Sunday Night Soul

Gil Scott-Heron was a bad ass.
Gil Scott-Heron - We Almost Lost Detroit

Seattle Swing

On saturday morning I took the train up to Seattle for a little R&R with Canup, Daniela and Billy. Canup took me up to Volunteer Park and it was a super gorgeous day to look around and see all the mountains. There's a graveyard next to the park where Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee are buried. A whole lotta folks were up there paying their kung fu respects.

Sometimes a Great Notion

Went and saw a play tonight at Portland Center Stage, a beautiful theater constructed in an old armory building. I had never heard of the book, Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey but its a big deal for the Oregonians because its set here and is about loggers. When i told people i was going to see the play, people at work got a twinkle in their eye of state pride. The rabbit didn't like the show because it was too much about masculinity and sheer will for her taste. i liked it okay. mostly for the long descriptions of the trees and the rain. it made me want to watch the new tv show called ax men.

Political Smackdown!

This put me in a better mood about the democratic primary.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot

Imagine a documentary that takes place in a parking lot in outside the Capital Centre in Largo, Maryland before a Judas Priest concert in 1986. Everyone is completely wasted, screaming "JUDAS PRIEST!" into the camera, and they have the most wonderful hair and clothes. That's what we're screening tonight.

Sunday Night Soul

The Soul Clan - Soul Meeting

Antioch in the NY Times

So fucking sad.

Punk Show

Dental work does not get me down. This morning, the dreaded crown was installed. it was a good decision to be a total weenie about it and ask the dentist if he would gas me. he said he didn't use gas but instead, good old fashioned high-grade pharmaceuticals. Having never taken halcyon before (but maybe I danced at a gay bar by that name?) i wasn't sure what to expect and what I got was a foggy unpleasant dental experience instead of an alert unpleasant dental experience. My alert is Very Alert so I'm glad to take the edge off. I am not especially dental-phobic, but there was a drill involved. Anyways, four stars, thumbs up, do yourself a favor and get the halcyon chaser with your crown. The rabbit picked my highness up from the dentist and took me to a matinee of the movie Chicago 10. Sort of an animated/doc thing about Abby Hoffman, Bobby Seale, et. al. I don't remember a lot about it but the colors were nice. Spent the rest of the afternoon in moderate pain doing a lot of nothing. By evening I was all sobered up and of course, ready for a punk show. It was in a stark first floor warehouse space called work/sound. Serving a limited menu of PBR and oreos. Turns out the kids who put it all together are from Marion Ohio by way of Bowling Green State. I was there to see The New Bloods, who I swear i'll catch up with someday but they headlined and I ran out of gas at midnight. But i did see a couple of really very good bands including Purple Rhinestone Eagle from Philly (but maybe they live here now?) who just about killed me dead with their Black Sabbath/Shangri-La's garage sounding righteousness.

The New Bloods - Oh Deadly Nightshade

Red Dress

We got there too late to see her, but apparently Chelsea Clinton was out at Portland's big gay Red Dress party this past weekend. It was 2000 people dancing with open bars, fire pits, etc and the rule was that you couldn't even come in the door unless you had a red dress on. I haven't worn a dress since the late eighties, but the rabbit located a stunning Lana Turner number for herself and a red velvet bathrobe for me. i cut off the sleeves, belted it, added a feather boa, and looked like Phyllis Diller meets Obi Won Kenobe. Fine. It got me in the door. The party was run by an order of drag queen nuns called The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They put on charity events all over the west coast to raise money for worthy causes, cancer research, children's hospitals, etc. Think of it as the Elks club for queens. With mylar eyelashes and complicated wimples. So we danced for a bit, some belly dancer costume beclad hippie man flashed the rabbit his junk. Chelsea was long gone, spirited away to a pancake breakfast.
Blonde Redhead - The Dress
Versus - The Glitter of Love
Baby Charles -I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor

House Bound

I don't know what to do with myself but i have a sudden cold and so I can't go out and do anything or write about anything interesting. which totally makes me freak out. and so to bed.

The Stooges - No Fun
The Butthole Surfers - Cough Syrup
The Cardigans - Sick and Tired

Sauvie Island

The sun came out this morning, the thermometer rocketed up to 75 degrees, and the rabbit and i went fishing for salmon on Sauvie Island with friends. We didn't catch any thing but we did have a really nice picnic. I want to get a serious Oregon fishing rod now. I hear that the salmon runs are supposed to be pretty meager this year and they've called off the ocean fishing for salmon in large areas of the west coast. I don't know that much about it but when you meet people who fish they get pretty worked up.

YAY!

I passed the Oregon Bar exam.

Supertramp on the Organ

Met a friend tonight at the Chapel Pub up on Killingsworth. Its a former big brick funeral home that's been redone from stem to stern by the McMenamin's people. We walked in and were greeted by the sound of the old pipe organ that i suppose they used to play at the funerals there. But tonight, instead of a requiem, it was the keyboardist for the Decemberists, Jenny Conlee. It was a fun game to listen to the songs and try to guess what she was playing. I was able to distinctly identify Supertramp, a Led Zeppelin song and Don't Bring Me Down by the Beatles. Hot stuff, my people.

The Organ - Brother

The Decemberists - Think About Me

Back to School

I am looking forward to this friday night when I'll be at not your everyday elementary school fundraiser. This is long awaited recompense for all the piano recitals, talent shows and school assemblies i have been subjected to over the years.

non-negotiable

I miss Kate today so I am listening to Low.

Low - Caroline

Low - Like a Forest

Best Portland Night Out Ever

Carla Bozulich. The best musical performance I have ever seen by anyone anywhere was in 1996 at The Paradise in Boston, MA. The Geraldine Fibbers played an opening set for Golden Smog. It rocked me to pieces. And so when I saw in the paper that Carla Bozulich, the former lead singer and avant rock genius was doing a show in Portland at the Doug Fir, I laid my plan. Holy mackerel. It started out with her scurrying around the club, moving chairs, moving people, moving the vibe, while her fantastic moody backing band buzzed and twinkled on stage. She's just a small little goth looking person, but when she opened her mouth, this big dark old world voice came out and everything stopped. There was a lot of sorting through crumpled papers on stage, fiddling over her guitar on the floor, and oozing feedback. At one point she body tackled a guy off the stage and then sprawled on the ground and sang the rest of a song. You kind of had to be there. And with each song, everything built and built and by the last number, she and the band hit a sweet spot. I was standing in center stage and I couldn't believe how overcome I was. I closed my eyes and listened. I had concentrate to take it in and stop congratulating myself about how great it was to be there. The guitars screamed in a perfect way, her voice droned on and on, the drummer hit harder and harder. I had a gigantic smile on my face and thought, I. must. remember. this. Brief but total aural pleasure. And when the last note sounded I stumbled around feeling like I had just had totally mindblowing sex. It made me stupid it was so good. I don't know when I've ever been so moved by music.

So, with me babbling and sighing, we leave the Doug Fir planning to go home. And about a block down Burnside, i see this guy in teal shorts in a second floor window dancing like a crazy person. I was curious so we went to the entrance and found out that the March Fourth Marching Band had just started playing. Okay! Pay the cover and run upstairs! Incidentally, Portland has all these great 100 year old ballrooms all over town that are still music venues, and this one was the Bossanova. I didn't even know it existed until I saw that guy dancing in the windows. Most of them are on the second stories of buildings and the floors are on springs. So musically, it was about the most polar opposite of dark and twisty Carla as we could get. Imagine a 20 person cosmic marching band with drums and horns and a washboard and singers and go-go dancers and people in costumes and grease paint on stilts and a packed ballroom full of people dancing their asses off. We jumped right in and shook it and breathed in the hippie madness. The band took to the audience and the stilt people formed a conga line and the rabbit and I danced our way through the tunnel they made with their legs.

AND THEN we decided it was the best night in Portland ever and we should walk across the Burnside bridge. So off we go, walking and talking over the river when we met up with these three really sweet bicycle guys. They had been out at a rock show too and stopped us at the very middle of the bridge and offered a nip from the bottle of Maker's that they were sharing. By the time we made it to the west bank we were hungry and had a late night snack at Cassidy's. And then we finally walked all the way home thinking that we had squeezed all the fun out of that friday night. We completely wrung it out.



Carla Bozulich - Inside Sleeps

The Geraldine Fibbers- Bitter Honey

The March Fourth Marching Band - Crack Haus

Fruit Salad

I made fruit salad with my mother for this morning's attorney breakfast meeting. It was a hit. I think they will keep me for a bit longer now. Its all in the wrist. And in the jicama. (the rabbit's idea). Better even than the fruit salad, I finished another habeas pleading, negotiated a good deal for a new client, got positive feedback in a supervised release hearing with a tough judge, and kicked ass and took names. And Hurricane Anita moved off shore and our apartment has been downgraded to a tropical depression.

Peach, Pear, Plum - Final Fantasy (Joanna Newsom cover)

All Her Favorite Fruit - Camper Van Beethoven (Orchestral Version)

A visit from Anita

My mother is in town for a few days on business. This is not her, pictured here, but close enough. I was raised to believe that Mary Kay Ash was a saint who walked the earth, some sort of pink entrepreneurial free enterprise evangelical saint who reads a lot of Ayn Rand and is not squeamish about testing cosmetics on animals. So we went out to dinner, talked about real estate and politics (really, you have no idea how idea how far right the far right really is). Tomorrow the rabbit entertains the mother while I visit the jail.