KatBox

Malcolm, the cat with the blue trumpet

As of July 1 I'll be over here:

http://glassmeow.blogspot.com/

I'm under construction there now. Adding your blogs over there (patience! if you don't see yours yet).

Were you named after anyone?
My Mom was the only girl out of five kids. FOUR little brothers! My Grandpa always wanted another girl and would have named her Katherine. My parents got that sideways and named me Kathleen. My Dad calls me Kathy and everybody else better (!) call me Kat. My Mom and I share a middle name - Ann - it goes with everything.

When was the last time you cried?
I cry inwardly at sad stories in the newspaper. This morning reading about some guy who's a suspect in his months old daughter's death. Her upper arm was broken. Who does that to a baby?

Do you like your handwriting?
Yeah. When I remember to slow down and take some care with it. I end up block printing for extra legibility. Had an ARCHITECT compliment me on how fast I could block print neatly. If I don't block print (architect print) my g's get confused with s's by those who don't know what a Roman g looks like.

What’s your favorite lunch meat?
Finocchiona (salame with fennel) rolled up in a nice provolone or asiago fresco sliced thin. No bread. Too many carbs.

Do you have kids?
My two Tabby Boys, Salvador and Spencer.

If you were another person, would you be friends with you?
Yeah! We'd go to all sorts of shows. Completely road-worthy!

Do you use sarcasm a lot?
More of a smart ass than sarcastic. Have to self filter frequently so as not to offend. But things get through.

Do you still have your tonsils?
MmmHmm.

Would you bungee jump?
Maybe. I'd probably jump out of an airplane (with a parachute) before I'd do the bungee thing.

Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?
I don't think I have any shoes that tie right now. At least not ones that I wear. Love my Dansko clog collection. Especially the Lime Green Patent ones.

Do you think you’re strong?
Yes.

What’s the first thing you notice about a person?
Eyes. Voice (we talking opposite sex here, or just in general?) facial hair or lack of it. Mouth.

Red or pink?
Lime Green.

What’s your least favorite thing about your body?
Vertically challenged. My aura extends to 5' 10". Really. I take up a lot of headroom.

Who do you miss the most?
Mom.

What color pants and shoes are you wearing?
Olive pants; kiwi green flip flops (my 'house' shoes - earlier in the day my latest Dansko clogs, black)

How about your shirt?
Black tank dress over the pants, with a cropped black sweater.

What’s the last thing you ate?
Broccoli dunked in jalapeno ranch dressing.

What are you listening to right now?
OPB radio - "Think Out Loud" talk show. Earlier in the day, R.E.M.'s Accelerate, The Tripwires' Makes You Look Around and Robyn Hitchcock'sYou and Oblivion.

Who’s the last person you spoke to on the phone?
Can't remember - a customer - I'm on the phone all day for my job. I tend to avoid the phone when I'm not working.

If you were a crayon, which color would you be?
Depends on the day. Crayola's renamed all of them but my favorites when I was a kid were: Yellow-Green (go figure), Silver and Gold.

What’s your favorite smell?
Vanilla. Then Coffee, Cedar, Earth and the smell of the cherrywood paddle when applied to a gather of hot glass.

What’s your favorite sport to watch?
On t.v., downhill skiing. Or Luge. Totally into the Winter Olympics events.

What color is your hair?
Enhanced Dishwater Blonde.

What color are your eyes?
Blue to Gray depending on what I'm wearing.

Do you wear contacts?
Rockin' the Lasik three years on! WhooHoo!

Favorite food?
Red Wine. Then Chocolate. Then Raspberries. Then Asparagus.

What’s your favorite cereal?
Oatmeal.

What’s your favorite ice cream?
Ben & Jerry's Holy Canolli (which might have been discontinued - it's hard as hell to find)

Favorite dessert?
Marionberry pie.

Scary movies or happy endings?
Both. But not in the same film.

What’s the last movie you watched?
Bridget Jones’s Diary on Bravo over the weekend. Hell, Beth. I watched it too. Caught the second half.

What book are you reading now?
The Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen. Or any of the other dozens of books that are in semi neat piles all over my house.

Summer or winter?
Winter. I love snow! Which we don't really get here. Oh well...

Hugs or kisses?
Really depends on who's giving 'em...

What’s on your mouse pad?
It's cat shaped at work. Home's a mac powerbook with a touchpad. No mouse.

What did you watch on TV last night?
Fell asleep in the middle of Top Gear and had to ask at work whose car/boat contraption made it across the channel.

What’s your favorite sound?
Purrrrrrrr...

Rolling Stones or Beatles?
That is an impossible question to answer. Robyn Hitchcock.


What’s the farthest you’ve been from home?
Europe - Denmark, probably the farthest, but that was only the airport, so Germany.

Do you have a special talent?
I'm psychic. Really. When I'm smart enough to pay attention.

Where were you born?
Pensacola, Florida. Actually Eglin A.F.B. None of my family is really from Florida. Massachusetts and Oregon by way of Western NY State.

Who do you want to answer these questions?
Anyone who feels the urge to share

Right nextdoor to the Beaterville Cafe on North Killingsworth Street (just West of Denver Ave) in NoPo (hip euphemism for North Portland, Oregon USA) is a great little re-sale shop called Rear View Mirror. Harmony and I were poking through the vintage kitchen stools, Japanese kimono silk scarves and various other tempting treasures but what I came home with are in the pix below.





Mini paintings for Peace mounted on postcards!
& here on the back (click for bigger picture) you'll see that they come pre-addressed.





I bought six and handed them out to friends. Mailing mine out to the current occupant now.

You can get yours from Rear View Mirror at 503-680-6700

...I mentioned to a friend that "I would have totally lost it" if R.E.M. had played "Pretty Persuasion" up at Vancouver.

They didn't there, but THEY DID at the Hollywood Bowl last night! Official setlist not up on the band's tour site yet, but someone posted it up on remring. They opened with it. I would have totally lost it had I been there.















note to self: look up html code to embed links - lj buttons don't work on Mac!

The Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds tix came in the mail today!

...and I got most of the grass out of the front flowerbed and whacked back the butterfly bush that was threatening to take over the front of my house. The rosemary's got the south side. Things grow good here!

All cleaned up now and about to head out to find things that grow fast and like sunshine. A lot. And some twine and a couple of bamboo edging fence pieces to hold the thyme back in the bed now that the grass that was crowding it out onto the sidewalk is gone.

I may end up Gardening at Night tonight!

Dang! I was going to take a picture of my tidy flowerbed and trimmed up bush, but the camera batteries died. Too many R.E.M. pix, I guess!






...um, yeah, I know that's a picture of Michael Stipe. Don't have one of Nick Cave (yet) and I'm still riding the great concert high from last Friday. It's already been a week!? He just looks so pleased with himself kind of how I'm feeling

Yay me for losing the gas powered lawn mower and getting a new push mower (on sale this week at Sears)! I'd been meaning to for years but the gas mower was 'free'. I passed it on to a friend who's got too much yard for a push mower.

(...and it's actually kind of fun to use!)

On the way home from Vancouver, I stopped at the Premier Outlet Mall up in Tualip. They've got a J.Jill outlet store. There isn't one anyplace in Oregon. I didn't find anything there this time that I couldn't live without.

I did find a really cool green handbag at the Kate Spade shop. I thought hard about it. Would have been $200.00 after their 'buy more save more' (ha!) deal - and after pulling out the Oregon driver's license which gets rid of the Washington sales tax. But I balked and now I'm glad I did.

This bag
http://KSP.imageg.net/graphics/product_images/pKS1-1697839dt.jpg

It's not like I don't have lots of bags already.


And I pride myself on having things that are a bit unusual. Vintage. Fair Trade imported. Handmade. And not foolishly expensive.

Which was reinforced as I all of a sudden got a huge rush of "too much mall" and all but ran to extricate myself from the hordes of Canadian Chinese down buying carloads of Made in China designer goods.

Does anybody else see the irony here?

#remvanbc Timeline of the day I got to see My First R.E.M. Show!!!

Up a little too late and out of Portland with a full tank of gas (Ouch! It isn't supposed to cost over $50.00 to fill a Beetle!) and on the road North to Canada. (Someone was pointing. I was just driving.) Slight detour around Ft. Lewis in search of the non-existent Starbucks. Won't believe that freeway exit sign again. Wound around by the water and found myself on Bridgeport Way somewhere out in the suburbs of Tacoma. Found a Starbucks (I can't believe it was so hard - they're everywhere) and my way back onto I-5 without too much of a delay. Got the express lanes North (Yay!) and made it in line at the border about 3:30 p.m. Border guy seemed perhaps a little wistful that he wasn't going to the show. I offered him the extra ticket I still had. I hope he didn't think I was trying to bribe a customs official...

Mapquest got me to just outside Deer Lake Park in beautiful Burnaby BC without too many faltering moves and no wrong turns! Found a place to park in a nearby residential street. Sold my spare ticket right away to a guy by the first (full) parking lot. Only got CAD$50.00 for it, but that filled the tank on the way home, eh?

Hiked up into the park and the first person I ran into on the way to the ampitheatre was Scott McCaughey! Quick "Hi/Bye" and I went down and thought "what the heck? I wonder how close I can get?" I dove in about row three and weaseled my way towards Peter's end of the stage and got right behind the front row by asking nicely and smiling. Being under 5' helps a lot, too! Stood behind the front row for all of The National and Modest Mouse, but patience pays off - got to squeeze in on the front row just before R.E.M. came on!

The pix get bigger when you click on them!



Peter's dinosaur collection. Oh hey - just noticed he's got the trucker girl thing going on here too. Can anybody tell my why R.E.M. had big rats stenciled onto their equipment cases? One older one said simply "R.E.M., Athens, GA" on it.



Here's Peter playing the opener "Living Well is the Best Revenge"



Here's Scott early in the show as well. Was really a trip to see these two guys who I've seen from a foot and a half away up on such a HUGE stage.
Scott looked like he was having the time of his life! ...but then he always does. One of his most endearing qualities. And Vancouver is really right in his 'backyard' so all his Seattle and Portland fandom were there cheering wildly.



Michael gave us lots of good photo ops.




I thought he had goth wristlets or something on but it was a striped jersey under the dress shirt and suit jacket.



Took me a while to get a shot of Mike. Dang - I thought that was a spider on his shirt, but it's a creepy wasp or something. (Yeah, I know wasps are closely related to ants and ants are a favorite of Robyn Hitchcock, but I'm just not so fond of waspy things - of any sort!) He's got a sort of frown-y look on his face too. The angle was hard - I had to just hold the camera up in his general direction and hope to catch something!



We KNOW what song was played here




"Let Me In" was acoustic - Peter at the organ and Michael singing - both out of the frame - they were clustered over on "Mike's side". Bill played guitar too. This was so beautiful it just about had me in tears.



Took even longer to get a 'halfway' decent shot of Bill. 'fraid this was the best I could do. Kind of dark.



Another nice shot of Michael.


The end - this was being filmed for dvd! Heck - the guy, Ryan from Saskatoon, who let me squeeze in beside him, was uploading video to somewhere - probably Murmurs - the entire time.





& he got a setlist!!! He let me photograph it so I could put it up here. Which is all I really wanted anyway.

Gravy!

Seriously. Salvador (that's Spencer in the icon) turned 17 (!) yesterday. He's quite the little old man these days. He's gotten progressively pickier and pickier as to what he'll eat and it has come down to gravy. All those tiny cans of very expensive kitty food that he merely sniffs and walks away from? A $0.75 can of Kroger's Turkey Gravy was the answer.

Not that we're wasting much kitty food around here. Pudge Boy (a.k.a. Spencer of Round) vacuums up most of what Salvador leaves behind. Except the salmon flavored one that nobody seemed to like.

Shhhh... don't tell them that they're going to get kibble for the over-nighter Friday to see R.E.M. in Vancouver.

Beth, if you've got airmiles and fly out here I've got an extra ticket :P

Happy, Happy, Happy!!!

...after being completely bummed to NOT get tickets in time for the sold out Portland show, they added a second one in Seattle! I'll soon be clutching two tickets for that - as soon as Ticketmonster mails them.

It won't be Nick's birthday show and we'll have to drive 3 hours, but we're going!

So I finally broke down and got a new t.v., cable for said t.v. and an internet connection at home! I feel as if I've joined the last century :P

Some funny stuff - I bought the t.v. out at Costco Tuesday before last, but I didn't get cable until the following week Wednesday. Tried to hook up rabbit ears to the t.v. in the meanwhile, but they had a smaller connector. Took out my trusty duct tape and got it to work. Sort of. Kept slipping out of place. Brand new flat screen hdtv and the picture looks worse than the worst old b/w portable you can imagine. I gave it up and went back to reading with the radio on (NPR!) for the duration until the cable guys came.

Cable Guys. They only squashed the shit outta my rosemary. Okay. I do have rather large and abundant rosemary plants. Kelly calls them the "rosemary that ate Kat's house". The first guy was kind of attitudinal - managed to crack two of the cement and asbestos tiles that my house is sided with while he was attaching the wires. I didn't want him draping cable wire all over the front of my house and I think he thought I was a pain in the butt for not letting him do it his way. The guy who came to help him was much nicer, had the great idea of running the cable under the porch via access from the basement (and didn't mind going into the dirt front half of the basement of my house with all the spiders and hopefully nothing scarier) and he was kind of cute to boot! That never hurts!

Now that I've got cable, I've stayed up way too late watching endless X-Files reruns. I was up until three Thursday night. Who knew you could watch back to back old X-Files on TNT? Was on the Sci-Fi channel too. And what I really didn't expect was the soft core porn channel. Not a pay per view. There were a couple of them. I haven't lived in a house with cable since I lived at home. That was 30 years ago, folks. That sort of stuff wasn't on cable then.

I think the best thing was the Great Performances on PBS - Lerner and Lowe's Camelot with the NY Philharmonic and Gabriel Byrne as King Arthur! In the tradition of actors who've played that role, he talk-sang it. It was half a concert, half a full on play. Really great! The kid who played Mordred was fantastic. And Fran Drescher played Morgan Le Fey. I used to have the original Broadway cast album with Richard Burton and Julie Andrews and I've seen the film with Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave. Saw that in a theater when it came out. With my Mom. We both loved Arthur and thought Lancelot was a prat. The version of the Arthurian legend it came from, T.H. White's The Once and Future King, was one of my favorite books as a kid. Still is.

News Flash - I find myself in the possibly enviable position of having an extra ticket to R.E.M. in Vancouver on the 23rd of the month. It's the first show of the Accelerate Tour! I bought a pair thinking my usual partner in crime for Robyn Hitchcock, Minus 5, YFF and other affiliated bands roadtrips would be up for it, but alas, she's not. I've offered to a couple others, but so far no takers. What should I do? Post it on Murmurs? Put an ad up on Craigslist Vancouver? Be nice to possibly meet a new Canadian pal in the process. Suggestions? Anybody want to meet me in Vancouver? Ride up from Portland?

Trivia - I've been enjoying the new Portishead album Third especially "Machine Gun" - had it up loud the other day on the way into work and the rear window of my beetle was vibrating so much it made me dizzy when I looked in my rear view mirror at a stoplight. Hee! It's a great album...

It dawned on me today that I can link both Johnny Cash and  Elvis Costello to Scott McCaughey in 
6 Degrees or Less! 

...both via Nick Lowe who was in the Sex, Food, Death and Tarantulas documentary about Robyn Hitchcock, playing in Robyn's living room along with Scott and the rest of the Venus 3*.  Nick played a show with Robyn Hitchcock and Elvis Costello just this week...and he (Nick) was once married to Carlene Carter (stepdaughter of The Man in Black).  So that's 3 Degrees (Scott - Nick - Elvis Costello) and 4 Degrees (Scott - Nick - Carlene Carter - Johnny Cash) respectively.

I'm beginning to think that there isn't any working musician that can't be linked to Scott McCaughey in 6 Degrees or Less.  Fewer?  

Why am I even thinking about this?  'Cause Robyn and Nick are playing in SFO this weekend.  I can't go, but I have friends who will be there!

*Scott McCaughey, Peter Buck and Bill Rieflin as Robyn's backing band.

EDIT - actually, I'm sure Nick played with Johnny Cash, at least informally, at some time so that's 3 Degrees, too!
 

...is it just me or does Peter's riff to Supernatural Superserious sound just a teensy bit like the intro to Moby's Play turned inside out and amped up quite a bit? Especially that bit where he comes back in again after the bridge.

Not to dis either party here. Just sayin'

(It was bugging me that I couldn't quite figure out what that riff reminded me of. It came to me driving into work this morning with the stereo up really LOUD. A complete "That's IT!!!" moment.)

EDIT

Ya know...after watching the YouTube videos of the Today Show this morning, I think that was Scott playing that bit :D

EDIT TWO: Now that I've heard that played live, I can attest that it is indeed Scott playing that riff! Whoohoo Scott!

Got X tomorrow night at the Crystal Ballroom!  

R.E.M. tix go on presale next week! 

(and Accelerate in the stores on the 1st!  Yay - I can rip it to my iPod for the upcoming trade show trip to Vegas - so NOT my favorite city)

...and The Minus 5 are playing on April 25th at The Doug Fir!

All that and SNOW this morning, too!  It didn't stick.  All over now. Was pretty to watch coming down this morning.  Big sploshy wet flakes. 

 I'm liking it!  Streaming on ilike right now.

Tickets for Sasquatch go on sale tomorrow.  Show is May 24.  A Saturday.  A five hour drive to Out-In-The-Middle-Of- Nowhere, Washington.*  One can camp there.  But I'm not so into the camping scene these days.  Not sure how many hours drive it is out of The Gorge to a reasonable hotel, motel or B&B.

Vancouver BC show is May 23.  That's another five hour drive, if there's no long line at the border and you make it through the traffic jam known as Seattle efficiently.   But then you're in Vancouver and there's lots of places to stay, good restaurants and such.  Passport in order? Check!

Or...there's Berkeley on May 31st.  That's a 12 hour drive.  Three days trip minimum.  Four or five days would be nicer.

Tickets not on sale yet for Vancouver or Berkeley.  

What to do?





*though it's supposed to be really beautiful 'nowhere'

 

So Hillary won in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island.  The mudslinging will continue a bit longer...  I wish they  (Hillary and Obama) would realize that they've got so much more in common than not and decide to run together.  How cool would that be?  The first Woman and the first Black Man as President and Vice President - or vice versa - at the same moment in history.  Flip a coin as to who gets to be Prez for Pete's sake! 

But what was really making me buggy is that I couldn't remember who Hillary's new hairdo was reminding me of.


Shirley Partridge!!!


...maybe a 70's hippie bus would boost her ratings further?

'k so I'm really disappointed to have missed the Lowe Beats over the weekend.  Sounds like it was the gig of the month if not the year.  Or the decade.  But the headcold crud that took over my office decided it was my turn.  I didn't get much further than my overstuffed chair with a down throw and a cat on my lap and a cup of Yorkshire tea at my elbow for two whole days.

 A random comment to my last post reminded me of a random thought I'd had over the weekend, in my feverish delirium:  Given his many official bands, semi official bands and side projects,  just how many major rockstars is it possible to link to Scott McCaughey in six degrees or less?

I have no idea!  I was still fuzzy enough at the time the idea popped into my head that it wore me out to even think about figuring out the links.  You folks who can still buy REAL Sudafed* in your states are lucky...

I have no idea if it can be done, but I'm throwing out the first challenge.  Eric Clapton.  Link to Scott McCaughey in six degrees?  




*outlawed except by prescription in the state of Oregon because of too many meth-heads cooking up their drug of choice from lots and lots of little red pills and a lot of noxious chemicals.

...I didn't even know Scott McCaughey had a Nick Lowe tribute band until recently.  Going to hear them tomorrow night at Dante's!

As long as the scritchiness in my throat doesn't turn into the crud that's been floating around my office of late