This is a local, archival version of a particularly tricky MeFi post. I put enough work into it that I wanted a copy at home.
Click - MeFites, click the link of Wolfgang's new endeavor,
murderous, doomed, that cast as Achaeans countless actors,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
blonde-tressed, open-helmed *. Will careers be made carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
as the time of Bush is moving toward its end?
Begin, crows, when the trailers first were aired,
Agamemnon, some guy, and Brad Pitt, Achilles.
*(helmet design changes were needed so's we plebes c'n, like, see Brad's purdy face).
It's a crude riff on the first lines of Robert Fagles' much-admired Iliad translation.
Here's how it really goes:
Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.
Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,
Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
A rough syllable count is recorded below, and you can see that I've worked to make the twain similar.
14
14
13 (14)
12
6
11
10
14
I personally am further entertained by the generally accepted idea that the folks who declaimed Homeric verse improvised, within limits, as appropriate to their audience. I'm glad to join in.
Bob Edwards: 30 Years on NPR is the NPR-hosted farewell site.
Twenty minutes ago my eyes snapped open just as Bob Edwards began his last on-air interview as host of Morning Edition with Charles Osgood, the same man he began the show with, a quarter century ago. It will be odd in the morning without him, the last day-to-day vestige of my childhood gone from my life.
The New York Times > Technology > Google's Sale of Its Shares Will Defy Wall St. Tradition
"Google is not an icebreaker for other companies to follow," said John Shoch, a partner at Alloy Ventures. "It's a polka-dotted zebra."
This explains a great many things, possibly including the story's noted judgement that Google does not love Wall Street.
Town Hall, 7:30, Friday, April 30.
New CD! Bring some scratch.
Potential posse people: leave comments.
UPDATE (2p): Sounds like KUOW is playing selections from the new CD RIGHT NOW!
UPDATE II: The new album, Only Just Beginning, has been released online!
American Mavericks just started on KUOW tonight at 10p. But it's in the KUOW Presents, which means it might be transient.
I still resent the fifteen-year-old loss of classical music programming on the station. I hope they pick this up, but even if they don't I have at least heard about the feckin' thing. Check out the audio on the AM website. Reich! Cage! Composers I've never feckin' heard of!
This is the show played tonight.
Giant power wows are hitting my neighborhood, so the server might go down.
*womp*
Blinken lights, radio static. Makes me wanna run out to look at the donner und blitzen.
Today I got in touch with my inner tard, by attending a film for review and SITTING IN THE WRONG THEATER for an hour.
Sigh. I will restrict my activities for the rest of the day to non-technical pursuits.
I checked out the 1978 book on Anhalt from the public library and wanted to tie up some loose ends and make some corrections.
First, Anhalt did erect some Mediterranean-style buildings. The book specifically notes that El Monterey was not among them, however.
Second, the book cites "thirty" buildings, but does not provide a detailed census.
Third, my citation of the Canal Market to the west of Montlake is not supported in the book. Since there's no comprehensive list of buildings, I could still be right, but the book doesn't mention it in the section on Anhalt's early commercial architecture.
Fourth, I attributed the design elements to a single pattern book. Apartments by Anhalt cites several by name.
In Where's the Beef?, Mena Trott mentions that on Tuesday, SixApart invited the first fifty public beta testers on board for MT 3.0.
I gotta pay better attention, 'cuz I was one of those fifty. I just filed the email, thinking I'd get around to it later (I have several semi-completed technical projects underway and SIFF press screenings start on Monday). I guess I will make time to set up the app.
One of my concerns was my desire to segregate my current implementation of MT from the beta, in case of unexpected nastiness, especially at the database level. I will spend some time on that topic, probably for publication here, next week, amid the other projects.
The Big MetaFilter User Survey | Results: "Most incessantly scratch their crotch and burp too, no doubt."
Mrs. C.'s Fact Sheets failed to answer my nearly-posted AskMe query. She does answer a host of other food-safety queries besides.
I was wondering, "How long can hard-bioled eggs be left at room temperature and remain edible?"
The Safer Easter Egg, however, tells me that the FDA says:
When eggs are cooled in water after being cooked, the eggs pull cool water through the pores of the shell. If the water contains bacteria, the bacteria are pulled into the shell, and grow quickly on this nutritious food source. The cooling water can be contaminated by bacteria on peoples hands, particularly staph bacteria. Suggestions to eliminate this problem are:
Add eight ounces of vinegar to every two quarts of boiling water in which the eggs are cooked.
- The acid in the vinegar makes it more difficult for the bacteria to survive.
- DO NOT cool the eggs in water. Remove the eggs immediately after cooking and cool on racks in the refrigerator.
The hard cooked eggs should not be at room temperature for more than two hour if they are to be eaten.
Verdict: Toss 'em. Shucks.
I saw an ad on the tube yesterday, which prominently featured the black ships, beached on the shore before Troy, and all the hair on my neck stood on end.
I didn't realize that I'm really excited for this film, but: I am. I think Viv is too.
The Fagles translation is hard to find even excerpts from, but there are some interesting online interpretations available.
I'm somewhat baffled by the overwhelming dominance of the Samuel Butler Iliad translation online. There are actually quite a few translations, most predating our current copyright imbroglio.
Hm... This post has promise.
Screenwriter David Benioff, interviewed by the Beeb, had this to say about his script:
Troy is an adaptation of the Trojan War myth in its entirety, not The Iliad alone. The Iliad begins with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon over the slave girl Briseis, nine years into the war. The equivalent scene occurs halfway through my script. Meanwhile, The Iliad ends after Priam returns from Achilles' shelter with his grim cargo - long before the construction of the Trojan Horse, and a good 20 pages before my script ends.
This is a massive story that we're trying to tell in two-and-a-half hours. The narrative is crammed with some of literature's most intriguing characters: Achilles, Hector, Helen, Paris, Priam, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Patroclus, etc. All these characters have to emerge on screen as fully realized human beings. The battle scenes have to mirror the epic confrontations Homer described. The journey of the thousand ships from Greece to Troy has to be depicted. Everything takes times, and we're not making a 12-hour miniseries. We're not making a trilogy of three-hour movies.
Let's hope Athena guided his hand, and the hand of Wolfang Petersen.
I'm tracking a Movable Type posting problem in the MT Support Forum, and thought I'd post about it here.
The bug appears to be an interaction of ecto (or, I suppose, mt-xmlrpc.cgi) with Markdown. It seems that Markdown is choking on a specific replacement string.
When that string is fed in from ecto, it reliably generates a Perl crash on my server, which prevents the rebuild or post action from completeing. Subsequent attempts to rebuild that entry, or others from the blog to which the problem entry was posted, will fail as long as Markdown is called in the rebuild.
An acceptable temporary workaround is to either disable Markdown by removing it from your plugins folder or to turn it off under the 'format' dropdown in the individual post-editing UI in MT.
Oddly, I was able to rebuild the entire site with Markdown disabled and subsequent rebuilds from the browser did not lead to the Perl crashes, but to in-browser error messages. Using ecto again experimentally immediately led to the Perl crash.
The site this is happening to is not this one. It's a different project that's not ready for prime time yet, so I have the luxury of really trying to isolate the problem.
I've dropped a line to both the author of ecto and the author of Markdown. Adrian, who is behind ecto, doesn't think it's his app, and given that it's interacting with mt-xmlrpc.cgi, I can see where he's coming from.
I haven't yet heard from John about Markdown, but hope to soon.
On Tuesday, I promised a discussion of the interior architecture of the Seattle area apartments constructed in the 1920's by Frederick Anhalt. After a couple of days of distraction I'm ready to deliver.
As noted earlier, Anhalt was not an architect himself. He worked with others who were, selecting architectural and decorative elements from a pattern book (or books). These architectural elements were based on Tudor revival architecture. This style is reflected on the exteriors and interiors of the buildings. It emphasizes light walls contrasting with dark wood trim, decorative beams, and other decorative, archaic architectural elements such as rough plaster finishing, cove ceilings, pointed interior arches.
In my experience of these spaces, the most distinctive element which Anhalt employed are false fireplaces. These fireplaces appear in every single one of his apartments that I've been inside. I understand that occasionally a real fireplace was included, but this is not the case in our building, at least.
Our "fireplace" is a scaled down replica of a medieval kitchen hearth, with the scullery shelf on the left side of the alcove. It stretches across the front of our living room. Naturally that's where television and stereo are. I've seen one other Anhalt with this large alcove, unfortunately remodeled so that it no longer resembled a fireplace. Ours is in original condition, and so resembles a fireplace this it's necessary to convince first-time visitors that it was not constructed as one.
The problem of maintenance and remodeling in these apartments is considerable. In our apartment, much of the original dark stained wood has been covered with years of gloppy white paint. About four years ago the apartment on the top story of the Romio's building I cited earlier was on the market, and Vivian and I took a look. All of the original interior wood finishing had been removed in a late 1980's-style remodeling. The flat, white surfaces conflicted with the peculiar mazelike floor plan of the apartment. Just up the road from that Romio's, another Anhalt building was remodeled at about the time we looked at the apartment in the Romio’s building. That building lost its lead glass windows, and original landscaping.
As originally constructed, the buildings are expensive to maintain. Generally speaking, those buildings which have been converted to condominium ownership have fared better than the rental properties. However, the rental properties in some cases will have retained a greater portion of the original building materials.
The interior layout of the apartments is highly idiosyncratic. While a set of basic apartment floor plans was developed and reused throughout the buildings, the individual apartment layouts are always surprising when first encountered. The odd floorplans in combination with the use of scaled-down interior decorative elements lend the apartments an impression of size. In fact, the apartments tend to be only slightly larger than an average modern apartment, ranging from 700 to 1500 square feet, the largest one of which I am aware. The downside to the use of dark trim and twisty floor plans is that over time the apartments can easily feel cramped, something the tight kitchens can reinforce.
Despite this, one of the key features of nearly all the apartments is the presence of both front and back door entrances, something which Anhalt describes in his biography as intended to enhance the sense of home for his tenants.
The buildings sport as much attention to detail in the landscaping as in the built architecture, commonly featuring a mix of fruiting trees and bushes and flowering plants. Our building features two Rainier cherry trees, a golden plum tree, blueberry bushes, and a tulip tree. After Anhalt left the building trade, he opened a nursery near the University District, which he ran for the rest of his life. He died in 1996, at the age of 100.
After the loss of his apartment business, he completed only a few more buildings, including a couple of homes and a church. These buildings are instantly recognizable. In the biography, he is described as retaining a fierce and proprietary interest in the apartment buildings. The creative thought and care which went into these buildings is apparent every day to me. The experience of living in one of these buildings is something I will always be grateful for, and has demonstrated to me in concrete terms some of the ways in which architecture directly impacts our quality of life. Seattle thinks of these buildings as Anhalts; I suspect that Fred Anhalt always thought of them as Anhalt's.
New Beginning, by John Longenbaugh, previews Jason's upcoming April 30 show and the new CD.
OK, OK, here's a little sumpin' sumpin.
The Anhalt next to the Capitol Hill Library has a vacancy. Looks like there were three, but the giant 2-bedroom and the studio are gone, at $1495 and $795, respectively. A 1-bedroom remains at $1095 $1195 (sorry. my mistake).
It's at 417 Harvard East. The 1-bedroom is described as 'large' and has a dining room. Email me for the phone number if you want it, or go by on your own. It's as good an excuse as any to check out a nicely maintained example of a Anhalt courtyard.
Between 11:00 and noon today, this site has experienced over 1,000 site visits. I'll update this entry with more information about the surge as I figure out what is going on. The box is just slightly pokey, so as long as things don't accelerate I don't anticipate a problem.
UPDATE: The discussion was cited as 'some degree of debunking' in a Fark posting citing the Mini campaign, which it seems is just getting going and being received rather credulously.
The link has scrolled well off the active area of the thread so traffic should be dropping, I think.
UPDATE II: Hm, hard to tell, actually. Tailing the log and looking at server usages shows no drop in traffic; and the SQL-based traffic-reporting system I'm using is now sending multiple emails each time it rolls over another 50 visits. That bug may mean multiple simultaneous visitors, or it may mean that the software lacks record locking, in which case the database records are going to grow more suspect over time. Not that I'm terribly concerned, the system is an estimation device, after all.
UPDATE III: 3:30 and they're still coming. The page is now well in the lead as most visited page in the site, with over 10,000 visits. The tide is definitely slowing, though. I didn't record the page's count yesterday, though. What's most odd, to me, is that NOT ONE of the has farkers commented so far. Maybe they're just shy.
Finally, this has distracted me from the Anhalt series sufficiently that I believe I'll do the interiors tomorrow.
My old entry Time Travel Spam has attracted the wrath of " the Greatest Thinker and Wisest Human, Dr. Gene Ray!"
*sniff*
I feel special!
Yesterday, I took a quick look at the beginnings of Frederick Anhalt's time in Seattle, and how he came to be a builder.
I learned the story from two books, both hard to find and long out of print.
The best-known work is the Seattle Department of Community Development edition of "Apartments by Anhalt," which I understand to be a reprint of a 1930 advertising circular. It's been some time since I saw this book, and as I recall it also adds background material.
The 1978 publication date may reflect the 1979 recognition of two of the Anhalt buildings as historic landmarks.
The book was also reprinted in 1982.
The other book, Built by Anhalt, is a biography. Published in hardback in 1982, it's based on a series of interviews given by Anhalt specifically for the book. This is my main source; shortly after moving into our apartment I came across a copy in a used bookstore. Currently, a neighbor is borrowing the book - when I get it back I'll check my facts.
Both of these books are exceedingly hard to find in local used bookshops.
Picking up where I left off, after working with the Loveless architectural firm, Anhalt grew disenchanted with the stucco exterior and Spanish colonial style that is the signature for these buildings. In the book I cite, he notes that the architecture is well suited to a sunny and dry climate but poses maintenance problems in the Pacific Northwest.
He settled on the Tudor style, which in the twenties was also quite popular. Unfortunately, I can no longer recall which building in the neighborhood is his first, but it was successful. Rather than selling the building or having built it for a third party, Anhalt retained title and acted as managing landlord for the building.
As soon as the building was rented, he took the capital and used it to begin another. As I recall, he had some difficulty getting banks to loan him the money because of his unorthodox business plan. His intention was to build a large number of buildings over a short period of time to service the high-end urban rental market, providing full-service maintenance on the buildings and charging premium rents.
His insight was that if he conducted a long-term building campaign, instead of a series of disconnected projects, he could hire very skilled craftsmen on a salary basis and move them from site to site as well as using them in a maintenance capacity. With this in mind, he worked with an architect, selecting structural and decorative elements from an architectural pattern book intended to provide British Victorian builders with architectural elements for the country manor trade. Generally speaking, these architectural elements in the Anhalt buildings have been scaled down by anywhere from a third to half the size they appear in genuine medieval or Tudor revival buildings. While sometimes complicating the interior spaces of the apartments, this also has the unexpected effect of making the apartments appear larger than they are, especially when viewed in a photograph or without furniture.
His initial capital shortages, however, led him to construct the first few buildings as inexpensively as possible. Many of the buildings he's responsible for feature textured, or 'clinker' brick. He claims that these bricks were discounted and his initial use of them was an economizing measure. One of the cheapskate features of these older buildings is a total lack of sound insulation inside the buildings. We live in the last building Anhalt constructed without it, and believe me, we miss it.
The first building that Anhalt constructed under the fully-realized 'luxury apartments' business plan is the building that faces the Safeway parking lot at the top of Capitol Hill at the intersection of 14th and John. Built on a small lot, Anhalt was able to rent a large tent to cover the entire property while the building went up, and he posted guards to keep the curious out. He did all of this as a publicity stunt, and the tent, and speculation thereon, was duly reported in the local media.
He publicized the grand opening, and by his account, the line to view the completed building stretched to Broadway - a distance of several blocks. The building was completely rented by the end of the first day, and Anhalt had a long list of people waiting for his next building.
This changed his access to capital, and he began planning much larger buildings - the four buildings near the north end of Broadway represent the fruits of this planning. Before they were constructed, however, many of the rest of Anhalt's smaller buildings were completed. I've never seen a map or comprehensive list of the structures, but I know of at least eleven, one of which is in the University District, and I believe there are several more.
The buildings at the north end of the Hill are the last four that Anhalt constructed in this period. In addition to the two buildings at the north end of Broadway visible from the front door of the Deluxe, (look across the intersection to the east, beyond the service station) there are two - or two and one-half - more buildings on the downslope of Belmont, including the building that Anhalt designed to include his private residence.
The extra one-half is a very large multi-story building just upslope from the first of these. This building was initially planned by Anhalt to be his largest, if I recall correctly (and I might be off base geographically). He was forced to sell the land before construction began because after the stock market crash of October 1928, the depression set in. The large building retains many Anhalt touches, presumably a consequence of his ex-employees, but internally the apartments are very run-of-the-mill nineteen-twenties homes.
Which brings me to the topic of the interior architecture of the Anhalts, something I'll tackle tomorrow.
Anita requested pics of our home in response to an earlier post, something I've declined to do out of a concern for geographic privacy - we have had plenty of burglars already, thanks very much. While I'm sure our recently-updated security system will help, break-ins in our neighborhood remain an issue, so please forgive me for being chary.
In the past I have deliberately avoided discussing our apartment because of this issue. However, it is a topic worth tackling, both anecdotally and architecturally. I'm not up to a full-on dissertation on the topic of Fred Anhalt today, alas. But I can lay out the facts briefly.
Frederick Anhalt came from Montana to Seattle early in the 20th century as a junior butcher. While pursuing his trade, he fell into contracting and helped facilitate the design and development of several 'suburban' markets and groceries. The Canal Market at 219 Fuhrman E., on the skirts of the Ship Canal on the downslope from Capitol Hill, is said to be an example of these projects.
Successful in these endeavors, he began to get more requests, the most prominent resulting project being the remodeled Eastlake Romio's (alas, no image Googled up to the surface), which Anhlat descibed in his biography as a building originally erected in the 1880's. If verifiable, that would mean the building is one of the oldest remaining in Seattle, largely settled in the 1860s. Seattle residents will recognize it as the turreted building on the Capitol Hill side of the University Bridge drawbridge, in the shadow of I-5.
After the remodel, in which the building came to resemble a Norman castle in miniature, Anhalt put two and two together and began to pursue work as a builder. As I recall he worked with the other exponent of craft apartments in Seattle of the day, the Loveless firm. This is the builder responsible for most of the Spanish-Moorish nineteen-twenties apartments in Capitol Hill and the University District. The finest work of the firm is not in that genre, though. It bears the Loveless name and houses both shops and housing across the street from the Harvard Exit Theater, at the north end of Broadway. The building also houses Bacchus, a delicious greek restaurant the features amazing murals executed at the time of the building's first tenancy, illustrating a Russian folk tale. The paintings were executed for the initial tenant, the Russian Tea Room, one of the interesting legacies of the post-revolutionary era for the neighborhood: Capitol Hill was a hotbed of White Russians, and their influence on the architecture of the neighborhood is considerable.
Tomorrow: What Fred did.
HistoryLink: Frederick Anhalt
The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest feature, 2002.
Better Homes and Gardens: October, 2003 feature.
MISCMedia: Clark weighs in, October 2000.
During Anhalt's life, two books were published relating to this aspect of his life and work. I'll see what I can dig up on those webside.
Buena Vista Restaurant is a Cuban place that just opened at the the north foot of Lake Union, right next to the former moorages of the Skansonia and the Kalakala (Kalakala link likely to rot in short order).
The restaurant is housed in a former rental hall known previously as CaterArts; the facility was built to highlight the spectacular views of the city skyline and lake. It's just off the Burke Gilman between the I-5 bridge and Gas Works - from the trail, it's the mango-hued building by the lakeshore.
Behind the building, literally at the water's edge, are about 10 or 12 patio tables and umbrellas; it's by far the best outdoor lakeside seating available in a public establishment on Lake Union. From 4 to 6, it's happy hour, which knocks a couple bucks off the drink and appetizer prices. Despite this, it's still pricey - $8.00 mojitos become $6.00 mojitos.
Yesterday, Viv and I took advantage of the sun to investigate. We are always interested in a new Cuban place here in town. Seattle's track record has been spotty, with places opening and closing at rapid rates, and even establishments that taste great the first time later exhibiting exorbitant pricing revisions or annoying, self-absorbed declines in the quality of service. Knowing nothing about the place except that we felt sure we could subject ourselves to a few hours on that sunny deck, drinks in hand, we sallied forth.
The food came as a surprise. It's fantastic, by far the most subtle and sophisticated Cuban I've sampled in a restaurant. We ate our way through the appetizers ("Bocaditos," natch) and by six-thirty were deeply stuffed. Sadly, that meant we did not have an opportunity to sample the lunch or dinner menus, both of which featured popular favorites (such as Cuban pulled pork sandwiches or Moros y Cristianos for lunch or ropa vieja for dinner) and interesting experiments on the theme of Cuban cuisine.
Service was attentive and charming, although it was also clear that the place had just opened. The deck never filled up while we were there. Viv and I will be hurrying back to get more of that sun and try the rest of the food before the word gets out, as I'm sure the initial local media reviews will fill the back deck right up for the rest of the summer.
Foolishly, I did not bring a camera, and I must confess, I contemplated not blogging this because I am so certain the crowds will come. But on that same principle, I'd rather share it with you folks now. Next time it's sunny, hang up that keyboard at four and meet your sweetie at Buena Vista. Your wallet will be lighter, and so will your heart.
I noted the Mini robot seen on MeFi as it scrolled down the page.
It would seem that the ad agency that crafted the videos has launched the campaign. It takes the form of an excerpt from Casson Publishing's 'delayed' book, Men of Metal, apparently appearing in current magazines such as Rolling Stone.
In the comments on my original entry, it seems that a fair number of folks are quite anxious to believe that the robot is real. But what of the startling evidence that the Lone Gunmen predicted 9-11?
I mentioned iPhoto2Gallery a few days ago, and man, it is the greatest. It's waay faster than using the in-browser post for Gallery; it may even be faster than adding pics via the command line.
Alas, though, for the stalled-out iPhoto to Blog plugin. While the developer's teaser for a new version screenshot implies awareness of the bugs and UI problems with the plugin as it stands, the work-in-progress looks a bit like a work in holding, as in the comments for the site he notes a new beta will be out 'soon' - in February.
Oh well!
Looks like it's time to go back to the MovableType-Gallery integration hunt.
Speaking of Mac plugins, googling for iChat plugins doesn;t seem to bring anything up, although iChatUSBCam appears to extend the functionality of iChat in a very plugin-like way. Poking around ADC didn't yield anything in the way of an SDK.
iChat Streaming Icon also modifies iChat functionality. However, beyond these two apps, I am not finding much in the area.
There's a hole in the kitchen this morning; our circa nineteen-seventies dishwasher gave up the ghost, and today a new one will be installed.
In the hole, there's some archeology. The apartment building we live in is one of the twenty-or-so scattered around Capitol Hill in the nineteen-twenties by Frederick Anhalt, a character's character.
This building employs a decorative rusticated plaster finish over lath for our interior walls. In the hole, unpainted and painted plaster informs us that the original color of our kitchen's walls is a pale sea-foam green, the color of Errol Flynn's tights in Robin Hood, released about ten years after this building was constructed.
The pattern of the paint indicates that the original cabinetry was removed, I would guess at the time the dishwasher was first installed probably in the early seventies.
The floor appears to have three layers of tiling - two linoleum and one that I can't make out.
Mike McGonigal writes about the Sun City Girls for the Seattle Weekly. He mentions the recent show at Tacoma's Java Jive, and that he first saw the girls when they toured with eighties skatepunk band JFA in 1984, the same tour I first saw them on.
I've been friendly acquaintances with the Girls since they first moved here, even designing an early Abduction Records logo. Alan is the person who first told me about Kurt Cobain's suicide, the morning they found the body.
So it's a distinct relief to see this piece, which, I must say, does a pretty good job of capturing the delightful non-sequiturs the boys are so fond of tossing off.
Danelope presses on with his hard-hitting coverage of the developing Good-Tempered Creatures story, this time bringing us an exclusive email interview with a key participant in the initial program.
I had a lucid dream this morning in which Vivian and I were stuck on the wharves in Algiers on our way to Iraq. I had forgotten my sunglasses and had to run around looking for clip-ons that fit my specs.
Right next to the wharf-and-building complex we were on was a sort of historical display of old sailing ships, but mixed in with the restored and retired grandes dames were grounded and swamped old rotting wrecks, like the tall ship near Port Townsend.
As I walked by the line of old vessels, I noticed that one appeared to be a Soviet-era olive drab truck - what are they, Ladas? - on a sunken barge/trailer attached to a small boat covered with a tarp. Workers swarmed over it shouting and gesticulating.
Turning back toward the foot of the quay, I mounted a stand of wooden crates and was able to see over the cluster of gimcrack vendors selling tapestries, rugs, bags, dates, and the like. I clearly recall several 3x5 hookrugs that reproduced the covers of Tintin books, which is where a great deal of the dream imagery of the wharf originated.
Over the tents and stalls, and in contravention of the actual geography of Algiers, I was able to see down the broad boulevards lined with date palms that make up the old government quarter of the city, large French colonial buildings and wide streets shining in the mediterranean sun. In the dream, the streets reached into the heart of the city rather than running parallel to the coast.
When I first became aware of the dream the prevailing emotion was anxiety and danger. When I realized that I was dreaming of Algiers I lost those emotions and became intensely interested in remembering and seeing what I was dreaming. I have been in the actual city of Algiers twice, for a total of about three days in December 1982, and my memories of the town are jumbled and fragmentary.
The actual experience I most clearly recall was wandering through the Old Quarter, the Casbah (in North African cities that's the generic term for the old quarter). Steep, narrow-waisted flagstone streets with a central exposed sewer trough (all dry in my memory). Three-story buildings leaning together conspiratorially as the bright sun echoed off the golden stucco walls, illuminating the neighborhood like a canyon. Curious youngsters turning.
I clearly recall the neighborhood as clean and well-kept, with none of the amazing jumble of smells I associate with other third-world cities. Only food and spices on the wind, and behind them, the sea.
StickerNation :: International Sticker Network has a bunch of cool stickers in the archive.
My chicken sense a-tingle, I did a keyword search on 'SARS,' which returned a user page for Mr. Chicken (I won't use the real handle to provide a minimum of Google cloaking). The most recent entry is 6 months old.
There are a bunch of photos as well (you may have to sub-select our artists' name in the appropriate drop down). Here are the pics uploaded by the artist.
This one is of particular interest.
The Punisher: hated it!
OTOH if you like the character you might like the film, but I'm doubtful.
UPDATE: they ran it in The Mercury as well as The Stranger. I gather it might show up elsewhere too but until I see it mum's the word.
UPDATE II: the review was picked up by AlterNet too, and appeared there on April 19.
Maciej makes the scene with 'Mammon' in the improbable state of Arizona, and lands some good ones on Esther Dyson.
MetaFilter in the Ruins! 'April 14, 2009.'
[via an obscure googletrail that led to this chestnut]
everlasting blort: 'ziptie is watching'.
It links where you think it links, and to whom you think it links.
Ehh... That is if you know what the hell I'm talking about. Sorry.
Raed in the Middle | Metafilter leads to a membership invites to the Iraqi posse. Which I must say sounds interesting.
Daring Fireball: Markdown Syntax Documentation: Oh, OK. I'll give it a shot, while I'm tinkering with another site. Not that I'm actually linking to anything.
After all, what fun is debugging unless you pile on the untested variables?
Hm...
Borges in Indiana, by Michael Martone, is called to my attention by AZ, and rightfully so.
The piece is full of era-specific detail. But did Borges ever visit my hometown?
Esta verdad. En 1976, se parece. Y otra vez alrededor 1979-1980, probablemente.
Magical, real news.
I had a much longer entry here but Safari ate it when I tried to post the cool drawing I found today. The drawing is signed '2004 - clare.'
The longer entry gave thumbs up to the new falafel joint across from the Market on Broadway, along with sundry other things that fell in my eye today as I hurried around the Hill doing errands.
Capitol Hill sports new guerrilla art: The story says that these sculptures appeared 'last week.' I'm pretty sure they appeared between 8pm an 11pm Sunday night, since they were not in the street when I walked to Thanh Bros at 8 but were there when I went home at about 11. I guess it's possible I walked by them without noticing, but I kinda doubt that they were there 'all week,' as the story describes.
On the other hand, there were grafittied and one had a broken arm when I saw them last night, so who knows.
Dear God Damn Diary's Polkapalooza, for a limited time only.
But did B^2 know about Weird Al's tragic loss? You know, I always thought Frankie was Al's pop. I was certainly mistaken.
A sunny afternoon in Fremont. I hear we got up to 80 degrees.
There were frites, and art, and hats. And clocks made out of hard drives.
Also, a dead crow.
Later, pho. Whilst pho-ing, I saw a SARS Chicken sticker that was peeling away from it's placement, so I gave it a good home.
Sars Chicken is not being subservient. Does he have a distinctive legbanding pattern?
[via bufoonery.org]
A couple days ago I noted that the Seattle Public Library has the magnificent survey of the psychedelic pop era known as Nuggets II. Obviously enough, it's the second in a series which begins with Nuggets, which I'm happy to note is also available.
Nuggets focuses on obscure American rock bands; Nuggets II looks afield to the UK, Europe, and beyond, including Mexican and Asian groups. It's really astonishing in the diversity of sources.
I first was exposed to this material through Steve Millen's ongoing tape-compilation projects, The Enpsychedelipedia and the followup, best-of project, The Re-Enpsychedelipedia. I don't recall how many volumes the series collectively ran to, but I'm gonna guess in the range of twenty ninety-minute tapes. A day after linking to the CDs, I got an email from a pal wondering if anyone had converted Steve's Enpsychedelipedia to digital formats. I believe that there are one or two cassette-based complete copies of the project around, but it's so much material I doubt that it's been completely converted, and possibly hasn't been attempted.
Steve had a collection of original vinyl from the era in addition to being a knowledgeable and passionate pursuer of roughly every vinyl reissue series available at the time. The project really picked up steam in the mid-to-late eighties, when there were several competitor series to Nuggets in circulation. The competitor compilations were a mixed bag: definitely of greater interest to connoisseurs of the obscure, these series tended to emphasize rawer songs and musicians, with recording quality being less of a consideration for inclusion than is the case on the relatively polished and well-budgeted Nuggets series.
Nuggets is a fantastic introduction to these sounds, make no mistake, and avoids falling into the anti-commercial trap that can so easily limit enthusiast-oriented compilations to material that did not succeed commercially at the time of release; thus, along with Tomorrow's Digger anthem "My White Bicycle," you get some pre-Monkees Davy Jones, pre-Eurostar Status Quo, the Troggs, and so forth.
Rhino conveniently provides tracklistings for both Nuggets and Nuggets II.
Nuggets was originally compiled by Patti Smith cohort Lenny Kaye in the early seventies; the original track notes may be seen at Little Steven's web site, which has a number of interesting rock history goodies scattered about.
The most wide-ranging and best distributed of the non-Nuggets compilations is the 28-voume (!) Pebbles series. Apparently, twelve of these have been re-issued on CD, with differing track selections, and three 2-CD best-of sets are also available.
The final compilation source that I know Steve worked from to assemble his survey of this fertile field was also released by the same company that promulgated Pebbles.
Highs in the mid-Sixties focused on the many distinct regional rock scenes in the US. I can still remember the first time that Steve played Volume Seven for me, which features Pacific Northwest bands from the mid-sixties. He backed that up with an introduction to the original vinyl of The Sonics, which astonished me in its' rawness.
Finally, Steve's favorite band from this era is the formerly overlooked 13th Floor Elevators, a band that, he maintained, was infinitely superior to the no-count likes of "orchestral rockists" such as the Beatles and "instrumental fascists" like that "tightass white boy" Eric Clapton. Steve had strong, and frequently amusing, opinions.
The Elevators are legendary in Texas, partly because lead singer Roky Erickson is supposed to have gone nuts from using too much cough syrup. The truth of the matter is probably more complex; however you come down on the debate concerning the high-art aspirations of the most widely celebrated artists of the late sixties, it does seem clear that the Elevators were long unfairly neglected, something that may have changed somewhat since the early eighties.
So, is there a way to emulate the Enpsychedelipedia? Are there other knowledgeable eccentrics that still care about this material sufficiently to present guides, their own recompilations, and the like?
Happily, the answer is yes.
Turn Me On, Dead Man (despite an unfortunate all-graphic front page) offers webcasts via live365.com, and though their features highlight predictable artists that would have induced armwaving rants from Mr. Millen, there is an extensive catalog of garage and psychedelic compilation reissues.
Here's another compilation database, which is also available for download from the compiler as an Access database.
Of course, a nod to Bomp! and the bomplist is called for. Bomp appears to have centralized many of the catalogs from other distributors that I recall from the eighties and appears to have a distribution relationship with Rhino, which in turn has a relationship with the big boys. Note that this is sheer observational speculation, I don't keep up on label contracts and distribution relationships any more.
The bomplist, despite its' name, is not specifically about Bomp product, but an active email discussion list that covers the same areas of inerest that the label's catalog does. At times it's been the best way I know of to find a particular garage-rock musician - while it's not uncommon for artists to be kinda disengaged from the internet and computers and so forth, their fans and friends are often in the thick of things.
The World's Only Ass Kicking Machine. [via MoFi]
Really, what more need be said? Ken, can we get you down there soon?
When I told Chloe that we'd been friends a lot longer than I had thought, she did start purring.
But then, she's always liked me.
Subservient Chicken: BK online ad campaign that right now allows you, the random web surfer, to instruct a full-grown person in a very elaborate chicken outfit to do, well, more or less anything.
Really.
Here's a MeFi thread which keeps track of what the Chicken will and won't do. The thread also includes anecdotal evidence that the Chicken is a collection of looped video actions tied to keywords. A monkey dissected it, provding further evidence for that line of reasoning.
Is this Sars the Chicken?
"allintitle: danelope week site:mike.whybark.com" was just spotted in my referrers.
'Allintitle.' Who knew? I deem this: useful.
In general, more than 1.5 grams of caffeine a day can cause the typical symptoms of caffeinism: anxiety, insomnia, irritability and palpitations.
[from a Times wire story in the P-I]
And finally, without intending that I would devote my day to Jeff's blog topics, I ventured to the University District where I attended a press screening of the forthcoming Jonathan Demme documentary The Agronomist, about slain Haitian journalist and activist Jean Dominique.
As I walked north from the Route 43 terminus, one block west of Trader Joe's, I spied a weathered sticker.
After the film, I had a pleasant lunch at the storied Sushi Express in the company of one Danelope, after which I enjoyed the happy sense of public morality that comes from riding the bus. Again.
As I walked toward my house from Broadway, what did I spy, high in his natural habitat of parking regulatory and instructional signage?
Sars the Chicken. You just can't help but root for such a plucky beak. Despite this, one presumes that Mr. Chicken will be avoiding our good friends north of the border for the foreseeable future.
Jeff has noticed that he is encountering the same crow repeatedly.
I warned him that the crow might also recognize him, and went off to Google a couple of things.
First off, I found contact information for James Ha, a University of Washington psych prof who, among other things, has studied crows.
I dropped him a line pointing out Jeff's post, and asked if the banded crow was a part of his study, and furthermore, if the banding represents multiple captures.
Here's his reply:
Mike,The bird was banded only once, but was banded so that we could identify
each unique individual so the pattern of bands identifies this animal.I can tell by the position of the aluminum Fish and Wildlife
Service-registered band that this bird was not banded by us but by the
other major crow researcher in the United States, also at UW, John
Marzluff and his lab. Check out:http://courses.washington.edu/vseminar/main.htm#3
Cheers,
Jim Ha
And off I went. Lo and behold, this key and accompanying instructions point to a sighting report form!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Jeff had read through another set of tagging info, and according to the rules seen therein, noted that the crow might be known as RB-GYS, for the banding order on his or her legs.
Since Jeff is assigning the male pronoun, I'll follow suit. However, I'll go one better. The bird's name is now Robgys, [rob-ghis] as far as I am concerned.
This concludes my initial bird post of the day.
Hello, what's this?
Friends, the public library is your true friend.
I think it may say something definitive about me that I'm far more excited about four CDs of forgotten one-hit wonders than four CDs documenting a single artist's profound effect on the history of a genre.
Tonight, shall it be beer, or shall it be Bombay martinis? The future is unwritten.
User One informs us of Beatallica's new album. You'll need a BitTorrent client (I've not tried this 'un) to access the torrent of either.
UPDATE: Now also seen on music.metafilter.com.
Those of you partial to Chuck Taylor hi-tops, neighborhoodies, and the occasional bowling shirt are strongly advised to drop in on Dear God Damn Diary today and avail yourself of some fine tune selections.
After 17 Years, They're Back, and in the Mood for Love: the Times picks up on poupou's eagle-eyed naturism.
Did I say 'naturism'? Perhaps I mean 'naturalist's observations.'
Iowa underwent an emergence in 1997, and this link contains video. Only one of the audio links is still good.
I have undoubtedly romanticized memories of the event. The noise of the critturs is unbearably loud, but the huge bugs themselves are fascinating and were not threatening to me as a child. I recall coaxing them to crawl on me, and studying their discarded husks on the bark of trees with fascination.
BryanByun.com appears to be a reglar-style blog from the illustrious B^2. Could this be the man behind the mask? Only time will tell.
Kindall points out the 8-Ball revealed, and with that I should really call it a night. It's been a busy day, mostly not involving computers.
I can't seem to come up with anything beyond being tickled that Metafilter has opened membership again. It's all shiny.
Off to the bottle of port.
RecentEdits is a back door into the April Fool's gag at MeFi, which appears to be giving the wiki code a run for its' money. However, a common trick appears to be the posting of spurious error messages in place of the collaborative content.
Adding to the confusion is the apparent rate of edits. Refreshing the page will almost certainly yeild a different result.
A useful link amidst the babel: Urgo.com is tracking the foolishness of the day.
Jeff has a doozy of a site redesign up. I've considered it from a number of angles.
[Warning: spoilers in extended entry. If you know Jeff or are in close blog orbit, you should probably wait a bit before reading them.]
From one angle, it looks awwwfully familiar. From another, familiar, yet different (Click on "Jeff" in the entry). From another, somehow, a sense of deja vu (click 'Beans for Breakfast' in the sidebar).
I feel special. That's some good company.
