Zombie Walk 2008

The 2008 Portland Zombie Walk. Will it get in the Guinness Book? Will it help the Oregon Food Bank?

Who knows, but it was pretty fun. More here.

2 comments October 27th, 2008

Lights In The Sky

Nine Inch Nails kicked off their Lights In The Sky tour in Seattle on Saturday, named presumably both for the track off of The Slip as well as for the absurdly amazing light show that they brought with them (but more on that anon).  As a birthday present to myself, we headed up there on what was a mostly uneventful drive except for the always-horrible traffic just north of Tacoma and the guy who nearly succeeded in sideswiping my car at 70mph due to an inability to look before plowing into the fast lane.  But I digress.

After stomping around the park for a few hours, seeing the half-hearted “25% off” Sonics merch at the Key Arena, marvelling at the preparations for the Sea Fair parade, and having dinner with a couple of friends, we headed in to the show.  It actually started on time, and by the time we were done standing in line for a drink, Crystal Castles had finished their set and Trent Reznor’s motley musicians had already begun, so we shoved some liquid down our gullets and went to find our nosebleed seats (which, at the Key Arena, still aren’t too bad).

So we missed the first song (which was “1,000,000″, as I later guessed), but the remaining set was wide, wild, career-spanning, and mind-blowing, as over the next two hours we were treated to an setlist spanning from Pretty Hate Machine; Broken; The Downward Spiral; With Teeth; various tracks off of Ghosts, The Slip, and probably The Fragile; and a smattering of great tracks off of Year Zero. (Mouse over the album title for the songs I could readily identify.)

It wasn’t enough to simply deliver on the goods, though, even with all of the raw energy and intensity that NIN brought to the stage (and woe betide anyone getting in the way of stray flying microphone stands).  There were also the aforementioned Lights in the Sky– a scintillating array of lights sat on either side of the stage, along with three “curtains” of light, placed as a backdrop, midstage, and just a few feet shy of the proscenium, each capable of displaying an amazing array of color, or to go nearly translucent when required, allowing for by far the coolest light effects I have ever seen at a show.

For instance, the middle light sheet could be a desert landscape of an alien planet while the front showered down a heavy rain through which the musicians played; or the front sheet could become the only backdrop, creating a small and intimate stage while each instrument had sound-related effects appearing behind the player/singer.  Or the massive arrays of lights at either end of the stage could throb with an intensity and brightness that bring you to the brink of an altered state of percepting with a near 3-D effect. The screens were, variously, security screens depicting the action onstage and off; a gigantic night-vision closeup of Trent Reznor whispering the words to “The Greater Good”; or bursts of static where the sounds of a microphone could punch a hole through, to reveal the singer behind.

My only regret?  That I didn’t spring for even-better seats.

Add comment July 28th, 2008

Random musings on a dystopian future

Year Zero, whose ideas, taken part and parcel, aren’t new unto themselves, but the synthesis of a totalitarian fascist society coupled with the overwhelming strength of big pharma– a scenario that could be lifted out of the pages of Wired magazine– create only the first act of the play. Just before the curtain draws, there is the awakening, the phenomena that seems to be driven by The Big Man In The Sky or, perhaps, The Big Aliens In The Sky.

I should probably preface the rest of this by saying that the burden of proof rests on those trying to prove it, and not on the defense; that is to say, if there is a giant, omniscient force in this world, I remain largely skeptical given the scant proof we have for such an idea.

I can’t help but be reminded of the man in the red sweatsuit that would come over and visit my crap apartment, the top floor of a dilapidated home, sometime around the winter of 1997. He was the friend of our own couch squatter– they had met at the Eugene Mission– he was an older man, with probably just over forty years behind him. Oh, and he was Jesus.

I don’t mean that he was Latino; he was a white dude with scraggly hair and a wiry beard who told me, in certain terms, that he was the Son of God. Apparently, he and John the Baptist were staying at the Mission together. He talked at length about an eventual “ascension” sort of event that was to come, and how certain people in various positions of celebrity and power would be “revealed” to be angels. Specifically, I recall him mentioning Bill Clinton and Michael Jordan. Jordan, at least, is a natural fit– the man already flies.

It seems there is just a part of us that needs to believe that something will come along and take care of us, since we can’t possibly be responsible for the unfathomable vastness of our combined existence on this lonely planet. Researchers have discovered a part of the brain that, when stimulated, will evoke a response indicative of a perceived event. Those of a religious bent describe it as a “spiritual event”, while believers in extraterrestrial life describe it as an “abduction”-type event.

From “The Warning”:

“You’ve become a virus
Killing off his host
We been watching you with all of our eyes
And what you seem to value most
…
We have come to intervene
You will change your ways and you will make amends
Or we will wipe this place clean”

The idea of a savior, in the form of an advanced alien race, a man in a red sweatsuit, or Superman, is certainly appealing, but I remain skeptical.

Add comment May 2nd, 2007