All Hallow's Eve

Are these questions testing whether I'm a replicant or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?


Each year at Microsoft they have a 'bring your kids to work for trick or treat' event on Halloween. It's a good opportunity to meet people's families, but frankly I'm in a rather bitter mood about my work and co-workers at the moment, and didn't want to deal with it. One of the other guys at work (who is also sans offspring) and I were joking about it, and as he lives in Pioneer Square he says he gets "Trick or Treaters" in his neighborhood year-round: they are called panhandlers. So I left work early Wednesday to avoid the bustle and noise, and I wasn't going to get much work done even if I had stayed.

I could have rushed home and then hid in my house from the trick/treaters in my neighborhood with all the lights off. There were not a lot of them last year, but they were a bit thuggish. Instead, loree and I went to the Cinerama downtown to watch Blade Runner: The Final Cut.

The audience was not large, but was a pretty solid cross-section of the childfree--who else is going to see a movie from 1982 on Halloween night? The Final Cut is a digitally restored version of the film cut mostly like the Director's Cut. Vangelis in a big surround sound system is awesome, but I still missed the noir narrator voice in the original theatrical release. I know lots of people hated it, including the director, but I loves me some noir. The movie seems less 'hardboiled detective doing an ugly job in the Sci-Fi world of the future' without it.

Blade Runner's vision of a future dystopia is still amazingly believable, although there are little details that I found amusing 25 years further on. Lots of branding usage of now defunct companies like PanAm and TWA. Plus everyone in the world smokes.

In any case, I'm really looking forward to the HD-DVD release, which I understand includes my beloved theatrical cut along with all the other cuts.

Put down the Glockenspiel and back away slowly!

jeliza and I went to see Brandi Carlile at The Paramount Theater last night. So far we've seen her at the Woodland Park Zoo and The Moore near the start of her tour, and this was the last show of her US tour.

Parking sucked because it was a Friday night downtown, but the venue was good and the performance excellent. Brandi did a few songs on piano, a new element to the show, plus some favorites like a cover of Johnny Cash's Fulsom Prison. She did the intro to Bohemian Rhapsody to warm-up on the piano, which was a hoot. The tour was being sponsored by Biore of all things, and it's good to see her getting some well-deserved success. She's off to overseas gigs including Australia, but she did do three Seattle shows just this year so I've probably seen her enough for the moment.

The opening act was a band called A Fine Frenzy fronted by a young redhead woman. First impressions of Tori Amos come pretty quickly, but she lacks Tori's psychologically rich neurosis and the associated lyrics I love so much. She does have some solid vocal talent, and when doing torch-style heartbreak songs I was quite impressed. She did a bit of Fever as well.

I listen to a lot of chick rock so it's hard to avoid comparisons with other singers, and her vocal quality reminded me strongly of Fisher. Frankly I think her music is too 'sweet & innocent' to hold my attention for long, and a few too many of the songs included the annoying ding of the xylophone, but perhaps as they get older they will start writing some more interesting stuff. There was also a bit of the 70's prog rock sound at work with the keyboardist. jeliza said she couldn't recall a female-fronted prig rock band, so perhaps their time as finally come... gods forbid.

In the era of 'iTunes' music I can always buy just the songs I actually like. She's one of those "Starbucks" featured artists, which I find distrubing. Then again, it's less distrubing than Wal-Mart controlling a fourth or a fifth of the world-wide distribution of CDs given their routine censorship.

In any case, an excellent concert and I didn't even feel too bitter about the $11 parking by the end of the evening.

Update: While I'm not sure I'd recommend the whole album, A Fine Frenzy's Ashes & Wine is prettty damn solid.

Update 2: I'm pleased to report the Glockenspiel problem was the sound mix at the live show. It doesn't sound nearly as annoying on the album :>