PNW Blue

As I type this, I’m at work sitting at the public desk in the guest relations lobby. It was about 7 degrees on the commute in, and I doubt it’s gotten much warmer. There’s also a light snow falling…but hey, at least the sun is out! About 20 people have actually ventured into the zoo today. Every time somebody walks by the sliding doors open and a blast of cold air gushes in. The maintenance staff here can’t seem to figure out the heating in this building – I worked in this same lobby last night, and it was freezing out, but I was still comfortable for the most part. It’s pretty cold in the lobby this morning, and my typing is the one thing keeping my hands from going numb. Maybe it’s time to round up one of the space heaters…

This is all a bit jarring, as the li’l woman and I just spent several days in the Seattle area. Granted, the weather there wasn’t that great. For the most part it was typical PNW winter weather – cold, drizzling, and overcast. But there was a day or so of sun, which is always a nice surprise.

This was my second Seattle visit since leaving 2 years ago. I had a long visit last December and a weekend this past June (my old employer wouldn’t allow Fridays or Mondays off, no joke, so it wasn’t even a long weekend). Due to all of the changes that have occurred there in the time I’ve been gone, I felt a bit out of place at times. Its funny how just 2 years later, it really doesn’t feel like “home” anymore in some ways. Everywhere we drove, new high rise apartment buildings were going up. We drove by my first Seattle apartment in the Ravenna neighborhood, and across the street a grotesque new apartment building had replaced the little diner that had been there for years and years – a bit sad, really. The traffic situation has gotten noticeably worse, and the promised monorail expansion hasn’t materialized despite being passed in 4 elections. (Who knows if they’ll ever get around to making any progress with that? Hopefully, it’ll happen eventually. I, for one, am not holding my breath.) Still, in other ways it felt like we had only been gone a few days. Overall, it was wonderful to be back and the time flew by. Thanks to everyone who made an effort to see us. Very special thanks are due to the following, if they’re reading:

Todd and Naomi – for their hospitality, letting us crash at their place, inviting us to Mia’s birthday party, and for friendship above and beyond the call of duty

Scott – for the Sgt Major vinyl, and for not setting the dogs on us when we dropped by stately Superfan manor unannounced on our first night in town

the Van Zuylen family – to Marcel, especially, for spending time he really should have been catching up on his sleep visiting with us and filling us in on his new business venture (check out his new espresso/wine spot, World Cup, on Roosevelt near Scarecrow in a few months)

Rob “Captain” Morgan – for an advance promo copy of the Squirrels’
Rock Polisher cd, and for putting us on the guest list at the Xxxmas show (too bad we didn’t check on that before we paid, arf!)

Pete – for dragging his butt off the couch after working an eleven hour shift to have a little beer with us

And a very special thanks to Mr. Juanish, house and pet sitter extraordinaire.

Happy Holidays!

Bunnies, Bands, and Burgers

On Friday evening, the li’l woman and I caught a band from LA called The Dollyrots. I had checked out some clips from their website (www.dollyrots.com), which were okay, so we decided to give them a try. I must admit that we were also intrigued by the awesome cartoon bunnies they use in their artwork – as you may or may not know, we’re all about the bunnies. What’s crazy is that (checking out the tour dates on their website) these kids have played in Colorado 11 times in 2004 – there are probably local bands that don’t do that many shows here in a year! They were pretty fun, if nothing amazingly original - poppy punk tunes with very girly vocals (they reminded me a bit of Manda and the Marbles, but not quite as “new wave”). The li’l woman really liked them, and kept telling me that the guitar player’s stage manner reminded her of Rusty of Flop/Pure Joy fame. It must’ve been the nearly two beers she had consumed talking, as I didn’t see a similarity at all. I did pick up their album, which is pretty decent, and more importantly has an awesome cartoon bunny on the cover.

In keeping with what seems to be a Mootown tradition, the warm-up act was a godfawkinawful punk band called Whiskey Kiss. What is it with this town and lousy punk bands? We sat in the bar during their set (it was an all ages show), grimacing whenever the bassist with the neck tattoos would add backing vocals (“wow, those harmonies really add something” I joked). Noticing how young they were, Emily asked “when you were in a band in high school, were you this bad?” “God, I hope not!” was my reply.

On Sunday, we went out for dinner with my old comrade Mr. Juanish. We went to Spanky’s, an Engleweed spot with great burgers. One whole area of the restaurant was taken over by what appeared to be some sort of junior high school sports banquet. Apparently, they hadn’t let the restaurant know that they were coming, as they were horribly understaffed. It took us forever to place an order and get our food. The staff thanked us for our patience as we left and didn’t charge us for our sodas, so I’ll go back. I’ll just call first and ask “there aren’t any junior high sports banquets there this evening, are there?”

Oh, and on the way out, Mr. Juanish bought 3 dog stickers from a vending machine. They were stickers of that dog that is a spinoff of the more popular Happy Bunny. I didn't have the right coinage to get one myself, which is just as well - I'll save my money until i find a vending machine with bunny stickers. You see, it really is all about the bunnies.

Complicated copying machines

Turning on the television last night to catch The Daily Show, I had to flip through a few channels to get to Comedy Central. As I flipped, a commercial caught my eye and I stopped. Actually, it wasn’t the visuals that grabbed my eye, but the song they were using. I immediately recognized it as “Complicated” from one of my favorite Rolling Stones albums, Between the Buttons, released in 1967. The ad was for (if I remember correctly) Lexmark photocopiers and printers. This struck me as really weird – using a Stones song that most people aren’t even familiar with to try and sell office equipment. Maybe they couldn’t negotiate one of the songs that have been played to death on classic rock/oldies radio:

We feel that "Brown Sugar" and "Start Me Up" would be ideal, but they are both out of our price range.”

“Well, consumers already associate those tunes with Microsoft and that rum drink that had the stupid ad with the cartoon mosquitoes that was running several years ago. How about “Jumping Jack Flash” or “Honky Tonk Women”? Or, if you want to do something edgy, “Sympathy for the Devil” is available.

Hmmmmm…..those are good, but still priced a bit too high. We really want to use a Stones tune; we’ve found that they test well with office managers in the market for a new copier. However, our budget is limited. Is there anything we can use? I’m writing an amount on a piece of paper….

Oh, well, let’s see….there’s not much that you can use for that price. Okay, I’ve found a few that we can let go at bargain rates – “Emotional Rescue,” “Dandelion,” and, uh, what the hell, “Complicated.”

Not much of a selection there…we’ll take, what was it called, “Complicated”? I’ve never heard of it, but it has to better than the other two! It’s either that, or look into using a Gerry and the Pacemakers song…

Personally, I’d like to think that their first choice was “Miss Amanda Jones,” but it had already been snatched up by a cell phone company/online broker/fast food chain.