This is the part of blog that is materialistic.
Haven’t bought anything for myself in a long time. Actually Jeff bought these, but let’s pretend, okay?
Kozy N’ Dan (I have a piece of their art as one of my tattoos) have partnered with Puma to make some shoes and clothing. Most of the stuff is not available to the North American market, and the shoes are too big for me! I ordered this awesome windbreaker, men’s small, hopefully it fits. It has not yet arrived, but we also noticed there were shoes on sale…
I wish this was not only available in Europe!
[a puma attacking the goddess Nike... haha!]
mmmmmmaterialism.
I won’t bore you with all the Puma shit “I” just bought [till it arrives anyway] but how crazy are these shoes?
The description makes them at least 1.5x better.
A fantastic material and color update inspired by Mega Man, a video game first released by Capcom in 1987. Whether you’re familiar with the character or not, this synthetic leather material looks and feels like vinyl, giving the upper a shiny, retro-futuristic look. The addition of the nylon underlays, painted eyelets, & video game inspired pixelated emboss on the toe bumper complete this awesome look.
Also, this Mongolian Shoe BBQ thing is pretty insanely awesome. Once I am less broke I am most likely all over that shit.
Strexy?
I am starting to find that my first instinct when I come across something cool is to twitter it instead of post it here. Twitter just makes it so quick and easy.
So check out my twitter since I can’t get my twitterfeed to work on here.
Anyway…. NEEDNEEDNEEDNEEDNEEDNEEDNEEDNEED
It really is the hugest shame ever that I probably wouldn’t fit in there.
Also, SO LAME that I don’t have a Star Trek uniform. I am afraid I would want to wear it every day though.
Star, star…
I went all Podcast crazy. I have never really downloaded a Podcast. Jeff downloads The Basketball Jones and we listen to it on the way to work and it kicks ass. But I was visiting the NPR website today in order to download some concerts I used to listen to via their website. When I had my office to myself, and the better computer of the office which was cruelly snatched from me, I was on NPR all day using their flash music player or whatever as I could not install software. I discovered some really great music from there including The Swell Season/Once/Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova/The Frames, Fleet Foxes, and heard some amazing live concerts from these artists as well as Broken Social Scene etc. Anyway, when I was on the site today I smacked my forehead that I could be listening to these all on my ipod. I downloaded a bunch of concerts from NPR, the ones I mentioned as well as Animal Collective, Radiohead and more. I found a few podcasts that seemed interesting including This American Life which people always talk about.
Does anyone have any good podcasts to recommend?
Speaking of The Swell Season, they have some pretty kick ass merchandise. [They are the musicians who star in the film Once.]
They have a DVD too! I so want to see them live. At least you can somewhat emulate the experience with technology. It’s not the same though!
It kills me in their encore in ‘Star, Star’ when they bust into the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the end and he says ‘It’s all yours Charlie!’ *TEARZ* haha.
BINGO
It is hard for me to even comprehend how great this is.
I recently learned how to be good at Scrabble and it’s no fun at all. My old strategy was make the best, longest word I could, opening up the board to play off of. Now I see that is why I was a repetitive loser. I win now, but it’s hollow, so hollow.
PS: LOOK AT HOW CUTE YOUNG ADULT JEFF IS. AWWWW.
Let’s go away for a while…
First task to begin five minutes into new life: Ferry to Seattle. Wipe the tears away from bidding farewell to the old. Greeted with future.
Seattle was pretty amazing. I had not been to the United States since I was about 6 or so, and had never been to the west coast. I had this image in my head of large American cities… rude, fat, inconsiderate people, and dirty, unsafe streets. Seattle was a perfect place to crush my perceptions of the unknown. With the exception of one person [she was a carny, what do you expect?] I found everyone amazingly friendly. Service people seemed happy to be doing their jobs. Strangers smiled on the street. When waiting to jaywalk cars would stop for you on busy streets to let you cross! At no point did I feel unsafe.
The first giant American flag of the trip.
First stop in Washington was braving the ever e-coli famed Jack In The Box. [An aside: I just wikid them to ensure I had the correct disease and I found out that all the cases occurred in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest! Maybe at the very restaurant we were in! Exciting.] This was a mistake for a first stop in Washington as along with the trauma of what had been going on around me, it took it’s toll for a while. Even here, the teen serving us was insanely excited about the curly fries.
I see it! There it is!
It was really really warm when we were there. This is better than rain but I was wishing it wasn’t quite so sticky. We were planning on going to the Gorge to see Tom Petty, but by the time we got across the border [by the skin of our teeth as I did not possess the proper documentation] and headed on our way it was becoming obvious we would not make it there before sunset, and it seemed like a waste of a lot of driving. Besides, the trip was about much more than Tom Petty. We were happy to check into our hotel.
The room was tiny but it was a neat hotel and became our first home, for a few days anyway.
This was the view from our window.
The monorail reminded me of Disneyworld.
The view from the monorail.
We were on our way to the SCIENCE FICTION MUSEUM. This had to be the thing I was most excited for on the trip.
The minute before I found out YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE PICTURES. Even without the flash. SO SAD. How could they do that to me? How could they show me so many wonderful relics and not give me the ability to remember them properly. I HAVE THE MEMORY OF A STONER HERE PEOPLE.
I did sneak one picture, because it was just too good not to immortalize. SOLARIS AND FLUX. Unfortunately the camera was still a mystery at this point so the quality is very poor.
You didn’t realize I am actually a space creature did you?
This fountain is very cool. I like the Seattle Centre area.
This dinky coaster with the disgruntled carny was actually surprisingly sweet. It is like exactly my pace for a roller coaster. AKA fairly lame.
I am actually a pretty wicked shot! Who knew?
Unfortunately this bitch was out of service.
While in Seattle Centre there were these AWESOME people with Guy Fawkes masks protesting Scientology, apparently they are called Project Chanology [I love you wiki.] I wish I got pictures. One of them had a sign [OMG CHANOLOGY. NOW I GET IT. 4CHAN LOL LOL. I MISS NOT4CHAN. ANNNYYYYWAY] that said something about Chef being evil… for some reason I enjoy people being disrespected when they are dead. Perhaps because it is generally so taboo, any downfalls of people are supposed to be forgotten just because they are not on this earth anymore.
First I just took a photo of this dude’s menagerie but then I figured it is only fair to get him in there as well.
One of the best/worst moments of the trip was listening to this choir sing ‘God Bless America’ in a mall.
This bus was alternating these two things, mildly strange.
We went to this amazing restaurant called Typhoon for dinner one night, it is Thai, the waitress was sooo adorable in a bookish way she just killed me. The food was insanely good. Thai vegetable tempura, and I finally had pad thai. I wish I could go there all the time! We also went to this quite good Mexican fast food place, all the meat was hormone free and everything, a quality fast food place like that would kill here. We ALSO went to this place recommended to us called the Cheesecake Factory. I did not have high hopes [for obvious reasons if you know me] but it was so good. The menu was huge [see?], and I had possibly the best sandwich of all time. The Cuban: Slow-roasted pork, ham, swiss, pickles, mustard, mayonaise, on a panini type bread. OMGZ.
In this part of town they have all these neat one of a kind sculptures instead of those stupid flags/banners on light posts.
World’s oldest arcade game? I had to play it of course but it didn’t work that well. Maybe I just need practice.
Sweetest Shi Tzu EVER, owned by the nicest people ever at Sneaker City…
Fruits of Sneaker City.
I got a lot of wicked shopping done, maybe you will see some of the clothes on here later. I mostly got cute dresses but haven’t had much chance to wear them since I have been back. And Urban Outfitters is surprisingly awesomely cool! I realize they have one in Van but I had never been. So much neat shit! MMMMM SHOPPING. I still didn’t manage to find a bathing suit, because I am a freak of nature, and while shopping can sometimes really frustrate me it is well worth it in the end, and that was probably the most fun I have had shopping in a really long while.
It started raining the day we were leaving. Back to reality. Back to a very strange mix of the old and the new, of joy and intense tragedy. I think it was a pretty solid kick-off for sure.
