got back from Seattle early Monday afternoon, and spent the day just hanging out with Jen and the kids... oh, and grocery shopping. On Tuesday I was at work from 8:30 AM to 9 PM, so it was almost like I was still away. Same with today. I'm at work right now, in that noisy lull in activity known as recess.

Seattle is an interesting city. It has enough hills and waterways to make the scenery interesting. There seems to be a lot of public art as well. Especially cool is the huge troll under the Aurora st. bridge. It has one silvery eye, and its outsized left hand grips a real volkswagon. The gasworks park is pretty interesting too, with its rusted mini-skyline of old gas processing equipment and a nice view of the downtown area from a grassy hill. Also of interest was Archie McPhee's, a store that specializes in bizarre toys and novelty items. I got the boys some Mexican jumping beans and the girls some Parasite Pals paraphenalia (a line of items featuring cute little characters who just happen to be parasites, including a head louse, bedbug, tapeworm, and eyelash mite). Sweet. We also managed to visit a couple of Thai restaurants, and a landmark movie theater showing Herzog's Grizzly Man, which was totally brilliant. The story was just tailor made for Herzog.

We got picked up at the airport by a guy named Sean, who would prove to be indespensible over the course of our stay. He was the Wooden Octopus Skull Pfestival's driver, and spent a lot of time cheerfully shuttling people to and from the airport, and driving us here and there around the city. Despite his claims of laziness, he never really stopped working for the whole week, even helping cook the vast amounts of pancakes and waffles for the Sunday pancake extravaganza. What a guy! All hours of the day and night!

We stayed at William and Leslie's place again (like we did last December) and fell victim to a territorial cat. G's jacket and my sleeping bag were the main targets. On the first morning of our stay, they proved to be moist. When I lifted my sleeping bag up, cat nuggets rolled off onto the floor. She was always sweet to our faces though. Probably passive aggressive. William and Leslie themselves, being festival organizers, popped in and out as they juggled running their record store and the festival.

The festival itself was at four different venues, the first of which was the Sunset Tavern (on Ballard St. near Market, if I remember correctly). Thursday night's show took place here. The headliners were the Portland Bike Ensemble, who used bicycles as instruments. I've seen this done before, but never exclusively. We missed Friday night's show at the ReBar, due to our wish to see Grizzly Man. There were two shows on Saturday, the first of which took place in the early afternoon at a bar called the Funhouse, located almost directly underneath the Space Needle. The Funhouse has an emergency exit located directly behind the stage, and doesn't allow anybody to set things up in front of it, so performers had to work their way around this restriction. We were a little less than pleased to learn this, since that is where we were playing the next afternoon.
Saturday evening's show was at the ReBar, and turned out to be one of the better ones. My favorites were a band from Portland called Smegma, the members of which seemed to range in age from twenty-something to sixty-something. I guess I would describe them as strange, somewhat humorous garage rock, with a large variety of instruments. The raw, pounding bits often meandered off into stranger territory before being reined in again by the drums. The headliners for the evening were the mighty Caroliner, who have been putting out strangely decorated records for nearly two decades now. The one I have, for instance, contains part of an old shoe. The existence of one containing a dead rat is also a story I've heard now and then (real San Francisco garbage!). For this show, the band had decorated the stage with brightly, obsessively painted bits of cardboard and various dangly things hanging and spinning from the ceiling. The stage was lit by blacklight, and the band was unrecognizable beneath large, bulky costumes that resembled an amalgamation of farm animal and garage sale trash. The music was loud, heavy, and utterly weird. One of the best bands of the festival. I saw them at Gilman St. during the late eighties, and they were weird then too. This was much more elaborate though.
We played on Sunday, with Broken Penis Orchestra, who were really cool, with funny masks, noisy noise, and strange video footage (Stan, who runs Psychform records and acted as MC for the whole festival is the main guy here - a great guy who also didn't seem to sleep for the duration of the festival and stayed at the forefront of things all week). Bill Horist played too and did some very inventive things with his guitar. Climax Golden Twins did an interesting, noisy set from one of the booths opposite the bar (They've been around for years as well, but until now their music was unknown to me, although apparently every performance is quite different). We played after them, and it was pretty chaotic due to the lack of monitors (feedback problems), but lots of fun. Matt's costume broke open and packing peanuts went everywhere. Sean cheerfully cleaned it up. Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet wrapped things up with a wall of noise that morphed into a strange dance number at the end. Inventive. Afterwards a bunch of us went out for thai food and wandered around the Space Needle. There's a small amusement park at its base, so we went on rides as the sun set. I just went on the ferris wheel, due to a distinct lack of funds and a belly full of thai food. Beautiful view though. It was like a slice of some more innocent period of history (if there really was such a time, which I doubt), or maybe like a Saturday night in small town America. It wasn't lost on me though that we had spent much of September 11th in the shadow of a very recognizable national landmark. So much for innocence.
Afterwards, we walked to a well appointed bar called the Baltic Room. Stan played again, this time with a project called Broken Human Machine. This was a more sober affair than the afternoon show, being more of a drone. Almost somber. At that point, we where whisked across the street to be interviewed by a couple of people from a radio station in Vancouver. As the interview progressed, police cars entered the parking lot and I think somebody was searching the building directly behind us, lending a certain air of tension to the proceedings. Nobody hassled us though. Later, we watched the Spider Compass Crime Band (I've got to check to see if I have that name right...), who, dressed as ten foot tall vultures, played some really twisted, gothic organ-sounding music on their keyboards. Then, Steve did an absolutely incredible DJ set (in surround sound!) from his rather extensive back catalog. He had originally planned to do a mellow, lounge-ey type of thing, but quickly got irritated with people talking over it and switched to a much louder, rhythmic set. People danced. We got home late and stayed up even later talking with William and Leslie, who finally had time to talk since the festival was officially over. Oh yeah, we had a picnic of hummus, bread, ginger beer and berries in the parking lot of a local grocery store at 2:30 in the morning. A nice little moment.

One other funny anecdote. Steve had a little trouble at the airport at the start of his journey due to the fact that one of his fingerprints didn't match their records. It turns out that if you smash your finger with a hammer it can alter your fingerprints. Who knew? He showed them his smashed fingernail and they let him continue.

What else? There was an auction for pieces of art by Steve and M to raise money for a couple of bands who had lost almost everything during hurricane Katrina. Steve's fetched $500. Not sure how much M's brought in. A hurricane relief can was in evidence all weekend as well.

There were a lot of great people involved in this event, and lots of favorable response from what I could see. It will probably become an annual thing.

Now I'm back at work, and it feels great to be back. The kids are really cool this week, and we've found some critters too - a Garter Snake, a couple of Scorpions, and the usual assortment of deer. I saw a Raccoon passing the cabins during dinner yesterday too.

Okay, people are in line for the computer. Time to stop.