Halloween is just another day in Portland.

is it a costume
or just a dirty hipster?
really hard to tell

But who won the football game?

one week, no facebook
biggest realization?
don't miss it at all

"You are very likely thinking I’ve lost my mind by now and you may not be terribly far off."

I decided to try these as a reward for some people working really hard this week. It was quite the production, indeed, and I wasn't totally pleased with the results (in my opinion, they were good but not the WOW I had hoped for - but I expected that since I let the dough sit in the refrigerator longer than I'd wanted to).

But, they were gone in 60 seconds and several people requested the recipe. I'd call that a success.

a world of yum

Purchased!

It made my day.

Time out.

highly recommend
good beer(s), good band* and park swings
on a wednesday night

________________
* Black Prairie played free shows every Wednesday this month, and a month ago I was really excited about that. Then life happened and I missed them all. But seeing as how last night was their last show, I finally got organized about it and dragged a friend along. We sat in the back corner where we could hear well enough but avoid the mass of humanity in the other room.

Good music, and Jenny Conlee was actually there which was awesome. But the best moment was during a music break; I was waiting behind Chris Funk at the bar and some woman asked us to move so that she could get water from the jug. Chris politely extended his hand for her glass to help her out, and she cradled the glass and edged around us. He looked at me and said something about her being serious about sanitation.

If you know who either of these people are, then I probably don't have to explain that Chris could have sneezed on my food and I would've happily eaten it. As it was, I could barely crack a smile. I WAS STANDING BEHIND CHRIS FUNK! IN A TINY BAR!

I love Portland.

Oh, and probably another eight on Saturday.

seventy nine in
another eight on Friday
... job security?

Pre-Wednesday three.

Three amazing things I learned about today, in no particular order:

• Trent Reznor is ready to let go of the steering wheel.
• I hope it's a musical.
• Why I will never go to a haunted house, exhibit #9.
  

Need to start paying attention again.

i had no idea
such atrocities occurred
thank you dave eggers

Occupy Portland, Day 15.

tempting... but no thanks

I walk by this park every day on my way from the bus to the office. Sometimes someone is screaming into a megaphone. Other times a drum circle is surrounded by people dancing. Once in a while it's quiet.

The protest signs range from clever ("bros before CEOs!") to angry ("to hell with wall street!") to snarky ("keep shopping, everything is fine!") to I-have-no-idea-how-it-relates ("this is 100% recycled material," "Oregon is killing its senior citizens").

The park smells funny and soon it will start to rain again.

On the up side, a friend was telling me that she was at her (behemoth) bank yesterday and witnessed several people closing their accounts. She then went to take care of some business at her local credit union and changed her mind because the line was out the door.

Baby steps.

Bank changes aside, I haven't quite figured out what actions I need to take in support of all of this. The homeless problem is rampant here and that seems like the obvious place to devote some free time... but this is Portland, where people line up months in advance for volunteer opportunities. And also I'm getting old and complacent so I may just resort to giving money to local shelters and other community-building establishments. I have been shopping and eating local like crazy the last few weeks though.

But whatever the outcome? Sorry, Oakland and Berkeley friends, but our protest has THE BEST acronym. Army with harmony!

I love that "corpse in an elevator" has become a plot keyword.

Last Sunday I was thrilled to see Attack the Block on the marquee at the local $4 theater. I'd been eying this since hearing that it involved various people who were also involved with Shaun of the Dead and related movies that I didn't like as much but still laughed at. And what with Halloween almost upon us, I had to keep up my string of recent campy blood-and-guts monster flicks.

I was entertained, but not wowed as I'd hoped to be. The social justice angle seemed a bit forced and the stoner angle was tired. But the blood-and-guts action was spot on, and really, that's all that matters as far as these films are concerned.

Right? Who's with me?

(Um... I also clapped after Sin City and I couldn't stop grinning after Grindhouse. And I love that "corpse in an elevator" has become a plot keyword. Do I need help?)

Wednesday three.

The best thing about no Facebook has been that I've managed to catch up on the bazillion items in my google reader subscription list. I know, I know - I've traded one time sink for another. But seriously, does Facebook have gems like these:

• "The glass is half full, you know why? Because someone bumped my arm, and now half of my drink is gone!" (from here)
• the cutest monkey EVAH!
• poor T-Rex (I feel his pain, I always lost the "shotgun!" game too)
  

?? I ask you!

________________
And also, OMG this is going to be an HBO series? If only Alan Ball was in charge...

And also, sweet.

Public service announcement for Spotify users.

You can find a brilliant version of "District Sleeps Alone Tonight" by Frank Turner on Spotify. It's raw and rough and it's how that song should have been recorded in the first place. (No offense, Ben Gibbard, this is just imho.)

Search for it. Do it NOW.

(Please. Also, please let me know your Spotify "name"? I am still figuring this thing out but I did subscribe to the $5/month service for a trial run.)

I saw Frank Turner and his band Saturday night and it was an amazing show. He's been dubbed "the Billy Bragg of our generation," and while I wouldn't go that far, it's not a terrible comparison. Some politics, some history, some really good love (and anti-love) songs. He's only 30 so his lyrics are a bit immature, and I mean that in the nicest way. This song (and cutest video EVER!) and this one are my current faves.

Andrew Jackson Jihad opened. They were very fun as well...

Almost halfway to a Friday five.

Five reasons I deactivated my Facebook account, in no particular order except for maybe the last most important reason:

• I recently heard a "futurist" speak about the future of social networking (as well as advances in research that had people moving objects with their minds - WITH. THEIR. MINDS!!) and it was so terrifying, it made me want to buy a cabin in the woods and never, ever come out of hiding.
  
• If you aren't reading this here blog right now, I don't really care that your baby rolled over for the first time, or that your basement flooded during the last storm, or that you "checked in" at the local pizza joint.
  
• My ex's ex kept coming up as a recommended "friend." (Um, no.)
  
• My 20 year high school reunion is next year and I want no part of that. I started to just hide people with the plan of doing a clean sweep after the actual event, but that quickly became way too much work. So I redefined "clean sweep."
• 1844 pages:
  

There are many more reasons but those are the highlights. Honestly, I was mostly using it to track local bands and it was AMAZINGLY helpful in that sense (not too little info like with email subscriptions, not too much info like Twitter feeds - it was just right). So now I'll have to figure out how to keep up with that proactively. I will probably go back someday in the near future, but it will be nice to experience actual life for a little while.

And, you know who you are, in response to "WHAT ABOUT THE BLOG. (no pressure.)", it stays and I hope to post more now that I'm not reading about what my 4th grade classmate ate for dinner. Thanks to all of you for your support. (Whoever you are. With the exception of YKWYA and a few others, I really don't know for the most part... and I kind of like that.)

And yet I'm up four hours later.

nineteen ninety nine
last time i partied like that
i'm too old for this

One day I will learn: ice cream before bed equals insomnia.

on nights like tonight
i wish my gym was open
twenty-four hours

I was kidding! (Sort of.)

Today in a meeting I commented that we really needed to do a good job scoping this project so that if I decided to stay in New Zealand next year, someone else would be able to easily pick it up.

Crickets.

No sense of humor, these people...

File under: people I would like to be friends with.

Spent way too much time today trolling the internet. Waaaaaay too much time. Most of the people I read about were not people I would like to call friends.

But a handful were creatively inspiring and made me wish I could hang out with them on a regular basis so that we could inspire each other. Examples:

• Ran across this creation via a mommy/designer blog I follow. (I am neither mommy nor designer; however, I enjoy her stories and storytelling method... However, I would not like to be friends with her. Just the musician.)
  
• Was reminded of this, which I got to through a very circuitous internet route starting with Facebook and meandering through sites I hardly ever read (Elle, Us Magazine) and sites I do read occasionally (Salon, Gawker). I used to keep up with his site years ago, before it turned into such an interesting collaborative artistic effort. What a brilliant idea. I hope to contribute someday... but it's kind of intimidating.
• Everything is amazing right now, and nobody's happy.
  
• And finally, this oldie but goodie. I love this lady.
  

Does an outlet mall count as a corporation?

lazy saturday
now for retail therapy
it's been a long week

iAm a PC.

Yesterday on the drive back to LAX after a work meeting, a coworker was checking her iThing and announced that Steve Jobs had died.

"Oh." That was all iCould muster. iFelt a little bad about that, so iAdded what iThought was an appropriate follow-up comment: "Wow."

And then iWent back to decompressing after the all-day meeting.

iKnow this is monumental - epic, in fact. Like most people my age, iLearned simple commands on a Mac at summer computer camp (um, you went to computer camp as a kid, right? it wasn't just me, right?). iWatched most people my age move into the Mac world at one point or another over the past decade and rave about the products. iUsed to live in the Bay Area where the annual Macworld was a mecca for geeks worldwide. When iNeeded a new computer iAsked for advice and all iGot was "OMG YOU MUST BUY AN APPLE." A flight attendant asked everyone to turn off "everything that starts with an 'i'" before we took off the other day.

But iAm a late adopter who just wants to be able to send an email now and then, preferably from the comfort of my couch, and listen to music on something portable, and edit photos occasionally. iHave not followed Apple. Like, at all. iBought an early version of the iPod several years after the first was released, mostly on a whim. iAppreciate my hand-me-down iTouch and Nano but really, iWould never have purchased them if left to my own devices. There are so many other products that do all iNeed for a much cheaper price. And iHate typing on those tiny keypads.

And then it occurred to me (and thus ends the snippy i's). Without Mr. Jobs, I would not have access to all these other, cheaper products. And then I saw this quote: "We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much — if at all."

[Ed. note: you know what? Never mind. I still like the quotes and I still hope he has free wifi though.] I've seen many similar humble posts on Facebook and elsewhere, and I now realize he was just a regular, stand up guy... who happened to be a genius billionaire.

So thank you, Steve. I hope you are comfortable and happy in your new home, wherever that may be. I'm sure there's free wifi. If there's not, there will be soon. iJust know it.

________________
Another fave: "I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television — but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent."

The real question: with the week, or with the job?

i think that working
forty one hours so far
means i am all done

Text messages do not count.

writing anything
every day no matter what...
harder than i thought

This weekend's infotainment inspired by Joss Whedon.

To honor the winners of the song title-off, I saw Fright Night this afternoon.

(Yeah, that work stuff? Ain't. Gettin'. Done. It's sacred Sunday, for Pete's sake! More realistically, vamps and beer were calling! I'll just go in early tomorrow. Whatevs.)

But first.

Yesterday I saw Tucker and Dale Vs Evil, which I was mostly interested in because it was showing at my local nonprofit theater that I love to support no matter what, and also because it featured my favorite comedic wingman, Alan Tudyk. You may recall him from such roles as Wash in Firefly/Serenity and Steve the Pirate from Dodgeball, and a bunch of other stuff (holy cow - HE was Alpha in Dollhouse? did I know that? I need to watch that whole series all over again immediately). TADVE was campy and awkward and uber-bloody and ridiculous... and I loved, loved, loved it. I think the last time I laughed out loud so much at a campy horror movie was during Sin City. Or maybe Grindhouse. Where is that Quentin Tarantino these days? Anyway, it's been a while since a movie caused me to literally LOL. (I have been following the "literally" warfare, and I can assure you that this use is legit.)

But back to the topic at hand. I watched the original Fright Night at a sleepover a bazillion years ago and loved it, and I was very excited to see that Marti Noxon had a hand in the 2011 version of the remake. It had been at a pricey theater for a few weeks (in 3D no less - WHY??), so when I saw it on the marquee at the local $3 pizza pint picture place, I planned my entire Sunday around that 4:30 showing.

Welcome to my life these days.

Sadly... it was "eh." It flowed okay. The vamp CGI (especially of them dying) was kind of interesting. The main kid, Toni Collette, Colin Farrell, and that guy from Doctor Who (who I would know if I ever watched Doctor Who) did a good job, and Lisa Loeb was in it (although I have no idea which character she played). There were a few lines where I recognized sarcastic intent.

But overall I have to say that I expected much more from Ms. Noxon.

Hello, you have reached my own private Whedonesque world. We charge a hefty price here. Hope you can afford the critique.

Also, I have 23 songs about ghosts.

I'm supposed to be working this afternoon, so naturally I decided to see who would win in a vampire/zombie song title-off in my iTunes collection.

I mean, really, which would YOU rather do?

It was a pretty close call but if you count anything with "Dracula" in the title, the vampires eeked past the zombies. Just barely. As it should be. However, if the contest was based on the song title, Sufjan Stephens would win for the brain eaters with his marvelous song, "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!! Ahhhhh!"

I might finally tackle that Decemberists pie chart too. Every new album they release makes it a bigger and more arduous project... Wait - someone already did it for me! I LOVE YOU, INTERNET!

A magical equation.

oregon zoo show
aimee mann plus the weepies
plus some elephants

(This is about two months overdue.)

The Weepies - the name fits the bass player,
but the other two were all smiles the whole time

"hoarders" inspired this song
(not too much different from all the "intervention"-inspired songs)