Just finished reading the newest Steven L. Kent Wayson Harris novel – The Clone Empire. Read it twice cover to cover, actually. Here’s what I think.

1) Good continuation of the main storyline from the earlier 5 books. There were definitely a few surprises (plot and character-wise) I didn’t see coming, which are always nice to see, especially in a fairly long series (sci-fi or otherwise).

2) I’m not sure what to think about Wayson’s state of mind at this point. On the one hand, he definitely seems like a man trying to escape his own past (and genetic heritage of being a programmed killing machine) but on the other hand, he can’t escape the violence when it starts, and because of that same internal programming, really can’t avoid liking it and feeding off of it, either. But unlike the many clones around him who have similar programming – he is given much more capability to ‘decide’ about what he believes in (or doesn’t believe in), which makes his decisionmaking (and ultimate mental anguish) that much tougher to bear in many situations.

3) There were two major plot ‘loose ends’ I believed I had caught as having been overlooked by the author over the past several books. One was answered at the end of this book – kudos. The other I’m still waiting to see if it gets addressed. Rather than spoil either one for people who haven’t read the books (or read them all twice like me) I would welcome a direct chat with the author on the latter – Mr. Kent, are you out there? 🙂 I simply couldn’t find an email address/form on Sad Sams Palace or i’d have pinged you directly…..

4) Stepping back to Wayson – I’m also a bit unsure about his ‘deference to authority’ seen more frequently in this book (especially as concerns Warshaw and Doctorow – Andropov seemed to light the fire just like in previous books, no love lost there) versus before. While there is an actual sentence directly mentioning this attitude mid-book, I just wondered whether Wayson was getting tired of ‘leading the charge’ every time no one else seemed capable or willing to solve major crises – yet gets perpetually dumped on and ostracized by most others the rest of the time. It may be that most other major authority figures see him as a complete threat, one that cannot be contained or stopped by anything or anyone (short of killing him), but that he’s too useful to simply execute (although that’s been tried unsuccessfully too). Hmmm…I wasn’t completely convinced of Warshaw’s motives in trying to ‘replace’ Wayson with Hollingsworth – but I’m not sure I was meant to get inside Warshaw’s head really either. Hmm….

5) One thing that occurred to me – Several books back, we got a brief glimpse (mostly through ancillary conversations) at the Mogat ‘bible’, written by Morgan Atkins about his encounters with and negotiations to hold off the Avatari. Can we see more from that? It may be too late at this stage given the next book may be well near done by now – but it would be very cool, and help understand the aliens a bit more? And why several thousand (million?) people chose to follow Atkins in the first place at that stage in the story? That was always a bit unclear to me too – They seemed to give up a LOT (as described during Harris’ invasion of their homeworld in an earlier book) but it didn’t seem that they were ‘racial isolationists’ (like Shin Nippon) or Freeman’s Baptist family (religious ‘back to basics’ farmer colony). Did I just miss the discussion of their motivations, or?

Looking forward to the next book – as I understand it – possibly the last one? doh! 🙁

candybowl

Good deed of the day – DONE. We were headed home on Aurora Ave. today, just barely crossing the bridge northbound, in the right lane, when we noticed the traffic slowing a bit in our lane and swerving left a bit at the same time. When we got to that spot, we saw to our dismay, there was a medium-sized bird, apparently trapped down next to the (now very high with barrier) curb. It looked like it had a broken wing, probably why it couldn’t fly up over the barrier to the sidewalk and get out of traffic. We both immediately decided we had to help the bird somehow, so we got off at the north end of the bridge, and I jumped out and ran back onto the bridge, while Kerewin circled around to drive back south on the bridge.

I started out running back up there, but soon slowed down (out of shape) but also didn’t want to startle the bird back into getting hit if I came running up. The poor thing was trying to walk/scuttle south – I slowly walked behind it (I’m up on the sidewalk, safe from traffic unlike the poor bird) and it slowly kept scooting south – but then it stopped and just huddled against the curb and stopped moving, probably too scared to do anything else (plus maybe about to give up? not sure).

Our crazy scheme was for kerewin to circle around at the south end of the bridge (there is a way you can get off, go under, and come back around to go northbound) across the bridge VERY SLOWLY to block out traffic in that lane, while I leaped over the railing (onto the road, NOT off the bridge!) and grabbed the bird, then jump into the car with the bird when she got to me. Probably a minute or so before she appeared on the south end of the bridge, a cop showed up (I realized someone driving by had likely called the situation in on their cell via 911) and she quickly pulled up and blocked 2/3 of the lanes, so the traffic died down to a crawl as the cars made their way around us. I talked to the cop, very nice woman, and she pulled some bags out of the trunk and we were able to get the bird in a bag and off the road – although he perked up and tried to bite a couple times – so we used the other bag gently to head that off (no pun intended).

They had apparently called Animal Control too – I wanted initially to take the bird up to PAWS in Lynnwood, because they have a wild animal rehab center there and they could likely treat the broken wing (or whatever was wrong with the bird). But the AC woman (who had just arrived right about when we corraled the bird) said they have a PAWS volunteer that comes to pick up wild animals in cases like this at their center. So, that was a relief, they weren’t just going to euthanize the bird and we didn’t need to haul it north too.

So, hoping to put in a call to them tomorrow to see what happened, but I think things will work out for the poor birdie! After we got home we looked up some bird pics and determined this was likely a Cormorant, like the one in this pic (not actual bird). Pretty good sized bird, about the size of a duck at least, but a bit more lanky than a duck (definitely longer neck and beak!).

Hooray for the bird! It was crazy out on that bridge, the cars and BIG trucks/buses were whipping by and I was just praying the bird stayed put until we could get him off the road. It was also really windy – thankfully not raining at that point – and yes, if you aren’t familiar with this particular bridge – it’s the one most often used for suicides in this town – VERY high up. I was very nervous (not a fan of heights **at all** in walking back to the north end of the bridge after the bird was out of harm’s way – forgot how high up that thing is – doh!

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Had a celebratory dinner for Kerewin at Lecosho last night. It’s located downtown on The Harbor Steps (in between the two high-rise apartment buildings on the steps themselves), about midway down on the south side.

Mm, Mm, good! We had the rillettes and and green salad for starters, and split the ribeye and cauliflower for our entree. Washed it down with wine, Dixie and a topper of Chartreuse – boo-ya! Our friend Matt Janke opened his new place a short while ago with his business partner Jill Buchanan, and it was definitely worth the wait 🙂

Got to get back there for the happy-hour menu veddy soon, too – here’s some additional press about them:

Seattle Times

Seattlest – with pics!

Matt’s Lecosho blog:

Nancy Leson in the Seattle Times earlier this summer

and Jason Sheehan in the Seattle Weekly.

Lunch, Dinner, Happy Hour or just for drinks – as their site and menus say – it’s ‘food WE like’ too. Congrats to Matt and Jill for a great new addition to the downtown eating scene and can’t wait to get back there :).

candybowl

Saw the short ‘documentary’ Heavy Metal Parking Lot this evening. This is a very short movie filmed way back in 1986, when ‘heavy metal ruled America’ for a short time (you had to be there :)). The ‘movie’ itself is pretty basic, not a heck of a lot more than the camerman/interviewer going around the parking lot before a Judas Priest show and handing the mike to various burnouts drinking beer and yelling ‘Priest Rules!!’ over and over. Some highlights:

1) Did we really have all that horrible hair? Yep. If it wasn’t a mullet, or ‘she-mullet’ (guess where the hair-metal bands got those long scraggly ‘dos? From the chicks!) – it was an uncombed ‘feathered back’ mess. The last time I saw that many winners in the same space, it was either Monsters of Rock (at the Seattle Kingdome – sporting Dokken, Metallica, Scorpions and ‘Van Hagar’) or even worse, a USFL football game in Portland during high school. Yes Virginia, there are lots of weird people/trolls out there who live under big rocks nearly every day of the year and only come out into the light for crappy semi-pro football or rock concerts.

2) Nearly everyone on camera seems to be drinking beer, even though almost none of them are even 21 (several admit their age on camera between beer chugs) and there was at least one cop seen walking around, to boot! This concert was in Maryland somewhere at what looks like a high school stadium (but I think it was in fact a sports stadium). Even worse, one guy brags about being 20, then his girlfriend says she’s 13(!) – then they start making out – ewwwww! The one saving grace is that he’s wearing aviator-style sunglasses – which proves that those glasses STILL SUCK today too, guys!

3) The one guy who says he likes Scorpions best (they were my fave at the time) is also sporting a ‘f*** you’ tshirt – pretty funny. Like nearly everyone else, he mugs heavily for the camera , yells and then chugs.

there are other ‘extras’ on the DVD but bleh. They include other subject-matter ‘parking lot’ movies (including a Harry Potter one?) and a brief HMPL ‘alumni’ movie – where they talk to some of the people in a ‘where are they now’ style. Watched about 5 mins. of this, but bleh.

Man, watching that was just too weird. And a little TOO real 🙂

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Continuing a two-week-long tradition, we saw our friends’ band – Shiftless Layabout – this past Sunday night at a small bar in Wallingford, Sea Monster.

Notwithstanding the coolness of being in a bar that has *anything* to do with sea monsters generally, SL is a great band to boot! Their sound is funky, but more akin to roots-funk (e.g. The Meters – who were playing over the bar stereo both before and after their set, conveniently enough) than say, The Red Hot Chili Peppers. In part because they have horns (like my boys in Fishbone) but they just have a mellower, more laid back sound. All the better to groove with.

Their next gig is Friday Oct. 22 @ The Scarlet Tree over in Roosevelt area. Check them out before the show by hitting their myspace page linked above, or on YouTube.

candybowl

Saw Manooghi Hi at The High Dive last night – another great show! They also played a few new ones that aren’t on CD yet – should be good. It was kind of weird since we got there WAY too early – around 8pm – it looked at first like no one was going to be there – it was us, bartenders and M.H. hanging out.

But then people started filtering in (including the opening band, who seemed to be showing up a wee bit on the late side). The openers – can’t remember their name and they never actually SAID it out loud – played some forgettable stuff for about 45 min-one hour, then M.H. played not long after, getting done around 1130 or so. Despite being a Sunday night show, it was pretty packed out, and it looked like there were more than a few M.H. family members in attendance – veddy cool!

This show came on the heels of eating at Delancey over in Ballard (finally) – also very good, it’s a gourmet pizza joint – basically Seattle’s version of A Pizza Scholls in Portland. While my personal fave here is still the nearby Crash Landing (because ‘grease is the word’) and in portland – Escape from New York – this was damn good. And *this* came on the heels of a wedding the night before that was catered by Via Tribunali! Between friends, family, relatives, music and pizza – it doesn’t get much better than that. 🙂

I will upload some abbreviated, way-too-dark videos from my phone/the show shortly, but in the meantime, SEE THIS BAND!

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There were two concerts (among others I didn’t know about) in Seattle last night: ‘The Chameleons Vox’ (meaning the singer/songwriter Mark Burgess from the ’80s alternative group The Chameleons) and The Cult (likely no explanation required – they lasted beyond the 80s even though they also started back then). On the one hand, TCV was only $10 – The Cult was $30+ (which is more than ‘current’ bands like Ozomatli and others charge these days, making it a hard sell) – we opted for TCV – The Cult just seemed way overpriced for its potential rock value (and if that’s not a lame way to describe even lamer 40-something concert decisionmaking, I don’t know what is :)).

There were three opening bands, we missed the first and the other two were largely forgettable (sorry guys). I give Romance (last opener before TCV) an A for effort and they were definitely good musicians, but not super-distinctive otherwise.

Then, on to TCV. They started with the song ‘Swamp Thing’ – the band was playing several measures of the song intro before Mark Burgess (the main original member/singer) came onstage in a ‘grand entrance’ – Uh….yeah. They powered through several more songs – all played well – but the show got progressively weirder for me the longer it went on. We left before they were done, near the end of the set (I would presume they played a few more songs, maybe an encore, not sure). Some impressions:

1) When MB came out on the stage – the first thing I thought was ‘here’s young Ozzy’ (meaning Ozzy Osbourne). For some reason he just struck me as a younger version of Ozz – maybe the face? Not sure. When he talked a bit between songs, he SOUNDS like Ozzy’s normal speaking accent, although I’m not sure if they are from similar locations in England. He is also sporting a Moe Howard hairdo – not the most complimentary? Finally, I couldn’t help also thinking of many Mike Myers parody characters as he danced around during many of the songs – sorry Mark.

2) There was too much ‘unbalance’ for me between most of the band (20-somethings) and MB’s obvious age. It was like a father playing music with his kids or something? When we saw X, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Queensryche, Living Colour, Madness, etc. over the past several years – whether or not they reach the heights of their glory days (some do, some really do, some are slipping) they all look older – but they also all look ‘correct’, because the band are all the same age. This show just seemed weird to have an older guy playing with such a younger band. I wish he had been the bassist like before, that might have avoided it a bit, but oh well. The band was very good, as far as playing – definitely no issues there.

3) Could there be any MORE delay pedal/voice effects? On albums, fine – I listened again to a few Chameleons songs on the bus this am going to work and yes, delay effects are all over the place – but live, it just seemed to wash everything into mud – and it was distracting (at best, annoying at worst) as regards the voice? It really served to date the music quite a bit for me, unfortunately. Throwing in a few Beatles and Clash verses mid-song on at least a couple occasions didn’t help either – cheese!

4) A positive – Mark B’s voice sounds largely fine. He’s no Boy George, Rob Halford or Bono, but for his historical range he largely achieved it. He was a bit quieter on a couple songs he would have likely belted out years ago, but whatevs. And you don’t need the delay effect to sound good – just be yourself….

5) Another positive – MB was putting himself out there. He was definitely not phoning it in. That counts for a lot, especially when you consider The Cult playing across town in not much bigger a club at 3x the price, and the comparative obscurity of The Chameleons even back in the 80s(?) – MB’s not getting rich on this tour most obviously, but cared to put on a good show, and he seemed to be having a good time.

6) A weird thing – in one of the songs (can’t remember the name) there is a long guitar mellow ‘exit’ at the end – which this time around was modified by actual drums in it, unlike on the album – but MB took the opportunity to head offstage while the band played for several minutes without him. When he came back, it *seemed* (can’t say for sure) if he had taken an 80s ‘coke break’ in the back – he was sniffing it up a bit. Weird, and I could be imagining things, but my buddies noticed it too. There goes the profits on the tour if so….doh!

7) Finally, after the first several songs I just kept increasingly thinking – ‘you can never go back’. I hope the tour works out well for him and the band, and The Croc was pretty full, definitely as full as seeing Manooghi Hi there a month or two ago. But the songs really sounded dated and lacked oomph for me. It seemed like every time they were cranking it up to really ‘rock’ – the sound would kind of smooth out at the top end and they would proceed – kind of like a ’70s Caddy trying to punch it up a hill and then gliding along without incident once there.

By way of comparison, when we saw X at The Showbox last year – they really *rocked* and were one of the tightest bands in recent memory, despite their age. And the fact that all their songs (being a punk band) are only about 2.5 min. long, so they have to play a LOT of them to fill an average show-length set – no ‘coasting’ allowed there, to be sure.

Here is another review of the show, from Glen Boyd – he obviously saw a much different show than I did. I’m glad he enjoyed it – but I really don’t think TCV were ever in danger of tearing the roof off at any point. Now…..had the mighty Fishbone made a surprise appearance….hmm…. 🙂

If you were there, feel free to comment/agree/disagree/etc. I guess the show left me with mixed feelings, but I don’t regret going (despite being all but asleep in my cube today for lack of sleep).

candybowl

Just got back late this afternoon from this year’s Bike MS event (WA ride – there are others nationwide at varying times throughout the year). This is the first ‘big’ bike ride we’ve done – I haven’t done STP (yet – it’s still in the cards someday though) nor RSVP (may get to this one first as we have friends who already do this ride) and the last couple walking events we did (Vancouver Sun Run, Seattle Half-Marathon) were also many years ago now. So it was interesting to be a part of a big event like this – they estimated about 3,000 bikers were going to take part overall, and I believe it.

Bike MS is a bit different than STP or RSVP – it’s not competitive, nor timed (unless you handle that) it’s to raise money to cure the disease Multiple Sclerosis. Teams of varying size – and corporate sponsorship in many cases – raise as much money as they can prior to and during the ride, all counting towards an overall goal (apparently this years’ is $1.6M, of which they had raised about $1.12M as of last night’s announcement while we were there).

We took the day off work Friday and got there around 11 am and as there was almost no one there (participant-wise) yet, we parked the van in our camping spot and helped some of the volunteer staff – I worked in the ‘bike corral’ helping store people’s very expensive bikes – kerewin helped at the registration desk. Our team started showing up mid-to-late afternoon, some not until that night due to getting off work – apparently the traffic from Seattle was its usual jam-up funfest.

The first riding day, Saturday, we did the 59-mile route – there are longer and shorter but we felt that was the best one for our ability. Saturday started out with a minor threat of rain but went from overcast early on to sunny by late am – ended up with a few minor sunburns but nothing major. Great conditions for a ride, good mix of hills although the course is mostly pretty flat.

The second day (today) we did the 50-mile route, which is even more flat – but, it rained about 2/3 of the ride today. And was pretty breezy/windy the whole time (especially at the end). Today’s route was a bit tougher mentally, even though otherwise a faster ride – plus, we were still a bit tired from the previous day. Got home around 4pm, no traffic coming back – always a nice experience around here. 🙂

To sum up, a great event, great teammates (for some of whom this was their first ride too) and a good time had by all – no injuries, only one notable malfunction (someone today had flats at two different times, and a crank that persisted in coming loose multiple times, so he had to bail on the ride about halfway to avoid something bad happening).

Thanks to everyone who sponsored us, and for hopefully defeating this disease!

candybowl

So besides the jet boat trip in July, so far we have attended two family reunions (the first was in Medford – the jet boat trip was the first event; the second was last weekend in Manzanita– somewhat interrupted by rain, unfortunately).

After the second reunion, we drove the Syncro up the coast and camped at 3 different locations: Cape Disappointment (just north of Astoria but on WA side); Grayland (mid-coast, about 25 miles south of Aberdeen); and Heart ‘O The Hills (just below Hurricane Ridge outside Port Angeles). In the first two cases, the weather was overcast, breezy and somewhat wet – typical for this time (and nearly every other time) of year. The last site was much warmer and dryer, but also came with more bugs – doh!

We got in some good biking too. In Medford, we took a couple rides – a ~30 miler roundtrip to the outskirts of nearby Ashland; a second one about 14 miles RT (bike problems prevented more). This past week, we took a ~42mi ride around the Long Beach Peninsula; some short rides near Grayland (one with about 50lb of ice and food on my back!); and a 6 mile ride down (from the campground to Port Angeles) and then back UP (this was the bad part). But we made it, and were better for it in the end.

Sat. am the 14th we packed up and drove to Hurricane Ridge, then hiked the 1.6mi ‘hurricane hill’ hike to overlook the Strait of Juan de Fuca (between the northwest WA coast and Vancouver Island/Canada), then back to the van and blast on home. Got home around 3pm and it was HOT back here in Seattle! And now the Syncro needs a good can or two of Woolite. 🙂

candybowl

Saw one of these bad boys (Red-Tailed Hawk) sitting on the fence this am near the backyard. Made my day! Now if I can only convince him to eat those d*** pigeons hassling my bird feeders! I wonder if he’ll take a check…..

candybowl

UPDATE 8-2: The Phinneywood blog has posted about either the same or a similar hawk in the area – and it looks like he has a taste for pigeons – enjoy!

In other news, we have been pigeon-free since that day….he’s earned his keep so far 🙂