Willfully Misdirected With A Chance of Broken Strings

An eventful weekend? Perhaps. After arranging dog sitting, I made my way northward to Seattle for Friday night/Saturday shenanigans in the city whose parking system hates me.

Friday was to be an afternoon of relaxing which led through the fiery pits of Wing Dome towards game night at Jared and Tessa's. I opted to try one of the level 7 wings at Wing Dome, which led to an extended period of watering eyes and complete lack of flavor on everything else I tasted for the next couple hours (not so bad for the tall boys of Rainier, more of a shame for the rest of the non-devil wings). Probably not going to do that again, as everything before that point seemed to taste great. Games went swimmingly, with Sommarstrom emerging victorious from a brutal game of Munchkin Cthulhu (I do believe I need to invest in the Munchkin games at some point. Always fun...).

The next morning started with a hangover, and my stomach protesting violently against the wing, which apparently had taken its sweet ass time to get there. I slept til 12pm with various false starts at getting up (consisting of me heading downstairs, grabbing water, sitting at my computer, and then deciding that another hour or so of sleep would do me good). Finally around noon I rolled out of bed for good, and watched the Sounders game with Sommarstrom and his mom.

The bands started playing at 2pm, but I stuck around through the end of the game and headed over to Capitol Hill at around 2:30. I missed the first round of music (including both Hey Marseilles and Awesome Color - whom I had wanted to see), but proceeded to have a grand time.

At the time I arrived, I wasn't sure if Hey Marseilles would still be on. So I wandered over to the Main Stage. It seemed like the next act had come on early (actually I think the sets were a lot shorter then I thought they would be), so I caught Moondoggies in the middle of the following:




I stuck through the one song (which I did in fact like), and headed towards The Pica Beats on the Vera stage. A pretty solid set with "Hope, Was Not a Family Tradition" and "Poor Old Raa" being the best of the lot. And here's a bit from the show. Courtesy of some enterprising camera wielding audience member.




The bass player amused me to no end. He kept rocking out too hard and knocking over the female singer's stuff. Too much glee in that one.

Next I strolled back to the Main Stage to catch The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. A solid set from them as well. I kept thinking that they were basically like The Cure. But happy. Also, the bass player reminded me of John Stamos. Also, one of my least pleasant memories. One of the songs, "High" to me sounded like the audio equivalent of a shattered stained glass window. Pretty at times, but flaying.




Again I cut out a bit early, to grab a drink at one of the bars in Neumo's and set up shop to see the stage for Akimbo. A gin and tonic took the edge off the heat, and I settled into the balcony above and to the left of the stage. Two songs in, and two words resonated through my head - "Fuck yeah." They rocked the hell out through the entirety of the 45 minute set. I found a few clips of them at the Block Party, but the sound quality really doesn't do them justice. So instead, head over here, and catch something of slightly better quality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpZ7VPyMRQ0

I headed out into the street, ears ringing and headed back to the Mainstage. This time, I caught a few songs from Pela. And for the life of me I can't remember much of them. I don't think I hung around for a whole bunch from them, as hunger started pushing its way to the forefront. I grabbed a pizza (nom nom nom!) and read at a cafe (an iced americano once again acting against the temperature) before heading back to the Mainstage for The Thermals.

Another good set. I had hoped for great, but time of day worked against them a bit. I was psyched for the two covers I heard ("Happy" from Nirvana, and "Basket Case" from Green Day). I think I'd definitely like to see them in a smaller venue. Or even not. Just not after a mid-afternoon energy crash.

I headed out of the crowd once more as the rain started to fall. Back to the cafe, where I grabbed another iced americano and, failing to find a seat inside, headed over to the Vera Stage to wait for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. I found a spot against the fence, and sat down with my book and coffee. And in a strange bit, someone with a camera came over and asked if I was really reading. Looking back down at the book and then back at her, I could only reply in the affirmative. She asked if she could take my picture reading, and I agreed, and got back to the book. She thanked me and headed off. No clue who she was with, but my bookishness appears to have put me in some random photo. Either for her book reading fetish website or some local paper. In either case, oddity.

Hur hum... Edward Sharpe then. Definitely another high point. Caffeinated and bemused, I tucked into a set that had accordions, backup singers, clapping, and a ridiculous energy. So weird, but so good. Posted this to Facebook already, but worth sharing again.





At the end of this set, I had one more stop. Sonic Youth. And I wish I had a bunch to say here, but I don't. The crowd was thick, people constantly trying to push through closer. I was packed in tight. Couldn't actually see the stage (thank you 6 foot plussers!). I spent most of my time joking with a girl that was shorter then me about visibility. That or on tip toes thinking that maybe, just maybe, I had seen the drummers hair through a crack between two heads. The music was good. Don't get me wrong about that. But the environment was a detriment. Again a different venue would have made a hell of a difference.



I headed out early. Hoping to beat the rush. I found my car, unticketed (surprise!) and found my way back to I-5. One more hiccup in the day. An accident, which apparently happened less then a quarter mile in front of me. The highway came to a stop. Emergency vehicles. People got out of their cars and walked towards the scene. We sat for an hour or so before they cleared a lane for people to go through (in the middle... there were cars on both the left and right side of the highway involved it seemed). I popped through eventually. Tacoma on the horizon. A bed to fall into. And sleep.

A Little Bit More Music

Concert season, for me, appears to be starting. I had been relatively indifferent to the presence of the Capitol Hill Block Party in the past few years. I didn't really go looking, nor did anything about it jump out at me. This year however, I was presented with two reasons to go.

First, as I was tracking down some new music from a KEXP podcast, I caught wind on the band's website that they'd be playing at the Block Party. The band is The Thermals, a Portland outfit that made me dance around my apartment when I heard the song on the podcast ("Now We Can See" which is the title track on their new album). This alone was intriguing, but $23 for a band that I could see for a fraction of that?

Then #2 came along. An email from Sound Magazine with additional lineup details. And one band headlining that sealed it for me. Sonic Youth are hitting the Mainstage on Saturday. I had a single Sonic Youth album in high school, Dirty. It didn't really hit me particularly hard at the time. But times and tastes have changed, and Sonic Youth has staked out some brain space for itself.

Thus was my ticket purchased. I'll be heading up to Seattle on Saturday, and hope to catch the following:

Hey Marseilles
Awesome Color
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
The Thermals
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Sonic Youth

And of course there's some time spread out to wander and hear random bits and pieces.

Extra! Extra! Noah Baumbach Movie More Awkward Then A Your Mom Joke at Your Mom's Funeral

Thanks to the inestimable Dinsky, I saw the movie Margot At The Wedding by Noah Baumbach yesterday. In a bit of strangeness, I apparently have never seen a Noah Baumbach movie. I am moved slightly to do so in the future (in regards to The Squid and the Whale and Kicking and Screaming), so as to get a better handle on his quirks and determine if the nature of Margot was an overarching trajectory of his writing and directing, or if it was simply a study in meta-awkwardness.

That phrase. Does it mean what I think it means in this case? My perception of the film as a whole was that on every level Baumbach sought to inject awkwardness. If that was his goal, he succeeded. Which could be genius. Or maybe it was unintentional. In which case its just poor writing, storytelling, filming, etc.... The real beauty is that you can't really tell. Even if I watch his other movies and see the same overarching sense of WTF developing, it could indicate a kind of artistic integrity. Or, once again, ineptitude. In any case. Awkwardness.

Individual lines would crackle with it (what would be the most fucked up word I can throw in to this one line).

Conversations were derailed with it (what one sentence could single-handedly cause this conversation to take a detour into awkward country - a place much like flavor country, but with far less puffing and cowboys, and more shoe gazing, shoulder hunching, and unavoidable silences).

Awkward family dynamic? Check. Not only is there an Oedipus complex thing going - I swear the thirteen (fourteen?) year old son got more facefuls of mom nipple then a breast feeding baby does in its first year of life. And, how often does a mom kiss her thirteen year old son on the lips? It appears to happen in almost every other scene here. At one point in the movie it looks like -for a moment- cousin love is blooming, and that shit looks rational and non-awkward compared to the other family stuff preceding it. Which is awkward in itself. To think that cousin love is less fucked up then the alternative? And that's just the sexual portion of it.

You also have the fucked up hyper-critical shit that Margot throws in her son's direction. My recollection of the movie has him crying once at the things that she's saying to him (although I think there's a bout of frustrated screaming in between train cars at the beginning - at the time presented it was so out of context that Maya asked whether we had missed something. Nope. They were just sitting silently on a train. He gets up. Heads between cars and starts screaming. Obviously he's got some issues. Which we find to be a truth fact as soon as his mom has her first line of dialog)

Awkwardly shot scenes? Check. At one point Margot is sharing a bed in a hotel with her sister, and it's framed as if the scene is going to devolve into the sisters making out. I asked Maya what the most awkward thing that could happen there would be and her response was indeed of the "I think they're going to make out" variety. But with the scene framed the way it was, that would be too much of the logical conclusion. Instead it lets you draw your own conclusion about what might be going down and then shifts in a different direction altogether.

Awkward pacing? Check. The narrative seems crafted to jump up and down in a way that keeps your eyebrows arched in perpetual what-the-fuckery.

Awkwardly ended? Of course. The ending is practically not an ending at all. It jumps at you at a surprising moment. When it happened, I knew it was the ending only because I asked myself, what would the most awkward way to end this be. The answer was of course if it cut to credits at that moment. And boom. Credits.

And despite all that, I can't say that it was awful. In fact, through the entire thing it kept me guessing at what the next source of awkwardness would be. And I felt a sense of self-gratification every time my answer to the question "What would make this more awkward?" actually manifested itself on the screen.