So Jesse got us tickets for the Sasquatch Festival this May for our first anniversary, and I got to see aaaalllllll my favorite new bands! Top on my list was:

Chromeo

MSTRKRFT

Robyn

I got to see all of them, and other great bands! Old favorite like Foo Fighters and Death Cab For Cutie, new discoveries like Fitz & The Tantrums, Foster The People, Matt & Kim, Biffy Clyro and Young The Giant.

Plus, we got to camp for 5 nights with a bunch of other crazy music fans!

Our amazing Tent Majal

The incredible view from the main lawn

Chromeo onstage. We had great seats for this show!

Our last day

I hope we have the energy to go again next year! It would be great to get a group of friends together for this festival.

I definitely have some updates to make and some writings to write about the things I’ve done. It’s funny how some things come about by accident; like the porno film, or creating a new dish (to be updated.) I don’t start out thinking of completing a list item, usually Erik reminds me.

Some things will simply not be completed. I added #68, See An Olympic Event In Person, specifically because of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. I mean, it’s only 3 hours away. It should be easy, right? No such luck. So that item will go unfulfilled. The international travel ones may as well, who knows?

More updates to come!

The books are basically about a secret, underground world of consensual slavery in a BDSM context. The stories are complex and extremely well written, the characters are memorable and interesting, and the smut, well, the smut is hawt.

I’ve re-read all 5 books so many times, and  they are seriously up in the Harry Potter category for me, as far as the characters feeling like old friends. You know, when you feel devastated when one dies? The characters in these books feel like family to me.

Thanks to a fan group on Fetlife, I was able to have a back and forth conversation with Ms. Antoniou. She often posts in her group, and shares details of her writing process, which I find fascinating. No, it’s not exactly the same thing as going to a book signing, but I was still thrilled about it.

Several months back, I’d read about The Stranger’s amateur porn contest, HUMP. Normally I’ve had little interest in creating porn, but this year’s film suggestions really got my attention. Fem-Domme, CFNM (clothed female, nude male) and pegging were suggested as a way to get a leg up on the competition, and those three things are right up my alley! So to speak.

So I grabbed a few friends to act, Erik wrote me up a script, and at the end of July we shot our film. We actually had a bona (boner?) fide professional porn star in our midst who was mostly helpful. The movie is less a sexy porno and more of a funny short film with porny elements. I enlisted my talented friend Looptid to create some appropriate music, and after some heavy editing, it was done! Today was the deadline for submission, and it was safely delivered to the Stranger office this morning. We are of course, hoping to win, but just having our film shown at the screening would be quite a feat. There are two categories, Humor and Hot. and the grand prize is $2000. While there’s definitely some sexy elements, (bible-spanking, naked boys) it’s definitely more humorous than hot.

We won’t find out if our film won until after the screenings, which are October 9th and 10th. But here’s hoping that The Marmonites will charm (or disgust) the judges.

As I got older, I found better uses for my song lists. When one boyfriend dumped me, I made him a tape using the music-mixing skills I’d learned at the radio station. It was a short tape, filled with appropriately sad song phrases and snippets, ranging from angry and desperate, (Anything, Anything by Dramarama) to accusatory (Train in Vain by The Clash) to defeated (Wild World by Jimmy Cliff) Did I mention pathetic? I have been cringing the entire time while writing this. I can only hope T has destroyed the tape and never mentioned it to anyone.

A few years back, I started making lists for my favorite songs of the year. Music has always been a snapshot in time for me; I love having one old song that I haven’t heard in ages catapult me back to a specific event or time in my life. Even now, hearing Fish Heads brings me back to my junior year of high school, and the sweet boyfriend who introduced it to me.
I thought it would be nice to have these yearly lists to entertain myself in my old age. 2008′s list is quite a bit smaller than the past ones, but not because of the music. I went through a weird classic rock phase, and you don’t hear new stuff on classic rock radio! That’s why there’s not much electronica on here either. These are in no particular order.

1. Viva La Vida, Coldplay
2. 15 Steps, Radiohead
3. American Boy, Estelle, featuring Kanye West
4. Jizz In My Pants, The Lonely Island (yes, that one from SNL)
5. Paper Planes, MIA
6. Kids, MGMT
7. Electric Feel, MGMT
8. Single Ladies, Beyonce
9. Take Back the City, Snow Patrol
10. Don’t Stop the Music, Rihanna
11. Shut Up & Let Me Go, Ting Tings
12. Gamma Ray, Beck
13. The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room, Flight of the Conchords
14. Business Time, Flight of the Conchords
15. I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You, Black Kids
16. Nine of the Afternoon, Panic at the Disco
17. Cap Cod Kwassa Kwassa, Vampire Weekend
18. Guilt By Association, Louis XIV
19. Supernatural Superserious, REM
20. Halo, Bloc Party
21. Mercury, Bloc Party
22. Did Ya Ever, Spoon
23. 4 Minutes, Madonna featuring Justin Timberlake
24. Salute Your Solution, Raconteurs
25. Who’s Gonna Save My Soul, Gnarls Barkley
26. Beggin, Madcon

I’ve already started my mix for 2009!

I’d been to the Experience Music Project  (housed in the same building) several times before, and was pleased to see that one admission got us into both exhibits. Plus, I had a 2-for-1 coupon, because I’m such a cheap-ass.

What an amazing place! We got to see the permanent exhibits:  Homeworld, Fantastic Voyages, Brave New Worlds, and Them, as well as a travelling exhibit, Robots. As was to be expected, a great deal of reverance and homage was paid to the early writers of science fiction, your Isaac Asimovs, your Poul Andersons and your Ray Bradburys. Personally, may favorite author is Philip K. Dick, and I was pleased to see him included in the Hall of Fame.

My own introduction to sci-fi started with an old boyfriend who introduced me to Red Dwarf at age 18. Perhaps comedy’s not the best way to start, but whatever it takes, right? When X-Files came around, I was easily sucked in, and gradually went from there. Believe it or not, I’d never actually read anything until maybe 6 years ago.

Since then, I’ve embraced my inner geek and hungrily eat up all the sci-fi I can get my hands on. I’m really happy that smart sci-fi movies are being made, even in the summer when one usually needs to drop their IQ by 20 points to enjoy summer movie fare. The Matrix, anyone?

I must say, I was pretty disappointed to see Doctor Who and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy excluded. Especially Doctor Who, because we’ve been watching the newer 2005 season and it’s the best thing I’ve watched in a really long time. Maybe I’ll tackle the older series once we get caught up on the current one.
I asked the gift shop clerk what/who decided what makes it into the exhibits. He echoed what I’d pretty much surmised: because this museum started out as bits of Paul Allen’s private collection, it’s fairly safe to say that Mr. Vulcan is not necessarily a fan of Doctor Who or HGttG. Now that I think about it, aside from the early classic novels, the museum’s offerings had a distinctly American feel: Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Men in Black, etc. Don’t misconstrue, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with American sci-fi. However,  the British stuff tends to explore more subtle themes than our typical stateside kill bad monsters stories.  Themes of loneliness and alienation, Big Brother and mandatory breeding/sterilization/behavior modification, and even the struggle to save face and keep plodding along while the world around you is going to hell, I guess we don’t see much of this in American stories. Buut I still have a lot to read and watch!

So this weekend I bought the new wireless drum kit for Rock Band 2, and the double cymbal add-on. It feels a little more realistic now. Watch out, Keith Moon! Having all this awesome new equipment, Erik and I decided to jam a little: he on his Yamaha DX-7 keyboard and me with my little drum kit and the “Freestyle” option in RB. We had some difficulty with the keyboard and eventually Erik reverted to a music program on the laptop. But it was still pretty neat. We noodled around a bit with some of his old songs, and I tried desperately to keep a beat. I need to work on my fills a bit, but maybe with some more jamming this next weekend, we could tackle my #100 item: Co-write a song with someone!

This San Francisco couple’s Shiba Inu had a litter of 6 puppies, and they are just the cutest thing ever. They have a 24-hour camera on the puppies, and it captures every mundane and adorable moment. I bring up the site at home and at work, and just leave it on in the background with the sound down low. Being able to peek in on them from time to time has really curbed my puppy lust, for which I’m sure my husband is grateful. I’ve been “hounding” him about getting a dog for close to 3 years now. (groan)

Watching the puppies really relaxes me! I noticed when they got a new bed, when the camera angle was changed permanently from just their crate to their fenced-in area, and I especially enjoy watching the owners sit on the floor to play with them. For a while I was actually taking notes on their behavior, but I quickly decided I had more important things to do. Like write this post.

I can’t figure out how to imbed the video, so you’ll just have to ckick the link yourself. Enjoy the puppily goodness!

http://cdn1.ustream.tv/swf/4/viewer.45.swf?cid=317016