R Place

Last night I went to R Place with a few of my friends. The following is a list of things I remember:

Dancing with the butt of a girl feels like lightly humping a moving pillow.

I feel like a bobblehead when I try to dance. Sometimes I also feel like this one ADD kid who couldn't sit still in my Kindergarten. It's less like dancing and more like looking like you have to go the bathroom.

I became transfixed by the gyrating underwear of one of the dancers and even when I looked away, I could still see his gyrating crotch. It danced in my brain the entire night, like a rolled up pair of socks.

I witnessed one girl trying to socialize with a group of people who did not want to talk to her. The whole time, the girl kept downing more and more of her drink, trying to feel more comfortable with what she was going through. She kept on trying to grab on to her friend's butt, but he kept shooing her away. Her eyes were completely transfixed on his butt. It was like, with every drink, the only thought was "Must Grab Butt" instead of "Must Make New Friends." It confused me.

There's something about being in a club that makes me suddenly realize I have a butt.

I only bent down once, semi-ironically, for Lilly. She barely humped me. She felt like a wall, like I was dancing alone with a wall. Down there, I looked for quarters. I just thought "I'm bored and might as well look for fallen change."

There's very little fallen change on the floor of R Place.

While reaching down to touch her toes, one girl lightly scratched me on the arm. It was like experiencing light foreplay with a stranger.

Liveblogging Dinner with Lindsey at Pies and Pints (UNSUCCESSFULLY)

PIES AND PINTS DOESN'T HAVE ACTUAL PIES. like with fruit and butter. just this meat crapola. it's like visiting a frozen yogurt shop and, oh, i don't know, being served yogurt with meat in it. Or regular yogurt. It's more than false advertising, it's lying.

I'm now sitting with Lindsey, my friend, who arrived hella late. She is studying the menu, knowing she will not be able to eat an actual dessert because Pies and Pints lies to their customers. She's wearing her dissapointed face. Her face makes me sad. Now she's casually scratching her nose. Now she's staring at the happy hour menu. Now she's staring at the actual menu. Now she's flipping her hair and looking away from me, annoyed. Now she just said "This is fun." Now she's really irritated with me. Now she asked me "are you typing what i'm saying now?" Now she's trying to close my laptop. Now she has closed my laptop. Now i'm experiencing an unfortunate feeling because i want to continue typing but I know she's really annoyed with me. Now I'm annoyed with me. Now I'm stopping. Now I just read what I just wrote to see if it was funny / revealing / representative of modern life. Now she's strumming her fingers against the table. Now this has reached a point of excess. Now I reaaallly should probably stop. OKAY. I'M STOPPING.

Now I'm back. Lindsey is talking to Daniel. Lindsey doesn't realize I'm trying to pay close attention to their conversation so I can type it down. Lindsey is not looking at me. Someone just walked by and said, loudly, "this is exciting!" I agree. I feel so covert. I am distancing myself from Lindsey by typing. Lindsey is going to hate me for this. Neither of them are saying anything interesting or noteworthy. The entire event is completely un-noteworthy. Now Lindsey is looking in my direction and making a very disappointed face. Now I am stopping.

The Sorrento = the New Kube Haunted House

I have to write up hotel listings now, which means I've been visiting a lot of hotel websites. Are you asleep now? I am.

Anyway, the Sorrento's website caught my eye- it seems like they're having some sort of problem with the site's flash which makes entire rooms light up, terrifyingly, like something out of the twighlight zone. Check it out.

OMG!

A Slog post I wrote has officially received...1231 comments! I'm famous!

What? Stop it.

I Love

Rosie To World: At Least I'm Better Than Hanging Out With Your Terrible Family

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So Rosie has a new show. But can anyone replace the image of her harried, tear-streaked face blogging every emotion in haiku on her blog and then yelling at her children on a cruise ship with this new image of her in a white fur robe surrounded by topless gay dudes? I'm having trouble.

Also- some people are natural one-eye blinkers, and some people are not. Rosie is not.

Kristin Wiig Excites Me! Sexually!? Maybe!

David Letterman reminds of the guy you meet at a party who can't remember your name or anything about you but pretends he does, and thinks it's really funny. Also, I love Kristin Wiig, but why isn't she funny here? Is it because actors and actresses don't actually have personalities and are malleable clay or whatever or was she just nervous?

In honor of Kristin Wiig, here's a video she's in called "The Engagement" where she plays a middle aged lady who can't contain her excitement or anxiety over her son's future wedding proposal:



(Don't you kind of want her to fall into the fish tank? Can they use fake glass for fish tanks? Of course they can! She should have fallen into the fish tank. Also- I used to think she was trying to channel the late gr8 Lorraine from MadTV but I was wrong. Kristen is something else entirely.)

And here she is as the "Just Kidding" lady:



She's really perfect at playing the self-conscious person who wants to sound more interesting than she actually is. See: penelope.



Haha, as if younger children are more manageable somehow. For some reason I failed to laugh once during that last video. Maybe Kristin Wiig's weird power over me is already beginning to wane. I hate when this happens. Damn it all to hell!

I'm in San Francisco Right Now

And every streetcorner smells like babypoop if you smell it for too long. does anyone else know what i'm talking about?

New Chow Bio

I interview a belly dancer.

Of Montreal

So yesterday I went to the Of Montreal concert at the Showbox in Sodo. By the way, this is not going to be a concert review. Just wanted to put that out there. I have zero interest in telling you what the concert was like and using words that will simultaneously alienate you and prove to you how much I know about music. Because I don't. Know anything. About music. Alls I know is that Of Montreal was weird. That's a word my generation uses when we don't know what to say about something but we want to appear mildly culturally competent. WEIRD. But Of Montreal WAS weird. It felt like a cultural moment of sorts. A cultural moment I couldn't, for the life of me, understand. There were all of these bears, and glitter, and suggested 69ing between bears wearing glitter. I don't know.

I was told, by a friend of mine, to go out and have FUN. FUN was capitalized in the text message, and I took this to mean: you do not usually have fun at things, so please, dear god, just try to have fun.

This felt very much like a moment. Kind of like the Backstreet Boys or something, but for hipsters. A moment where a band could do anything the fuck they wanted, and get a huge response out of people. Like, people were just willing to go there. Or at least, the kids at Northwest School were willing to go there. And yeah yeah, those kids are kind of adorable but they banged their heads into my side and that's not fun for me.

Sometimes I feel like I'd experience concerts in general differently if I lived in New York City. Here, the crowd was just trying too hard to enjoy themselves. It didn't feel honest. It felt forced. It felt like everyone had read a newspaper article about the concert and was trying to feel the way the journalist had felt about the concert.

The security were huge dicks to everyone, too. This I don't understand at all. Okay, you're security, you're very large people...shouldn't that be enough for you? Like, that's a lot to get off on here. You get to shine your flashlights in people's faces. You get to check stamps on people's wrists. You get to order people around. You don't have to frown. If you're sad, okay, go on and frown. But you're obviously not sad because I saw you laughing with that girl right before you frowned and stuck your flashlight into my retinas and barked at me.

All that being said, I do enjoy about four to five seconds of every Of Montreal song on the new CD. Sometimes I enjoy even more! But usually, just four to five seconds.

I Wish More American Newspapers Sounded Like the Independent

So yesterday I was googling the words "berlin" and "gay" (I'm planning a trip) and I stumbled upon this profile of Rufus Wainwright in the Independent.

Midday in the kind of upmarket London restaurant where the waiters look like models and the chefs are busy coveting Michelin stars, and Rufus Wainwright is doing what he perhaps does best: talking about himself in highly reverential tones. To accompany his vocal patter, his knife and fork conduct an imaginary orchestra in the air while his plate of artfully designed couscous and chicory leaves lies untouched before him.

What a fucking beautiful lede. Acerbic, witty, devastatingly perceptive...check check check.

"The thing of it is," he drawls, speaking American the way Quentin Crisp spoke English, with every consonant exaggerated and every vowel extended way beyond its natural boundaries, "is that I like to tell the truth - in ev-er-y-thing. And the truth of the matter is, I really am extremely good at what I do." He laughs in his bone dry manner. "What? I should be falsely modest and pretend that, actually, I'm not that great? No, no. For me, that would never work. I am great, and that's all there is to it."

Man, Rufus is such a dick. But don't worry, the Independent interviewer puts him in his place.

Before his all-consuming arrogance and self-love threatens to suffocate this interview, let us try to put his peacock preening into some kind of mitigating context. Wainwright has just released a new album, his fifth, called Release the Stars. After maintaining cult status for the past decade, his records rarely selling more than a few hundred thousand copies (a comparatively paltry figure for someone with his profile), he wants this one to be his mainstream breakthrough, and to sell millions. In order to do this, he has to blow his own trumpet, and hard.

Here, the writer manages to critique his subject and sympathize with him. Quite a feat, indeed.

Compare this to what the Seattle Times wrote about him when he was here in July, 2007:

"You're an amazing audience ... and I'm an amazing performer!"

A packed Moore Theatre couldn't have agreed more, giving Rufus Wainwright his sixth standing ovation of the night while he and his septet linked arms, blew kisses and bowed.

The writer here just assumes we are all in love with Rufus Wainwright, and his ego deserves no extra scrutiny.

After the house lights came on, strangers beamed at each other like they'd just seen a shooting star.

Okay, yada yada, people love concerts, I get it. It's not exactly a newsflash. Seattle audiences love a big 'ol self-obsessed 'mo. I still like Britain's version better.

And Rufus? Listening to you still makes me feel like I'm living in a dramatic reinterpretation of my boringass life. So, thanks. No sarcasm intended.

Wanna Buy A "Chair"?

Thanks craigslist! Really helpful!!!

Restaurant Death List

So I have this new post where I'm writing about all the restaurants in seattle. Well, all the good ones. And I have this list of words I'm trying to avoid. Some (most) of them are really really hard not to use.

Think:

Friendly. Authentic. Well-heeled. Inventive. Creative. Traditional. Movers and Shakers. Not Your Mamma's... Fusion. Old school.

And that's just for starters..

Then there are the words you sorta have to use, like:

Local. Organic. Sustainable. Friendly. Unfriendly.

If you don't use these words, you look like you're just whipping out a thesaurus for fun and you look like a total moron.

Sasha on Blogs

Newspaper and magazine writers work in a logical key: Start here, take a little promenade and then circle back to the beginning, careful to not knock over anything on the way. This smooth revolution feels good. I need it more than I'd like to admit. But someone's got to supply the mad love and raw justice, the garbage and the free food. I hope this is what blogs do. Lusty overstatement leads to good things, and full-on commitments are a requirement of the fully engaged life, even if the commitment is to Christina Milian.

I don't just like blogs for the pub fights. I like sentences and I think blogs are a good place to find them. I like blogs with very short sentences. I like blogs with very long sentences. I like the music of the prose on a lot of LiveJournal pages, because many of the writers haven't necessarily figured out what writing means, and won't necessarily be better off when they do.

Frere-Jones in Gawker.

It's an old interview, but it provided me with insta-comfort. That last sentence kills. I know, I know...meta alert. Isn't it wonderful and altogether fascinating and insanely productive when the media talks about the media? You learn so much about the world...no, but really, I love you Sasha.

It's Okay to Cry

Video of the Day

Micro Loup from Richard McGuire on Vimeo.

The people look like alphabet soup, the city a collection of neon signs, a sort of King Kong esque plot line but all the gore is implied with little squiggly lines and chomping noises. A gorgeous French animation. Enjoy.

Yo B, This is Hot

I like how these women explode their hips, and how they sort of float around in the frame like short-wired fembots. Beyonce's terminator hand? Totally fuckin weird. And what a great, honest, self-conscious end-chuckle. The white background doesn't feel too early 90s GAP ad since there are all these spotlights and sweeping camera shots.

Damn. I'm kind of in love with this vid.

I'm Writing About Linda's

This is capitol hill's outdoor rest stop, a winking saloon / ski cabin with plastic trees and a giant paint-by-numbers mountain range.

I'm Writing About Honey Hole

A circus break room staffed by tattooed hipsters, a prop and costume shop for the weirdest play every produced.

I'm Writing About Black Bottle

Think starkly decorated, monochromatic drinking hole.

Words bounce off the walls in a crisp staccato beat. The buzz feels foreign: a sliver of the Lower East Side forcibly carved into a Belltown storefront. Try the prosciutto and bechamel or the laab gai.

I'm Writing About Molly Moon

Molly Moon is an ice cream flavor laboratory, a tiny classroom where the subject is how to create something delicious by combining disparate flavors like balsamic vinegar and strawberry.

The lines are long, the ice cream is thick and chunky, and the buzz wavers between gourmet restaurant and neighborhood soda shop.

I'm Writing About Liberty

Ellen Forney’s sexy ‘hands’ paintings used to hang inside this bar above the sofas, making it seem as if cartoons were reaching through the walls to try to finger the furniture.

Boring poster art replaced ‘hands,’ but nothing else has changed: plush couches are still available to intensify the warm sinking feeling after a particularly strong ginger-cucumber concoction and good bar music makes rather run-of-the-mill epiphanies sound profound.

I'm Writing About Cafe Presse

Bartenders with mullets, writers with Ira-Glasses, and the freshly-scrubbed Sitka and Spruce crowd all look gorgeous under Café Presse's perfectly-sized skylight.

Everything to everyone, Presse's magazine rack stacks Artforum next to Newsweek next to Adbusters next to Cooking Light. At night, the Brazillian Girls pulse through the dimly lit dining room as writers sip wine, down cubes of cheese and liveblog on their laptops. The subtext being, don't we all look ridiculously cool sitting here?

I'm Writing About B+O Espresso

An anthropologie store that just happens to serve fondue, B+O doubles as an antiques parlor and the classiest train stration on capitol hill. Desserts are a delightful clusterfuck.

I'm Writing About Wild Ginger...

A shmancy asian banquet room, like something out of a super sweet sixteen finale, bigger than an airport frequent flyers club, with waitresses who talk like dental assistants: sweet but not the brightest bulbs.

Gimme

People are selling their NYTimes with Barry on the cover. This dude wants 100 dollars. How about 5? Come on dude, they're not historic yet.

ZOMFG

Thank the lord, people. We're never going to have to hear about this lady again.

New Chow Bio

George Lagos, of the Continental Restaurant. Read it here.

This Film Preview Gives Me The Goose Pimples

Sean Penn: such a charming homosexual. The little smiley laugh after he says "but god knows we keep trying"...I'm in love.