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Some fun for a Friday.

I already did a post about PJ Harvey, so I won’t include her here. But I suspect she could line up all these female singers and kick their asses with one arm tied behind her back (and in spiked heels).

Still, these chicks are pretty dang awesome.

OK, here’s PJ too:

Who’d I leave out?

Not that it’s a competition, or anything.

This is the folder I store my mp3s in.

Obviously, that doesn’t do my collection justice. That’s only halfway through the Bs. Let’s see how it looks in iTunes.

Well that doesn’t even crack the As. Let’s zoom in on this sucker…

What’s that? 34,567 songs? It’s like an illness.

You know what’s sadder? I have a folder full of downloaded albums I haven’t even unzipped yet.

Moving on to cameras. Just how many cameras does one person need?

Let’s not answer that. Especially since I’ve already acquired another camera since putting this picture together.

What I originally intended this post to be about was my new computer monitor, anyway.

Yes, you wish you were this ridiculous. And messy. And had a husband that could do a no-footer on a dirt bike while still maintaining his dignity.

I do all the time. The one I’m in love with right now is actually one that’s been out for awhile and I loved it when it came out. But I just heard it again the other day and could actually make out all the lyrics. Here it is:

I spent an hour in the car yesterday playing it on repeat until I could sing along with every word. I love the part where the chorus kicks in again near the end, and they play the guitar part a little harder, makes you want to jump up and down or stomp your feet.

What song are you in love with?

I really don’t care much about politics. I know a lot of people do. I personally can not get worked up over it. I’m all about emotional conservation, and worrying about politicians and which one is the bigger liar is not on my list of things to spend emotional energy on.

Yes I’m very cynical about it.

I came across this clip of Jon Stewart on the TV show Crossfire from four years ago. I loved it when it was new; I love it now. I think it’s interesting to watch now, in the death throes of another election year, because it was filmed during the last election in 2004.

Jon Stewart totally calls the hosts out for the lameness they participate in. No offense to those of you who love those kinds of shows, but I happen to think they’re exactly what Jon Stewart claims: theater. And I do think they’re hurting America. I think most Americans are pretty much centrists when it comes to politics. The media wants us to be right or left, black or white, and it gets very tiring after awhile.

It’s hilarious, how lost the hosts are in trying to deal with his comments. “Be funny. You’re not being funny.” That’s the best they could come up with? I personally thought he was hilarious.

My favorite part is when they accuse him of sucking up to John Kerry because Stewart asked him soft questions when he was on Jon Stewart’s show, and Stewart reminds them that the show leading into his is puppets making crank phone calls.

Earthless are a local band I’ve seen once before. They really blew me away last time I saw them. They’re three guys who don’t look like they should be in a band together at all. One is a short, stoner-looking guy (on bass). One is a giant Hispanic guy (on drums). And one is a scrawny, kinda geeky-looking white guy (on guitar). Put them together, and what do you get? An amazing psych rock jam band.

I heard they were playing a free music festival out in Chino so I took Nathaniel and Dillon to check it out. It was free! It was held at a shopping plaza, which was weird. But it meant I got pictures like this:

Very bizarre setting for this band.

(Nathaniel and Dillon on lower right)

When we got there, we walked right up to the stage, and a guy announced Earthless was next. Couldn’t have timed it better. There were around 100 people there I’d guess. Probably more, but most weren’t right up against the stage.

They play these big long songs, like one song can go on for 30 minutes. It’ll start to wind down, and you think it’s gonna be over, and then it’ll build back up all over again.

They stopped playing after what to me seemed like 15 minutes. Nathaniel said it was 30 though. I was bummed they had to do such a short set.

We stuck around for another band but they weren’t very good. Then we left.

Nathaniel’s hair is getting long.

More video here.

More pictures here.

Next upcoming show: Van Morrison!

Actually, a really great line up of doom metal bands is playing the night before Van. I really want to go. I just don’t want to be too tired for Van’s show. What to do?

I took the boys to a local guitar store to get a new amp. This is what we got:

Pretty dang sick, right?

So we got to the store and wanted to hear how it sounded. The guy working there looked like he was straight out of the 80s. As in, he was in a hair metal band in the 80s and has now aged 20 years, but still clings to his youth. He had long black hair, which was all damaged from the black hair dye. And he was wearing a tank top and gym shorts, which really kind of made me uncomfortable, but maybe I shouldn’t mention that.

He told Elijah to grab a guitar and he’d plug it into the amp. Elijah went to grab the closest one and the guy freaked. “NOT THAT ONE! That one’s signed by Michael Angelo!”

I said, “Michael Angelo…That guy’s so cheesy. He out-Spinal Taps Spinal Tap.”

Don’t believe me? Here he is:

When I got home and told Daniel about it, he asked if Michael Angelo signed the guitar with both hands.

On the heartless streets of Huntington Beach.

Some cower in fear, not knowing which way to turn.

They find themselves seeking out companionship in questionable places, turning their backs on their true friends, not realizing they’re headed only for sorrow and despair.

Until, lost amongst unfeeling strangers, they fall into a drunken stupor of spiraling shame and degradation.

Don’t let this be you.

I wasn’t actually going to do a Part IV, but then Mike said he was looking forward to it. So here we go…the music! And some other stuff.

I feel really lucky to have been a teenager in the 80s. I was talking about this once to a guy who was a teenager in the 90s. He thought the 90s was a pretty good time to be a teenager. I could only think, “pffft.”

And Nathaniel’s friend Dillon is always complaining to me about how all the great bands and music scenes existed in the past. As in, the 80s. It’s true. I mean, look at it: we had early grunge, ska, Bad Brains, Husker Du, Dead Kennedys, Big Black, crazy industrial stuff…so much awesome music happened in the 80s.

My high school really was straight out of a John Hughes teen movie. The cliques were few and they were rigid: preppies/jocks, skaters/punks, geeks, stoners/metalheads. Although the metalheads seemed to get along ok with the punks. Must’ve been the mutual love of underappreciated music.

These days you get all kinds of groups of kids. And I’ll tell you, nothing ticks Daniel off more than seeing guys who in the 80s would’ve been a jock beating him up for being a skater punk that nowadays think it’s cool to have tattoos and look all punk. (I know that sentence was really convoluted but hopefully you know what I mean.)

Here he is, suburban skater punk:

Back in those days there weren’t skate parks on every corner. You had to build your own (wooden) ramps. We had a friend whose parents let him build a big vert ramp in their yard. It was cool. When Daniel and I finally started dating, we’d often drive up to Vancouver, Canada, because they had a skate park there—North Van. And once or twice we went down to Burnside in Portland. Daniel also knew these guys who built their own bowl to skate in their backyard in West Seattle. Those guys eventually started a business building concrete skate parks, Grindline. The parks they build are insane.

There were a lot of Seattle bands back then that weren’t grunge. I don’t think most people realize that while there was the heavy stuff going on, there was also a poppier indie scene in Seattle in the 80s. One of my favorites was a band called Room Nine. They broke up and the singer later formed Love Battery. I believe this is a picture of Room Nine performing one year at Bumbershoot:

Here they are when we interviewed them for my friend’s ‘zine:

L-R: My friend Jennifer, a guy from Room Nine, Daniel (flipping me off Young Ones-style, again), guy from Room Nine, my brother Willy.

Another band we saw at Bumbershoot was this one:

I think they were called Danger Bunny. If not, they were Danger Mouse. I always got those two bands confused. This was taken at Bumbershoot. They played right before Robyn Hitchcock.

This is a band called Pure Joy:

Great name, huh. I saw those guys a bunch of times. The singer, Rusty, is now in a band called Llama.

One of my greatest experiences as a teenager was my 16th birthday. I had a penpal, Laura, who lived in San Francisco. She was as into music as I was. We both loved U2. She lived right downtown and knew where to go to meet bands when they were in town. She met all kinds of bands—the Cure, the Alarm, she met John Lennon when she was 4. Well, U2 were playing a show there on June 4, 1986, my 16th birthday, and she got two tickets. My parents let me fly down and stay with her for a week.

She heard U2 might go check out a show by a local band, Camper Van Beethoven, and the club was 21+, so we waited outside on the sidewalk, hoping to catch them on their way in.

They didn’t show. The next day, the day before the concert, we hung out on the curb outside the hotel Laura was sure they’d be staying in—the Four Seasons. While we were sitting there, a van pulled up, and Bono and Sting got out. I took a picture of Bono with Laura and Laura’s friend, Sherry. (I’m sure I’ve posted this before.)

Bono was really nice to us that day, even though he was obviously very tired. And at the show the next night, when he pulled a girl out of the audience during “Bad,” Sherry was the girl he chose.

It’s all about the hair.

When I was about to start high school, which where I lived meant 10th grade, I went into a Supercuts type of salon and asked for a mohawk.

The woman there couldn’t bring herself to give me a mohawk. I don’t know why I expected a salon to give me one. I was rather disappointed with what I ended up with. Here’s my 10th grade yearbook picture (scanned from the yearbook):

I look like a boy.

I was going to take you through a chronological evolution of my hair styles from high school, but I honestly can’t remember what order these pics should be in. Here’s my best guess.

This was a haircut I got by a kid at my school:

His name was Julius. He was the cutest guy. Really small, he was Filipino, and he wore his hair about like mine in this picture. He used to wear his mom’s silk pajamas to school. They were black with huge white polka dots on them. His dad had this huge stereo system, with speakers that were abut four feet tall. His dad had a big reggae record collection. I used to go over to his house, lay on the floor between those giant speakers, and listen to Yelloman.

I also used to give people haircuts. I don’t know why. I guess it was because we had a pair of hair clippers. This is me giving Daniel a haircut. This is later, though, when I was a senior and I think he was home from college on Christmas break.

I have other pictures of me and my friend who was in beauty school dying my boyfriend’s mohawk bright magenta, but I won’t post those.

Eventually my hair just got bigger and bigger. I kept ratting it up big, Robert Smith-style. At one point I started ratting up the top and leaving the sides down. It was sort of a mushroom or hour-glass shape:

Before school started my friend Jennifer and I used to go hang out in the library at school with my older brother Willy and his friends—which included Daniel. Willy claims the first time I wore my hair like that to school, we went into the library, and when Daniel saw me, he fell off his chair.

I used to wear a lot of vintage clothes. Most were old clothes of my dad’s, like a ski sweater from the 60s:

That’s my grandma, me, my bro Willy in the back, my little brother Danny, and my grandpa. Note the shelf of records next to my grandpa.

My grandma gave me some old dresses from the 50s, too, that I wore occasionally. What I remember most about them was how well tailored they were. They fit so much better than any other dresses I’ve ever worn (to this day).

In the above photo, I’m wearing an old top of my mom’s from the 60s. Can you tell? Not sure why I’m carrying an extension cord. But don’t you love our mint green kitchen? Not to mention the big, big hair.

At some point, I wore it in a bob, which an undercut that was shaved. I used to shave different things into it—I think at first I shaved in “U2″ and a peace symbol. Here I am, getting ready for junior prom, when my undercut just had criss-crossing lines:

You couldn’t see the shaved part unless I pulled my hair back into a ponytail.

I think this next one is one of the last times I ratted my hair up. It took me an hour to achieve this. And lots and lots of Aquanet hairspray. And when it rained? Yep. All caved in. (And we lived in Seattle. It rained all the time.)

It’s a photo my brother took and we developed and printed at home in our cellar darkroom. I say “cellar” because that’s what it was. A spooky, dark, damp, cobwebby cellar. Like something from a horror movie.

By my senior year I’d toned it down a lot. Here’s me and my bro Willy:

Yes, that’s a spinning wheel behind the couch. We had sheep for awhile and my mom would spin the wool into yarn. I did it sometimes, too—it was fun.

And one of my senior pictures:

I didn’t actually intend to do a post all about my teen hairdos, I was just going to focus on all the pics I have of Daniel from back then. But it’s hard to resist mushroom cloud hair pictures. I guess if you’ve got it, you’ve got to flaunt it.

(Here’s part I.)

This is the car Daniel drove in high school.

‘58 Chevy.

There were a series of concerts at the Seattle Center one August, all local bands. My brother and I went to all of them, I think. Lots of kids from our school did too. We saw the Young Fresh Fellows, the funnest local band there was, and they had the drummer from the Smithereens join them on drums for a song or two. They even covered the Smithereens’ biggest hit, “Blood and Roses”—but they changed the words to “bloody noses.”

There were a lot of people up front trying to get pictures. I was sitting up front but off to the side, and a girl from school who was sitting back up on the lawn came down and asked me to get some pictures with her camera. So I snapped a few.

Then Daniel came up and put his face like an inch away from mine and said, “Focus on me.” I tried telling him a picture that close wouldn’t come out, but he didn’t want to hear it. He grabbed the camera and handed it to my friend Colin, shoved his face right up to his, and said, “Focus on me.” Colin tried. Then Daniel went and jumped on stage, shoving the camera right into the singer’s face, and snapped a picture. It was really funny.

Here’s a picture of Daniel at the Mural Amphitheater, after one of those shows. Note he’s flipping me off Young Ones-style.

I never did see how that picture he took came out, since it wasn’t my camera.

After one of these shows, Daniel offered my brother and I a ride home in his Chevy. I sat in the back behind the driver’s seat. At one point on the freeway I began to feel really hot. I didn’t think much of it, just figured the heater was stuck on or something.

We got to our house and when I got out of the car there was a lot of smoke coming from the back. I waved it away thinking what an old clunker it was.

I went upstairs and a few minutes later I heard a big commotion downstairs. I came back down and Daniel and his friend were running outside with pots full of water. Apparently his car was on fire.

I tried telling them we had a fire extinguisher but Daniel wouldn’t listen. It was a really old one, didn’t look like a fire extinguisher. So I grabbed it and brought it outside. Daniel’s friend took it from me and promptly put the fire out.

It was the rear wheel that had caught on fire. The brakes, actually. The same wheel I’d been sitting on top of during the ride home.

I thought for sure they’d have to stick around at our house until my parents got home, but no. Once the fire was out, Daniel got back in the Chevy and drove it home.

That thing was a tank.

My other experience with that car was when Colin and I asked Daniel to drive us to this show:

Only one of the most intense shows I’ve ever seen.

At the time, the car’s hood was missing. I didn’t ask why. It wasn’t until years after we were married that Daniel told me the story of the missing car hood. It was after we saw this scene in a movie:

We nearly fell off the bed we were laughing so hard. Then Daniel said, “That’s a lot funnier when you’ve actually had it happen to you.” Apparently he and Dave were driving in the Chevy and the hood flew up, then off the car. They put it in the trunk and drove away.

Once they were driving around a corner and Daniel looked over and saw a wheel go rolling past the car. The car kept going for a moment, on three tires. He had time to think, “Is that my wheel?” And then—clunk. The car tipped over and stopped.