Adventures of a Discoverer

Tonight I went for my first listening party, at the Easy Street Records store in West Seattle. Basically, a listening party in a record store is when they receive the first batch of records for a brand new album by some famous artist and then they play it for the people who come to the party, and usually there is some associated promotion, like a raffle of some memorabilia. In this case, the Easy Street Records was celebrating the release of  "Before and After" , the brand new record by the legendary  Neil Young , a long time rock and roll artist. This record is particularly special because it's basically a retrospective of his entire career, which started all the way back in 1966 (!) and has had a number of hits over the decades. The DJ at the store played the record, and then he proceeded to do a raffle, in which I won a t-shirt (could have been better, one of the prizes was a fancy record player, but not bad nevertheless). By the way, I had never been to the Easy Stree...

This was a new experience for me in the United States: I had seen friends' bands playing in Brazil, but this was the first time that I saw a band composed of friends of mine presenting a live concert here in the US. The Bad Hombres, a band made from former colleagues from Microsoft, made a one night only presentation at the Rendezvous in Seattle (a small concert venue which I hadn't been before, so another first!) and played a bunch of cool music, including a lot of hits from the 80's (since there were a lot of 80's kids in the crowd). This event brought together a bunch of old Brazilian friends, so this was a wonderful occasion indeed. As a bonus, it was the first time that I saw live someone playing the  keytar . This was really a night to remember. 

Yesterday I spent a great day hiking at the Maury Island Marine Park. Maury Island is yet another island in the Puget Sound, which is connected by a narrow isthmus to the larger Vashon Island, and that last one is accessible by ferry, making it easy to get to. The park was created where a gravel mine used to be, and you can still see some remnants of the old infrastructure. The day was cold but very sunny, with intense blue skies, that gave us amazing views of the waters and of Mt Rainier in the distance. We had an interesting soundtrack for the hike: nearby, there were a number of sea lions basking under the sun (unfortunately, we couldn't get close) and they were sounding their excitement. Some people were walking their dogs and interestingly enough, when the dogs barked, the sea lions would respond. This is a beautiful trail that you can make as long or as short as you want, so I recommend it to everybody.

This last Sunday (11/19/2023) night, I had the opportunity of watching a live concert of one of the bands that started this whole Grunge thing: Mudhoney. As you may imagine, the band was formed in Seattle around the 80's, and pioneered the kind of sound that later would be labeled as Grunge. In fact, a number of the more famous bands that came later, such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam, stated that they were inspired by what Mudhoney was doing. Differently than those bands, though, Mudhoney remained a small independent band and never had the kind of globe spanning success that those rock bands reached. All those years later they continue to perform in (almost) their original formation, and they continue to put out the kind of noisy loud sound that characterized that music style. Mudhoney and many of the other Grunge bands had their start at the old Crocodile in Seattle, so it was just proper that this concert was at the new (and improved) Crocodile. The crowd was wild, so much so that th...

In a previous trip with the family, we stopped by a fruit store next to I-90, close to Thorp, WA. In addition to some very good strawberries and cherries, we saw something quite curious: a package containing a corncob which you could put in the microwave to make popcorn. So, popcorn in the cob. We decided to try it out! Unfortunately, I have to say that the results were not great. What we thought was the label turned out to be a bag, in which you insert the cob and then put the bag in the microwave. We let it stay in the microwave until the precise time indicated in the instructions, but the result was uneven at best: some kernels had not popped, so kernels popped but remained attached to the cob, some popped but apparently for a little bit too long and they were somewhat burned. The not many kernels that popped right didn't have the right texture and consistency you expect from popcorn, plus there was no butter flavor nor salt. So, as I said, not great. If you see this product som...

AI seems to be all the rage these days: companies are trying to put "AI" into everything. Coca-Cola thought that it could get into it too, so... it released a new flavor of Coke "co-created with Artificial Intelligence". I tried it and... it tastes just like regular Coke, perhaps with some subtle different smell, but in the end it's a fizzy sugary drink just the same. I think that the biggest contribution of AI in this was telling the company to write "co-created with Artificial Intelligence" on the can.

The name of this by itself caught my attention: Friendship Dungeon. It consists of two stand-up comedians that decided that Seattle needed to stay weird, and so created a live show to bring all the weirdness they could back to the city. It starts with the fact that one of the comedians is currently dead, so he's only present in the form of a small altar with his picture. The show only happens at midnight on Saturday (it's possibly the latest show in the city) and it contains a little bit of standup comedy, besides some "interesting" sketches like "Hell Baby" (an inflatable baby that tells tales about Hell), "Fish of July" (a female comedian dressed like a fish dressed like a cheerleader that does patriotic songs) and "Sugarplum Gary" (a man that answers metaphysical questions about Christmas). The show ends with the audience singing popular songs like "Lithium" by Nirvana but with the original lyrics replaced by car sales ads fr...