Video: Seattle's Band of Horses play "No One's Gonna Love You"

Band of Horses are one of my favorite bands to emerge from Seattle recently, they're indy, hirsute, and have something of a pop sheen. I saw them in September at Bumbershoot and had a great time. They even managed to sound good in Memorial Stadium.



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Seattle cover-up: a ban on public nudity?

Seattle's tolerance for nudity may be coming to an end. A proposed rule banning nudity in area parks will have a public hearing in early 2009. The ban would include skinny dippers at beaches on lakes, rivers, and Puget Sound; nude volleyball; participants in the World Naked Bike Rides (three have been held in Seattle this year).

A Nov. 13 parks memo said "Seattle appears to be unique in receiving nudist requests for use of park facilities." The memo mentions that other cities have "some regulation of nudity in public places." As the memo points out, nudity is "per se not illegal" and "Seattle has no law regulating public nudity."

The rule won't affect the notorious naked bicycle riders in the Fremont Fair parade, since that event doesn't happen at a park.
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Band of Horses videos: The Funeral and Is There A Ghost?

We saw Seattle's Band of Horses yesterday at the Bumbershoot Festival (along with two great art exhibitions, the usual collection of amusing buskers, Neko Case, Lucinda Williams and a few other folks). Here is a video from their first national appearance, on David Letterman...




And another video of the song Is There A Ghost?, from a more hirsute, later appearance on Letterman:



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The Posies 20th Anniversary: performing Definite Door at Neumos, May, 2008

We were unable to make this show, alas, being stuck at an under-attended party we couldn't gracefully exit....it looks like it was a good night. . .

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America v The United States, in Greece or Turkey, anyway...

In both Turkey and Greece, when people asked where I was from. I said "The Unites States'" For a while. . .but when ever you said United States, they would almost always say back "ah, America." And so it became America. And I got to like saying it.

People were careful about demarcating America from the United States. The United States was President Bush and his war. America was Coca Cola, rock and roll, hip hop, and blue jeans; America was where relatives immigrated and did OK for themselves. I don't think I ever met a Greek (and a number of Turks as well), in our month there, who didn't have a cousin, uncle, or sister living in America. I've heard it's jingoistic to call ourselves America, when you also have our pals in the frozen north, Mexico, and Central America, who might also lay claim to that name. America.

Not only did I begin using the word America, but I was often reduced to describing where I hailed from as California. Maybe 10 or 20% of the people had heard of Seattle--but surprisingly enough, I met people who had been there, knew where it was, or had a shirt-tail relative there. But most people's faces fogged when you said Seattle, so it became sometimes this place up near Canada, or, more often, "just up the coast from California." And they got that. Images of California are common due to all the movies and television shows. Everyone knew New York City. And people often mentioned Los Angeles, Chicago, and Florida.
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Automatic Daddy - a blog worth reading

image stolen from Tom Dougherty
copyright (c) 2007 by Tom Dougherty

A friend, Tom Dougherty, is a Seattle area writer and artist (he's pretty damned good at both) who has a varied, weird and interesting blog, focused on art and pop culture. He always has a great sense of humor, and he has lots of articles and links on things I've either missed, ignored, or of which I've been shamefully unaware [ed's note: you ever notice how sometimes when you try to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition that the result is far more awkward than actually ending with the preposition would have been?].

So, check him out. And check out his "side project" blog--the Grump Blog.
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My Crib: an aerial view of Jack's place

click to enlarge

This is an aerial view of my house in Seattle. To the left, is Puget Sound, an arm of the Pacific Ocean, connecting to the Pacific about 75 miles north, and also connecting with the Strait of Georgia, leading up to Canada, and even further on the inland waterway to Alaska. Puget Sound is technically a fjord system of flooded glacial valleys, linked to the ocean by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a narrow channel whose name is often joked about. My house is a short walk down the hill to the sound, and Golden Gardens, a Seattle park directly left (west) of our house. You can see hundreds of boat slips along the coast at the marina there. The body of water to the east (right) is Green Lake. At the far right side, you can see the ribbon of Interstate 5. To the bottom (south) of the photo, you see what looks like a river. This is the Ballard Locks that connects with the Montlake cut/Ship Canal and connects Puget Sound to Lake Union, Salmon Bay, Portage Bay, and Lake Washington.

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The Mission To Unreached Peoples

I have passed by this sign on 85th Street in Greenwood, Seattle, every day for years. Last night I decided to snap a picture of it. Without actually looking up what The Mission To Unreached Peoples do (obviously something to do with Christian missionary work), it is evocative. Well, now I've looked it up, and yes, indeed, they are out there spreading The Word.


Whenever I see this sign, it makes me wonder whether I am one of the unreached peoples, or if I have been reached to the breaking point? Good question.
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Animated video with music by Jon Auer, and animation by Michelle Auer

A song/video--Adios--from Jonathan Auer's Songs From the Year of Our Demise, with his wife Michelle's animation.

Earthquake!: Shakin' All Over In Berkeley

click map to enlarge—the red square is this 'quake

An hour after I arrived in Berkeley tonight, and settled into my hotel, the building started to rock and roll. The 4.2 earthquake, centered in Lafayette, while not so bad, was felt all around the Bay Area. Berkeley was the site (and epicenter) of another earthquake just last week.

Kron-TV says that "The earthquake shook basketball fans at Haas Pavilion on the University of California's campus in Berkeley. The crowd issued a collective "Oooh," as the building briefly shuddered during a timeout in Cal's game against Arizona, then cheered loudly while officials briefly delayed resuming the game."

We experienced dozens of earthquakes when we lived here, especially our year in married student housing in the Berkeley Hills. The Hayward fault ran--literally--through our backyard, and straight through the U.C. campus. We felt little earthquakes every day while we lived there. Fortunately, we had moved to Seattle by the time of the big quake of '89.

When I was 11, the Seattle April 29, 1965 earthquake (epicenter: Shelton) registered a 6.5 magnitude. I was outside at elementary school and watched the massive waves roll through the streets and saw cars bouncing up and down. I was in San Francisco during the April 24, 1984 Morgan Hill earthquake. I worked on the 10th floor of a 1905 skyscraper on Market Street. In that 6.2 quake, my building rocked for several minutes after the quake. It was 15 years 'til I experienced my next big one--the Seattle Nisqually earthquake on February 28, 2001--a 6.8 magnitude temblor, still vivid in my memory. While it's happening all you can think is "when's it going to stop?" As your intestines turn to jelly, you begin to wonder if this is finally the one we've all dreaded; if this is The Big One.
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