Hey folks, I’m not dead. Now that’s out of the way, on to the main event. I’m quite the fan of Henry Rollins, anything he’s in I’ll watch, any interview that’s out there I’ll look into – I really dig on him. I’ve seen his spoken word twice before, once in my native state of New Hampshire and once in the neighboring Massachusetts. After looking on his site to see if he’s going to be stopping around the area in the near future I saw two shows posted for his Frequent Flyer Tour that are within somewhat close proximity — Sommerville, MA on March 17th and Portland, ME on the 18th. Hadn’t seen him in Maine yet, time to change that. And although the show hasn’t happened yet I will most likely enjoy it but regardless this will make him the second artist to have seen three times, once in each state (the other being masked metal band from Ohio, Mushroomhead.) Being a fan of him, like being a fan of anything, I have questions and I would love the chance to sit down with him for about four days and ask all my nerdy questions until blood rockets out my nose. However due to time constraints that unfortunately could not happen, but Henry was very gracious enough to answer my questions via email. Enjoy, folks.

Image from artvoice.com

SKETCH: Those who are big fans of your spoken word will notice that the tone of it has become drastically different. You started out reading poetry on stage that was quite serious, then you just went up there and did spoken word with a serious tone, now its a balance of comedy and that dash of reality. Like the first hour and a half will be mostly comedic stories then the last half hour will be something very down to Earth and something that kinda snaps you into reality to make you realize there are still big problems afoot. Was this change a conscious choice or did it just happen that way?

HENRY: I just do the show. I am not sure of how the thing has changed over the years. I am not really working on the form of the thing as much as I am just out there doing it and I guess it changes over the years.

SKETCH: You’ve mentioned in many interviews that you don’t consider yourself to be an actor despite the 35+ movies you have under your belt. But has there ever been an acting gig you’ve taken where you’ve looked at the film and thought you did a good job?

HENRY: I thought I did pretty good on the Sons Of Anarchy show I was in last year. Most of the time I don’t watch any film I am in.

SKETCH: Additionally with your film credits and knowledge of film have you considered or attempt to write a script or make a movie of your own?

HENRY: Never. I respect that kind of talent but don’t have any of it. It’s never been something that interests me.

SKETCH: Your show in IFC “The Henry Rollins Show” which many people, including myself, dug quite a bit, hasn’t had any new episodes since 2007. What’s that status of the show and when can we look forward to Seasons 2 & 3 coming to DVD?

HENRY: We shot the two seasons of it and then IFC dropped the show. It’s their money so they have the say. I guess they didn’t like the show. I thought we did good work. The 2nd season is on DVD in Australia and I believe they are on download on i-Tunes.

SKETCH: Those who look you up will know that you are quite passionate about the West Memphis Three, and that there is an album that was released which features you and many different artists doing Black Flag songs to benefit their defense. First, how are things developing on this front? Second, how did getting these artists come together?

HENRY: The case moves slowly through the system that will hopefully resolve in new hearing. Things move very slowly though. Meanwhile, those men sit in prison. We had a couple of people to help us get all the singers. I didn’t have many phone numbers to reach these people, so we got some help. Once we asked these people, most of them came aboard very quickly. They were very generous with their time.

SKETCH: Has there been any music, new or old, that you’ve been listening to a lot lately?

HENRY: I have been listening to a lot of old music from what’s called The Nurse With Wound List. It’s a list online of very out there albums. Many of them are very rare and hard to find. Someone gave me about 15 gigabytes of music from the list recently, so I have been checking that out for days now. Today, I listened to a band from the list called Moving Gelatine Plates. Pretty cool.

SKETCH: Lately many audiences have been complaining, on small and large scales, about the way that studios are running their companies (constant remakes, sequels and adaptations; good shows canceled while “reality” TV is all that’s left.) Similar complaints have been made about mom and pop shops going out of business and malls and large retail chains left standing, yet the reality is the American consumer is choosing to go the chains and malls so they are at fault. Do you think that the status of the entertainment industry is in a similar vein, that it’s the audiences who are not really wanting it? Or do you think studios and record labels condescend the intelligence of the audience thus lowering the standards of new material or not putting it out at all?

HENRY: The people are going to the malls because the merchandise is cheaper there. They buy from Amazon.com because it is cheaper to do so. That’s how it is. It’s very hard on those smaller outlets that can’t buy in the vast bulk that these other places do and they can’t get the extended lines of credit, either. I think the audience wants it but they are low on cash and have found that they can often get things for free online. I know a guy who heists films from the internet, I don’t know how he does it but he always has films on his i-Pod that are still in theaters. I think it’s a combination of things, what I listed as well as other factors. It’s too bad that it could make it bad for so many hard working artists. The studios have underappreciated the intelligence of their audiences for years. Hence the success of shows that are sharp, those in the industry who have figured out that there are millions of people who want some more intense and thoughtful fare have been very successful.

SKETCH: On your online store you had a video promoting/explaining the contents of “Fanatic Vol. 3” while standing in a room where your music collection is housed, and you probably need to pause the video in order to properly gaze in awe at the two walls you see of CDs there are stacked from the floor to the ceiling. With such a collection like this, the idea of organizing it makes me both curious and scared. But how the hell do you organize that thing and have you needed to expand the room/store elsewhere to squeeze in a few discs?

HENRY: That’s the old room, actually. The room you saw held 24 feet of shelving about ten rows high. The new room has 64 feet of CD shelves, 12 rows high. There’s a different part of the room for vinyl and other media. It’s all genre/alphabetical. There’s several feet built in for expansion for all the media. A lot of work went into the room to get it all built to spec.

LINKS
Official Site
IMDb page
Wiki on The West Memphis Three
The Henry Rollins Show: Season One

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This first card was challenging. Back on the 13^th, when I first set down my intentions for this project, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do. I spent the next ten days reading things, assimilating concepts, arguing with myself, and cutting up magazines with the thought of doing a “real” art project using physical materials.

Even when I sat down and admitted to myself that I was not going to find what I wanted in the piles of magazines to create something meaningful, nor would my drawing fulfill my vision, I encountered uncertainty and hesitance. What was the most important thing I could say or depict on this card? Did the image mean the most, or would words be the order of the day?

Ultimately I ended up with something that I feel as though I’m happy with. There is still a lot to learn about this card, and I may revisit and revise it as I understand more about the intimacies of meaning contained within this set of gnostic guideposts.

Click the image to download the full size PDF version of this card. Note: It is a 1.9mb file!

Tarot and Qabalah: A Two-Fold Guidebook

At first glance, scholars of the Tarot and its relationship with the Qabalah may rush to correct my association here. In the Golden Dawn’s depiction of the Sephiroth[img], The Hanged Man corresponds to the path leading between Geburah and Hod. I am using the reformed Tree as outlined by Donald Tyson in the essay The Gate of Daath1. In this essay he outlines changes to the positioning and numbering of the paths based on the idea that Yesod is the only realistic path into the tree from Malkuth2, as well as establishing the need for paths connecting Binah-Chesed and Chokmah-Geburah3. (He has not published the diagram for this tree on his site, nor did I find another image elsewhere. Out of respect for the publisher’s request at the beginning of the book, I will not reproduce this diagram here unless I am given permission.) This corrects the Tree for the notion that the moon (Yesod) has always been the gateway to higher planes of consciousness, as well as creating the “x marks the spot” location for Daath on the upper portion of the Tree, similar to the positioning of Tiphareth below. Although this may realistically change many of the associations, I am currently running under the assumption that since The Hanged Man maintains position as corresponding with Path 23, that the tables provided by 7774 still hold true.

Getting to the card itself, I opted here for a two panel system, very much in line with the iconic layout provided by long-running CCG, Magic: The Gathering5. Looking again at their layout, I can already see areas in which I can improve the structure of my cards to convey more information more cleanly, but results of these thoughts will be explored another time.

The top panel is an image which I feel befits the original artistic depiction of the card. The caption provided by the artist is equally fitting and moving.

I can wait…
… says the little voice.
I close my eyes, try falling asleep, try not seeing him, his pesky presence. Try not hearing his never-ending questions.
Who says I have to answer EVERY question? Who says it has to be NOW? And why me? I am falling behind, at best of times feeling like I am about to catch up. But most of my time – I am just repaying old debts.
The spotlight dims and darkness descends. Precious sleep.
But should I wake up, without omission, here he is! Ta-dah!!!!! The little powerful voice and his army of questions.
“Not now”, I say.
“I can wait” he says, from his timeless space.

From the original flickr photo page.

This story unknowingly ties perfectly into the concepts fueling The Hanged Man, regardless of which side of the Tree you are exploring. It is characterized by Ordeal, by rite of passage and confrontation of that which would rip asunder our assumptions. On the back side of the tree, this would mean blindly surrendering to ignorance. On the front side, it is a willful sacrifice of old beliefs, resulting in enlightenment. Tiphareth is sort of a mid-way point in the tree, still exalted in its own right, but by no means the end of the journey. This route (on the front side) bypasses Tiphareth entirely, though I would argue that its enlightening end results are brimming with Tipharethic energies. Likewise on the night side of the Tree, The Hanged Man catapults himself headlong into the Abyss, bypassing any attempt for reform or redemption that is offered by Daath’s position at the center of the criss-crossing paths that makeup the middle of the upper tree.

Characters Fitting This Card

Here I outline a few characters – fictional, mythological, and otherwise – whose stories have examples of the transitional energy of The Hanged Man. It’s a fairly small and obvious collection. I’d love to come up with a few more examples of both the day and night sides of the tree.

1. Cecil (Final Fantasy 4)
• Although he was victorious in many ways as a Dark Knight, he couldn’t fulfill his quest until he learned to be merciful and accept the ways of the Paladin. This is a very overt example of ordeal leading into redemption, and enlightenment.6
2. Odin
• In return for hanging upon Yggdrasil for nine nights, Odin received the knowledge of runes7. A clear example of the concepts at work in The Hanged Man.
3. Jesus Christ
• Directly noted in the correspondence tables of 777, Jesus is possibly the quintessential archetype for sacrifice resulting in ascension to higher power.
4. Any Death-Rebirth Deity
• As argued here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-death-rebirth_deity, citing Jung’s claim that death and rebirth are archetypal processes. A theory supported by other researchers of myth.
5. Ikari Shinji (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
• Rife with gnostic symbolism and modern angst, Evangelion can and will burst your mind at the seams with all the concepts it tries to throw at you. At the end, Ikari Shinji is submitted to sacrifice and is reborn in a strange new world. I submit that his case would be a good example of the Qlippothic journey into dark supernal Binah, as his was always a path of despair and denial.

Final Thoughts

There is so much to learn here. I barely scratched the surface of the correspondences, especially the intense association with water and watery deities and concepts. Lotuses, nymphs, and the lord Poseidon all by the wayside while I figure out what it all means. The animal associations present their own puzzle: what do eagles, snakes, scorpions, beetles, lobsters, and wolves have to do with The Hanged Man?

What will the next card be? I have no idea. I will not draw another card until after this is published and another day dawns. When will it be published here? Again, it depends on the card and candidly on my life in general. Until then, I invite comment and question!

Resources:
1. Tyson, Donald The Gate of Daath, Howlings (Scarlet Imprint, 2008) 133.
2. Ibid, 129-130
3. Ibid, 131
4. Crowley, Aleister, 777 vel Prolegomena Symbolica Ad Systemam Sceptico Mysticae (courtesy hermetic.com, PDF)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_the_Gathering for general history & images or the Getting Started Guide on Wizards of the Coast’s site for a full breakdown of how a card is constructed.
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_IV#cite_note-14 or FF IV original (Japanese) & English script: Mt.Ordeals
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdrasil#H.C3.A1vam.C3.A1l

Supplementary Resources:
http://www.servantsofthelight.org/QBL/Paths/23_mem.html An HTML table rendering of all the data of line 23 of 777.

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The premise behind this project is very simple:

1. Choose a Tarot card (only shuffling for the first draw).
2. Dissect the visuals on the card and write down their most basic symbolic elements (from opinion/personal preference).
3. Look up details of that Tarot card from tarot books, 777 and other cross-cultural references.
4. Create a visual and/or written interpretation of the card.

The idea is part research project, part art project, part image-meme-in-the-making if stripped down to its most base elements (pick card, recreate card the way you see it).1

The deck I am using for my base of operations is The Robin Wood Tarot deck, put out by Llewellen publishers in 2002.2

Candidly, the Robin Wood is not my favorite deck in terms of art; I’d bite my own mother if it would get me a copy of the Yoshitaka Amano deck, but I adore his rich, Art Nouveau inspired work and that makes me rather biased. The Amano deck would actually be a poor choice for this endeavor, as the number cards within the suits are apparently expressed with a simple display of the number of each thing (cups, swords, etc), rather than full, symbolically significant art.3 The Robin Wood deck, on the other hand, is a much more suitable deck, inspired by the perennial Rider-Waite Deck published in 19104, although perhaps slightly more “modern” in its sensibilities.

I am currently at work on my first card, which I shall reveal if you ask me about it when I’m ready with a finished assessment and/or artistic recreation. Initially, I sought to impose strict deadlines for this work, yet I grossly underestimated the amount of information that has been layered into these cards over the centuries! Just working with only the base symbolism in the card could keep me very busy. Each card has a unique personality to be expressed through careful consideration of my reactions to it and available materials for creative reconstruction. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of the myriad readings to choose from in just the books I have available, especially since broad descriptions are given to help these cards display meaning when read in the intended context of a specific goal as well as their relation with other cards in a spread. Intentionally working with one card at a time means a lot of winnowing to get to the germ of the matter.

Furthermore, there are other unique challenges: Tarot interacts rather directly with several other systems of magick and philosophy, making the cross-referencing quite an in-depth affair. My extremely limited knowledge of Western Esoteric systems will prove to be my biggest stumbling block. This has been made clear while researching the first card for the series in 7775, Crowley’s seminal work providing rich tables of correspondences between systems of symbols used in different magick disciplines.

Though I will endeavor to research each card fully and provide serious thought and commentary to this effort, I do want to keep moving forward. What this means is that each article, each visual working (likely to be magazine-centric collage as I’ve a lot of material to work with) should likely be considered a work in progress, no matter how complete it may seem at the time of release. There’s likely to be more personal revelations and hand-written notes that simply don’t make it into this journal. These things may surface later as part of a larger effort to commit this project to print. Hail Eris!

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So those kids over at White Chapel, had a a delightful little idea: Group Fiction. You know the old threads on message boards were one person would start a story and the next person would right the next four words and so on? EX from them boys at Fast Karate:

GOKU1838471: Goku was walking and
Bigdooba: got a BJ from
KIDBOO: BY A PINK ELEPHANT LOL
GokuRAWKS: thats five words ROFL!
MikeReason: Well techinically lol is three words so its actually seven words
GokuRAWKS: FAG!

Sometimes it doesn’t work out too good, but the in this case it worked out rather well, and more importantly is actually amusing. So here it is uncut and archived for prosperity, I hope you have as much fun reading it as we all did writing it. Beware it is pretty dammed long.

The Hat Of War and Peace or THE NAZI TURTLE WHO WAS ACTUALLY A NAZI GENERAL ALSO A HUNCHBACK

By: Jess, Oldhat, VKlaus , Rootfireember, kpatrickglover, and the wonderful andrenavarro

Frank watched as the old man left the cafe, struggling with the door in the wind. It almost caught him and pulled him out, but he managed to maintain his balance and push the door closed. Just before he turned away, Frank realized that a rumpled gray fedora had blown into the room. He watched it as it tottered on edge and finally fell to the ground. It was a pleasant looking hat, full of character. It reminded him of the one he owned many years ago, before the war. But then, everything reminded him of life before the war.

They said war changed a man. They did not mention, in the infinite wisdom of generations past and hoarded scraps of wisdom, that it also changed everything it touched. Even something as simple as a hat skittering along the floor until it came to a stop. The simple object was more than a hat; it was a symbol of things loved and lost, and days long past.

It hadn’t been a hat, thirty years ago. It had been a helmet, with a hole in it, rolling down the hill until it hit a puddle of mud. The rain washed the blood off of it. On the top of the hill, dozens of soldiers were being massacred by mounted machine guns. It was a sight he’d have seared into his mind forever, but the helmet rolling down the hill was the strongest memory he had of it. Somehow, it was stronger than seeing dozens of people being mowed down because of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

While the helmet rolling down the hill with a hole in it was a symbol of the futility of the war, Frank’s own helmet was a symbol of strength and power. This was proven when Frank’s squadron infiltrated the base that held the horrible General Franz Kraustitt. Since 1941 the general had been heading horrible experiments on prisoners of war, animals and even his own men. He was a madman trying to play god who had to be stopped. Frank was the first one to find him and immediately the general fired at him. A stray bullet hit his wrist and his gun dropped to the ground.

There have only been a few times Frank felt the need for a miracle. This was not one of those times. Being in war changes a man, teaches him how to survive. After all General Kraustitt was only one man, a man with sever mental problems. He could handle this. But boy oh boy was he wrong.

As Frank sank deeper into the memories spurred so rudely by the lost fedora, a small turtle watched him carefully from across the room. No one paid much attention to the turtle sitting in the small plastic cage on the counter. It was unusual for the young girl to bring the creature to the cafe, but a closer inspection of the reptile confirmed that he was brown, boring and an otherwise unremarkable pet. The turtle was not inclined to do much to entertain his audience, as he was concentrating on Frank. Something, SOMETHING about the man seemed vaguely familiar. Unsettled somewhat by being unable to place the old man, the turtle’s good sense told him to stay quiet. Yet he wanted to know more. The man across the room seemed strangely intent upon watching the hat, and the turtle couldn’t help but remember a man wearing a similar fedora.

There had been experiments before the war, and during it upon beasts. Vivisection was the tip of the iceberg in those muddy years; though it was thought to be the origin of what some called hyper-intelligence in some animals. It was not; but most people seemed to prefer to think of abominable origins for animals that spoke and thought like men, instead of believing sentience in animals could have come from more natural origins. People wanted to be the smart ones. They were intimidated, and fearful of these strange animals among them. So the turtle kept his beak shut, kept his thoughts to himself.

Frank fought his way back from the memories, amazed how vivid they had been. It was like he was being pulled back through time, all because of that rumpled old hat. He pushed his coffee aside and stood up. The turtle watched him as he crossed the room, fear growing in its heart. He wanted to warn Frank not to touch the hat, that this was a bad thing, but thoughts don’t always equal words. Not in a turtle. So he simply watched as Frank picked up the hat, turned it around in his hand, then placed it lightly on top of his head. He wasn’t surprised when Frank vanished from the cafe, hat and all.

The turtle had made a promise to himself many years ago. To be precise, seventy years ago, before the human who “owned” him was even born. It had promised it would never, ever speak, even though the experiment had given it the ability to do so (albeit with a hideous accent), and in the lifespan of a turtle, picking up languages is no challenge. Still, the turtle knew what would happen if it dared to speak, like that time the human dropped him and he went “AAAOW FUCK”. Luckily the human was constantly on drugs, which made things easier to forget. But a cafe full of people… still, if the human continued to wear that damned hat, something horrible would happen.

When the green flashing in Frank’s eyes started to fade away, he looked at where the hat had taken him. He was surprised to see another H4-T. he hadn’t seen one of these devices since the war. It was a genius invention originally brought on by the Germans. Basically they would distribute the H4-Ts in hat stores in well known Jewish areas. hell, they’d even give them away. And once those hats were put on the wearers would be transported to a concentration camp. A lot even ended up in General Kraustitt’s base. But that couldn’t have happened now. Frank knew the general to be dead. He killed the man himself…

It was at this point Digressing Omnipotent Narrator thought to himself “what is the world coming to?! Teleportation hats talking turtles? Jesus H Christ (not me), all things have gone awry!” But he digresses and returns to the narrative, it which Frank looks around to see the old room where he put a bullet in the generals head. The faded blood stain still marked the wall. Nazis, not the tidiest of folk.

The turtle sighed. He had to get out of the cage, get to the man with the hat, and make sure nothing was undone that should not be undone. Escaping wouldn’t be too difficult, he thought. The human had been careless lately. She had left the top panel of the cage open, and all he had to do was get his claws in the air vents just below the lid. From there, he could pull himself up and out. Luckily, the human seemed to be engrossed in her french fries, so the turtle took this opportunity to sneak to the corner of the cage, stand on his tip-toes, and crawl atop the plastic prison that he lived in from day to day. He took a moment to savor the fresh air and the smells of the cafe. Then, faster than you could blink, he too was gone.

The turtle was quickly realizing what was at stake. Drastic measures would have to be taken. The ability to speak was only the first successful experiment (after five that failed very painfully). The second was the ability to hide in plain sight. The turtle walked into an alley and, sure nobody was seeing him, he started to grow. Suddenly it could stand on his hind legs, and the shell on his back became as soft as flesh, and his face grew a nose and the eyes widened. He was now… a hunchback.

No longer a turtle, General Krausititt’s started the long hike back to his office, where he knew Frank would be waiting. It was cold, but he knew it would be. He had lived this day before. He almost hadn’t survived it, but his scientists had got to him after the shot, before he bled out. The transformation was complicated, but quick. He bore Frank no ill will, he wasn’t looking for revenge. But he had no intention of taking another bullet. The timestream must be preserved, but some other way. He would not be turtlized again today.

Krausititt could feel the timestream pulling, trying to create a loop, to make what once was merely repeat itself ad nauseum. He’d had an assistant once, a rather dim jackal-creature that had warned him of such things…every five minutes. He’d taken heed of the warning, then ended the looping for the mad beast with a few well-aimed shots. Krausititt pursed his lips, and didn’t let his will waver; history would not repeat itself. It must not. The fate of the world depended on it. He had seen it.

It wasn’t until Kraustitt stepped in to the same room they were in all those years ago that things started to happen. Kraustitt managed to catch a surprised look from Frank before everything went blue for a moment. Suddenly it was 1944 again. Kraustitt was exactly where he was when Frank had stepped in. His first instinct was to reach for his gun, but he thought better of it. That would lead to Frank dropping his gun and then in a surprise move, getting it back and shooting him. Besides, he could see that Frank was hesitating. He knew that a change had happened. Keeping his gun in his holster, Kraustit smiled at Frank. “I suppose you want to know what’s going on, yes?” Frank’s eyes widened. “y..yes…” “Don’t worry. All will be explained in good time. Would you like some cocoa? Before your men got here we had a pot of it brewing.” Frank lowered his gun and started to walk towards Kraustitt, unaware that Klaus, the 7-foot sergeant-major built like a gorilla was slowly creeping behind him.

The veritable man-god grabbed him by his unsuspecting ears and hoisted him to the ceiling. “You see,” explained Krausitit, “You have been brought back into time to re thread history”. The rage was bulding in Franks face, pink an purple from pain and anger. “YOU SON OF A BITCH I’LL HAVE YOUR DISGUSTING ZOMBIE TURTLE HEAD FOR THIS! YOU CAN’T STOP ME!” SHOUTED Frank, “You are all demons, and god will rain vengeance upon your soul!” To which Krausitit replied. “No Frank, you are the demons”

and then Frank was a Zombie

THE END.

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“There’s an implied obligation of those (myself included) who own these nuggets of history to share them, not squirrel them away in some dusty shoebox only to risk oblivion via flood, fire, or neglect.”- Gary

The Adolph Sutro’s Victorian Cliff House sat upon a cliff in San Fransisco over looking The Sutro Baths for only a 11 years before it tragically caught fire and burnt down in 1907.

However this beautiful Victorian dream home is being preserved by images alone by a man known only to me as “gary“.

His website has done a wonderful job chronicling and preserving the house in all its 19th century glory. From tintypes and post cards to a very cool virtualization of the house using the huge library of photographs, CAD, and the archived blueprints! (which are on the way to my architect as we speak)

It sort of blows my mind frankly. Being able to take a tour through a house that burnt down over over 100 years ago on a coast that is nearly 2,000 miles away. Isn’t the internet great? :D

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So here it is, Thursday morning. I’d like to talk to you for a moment about food, and some crappy absinthe, but first, food.

There may have already been some food (and general trip) related photos, so make sure you’re keeping tabs on my flickr, which I didn’t even know that ping.fm posted to until yesterday!

Here’s what I’ve been jotting down my food-related notes in:

50 cents in the random crap bin at the grocery store. Purchased for the lulz.

Tuesday when we got in, we checked our bags at the hotel, and since it was too early to check into the room proper we decided to suss out the closest delicious food source. I poked at yelp and so forth on my phone, and saw that there were a couple things up the street from us. Exploring, we discovered a little hole-in-the-wall Japanese place.

Koji Osakaya Japanese Restaurant

First off, whoever told me that sushi is just better on the west coast… was clearly right. This was a great experience that trumps every east coast sushi I’ve ever had. Granted, hunger does make a fine sauce – and man was I ever hungry – but this was very easily a much tastier and worthwhile experience.

The place was fairly quiet, somewhat understandable for about 2pm on a Tuesday I suppose. There was limited seating in the restaurant from what I could tell, leading me to think they probably do more takeout business than dine-in. Still quiet was exactly what I was after. I greedily eyed the noodle bowl options, but knowing the portion sizes that things like that tend to come in, I resigned myself to checking out the lunch specials and items that looked cheap since I knew they’d be somewhat smaller. I was starving, but not interested in eating myself sick either. Sometimes it’s a thin line between full and HOARF, ya know? While perusing the sushi options, I spotted an amusing typo.

Bagle Maki

page 1 of food libraries

For about 15$ I picked out the assorted sashimi lunchbox, mostly because I was hoping it’d come on a bed of rice so I could stuff myself silly on sumptuous sushi rice. It was to be my one concession to the urge to eat ’til I dropped. No such luck there, but the miso soup was some of the best miso soup broth I’ve had in a while even if it was lacking my personal favorite: green onion. My usual habit of dumping a generous amount of soy sauce (we’re talking 3 shades darker at least, people) into the soup was totally unnecessary here. The fish, oh the fish was amazing! There was a piece of octopus which was chewy, salty, light and packed with flavor. It’s somewhat difficult to describe but if you haven’t had octopus and you enjoy sushi, get past the idea that it’s a tentacle and do it up. There was salmon which was melt-in-my-mouth delicious, though perhaps a little… lighter than what I’m used to getting. This may have to do with it being fresher, or it may be a different variety of salmon. I couldn’t tell and I didn’t ask. There was something that was pale, flakey and unbelievably rich. I was just looking at sushiencyclopedia.com – which seems like a pretty nice resource – but couldn’t find anything that quite matched. There was of course some medium fat tuna, and something that I think was yellowtail perhaps. I grabbed a couple rolls off the sushi plates my compatriots got, and was also impressed. The rice was terrific (would that I had gotten some!) and the veggie roll with ume and shiso was intense. Not quite my thing, but impressively flavored nevertheless. I also got the coldest, crispest Sapporo I’ve ever had. It was in a brown bottle with a golden label, which I don’t think I’ve had before. Totally awesome. One of those and all that lush food, and I was on top of the world, lookin’ down on creation.

After an awesome start to the food ethos of the West Coast, I was pumped for what lay ahead. The hotel uses the restaurant downstairs to fulfill their room service, Pazzo, and that was our next experience, with WILDLY mixed results.

Pazzo and Pazzoria

We got late night munchies from them. I got manicotti, and @meatbag picked up the capellini pomedoro (which was angel hair pasta with… stuff). The manicotti was pretty good. The sauce was lacking a little something, but the baked cheese on top totally made up for all that. (What can I say? I’m a sucker for cheese.) With that experience being pretty satisfactory, I was looking forward to breakfast. I was wrong to do so

The egg in the omelet I got had almost no character whatsoever. The spinach and fontina in it were fine enough, I suppose, but paired with the egg it was just underwhelming. The potatoes were salvaged from a dry hell by copious amounts of tabasco and ketchup. The bacon… oh the poor bacon. The nearest thing I can think to compare it to would be pork rinds made out of cardboard. The cappuchino was cold, so it pretty much didn’t matter what it tasted like. I spiked it with coffee from the thermos so I could at least drink it. The coffee itself was definitely potable.

This morning out of laziness, we opted to give them another shot. This time I got the french toast with sausage, and a fruit cup. It was like a whole different experience! The slices of bread were huge and screamed “we totally bake our own bread” which they totally do, in the bakery connected to the restaurant that’s connected to the hotel (and the green grass grew all around all around, ‘cept it didn’t because this is the city, duh). Pazzoria bakery helped make this particular breakfast a total success. The pain perdu had awesome flavor. I spread it with butter and drizzled it generously with the (I believe totally authentic) maple syrup, stealing a little cream cheese from @meatbag‘s smoked salmon plate for one of the smaller pieces. It was all music to my mouth and filling without being super heavy, like rich breakfast food like that can sometimes be. The fruit cup was impressive. It was actually a small bowl of nicely arranged, fresh, and really flavorful fruits. The apple was the best I’ve had in a long while and left me wanting so much more. The pineapple was delicious, as were the blueberries. I’m not a huge cantaloupe fan but this was firm and sweet, and before I let it get warm it was quite good. The only negative here was the slightly mushed blackberries. They still had good flavor, but once they start getting smushy the texture aspect just isn’t very enjoyable.

ridiculous breakfast!

meatbag's salmon plate. those triangles? expertly cut cream cheese, folks. mmmmm... cream cheese.

Let’s take a quick trip back in time though shall we? Yesterday’s lunch was equally as squee-tastic, and came courtesy of a jaunt out to a place called Bon Apetite, across the street from a large Greek restaurant with a crazy purple octopus out front.

What you see in the upper left corner is not a monster, but my finger. It was raining and I was attempting to shield the camera lens on the back of my phone.

Bon Appetite!

So as noted above, the Greek restaurant with the giant octopus out front sounded great at first because it’s Greek food, and it’s close, AND they have a giant octopus out front. I checked it out on yelp and was disappointed to find that most reviews were very negative. Slow service, incorrect orders, etc. I sniffed around some more to see what else was in the area to satisfy my urge for something Mediterranean. Just across the street from that same cephalopod-bearing restaurant was a place called Bon Appetite, labeled as Greek/Mediterranean food. Perfect! We trucked down there in an inexplicable rain shower, a light but steady drizzle from what looked like a clear sky.

It took a second to find the place. It’s part of a strip of stores that aren’t terribly distinctive. That puzzle solved, we headed in and firmly glued our eyes to the menu. Shwarma, falafel, gyros abound on their list. The shwarma was tempting, but since Quick to Go in Somersworth (NH, that is) has already won the right to that fiefdom of my heart, I went with the falafel. I’ve made my own sweet potato falafel, but never had proper falafel until yesterday. Holy crap I had no idea what I was missing. It had a enough of that fried food flavor to satisfy even the most vicious urge for grease, but not so much that it was dripping with oil. The flavor itself was rich with parsley and that slightly nutty flavor that only comes from chickpeas. The sauce was so fantastic I actually avoided picking the tomatoes out of my wrap, which is kind of a big deal since I don’t do raw tomato as a rule.

Or as I conveyed my feelings on the matter via Twitter:

that was so good it was almost sexually gratifying A+++++++ would nom again

We grabbed an appetizer box to go for @malpertuis, who’d stayed in to chill. It slid around a bit since the takeout box decided to turn sideways in the bag, but that didn’t stop it from being fantastic, it just stopped it from looking pretty. The hummus, baba ganoush, etc were all amazing, and clearly homemade with that kind of balance between richness and salt that can’t come from the store.

After the fantastical radness of Bon Appetite, we decided it was high time to procure some booze. Not being bar-going folk, @meatbag and I both decided we’d hunt down the liquor store and see what was different and thrilling on offer. We first popped in to a convenience store to pick up a six pack of local beer, which was pretty good, though nothing incredibly distinctive.

I didn’t know you could buy scope at the liquor store…

What WAS noteworty was the absinthe we picked up at the liquor store on our way back to the hotel. First off, a word about this liquor store. It was dimly lit, maybe because it was so close to closing time. The selection was pretty admirable, though hard to read since it was all behind the counter. A type of theft prevention, I’m sure, but kind of annoying as I like to be able to read the bottles and price labels up close and personal. The guys working were playing Wilco (Being There, so mad cred for that too) at an admirable level.

In the interest of perhaps setting ourselves up with the means to make Doctor Funk/Crunk/Funkenstein (pro tip: they’re each slightly different drinks), we eyed the absinthes on offer. They had Lucid, which has become our standby at this point, and three others we weren’t familiar with. One was about the same price as the Lucid (around 60), and one was $80 in a lovely bottle. The one we ended up getting, however, was about $45 dollars. We learned the hard way that you do NOT cheap out on absinthe. Ever. Seriously.

It came in a cardboard tube, positioning itself like some “fancy” booze. In retrospect I theorize this was not so much a package design decision as a “let’s hide how fake this shit looks” move. This was definitely an instance where the inability to get up close and personal on the packaging (largely due to lack of time, I’m sure they would have let us check it out) really hurt our purchase decision ability.

Here’s how the live twitter report went:

• http://ping.fm/p/ijjMm – new kind of absinthe it is VERY green not sure how I feel about that, but the proof is in the louching afterall :)
• http://ping.fm/p/7drCc - no your eyes do not decieve you, that IS mouthwash colored absithe, friends. taste verdict to come
• it smells like a high alcohol herbal perfume so far, not as rich on the nose as i’d like…
• correction to aroma report: out of the bottle it smells like wintergreen and non-descript men’s cologne
• and what did we learn here, kids? we learned that you don’t get the cheap goddamn absinthe. it TASTES like wintergreen cologne too. :/ Editor’s Note: FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

It was just plain awful. It’s got at least 3 dyes in it, thus the fucked up neon aqua color. It really does taste like what would happen if you dumped some cologne into scope. A child’s experiment in mixology. “Here daddy I made you this!” Hell, I almost gargled with it this morning since I really just want it to be good for SOMETHING. It was a tragic waste of 40$, for sure.

Avoid, at all costs, Le Tourment Vert absinthe. I really can’t stress this enough. Other reviews back me up, too. Someone generously suggests that it might appeal to people who enjoy Rumplemintz. That may be true, I’ve never had Rumplemintz so the comparison is lost on me. However, I’d not suggest giving this away to a desperate alcoholic who is on the verge of switching to sterno, I found it so repugnant.

Luckily, we’d also picked up a 10 year Macallan scotch, so that and the Blue Heron beer comforted me.

So what now?

Tomorrow marks the first day of the film festival, and the arrival of @cheshster and @oddessy, as well as the exciting prospect of meeting @theweeklygeek-ers. :) I look forward to all of it.

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Preface: If you’re following me on Twitter, you may have seen my non-stop barrage of updates relating to a trip I am currently still on, a trip to Portland Oregon for the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. What follows are a few selected tweets (in chronological order), and my hand-written journal entries. Each will be delineated clearly, for now. As the week rolls by it may devolve a bit. I just don’t want this experience to pass by like the MoCCa convention trip earlier this year, which was amazing and full of photos and quotes that has to this day not made it into a final record.

Tweets

• 2:30am 09-28-09 – leaving for the airport – adventure start! lvl 1 bus trip
• the led 1s above me seem to stare like the eyes of some large, shifty beast, or fireflies frozen in time, forever calling out a 1 note plea.
• I feel about in the dark, which is blindingly punctuated by electric light, and can find no familiar shapes, puzzled by this urge, I settle.
• I recall the coffee, given to me gratis by a kind but unhappy young man working @ the mcd’s, I do not so much drink as huff this kind nectar
• first leg of the journey eclipsed, a girl outside has a box labeled “fresh seafood”… oh my Editor’s Note: I have no idea what became of this “fresh seafood” container.
• with the lights on as we pause to collect passengers, I note my place: seat #23 :) so far so good – hail eris!
• it suddenly dawns on me that if I had any brains I would have turned on tweet import into rknet during this trip – someone please archive?
• dozed for a moment, woke up to some horrid coughing sound & saw a SWARM OF BEES over the aisle which faded into nothing as my eyes adjusted. Editor’s Note: This is 100% true and was 100% TERRIFYING.
• promised myself i’d save sleep for the plane, yet I nearly dozed thru the 2nd checkpoint, dreams intense &fitful Editor’s Note: And I think some of them involved *shudder* furries.
• the nymphs of sleep continue to tempt me with their lush, velvet arms as hypothermic sleep must entice the arctic’s soon-to-be-lost souls!
• the end of lvl1 I avoided: snoring (I hope), leg cramps, & battery overuse. next lvl2: airport ho!
• waiting in line to check bags, kiosk fail, but the girl behind the counter is cute and chipper. :)
• woman in front of me has a lesportsac carryon, posh! Editor’s Note: I think it may have even been a highly coveted TokiDoki black bag. *swoon*
• baggage check success! now waiting for tsa to open up, c’mon sleepyheads, shake a leg, this stuff’s heavy!
• got thru tsa with minimal fuss. @meatbag sacrificed a cute dr bronner soap bottle to the 3oz only gods. oh well, no great loss. lvl 2.5 get! Editor’s note: I probably shouldn’t have called it as level 2 and a half. This was barely scratching the surface of the trip. :/
• http://ping.fm/p/I8pmq – this waiting area is PIMP. nice comfy chairs, usb (g1 used power leech! it’s not very effective)& reg power jacks
• well, we were gonna board but I guess they gotta get the gremlin piss off the wing or something Editor’s Note: One of the bathrooms was apparently leaking some kinda water.
• one plane down, sitting in chi-town on the next waiting to be hurtled thru the sky at terrifying speeds which defy the earth’s very spin! :D
• destination: portland, oregon :) finally, to the west coast! not a first for the well-travelled @meatbag though
• this is the nicest damn airport I have ever seen
• lvl2.75 complete! flying & bag claim all done – now waiting to collect @malpertuis & establish home base!
• on lvl2.75: encountered wild tacos! devoured easily but left with burn.
• Zomg I think it’s gonna be @malpertuis tiem soooooon
• http://ping.fm/p/4XV4H – we got to the hotel, complete with bear & obelisk Editor’s Note: Though I neglected to say so, I think This is officially the END of level 2.

Not part of the travel portion of the adventure, but absolutely part of adventure as a whole: http://ping.fm/p/t05uG – inspired by the interview w @jamesurbaniak & jackson publick, they’re right, it IS awful

Notebook content

I admit that I did something that could mark me as some kind of trend whore and got a moleskein journal. I wanted something without spiral binding, and unlined pages. The moleskein gave me that, and the bookmark, elastic closure, and a back pocket. It was worth it.

Page 1

Hurtling above the land & clouds at pilot-only-knows what manner of height & speed, I am inclined to make a few observations, though they may be trite and obvious to all but the most obstinately non-observant. The upper surface of a large bank of fluffy, white clouds possessed the same manner of undulating sea surface I had noted as we banked out over the Atlantic to gain speed (presumably). In short, it was a captivating case of “As above, so below”. The second thing which really grabbed me as I owlishly stared out of the smallish window to my left (would that make it port side?) was the curious juxtaposition of man-made grids of landscape, versus the chaotic winding of rivers and their surrounding forest. Of course the more urbanized areas do tend to wind and twist – the loops and whorls that give fingerprint to a living community. Not even an expert palmist, I suspect, could read the fats of these places by such unassuming lines. I think, perhaps, the swaths of red/brown, and of glittery cars clustered around big buildings paint a clearer picture of what humanity is doing to/for itself. Certainly moreso than any other aforementioned qualities of landscape.

Page 2

My good pen exploded and I smeared the ink from my fingers onto the page. I took this opportunity to try to base some drawings off it. I did a pretty nice sketch of an eye and ruined it by trying to ink it with one of my felt tip pens.

Page 3

This page intentionally left blank.

Page 4

It took about 12 hours to cross the country, no mean feat, but it’s amazing this future we live in.
Trendspot: patterned tights w/ flat boots
Saw my first ever, proper, junkies hanging about the rite aid. Editor’s Note: That Rite Aid was the most intimidating, WEIRD shopping establishment. So many strange items behind chiming plastic half doors, everyone was in an absolute rush. Disinterested cop standing near the doors, and junkies milling about both in and outside the doors, with the most lost and tragic air I have possibly ever seen in a human being. It frightened me and broke my heart simultaneously. My journal entry item was too cursory and unfair to the actual experience.
Crossing the Rockies was amazing, though perhaps more amazing were the ranges of mountains that preceded them.
So many hills, valleys, ravines, rivers. Amazing. There was a large brush fire, too. Not sure where we were when we saw it.
Looks like some of the bars round here permit smoking. This does not bode well for my lungs.
The air here is chill but clear & pleasant.
There is, potentially, so much to do, I simply don’t know where to begin.
I’m looking forward to the film fest.
It promises to be greatness for sure.
Meeting more Ectomites is also a thrill in waiting though I fear Eliza’s exacting tongue… ah well. Editor’s Note: It’s so difficult to meet people you admire, and of all the Ecto-gods, she is the one I want to avoid looking like a douchebag in front of the very most. Introspectively, I can’t help but wonder if my lack of female interaction growing up has made me incapable of interacting normally with other females now as an adult.

Page 5

While listening to WFMU, enjoying the hell out of hearing Jackson Publick and James Urbaniak of The Venture Brothers (which I absolutely ADORE), they were discussing comics, and the topic of political cartoons came up. They likened the modern political cartoon to something as crass and stupid as a guy wearing a shirt that says “taxes” and a guy with a bat that says “healthcare”. In a fit of “I should draw more because that’s the only way to get better”, I busted out the blue pencil and the non-smeary pen and set to creating this masterpiece of AWFUL. I shared it via Twitter/ping.fm: http://ping.fm/p/t05uG.

The text reads:
Guy in taxes shirt: “What’s that whistling noise?”
Guy with bat: MINE
Caption below: HE WON’T KNOW WHAT HIT HIM

Sidetext: Political cartoons are terrible (Then a note regarding the inspiration as noted above.)

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Bottle Rocket – The Go! Team

I was minding my own business when: Digging through my collection I stumbled across a compilation with a few tracks I wanted to get in my list for the day, and opted to listen to the whole thing. This sweet jam surprised me with horns that screamed 70′s movie magic, a record scratched, the beats kicked in, and it went totally apeshit from there. The lyrics spread like hot butter over the tightly woven tapestry of samples and drums. And those awesome horns? They just don’t stop. It’s disco funk, classic rap, peppered with soul.

Look for: In at about a minute fifty, harmonica solo. There’s also a guitar sample or something early in (within the first 15-30 seconds) that I recognize but I can’t place. It’s maddening.

I recommend it if you like: Girl Talk, any of the Bootie crew mashups, (and to a lesser extent) The JAMs.

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfx4UH659kQ

This poppy, energetic, tightly executed ditty grabbed me in the first few seconds the way few songs have in a while (since the Fleet Foxes’ White Winter Hymnal, I reckon).

It’s a super catchy balance of techno precision and warm pop sensibilities, wrapped up into three minutes fifty-odd seconds of awesome. The vocals have the adorable lilt that makes people fall in love with artists like Feist, and the kind of simple but well crafted lyrics that make an absolute classic song. I detect little airs of Fleetwood Mac, or maybe Heart or Pat Benetar. There’s a throwback aspect here that I haven’t quite pinned down, but I’ll be happy to listen to again and again to discover. Little disco notes bubble up here and there, adding that particular flavor of jubilant funk to this heady brew.

If you bounced along with Freezepop’s addition to Guitar Hero (or just listened to their albums!) you’ll probably really enjoy this tune’s grin-inducing hoppy beats. It’s not all techno though, throughout you can hear the slide of fingers on guitar strings, providing little organic clues to the musicianship at work.

I’m excited to check out the rest of this album and highly recommend you press play above!

Also, nerd bonus I just noticed: Ender’s Game reference at about 0:45! :D

P.S. Their five song EP, The Robots in Love is only 5$ on Amazon MP3.

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I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1

As it turns out, I don’t just love this game, I love-love it. Let me tell you right now that you may not spend hours and hours on this. It’s not that kind of game. What it is, you see, is the fastest paced, 1-4 player shoot-em-up (or shmup, if you must resort to neologisms like that) on the block. It starts slow, with just a few enemies so you can get the feel for the two-stick mechanic which is smooth like butta, even if you’re like me and your hours of Katamari training make you tend to point both sticks in the same direction. There are no instructions, no tutorial, just a couple of shuffling zombies coming at you across the field, shown in glorious top-down 2d as the theme music begins to swell “Welcome… to my game…”. After killing a few zombies a couple power ups might appear on the field. Scampering over to pick these up, you may find yourself as I did: simultaneously delighted with the new firepower presented to you, and horrified as you realize that the number of foes is beginning to rapidly increase. I’d tell you what happens next, but to do so would be to totally ruin the awe-inspiring effect.

Let me prognosticate for a moment about this game’s theme music: it will be the next Still Alive. It encorporates all the elements that make a video game song just great. Involves a nerd favorite, in this case zombies. It is very tongue in cheek. It is epic in scope. It appeals to those with an already eclectic taste in music. I am going to link you to the song under one condition: don’t listen to it until you have played the game. Ok? Here you go.

The game, as I mentioned, accommodates up to 4 players, and I strongly suggest enlisting all four. From what I understand it’s a short game, but I still haven’t made it to the end. I die pretty quickly on my own, and got MUCH farther with just one extra person. I think a team of four could probably make it all the way to the end, although it gets really intense rather quickly. I haven’t explored if the game allows remote multiplayer, but if it does I invite you to join me for a round or two.

Go get the game! You’ll probably spend more money on a shitty sugar soda! This is so much better for you, trust me.

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