Saturday the pharm gang and I went to Western Washington to do some car camping at Olympic National Park. Lauren and Heather called it “break-in camping,” aka “pop-your-cherry-camping,” since Pat, Sherri, and I never been camping. My fears of being eaten by a bear were assuaged when I discovered how populated the area was and how there were many amenities.
We drove to Edmonds port to take the ferry over to Kingston to continue our drive over to the park. We first stopped at Hurricane ridge, a popular tourist spot to do a quick hike and check out the area. I never understood the lure of National Parks as a tourist destination. Entire families would come to see the view of the surrounding mountains, take some pictures, buy some sweatshirts with “Olympic National Park” imprinted on the front and then leave. Maybe when I’m older I’ll get the strange desire to visit random high altitude places to take pictures.
After a short hike we made our way to the campsite located on the far side of Lake Crescent. Very blue and clear lake. Heather said it was partly due to the lack of certain organisms (the green inducing kind?) because of the pH of the water or something…not sure; I asked her more questions but the subject just ended up on my “to-research list.” Ask.com had the answer. The campsite was almost full when we arrived-lots of families. The site was more like a winding parking lot in the forest with each large parking spot having enough room for two cars, a picnic table and a fire pit. There were even restrooms and running water around. I was pleasantly surprised by all the nice amenities.
After setting up, we went for a walk around the lake. We saw some people skinny dipping, but I didn’t have the balls to whip out the camera. I did see side-boob though. They later turned out to be hippies when they asked us for help to push their VW bus out of the soft dirt. We worked up a good sweat and jumped in the lake to freshen up.
Just like what happened with camping at Sasquatch, we didn’t bring enough activites to do (except at Sasquatch we didn’t bring anything to do so we had to sit in the tent, in the rain, doing nothing). We played around with the guitars for awhile, and then Lauren got a little inebriated and started sharing dance moves with Sherri and Heather. They learned to do the “backtrack,” and the “running man.” 1994 was replaying right in front of my eyes.
Smores and snores later, we packed up our stuff and headed back to Seattle. Sunday was the hottest day of the year so far and Pat and I chose to stupidly roast in the sun playing tennis. Overall, camping wasn’t that bad, not my all-time favorite activity, but also not at the bottom of my list. Would have been nice to get intoxicated of another sort and just chill and indulge in a munchie-induced marshmallow and cheetos feast. If I had put a freq cap on camping, I’d probably say twice a year, during either summer/spring/fall. I did end up with a luxurious chair and a killer headlamp out of the adventure though.
Not much to say except that being in the front row ROCKS! Maybe it was because there weren’t too many people on a Monday night or the nice crowd there, but we were very comfortable in the front row. This is great for short people like Jaime and I. We didn’t have to fight to get there either; people convienently stepped aside after the PSAPP performance.
We only caught the tailend of the PSAPP show, but from what we saw, they were weird and eclectic. They probably had 7 people on stage, with some playing strange instruments.
Also check out my other write-up of Jose here. Here are some choice Jose Gonzalez songs before you watch the videos I took:
I heard Juana Molina for the first time last night as she opened for Jose Gonzalez at Neumo’s. I find it difficult to describe her music, but if I were to pick adjectives, I’d use: eclectic, raw, organic, and soothing. Weird innit? Wiki describes her as:
The lyrics on her albums are sung in her native Spanish and often accompanied by acoustic guitar, among other instruments. Her music features elements of ambient and electronica, and she is often compared by critics to Björk, Beth Orton, and Lisa Germano.
Prior to her performance I got a lesson from a fellow next to me about how elegant her Argentine Spanish dialect is compared to other common dialects. He said that certain pronouns and other words were pronounced less harshly, giving the language a more graceful sound “similar to French, but without the pretentiousness.”
What I found amazing about her performance was that she was recording samples and loops during her performance through the use of her foot pedals. Sometimes she would do this before a song, and other times during a song. For example, she would sample herself doing a percussive strum on her guitar, then loop it back and play over it; she does not need a full backing bad -- she IS the band. She often intertwined her own droning vocal melodies as the backdrop for her Spanish lyrics.
Jaime and I had a great spot in the front row, unfortunately it was right in front of her keyboard so we could barely see her face. This spot would prove to be great for watching Jose Gonzalez though. Here are some pictures and videos of her performance:
Not much has happened since my last entry. Last Sunday I went mountain biking at Lake Sawyer with Pat and the BBTC. Hardest, most technical ride I’ve been on so far. I fell multiple times and I still have a bruise on my thigh and my wrist is still sprained. My taint is still in pain too. Other than that, the past week has mainly been about work. I tried to promise myself that I wouldn’t write blog entries that just listed what I did, but I’m going to do it anyway – I want to chronicle even the little things, plus I feel guilty when I don’t update the blog for more than a week.I’ve also been focusing a lot of my efforts into sprucing up my music blog and populating it with content. Been messing around with this blog too.
On Friday night I went to see Sex In Seattle, a comedy theatre performance about the Asian dating scene in Seattle. A very funny show, although I have yet to see anything that would make the comedy Seattle-specific. I saw an episode last year and the actors were different this time around but everyone still did a great job. There were a couple of jokes about why asian women date white guys which were on-point.
In other irrelevance, Howard Stern is finally streaming on Sirius over the internet. I’m not sure if I will listen at work yet, but I’m having a blast listening at home.
What a crazy night. Joyce and I got to the venue early and we chilled for a bit and when it started filling up we got on the dance floor. We were laughing constantly at the crazy dancers around us.
There was a guy who looked Armenian or Hasidic and so I dubbed him code name “Matisyahu” -- his dancing was my favorite. Stiff shoulders, loose arms and tons of wriggling -- Joyce said he looked like he was being electrocuted, but I think it more resembled a seizure. There was a crazy white guy in a too-too-small t-shirt dancing like he took an ambien -- “loose,” would barely begin to describe his movements, he busted out the soon-to-be-classics such as the “lean way back and hand chop the air,” “touch the ground and spin around” and “throw elbows like nobody’s business.” But enough about the dancing, I’ll get to the music. Thankfully, when the club got more full, there was less room for people to throw elbows while dancing.
The DJs were great, I particularly enjoyed Low-Budget, whose mashups between top40 rap songs and dance beats got everyone to move around. Pase Rock also a great DJ set and would later rap along with Spankrock. Spankrock got on stage after midnight and simply rocked the house. He’s got so much charisma and style on stage he has to be seen to be believed (some girl threw her thong on stage and he wore it as a hat). I’ll let the videos I took speak for themselves.
We left Chop Suey (fun venue! Asian-themed) dead-tired after Spankrock’s set. Overrall Spankrock did a great job, he did a couple of songs I’ve never heard of before; but unfortunately he didn’t do my two favorite songs “Bump” and “Coke & Wet.” Unless he did an encore, I don’t think he did any more songs when we left.
I made a separate blog chronicling my music-listening adventures. I wanted to keep my music ramblings separate from this blog, because I didn’t want to flood this blog with tons of playlists or artist spotlights. Some of things shared between both blogs will be my writings about the shows I attended.
This site has been up for almost two months now and I think it’s time we think about what the blog should be about. The blog has changed immensely from my original intentions, but now it is shaping into something I feel comfortable with updating on a regular basis. I think that we want this to be more than just a typical blog where we write about anything – instead, we’ll to try to make sure this blog has a more personal touch.
We don’t plan to pollute the blog with funny/interesting links (the SW forum is for that), but instead use this as a platform to chronicle our lives and write about issues that affect us directly. It’ll be useful for friends and family to take a peek and see what’s going on in our lives at the moment. When catching up with old friends, it is sometimes easier to direct them to this blog and have a sort of starting point to talk about.
Eventually, I’d like to make this blog a sort convening point for friends where we can catch up on each others’ happenings. That’s why I have it currently set so anyone can register and start making posts.
Other news: I’m starting (yet) another blog, that will entirely be about music. It’s going to be similar to this blog, but will focus on all the music I am listening to at the moment or about shows I am attending – so expect some cross-posting.
Other irrelevance: Image header is now randomized with each refresh – got the idea from diversion’s blog
