Month: January 2002

When I call someone on the phone, after they say “Hello?” and I say “Hello!” and they say “Hey, how are you?”, I always assume that they mistook my voice for someone else’s. So I offer a disclaimer, “This is Jeff,” before going on with the conversation.

I don’t know where I got the name “Jill” when I posted a correction of my completely false assumption that Alice at Strange Brew was a Mac user.

Does the fact that the person who pointed out this error has a “mac.com” email address mean that she’s a Mac user? I wouldn’t even speculate. (Her His sig file explicitly says “Mac user”.) End of subject.

Also: It’s “Novoselic”, not “Novaselic”. Robert is from Kentucky Oklahoma, not Tennessee. The joke was that “the bee flew away”, not “the bee got away”. Larry’s Market is neither on Queen Anne Hill or Queen Anne Avenue. It’s in the Queen Anne neighborhood; so it would’ve been more correct to say that the taxi driver took me to “Larry’s Market in Queen Anne”. And I (excuse me, “you”) still haven’t sent that email.

I liked the spot because it had a panoramic view of the city. Once though, I looked more carefully and noticed that I’d been turning in my seat, away from a building that covered half of the scene. I was disappointed – “That’s no panorama!” How could I fool myself into thinking otherwise?

I came back and had another look. I watched people appear from around the corner of the building, cross the street in front of me (sometimes waiting for the WALK/DONT WALK sign to change), and walk past. The building was only one-story – the sky, alternately drab and dramatic, could still be seen above it.

I decided the building was part of the setting – not an intrusion. It was fine where it was. I could appreciate the view again – one-quarter building, one-quarter city, half sky, people walking past.

Finally, regarding the Eyes Adrift show:

It was an early show, starting at around 6:00. The downstairs was filled the all ages crowd wearing their Sublime and Nirvana t-shirts. A short 40-year-old man in a mohawk shared his pipe with a couple of teenagers. But there were a couple of girls hippy dancing off to the side, that was kind of cute. Upstairs was smoky, the of-age crowd stood around with their drinks, watching the stage.

The opening bands, Cookie and Blood Brothers, were both self-consciously cheesy. The first relied a bit on, uh, pyrotechnics and the second had a pair of (literally) screaming vocalists. They were fun bands.

After the nearly unbearably long period where those guys – you know the ones – wander around on the little stage poking at microphones and such-like, the band came on stage and started playing. I stayed downstairs and watched the attention of the audience focus itself on Krist Novaselic towering frame. He hammed it up for the kids, getting up close and striking a couple of poses for the cameras.

The music was good – very much in line with the Meat Puppets – Kirkwood’s nasal voice wandering through semi-stream of conscious lyrics and hard, often countryish, guitar-work. (I don’t have the knowledge of music or the vocabulary to do any better than that.)

About halfway through the set a few people started to make asses of themselves in small ways. There were calls for “Freebird” or “something by Nirvana”. A group of kids started jumping up and down exageratedly and formed a sick parody of a 1994 moshpit.

This really put me off, it was undoubtedly not the intent, but it was like the audience was mocking the band – really disrespectful. I can see that someone might think I was over-reacting. It was a rock show and the opening groups have some self-conscious elements of mockery to them that the audience might have fed on. But, after standing for awhile, my back tenses up and I can get a little uptight, so that was my frame of mind. Maybe it was just me.

I escaped upstairs, the crowd had really filled out up there and there was a low-rumble of quiet conversation. I found a fine vantage point for the rest of the show.

The band finished playing the song that had inspired the moshers and Kirkwood made some dry flip comments, “That’s great! Isn’t this super!”, and he wandered over to a corner and faced the back of the stage where he stayed until his vocal part in the next song came up.

To summarize: The music was great. I look forward to the CD. I was embarrassed to be a part of that audience.

My acceptance of Robert’s optimism is just naive wishful thinking. For the last week or so, he’s been saying that he was supposed to get a subsidized apartment on February 1. But I ran into him yesterday (he’s turning up most days now) and he immediately handed me his case worker’s card and a post-it note that had the name of the facility and “wait list 10 months to a year” written on it in pencil. He said that his caseworker had told him to give it to me.

Three posts today, following up on the three posts from the day before yesterday.

First a correction: I don’t know why I assumed that Jill Alice at Strange Brew was a Mac user. A quick look finds that, aside from today’s denial of my assumption, she has blogged no acknowledgement of any OS affiliation.

The Stranger reports:

Former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic has formed a new band with Meat Puppet Curt Kirkwood and Bud Gaugh of Sublime and Long Beach Dub Allstars. Eyes Adrift is the name of this project, and you can catch the guys’ first local show this Friday, January 25, at I-Spy.

That’s terrific! Curt Kirkwood and Krist Novoselic are pretty much the most respectable people in rock music as far as I’m concerned. I just put in Kirkwood’s album with the four-piece version of the Meat Puppets (after the brother crashed, the drummer burned out I guess, and Kirkwood moved away from Phoenix) and it’s good. Worthy of more credit than I gave it at first.

I’m looking forward to that tomorrow.

Robert tracked me down at Vivace. He basically confirmed his continuing purgatory. The end is nearer than the beginning; he’s supposed to have his subsidized apartment on the first and he says that his church may start paying him for his work setting up the mission and some janitorial work.

He seems a little hurt since I’ve been less able to help him with the rent just as he’s needed the most attention and my supply of optimistic moral support has dried up. When I gave him a few dollars for coffee he said, “I’m going to find a smaller cafe. Everyone seems to be in their own little world here.”

I looked around and agreed, “Yeah, I guess so.”

After he left, I looked again and thought, “There’s nothing wrong with that!”

Maybe extroverts feel excluded in a room full of close conversations and lone people hovered over books and papers. Or maybe he was onto something, that hard to pinpoint shelled-in attitude that people sometimes associate with Seattlites.

Thank you to the bloggers who’ve recently added this site to their links lists. Validation is good!

Strange Brew
The Jer Zone
Jeff Schuler

Interestingly enough, all three appear to be Mac users. (I avoid eye contact and begin whistling tunelessly, trying not to betray my Windows dependency.)

Meet. Notice a rapport. Have a series of sharp conversations over two days.

Say Goodbye. You’re asked, Maybe you can email me sometime?

Weeks later you get the address from a friend. It’s time to say something, but you don’t know what – Hey, remember me? Decide that you’ll work out something clever later.

It has been months now and you haven’t sat down to think of something clever yet. You’ve been told that she’s asked about you. You wonder how your silence is interpretted.

Didn’t you get my smoke signals? Semaphore with binoculars that compensate for the earth’s curve. ESP. Alright, old fashioned email it is.

Sit down and type something. It’s not clever.