Site has moved.

I have moved this site over to it's own domain.

www.whereishogg.com

Please check it out there. I will be taking over the best of this site in the coming weeks! Thanks to blogspot for being such a great, free host over the years-- much appreciated!

--Tim

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Random thoughts Labor Day...

thought I would check in.
Someone sent me a note recently about the last blog post I wrote months ago and it reminded me that I really need to get in here and get moving on writing again.
Things have been going well-- very well. I have been married for over 2 years now-- it's simply amazing how life just rolls on by. I am listening to a Dave and Tim concert that Lili and I went to in Koln in March of 2007! Crazy how it was 2007!
Long time ago, yet it seems like it was just a year ago.
I have been thinking alot about Dave as this is when the annual pilgrimage to the Gorge happens-- something that has been going on for about 15 years now-- again, crazy when you sit and think about it for a moment. This will mark my 57th show, with the 58th coming when the band concludes it's last show in the US for a year.
58 shows.
A titch ridiculous if you consider how much the tickets are and what is exactly involved in all of it-- but I can tell you without a doubt it has brought me countless moments of joy that few other things in the world can bring.... With that being said, I am very glad that the band is taking a year off and I intend to get a number of things accomplished within the next year-- exactly what-- well, I will save that for another post at another time :).

Enjoy the weekend-- and look for more soon! Read more!

"In Europe" thoughts of wars past, contrasting present

Over this trip to Germany, I have been reading a book that I thought was simply a travel narrative of Europe. The book, titled "In Europe", is actually an interesting journey through the last 100 or so years in Europa, from 1900ish to 2000ish. The writer begins the book at the turn of the 18th century to the 19th, contrasting the 20th as a litmus for all that was happening at the time.
This has also proven to be quite useful in my own personal journey during this time as I come to realize that I am also becoming part of Europe as more than half of my family presides directly on this contentient. Each day presents new challenges as I contrast my own life as an American with the lives of Europeans. The differences are seemingly large--we view this land in totally different ways because of the time that we have to interact with not only the spaces, but the times as well.

As an American, I think I seem to be obsessed with the wars that plagued this country for so many years, both devasting the land, the people and the culture. However, the more that I learn about it, the more I see that it is becoming so far of the past that it is rather difficult to draw the conclusions of how this place become now what it is from such devastation. The times, for the first time in nearly a century, have been, for the most part, calm for the last decade. The book, "In Europe" is more informative of the wars than anything I have come across here, either accidentally or intentionally--and its not because the people are willing to talk about it--it's moreso that they simply do not think about it. When I recite facts of things that I have been reading. For example: When the Nazi's working in the concentration camps would see someone with an interesting tattoo on their body, they would remove it from them (either killing them or just removing the skin) and make lampshades out it. When I told a couple people this, they nodded, knowing it, but of course where in conversation would that really come up. "I know the war was terrible and the Nazi's did terrible things like ________, but that's all in the past now, so...."
We all want to move on from the devasting parts of life and the reality is that the German people are now almost two generations gone from that period of time. The last super power to have a government that took its own people down a simillar pathway would have to be the Americans with the suspension of civil liberties and freedoms in the name of terrorism, led by George W Bush. That fact is still suppressed because, much like the aftermath of the war, it's too soon to really look at what has been done and accept responsibility. I wish Bush would read this book and think about the millions of people that were killed all because a group of people simply couldn't agree on things. As both wars dragged on, particularly the first World War, the people living in the trenches on both sides of the war began to realize that they had been duped into fighting for something that wasn't in reality, what any of them really stood for. The book constantly refers to the moments where the generals were running the battles from a safe distance with no regard to the people that were being killed off in the name of their own planning-- and this happened on both sides-- very little value was placed internally on the lives of soldiers. In the end the Americans were proclaimed as the victors because they had so little at stake in both wars-- America came into the first World War only when the Germans began to torpedo the American ships carrying supplies to England-- the war, just like the Second WW, had been going on for many years before the Americans got involved. When they did though, it was a massive operation with millions of fresh bodies entering a war that had all but destroyed everyone around them. The trench soldiers had been living in conditions that no one living would choose-- and were skiddish warriors at best.
Regardless, stumbling upon these moments of history on this trip are moments which I hold with very high regard. Having a book like "In Europe" makes me hungry to know more about a place which holds so much history--that makes our young country seem so young and inexperienced with tragedy. Perhaps that is why we made the mistakes we have in our young history -- we have so little history and understanding of the true tragedies of the rest of the world. That is what travelling, in a sense, is all about-- experiencing these other cultures in order to put it against our own. Read more!

Nuremberg

Lili and I have arrived in Nuremberg, Germany yesterday from Koln. We rented a rather lovely and fast Volkswagen Golf, for a very reasonable price. I am a bit sad to report that the Autobahn was not the uber fast speedway that we Americans dream to drive on-- at least not yesterday. There was more construction on the bit of Autobahn from Koln to the Bavarian border that it was very rare that I got the chance to hammer down the pedal. However, when I did, it was nothing short of exhilarating.

It took us about 4.5 hours to drive here and we arrived just after 5. Traffic was busy coming into town as everyone was just getting off of work and we headed directly to the hotel, which Lili claims to have found using her most excellent mapping skills, but I think it was more luck than anything else. We managed to find all three hotels like the one we are staying in -- ETAP. It's a budget hotel, 50 euro's a night, which is actually cheaper than staying in a hostel with a private room.

The city of Nuremberg is much more beautiful than I had imagined it and I was thinking it was going to be quite special. It ranks right up there with Dresden in the most beautiful German city thus far... and I think that once I actually soak it in, it will become my favorite German town.

There is a giant castle, schloss, at the top of the city gates, which is where the picture above is taken. It has a great overlook of the city itself, which was mostly destroyed in the WWII. In case you didn't know, Nuremberg was the center of the Nazi movement and also where the trails were held at the end of the war. It was destroyed in the war and rebuilt. Luckily, when the Nazi party was here, they were meticulous in photographing the city and all that it contained.

I have read quite a lot over the years about WWII and to be in the city where so much of it went down is quite a dream. Walking through the streets and thinking about the pleasantness that this city now offers and contrasting it with the days when the Nazi party was at it's height of control in Germany -- and most of the propagandist theater was staged right here. I imagined the city center streets lined with German soldiers as Hitler gives his speeches -- and how he watched the parades of soldiers march through the city.

Today we will walk out to the soccer stadium, which is on the same grounds as Zeppelinstadium, which is the area that he gave his speeches to hundreds of thousands of supporters. Again, most of that was destroyed by the Allied troops after the war, but they did leave parts of it. I will post those photos over the next several days.

For the record, I don't want this to seem like I am some war buff vacation, but there really are two stories to the German life-- the war and everything that happened after the war. This country has a lot of deep scars from that time period and the wound is finally healing, but that injury will forever be with the German people and it was an interesting period of time. Hitler and the Nazi Party were an evil regime and it was a dark period but they did some pretty historical things. To think that this is the hotbed of it all-- the wound runs the deepest here-- but it's also where the healing began with the Nuremberg Trials -- the fact that they tried and hanged the people that were left in the end here gives the place the opportunity to start anew--and it has.

In fact, one would have to know firsthand that the city was destroyed by bombs to realize that all of it has been completely redone because it very closely resembles a city like Prague, minus St. Charles Gate, of course.

Anyway, that's all for now as were headed to Zeppelin Field...

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Alice in Wonderland-- worth the price of admission

Alice in Wonderland
review by Timothy Hogg

This week, the movie theaters announced that (insert bullshit reason here) prices were going up slightly for regular films, but the IMAX and 3-D films were going to skyrocket. We decided to go and catch Alice in Wonderland before these outrageous prices took effect, but sadly, they went into effect on March 25th. Luckily, we had a coupon, which kept the price to $25.00 for two tickets to see Alice in 3D.
As much as I would like to go into some tangent about the outrage I feel toward the greedy people of Hollywood, this post is going to be about how WONDERFUL this film is.
Alice in Wonderland is a well known story, one of those tales that seems to get redone, rehashed every decade or so. It's one of those stories that seems to get told in cadence with the current vision of reality of the time-- the most famous being the tame Disney cartoon version-- violence rarely plays out so well in a cartoon.
This does represent Tim Burton's vision of the original story by Lewis Carroll. Like most films, Burton's version pays no attention to keeping with the consistency of the original story. Instead, this version of AIW is more Burton's version of the Disney cartoon mentioned earlier. Instead this is more of a culmination of both Alice in Wonderland and through the looking glass, but regardless of how authentic, the film works amazingly well. I think the main thing that really makes this film shine is Burton's way of storytelling has finally managed to mitigate its weird/awkwardness to normalcy. Alice's dream sequence offers Burton an open canvas of his craft and he wields a colourful brush indeed. The visuals of the world offer striking contrasts of red, white and darkness.
Burton's cast of characters are mostly from his previous arsenal of big name actors: Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp and the ever creepy, Cripin Glover. The casting is wonderfully done, Bonham-Carter is nothing short of brilliant as the evil Red Queen, with Glover as her Heart patched heroine horror. The true stars of this film are the anthropomorphous, particularly the Cheshire Cat's coyness. Depp's characterization isn't particularly amazing or astonishing, in fact the bond that Alice and Hatter share almost seems rehearsed.
Regardless, the film is still at the top of the list of a decent year of films thus far. Is it worth the additional cost of admission now? Yes. This is one of those not to be missed films in the theatre--although the 3-D experience is certainly optional. Read more!

The White Stripes Under the Great Northern Lights Film

Film Review: Under the Great Northern Lights

by Timothy Hogg

It was just a couple of days ago that I was scanning through the internets as I do everyday that I stumbled upon the news that the White Stripes have a new documentary coming out soon. Tonight, for whatever reason, it was on Comcast's On-Demand service. I had seen an HD preview just a few days before and was intrigued, so I paid the $6.99.

Simply put, its a great film and probably the best music documentary I have seen in years. There is just something about Jack White and the way that he markets himself and the band that makes all of this such a neat little package. It works so well because the grainyness of the homemade film fits perfectly with the style that the White Stripes puts out musically.

The film centers on the brother/sister duo from Detroit who make the trip to our great northern partners. It serves as a perfect showcase of what the band essentially wants to do, play small shows and even smaller shows during the daytime. It makes the supergroup seem more human, quaint even. I am a bit prejudiced in that I simply love the music, its rawness authentic and because of this film, legitimate. Jack White's fame has sort of spoiled this band, which is always seemingly in contrast to Meg, who has the personality of a church mouse, quiet and cute (albeit sexy). Often as Jack plays through his philosophy on everything, Meg is often in the sequence, quiet while he roars--the same goes with the band--his guitar loudly rebelling against the demanding timing of Meg's drum.

This is what they are all about--and the film really shows them beautifully in this world of mostly black and white, antique cars and animated crowds. It's so beautifully done, comedy at times, emotional at others that it will be somewhat disapointing to see the band live in concert again someday, in full color. This is the concern when documentary rock films are just that good, it makes it difficult to really appreciate how good the band is live the next time you see them.

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Crazy Heart Film Review

Crazy Heart review

by Tim Hogg

Jeff Bridges has become the Hollywood face of the American story. His latest masterpiece, Crazy Heart, is sure to pick up a few more awards as it makes it way to the Academy Awards this month. This film has been around for the last several months, playing at a local arthouse theater or two until recently. Very much like the character, Bad Blake, this film is making a comeback that no really saw coming. Same thing goes for Bridges, who has had his ups and downs as much as the fictitious country legend, Blake.

What makes this film work so well is that Bridges knows his characters and its audience. This character is not much different than the role he is best known for, one Jeffery Lebowski. Bridges plays that character that we all know but don't see often enough, the guy who didn't become the shining star, but rather the guy who simply keeps on keeping on. Bridges plays Bad Blake, a washed up, drunken country legend that might be playing at your local bowling alley and you would never know. Blake has been moved off the mainstream concert circuit to the local dive bar, making enough money to gas up his 1978 Suburban and his kidney with enough booze to make it to the next stop, barely.

Although this is a story we have all heard before (and know that it exists every night at a local seedy motel near you) what makes this work is Bridges ability to show the soft touch in each character that he plays. This story is not about the mistakes that Blake made or the joint torch that glowed so brightly for Lebowski, it's about the human being that is evident in all of these characters. Mistakes were made, but at some point, Blake has no choice but to make amends with the demons that haunt him.

The only problem with this wonderful film is the character played by Maggie Glyllenhaal. In every Hollywood film, there always has to a woman. No surprise there. Gyllenhaal's character is the interview for a small town paper who wants to crack the story behind the legend. They quickly fall in love to move the storyline along, but her character is irrational, forcing a checkmate to Bad's drinking and meandering ways. In the end, she rejects him, but not because of what he's done or who he is but more so because she has found someone else. This is an extreme letdown for the film, which would have been much better off simply allowing her to have the strength to not put her young son through the future turmoils of a man who has no home except the long stretch of the long, lonely open road. Regardless, there are some pure lovely moments in the telling of this story and I do hope it gets the recognition it deserves. Don't wait for this one to go to video-- it's worth a look on the big screen for the stunning imagery that is the Southwest.

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travelitis

Americans are particularly funny about their travels. I have noticed it throughout my life. We tend to stay in our own country, which is understandable--it's fucking huge!! Regardless, part of the point of traveling is to go to other places to see how people live--to speak to them and see what their lives are about, how they are getting by on their side of the rock.
The more that I speak to my brethren, the more I see how little we travel. Sure, we all know those people that are serial travelers to Vegas and Hawaii for the west coast and Florida for the east coast. We don't generally go to experience culture, but rather to escape our own reality of things.

Vacation for the American is just that--to vacate, to leave, to part ways. American's don't travel, they don't wander, they don't go on walkabout. This is a generality of course--we do travel, some of do wander and a few of us might actually go on walkabout.

Someone said the other day, We don't travel like John Muir did, with nothing more than a sketchbook and an imagination and perhaps a new pair of boots.
The fact is that we must prepare for that harsh world that lies outside of that comfort zone known as home. Think about all of those things you own and assess how much of it is for that harsh world you have to travel in everyday.

All of this came about because I had recently overheard that a friend of mine was going out East for a few weeks to check it out. I offered to have a drink with him and go over some details about things I experienced while I was there--the more information you have, the more time you can have to focus on the pleasantness of the trip. Anything to speed up past the minutia of traveling helps, right?
Not quite.
This fellow actually said that he would prefer just to go about it on his own. "We have totally done our research." was the quip.
I retreated. The east is a messy place and time can easily get away from you. It's not like the rest of the world where you can get by on "roughing it". Countless hours and days can be wasted if you don't know when or where to go during certain times. But the issue was a little deeper than that-- I think this guys problem was also a common one-- people don't care to hear about your adventures as much as they want to make their own--they want to make the same mistakes that you make, they want to wait in the same lines that you wait in.
It also is hard to believe that things could be so different somewhere else until you have actually been there and seen what there is to see and do. When I got off the plane in China, I had not the slightest clue what the hell I would do if I got off that plane and there wasn't someone there to rescue me, but I would have managed and that is the adventure.
Eventually, we did get to talking a little bit about the trip he was going on. He eventually told me that I was just telling him all the things to watch out for, but I wasn't giving him any advice.
My response: it's up to you to find the diamonds--another traveller's job is to help you not fall in the mole holes on the journey.
You will never spoil your trip by talking to other travellers-- you will own what it yours, no journey is like another. It's for you to take and for you to see.
That's how it is out there. Read more!

its been awhile

Well, I have been seeing some mail lately asking if I am alive...
The answer, in short, is yes, I am still alive.
The blog is still active and I review it from time to time, wishing I could do more with it. The fact is, with all of the technology that we have and the different ways to express oneself, I am finding it harder and harder to actually do. Technology has made it really difficult for us to sit back and express anything in a long handed, complex kind of way. ADD for the masses.
So, I am trying to put it all together, to make sense of it all communicate out, blog style, for the world to consume at their own leisure.
HAITI:
I have been thinking about this terrible event a lot lately--as all of us have. 200,000 dead bodies in a city the size of Seattle. That is a lot of people, dead for no other reason than nature and poverty. I have been thinking a lot about that amazing loss and the amount of relief that has gone toward it and what's going to become of it all-- it's a difficult thing to grasp.
I think of the huge amount of different charities that were already there, trying to help that country and I think of the amount of agencies that will now be there for a long time to come-- I think of the hundreds of millions of dollars that individuals will donate to that effort and where all of that money will actually end up. I fear not where it is supposed to go.
What really needs to happen, from my layman point of view-- is a massive re-construction project, that leads to completely rebuilding port-au-prince. The new Port-Au-Prince needs rebar in the buildings, it needs infrastructure.
Sadly, I don't think it will be managed correctly, people will look for the quick, easy solution and leave the distribution up to the same methods that have been the source of donations for so many years there.
The thing I struggle with is that there is no simple resolve to this soon to be epidemic. It is going to get really, really desperate there, while the people who died from the initial blast are still rotting in the hot sun, more will perish as the heat breed disease, as people run out of supplies, things that we take for granted, like the food that we will eat tomorrow, the food and water that is in our bellies-- all of it, these people on this little island in the Caribbean, no matter how many millions of dollars we think we are sending that way, people are still going to get infections, have a lack of water and will smell death at the doorway.
This world that we all share together, sometimes it is unfair.
My thoughts are with you tonight, Haitians. I hope we will still be with you in the months to come as the struggles get more and more difficult. Read more!

A word on surgery...

Let me tell you something:
When something inside of you says that something inside of you isn't right, listen to it.
Men in particular, don't bother to pay much attention to our bodies when it tells us that something is bothering it.
The growth as it shall now always be referred to, has been around for longer than anyone cares to imagine. Like a good transient, no one knows when it arrived, how long it went undetected but my guess is that the growth must have moved in around the time that I was in China.
That is when the kidney stones started, which is a by-product of this thing moving in. I remember that day in China well (rather that evening). It caused me to spend a couple of days in a Chinese hospital, moaning for hours at the pain in my kidneys while the glass bottle dripped a saline mixture into my body.
Truth be told, it could have been going on much, much longer than that-- but it doesn't matter in the long run, because now its gone, sliced out Monday morning and sent down to Pathology to check for Cancer. He wasn't home this time.

They call it a parathyroidapidectomy or something like that.

You have four thyroid glands, which are about the size of a grain of rice, two on each side of your throat. These thyroid glands, for those of you, like me, that failed to pay attention to Biology, control a number of bodily functions and temperaments. My upper-left para-thyroid gland needed to be removed as it was causing my body to produce too much calcium, regardless of how much calcium was being consumed. The body, when it doesn't have enough calcium, begins to pull it from places in the body-- (think bones, teeth, etc)... so you can quickly see the potential issue here.

Regardless, it is now out. Special thanks to Dr. David Moore, the careful surgeon, Dr. Mozapharian, the Organist and good ole' Dr. Martin Cahn, the good 'ole doctor. :)
Special thanks to Lilifer, who managed to keep me in the best of spirits during the recovery process.

Things are moving back into its normalcy. Read more!

Where the Wild Things are Benefit/Premiere

Tonight, Lili and I attended the 826 Seattle Benefit, which included a pass for two to catch the Seattle sneak preview of the children's classic book, Where The Wild Things Are.
My personal hero was there- Dave Eggers, with Max. You can purchase the book, The Wild Things, which was written for the screenplay. Buy the book here.
The film itself is nothing short of a masterpiece. I am still quite undecided if the film is appropriate for children. If your child is old enough to not read the book anymore, than the film will be appropriate for them.
If you are an adult and are going to see this film to recall childhood memories of the book, you will be surprised. This is a delightful, yet at times very dark film, but it doesn't bear much resemblance to the book. It reminds me more of being a kid, growing up in the snowy winters of Buffalo, New York as an only child. It reminds me that at times there was no one else to play with but your own imagination, whatever it may be at any given time.
For this, director Spike Jonze deserves the Academy Award.
The Wild Things carry their own level of power, both in their emotional content as well as their pure size and energy. Each character has its own personality and most of them are obviously in the dark funk when Max arrives--but these Wild things suffer from the same daily complexities that we, as humans suffer from--from time to time. There is lovers scorn, hurt feelings from a torrid past, worries of stupidity and rejection from the group and vice versa. These are Wild Things--fictional characters that in the end don't seem like they would have these kinds of problems in Max's head, but we can all relate to each and everyone of them in our skin.
This is what film is about my friends. Where the Wild Things are is the right mix of everything in life, the beauty, the depressing and the Wild. It's all there and like Max, we can't escape it--nor should we want to. Read more!

Night Heat

--Timothy Hogg

The night that the heat finally cooled from the city, dissipating from the freshly tarred streets, the cool air provided an abundance of much needed sleep for most of it's residents. Dreams became clearer in the coolness of the night, less abrasive, more visceral. He awoke in the middle of the night, the last dream all too much a reality. This began during the heat, but the dreams themselves were less clear but more horrific. He would lie there afterwards, sweat glistening from his pores in the night glow, wondering what was causing these dreams of discontent. Not this night--the cool air brought forth a moment of almost euphoric haze, his body no longer trying to sweat out the badness inside of him.
There is something here and there is something missing, lost.
The stress from the days had been compiling into the night for everyone--people here need their slumber in order to rinse their sins from their minds each night. When the heat leaks into the night, there is no escape, no savior or solstice. It is a natural ebb and flow, much like the ocean that drives the weather--when there is no release of the hot air, the clouds begin to produce thunder heads, pent up angst, demanding a release.
His mind recants to a different time in a different place, the opposite side of the rock, a place where the heat is not controlled by the days, but by the season. There is never any escape from the heat, but the end of summer. Read more!

...on Michael Jackson

It is sad that M.J. has done has last moonwalk, but make no mistake: the real sadness is about to plague the media for the next couple of weeks. There will certainly be a special cast of characters brought out of the woodwork to showcase just how pathetic the "King of Pop" existence was. For the next several months, we will be constantly hearing about the wrongful death, how the doctor is to blame and how people like the Reverend Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are there to aid and assist the family in their time of need.

We will allow grow pathetically tired of it.

Brining out people like Jesse Jackson and Sharpton do nothing but kill any sense of reality that this story had.

However, they do seem to serve as the most ideal representatives of a family that has mooched off of Michaels extreme wealth and good fortune--and they seem to be the ones to blame for Jackson's condition.

Michael Jackson was in a very special group of Hollywood's most elite, Liz Taylor, Liza Minelli and all the rest of the plastic population spending their good fortune obsessed with never growing old, yet looking so far away from the human condition that they don't appear young, but moreso Alien.

Jackson, like most Pop artists, had a moment in time where he was a talent, a prodigy, a hero--but something seems to happen when you get as big as he did, some of the minds internal wiring came undone -- so many friends, yet no one seems to care that you are killing yourself slowly inside--and they just stand by, waiting for him to unravel in front of their eyes--that must be the most sad thing about all of it--was that it very could have been that everyone in the world was his friend, yet no one could save him.

...and now, all we get to do is simply stand by and watch the vultures circle around his carcass, seeping each droplet of blood and gold that they can.

This is what makes the world such a sad place.

Read more!

the dust is beginning to settle

....fragments of everything have come together.
yet some grow further apart.

Lili has been here for close to a month and we are finally beginning to feel somewhat settled into the place and things are beginning to come together. I feel like I will once again be able to take up this blog and writing again as soon as I can get my head out of the work I am engaged in and begin to think about the next steps of what were going to do for the next couple of years.

We watched a little No Reservations this evening, with Anthony Bourdain and it made us both linger for the open road-- specifically Brazil. Although finances do not allow for such a trip just now, it is on our minds and we will eventually hit the road again, this time as a married couple, our lives connected in every possible legal way... It will be a nice way to travel and I look forward to spending many days wandering around this earth with my wife.

I have a week of work left before getting laid off, but I can't seem to start freaking out about it. The last 9 months of work have been good, easy and fun, but all things must come to an end and this job was beginning to get overly boring and mentally taxing, so I am not all that sad that things are coming to an end. We all like money, we all need money and there is a certain level of comfort one has from having the same old job, but there wasn't much of a future in the team I was in-- I need something that continues to have some level of excitement in it, along with a sense of accomplishment, mixed with the greater good.

I do wish that we did have a small nest egg left over, mostly because we need to travel during this free time we have, for there soon will not be that shared time that we can both enjoy at the same time. This is the way of the world. Read more!

Alligator Pie

Finally, a moment to write.
So much to talk about, so many things to discuss and its almost midnight, so allow me to just puke it all out and put it into it's right place later.
Special thanks to Jason and Apple for opening up their house to me and making it possible to pay off some bills and save a few dimes before Lili arrived.
Since I have just used arrived in the past tense, this means that she is in fact, here. Lili arrived Wednesday afternoon, which I must say is one of the most exciting and strange moments of my life. It was the moment where it all became a reality, all of the waiting, all of the phone calls, all of the stress, worry and everything else you can image came to a closer as she called me on her cellphone and said, "I'm down at baggage claim."
The details of that are for another time...
The last several weeks leading up to this moment were gradually getting busier and busier, both in my professional life as well as my private life. Work at Microsoft has been fast paced and higher stress as Windows 7 comes closer to release.
Apartment hunting was also total choas. Jason and Apple wanted to get the place ready for when her brother moves here from Thailand and I decided it would be better for us to move into our own place and not have anytime in the basement while we looked-- so I started to look...
and look...
and look...
Seattle has had some definitive times where it has really had a building boom-- you can see it in the design of places (Hello brown 70's cabinets!!)
..and along with that comes the new modern, green, green look-alike over-priced postage stamps .. Searching and searching to find the right place in the right neighboorhood-- Fremont (nothing good for the price), Ballard (Old and New, see above), Magnolia (Too Goddamn Far, train tracks) Green Lake (nicer places) and Ravenna (where we settled).
The place is perfect-- right near good places to see and hang, third flood with a deck, tiki torches, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms... perfect-- especially after looking at other boxes of crap throughout the city-- Lili instantly feel in love with it and each day it is becoming more and more our place.
All of that, mixed with a glorious couple weeks of some well needed sun and a new Dave Matthews Band album to boot!!!
Anyway, I will get into more details later-- just wanted to put an entry in because the office I have been waiting years for and the wife I have waited decades for are all here now, so you will be hearing a lot more from me than before.

Hope all is well, wherever you happen to be on the rock.

Abidingly... Read more!

Ashes of America, thoughts on Wilco...

Tonight, Neil and I went to see the new Wilco film, Ashes of American Flags.

It was playing at the Northwest Film Forum, up on Capitol Hill, where the arts are. I have been looking forward to this release for quite some time, looking forward to going to the cinema and taking a few moments out of my life to enjoy a documentary. This is something I don't do enough of, yet I, like most of you, spend time in front of the tube, trying to gain enjoyment from shows like Lost, 24, etc... Let me tell you that we are wasting our time. That become evident tonight as I was watching this band, this Wilco band, play and discuss life in Hi-Definition. It felt good to be alive.

There is something about this band that I just have this connection with-- it's difficult to explain if you have never gotten that experience from music. The high comes from the simple fact of being in the aura of greatness. To be with a group of people who are on that journey of righteousness, where what they do is coming together so perfectly that it really doesn't matter who's watching or paying attention because they know that the music itself speaks more collectively and timeless than they ever could.

The film just makes you enjoy that moment, sitting with a great friend, living it together.

The film, out on DVD on Tuesday, features a number of performances across their trip through the southern US, last summer. Places like Mobile, Alabama, New Orleans, Tulsa are all featured as the band blazes through the south. Lili and I had the pleasure of seeing them in the early summer last year and it was very similar to what you see on this DVD.

The main focus is on the music, with a little documentary style conversations blended in. The combination leaves me wanting to hear more details about what really makes this band tick so well-- such a dizzying array of musicians working together in what appears to be unison-- it almost seems to good to be true-- and maybe it is. Tweedy alludes to the possibility of another switch in the band being possible, "but not John", a reference to bassist John Stirrit, who I think is the only original Wilco member now, sans Tweedy.

Regardless, this band seems to be at the peak of their performance--it doesn't seem like it could get better, but as Tweedy's Dad says at the end of the film, they just keep going and getting better and better.

Well said.

If only there were more moments like this one.

Hope you're all well.

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..thoughts of Iran...

..Iran, a country that is so hated and feared by the U.S.
Like most of our enemies, we know nothing about who these people are or what they are about. Even in all the studies in College I took regarding the Middle East, we didn't spend much time on Iran.
Tonight, Rick Steves shows his trip to Iran. 15 days of carrying around a high defination video camera, people fearing him as much as he feared them. What comes out of it is really good glimpse into a county that we know nothing about.
"Here is a country that seems so conservative to us, but they are just trying to keep their youth from being Britney Spears!"-- ok, maybe that is a little crazy, but the point is well made.
What a stimulating, visceral show this is-- touring through Tehran-- a crazy city that reminds me of cruising through Beijing-- a city that has the same stereotypes, but since we do business with them, we see them differently than those crazy Iranians....
Just something to ponder... Read more!

Approved!

It's been awhile.
This is mostly due to working a full-time position, trying to get back into shape and not really having much to report. Since coming back from my latest trip, which I blogged here, I have not been doing much other than working and working out.
I am happy to share that we rec'd notification from the Visa Center that Lili's application was approved, so now we are just waiting to hear the date of the interview, which they only schedule in the second week of every month, so we missed March and will have to wait until April... which means May is the earliest possible date to get Lili here, but it could also be anytime later than that... but it looks like it will be May-- and just in time for Sasquatch Music Festival, which hopefully I will blogging about at some point.
So that's great news.
I am also in the process of working harder on the book that I have in before. It's coming together--working through the parts that don't connect so well is the hardest challange for me right now.
So, there's the updates...
Hope all is well and I promise to write more as I have time. Read more!

back from the Isle of Wight...

Travel during the holidays can be a challange-- especially when the travel is about 40% around the world.  This travel time I seemed to have gotten out of Seattle just in time, as the airports experienced hellacious delays and cancallations just hours after my flight from Seattle to Dussoldorph.

There is something very special about Germany during the holidays-- with the open Christmas markets, loaded with one of a kind trinkets, plenty of gluvine and some of the most delicious delights known to man--freshly cooked waffles with Cherry toppings, backfisch, potato pancakes, thuringer sausages--just to name a few things.  It all feels very merry indeed.  This is the second Christmas we have spent here in the Weimar Republic and each of them were very special and relaxing.  

The one minor thing about spending the new year in Germany is the time between Christmas and new years-- the country literally shuts down during this time of the year, which can proved to be a little bit dull.  Lili and I were both aware of this slowdown and started to consider places to go during the time--and since it might be the last time that I am here for a while, we considered both Munich and England--and decided to go and visit my Dad's Cousin Andy, his wife Mandy and their three lovely children, Jacob, Jemma and Ben Furbish (or Furbirino, as he prefers to be called).

It was nothing short of a brillant stay-- we arrived late Monday night and stayed until Saturday afternoon-- 6 nights and 5 days in all and most of it was simply spent getting to know a part of the family which I have always loved from afar-- Jacob and Mr. Furbirino I had never met before in person.  

The highlight of the trip was the 70's New Year party, held at the local Community Center.. As you can see by the pictures, we had a wonderful time!!

The best part of the trip was seeing a side of my father that I have never known.  I had always wanted to visit the areas where he grew up, but was only there when I was a young kid.  Seeing and understanding that community where he is from helps me understand things from his point of view-- as we get older I think all of us has a harder time to understand other peoples perceptions--we see the world through our own rose coloured glasses and that is it, sometimes.  Travelling to the Isle of Wight allowed me to see and hear the stories of my father and his family before he moved to the States and to walk the same streets he walked as a child, which was an important thing for me to do.  

It was also good to spend time with family, something I don't really get to do very often as my family has become split over the years and doesn't communicate as well as they should-- over the years people change and too much tension builds up over the years and people lose touch.  No matter how much I want to battle against this kind of thing, I know that I will fall victim to the same problem when the years go by.  It's an easy thing to happen, we all get busy in our lives and if the rearview mirror doesn't look so bright, we don't bother to look back at such things.

Anyway, thats my two cents for now.

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You've Got to Spend some time, love...

Hello and Good morning from Germany.
The weather has been very nice -- we went to the Netherlands yesterday and I am excited to report that the cord jacket that I have always wanted- you know the one, with the leather elbow pads, the one that smoking professors use?
I would provide a pic of it, but the ones on the web dont do it justice-- but I am sure that there will be plenty of pictures taken with it on... :)
Lili's parents also bought me a rather terrific Wool jacket from Polo as well. All in all, a great Christmas for books, but I do miss my own family, they seem so far away from me during the holidays.
We are headed to England in a few days, which I am very excited about. It will be very cool to see my cousins and hopefully loads of other people that I have lost contact with. We are staying on the Isle of Wight through New Years and coming back to Germany on the 3rd and I fly back out on the 7th.
Its been a good trip thus far-- and it hasn't been as spendy as one might think-- but as always, you spend too much :).

Photos later... Read more!

Merry Christmas, with Mariah even...

The Holidays are a time for peace and reflection.  Taking this time to be with my wives family in Germany is special as much as it is relaxing.  We share this time together, but there is also a lot of time for individual thought -- even if Mariah Carey's Christmas album is playing on the hi-fi and it is right now.  :)

I am currently reading Robert Fisks latest work -- a collection of essays he has published and the more I read it, the more I am reminded of my father and myself.  Fisk is a man of his own will and nature-- and the declarations he makes when he isn't reporting are spot on with the theories I have grown up to know, but without the sometimes cynical approach that comes with realizing that things in our lives are the way they are for a very specific reason, even though it doesn't appear that way.

The latest essays that I have been reading focus directly on the written words-- the power of them and the power of their destruction-- namely the laptop that I am writing all of this on-- the fear by Fisk-- and I do take this with a grain of salt, is that something is really lost in the lack of writing things out-- and having a copy of those materials-- when this laptop becomes the mainstay of our communications, it does simplify things, but that in turn, complicates things.  Without having those handwritten notes about certain things, we leave the archieves of our work up to the machine-- so much of my writing is on this site-- what if they simply ran out of capital and closed up shop?  What if their server room caught on fire?  Where would my words be then?

Also, as I am writing this, you, the reader, will read it as soon as I click that little orange button-- this is an amazing power-- the power to instantly send information out to the masses, but there has been a huge cost for all of this information overload-- this distribution of thought and opinion is killing off the gatekeepers of information, the press-- and that is never, ever going to be a good thing-- especially given the tough times that are right around the corner.

Luckily, I have thought of this and I do have backups of my data here on the site-- it has been copied down long ago-- just in case.

But the point remains the same, writing and communication is suffering because of the overload of communication that we get from a variety of sources throughout our daily lives.

So, on this Christmas day, I want to thank you, the reader, for taking time to listen to me ramble on in this wonderfully dreadful medium of communications...

Read more!

..In Germania

I have safely arrived in Germany a few days ago and have seemingly recovered from the jetlag. Looks like I got out of Seattle just in time, as the news reports have the area looking quite dismal as predicted. The incliment weather seems to affect Seattle more than any other place-- due to the hills and lack of resources in getting the roads and commerce taken care of.
When Jason and Apple took me to the airport, it had snowed the night before, so it was a slight challange to get up our little hill, but we made it to the airport without any problems-- however, the storm bore down just hours after my flight left Sea-Tac.
The flight was far from the worst flight I have had-- Delta tries to do as little as possible to be anything more than slightly accomodating, but for the measly $505.00 I paid for a round-trip ticket, I can hardly complain about it all that much.
I am happy to report that everything is fine in Germany. Lili was crying when I got out of customs, which took much longer than usual-- my bags were literally one of the last ones out of the plane and it was so good to see her. My father in law, Uwe, was also there and were all delighted to be re-united once again for the holidays.
The first night we stayed in a nice hotel in Koln city center and arrived at the house yesterday afternoon. Lili's parents headed off to their company Christmas party and then they will head off the Bremerhaven for a couple of days. Lili and I are going to the Christmas Market tonight to meet up with her friends, eat some food and drink as much gluvine as we can stomach. She is yelling at me to get ready, so I will finish this off later.
Stay varm in Seattle! Read more!

Well, heres the thing:

Lili's been cleared from the Department of Homeland Security, so this hiatus has finally progressed to another level, which is a good thing.  The hardest part of getting through this process is now complete and now it is on to the National Visa Center, for a final check, before she comes into this country for as long as she wants and we begin our lives together.  It has been very difficult on me, these last few months, as I beging to discover that there isn't really anyone else I want to spend time with except her and all that has been and all that there will be is reliant on when we can be together.  For now, its just a waiting game, where I drift through the days until we are together.

...and we will be together in just a few short days from now.  As I write this, my mind drifts to just three days from now, when I will be boarding a plane to see my wife in Germany, another Christmas abroad, a few moments before we finalize the immigration papers and start our life together.  I am looking forward to this trip, even though its in the dead of winter-- its going to be a good time to again be with the family that I now a part of and to see them and spend time with them once again-- it should be a very special time.

Still working on the book and I am still telling myself its going well-- so take from that what you will.  I am trying to come up with a title that I find fitting, but I would like to get enough of it done to where I feel satisfied with it.

  

Read more!

Clearing out all the cobwebs

Like most of us in the US these days, my mind is simply swirling at just where we as a country. Here we are headed into Winter and the doom and gloom seems to be here more significant than usual--and this is through eight years of bush.
I am trying my best to clear all of these thoughts out of my head and begin to once again address the book, so stay tuned. The next month will be filled with writings that I am hoping to supply--because lets face it, we all need to escape to another time in our lives... :)

Hope you're all doing well. Read more!

Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellon_Collie_and_the_Infinite_Sadness

The common question when seeing people that I haven't seen in a bit is a mixture of questions of the past and the future-- how was the wedding and how is it without your wife not being in the country?
At this point in my life, I feel like I am in limbo, no direction, no way home, just waiting, lurking in the shadows, waiting for the moment when my wife is allowed to enter the country so that we can then begin our lives together.
This time has not been easy, so difficult that at times you try not to think of it, whatever you have to do to get away from it, to get away from the reality of your life being on hold because of the government.
During this time, I have had the opportunity to work on myself the way that I have wanted to since coming back from China-- losing the weight that I quickly put on from spending a year in China. I lost 50 pounds in China and gained 100 coming back. I made a promise to myself when I got married and could barely fit into a suit that enough was enough-- I was going to take my life back and begin to make decisions that need to be made because I want to have a life and I want to be a role model for my children-- someone that they can look up to in any case.
So I have spent the last three months going to the gym and trying to take care of myself, trying to develop myself into a routine, getting things straight, mentally and physically so that I could begin this new life with my wife, fresh and anew.
Today was a celebratory breaking point-- I reached the first of my goals since undertaking this challenge and it was done with the help of the Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness, a complex double album of songs that supposedly chronicle the different stages of life, from sadness to joy to anger to enlightenment...
I have listened to this album hundreds of times, seen the band perform it live in their pajamas and it is one of the en grained soundtracks of my life. It is one of the strongest albums ever recorded and each time I listen to it, I think about all the times around it in life.
In some ways it seems like the perfect thing to listen to while hitting the elliptical machine for 60 minutes-- and the first part of Mellon Collie lasts 56 minutes-- so I am looking forward to hitting the next part of the album on the next goal-- or maybe on the plane as I am going to see my wife for the first time in months...
But I am keeping my head up, looking forward to the future, one moment at a time...

Hope youre all well.

Read more!

On Obama...

After years of campaigning relentlessly for the candidates and their armies of people, the war was won handily by the democrats. I, like most of the people, am glad its over.
I am also happy that it wasn't close, that we didn't have to wait all night to realize who the next leader would be-- the message was clearer than it ever has been in my entire life-- the words of the American spoken as close to unison as we have seen in quite some time-- and that message was clear- Obama.
The biggest thing that we can hope for in the this country is that we begin to once again begin the process of functioning like the America that I remember-- a land with prosperity, a place where people wanted to come to attempt the American dream-- a place of freedom. The last eight years have really turned people against each other because most people were seemingly unhappy about something-- and it seemed like Tuesday night we gained our souls back again, the balance of power from eight years of misrepresented government washed away in the hopes of our new leader.
Barrack Obama is legit-- that is the best way to describe it-- he is the perfect leader of our country and will open up so many options for all of us because he will not need to be guided through the rough world of politics-- his biggest financial backer are the American people, people like you and I, people who donated our actual income to this man because the basic things that he thinks and says are exactly what we are saying and thinking.
It just feels good to be an American again. Read more!

from the shoreline basement.

As I am now back to work, I finally have the time to lie on my couch and enjoy some reading. This reading is an evil thing, mind you. Its not like television where you have things constantly dancing in front of you for how ever long its on-- no, this reading thing actually gets you thinking about things!
Not only are you thinking about the reading you are doing, but your mind is also attempting to put these things into a video like sequence inside of you head to make the words seem more appealing!
I know, I can hardly contain myself!
Last night I went and saw Sarah Vowell speaking at Town Hall. It was just what I needed to pull myself out of the rut I have been in lately--thus rut which is mostly brought on by the upcoming election and how most conversations either involve that--or television.
Vowell has a new book out, The Wordy Shipmates, which I have instantly (and not intentionally), put in front of the other masses of literary schwag I have purchased since getting that first back at work paycheck just a few short weeks ago...
...and I am glad that I did just that.
Her talk last night was specifically arranged to showcase the book, but she didnt read for long and when she was done, a question and answer period followed. She was kind and it was not as tiresome as it normally is--there were actually moments where I was quite interested in the book and so purchased it and got it and a couple of McSweeney's along, which she remarked that she hadn't actually seen them in awhile.
So, it has inspired me once again to begin reading and writing again.
But now I must go and zone out at the gym.
Hope you're well.
Heading to Pullman this weekend, the first time since graduation. Read more!

...moments before another debate

This one is supposed to be different than the other ones.
This one is done in a town hall style, with people asking questions that will no doubt be read from a card, real people asking rehearsed questions.
What do I expect in the next hour and half?
Lots of nothing-- a serious lack of McCain answering questions about the economy, Obama not calling him on it, vice versa.
The American public will once again come away from this wondering how the hell we got to where we are, afraid to discuss the issues that are directly impacting us and the way that we live. All of this goes without us really being present in the process.

Heres a question:
1. What do you think of the arrests of journalists and protesters from the GOP convention? Read more!

...from Redmond.

I have decided to start using the title of each posting as where I am posting it from... So today, its ...from Redmond as I am sitting in my office in building 28 of the Micrsoft campus working on a release of something new for MS (but thats all I will say on the internets about it).

I have been spending much of my days frustrated and unable to write about whats happening politically in our country because I think we are all suffering greatly from the sensory overload that the upcoming election is having upon us.

It feels good to just pull away from all of the pure bullshit and not think about it--because for most of us, its just depressing that these are the best that America offers up to the highest position in the land.

Don't get me wrong. This is the first time in my entire life that I have felt connected to a candidate and that I mostly agree with-- I really do think that Obama as president will do one major thing for the rest of this country above all others--and that is bring hope and trust back into politics. The two foundations of our entire way of life is based on two basic principals: Hope and Trust. Both of these things have been erased by the previous administration and we need to get it back to an even playfield.

Hope and faith are what are going to restore the economy and nothing else.

--back to work... Read more!

Thoughts...

Hello again my friends, Hello.
I have not been especially busy with anything worth mentioning lately, except finalizing job prospects and watching way too much television.
I have a new job, with Microsoft, on a contract, which starts on Wednesday.
The big thing that has been consuming my thoughts lately has been this terrible courting by the media to talk non-stop about the political process that we are currently entrenched in.
Three years in the making, this political season must go down as the worst one in history, mostly because we have had to endure these people for the last several years and although the faces have changed, the agenda hasn't altered hardly at all.
The way that the news networks are going about this, it will be difficult to imagine how anyone will be able to vote with their heart.
Is it intentional? Read more!