The Crooked and the Straight

Technology is a wonderful thing. I went out to a bar in Lakewood with some friends this weekend, only to discover that they had an Internet-connected jukebox. Actually, it's rather stretching the classic definition of "jukebox" to call it one, but that's easier than saying "an Internet-connected, touch-screen-controlled MP3 player," which was basically what it was.

Of course, the device made it easy to pick and play the top 40 crap, and we were listening to Kid Rock or some such when we arrived. Fortunately the friends I was with have an almost encyclopedic knowledge of excellent music that is not often heard in bars. So we decided to mix it up a bit. Fortunately, the jukebox has an enormous library of available songs.

First up was Mack the Knife by Bobby Darin. I think we knew we were on to something big when about six people got up and left immediately. Since we were on a Darin kick, we followed up with Splish Splash. Then we started drinking in earnest.

Having all grown up in the 80s. we were seized by a sudden, PBR-induced wave of cinematic nostalgia. After Bobby was done crooning, we decided to load up the jukebox with some tunes from our favorite movies. It was about this time that I discovered that, for an extra 25 cents, the device would bump your selections to the top of the play list. Oh, the deliciousness. Since I can't recall all of the brilliant selections we chose, here are some highlights:

• Ghostbusters theme, Ray Parker Jr.
• Goonies 'R' Good Enough, Cyndi Lauper
• Soul Finger, the Bar-Kays (from the movie Spies Like Us)
• Oh Yeah, Yello (from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off)
• Twist and Shout, The Beatles (also Bueller)
• Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Tears for Fears (from the movie Real Genius)

Obviously, we were a big hit. At least, we were a bit hit amongst ourselves, singing along and reciting movie quotes at the bartender who was much less annoyed than she probably would have been if we hadn't been tipping so well.

After we had been drinking for quite some time, we realized it was coming up on last call. We also discovered that the jukebox had several recordings from the United States Marine Corps Band. Now, those guys know how to play--there was no way we could end the evening without some really rockin' instrumental brass. There were so many selections available, it was impossible to choose--especially since the touchscreen becomes very fiddly to use when you're drunk.

We eventually settled on two thoroughly recognizable favorites: Taps, and Anchors Aweigh.

An interesting thing occurred when Taps (yes, that Taps, the one they play on Memorial Day and at funerals) came on. People stood up. Or approximated standing up. Or at least looked very put out. And I have never seen so many people with so many beers look so incredibly relieved to hear the song Anchors Aweigh being played by the United States Marine Corps Band. Nor have I heard so many drunken people trying to sing it so earnestly. It was really a beautiful sight; it literally brought tears to my eyes. Tears of laughter, yes, but that didn't make the experience any less emotionally moving; it just made it emotionally moving in a different direction.

So the next time you hear someone play Taps in a bar about 30 minutes before last call, come up and say hello.

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Given the large quantities of alcohol involved, I was surprised to discover a dozen or so salvageable photos on my camera from New Year's. Here's Bill, and Roger and his fiancee Carmen, with Mike:

Bill and I hadn't seen each other for about five years, so needless to say, he was caught up in paroxysms of spontaneous delight at our reunion. As was I. It was quite a jolly occasion. (And if anyone has any more pictures they'd like me to post on Flickr, send them my way.)

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I'm glad I know cool people.

• Jef is doing many things, including writing a short screenplay (and some day he will give me a walk-on role in his first blockbuster).
• Mom says, "I know that I don't understand quantum physics and that it doesn't bother me." (That's okay. Nobody understands quantum mechanics.)
• Stef found an awesome video of a dog floating in an airplane, via Google Video.
• Maya, among other notable things, received a marriage proposal, heard the Dalai Lama speak, and was kicked by a cow. (It turns out that being kicked by a cow is good luck, apparently.) She also took a lovely picture of a sunset in MacLeod Ganj:
  
• [Update:] She also saw King Kong. In English. In Bombay.

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Maya is in India. India has monkeys. Maya has taken pictures of monkeys. See monkeys, see!

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Nate's put up some of his latest photographs, finally.

He's got a good eye--which makes sense, really. All that insanity has got to be useful for something. I mean, just look at that shirt. (Hey, Nate, I think I was there when you bought that shirt, right? It was one of the really ugly ones?) Anyhow, also check out: Views of London, Friends (and Wedding), and Birds of Canary Wharf.

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My friend Steve was married this weekend to a lovely young lady named Liz. (That sentence sounds like I'm about to start a limerick, but I promise I'm not.) Sadly for me, I was very sick this weekend, and didn't make it to the festivities. Thanks to the Power Of The Internet, however, I can enjoy pictures from the joyous occasion.

Here are they are at the reception, doing the everyone-clinks-their-glasses-and-the-newlyweds-suck-face thing:

The rest of the photos are here: Our Wedding

Congratulations, Steve and Liz! I love you both.

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My friend Nate (who you may recall purchased a new camera during his last visit to Seattle) has been busy taking snaps all over the place since he returned to London. At least, he busy doing that when he's not otherwise engaged at work for 20 hours a day. Anyhow, his latest adventures resulted in a great set of photographs from Stonehenge.

Check out the rest of his pictures as well; Nate's got a good eye.

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The thing about spider webs is that you never see them coming. But I’m getting ahead of myself; let me back up a bit.

My friends, by and large, are a pretty smart bunch. I’d like to think that this is because I am also smart, and so I have a natural tendency to self-select other smart people to socialize with. The truth is that an equally plausible explanation is that I’m actually very stupid and my friends keep me around because they can always beat me at Scrabble. (I suppose yet another explanation would be that we’re all together in this gang of ours because we are destined for collective greatness of some sort—like solving the world’s energy problems—but I think the Scrabble answer is much more likely.)

Okay. Maybe I’ve backed up a bit too far from the spider web thing. Skipping ahead…

My friend Ken doesn’t like to toot his own horn, as they say, but he’s pretty much the smartest person I’ve ever met. And I say this having met some pretty smart people so far: a couple of NASA astronauts, Bill Gates, these three guys from my high school trivia team who collectively know everything, Bruce Campbell, and the guy who invented those little dangly fastener things that keep you from driving off from the pump with your gas cap on your roof.

Well, okay, not the last guy. But still, I think I’m fairly well-placed to be able to point out smart people when I see them, and Ken is a smart guy. I’m not even slighting my friends when I say this—they agree with me! There are stories about him going back to high school detailing truly mind-boggling feats of sheer cleverness and sleep deprivation. Sure, you say, but a lot of those stories are apocryphal, right? Well, maybe so, but I guarantee you that the apocryphal stories aren’t nearly as impressive as the ones that are actually true.

But I digress! Spider webs, yes, yes.

Continue reading "Spider Man" »

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The Gang spent yesterday--a really beautiful Sunday--downtown visiting museums and stuff. By a quirk of fate, half of us wound up at the Pacific Science Center, where we playtested video games, watched a snake eat a rat, and saw some butterflies. The other half went to the Seattle Art Museum where they saw... I dunno, art and stuff.

Then we met up at Kell's and had some beer and pasties, and finished the evening off at Palace Kitchen for some wine and delicious desserts.

I took some pictures of our weekend adventures, of course.

[Updated to fix broken images.]

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My friend Maya is getting ready for a six-month trip to Asia. She just started a blog about her travels. Oh, and she keeps a pretty awesome notebook as well.

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This weekend was a reunion of sorts for me and several of my friends from high school. We were celebrating our friend Steve's impending marriage (and therefore the loss of his cherished bachelorhood). Rather than go in for any standard kind of bachelor party, Nate organized a "bachelor weekend" around the four-game baseball series between the Mariners and our beloved Indians. Thus a one-day event ballooned into four days of bumming around downtown Seattle, punctuated by a few hours of baseball (and then a few hours of drinking).

I'm happy to say that the Indians took the Mariners in the series, three games to one. Everyone is now safely on their way home (except for Nate who is wathing Family Guy while checking his email before his flight in four hours). No serious injuries were sustained, and the only casualty was the loss of Roger's mobile phone (which he left at Safeco field and which was never recovered).

Anyhow... many pictures were taken. Nate and I have already compiled and edited our share, although the rest of the Gang will have more pictures to contribute in the short term. But for now I am tired, so you'll have to be content with the photos we've got:

Steve's bachelor party weekend

[Update: I should give credit where it is due, and mention that many of the photos this weekend weren't taken by me. Nate contributed quite a few (and almost all of the close-ups), and some came from Dave and from Steve.]

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The picture is Nate's from Marymoor Park. The pun is mine.

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Nate's in from London for about a week, so he's crashing at my place for the next few days. Come Thursday, a bunch of my old high school cohorts will descend upon Seattle for our friend Steve's bachelor party (which is actually just a bunch of us going to the four-game Indians / Mariners series this weekend, plus beer and hot dogs).

Anyhow, I was showing Nate my pictures from Alaska, which led him to ask about the camera I bought because he liked the quality of the pictures it took. (Note that he didn't consider me, the photgrapher, to be an important component in the quality of said pictures. This is an assessment I agree with.)

Well, I bought a Nikon Coolpix 5900 (which I am extremely pleased with). So Nate, not being one to resist his more impulsive tendencies, decided that we should go to the camera store so he too could get one. To make a long story short, Nate walked out of the store with a new Nikon D50, a telephoto lens, and an SD memory card. The D50, being a rather nice digital SLR camera (compared to my idiot-proof 5900), was also rather more expensive.

I did feel compelled to point out to Nate that he could have spent the same amount of money and gotten four of my cameras and still had enough left over for a couple really, really nice bottles of bourbon. To this, Nate replied, "shut up, this is your fault anyhow" (I'm paraphrasing).

So, home we went. After a long charge, we played with the camera for a while.

No notable pictures yet, but we're planning on heading downtown tomorrow so I think we'll be able to find some subjects far lovlier and more worth of being photographed.

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Ode To My Friend John’s Car (Which I Affectionately Think Of As The Blue Gumdrop)

You always said you didn’t need a car
With a lot of flash
And that's what you got
for twenty-five hundred, cash.

In the mild Seattle clime
The car will never rust
But wash it once and you risk losing
The accumulated load-bearing dust.

It starts, it stops,
It doesn’t leak (much).
We could probably pick it up
And flip it over
Without, you know, a lot of effort and such.

It can turn left and right
And it can stop on a dime
Provided you plan ahead
To hit the breaks in time.

A tape deck, how quaint!
And only one side mirror,
How economical.
The broken door latch,
Funny smells – all quite comical.

It has a gas tank,
But no power steering,
No A/C, and a manual clutch.
I’m sometimes surprised
that is lacks a hand crank.

On a good day
It can do sixty-five
And as long as you don’t hit
Anything
All your passengers will survive.

It can go faster, you say,
And it will
As long as the wind is behind,
And you’re going downhill.

It’s a functional car,
Nothing more
Nothing less,
And it was much less expensive
Than (say) a wedding dress.

I don’t mean to poke fun
At the car
Or to denigrate,
But the time soon will come
When it will disintegrate.

It takes you to work
And us to Taco Bell
With the help of new tires
And gravity
It stays on the road as well.

I’ll say this for the car:
It’s gas mileage is fantastic –
Owing, of course to the fact
That it’s ninety percent plastic.

But as a car, it’s really quite fine
And it suits your needs
Well.
(Although your definition of “fine”
Might be different than mine.)

Thanks for all the rides,
And all the drive-time chatter.
I know you love the Blue Gumdrop
And that’s all that matters.

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