Kids In The Hall and Fun with Crackheads!

We saw Kids in the Hall last night, which was funny and all that (though I felt a little jipped that they used some video bits in concert that are available on YouTube - lazy fuckers). I had parked in Chinatown, and heading back to the car afterwards, I make the ill-advised decision to detour and use one of Seattle's notorious public self-cleaning toilets in Hing Hay Park. As we reach the park, we walk right past a crowd of druggies huddling around a crack pipe, right out in the open. Just ahead is the toilet, but I can see there is a red light on the toilet's door, meaning it's occupied. A scraggly woman is walking circles around the toilet, casting the stinkeye our way as we wait.

Suddenly, a fracas erupts amongst the druggies. "Hey man, that shit wasn't real!" "Oh yeah? You want some of this? C'mon muthafucka!" Three of them are circling around the other, fists raised in the "put up your dukes/kung fu fighting" pose, throwing wild punches and yelling. Morbidly fascinated, I watch as it spills into the street. I say to Ad, "Hrm, maybe I can just hold it til we get home. We should probably get out of here" Ad: "Can we... Please!?"

Dessert Daddy

Thanks to some lucky traffic-dodging and killer robot speedwalking, Ad and I crammed more into a Friday date night in Seattle's arts district than one would have thought possible. For starters, we pondered our place in world history, gazing at time-ravaged marble genetalia at SAM's roman art exhibit. Food-gasming at Troiani followed soon after - I caved in to my carb-craving id and ordered Lobstah Mac & Cheese, determined to will myself into beating the inevitable food coma that would follow.

Chocolate dessert and a double-shot latte at the Triple Door staved off said coma and provided rocket fuel for the Cherry Poppin Daddies show. The Eugene swingers haven't missed a step, and it was nice to see them strut and toot in a swanky venue befitting their talent and style. I hadn't seen them in over 10 years, though I don't think they'll ever top a show at the now-gone OK Hotel, circa 1993 (maybe) from which I snatched a set-list written on the back of a classic Daddies showbill with Evil Clown illustrations.

I captured a great video of their encore rendition of "Cherry Poppin Daddies Strut", though my retarded video skilz haven't figured out how to compress it to an acceptable YouTube bite-size just yet. Stay tuned!

Teppanyaki A Go Go

April was a brutally stressful month for this traveller. May is shaping up much better, thank Zod. In the midst of much fretting and teeth-grinding, last week I got to enjoy a relaxing night of good food and even better company at Seattle's Mikado restaurant. We did the teppanyaki grill dinner-show thang, but the Mikado also has those cool, intimate tatami style rooms, where you take off your shoes and they cook for you at your table. Some 30-odd years ago, I went with the family to Bush Gardens for that dinner treatment, and it was an experience I never forgot.

Tomorrow is hot date night, with dinner at Troiani, followed by The Cherry Poppin' Daddies at the Triple Door. When I first set foot in the Triple Door last December, I told Ad that it was the perfect venue for a Daddies show. Their ears must have been burning from their Seattle fans' collective yearning, cause they booked a gig only a few months later. I'm looking forward to snapping some choice pictures and getting my swing on!

Tulips + Shriners = End of Days (not really)

Being as the weatherman predicted a Seattle April heat wave of 80 degrees on Saturday, we decided to be "outsidesy" and head out to LaConner to take in the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. I'd seen postcard pictures of the tulip fields for years, and as a native Washingtonian it one of those nagging items on my "bucket list" to check off.

We spent the morning literally tiptoeing through the tulips, as well as the mud - Tiny Tim left that part out of the song. I was a little underwhelmed - I'd expected seas of tulips as far as the eye could see, but it was more like the occasional big field and a lot of smaller, but very gorgeous patches.

We stopped in downtown LaConner for an afternoon of antiquing, art-walking, and gnoshing. My heart lept when we saw a food vendor selling my latest food addiction, indian flatbread. Their flatbread tacos, stuffed with salmon (Adrienne had beef), cream cheese, and salsa was right in my junkfood palate's wheelhouse!

As we were readying to leave, our exit was postponed by a town parade - though we couldn't have refused the chance to see Shriners driving those tiny cars anyways. When we got home, Adrienne gasped at the supernova sunburn on my pasty-white neck. Thankfully, I'd been wearing a baseball hat to protect my delicate noggin.

"See Washington's Tulip Fields" - check

2008: What a year for men in tights

As a perpetual juvenielle and fan of costumed perverts, er, crimefighters, 2008 just might overload my cinema-libido with it's super-lineup. It's a veritable festival with more chicks and guys in tights, monsters, and cliffhangers than you can shake a stick at!



I kicked the Year of Heroes off Saturday with "Doomsday" - Neil Marshall's "homage" to Escape from NY and Mad Max. I gave Adrienne a get-out-of-jail card by offering up the chance to see "Horton Hears a Who", which was playing at the same theaters, but the screaming throngs of children (it was 3pm) nudged her to pick Doomsday. It was about what I expected - incredibly dumb, but pretty fun. The first 3/4 of the movie was nearly a great Snake Plissken adventure - what Escape from LA should have been. Director Neil Marshall made no bones about modeling his heroine Eden Sinclair after Plissken - right down to similar attire and an eyepatch that she occasionally uncovered to reveal a cyber-eyeball cam. (Which sounds insanely dumb, but it suited the grindhouse vibe). The production quality and polish were much better than I expected - the post-apocalyptic Scotland was executed really well for the most part. But Marshall's spastic, rapid-fire editing gave me a headache during many of the action scenes, and the movie's finale landed with a thud - It was a silly Mad Max-ripoff road chase that was out of place even for the lowbrow spirit of the movie up to that point. Doomsday was also far and away the most violent movie I've seen. At one point, the post-apolalypic Scottish C.H.U.D.S barbeque a live captured soldier - in full frame from roasting to tearing him apart and eating, which was a bit much for my tastes (pun intended). Contrary to many of my peers' opinion, I actually avoid gory movies for the most part. Though I do love cheesy-gory movies like Evil Dead and Reanimator, I avoid torture-porn stuff like Saw or Hostel.

The trailer for the new Hulk movie ran before Doomsday, which looked marginally better than Ang Lee's awful attempt. I have high hopes for Iron Man, Hellboy 2, and Batman. And the pics for Zack Snyder's take on Watchmen have me giddy!

Feliz Navidad y Feliz Año Nuevo

After a nice winter break, it's back to the Microsoft mothership come Monday. Today, the tree and decorations are getting packed up and crammed into storage, the Xmas candy is in the pantry, and gifts are being sorted and put away. The marathon of Christmas craft shows, light displays, freak Seattle snowstorms, endless gorging on decadent food, and reuniting with friends and family seen too infrequently has come to a finish.

One of the more surreal moments of the Christmas season was getting lost in Bellevue's tighty-whitey community of Medina on a dark and rainy night, en route to my grandmother's dinner at the stuffy Overlake Golf & Country Club (I kept an eye out for Judge Smails). I asked a lone, rainslicker-garbed fellow walking his dogs for directions, and was surprised to recognize former Washington Senator Slade "Skeletor" Gorton. He was kind enough to give directions, though my juveneille brain was scrambling for some kind of witty crack the whole time, so I didn't hear a helpful word he said.

Hittin' the (cold) town

Friday was hot date-night on this traveler's calendar as Ad and I braved the frigid Seattle streets at night and caught Kim Virant at the Triple Door. I'd read rave reviews about the venue, and Kim Virant had played there before - but alas, at the time I was a lonely single bloke, and uncomfortable with the idea of sallying forth to such a swanky juke joint flying solo. Hot gal around my arm this time, however, the Triple Door and the divine Miss Virant didn't disappoint. A scrumptious asian-fusion dinner and cocktails was followed by a great performance, though I was still left yearning for Kim's former bandmate Brian Kenney, in attendence, to join her onstage to blow the doors down with a couple blistering tunes from their band, the legendary and much-missed Lazy Susan.