blog.circusgeek

a personal blog with nerdy bits thrown in

Category: Entertainment

  • Company party, and more sick?

    The weather today was fantastic (60 degrees and sunny) so I finally spent some time in the yard, doing some much needed pruning of the roses. Lots more to do, but at least I've made some headway.

    Tonight my place of employment threw a big party at a downtown club called Aura, to both celebrate the launch of all the new products, as well as to celebrate the company's 6th anniversary. Happy news all around. I've been recovering from my cold, and felt pretty well ready to party the night away. The company provided taxi vouchers so Kelly and I could be safe and have a paid ride to the party and back. Excellent.

    For the party, the company rented out Aura for a few hours, where we would have food and drink provided. Kelly and I arrived shortly after 7pm and were halted at the door "this is a private party" … to which I replied "yeah, I work there"… I think the girl at the door wasn't quite sure how to ask "are you with the private party?" SuperSweetCo should have provided employees with a password or super secret handshake or something. Oh well. The place itself was pretty "hip", with lots of modern stylings. The music was blippy and loud, the lighting was low with bright, focused lights and trippy video displayed on a large screen dividing the space in two, a seating towards the front and a dance area towards the back. Pretty interesting spot, though nothing I'd likely go to normally.

    Kelly and I got a couple drinks (bottle of Guinness for me, blueberry martini for Kelly) and wandered towards the back where all the food was set up. They had many of the things on their menu out on a few tables, and Kelly and I snacked a bit. I tried their mini chicken burger, and both their beef and chicken skewers while Kelly had their gigantic prawns with cocktail sauce. Spent a bit of time chatting with coworkers and then suddenly started not feeling so well. "Great" I thought, while I tried to ignore it, continue hanging out, and having another 2 beers (an Amstel Light and another Guinness). Finally, at around 9:15pm my stomach wasn't feeling well at all, and Kelly and I left. I was very bummed, because the party was really just getting going when we left.

    We got home just after 10pm, and Kelly and I took to the sofa and watched some TV (a NetFlix disc we'd recently received, Black Books, a hilarious British comedy) where I found myself freezing cold. I went to bed at around 11pm, shivering violently until I fell asleep. I woke up today (sunday) feeling mostly fine, but still taking it easy. Not sure what happened, perhaps it was the food, but either way, I'm none too pleased.

  • Tolkien Day at Kennedy School

    Tonight McMenamins Kennedy School held their annual Tolkien birthday bash, in celebration of the famous author's birthday (which was technically January 3rd). It's an all day event (from 11am to 7pm), with food specials (like Shire Stew, and My Precious Onion Rings), readings from Tolkien's work, people dressed in costume, and the theater playing all three Lord of the Rings films back to back. Because of my poor memory, if it wasn't for the email I'd gotten from Snooks I'd have forgotten about it completely (I'd forgotten to add it to my calendar, oops). Kelly was in school all day, and I had some errands to run, but I met Snooks and L there around 4:30pm, grabbed a beer, and then went exploring. The hallways contained a number of people dressed in costume, including a very impressive Ring Wraith and a girl in a beautiful Elven costume. I also wandered into the theater (which I'd never been into before) and caught about 5 minutes of Two Towers. Most of my time was spent hanging out in the Cypress Room with Snooks and L (and later Kelly, once she finished with her day of classes for school), learning to play rummy (and kicking ass for the few hands I played, heh). Fun evening. Had I showed up early enough I'd have loved to seen all three movies in the theater, but as it was, it was just fun hanging out, soaking in the Tolkien-esque atmosphere.

  • Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton

    Tonight my friend Miranda and I went to see Emily Haines (singer/songwriter for Metric) perform at the Doug Fir. The evening started with a surprise cocktail party in the company break room; music cranked up, snacks, people playing cards, and even a waiter mixing martini's. The boss apparently decided that due to all the stress everybody's been under the past few weeks, that a party was well deserved. Pretty fun time, and it goes on the long list of reasons why I love working where I do. I'd have hung out longer if it weren't for the plans I'd made.

    After leaving the office I met Miranda at the Shanghai Tunnel, where we had some drinks and a meal before heading to the Doug Fir for the show. Kelly had to miss out on the evening unfortunately, due to school. Miranda and I arrived at the Doug Fir about an 45 minutes before the show started. The main floor was arranged with rows of seating (something I've never seen at the Doug Fir), which given mood of the Emily Haines album Knives Don't Have Your Back seemed like the perfect way to do the show. We got in and took a couple seats a few rows from the stage at one end. The opening band, Tall Firs (yup, the Tall Firs played at the Doug Fir, heh), were an interesting and mellow trio, a drummer and two rhythm guitars players / singers (no bassist). The music sounded like it might be a good fit for driving over the mountain ranges on the way to the coast, very chill, not very exciting though.

    After a very long intermission (the stage sat, completely set up and empty for over a half hour), Emily Haines and her band The Soft Skeleton took the stage. They immediately started playing, but after the first song or two, Emily paused to talk to the audience, where she seemed a little 'out of it'. She described having had a wreck of a day, something about a stalker freaking her out, and one of the members of the Tall Firs spending time backstage consoling her before she could go on stage (this, I presume, is the cause for the long intermission). She seemed genuinely freaked out, though while she was describing things there were this morons in the back of the place laughing… either they were cold, heartless bastards, or they thought she was being funny or ironic. I didn't detect any irony in Emily's tone, but she laughed along a bit, in something of a helpless / hopeless way and continued on. In between songs she kept sipping on cans of Guinness. As the show went on, she tried talking to the audience about songs but the constant and loud murmur of conversation at the bar was distracting / annoying her. Several times between songs she went on little tirades about it, eventually causing members of the crowd who were paying attention to yell back "shut the fuck up".

    As the evening progressed, Emily was either losing hope, drunk, or was too drained (or all three, I couldn't quite tell) that she almost stopped playing completely, looking at the guitar player saying "man, I can't be bothered… should I continue?". I don't think she was drunk, though if she was, she continued to play piano and sing flawlessly. Either way, it was a surreal and very emotional show, one of the strangest I've ever seen. I get the impression that the material and the mood of this solo work is so personal and emotional for her, that she's a lot more vulnerable than while performing with Metric, with her tough, punk-chick persona. And while the show was an emotional roller-coaster (from tears welling up during certain songs, to anger at the morons being so rude, and everything between) it somehow worked. While distracting at times, it was still a good show. I hope that whatever this stalker business is gets resolved and Emily can continue the tour without the mess, and I also hope that she doesn't think of Portland as a city filled with insensitive jerks (and stalkers, if said person was from here).

  • Mappyhour

    a little something a coworker sent my way… MappyHour, the Happy Hour Map. Enjoy!

  • Back Stage Bar and Talkdemonic show

    Tonight Kelly and I met up with our good friend Miranda after work at a new-ish McMenamins pub called Back Stage Bar (named for it's location, behind the Bagdad Theater on SE 37th). The pub hasn't been open for quite a year yet, and was once literally the Bagdad's back stage when it opened in 1927. In the 70's it was converted to a more art house theater, but since McMenamins bought the Bagdad the back stage building has been more or less vacant until last year. When you walk in, you can't help but be awed by the height of the room. Essentially, it's the concrete shell of what looks like a 4 story building, though I could only pick out one missing floor, about 15 feet from the ground, I'm guessing that's the height of the Bagdad stage. It's really very impressive. You can also climb some stairs to two smaller rooms along the street-facing side of the building. There are 5 pool tables and one snooker table, a large bar along one wall, and a dozen or so booths. Aside from the building, the food and drink is what you'd expect from a McMenamins.

    After dinner we drove over to the Doug Fir to see Talkdemonic play. This was the first time they'd played in a while, what with Lisa Molinaro having joined the Decemberists on tour. Lisa and Miranda are friends so at one point we got to meet her, and had a chat about the Decemberists tour, the future of her with them, etc. It seems that she'll be joining them on another tour sometime soon.

    The second opening act was Leti Angel. Fairly good rock trio, though the vocals were pretty rough at times. That said, the male singer (there's a female vocalist and bass player in the band too) would use a sampler effect pedal and add harmonies loop vocal bites (yells, etc), which created some interesting sounds, some of which were really really cool. All in all, worth checking out their MySpace page.

    Talkdemonic were, as always, great. I've talked about them before, so I won't go into great detail about them except to say that each time I see them the crowd gets bigger and bigger. They performed a lot of my favorite tracks from their albums, some of which were slightly re-worked, or Lisa would play her parts different, which was nice to hear it sound fresh… and they also performed a lot of new material, which was fantastic. More pics here and here.

  • iPhone… very nice!

    Ok, I'm not going to go on about this, but I will say that I saw the Apple page for the iPhone today and it is, as Borat would say… "Very nice". It's a slick device (as you would come to expect from Apple), phone, mp3 player, and wifi-enabled web device. I'm not decided if I really want one, but it is pretty sexy. There are some user interface designs that I find interesting, such as "pinching" a photo to shink it's view and "stretching" to enlarge, and it's cover art 'flip' view of your music collection. I also appreciate the built-in Wi-Fi, web browser, and the simple integration with Google maps. Overall it's a very neat device. I'll be curious to see how real-world use shapes up once it's available.

  • Videos: God, Inc., episodes 1 and 2

    Found some fun videos on YouTube while eating lunch today, two episodes of God, Inc. by Francis Stokes. You can watch them on his website, francisstokes.com. The comedy reminds me of The Office, or Office Space, but with a twist, the employees in this office work in the corporate offices of God, handling public affairs, marketing, etc. A fine example of the comedy is this:

    A new employee is meeting about her new role in the company…

    Manager: Sarah Melody Church, you're going to be in product development, right?
        Sarah: That's right.
    Manager: OK… birth
        Sarah: June 3rd, 1976
    Manager: OK, and death?
        Sarah: November 5th, 2006
    Manager: How did you die?
        Sarah: Leukemia
    Manager: Oooh, ouch. That sucks.
        Sarah: Yeah, it was pretty painful, but I had the support of my friends and family, so, that meant a lot.
    Manager: Yeah… Isn't there a cure for that? (looking puzzled)
        Sarah: No (also looking puzzled)
    Manager: (looks at a sheet behind his desk) … Oh, yeah, that's next year. (Makes "tough luck" face)
        Sarah: … (looks at floor, sadly)

    Apparently he's working on Epsiode 3 now. I think these along with Chad Vader are among my favorite web videos of all time. Enjoy! 🙂

  • New computer: built

    Continuing on my week of productivity, today I built myself a new PC, a Core 2 Duo, two gigs of DDR2, and an nVidia 7950gt video card. After spending most of the day and evening getting all the hardware and basic software installed, I installed Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (which came with the video card) and Call of Duty 2, and briefly played each one. I will say that after upgrading from an older system, the new one is quite speedy, and while it's fun to have a new machine, it's a big pain reinstalling all the software and getting things set up the way they were prior to the upgrade. I'm guessing it'll take a couple more days to get things set up the way I need, and to back up all the junk from the old hard drive, but it's nice to have a modern system. Oh, and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is pretty fun. 🙂

  • Company Holiday Party

    Last night Kelly and I went to my company's holiday party, held at the Paragon Restaurant in NW Portland. They had rented out the Gallery Room, a large room for private parties, and supplied hors d'oeuvres, drinks, and dinner. Seeing the entire company (with their spouses / significant others) under one roof is impressive. Even the two 'out-of-country' employees flew out this past week and were able to attend. It was fun to get to meet many of my coworkers better halves, chat with coworkers who I don't see in the average day, etc.

    About an hour or so into the event however, the power went out, not just in the building, but a large portion of the surrounding area. I went outside to look around and from Paragon (NW 13th and Hoyt) north as far as I could see was out of power, but it seemed that south, east and west were only out for a handful of blocks. Still, it was a pretty large outage. The Paragon staff were polite and professional however, filling the room with candles and continuing to serve drinks (and later, the salad portion of our meals, since nobody was sure whether they could complete the main course without power). Also during the outage the CEO stood up, read a hilarious poem he had written about the company and employees, set to tone of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore, and then handed out gifts (each employee participated in a white elephant gifting scheme, and some of the gifts were hilarious, including what I received). The power finally came back on, and within a half hour dinner and then dessert were served.

    Due to the late dinner, many people continued drinking, on empty stomachs. Fortunately for me, I don't drink anything but beer, and my head cold kept me from drinking too much of that, so for the whole event I remained sober. Kelly has a different story, which I'll let her tell. 🙂  It was fun though seeing some of my coworkers getting a bit tipsy, standing outside with their manly drinks and manly cigars. I just stood there with them with my bottle of beer and a cigarette.

    After the event, my manager wanted to go to the Moon & Sixpence, which I would have gladly done, but Kelly was ready to go home so we thought we'd share a cab there, then call one from there home. The company provided taxi vouchers for the evening, which was great, except that the cab company's phones were either busy or not answering. The few of us (seven total) who were going to go out decided to find something walkable from Paragon rather than stand out in the cold, somebody (I believe it was my manager's wife) directed us around the corner to a club/restaurant called Apotheke (Portland Murcury review here) for a drink and, well, warmth. The place itself, which, nearly all white, had a very angular, rounded-corner, 'plastic' look (most of it was either plastic or fiberglass), with minimalist artwork decorating the walls, and a couple of guys (one on a laptop, the other with a sampler) creating 'crunchy' electronic music completed the atmosphere.

    The restaurant serves what it calls 'Scandinavian and Northern European Cuisine', and has a better-than-usual beer selection (including a couple bottled Scottish beers [1, 2] I hadn't had, or even seen, before). The server behind the bar was very friendly and knowledgeable about the beer offerings and accurately described the flavors of the things I tried after they ran out of one of my favorite English ales, the Adnams SSB. It was a very interesting place to go, and given the friendly staff I'd be curious to go back and try out some of their food menu (the patat, wurst with potato salad and sauerkraut, and Westmalle stew all sound delicious). Kelly and I finally got a cab home sometime around 1:30am, then Kelly, I, and Arthur all dozed off on the couch around 2:30am. I woke up (still on the couch) sometime around 4am, and sleepily shuffled my way upstairs to bed. Fun night. I'm sleepy.

  • The Shins

    The Shins on stage at the Crystal BallroomTonight Kelly and I (along with our friends Miranda and Brian) saw The Shins perform at the Crystal Ballroom. We all met up at McMenamins Ringlers Pub for dinner and drinks before the show. When Kelly and I first arrived, our server listed off some new beers they were serving (brewed at Ringlers, not sure if any of the other McMenamins carry them or not), one of which cought my attention, a Scotch-style ale on nitro. I had one and it was fantastic. Dinner was also very good. The show started at 9pm, so shortly before we went on upstairs to a packed Crystal Ballroom. I'd forgotten until that moment that the show was a sponsor-filled event put on by the local radio station 94.7 FM. It was full, very very full.

    The opening act was a great local band Viva Voce, who I'd been wanting to see for a while. Miranda, Brian and myself had seen The Shins once before, about a year ago (Kelly missed out due to a work event, if I remember correctly), and again, they were fantastic. They played a lot of new material from their upcoming album (released on January 23rd), Wincing The Night Away. The stage was decorated with Christmas lights, and their 'entry' song was the Vince Geuralid song "Christmas Time is Here", from the cartoon A Charlie Brown Christmas. Kelly was smiling a very big smile, as Christmas time and that film (and song) are closely intertwined and always put a smile on her face. The whole show was great fun.