Strange Pulse

We caught the show in Hawaii, before we moved back to Seattle. And then when we got back, they were playing Seattle, so we caught them again. Here’s a pic from the Seattle show:

The first show, in Hawaii, was better. Because we walked up to the door without tickets the night of the show and somehow ended up with about 20th row. The seats in the arena in Hawaii were plastic fold-out chairs that hooked together to form a row. So everyone up front just unhooked them and tossed them to the side. We were the first row not to do that, so there was a big gap between us and the rest of the crowd jumbled up against the stage—which means from the band’s vantage point, we stood out.

There’s a song, forget which one, where the band tries to get everyone chanting, “Die! Die! Die!” We just stood there. So the singer and the bassist pointed right at us, motioning for us to join in. Yeah, right.

It was a great show, though. And now my son can brag to his friends that we saw Metallica in 1989. And I guess I can brag about it on my blog.

Felt a tremor stir beneath my breath
That forecasts storms on the gallup poll
Woke up from the nightmare news
Hoping to read a sign in the morning air

Nothing changes here and nothing improves
All say my friends who just want out
And leave these troubles behind
Scatter like paper in the eye of the storm
Documented with a silenced note
That’s only heard from far, far away

More cards in play, following suit
Everywhere you look, you only see red
Wonder when to call off the race
Watching a horse running down its last legs
Just when you think it couldn’t get much worse
Watch the numbers rise on the death toll
And the chimes of freedom flash and fade
Only heard from far, far away

I hear you can’t trust in your own
Now the grey is broken in the early morn
And the words forming barely have a voice
It’s just your heart that’s breaking without choice

Everything you’ve learned is distorted in your head
Bouncing off the walls, unraveling the thread
Staying up with the blue screen glow
Forgetting everything you ever dreamed years ago

When the dread is flowing down my veins
I want to tear it all down and build it up again
Tear it all and build it up again
Hear your heart that’s breaking without choice
I want to hear those chimes ring again
Ring again

I think I normally post this over at Kulturblog, but MCQ already beat me to it. This time I’m not just going to include pictures, though, but also recordings!

^ Bang Camaro

^ Charlie Parr

Who was opening for:

^ Low
Song posted: “Cue the Strings”
(They’re actually singing it in the pic above)

^ Pelican
Song posted: “Bliss in Concrete”

^ Middian
Song posted: “My War”
(Black Flag cover - that’s me you hear laughing at the end)

^ Voxtrot
Song posted: “Soft & Warm”
(I think they’re singing it in the pic above)

^ Ted Leo
Song posted: “Timorous Me”
(He messes it up, kinda funny)

^ The Frames
Song posted: “Fitzcarraldo”
(I still can’t believe they played it! Sooooo awesome.)

^ Hoodoo Gurus
Song posted: “Dig It Up”
(Only my favorite song by them ever, and they played it!)

Alison Krauss & Union Station
Song posted: “Goodbye Is All We Have”
(Can you believe the perfection?)

Isis/Jesu/Zozobra
Songs Posted:
Isis - “Wills Dissolve” (That’s Mike D. and me talking at the beginning)
Jesu - “Silver” (That’s my “wooo!” at the beginning)
Zozobra - Title Unknown

Some of these recordings are really lousy. But I don’t care, because I was there, and now can relive it. :)

Shows I didn’t get a camera or a recorder into:

Heaven & Hell/Megadeth
Willie Nelson/Jackson Browne
Linkin Park/My Chemical Romance
Melvins/Mudhoney (Don’t Look Back show)
RJD2/Pigeon John/Happy Chichester
3 Inches of Blood
Midlake

He loved them both.

1) I got him a couple disassembly, or interlocking, puzzles. He only recently discovered these things and absolutely LOVES them. He’s always been a very spatial thinker so it’s perfect for him. I ordered two online and they didn’t get delivered until about 4pm Christmas Eve—talk about cutting it close! I knew they’d make him happy and I was right.

2) I also got him a band t-shirt at the swap meet. Not just any band t-shirt, but an old punk rock band called Rudimentary Peni. I don’t understand it, but you can find these shirts at various places. I guess they’re part of the punk rock “uniform” kids are into these days. I doubt any of the kids who wear these shirts have ever heard their music—they’re a very obscure band from the 80s. (If you look them up in allmusic.com, there’s not even a bio for them.) We just happen to have their record on vinyl, from our teen years, and Daniel just happened to have the same t-shirt as a teenager. He wore it ALL the time:

And when he opened the present and saw what it was, he immediately stripped off the shirt he was wearing and put it on.

We did.

When the kids were small, we videotaped them opening their gifts on Christmas every morning, and we always did it on the same tape. On Christmas Eve this year we dug out that old videotape and watched it. It was really entertaining. Every year, we were in a different house. Every year, someone was sick with a cold.

Funniest moments:

Catherine, about age 7, opened a gift that was a bunch of fancy Barbie doll dresses. She said, “Oh! I *need* these.”

Nathaniel, about age 8, said, “She does need those. She has a lot of naked Barbies.”

–

Catherine, about age 7, was just as bossy as she’s ever been. She said to Elijah, while everyone was opening presents, “You should choose a space and put all your toys there. See, I chose the shelf.”

Eljiah, about age 4, said, “I choose…” He looked all around the wide open floor, which he was sitting in the middle of. He motioned to the gift right in front of him and said, “Right here.”

I went to the flea market down the street yesterday to pick up a couple last minute things for the kids, and I saw this sitting in a pile of other junk:

I thought, “That’s either a fold out camera, or a flat pair of binoculars.” I opened it up, and I was right:

It’s a fold out camera!

The coolest thing is that it takes 120 film:

And it came with an exposed roll of film in it! Can’t wait to get it developed and see what’s on it.

My kids’ first reaction was, what if it has nasty pictures on it? I said, “People didn’t take nasty pictures back then.”

I’d say Dax Riggs:

Video footage is shaky in this one, but the sound is good—listen to his voice:

I love the line, “I envy the night for its absence of light.”

After Dax (or probably tied, hard to choose), I’d say Mark Lanegan:

I have a friend who was roommates with Mark Lanegan way back in the day. He said he’d wander around the apartment singing. Can you imagine?

If you don’t know what Hot Topic is, it’s a store in the mall that sells punk rock and heavy metal music, clothes, accessories. It’s the store I wanted to exist when I was a teenager. Now that it does actually exist I find it really bizarre. Just weird on so many levels.

I went there because Cat wanted to get some Christmas presents for her friends, and I didn’t want to go to the mall after school or on the weekend because it’s insane to go during those hours. So I went shopping for her. She wanted to get something Gir-related for her best friend, Gir being a cartoon character on the tv show Invader Zim. I found a little compact with lip gloss in it shaped like Gir. Her friend is also really into the band HIM, and they had a giant HIM button right by the register, so I grabbed that, too.

The woman at the cash register, who looked about like this, said, “I love your dye job. I mean, your hair is naturally brown, right? The blond looks great. Really natural.”

I don’t think of my hair as blond, but I guess you could call it that. Just a lighter brown than my natural color, which I use because with all my gray, it looks more natural.

I said, “It’s because the blond doesn’t cover all the gray, so it looks more natural.”

Then she thought I’d been offended, like she had noticed all my gray, or something. I dunno. People are weird.

I went along with Daniel on Saturday when he went dirt bike riding out in Beaumont. It’s about an hour drive southeast of us. More east than south. There’s all these hills of dirt, some have giant boulders and rock formations. It’s illegal to ride out there, you can get tickets for it, but everyone does it. We went to one spot first, and before Daniel was even set up to start riding, cops showed up and were giving people tickets. We’d parked further in so we just left before the cops headed our way. We went around to the other side of the hills to a spot that’s much harder to get to and no one bothered us.

I took my panoramic camera with the flipped lens and hiked around while Daniel did some riding.

It was cold and windy. Or maybe I should say, the wind was cold.

Daniel:

There was this top of a tree just sitting on the hillside upside down:

From further back. You can see the dirt bike trails on the hillside:

I tried hiking over to these other rocks but there was too much brush in the way. Brush is prickly in the desert:

There was a crazy bush—two bushes?—with these big branches growing out of it:

The little dark speck in the center horizon is Daniel:

Oh well.

My kids, taken last Sunday:

Plus some action shots: