April 2007 Archives

My friend Tricia Allen of Tattoo Traditions - just about the best polynesian tattooist in the world - has written the definitive book on hawaiian tattooing.

Said book is up for the 2007 Ka Palapala Pookela book award.

We can help out by voting for tricia's fantastic book (follow the instruction below or just click here)

Trica Allen writes:

Aloha,

My book has been nominated for a 2007 Ka Palapala Pookela book award, so now it's up to you readers to vote! Please vote for my book! Below is the link to the article the Honolulu Advertiser ran on Sunday about the Reader's Choice Award they are sponsoring. The link also has other books you might opt to vote for (God forbid!).

To vote, simply send an e-mail to hawaiibookpublishers@gmail.com with the title-- TATTOO TRADITIONS OF HAWAII in the subject line.

To read the article:
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Apr/22/il/FP704220322.html

Tricia's book is great, if you're interested in Hawaiian tattooing, it's a must-own. Go buy it.

I'm standing in Downtown Disney in my black workman's utilikilt, trying to get a cell connection (Cingular may have better service than verizon did but they really don't have quite the quality.)

I'm standing in a stream of people who I assume were heading towards the disney trams; i am the rock around which the stream part, standing with my back facing the upstream mass.

"Don't you dare, mother!" i hear, and turn, to see an attractive older women woman and her even more attractive late-twneties daughter heading my general direction. I smile at them, and know they were somehow talking about me.

They glance at each other, and the mother leans is close, not stopping, and asks the question.

"We were wondering if it's really true that you don't wear anything under there."

They're stepping past me, and I am intent on the phone call I'm trying to have.

"You'll just have to find that out for yourself." I say. And they shriek, and giggle, and it's that kind of giggle. Then they're gone one way, and I'm walking away another; but I know that these two attractive ladies are now, as they head home, thinking about my cock. And that alone makes my evening.

I'm leaving on a very short trip to southern california - getting on a plane in about two hours. I wish I had time for a real vacation, with time spent sipping cocktails by a pool, and energetically doing nothing. But this isn't that kinda trip; i've got two and a half days to hit d-land and possibly a few other sites in and around anaheim (though I'm sure, as usual, I won't have time to go get tattooed by jack rudy; that always happens).

It's the kind of trip where one has fun, but never had time for downtime which what I need most right now. That has to wait a bit, however, and it's virtaully impossible to be unhappy at Disneyland.

I fly back saturday afternoon, so at least I have a day of peace and quiet after the trip. I'll need it.

I stopped my truck to let her cross.

She'd emerged from from a shiny, modern auto, and was headed for starbucks, or jamba juice, one of those corporate purveyors of sweet-soulless beverages.

I generally let people cross in parking lots; it's one of those general rules of courtesy I try to follow, all the more because I drive a big vehicle, and because I have a somewhat threatening demeanor. So I go out of my way to make shows of public courtesy (one might say I was lulling people into a sense of false security, and one would not be entirely wrong).

But in this case, the act wasn't one of courtesy, so much as it was one of - words fail me here, mesmerizement?

She was attractive; lovely, possibly. I can't really say for sure. Thirtyish, or fourtyish, or more, or even less. The details melt away. Her hair was pixie-short, stylishly so. Expensively colored some wine-dark tone.

She smiled at me when I stopped my huge truck and waved her on, go ahead, you have the right of way. Her makeup was tasteful, lips some strong color I can't recall, which didn't particularly compliment or clash with her hair. Nice, but not striking.

But it was her clothing that left me overwhelmed.

She wore a skirt in an orange one rarely sees in clothing; an orange made for hot-rods from the seventies, for vintage british amplifiers. For plastic furniture or sports uniforms or or the inside of lava lamps. It wasn't demurely orange, elegantly orange; it wasn't naturally orange, the orange of fruit or blossoms. It was brazenly orange, aggressively orange. It shouted, screamed the color - Orange!

The skirt was longish, to the calf, in some swingy, flowing fabric. It was the sort of skirt my female friends will know the name for, the cut, the length, the fabric. But it was well made, and moved about her legs as she walked, flashing only a bit of calf, and flattering what wasn't a remarkable walk.

Her shoes were like some minimalist craft; sleek and low, like cigarette boats or the sort of cars that sit so low you can't see them from your SUV window at a stop. Barely a shoe at all; low and flat, with a slightest band across the ball of her feet, her toes peeking out. The heels were low, with angular, sharply tapered heels. They're what I think are called a 'kitten heel', which I recall only because the word 'kitten' has so much sexual resonance for me when applied to a woman.

They're shoes I'd never have noticed, but that they matched her skirt. They were blindingly, brilliantly, attention-grabbingly orange. Tiny, thin, barely there; yet the image if the elegantly tapered heel has attached itself to my mind's eye. Her feet were hypnotic.

And there was her jacket; and this is where all hell breaks loose.

Imagine if you will: Drop acid with Emanuel Ungaro and Peter Max, and they spend the night watching Yellow Submarine, making love, and designing ladies jackets. Imagine a color palate featuring this mind-bending, eyeball-saturating orange, and mate it with contrasting hues in similar intensity. Imagine the yellow, the green, the pink that would go with this, and take your mental paintbrush and swirl it into a carefully planned psychedelic salmagundi.

You are short of this jacket; you have made a valiant attempt, but you fail. It is more; brighter; wilder. It is a garment made from madness and pop-art; or one might simple say, it was very bright.

And I sat in my truck, willing my eyes to close, to allow myself a moment to recover. And I thought, where is she going?

Because my town, it is not the sort of place where Peter Max and Ungaro give birth to a psychedelic love-child in dupioni; it is not the sort of place where a woman goes causally down to Starbucks in a swirl of brilliant orange skirts and matching kitten-heeled mules. It is not a town where elegant ladies wear amazing technicolor dream coats.

This woman, in fact looked like she might have stepped out of the world's most elegant circus. I wondered, as she vanished in my rear-view mirror, if she were the office manager for cirque du couture. My mind filled with a vision of designer clown cars disengorging an elegantly clad and near-eternal stream of perfectly-coiffed clowns, not slapping about in huge, boat-like shoes but instead clicking along in dolce & gabbana. Ringmasters in chanel, jugglers in gautier, tightrope-walkers and acrobats in lagerfeld and st. laurent.

Was she the den mother for the cubscout be-in? Was she the here with a gypsy caravan? Was she a member of some mind-warping cult, a designer-dressed pied piper, ready to lure our vogue-reading rats and children off to some pleasure island of tropical-candy-colord joy and sin?

Who was she and what was she doing in my town? And did she, I wonder now, know what she was doing? Or was this some horrible accident of taste that brought her out, perfectly, elegantly dressed in something where the word taste becomes abstractly meaningless. Did she not even know?

And I am left to wonder; what did her blouse look like, for I never even saw it. And what - my mind going there because it has to - did she on have under that sun-bright skirt? Nothing, I want to think, but i know that's wrong. But i wish - hope - that she had the tiniest thong, covering a perfectly, lovingly waxed pussy; a delicate thread of brightest orange or acid green or hot, tropic pink elegantly cleaving a perfect bottom. I want the part I couldn't see to be as outrageously, loudly perfect as the rest.

I will never know; but let's all assume I'm right.

Wow, what a resource.

I just found progressiverock.com; a massive timeline of Prog, from 1967's proto-prog Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, all the way through Pink Floyd's bloated radio-rock opus The Wall, featuring reviews of pretty much every major prog-rock and krautrock album in between.

There are reviews of major works - The Yes Album, Thick As A Brick, Brain Salad Surgery, Trick of the Tail; but also of minor but important acts like Jade Warrior, Premiata Forneria Marconi, Camel, Gentle Giant, etc.

This is a work of major geekery, arranged in cronological order. And importantly, while the dude who wrote all this is a fan-boy, he generally gets it, nailing both why the particularly great albums work, and why the over-rated ones (like The Wall) are not all they're cracked up to be.

It's an impressive piece of work; and for stoner prog-heads like me, it's like a personal, bong-hit-and-black-light history of my teenage years.

Wow, man.

comment spammers have brought my (brandon's) server to it's knees. If you can't comment that's why. Sorry about that folks; we're working on it.

I dunno if we finally did the right thing or if the spammers just gave up and ran, but this finally calmed down.

I do NOT get what they think they're achiving. We all have nofollows on our links and most of us restrict who can post, so they're spending cycles attacking the world, spending effort (and often using illegal resources).

And for what? To annoy us so mch we eventually find a way to cut them off. Unless they're in the business of selling more security software and hardware, they're not getting dick from this.

So it's hard not to see it as malice, you know? Malice or stupidity. I'll admit stupidity is the easy answer, but malice is just somehow more satisfying.

This caps a day where I struggled all morning to over-come a hangover and to write; the hangover I beat, the writing though, I never did, instead spending my day moderating domestic mayhem and cooking all afternoon. I shopped, did laundry, and while ideas floated through the back of my skull, they never stuck long enough to get down on paper or keyboard.

At least my kitchen smells of fresh turkey stock, which tomorrow should become asparagus soup, or possible tortilla soup; and I finished the day with little tequila while Papa Christo played guitar in my living room.

Days that end peafully are a good thing. I need them on almost all days ending in 'y'.

I posted that Swervedriver song the other day which made me go listen to Mezcal Head. And I'm reminded what a fucking brilliant album this is.

Here then is the one I can't get outta my head, just cause I can't get it outta my head: Last Train to Satansville.

I looked over my lunch date's shoulder, as we ate garlic-and-chili tofu and rice.

I can't even say exactly why the girl in the corner of the restaurant distracted me so much; or maybe it's as simple as what she was wearing.

She was blond; long, wavy hair. My best guess puts in her late twenties, though early or mid thirties might not be far off. She had a pretty, round face, and a figure you might call lush, or less flatteringly, round or plump. She had that pretty, shy look, like she had no idea how good looking she was.

She was wearing a Motörhead tee-shirt; I noticed this second, after I noticed that she was pretty. I have the exact same shirt.

I was looking at her over my lunch date's shoulder; she looked up, looked away, down at her menu, then looked back at me. She blushed, I think, her pale cheeks coloring just slightly.

Maybe she knew me from work; I don't know. When I later walked out, I caught a glimpse of a work id at her belt. Or maybe she just liked me looking at her, or in her insecurity, wondered why I might stare.

She was eating with two men, one asian, one not; both geeks. I could imagine them discussing gaming, or operating systems, or which Rush album was best. Co-workers, not boyfriends; Body language made that clear. She was one of the boys. I had an eye on her, without seeming to stare, all through lunch.

Later, when I walked out, I looked at her from another angle. She was in jeans, a little too small for her but in a good way. I wanted to see her standing, walking. I wanted to see her ass.

The t-shirt had ridden up slightly. She wasn't wearing it that way in purpose; I'll bet she feels too fat. A soft curve of skin showed between the top of her jeans and the bottom of her tee-shirt, creamy-pale against indigo denim and jet black shirt.

I imagined the feel of her skin, soft against my palm. The contrast of rough denim and soft, soft hip. Pictured stepping close behind her, one hand there, fingers inside the waist of her jeans; one in her hair, pulling her head back against my shoulder, turning her face to kiss me.

"You are getting into my head," I wish I could tell her. From across the room; your face, your hair, your cool, rock-n-roll tee-shirt. Because when you reach across a room full of strangers and grab someone's attention, get in someone's head, you should know about it.

Motörhead girl, I want to kiss you.

This video is too goddamned funny - The Landlord.

Posted after the cut cause I can't get it not to auto-start.

I sat at a light, and watched a girl on a motorbike.

The bike was yellow; the girl was in leather, jeans. Her booted feet looked like a child's, tiny black leather boots.

She passed me in an intersection as I waited for green, and then I tried to catch her; in my huge gray truck, it was hopeless. But I tried, ran a light to stay with her, passed my stop.

Her helmet was decorated, neck to crown, in sparkling stickers, whorls and flourish and little stick-on gems. It was a helmet a little girl would imagine on a princess, should a princess ride a motorbike; perfect and elegant, yet child-like.

I lost her at the next light, carving between cars on her fleet little yamaha; her black braid trailing behind her in the wind. I never got a look at even the sliver of face a motorcycle helmet would show, only a pair of mirrored shades, no more.

I turned my truck around, a great tire-screeching arc, and went back to my errand.

This is the song I dialed on my iPod as I drove away.

I mentioned in a recent post that I was reading CJ Cherryh's Fortress if Ice:

This is the latest in the Fortress series; and I'm happy to say, to my surprise, she's looking like she's redeemed herself after a couple of significant misfires.

I was talking to a friend recently about tattoos (ok, so, this could describe about a full quarter of the conversations have on a daily basis but nevermind).

This is one of those conversations you get in regularly if you're heavily tattooed and in any way expert.

"I want to get a tattoo, can you tell me were to go."

This is different than who did that tattoo or where did you get that tattoo; that question comes from two groups. One, those who are looking and know enough to know good work and to inquire as to it's origin, and two, those who feel the need to comment and don't know what to say. That second group, i can say 222 tattoo, san francisco, or I can say, san francisco or I can say katmandu and it won't make any difference. They stare at me blankly either way.

But those are not the conversations I'm talking about. I mean the ones where someone who's never been tattooed asks for help or advice. This is always a difficult conversation. Because tattooing is so completely personal.

Thus, here's some general advice for those who want to get a tattoo and have no idea where to start.

Stolen from the lovely and talented OG, because it's about time for a Really Stupid Quiz:

Skip this one if you're here for the dirty stuff. This is one in which I bitch about work and stress.

How did another fucking week get by me like this? It seems like yesterday I was saying, i'm off for sake bombs and then two blinks I'm back, and the list of things I need to get done is no shorter, in fact it's longer.

I need a vacation, so very fucking badly. Hell, I needed to take a couple sick days this week (doctor's orders - i got me a wicked sinus infection) but fuck it, I've no time to be sick.

I'm counting days til I get a break; 18. I head to anaheim for an all-too-short family trip to see The Mouse. But while that's good for the soul, it's not rest; four days of mad rush and then back at work.

My real vacation isn't til august, and even that is still in a state of flux due to some scheduling difficulties. If I'm lucky though, I'll be under water in about a hundred and twenty days.

Ignore me while I grumble. This shit ain't as easy as when I was 25. This is why i didn't move to a startup company six, almost seven years ago when I left Cisco. I had offers; I had several offers. But I had a moment of clarity, and though, sure the big money, maybe, if the dice land right, but what else? And I thought about my first run in a start-up where home was a memory, a place I showed up at to sleep and shower, where life was what I did at work, not the other way around. And I turned down an offer or two and took a job in a big corporation.

This last month it's like I'm on one of those shops, where we are in push mode all the time, short handed and long-houred; and we don't even see when the light at the end of the tunnel is, we don't know when the ramp stops going up. It's that kind of push, we're in uncharted waters here. The schedule tells us nothing, because for my team, the work is setup, support, methodology. And we don't know what is going to explode around which corner yet.

We're makin' this up as we fuckin' go, y'know?

I had a conversation with a co-worker the other day; one of those relaxed, happy, eternally competent people who almost never gets riled, who never complains even when he has to work long house (ie, nothing like me), and he remarked, this is getting really tense, you know? Stress is getting to everyone. And I said yes, and dude, it's going to get worse.

To be sure, I'm actually into what I'm working on, which hasn't always been true the last two years. My days are winging by and I'm doing work I'm good at (i'm at my best at the bleeding edge). This isn't misery I'm talkin' about. But damn, I'm tired.

I just wanted to say happy birthday to my dear friend Doxy. I don't think she even dwells in the blogosphere anymore so I doubt she's reading, but still, she's one of those people who should be celebrated.

Here's to ya, Girl.

One of my literary heros, Kurt Vonnegut, has shuffled off this mortal coil, as they say.

Cory says it better than I can.

Vonnegut's short story collection, Welcome to the Monkey House, was one of those books that opened my world. My first significant sci-fi, my first read by someone who'd be considered a major, modern literary figure, my first encounter with short stories. Pieces like Harrison Bergeron, Monkey House, and Tom Edison's Shaggy Dog made huge impressions on my young mind; possibly the still influence my thinking to this day (certainly I still refer to Bergeron often.)

One more hero gone off into the sunset. Hey, Kurt? Say hey to Hunter for me, k?

It's been way too long since I've caught up with m'man Art's Mashuptown.

Here's an absolutely inspired mash of My Sharona with Enter Sandman and among other things) Sympathy for the Devil. The really funny thing is the way this treatment takes Enter Sandman from ominous and scary to something between funky and southern-rock swagger; the vocal, out of context and stripped of backing (and sped up) sounds completely different. I think the first half of the song (featuring Sandman) works better, the second half features the vocal from Sympathy for the Devil. But it makes for a very listenable (and very danceable) mash.

Listen here: ToToM - Enter North American Sharona

Thanks, Art. I gots me some catchin' up to do.

For some reason of late I've been having weird - and weirdly vivid - dreams. Odd, since I've been sleeping little (or maybe not so odd, maybe that's why I'm dreaming this way).

In no particular order, since I can't recall when I dreamed these:

There was a woman I knew named Laurel, from my tower days. Laurel was the sexy older lady at the time; she knew Lindsay Buckingham, she sun-bathed naked, she danced like a stripper. I realize now that she was in her early thirties, a woman I'd think of as a sexy young thing now; but I was 22 and she was tan, exotic, and incredibly sexy.

I never did fuck her, for all the times I thought I might; all the times we played grab and tickle, all the times it seemed like I'd have wound up in bed with her, it never did happen.

In my dream, we are riding on a bus, or some sort of large, slow-moving vehicle, and talking about how we never did, and how we should have, but now it's too late since the people who should have aren't here anymore.

I am having a conversation over drinks with Buck. But for some strange reason, Buck has hair. In real life he has none, of course, but in the dreamy unreal reality, it is known to be him.

When I say hair, I don't just mean a few days without shaving. His head is crowned with some elaborately tall, almost sculptural thing, a pompadour, a golden whipped topping of hair, high and blond and framed with mighty side-burns.

I've no idea what we talk about. It is important, though.

I wake with her beside me - some girl from memory or sub-conscious. Her sweat on me. I can smell myself on her.

I kiss her bare shoulder, stroke from hip to belly, fingers parting her thighs and feeling the wetness of her bald pussy.

I roll her over, kiss her, and straddle her, kneeling between her things. She's still slick and wet; we've already fucked once. Her pussy smells like her come and mine.

I wrap my hand around the base of my cock, working it fully hard. I rub the head against her slit, working her open.

I push into her, wet and welcoming. She whispers my name. I can feel the inside of her; she moans softly, and I begin to growl.

I'm at a planetarium, or a museum. I don't know what, or where. Maybe los angeles. Maybe not.

Travis Barker is, first figuratively, and then literally, crying on my shoulder.

He weeps, laments; how could she do this to him, when he loves her.

She's a bitch, he says, how can she do it? He'll never love anyone else.

He's drunk, slurring his words. I attempt to comfort him, but he seems on the edge of crazy drunk, like he'll turn violent of I say the wrong thing. So I speak softly to him, agree with what he says.

The setting gradually morphs to someplace with a bed, and he's passing out, still fully clothed, including boots, which are filthy.

I tuck him in and leave.

When I wake, I have the name 'Shanna Moakler' in my head, and for a moment can't figure out why.

He does, you know.

I ran across a bit of dialog in a book I was reading last night - a CJ Cherryh novel, one of Fantasy/Sci-fi's perennial greats, and in my opinion, one of the greatest writers working today (even if her recent books have been someone off her usual mark). She's a brilliant, insightful, lyrical writer, someone who seems to understand human beings on a more deep and fundamental level that most, and someone who can take that understanding and build characters with the full, conflicted, confused richness that comes with being human.

Strangely, some of her best observations on the human heart and mind come from the point of view of non-human intelligence; as if humanity's real nature is best seen from outside.

This quote then is from such a character, Tristan, from Cherryh's Fortress series.

"This too: love you must have, love that come to you from outside, un-bought and unasked for. Do you understand? You cannot hold it. You cannot compel it. But you must keep it when it comes."

"How do I keep it, then?"

"Deserve it".

This captures something that is central to the way I try to live and what I expect in others. Love isn't a thing to be expected, assumed, compelled, or demanded. Love is something that is earned; one gains it by being deserving of it. One keeps it my striving to remain deserving.

I tried to express this the other day, and failed, and then found this quote; That, I said to myself, is exactly what I was striving for.

some weeks just make your head wanna explode.

You know how it is when things that should be simple wind up growing up to be problems, and then children of problems, and then problem-clans? They start as a spark and end a conflagration, start as a single point of data and fan out into a cone of ill-logic?

No?

Maybe it's just me.

In any case, that is the week I've had, on the heels of the month I've had, and there's the year, 1/3 gone and a foul, swampy road it's been.

I think I had an entry here but as usual, my thoughts scatter like roaches when a light's turned on; fuck it, I think it's time for sake bombs.

The Hoodoo Gurus are back.

And it's about fucking time. They haven't toured in more than ten years.

This is snipped from a mini-review I posted on the band's mailing list; the photo is from a gig in Los Angels at the El Rey on 3/28 (photo courtesy of qsysue on Poison Pen.

I saw the Gurus Saturday night 3/31 In SF, at the Cafe Du Nord; it was the last night of the tour but Dave [Faulkner, the Gurus frontman] pretty emphatically stated they'd be back in September or October.

Cafe du Nord is a small place in San Francisco's Castro district; it looks like it'd be a great place to see jazz or acoustic but it's a bit small for a band like the Gurus. Dave described it as looking 'Like a punch n' judy show, with a little punch n' judy PA'. This resulted in a show where the volume wasn't quite as earth-shattering as when I've seen 'em before (i lost a good chunk of the hearing in my left ear last time I saw 'em, in San Jose CA ten or so years ago). But the sound was good, so you know, *shrug*.

I swear, it's like they never went away. The same energy, the same evident joy in playing live.

I wish I'd noted down a set list; I was too much in the groove just diggin' it to recall (well, that, and the sake and beer wreck havoc with memory). But as always, Cyril Jordan from the Flamin' Groovies joined the Gurus for a few songs, playing a rippin' version of the Groovies hit 'Shake Some Action', as well as a couple other songs. Cyril's lookin' really old, but his playing just keeps getting better.

I don't have any audio from the show but here's Miss Freelove from a live album they released a while back. They played it saturday and like every other damned thing they played, it smoked. They were and are one of the best live bands I've ever seen I I suggest you do whatever you have to to see 'em on the fall tour.

I'm payin' for saturday's rockin' good time today, though. The cold I was fighting off friday won on sunday. But the Gurus are worth it.

Update: I found YouTube videos of this gig. The first two are with Cyril Jordan.

Bittersweet
Teenage Head
Come Anytime