it’s that vibrating touch.

they other night i couldn’t sleep so i was watching some late night television. some of the funniest commercials are on then. this one killed me. i’m glad the studio that made it had the sense to put it on youtube.

mock chicken salad.

i started my new job this week as the assistant manager in the food front co-op deli. so far it is all going really well. this week was mostly spent observing and doing a lot of talking with ron, the deli manager. i can see lots of needed improvements already, but i don’t want to come in there like a tyrant. i still have one more week of learning the various jobs in the deli, then i’ll bring down the iron fist.

food front is a much different environment than pcc, the co-op i worked at up in seattle. the most obvious difference is the size, food front only has one store (with a second one opening in hillsdale in late august), and the deli is about a quarter of the size. while pcc had the corporate atmosphere of a regular grocery store, food front is the opposite, it may take me a little while to adjust to the free flowing nature of the place. the customers of food front seem less crazy than the pcc customers, although i have only been there a week so the real crazies have yet to come out of the wood work. then all my kid stories from the day care will be replaced by crazy co-op customers stories, which will be much funnier.

the next couple of weeks should be interesting. right now the co-op is flooded with employees, half of which are being trained for the new store. so i don’t think i get a real handle on my job till after they leave and i can really understand how the deli operates. i’m looking forward to what lies ahead.

did you notice he threw you into garbage.

joss whedon’s musical web series gets it start. love it!

watch it here.

dr. horrible

why gary coleman?

i have been fairly sick for the last few days, that combined with the hot weather i have been very unmotivated. my illness started last friday when i noticed a soar throat. saturday morning i woke up full on sick, unfortunately we had a weekend of activities planned, i decided that i was going to ignore my illness and hoped that it would go away. usually i am very good at not doing anything on my weekends, this weekend was the exception. saturday brought with it 100 degree weather, perfect weather for a birthday picnic in washington park for my workmate jamie. despite being ill, we had a great time relaxing in the shade eating cucumber sandwiches. after the picnic morgan and i went home and i sat on the couch and stewed in my illness and watched shut up and sing, the surprisingly interesting documentary about the dixie chicks and how they dealt with all the hype after saying that they were ashamed that bush was from texas.

the roses of washington park

on sunday we had plans to go to the north american organic brewers festival. emboldened with cold medicine i ventured on. we got together with some of morgan’s school chums and took the max to overlook park. thankfully it was much cooler today, it was even kind of cloudy and there was a chance of rain. i made it a point to try all sorts of i.p.a.s and ales, for the most part all of the beers were very good. the best one being the hair of the dog’s blue dot double i.p.a., brewed right here in portland.

after the brewers fest i met up with dana for our evening at the theater, we had tickets for avenue q. by the time we made it to the theater my cold medicine was long gone. the show was enjoyable, from what i could enjoy anyway. i kept having to blow my nose, and my ears were plugged up so i could just barely hear it. what i took away from avenue q is that it is a great collection of songs. i think that the songs may have been a bit too cartoony and simple, also they seemed to be more about the shock value than story development. never once did i actually care about the plot, which i think involved a male human puppet falling for a female monster puppet and want to help her open a monster school. i thought the concept of the monsters living along side the human was good, they should of fleshed that out more. tensions around that were hinted at but not ever explored. also i couldn’t help wondering why they went for such a similar look to sesame street. i had a good time, it just failed to connect with me.

it is now wednesday i am feeling much better, not 100% but at least 75%. i still have a froggy voice, when i have my voice. summer colds are the worst, and i will be glad when this is one is gone. it better. morgan and i are going up to seattle for the holiday weekend, and i will be working at the dish. i don’t see a day off till next weekend, it would really suck if it carries over till then.

summer pop.

for all the esoteric noise and avant rock i listen to, summer always brings out the pop. so far these are my summer jams.

robyn:
“cobrastyle”

“konichiwa bitches”

santogold:
“l.e.s. artistes”

lykke li:
“i’m good, i’m gone”

and of course madonna:
“give it 2 me”

do you know abouts juan’s sugar?

the last week and a half has been pretty active. it all started last wednesday when juan arrived, he was three hours late and had been traveling for thirteen hours. despite his delerium we stayed up way too late playing wii. on thursday juan and i drove up to seattle. the main reason for juan’s visit was because he, rachelle and i were going to see erykah badu twice, once in redmond wa and once in vancouver bc. we had to leave portland pretty early so that we would be able to have lunch with audrey. the drive up to seattle was slightly frustrating with many periods of uncalled for congestion. we made it to seattle, met up with audrey and had lunch at in the bowl, which would turn out to be the first of many meals the would involve meat analogues. juan got to quickly meet erika, although i know the timing of the visit was just their way of getting me to pay for the meal. we dropped audrey back off at work and headed over to rachelle’s. rachelle’s was the meeting place for the group going to the eyrkah badu show at marymoor park in redmond. the review of the show will get it’s own post.

typical audrey picture

friday morning rachelle, juan and i rose fairly early to eat and get ready to go to vancouver bc, for the next erykah show. for breakfast we had waffles and a grapple, a food product that rachelle and i have been wondering about for quite sometime. eating a strange grape flavored apple is just as weird as it sounds, and kind of taste a bit like children’s medicine. i don’t really recommend them. after breakfast we packed up the car and left for canada. a rather cold and gray trip was in store for us. we stopped at the co-op in mount vernon for lunch, a very dry veggie burger from their deli. the pastries we got for dessert made up for the dry veggie burger. rachelle became strangely obsessed with cheddar beer flavored potato chips and bought a large bag, luckily i noticed that it was expired (by almost a month) before we left the store, new bag in hand we headed for the border. i should mention that those chips were gone before we got to the border. we breezed through the border and made it to the listel hotel with plenty of time to walk around. the hotel is on robson street so we walked around that area looking for an h&m. juan has a superpower, and the superpower is to always be able to tell in which direction the nearest h&m is. it needs to be seen to believed, he kind of blindy led us right to it. i generally have luck at h&m, especially in the shirts and jackets department, but not this time. the store had just opened and it was packed. the fitting room and checkout lines were out of control. i felt that i couldn’t even look at the clothes, we fled pretty quickly. we had dinner at the possibly reduntantly named HON’s house of noodles. rachelle and i have eaten there several times, and this would be the second meal involving meat analogues. i love this place, the food is always interesting and generally very good. i get the feeling that it is the most authentic chinese food i will ever have, unless i go to china. plus i love that they have a vegetarian kitchen separate from the meat kitchen. we ordered several stir frys and something called “assorted glutens”. everything was delicious, except for the yellow gluten. the yellow gluten was curry flavored and looked a bit like a batch of burnt scrambled eggs. strangely watery and chewy at the same time, and the flavor was a little sour. the star was the “chicken” dish we ordered off the specials menu, lots of green beans and “chicken” served sizzling with a delicious sauce. after dinner we went back to the hotel and got ready to go to the second erykah show.

rachelle and i getting to the car to leave for vancouver.

rachelle at the listel

search out the h&m juan.

saturday morning after the show we got up and went to have breakfast at a crepe place, i had the best one with nutella, banana and grand marnier. rachelle’s mushroom and egg one was pretty good too. unfortunately they had the worst coffee, and they must of been shorthanded becuase the service was a bit shakey. we did more shopping on the way back to the hotel to check out. our trip back to seattle was not as swift, we waited in line at the border for about and hour. thank god for my ds and the crossword game. we stopped in mount vernon again for lunch, this time we went to a brewery. the veggie burgers were much better. when we get back to rachelle’s, we all collapsed onto chairs and couches, and didn’t move for a couple of hours. when hunger finally motivated us to move we walked up to jalisco’s, lots of beans and margaritas were consumed. afrer dinner we all passed out watching myra breckinridge, a movie i know i’ve seen several time but can’t tell you how it ends.

at the creperie.

on sunday i went and worked at the dish. i enjoy working a day or two at a time, it seems more like hanging out than work. i love catching up with everyone. my next guest spot will be the weekend of the forth of july, if you happen to be in seattle, stop by and say hi.

after work juan and i packed up and left rachelle’s, before leaving seattle i wanted to swing by josh and janet’s. josh and janet both looked great and ben is getting cuter by the visit. i gave josh some cd’s and we chatted for a while, a sadly short while. juan and i had to get going, we still had to eat some dinner before leaving for portland. we ended up eating at my favorite (non arayas) thai restaurant kwanjai, the food was perfect as always. juan and i were on a tight schedule, morgan had left a message earlier in the day that he and his friends were going to see the crystal castles at backspace and he had them get tickets for us too. so now we had to back in portland by 10. we made it in time for the opening band to be ending. i’ve been to this venue before and knew it was not the best place for show. the place was packed with brightly dressed youngsters. i have never heard any crystal castles before, all i knew was that they are well liked by the blogosphere. they were pretty good, techno beats with female hardcore style vocals, not really anything i would buy though. visually we have no idea what they were like. we couldn’t see them at all thanks to the low stage and packed house. the crowd loved them, and hardly stopped dancing.

on monday i had to work and morgan was in the studio all day, so juan was on his own. luckily for him bravo was rerunning the last season of project runway, so he got to catch up. that night we met up with morgan to go to vegetarian house for our third meal of meat analogues. the star dish of that meal was the tofu hushpuppies in tangy sauce. savory tofu balls, lots of steamed broccoli and a sauce made with lots of bits that certainy was a bit tangy. juan and i walked back to our place and finished up the first disc of square pegs. tuesday was similar. i had to work and juan spent time walking around portland by himself. after work we went and had dinner at an italian place near our apt. the food was fine, but the service was bad, they put chicken, yes real chicken, in mine! after dinner we watched the directors cut of knocked up and went to bed.

at 4am i got up to drive juan to the airport, i got back home with enough time to sleep for another hour before going to work.

juan’s visit now seems like a blur, or should i say haze. next time he should come out for two weeks and i need to not work at all.

oh tyra.

tyra doing what tyra does best, talking about herself and smiling with her eyes.

juan in the new york times.

may 1st 2008

Arts, Briefly

Free Madonna Show? Only for Die-Hard Fans

By BEN SISARIO

Published: May 1, 2008

The first ones lined up at 10 a.m. Monday. They brought Madonna memorabilia and warm clothes. Some had candy earrings in tribute to their heroine’s new album, “Hard Candy” (Warner Brothers), which went on sale Tuesday. They were outside the Roseland Ballroom on West 52nd Street in Manhattan, and the lucky ones would get free tickets to Madonna’s promotional show there. For this event Roseland had a capacity of 2,200, which by Madonna’s standards is as intimate as a basement club. At 6 a.m. on Wednesday 750 fans received wristbands entitling them to free tickets that night. But by noon a hundred or so still had not left; they just had to be the first to walk inside. “I told my bosses I was going to take four days off,” said Juan Romani, 34, of Pawcatuck, Conn., who was near the front of the line. “When I told them what I was doing, they thought I was crazy. But it’s Madonna.”

a sea of nodding heads.

on sunday morgan and made our way to the doug fir to see clinic. we were pleasantly surprised by how much we both enjoyed the opening act, shearwater. they have been around for a few years now and i have never payed attention to them, i kind of regret that now. they kind of have a scott walker/leonard cohen/nick cave sound. and they did the (almost) impossible and got me not to hate a song with a banjo. also their drummer can do some interesting things with a bow and a xylophone. i’m gonna have to pick up their new album when it comes out next month.

one of the reasons i like the doug fir as a venue is their punctuality, clinic came promptly at 10:30. they told us they were going to do two sets, the first with songs from the new album do it, the second with songs from the first five albums. i am well aware that clinic is one of those bands that really only have one song, sometimes played faster than other times, but i am a big fan of that one song. on the new album they added a bit of reggae and free jazz influence to their krautrockish protopunk. the songs off the new album really shined live. the second set contained a couple of songs off each of the older albums, including their “hit” “walking with thee”. clinic is a great live band, bringing a lot of energy to the show. i miss the scrubs though, i’m not quite feeling the hawiiaan shirts.

my new favorite thereminist.