Debate Night

Looking forward to watching those debates tonight over at Roots Brewery so I can scream at the flat screen with a bunch of other lefty weirdo Portlanders. One of a long list of places to gather in our collective rancor.

When the Swifts Come Home

What a glorious thing. I had one of those I Love Portland times after work when I went up to the Chapman School and watched over 10,000 vaux swifts spiral and organize and dodge through the air and then spin against the sunset into their decommissioned chimney and autumn lodging. Just like last year. And I have to post the same song again because I like it so much. All manner of Portlanders were there with picnic baskets, splits of pinot, piles of bicycles, splayed across the hillside overlooking the athletic fields. I was surrounded by first dates, folding chairs, punk rockers with their laughing babies, and gasps of happy. The weather couldn't have been more beautiful. And it was quite a show. Two peregrine falcons dove into the swarm and then the swifts gave chase, and then the falcons chased, and then when both the falcons found a slow one to pick off midair, the swifts retired for the evening into their chimney, two shy of last night.

Tenement Halls - When the Swifts Come Home

inky wrists

1. Calexico at the Crystal Ballroom. Big horns and rickenbacher guitar music that sounds like sand and tumbleweeds. Great show packed with people. Dance floor on springs.

2. Holocene for Doubledown, everybody wins. big lesbian dance-a-thon and they even played my favorite song to dance to, Knock on Wood. Not the Sam and Dave version. not the Justine bateman version. the other one. the one that's kind of disco.

3. Whisked off to the E Room in an 82 chevette by a couple of sheilaisapunkrocker mullet wearing hipsters. the chevette that belonged to the brother and it had a number on the side and it runs on biodiesel and plays nothing but 80s dance music on the tape deck. so loud that my ears are still ringing.

Calexico - Black Heart

Amii Stewart - Knock on Wood

The Cure - Jumping Someone Else's Train


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Film Night

Went to a the Portland Gay and Lesbian Film Festival this evening. Went with a friend and had no idea what the film was called or what it was about and it was sort of odd, about Indian women getting it on in apartheid South Africa. A World Unseen.

Probably more interesting than the film was to go across the street and watching the debate and O'Brien's bar. i love portland. the place was packed with young people and you could have heard a pin drop if the debate wasn't turned up so loud. people were riveted. and rooting for Obama.

its new to me

The 3 month experiment with having no vehicle is over. I'll still be good friends with walking to work, trimet and the occasional zip car but the rain is a coming and as you know i really like getting out into the wilderness from time to time so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on a used mazda 3. i like it. Shayla said, girl, you need to get a car. she rarely tells me what to do so i took it to heart and followed her instructions precisely.


Thao - Travel

The Walkmen - The Blue Route