824

i’m back…

friday, i drove to portland and met , which was cool. she doesn’t do as well without some previous planning, and we didn’t make any kind of arrangements beforehand. i’m not much of a socialiser myself unless i have some kind of screen (like internet), or if i’ve known you for a while, so we both sat in her living room and discussed this and that. i’ve not met many people i know on the net IRL, and one of them was moe, who is a special case, but meeting was interesting. i’m meeting for lunch on thursday… should be interesting…

i got to the someday lounge at around 5:00, and nobody was there, so i began what would eventually become a two-day extended random wander around PDX. i took a lot of pictures, but they weren’t of the actual performances because they didn’t want me to use a flash and my digital camera isn’t good enough to take decent photos in low light situations without it.

i got back to the someday lounge at 6:00, just as they were just opening. the only people there at that point were one of the owners (i think his name is nick, but there were so many people i didn’t know that i’m not sure), lance the tech guy for TOJT (the sponsors of drunk puppet night in portland), and queen schmooquan, who was rehearsing her wonderfully twisted, bizarre, but very topical piece that featured george w. bush doing obscene things with a massive dildo (complete with two maracas) and a piece of shit.

the meat play was well received but josh and i had some problems reading the script because of low light. it always amazes me that i have to wait for people to get done laughing before i read my next line… to me, it’s just reading a script that i’ve read hundreds of times before, and it always takes me by surprise that other people haven’t read it at all.

i stayed at lance’s house, like i did last year. his wife, kris, is learning HTML because she has become the default webmaster for TOJT, but she’s having only limited success getting HTML to do what she wants – primarily because she should be learning CSS as well, and she was unaware of that. another thing of which she was unaware is validation. i’ve known a lot of people who do web design, but i can count on the fingers of one hand the web designers i have met who understand and take advantage of HTML validation. admittedly, it’s difficult to understand at first, but still… ??? needless to say, i gave her my card and told her to write me with questions as they arise.

saturday, i got up and went to find music millenium, where i purchased the latest CD by The Residents, called Tweedles. then i decided i would see how far i could drive before i got lost, and i discovered that it’s practically impossible to get lost in portland… basically, you have to go “off the grid” before the streets start making no sense, and that’s a long way in just about any direction. i started heading out of town and it wasn’t more than 20 minutes or so later that i was totally in an area that i recognised and knew which direction to go to get back to where i started. so i took the scenic route to get back to where i started, left my car and started wandering on foot. i wandered downriver from the morrison bridge to the steel bridge on the eastbank and crossed on the steel bridge exactly at the same time that a portland fireboat was crossing underneath, so i got to watch the lower level of the bridge (for freight trains) go up for it while the upper level of the bridge continued to carry car and rail (MAX) traffic without interruption (very cool!).

portland is a much friendlier city than seattle. i say that primarily because of two reasons: the people, regardless of who they are, more frequently make eye contact, and say hello or nod or something, and they’re a lot more tolerant of pedestrians when they’re driving. i’m not sure, but i think the latter may be partially a legal thing. i did notice pedestrians getting away with stuff on a regular basis that they would either be getting a ticket, or an ambulance ride for doing if they were in seattle. it doesn’t really have to do with friendliness, but portland also has an impressive array of large sculpture in public places, rather than having one or two big “sculpture gardens” and a whole bunch of smaller sculptures “hidden” in places where you probably won’t see it unless you’re looking for it, like seattle does. i get the impression that it may actually be possible to make a living as an artist/musician in portland, and there are not many ways to do that in seattle.

the saturday performances were outrageous, and only five of thirteen acts(!) were repeats from friday, the piece by queen schmooquan, a piece called “light year” by dan luce, which is about becoming disconnected from this “alien” world, “edward puss”, a modern take on the old story of œdipus that was absolutely hillarious, “el sol de verrano”, a quietly disturbing piece about two kids at the beach who go swimming, but only one comes back, which is based on a spanish folksong, and the meat play.

it turns out i may actually get paid for drunk puppet night again this year. the someday lounge was charging a $15 cover (which is one reason i don’t go out that much, as i consider paying $15 to go to a “bar” outrageous, even if it is something like drunk puppet night), and lana, who was the sponsor’s host this year, actually got personal information, including my SS# and said that it was because i would be getting paid… but i’ll believe it when i see it. she was saying that if it were up to her, there would be a drunk puppet night once a month, and i get the impression that she’s at least partially in a position to make things like that happen. also, somebody whose name i (unfortunately) don’t remember, shot video of the meat play and she’s going to send me a VHS of it, so i can see what it looks like from the audience’s perspective for a change. 8)

and when i got home i had a marble sivalingam and 6 CDs from india waiting for me, i got email saying that my 1″ expansion taper has been shipped, and my sweetie should be home soon, so i’m happy

3 thoughts on “824”

  1. unfortunately, she’s “never heard of” firefox, and she uses <shudder> IE… i told her about all the problems with exploder, and she said she’d look into it… i’m going to take it one thing at a time.

  2. i gave her my card and told her to write me with questions as they arise.

    Thank goodness! The last thing the world needs is more crappy non-valid XHTML! I have nearly religious feelings about pretty, valid markup. I was know as a W3C standards natzi at my old job, but I don’t care–valid markup is really, really important for accessibility, scalability, and longevity.

    XHTML is the only thing I’ve ever managed to consistently teach people quickly and effectively. It’s just a very simple grammar, with a handful of very intuitive elements. If a person can outline a paper, they can write valid markup. Be sure also, if you haven’t already, to point Kris to the various validator extensions available for Firefox, which are faster to use than having to go to the W3C’s page.

  3. Sounds like it was a good weekend. I am looking forward to the Seattle shows. See you monday night to practice.

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