Two for one over on Three Imaginary Girls

The writing muse wooed me today and I wrote two articles over on the Three Imaginary Girls music site.

Pearl Jam back in the day
Seventeen years + 1 day ago, I started loving live music shows.
(Pearl Jam plays Seattle's Key Arena tonight and tomorrow night)

Girl Talk and a remix manifesto
Rip: A Remix Manifesto is a new-ish documentary film about the legality of remixes and mashups and features Gregg Gillis of Girl Talk as the poster child for open source licensing.
(Girl Talk played a show in Seattle on Saturday and a second one tonight)

Dusky city soccer

dusk city soccer
Originally uploaded by JeanineAnderson

Cal Anderson Park supplies continuous photo ops.

Day trippin'

Got out of the city
Originally uploaded by JeanineAnderson

Lake Easton State Park is one of my favorite late summer/fall day trips when it's cool in Seattle and hot in Eastern WA.

The picnic area is very well shaded with tall pine trees and is located right on the lakeshore. Beer is tolerated, even if not expressly permitted. Dog are allowed on leashes; children may run free.

Lake Easton is the headwaters of the Yakima River, which is the main source of irrigation for the fruit and farm-rich Yakima Valley.

Located at exit 70 off I-90, about 10 miles east of Snoqualmie Pass. about 75 min from Seattle.

Picture from my magic gadget iPhone

Sidewalk fruit. red plums. Yum!

The wading pool at Cal Anderson Park! Haven't seen it filled before. A sad little spot no more.

The wading pool at Cal Anderson Park! Haven't seen it filled before. A sad little spot no more.
Originally uploaded by JeanineAnderson

Video: The Crocodile showroom redone

I was somehow lucky enough to accompany a writer on a pre-opening private tour of Seattle music venue The Crocodile earlier this week.

In one sentence: everything is different from what you remember of the old place.

Here's a 360 video of the showroom two days prior to first door open.


You can see the new showroom for yourself tonight and Friday, when local bands take the stage for what The Croc is calling soundchecks. These two nights are opportunity for the club's operations staff to fire up all engines for the first time and learn the kinks and quirks of the new place, prior to the first ticketed performance this weekend. The soundchecks tonight and Friday are completely free. You should go.

Read more about the tour and get some inside scoop in Chris Burlingame's article The Crocodile Sneak Peak. A few more photos from our tour are over on my Flickr.

The Crocodile is a new venue located at the old, long-storied Crocodile Cafe location in Belltown. (One such story goes like this: Eddie Vedder had his own personal key for the alley door so he could come and go whenever he wanted.) But this venue is not simply The Crocodile Cafe, reopened. It is The Crocodile, with a completely redone interior, top-of-the-line equipment and an operating philosophy which places quality over quantity. You will not see The Croc booking shows every night of the week, just to be open. If a good lineup can't be had, the club will be closed. (ala Showbox vs. Chop Suey vs. the old Crocodile Cafe.) I like this approach: it helps the performance-going public to distinguish between a good show and just a show. If The Croc books it, the club believes it will be good, and it is not just a date-filler on the club calendar.

The Crocodile folks we met were to-a-one friendly, approachable, open, fun, and really good people. I'm confident The Crocodile will soon enough have their own stories and be creating new memories for music lovers throughout the Puget Sound region.

It's the small things in life

toast tongs!
Originally uploaded by JeanineAnderson

These toast tongs are awesome! I've become hooked on toasted cheesy bagels and boy, oh boy, do they get HOT.

One of my kids (Glenn, I think) made these toast tongs in woodshop class and they've been neglected and fogotten in the mess of the utensil drawer.

After burning the fingertips, I briefly considered using a metal fork -- but yeah, I've seen the same cartoons as you and didn't want to turn into a b/w skeleton.

Wait, don't I have TOAST TONGS? Why yes I do! Nom nom nom.

Video: If I Made a Commercial for Trader Joe's

Who doesn't love Trader Joe's? This is a funny fan ad created by Carl's Fine Films, who describes this as an "unauthorized commercial for Trader Joe's shot on my Palm Treo before I accidentally ran over it with my car." The song perfect represents the TJ vibe.



There's a Trader Joe's three blocks from where I live. My favorite TJ things: good cheap wine, Parrano cheese for half the price of regular stores, feta cheese, organic marinara sauce, black bean dip, flattened bananas, choco-covered graham bites. I have more but I'll stop now.

Art: Wordle creates images from words

Wordle

You can make your own word art at www.wordle.net. Paste in any text, website address, or rss feed and go. After the image is generated you can play with options such as shape, colors, orientation, number of words to use, and fonts.

The fonts (typefaces) have funny names: Gunplay, Telephoto, Boopee, Sweater School Rg, Duality, Kenyan Coffee, Sexsmith, Owned, Silentina Movie, Tank, Scheme, Loved by the King, Alphabet Fridge Magnets All Caps, King Typewriter, plus more.

I made this Wordle from my Twitter posts. You can get a text file archive of all of your tweets on Twitter from TweetScan.

Advert: Check these eyebrows

I can't help but love the uber-creative ad spots the folks at Fallon come up with.

Eyebrow Dance



Cadbury’s Dairy Milk ad
agency: Fallon
creative: Nils-Petter Lovgren
production company: MJZ London
director: Tom Kuntz

Fucking David Foster Wallace (free)

Yeah, I know he's dead and all, but I have to be straight up: I couldn't get even half through An Infinite Jest. The novel was pretentious and hipster and navel-gazing and as hard to get into as any James Joyce piece of work.

I'm mostly alone in my opinion of David Foster Wallace, I realize. To be fair, I liked a few of his short stories in the collection Girl with Curious Hair. His writing was sharp and insightful in short form, particularly the first few in that collection. (The ones toward the end, meh, not so much.)

If I don't have anything else to do on Thursday April 26th, I might end up at the Hugo House and give fucking David Foster Wallace one more chance. I like the reader line up.

Reading and Celebration in Memory of David Foster Wallace
Thursday, February 26th 2009, 7:00 pm
Richard Hugo House
Free

Hugo House is hosting a special event celebrating the life and work of writer David Foster Wallace. Local luminaries David Schmader, Cienna Madrid, Paul Constant and other writers and performers will read from their most beloved of the late author’s work.

Wallace, who died tragically last September at the age of 46, was a writer of singular importance and influence, both as a literary stylist and as an exacting, hilarious, and heartbreaking examiner of the cultural and existential absurdities and tragedies in contemporary America. Come hear some of your favorite of Wallace’s essays, novels, and short fiction, or be introduced to this extraordinary writer for the first time.

For further information, contact Cristin Miller at cristinmlr@gmail.com

Make the story happen

In the dichotomous choice of cat or dog, I am dog. All the way. Not that I hate cats, I'm just mostly indifferent. (Just like a cat.) Yet, even I like this amusing video, Kittens Inspired by Kittens:



Yes, cat funny (LOL). But the video also perfectly captures what kidlets under 5 have in abundance: energy, creativity, and the ability to see the simply obvious. It's been 15 years since living with a 5-year old, so I forget the magic of a young child learning and shaping their world.

It reminds me to take time to think simply, to see the obvious, and to make the story happen.

(via LeeLeFever)

p.s. Please don't send me links to other "cute kid" videos. I can only tolerate one every three to six months. If you ignore my request, you'll get links to movies of my dog and of my vacations. The links will be disguised so well as to be irresistable. Be cool. Thank you.