spooooooky tunes

I am attempting to raise the dismal morale at my work and showing Beetlejuice over lunch yesterday and today. Man, does it hold up! I forgot that Michael Keaton doesn't enter the picture except in glimpses until 45 minutes in and steals the goddamned show. Katherine O'Hara and the principle from Ferris Bueller are great too. It's cool that it's not dated because Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin wear the same generic outfits the whole way through. Then it's not like "dude, 90s fashion" or any other distraction like "ha giant cellphones!) I can't wait to see Birdman, which opened at Tower today


2014 played in Stockton and it was soooo fun! It's very cute how the kids hope their new venue will help revitalize some really grim blocks downtown and I hope that it's true. There was a very gothy and punk band made up of members of Satan Wriders that was entertaining and Halloween appropriate.

I am playing an early spoooooky set at the Verge party tonight. Yes, this song kind of sucks but if you think about it it also kind of rules

true story

I went to Hancock's Fabrics and the grandma buying fleece for a quilt said "what is that your tshirt says?" I reluctantly said "Satan Wriders". Then she asked me what my black fabric was for and I demurred because I didn't want to tell her I was making a Zodiac Killer hood.

Do you remember Madame?

I was looking at clips of the puppet Madame, as you do at work when you are not that busy, and I came across this. I guess there was a Red Foxx movie called "Norman, is that you?" and here is a clip with Madame and her puppeteer, Wayland Flowers, who sadly, died of AIDS at 48.

clown controversy

Wow, a coworker just did this: "hi, how are you?" me: Fine. He: you don't look fine. Me: Really? He: yeah you look really tired. OUCH. I think that is soooo rude. I only say that when people say they are tired or sick, then I might agree. And I thought I looked fine. I mean, I only got like 6 hours of sleep but I don't feel tired. Jeez, now I have to worry about how my resting face looks. Guess I better walk around with a fake smile. I didn't say it that enthusiastically, in his defense.

 

This article on the clown art at Pancake Circus is SO RAD! The stuff about the art that was too controversial is insane. Some band folks are in town tomorrow before the King Tuff show and I think I might take them there. Hope they aren't all vegans. No offense to vegans, but usually half of any given band is vegan and it is hard to find a place to take one. PS, the article notes that it MC Ham's grandpa opened it as Al and Bud's Platter in 1961. He and his wife also opened Trails. Which, by the way is staying open longer because the sale fell through. I only pray that someone is going to keep it a restaurant.

 

Speaking of restaurants, just a reminder that Masullo is open on Sundays now! And yesterday he had bread for sale too! It was pretty dead when I stopped by at 6 to get takeout but I think once people know that it's a natural Sunday night dinner spot.

Why, Allo

Wow, there's a really good and very intimate article on Arts and Leisure in the bee today. They are playing with Allo Darlin at WR on Saturday and I'm stoked.

 

I went to the corn maze in Dixon last night. It really is big. Like certified as the world's biggest. Some (me) would say too big. If I hadn't had people leading me through it I would still be there. I was no help navigating and instead played scary music on my phone. The best were the Psycho theme and some EDM Halloween music.

 

It's also a pumpkin patch and they have so many cool pumpkins and they are so cheap! Seems like a great place to go with kids. Instead of getting some 20 dollar heirloom warty green pumpkin at the coop just go to Dixon. It will be fun and even with the gas you will save $.

he is kind of the best

Have you ever gotten the Baker Seeds Catalog? They stopped sending it to me, I'm not sure why, but when I did get it it contained wonderful pictures like this of the owner and his family:

 

or this:

Imagine being in your garden and having them pop up like this

 Dude can rock some overalls

 

 

Formal overalls:

 

He is named Jer Gettle (of course he is) and he started this bomb-ass seed company when he was 17. Here's a NY Times profile. A seed prodigy, if you will. If you care about gardening at all you should send for the catalog or better yet, visit the store in Petaluma. Smiller saw somewhere that he opened the second one in Petaluma (first one was in Missouri) because the majority of his orders were from that area! That's how fancy these seeds are.



 

 

Spoooooooooky

Scott pointed out the month mark yesterday, too. I think I'm gonna be able to do more blog, less facebook. I am trying to get back to being smarter, which for me personally means less social media and less TV. First big step: canceled Netflix streaming and went to one movie at-a-time. I figure not always having a movie will force me to read more so I can increase my attention span. Yesterday I managed to watch an arty French film and enjoy it very much. It's Summer Hours starring La Binoche. It's kind of a nothing-much-happens movie, but I like those. A running theme is the importance and power of beautiful objects and art, which was a running theme in The Goldfinch too (a book I am kind of meh on). At the risk of sounding shallow I stand behind this idea because I think what you surround yourself with greatly influences your state of mind and our objects can stand the test of time when we are dust. Getting deep I guess. This getting smart plan is just what works for me, I'm not saying others need to follow. I think if my job was super stressful I would definitely need that veg-out time and I know HBO has stuff I would probably love.

Halloween approacheth and I'm excited this year because Verge is having a party on the actual day. Finally something to do! Actually, I went to a super fun party last year so I am on a roll. I thought I'd post trailers to some creepy favorites. Parents I loved in the early '90s and watched many times but I just remembered it today for the first time in many years:

The Stepfather is a classic! A family and all that crap!Starring Locke! Here's a cult one that Netflix has. Demonic children! Changeling=scary The Haunting is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen and the book by Shirley Jackson is one of the scariest I've ever read. It ranks up there with Turn Of The Screw, Pet Cemetary,and the Shining Oh god Cujo is majorly traumatizing. Spoiler=in the book the kid dies!! This is going to the top of my queue right now. Stephen King is pretty awesome for teens. I'm pretty sure I've posted about Smooth Talk before. Underrated! Should be a cult classic and the Joyce Carol Oates story is scary too. Thanks for the impetus for this spooooooky post!

Tribes

This is an awesome rebuttal to that garbage Dan Walters wrote. I want the debate to move away from bikes v. cars and towards infrastructure and laws that can help both! As that guy points out, most cyclists own cars! Why does it have to be adversarial?

 

I definitely recommend Tribes at CapStage. It deals with issues of deaf culture and some of it is in sign language (translations are projected on the stage). Some really excellent performances (except for one I didn't like but I won't name names). Two of them, the two that sign in the play, were two of the best I've ever seen on stage. I cried at the end of the first act and at the end of the play.

Lil Wayne vs. Drake vs. play

Drake and Lil Wayne canceled their show tomorrow! Weak sauce! They didn't say it was cuz of lack of ticket sales but that has to be why. Why did they put it in the stupid Marysville arena? It must have more seats than Arco. Dicks, still. Way to disappoint your fans. I am glad to have 180 more dollars to kick around but there must be some teens that are crying their eyes out right now. The 180 was for two, and I was going to give MC a ticket for being our driver and because he would have been the best person to go with!I won't get the chance to vote via phone for which guy wins. I guess they are neck and neck at this point.

My Halloween show bumper sticker sparked a chat with one of the fire department guys on campus and it led to him telling me he was a roadie for Blue Oyster Cult for 21 years! I can't wait to get the full story on that at a department barbecue. The other mindblowing thing is if I had to guess I would have guessed he is 34-35. Roadie-ing keeps you young?

I found two good new podcasts for those of you who love This American Life. The better one is Everything is Stories. The one that is sometimes good is Love + Radio. They are both longform stories, with no narration at all. Some of them are amazing.

I bet I am the only person who is going to see a play tomorrow night instead of Drake and Lil Wayne ha ha.

food (get it?) for thought

I am trying to get a block of Kings tickets for my work and you might be surprised how jank this process is. Maybe you wouldn't. It's kind of just talking to a guy and waiting for him to call you to let you know which games you can get tickets to. I submitted a 200 dollar deposit and am still waiting for the call. I just called and the guy remembers me and is trying to figure out if my survey on what games I want to go to was even submitted. It seemed like it was, but again, it was jank so who knows. All I'm trying to do is give them like 1000 for some crappy seats to a not-very-desirable game.

Jesus Christ, I think I always say this and am surprised anew by how good Magpie is. We were going to go to Waterboy but opted for the "cheaper" spot. HOWEVER, Magpie prices are THE SAME as Waterboy! I am shocked, but our 180 dollar bill last night for 4, in which we only drank maybe 6-7 glasses of cheap/beer wine, clued me in to think wait a minute here!

Here's the breakdown:
apps:
Waterboy- $4-14
Magpie- 5-14

1st Course
Waterboy-9-16
Magpie (does not have a first course per se but I am including salads and a pasta dish - 6.5 (for cup of soup) -17

Main:
Waterboy- 21-29 or AQ for daily fish dish
Magpie-15-30 (15 is for a roasted vegetable plate, the next lowest is 25 - so kind of actually higher)
Smiller had scallops for 28 at Magpie - they are 29 at Waterboy

I think desserts are about the same - both of them have outstanding desserts. I love the avocado chocolate mousse at Magpie and the seasonal crostada at Waterboy is always good, and right now is Delta pear, goat cheese ice cream, red wine caramel, and hazelnut praline. I would say the crostada wins out! It's always warm and melts the ice cream. My mouth is watering.

That is kind of crazy for such a casual atmosphere and quicker pace than Waterboy. I love settling in at Waterboy with the white tablecloth and the whole deal. The servers at Magpie are excellent usually, but the ambiance is kind of cramped and noisy, and ubercasual. This bums me out!

Bday nymphomaniac

It's Scott's birthday today!!! We are going to the Waterboy with his family. Yay! I love Waterboy it fits like a velvet/iron glove or something like that. I bought him three highly/practical, boring presents. I wish I had something more fun, but as I was talking to him about that he pointed to his room that is piled with more books and records than he could read/listen to in ten years.

I watched Nymphomaniac 1 and 2. Garbage! Just one more piece of refuse in a huge pile that Von Trier has created. I don't know how they faked all the sex and whippings, etc., but WB said that he read that some of the genitals were greenscreened. If that is true I would like to see the unaltered footage. Christian Slater (yes, you read that right) gives an insanely crappy performance, and Shia LeBouf's (yes, you read that right) accent is atrocious. Skarsgaard and Gainsbourg do fine with what they are given. Four hours! I watched it over like a week though. Honestly, I would play solitaire on my phone during the non-dirty parts. Oh god, the music is so dorky too.

squeezing one out

It's been so long since my last post because as I lagged I got overwhelmed by the amount of photos I needed to upload, stuff I should write about, etc. Well, the word "overwhelmed" is a bit dramatic but I was just having a hard time getting around to it.

 

So you will just have to always wonder what I have been up to the last few weeks and here's what's up now. I got the cover of Feast in the SacBee! So cool! I love having Tim Swanson as editor and he was quite patient with my crappy first version. Too much exposition! Show, don't tell! Etc.!

 

Darrell Corti sent me a nice email telling me they sold out of cookies. The power of the Bee!

 

Pitchfork reviewed the Cassie Ramone album (I was reading it because she loves Sac and the Bananas, which is why I know about Vivian Girls in the first place), and they had two Sac comparisons: The Softies and Jean Jean, Molly Schick's solo thing. Pretty random.

 

Glad I squeezed a post out. Maybe now I will be able to get it rolling again.

 

 

gee whillikers

Oh boy oh boy oh boy Satan Wriders and 2014 at Café Colonial on Wednesday. Come see the stars of this NPR story and peep what this hip Stockton scene is all about!

zines! and Doug!

Wow, this article on Doug B. and the history of zines is one of the best interviews I've ever read and it really brings a tear to the eye. Besides the cool fact that Scott gets mentioned as the guy who was instrumental in getting distro for a lot of music zines and a  picture of MikeRMike as a young buck, it makes me think about what zines meant to me in a pre-internet world and the fact that Doug could be said to have directly shaped who I am today.

 

Maximum Rock and Roll led me to the Cattle Club which led me to the Loft which led me to almost every single (god might even be every) close friend or even acquaintance (and husband!) I have today. Don't laugh but Morrissey zines led me to a way out of my desperately lost teen years and a way to leave Lincoln. My first kiss was with a wonderful guy I met while touring around California following Morrissey. It was a beautiful experience and I floated around on air for days. The crew of people I was hanging with were people that I met from writing to them because they wrote Morrissey zines. I never would have gone by myself and couldn't have afforded to because I crashed on their floors and carpooled.

 

Not to mention the mind-expanding, sometimes hilarious, sometimes scary zines Roller Derby, Dishwasher, Cometbus, Murder Can Be Fun, Grand Royal, Fat So?, Boiled Angel, Answer Me!, Ben Is Dead, Punk Planet, Rocktober (falls on the hilarious side if I remember correctly), ThriftScore! (before I had ever thrifted) and more I'm forgetting. I'm pretty sure I leafed through the one of girls smoking that Doug mentions! I'll throw in re/search, pranks was my favorite one, but I loved strange music and the modern primitives one was insane.

 

These zines introduced me to kinds of people that I never knew existed, people who did things I couldn't understand, and some people who were living a life that was free and exciting in a way I wanted to emulate. Weirdos, hipsters, freaks, perverts, punks, free speech boundary pushers, counterculture lifers, militant feminists, dumpster divers (oh yeah, wasn't there a mag about that?), backpack world travelers, people who lived for music, people who hung themselves up from fucking hooks for sexual pleasure!?!?!?, and I would say almost 100% people who didn't give a fuck about money or how it related to living their life - and I sure had none at the time or for a long time after. They were people who lived how they wanted and did what they wanted, and found a community, often through zines, of people who wanted those same things too, no matter how unusual. And I found my community too, although none of you have ever pounded nails through your genitals to my knowledge.

 

So thanks, Doug. Not only do you enrich my life now as a friend and one of my favorite artists, but you changed it then.

 

And YES, I once wrote a zine called Pinky that I never distributed and that I think might be in the basement and which I cannot bring myself to look at.

 

calypso cola guy

I woke up with the 2014 song "big weight" in my head, which then switched to an endless loop of knock knock "where the world won't end" that at this point I wish I could get out.

 

More stock photos!

 

Look how scary these three are! Are they going to train you or stab you with scissors in the eye?

 

stock photos

 

I've been taking some online professional development courses today (no wait, don't fall asleep yet!) There are some very funny stock photos in these things. Look at that poor passive person on the left!

 

 How would you like if your boss made sensei-type hand gestures like the ones on the left



 Which of these are stereotypes and which are totally true?

I don't know, passive guy looks kind of nice.

King of Jerry Day

It seems wrong that it costs more to stay in Portland than Tokyo. It's funny that other countries get reps for being expensive but I think the accommodations here are really high. Over a couple of week trip to a country with cheap lodgings you could save the same amount a plane ticket would cost to get there. A trip on the Cali coast vs. a trip to Mexico and you could easily save enough to fly to Mexico. And I'm talking airbnb! Forget a hotel! The semi-crappy Ace in Portland is almost 300 a night. Still, stoked as hell to be going there and at least fancy-ish food and beer is cheaper there.

Jerry Day was Jerry Day all the way, as usual. We got there at noon, which is the earliest I've ever been. I wish DP could have been there, or at least could have skyped in. There were a few intense acid burnouts, lots of amazing shirts, and a fascinating kingpin guy that was running a whole area, posing with everybody with a full-sized skeleton in a pirate hat that he had brought with him, pouring cranberry juice all around, and other gladhanding activities. We couldn't figure out who he was but he was fun to watch. He was the king of Jerry Day.

America's Favorite Funnyman

 

Tonight you should cancel everything.....Neil Hamburgerrrrrrr's in town! Tonight at 9 at the Comedy Spot, 12 bucks. It will probably sell out.

 

Tomorrow: Mantles and Knock Knock at Witch Room! What a bill!

grocery musings

Crazy. They announced a Whole Foods at 20th and L today in the Bee. We were discussing it last night and Smiller was saying it was going on the R street corridor, which I either didn't know or had forgotten. I wonder if that deal fell through?

I have mixed emotions, of course, since Whole Foods is a lame chain, but def leaning towards positive. A big Sacramento bucket list item for me has been a market I can walk to. It will hurt the Sac co-op but I don't want to say I hate that co-op but I haven't been there in over a year. Possibly leaning towards two years. I shop at the Davis one and I will shop there less, but it's very successful and it won't hurt that business. In contrast, when Trader Joe's first opened in Davis it cut business by 10%, but the co-op had smartly made a contingency plan for just such a drop.

Judging by the spokesman's comments in the Bee today, the Sac co-op is of course bummed, but they've made some dumbass decisions financially and that's their fault. They are probably still recovering financially from that Elk Grove store that closed. I'm not sure the reason for the SNC move, but it seems stupid. I guess if the store is bigger they could make more.

I will probably shop at Taylor's a bit less, but that family practically mints money with that place, and any time I want a bottle of wine for dinner I will hit up Taylor's. The Whole Food's selection is not to my taste at all.

Jerry Day is this Sunday! There is a lot of other stuff going on this weekend so I haven't been thinking about that but it's pretty monumental! Can't wait! Scott brought me a new Bertha tanker from Deadnet for my birthday.

thank jah

Thank god my pesky 30s are over. All that annoying youth and vitality! How did I stand it?  The Archbishop took some video of the Bright Ideas. Top notch! Look for a guest appearance of me at the end with a beer attached to me like an appendage. Oh wait, ha ha ha it's mineral water! I was wondering what the hell bottle of beer I could have been drinking.