girl got splattered all over the road by a truck…well, that was pretty sweet too.

After the movie, we were giddy and exhausted. We met Borgia and headed back up the Hill to the Six Arms. After one beer, Jacob, Dom and I were ready for bed. Faye and Borgia stayed out so I don’t know what hi-jinks ensued after that.

SATURDAY
We slept in for a very long time. Jacob and Dom watched “King of the Ants” (very good movie) on DVD while I flitted in and out and dyed my hair. We called Faye, but I guess she must have stayed out pretty late because she was in no mood to make decisions about the day. Jacob and I took matters into our own hands and went out to get some coffee and rent the new “Constantine” DVD with 18 minutes of deleted scenes and an alternate ending. We did enjoy “Constantine” quite a bit (not Shakespeare, of course, but it was a fun movie), but because the original ending of the movie was kind of dumb, we thought perhaps the alternative ending would make the entire viewing experience more satisfactory. Now, since I saw “Constantine”, I took up reading the Hellblazer comics from which the character was taken, and have grown quite fond of the story. Of course, the specific Hellblazer story that the movie is “based on” is pretty much nothing like the end result, and is, in fact, far superior. But if you forget all that when you watch the movie, it’s still a good way to waste a Saturday afternoon. Especially the part where the Gavin Rossdale demon dies. And I always like me some Shia LeBouf wackiness. The deleted scenes, however, were weird. Apparently, they had another character entirely in there (a demon with whom Constatine has a sexual past; a character who actually is in the comic), who they cut out. The dialogue is still the same. They just re-shot the scenes for the movie without her character in there. I guess they thought the notion of Keanu Reeves having sex with a demon was too horrific, even for a PG13 audience. Or something. And the alternate ending is SO GODDAMNED CHEESY! SPOILER ALERT So Shia’s character (who, in the comic, is actually a 35-year old man with a wife and kid; not the rookie apprentice they made him in the movie), dies (of an instantaneous concussion, I guess) and it’s all sad and whatnot. But they leave it at that. In the alternate ending, Constantine visits the cemetery with his new girlfriend, and as they are leaving Shia’s grave, Constantine turns around to see Shia’s ghost sitting on top of the gravestone. But then…get this…he sprouts motherfucking WINGS and flies up to heaven. I’m not kidding. So. Lame. Give me Keanu on a rooftop looking broodily out onto an L.A. skyline and then popping some nicarette any day over that “Touched by an Angel” bullshit any day. I guess that’s what the test audiences thought too.END SPOILERS. Also, END RANT.

We touched base with Faye at this point, still trying to keep the location of the evening’s belated birthday party a secret, while still coaxing her downtown in time. The plan, we thought, was for me, Jacob and Dom to hang around downtown while Jacob checked out some sales at the “overpriced cotton dress shirt” store, and then to meet Faye, Borgia and Sherrard at the Noodle Ranch. But because Faye didn’t know where we were going to end up later, she though the Noodle Ranch was too far away. Plus, she’d already eaten a big snack. So we waited another hour (at Von’s which Sherrard described as an upscale TGI Fridays. I agree. Worst $7 martini ever). Sherrard hooked up with us and we met the attractive couple at Bambuza. I’d always wanted to try it. The meat dishes are a bit overprices (undoubtedly due to the word “bistro” in the name of the restaurant) but the vegetarian dishes were pretty normally priced, so we just got 5 or 6 of those to share. The food was AMAZING. The long beans were succulent. The noodles were heavenly. Highly recommended.
During dinner, we witnessed one of the most priceless Sherrard moments in history. Bare in mind that we were still trying to keep the evening’s events a surprise for Faye. At an unexpected interval, Sherrard announced to the table “So, I’m really excited to go to Gameworks”. The table fell into dead silence for a moment as everyone stared blankly at Sherrard. “What? Do I have something on my face?” he asked. I turned to Faye and said “Surprise! That’s where we’re going” and everyone irrupted in laughter. Sherrard was very embarrassed but we were all just really amused. It was a priceless, cinematic moment. And besides, Faye apparently already had a pretty good idea where we were going anyway. There’s not that much to do downtown. Still, I had really wanted to play a joke on her by leading her into the Fox Sports Grill and shouting “Happy Birthday”.

So with full bellies, we wandered over to Gameworks. We began with a drink and met up with Kayobi, Matt and Legolas (I can never remember his real name). Later, Adam showed up. Later still, B-Rex and B-Rex-ette (I guess I’m bad with names in general, and she doesn’t resemble anyone in LOTR). With a nice buzz going (for some of us), we retreated to the floor to get our game on. I haven’t been to Gameworks in quite some time. We were pleasantly surprised to learn that there are a lot of interactive games now that are almost like working out. There’s air hockey, which I’ve always enjoyed immensely, that is pretty intense, there’s a bicycle race game where you actually have to peddle, there’s the basketball and baseball games in which you actually swing and shoot respectively, and there’s even a soccer game where you have to kick a ball. Best of all, of course, is Dance Dance Revolution. I had never played before. I was always a little wary of it due to my extreme lack of coordination. But Kayobi talked me into it and, after two games, I was completely hooked. By the time we left, two hours later, I was sweating. Gross. But fun. Fun as hell. Apologies to Faye for keeping her there longer than she wanted so that we could get our DDR Ya Ya’s out. Hopefully Faye still had an OK time.

Then we headed back up the Hill to Bill’s. Lily Taylor the waitress was back. She was her usual giddy self. We replaced our burned calories with cheese pizza and beer and then headed home to sleep.

SUNDAY

Sherrard joined Jacob, Dom and I for breakfast at the Canterbury. We were going to try Coastal Kitchen for once, but when we got there, we realized why we probably never tried to go there before. There was a 30 minute wait for a table. On Sunday morning, you do NOT want to wait for a table.
At Canterbury, we had a top-notch waiter who was cool, polite, and attentive. Best of all, he when the cook got our order wrong, he corrected it in less than a minute. I wish he has been there when Mark was there instead of the lazy, lackadaisical waitress. Breakfast was perfect and hit the spot. Following that, we needed some TV time. We finished up the last episode of Buffy (I still can’t help but tear up at several moments in that damned thing. Especially when Andrew tells Xander how Anya died and Xander says “That’s my girl. Always doing the stupid thing”) and then put in some The Office, Season 2. Jacob and I had planned to go to yoga, but it was just too beautiful a day to ruin with indoor exercise. So we went downtown so Jacob could check out one more sale, and then we finished off my Gameworks card for a few more matches of air hokey and one more round of DDR. We returned home where I prepared a glorious nacho orgy, and then we had a PLOTD meeting. The meeting part isn’t the most exciting way to end a Sunday, but it had to be done. Besides, we were discussing our dream cast for PLOTD, and that was kind of fun. Even if I know there’s no way in hell we could get Steve Coogan. –sigh-

Thanks, Jacob, for coming up this weekend. It was a rare treat to see you two weekends in a row!

PS: Who wants to catch another showing of The Devil’s Rejects sometime this week (possibly Wednesday)?

July 25, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, Filmpinions . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

And fly the nocturnal marc

THE ULTIMATE WEEKEND RECAP
Starring The Baxter & Meep

Since this is the absolute longest post I have ever written (7 pages in MS Word), I am going to do to utilize the cut feature. Read on at your extreme leisure. Continue reading →

July 19, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I Made Movies . Tags: , . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

I fly at forsaken

WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY
After a long day of meetings, I headed over to Uptown Espresso to meet with Team Gadzook and begin my portion of the 48-hour Film Challenge. On the way, I stopped at Ralph’s to get some Kettle Corn and chocolate-covered espresso beans for later. The writers were to be me, Faye, Cherry and a little fellow I will call Baz. Gevin, Pat and Amy were also there for a bit to lend their support and brainstorming ideas. Dom and Borgia ran off to Nimble for the genre drawing and to find out what our criteria would be. While we awaited our fate, we looked at some photos of our available locations on Dom’s lap top. We also briefly rocked out to one of three songs that Dom had in his i-tunes, “Cold as Ice”. (When Dom and I first started dating, I would probably hear that song once a day. Hearing it will remind me of Dom for the rest of my life). Shortly after 7, the phone rang and Jef read us our genre: Romance. Everyone groaned in unison. BORING. We had the option to take the “wild card” (which we asserted couldn’t have been much worse than “romance”) but we decided to suck it up and try to make it work. Our criteria (which each of the 24 Seattle teams has to incorporate into their film) was as follows: the character is “J. Ellepano, Fisherperson”. The prop was “doormat” and the line of dialogue was “Maybe, but not on my watch.” I suggested early on that we have the character deliver it “Maybe…but not on my watch.” Hopefully it won’t be done that way a dozen other times.

Anyway, we started brainstorming. Many good ideas came out and we wrote them all down. Then everyone but the official writers and Dom (the director) left to get some sleep. And here’s where we started to realize that we weren’t all on the same page creatively. We are all trying to make the best of the crappiness of the Romance genre by being as bizarre as possible with our ideas. We had a GREAT idea of doing a 4 minute Jane Austen-style story but it was becoming too complicated. We had several other ideas that were pretty out there and cool, but one of the writer’s just wasn’t having it. They kept pitching conventional romance story ideas and wanting us to provide logical, real-life explanations to the fantastical situations we were pitching.

We thought we had FINALLY come up with a compromise by having a somewhat conventional romance montage with a bizarre surprise ending. We had an outline and then moved locations to write the thing. But as we started to write, our defector kept trying to change the story and even START OVER with a new story. At this point, it was midnight and we just wanted to get something written. There wasn’t time to start over and there wasn’t time to explain 500 times why we didn’t need to exposit the reason that this magical thing happened or that happened. Who cares what the character’s back story is? It’s a 4-minute film challenge short. And it’s supposed to be FUN. It’s not going to be Felini. At 1:30 we finished what we THOUGHT was a pretty fun, tight script that we could all live with and went home to sleep. When I got home, I suddenly had a bad feeling that the defector would try to change the script in our absence, since he was going to be the only one of the writers on set the next day. But Dom was asleep and I didn’t want to bug him. He had a big day coming up.

SATURDAY
Dom woke me up a little before 7 to say goodbye. I groggily wished him good luck and then went back to sleep. Around 10:00 I got up and called Dom. I wanted to know what was happening. I wanted to make sure that they were using the script we all agreed on. When I called Dom, I expected to leave him a message, but instead he answered and said “we’re in the middle of a shot”. So I said, “Call me back when you get a break”. At this point, I was paranoid and making myself angry. “They’re using a different script, aren’t they?” I thought. “Those bastards! I was so annoyed that I tidied the hell out of the apartment. I should get annoyed more often. But then Dom called me back an hour or so later and told me that yes, another script was brought to the set, but they were using ours. Phew! He also said that little Baz would like to have his name taken off the writing credits. It’s pretty lame because he actually DID contribute to the script, however reluctantly. But alright. Whatever makes him happy. Sadly, we certainly won’t write with him ever again, but I hope this isn’t the beginning of a feud or any animosity be’twixt us. We really liked the guy. It’s just pretty clear that we do not, and will never see eye-to-eye when it comes to movies. Strange, though, that he was SO opposed to our ideas, when he actually worked on “Snow Day”. BLAAAH! I’m done.

So Faye and I sped off to SeaTac to pick up our friend “Mark from Hollywood”. We found him by the Alaska terminal with his L.A. sunglasses on. He hopped in and we settled on the Canterbury for lunch. We stopped at my now, un-embarrassing apartment so he could drop off his bag and meet the kitties, and then we strolled up the street for a nice, greasy lunch.

Unfortunately, Mark didn’t get to meet any of the sweet, cutie waitresses that The Canterbury is so famous for. Instead we got some grumpy new girl who didn’t even ask us what kind of toast we wanted and who took liberties with Faye’s grilled cheese. Mark was very kind to pay for lunch, especially considering the “Alice”-like service we received. We assured him that it was rare form. Then we decided to try and find the cemetery where Bruce and Brandon Lee are buried. We didn’t really know where it was. Only that it was in or around Volunteer Park. So we headed over there and just headed toward the end of the park not oft’ explored by us. On the way we passed a wedding party and a small gathering of Shakespearean actors. As a detour, we decided to check out the conservatory which was really neat and only $2. As we wandered through the plants in the wrong direction, we spotted the cemetery out the back window! What a fortunate detour! After petting some cacti, taunting the carnivorous plants and smelling the Corpse Flower, we moved toward our intended destination.

As we wandered through the cemetery, looking for the graves, I wondered allowed how many people visited them every day. Faye suggested “four…at least today”. We finally found them on a hill, by a tree, just as Mark had said. I was stupidly surprised to see several Chinese people there taking pictures. I had expected, if anything, to find a bunch of Robert Smith-looking fellows abound. I had forgotten completely that Bruce Lee was famous for, like, bringing kung-fu to America. Jesus Christ, I can be thick sometimes. Anyway, the graves were very beautiful and there were some cool little notes on them. It was pretty clear that more than four people visit in a day. On Brandon’s grave was his famous quote about life being fleeting and previous that he gave in his last ever interview. It was all very nice. A nice way to remember someone.

We walked back to my house for some water and to google directions to the Sound Garden. Mapquest was very helpful as usual by identifying it as being in Magnuson park somewhere. Thanks. Mark had been there before so we thought if we just journeyed over there, we would find it easily enough. I mean, it’s got to be well-marked, right? It’s THE Sound Garden. Wrong. We wandered and/or drove around the park for an hour looking for the damned thing. At this point, the sun was out in full force and we were wondering how our 48-hour friends were doing with the neutral density and skin protection. We FINALLY found a secured gate that Mark assured us “looked right”. But there was no guard on duty and no visible way to circumvent the gate. We sat there in the car looking dodgy for a few minutes before deciding to give up and drive back. I guess since it’s not 1994 anymore, they figure no one wants to see the Sound Garden.

On the way back, we stopped at 7-11 to get Mark some tissues and get us all Slurpees. I hadn’t enjoyed a Slurpee in a very long time and it was wonderful. At a stop light, we saw three suspicious-looking teenagers attempting to climb the side of an apartment building. Kids today. They know nothing of covert operations. We stared them down until the light turned green.

We parked Faye’s car back at her apartment, rested for a little bit, introduced Mark to the rats, and then began the journey down to the Crocodile. Faye needed some ATM action so we hit Broadway. Two people with mouths full of gold teeth stopped her and asked “Can I borrow $20?”. Count the things that are wrong with that sentence. 1) “borrow”? Since we don’t know you, when exactly are you going to pay Faye back? 2) What exactly do you need money for? Usually pan handler’s at least make an attempt to convince you that it will be spent wisely. Faye suggested that it was for more gold teeth. 3) $20??!!! Are you kidding me? Being the liberally-trained youth that we are, Faye’s response was “Sorry man, I don’t have any cash”. But instantly she realized that she should have said “What? Are you crazy? I’m not giving you twenty fucking dollars!”. She wished that they would come back and ask her again. Would that it were Groundhog Day. While she was at the ATM, an extremely tweaked man paced around me telling me that he really liked my skirt (what, this plain black one? Thanks) and that he was from San Diego and the weed was SOOOOO much better down there. Ok. Cool, man. I have to take this call. As we attempted to leave Broadway as quickly as possible, we saw the tweaker harassing the unfortunate souls who were dining outdoors with only a rope to protect them.

On the way to The Crocodile, Faye and I explained to Mark that it was owned by Mrs. Peter Buck and that many a celeb has been spotted there, including Peter Buck himself, David Cross and Deathcab for Cutie. Our delicious meal was served and Sherrard and Doug joined us. As we whooped it up trading poo and webcam boner stories (you’d be surprised how many of each we all have), we noticed someone being filmed in the corner. It was a woman I had never seen before. Every once in a while we would overhear part of her obviously scripted speech about the delicious eats at the Crocodile. “They’re filming a commercial for the Crocodile,” I said. But as the woman was leaving, Faye finally recognized her as some Food Network star. None of the rest of us had ever heard of her but we still wondered if we would be visible as extras in the show. Probably not. I wonder how many takes we ruined with our poo stories. Feeling guilty for not throwing some boobs into this supposed bachelor party for Mark, (as people shot down my suggestion to go “Poke our heads into the Lusty Lady”), I picked up one of those free postcards which depicted a sleazy-looking woman and a tiger. We all agreed that she was in no way attractive. Even when Faye made the postcard dance.

Next, we moved to Shorty’s for more drinking and possibly some video games. The sad bastard DJ from yore had been replaced by yet ANOTHER John Gulager look-alike in a Night of the Living Dead t-shirt. This guy rocked. He even played the Monkees! The riveting conversation and story-swapping continued as we downed the delicious drinks (Blackthorns!). Before long, nachos were in order. The very kind man behind the counter stuffed as many chips as he could into the paper bowl and scooped no less than FIVE scoops of cheese onto them. I gave the knight in indie armor a very nice tip.

Ben called around 9:45 and said that Team Gadzook was finally done shooting. He was headed home on account of his having to work at 3am. Dom was going straight into editing. Borgia and B-Rex were going to the Satellite for post-funking. We finished up at Shorty’s and got into Doug’s truck for the ride of a lifetime. Even though there was apparently plenty of room in the cab, Faye and I opted to ride in the covered back of the truck. We lay down on blankets to avoid being seen by the cops, and Doug sped off toward Capital Hill. He blasted some Polenesian music over his P.A. system. Every once in a while, we could hear Sherrard addressing the people, but we couldn’t hear what he said. On several occasions, we were bounced around like rag dolls. On one occasion, we actually both caught air. It was terrifying and exciting all at once. I attempted to take a picture of the view we had from the back of the truck.

We sauntered into the Satellite and found there was no room at the Team Gadzook table, so we set up in the corner booth. Borgia came over to visit and told us that they had been playing truth or dare. At this point, things were starting to get a little hazy. It as loud, the waiter forgot about us, and I don’t remember all of what was discussed. Needless to say, it was fun! At one point, Borgia slapped a man, in defense of Faye’s honor and beer. (Apparently, one of the dares was to steal Faye’s beer). We closed the place out and then meandered home. On the way, we ran into Ahe who was also very drunk, and friends. She identified Mark as “the guy who was sleeping with the rats”. I accidentally insulted her ankles when I meant to compliment her boots. Then we went our separate ways. When Mark and I got back to my place, Dom was (not surprisingly) sound asleep.

SUNDAY
Dom woke me up to say goodbye again, but this time I got up right away. He managed a quick hello to Mark before he had to be out the door and back to editing. Mark and I had a nice little morning chat over water and then organized a breakfast outing to Charlie’s with Sherrard and Faye. On the way, I photographed a creeply placed baby doll in a tree and a poor smashed television. We also posed for pictures in front of the poor little thing. At Charlie’s, the great conversation just kept on flowing! We played a few fun games including “the one where you add ‘the’ to movie titles” (i.e. The Starship Troopers) and “the titular line game” (i.e. “That sure is a lot of Office Space”). Faye also invented a modified version of “the one where you add ‘a’ to movie titles (i.e. “A Titanic”). Fun stuff. After, breakfast, Faye had to take off to go help the puppies and so Mark, Sherrard and I were left to wile away the afternoon. Eventually, we had to catch the bus to Ballard so that Mark could meet his dad, who was playing accordion at the Nordic Heritage Museum for their “Viking Days” festival. We tried to think of something cool to do in the meantime, but we ended up just shooting the breeze back at my place until it was time to go. That suited us just fine, methinks. As we waited for the #10, Sherrard told one of his lovely stories that starts with “One of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen…”. We got on the bus and sat in the back on account of Mark’s large bag. Things were going well until, a few stops later, the very picture of lunacy caught the bus in time and meandered immediately toward us. At first we thought nothing of it. Plenty of unfortunate people ride the bus, usually without incident. Sherrard began a describing the opening seen to the fairly obscure film “Eating Raoul”. It was then that the woman piped up. “Don’t talk about “Eating Raoul”! I saw that movie in the theatre and it was awful! I walked out and got my money back. Did you know that if you walk out in the first half an hour of a movie you can get your money back? I just want to pass this on to as many people as possible.” We all looked at each other and kindly dropped the subject, but another woman about 5 rows up loudly called back “What movie?” “EATING RAOUL,” said the crazy woman. She then turned back to us and we finally saw the full horrific site that was this woman. She was dressed in a black sleeveless blouse, with some sort of a bonnet/visor on her head. Her hair was short and gray and spiked straight up. She looked at us with her crazy, lazy eyes and exclaimed “I usually have the back of the bus to myself. I ride this bus all the time. This is my bus and I don’t want to hear about “Eating Raoul”. We said we would drop the subject and hope this would make her go away. It did not. It was at this point that I noticed her large, yellowed front teeth with the black tar around them. “So, where do we make our connection?” Sherrard asked me in a desperate tone. “Pine,” I noncommittally answered back. I didn’t want to reveal the fact that our destination wasn’t until 4th avenue, in case the situation escalated and we had to disembark earlier. “I usually have the back all to myself” the horrible woman said again and she stood directly in front of us with her arms outstretched, gripping the bars on either side. I couldn’t avert my gaze from her hairy armpits. “I like to do my gymnastics back here,” she said, and she pulled her feet off the ground and swung slightly. Mark, concerned, said of me “you should be careful or you might kick her in the face”. The woman said “Oh, I would never do that. I’m a dancer. I am very coordinated and graceful and I would never do anything like that”. Mark persisted that it had nothing to do with her being a dancer, simply that the bus jerks from time to time and it’s not the best idea to invite injury by swinging from the bars. The woman grew angry and sat RIGHT NEXT TO ME, saying to Mark “You haven’t heard a WORD I SAID”. Mark, having ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how to respond to this, said “I thought I did”. “Well, you didn’t,” she said. It was then that I made a snap decision. We had to get off the bus at the next stop. I didn’t want to ride all the way downtown in such horrid, uncomfortable silence, and the woman clearly wasn’t going to leave us alone. The bus stopped at Broadway and we bolted for the front door. I didn’t know what time another bus was coming. It didn’t matter. Must. Get. Away. From. Crazy. Lady. She shouted something at us as we scurried off the bus. Now we know why she usually has the back all to herself.

Not long after, a 49 arrived and we still managed to make it to our connecting stop with one minute to spare. While we waited, we watched a cancer patient ride a stationary bicycle in the middle of Westlake Center and uncomfortably joked about the escalation of mental illness in Seattle. We rode to Ballard without further incident and found the Nordic Heritage Museum in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Apparently, the festival was almost over. We had about half an hour to scarf down the delicious traditional baked goods (thanks, Mark!) and find Mark’s father in Valhalla (a.k.a. the beer garden). Sherrard and I briefly met Mark’s dad and step-mother. Mark’s dad fulfilled his fatherly duties by making fun of his son’s haircut in front of new people, and then Mark watched us back to the bus stop. Thanks for the visit, Mark! We had a GREAT time. I haven’t had such fun non-stop conversation in ages. Come back soon!

Sherrard and I took our seats marveling at the strangeness of the weekend. A few stops later, a couple who looked (and dressed) suspiciously like dwarves (LOTR style) got on the bus and sat across from us. The man in the group was VERY OBVIOUSLY listening in on our conversation. I know because he was staring directly at us. I looked over at him once or twice and he just smiled. Did he want to JOIN the conversation? I don’t know. I just wanted a nice ride home with Sherrard. I ignored him as much as possible. We got off in downtown Ballard to grab some dinner and the dwarves got off at the same stop. The guy HELD THE DOOR OPEN for us. The BUS door. It doesn’t need to be held. I’m pretty sure he just did it so he could get right up in our faces and say “Have a great afternoon”. Er…thanks.

Sherrard and I had just about enough of eventful bus rides. After a quick Sushi dinner, we caught the 44 back home. The dwarves were on that bus too, but luckily, we were able to sit very far away from them and have a private conversation.

I got home around 7:00 and spent the rest of the evening watching Angel Season 5 commentaries. Wonderful. Best. Weekend. Ever. Until next weekend! (Also Longest. Post. Ever.)

PS: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FAYE!!

PPS: See pictures from the weekend here.

July 11, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I Made Movies . Tags: . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

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