I'm an award almost-winning investigative reporter now

I have a smartass remark I have made often in my career as a journalist: that I don't put much faith in any awards except the ones we win. I'll have to amend that to include the awards we (or I) almost win.

This morning a woman at New American Media called me and said a story I wrote last year for The St. Louis American had been awarded Runner Up in Best Investigative Reporting in NAM's 2009 Ethnic Media Awards.

New America Media describes itself as "a multi-channel news and communications agency serving ethnic news organizations in the U.S. and overseas. Founded in 1996 by the nonprofit Pacific News Service, NAM is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C."

In 2006 Hillary Clinton described their awards as "the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize," which may mean something beyond the fact that she was speaking to a room of journalists and knew she would be running for president soon.

My story that almost won the big award was "New beginning? Promotions under Jenkerson heavily favor South Side whites". Jenkerson was the then-new St. Louis fire chief, Dennis Jenkerson, reported to be a personal friend of Mayor Francis G. Slay. Jenkerson replaced an interim chief who briefly had replaced the city's first-ever African-American fire chief, Sherman George. George was demoted because he refused to make a set of contested promotions based on a test administered by an agency he had advised the City against using.

My story was based on the list of St. Louis Fire Department promotions pushed through after Chief George's demotions. I obtained the list from a confidential fire department source and then cross-referenced it with a directory of department personnel I obtained that listed everyone's address and ethnicity.

Add up the average increases in salary associated with each of the promotions, and the numbers are eloquent. Computed by region, in our radically segregated city:

Overall, the transfer of wealth is $592,000 gained by South Side neighborhoods annually, while only $28,000 annually was gained by North Side neighborhoods, a difference of more than a half-million dollars ($564,000) per year. That boost to the South Side climbs to $589,000 per year after adding Jenkerson’s annual raise of $25,000 from his unprecedented promotion from battalion chief to fire chief.

And by race:

The “new beginning” represented by Jenkerson has seen $386,000 in annual salary increases handed to the families of white firefighters, yet only $122,000 in annual salary increases for the families of black firefighters. Add in Jenkerson’s $25,000 annual raise, and the annual advantage to whites becomes $411,000 to $122,000.

The city of St. Louis has a slight numerical majority of black residents. In 2006 the U.S. Census Bureau projected city residents to be 50.5 percent black compared to 45.7 percent white.

I guess I put stock in any award I win, or almost win, but this one is a pleasure for a few reasons.
Working for a black-owned newspaper in a region like St. Louis with a dense fog of residual racism, we often feel our stories get overlooked or downplayed. I am especially galled by the sneers we hear from time to time that we "make stuff up".

The City Hall reporter from our weak daily paper, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, actually followed one of my stories from our recent mayoral race, but first he called me to ask if I "stood by the quote" he wanted to use, something inflammatory that had been told to me by a mayoral challenger.

Stand by the quote? What on earth did he expect me to say? "No, busted! This is the Black Press! We just make stuff up!"

Almost winning a national award for an investigative story is a welcome recognition of all the hard work we have done in recent years at The St. Louis American based on documents and data, just the opposite of "making stuff up" - the kind of gritty, difficult, tricky reporting associated (once upon a time, anyway) with well-staffed investigative teams at daily newspapers. This particular story was just me and a firefighter who didn't like what was going on and trusted me to tell the truth.

Finally, I wasn't even hired to be a reporter. I am the paper's editorial director - the assigning editor, line editor, copy editor, fact-checker and (on a bad day) shit-catcher. I do my own reporting and my writing on my own time, mostly late nights and early mornings, often to the chagrin of my wife, sometimes of myself.

I am looking forward to going to Atlanta and collecting my almost-award and meeting the person (people?) who beat me. I'd like to think it's an investigative team of two or three paid to do nothing but dig and write, but I suspect - this being the perennially understaffed ethnic media, in the great advertising drought of 2009, no less - it will be one other exhausted person who does everything at the shop this side of scrubbing the toilets.

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Image is of Joseph Rouletabille, a fictionalized investigative journalist created by Gaston Leroux, from The Europen Wold Newton Universe.

Museum curates warped arm armor from hurt artist

I have a museum in my basement, neglected at the moment, where I archive, among other things, artifacts connected to my friends, many of them now dead, though not only.

This is the latest artifact I am curating into the collection. It most recently belonged to my friend Heather Corley, who is not dead, though she could be, and by virtue of the incident that turned this circular metal bangle into this sad shape.

But you should see what it did to her big armored tank of a car!

Looking at this devastated car - literally run over by a bigass trcuk - and then back at the terrorized, bruised, and burned (from the airbag) girl, the paramedic seized upon a piece of good news, in addition to the evident good news that she was alive, not dead.

"You got some good armor on, there," the paramedic said, referring to a sheath of some thirty-five bracelets she wears on her forearms.

The force with which her arm hit the driver car window upon impact shattered the plastic bracelets and warped the metals one, and all that absorbed and transformed energy is what kept her from breaking that arm.

Here is Corley in happier times:

I think we'll get that smile back, before too long. Right?

Dumpster-diving salonista salvages vampire scripts

I'll put this one out there as released. I have calls out to the salon owner in question and her attorney. If she is African-American, this is an interesting story for us at The St. Louis American. Either way, the mainstream media is likely to take a bite. After all, this is yet another chance for someone to say that GEORGE CLOONEY ACTED HERE!

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ST. LOUIS SALON OWNER FINDS MOVIE SCRIPTS AND LANDS A DEAL

A young and hip female owner of a St. Louis beauty salon has found herself the focus of attention by one the nation’s hottest motion picture studios.

Casey Ray, the owner of Salon K, a small beauty salon located in St. Louis’ trendy Loop area, found the movie scripts for New Moon and Memoirs, the sequels to the overnight vampire sensation, Twilight.

The scripts had evidently been left in St. Louis by actress Anna Kendrick, who had been in the Gateway City shooting the latest George Clooney film, Up in the Air. The scripts had been discarded and wound up being exposed in a Dumpster outside the Tony Hotel at which Kendrick was staying during the St. Louis shoot.

Ray spotted the scripts while waiting for her fiancé to get off work and recognized their potential value as collectibles. Having coiffed actors and actresses before performances in St. Louis, Ray was familiar with the look of a script.

After "shopping" the script to an "extremely interested" national tabloid, Ray consulted with her attorney, Albert S. Watkins, to address the legal issues which may arise from a deal of this nature. After evaluating the options, Watkins contacted Summit Entertainment, LLC, the studio producing New Moon and Memoirs.

In short order a deal was finalized. Ray returned the carefully guarded and undisclosed scripts to Summit and, in return, Ray and her guest will be invited to the premiers for both films, the after-parties, and, following the release of the films, she will receive the scripts she found, certified by the studio for authenticity, signed by the writer and lead actor and actress.

"Ms. Ray desired to take the appropriate steps with the scripts and not compromise the integrity of Summit’s motion pictures," said Ray’s attorney Albert Watkins. "Her honesty has been graciously rewarded by a grateful studio," he added.

"I am extremely excited and hope the films are blockbusters," concluded Ray.

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Dracula Dumpster image from Johnny Cup Cakes.

The only thing worse than love is hate

This past Tuesday was an important day in the life of our little family. It was the first night our daughter, Leyla Fern, spent without her mother. I travel alone from time to time, and stay out late making music at least night a week, but not Karley, my wife: she has always been there for the girl. Always. Every night.

Until Tuesday night. It was not a good night for little Leyla. Wednesday was worse. She came home early from school on Wednesday, and I kept her home again on Thursday. She had a stomach ache and was vomiting, though she had no fever and I couldn't think of anything she had eaten that might have triggered an illness.

On Thursday afternoon she saw her doctor. He couldn't diagnose anything. We started wondering if maybe the girl was so shook up to be left without her mother that she was sick with sadness.

"I want Mommy," she said, a lot.

The little girl loves her daddy too, and she is a kind and respectful little person. She didn't act out, and she often told me she loved me this week. It's weird to say, but she did her best not to hurt my feelings, to make it clear that I shouldn't take it personally. But she really missed her mommy and she wanted her mommy back.

Leyla was asleep when Karley finally came home Thursday evening. Karley joined the girl on the crouch and cradled her. When Leyla drifted into consciousness briefly enough to register her mother's presence, this comfortable smile slowly spread across her face. Then she drifted back into sleep.

The little girl was not instantly well in the morning. At the moment we are awaiting the results of bloodwork, and I must admit the possibility that this story may not in the end be a motherlove story. This story could take a different turn. But I do think the shock of separation from her mother affected the little girl physically, and it is taking some time for those physical affects to disappear completely.

My aunt Dorothy cared for her mother, my grandmother Pansy Fern Sans Souci, until the day she died. They had a very close bond, one of the closest I have ever seen between two people. Dorothy explained to me one day that she had been a difficult pregnancy and birth for her mother, and that the more difficult it is to bear a child, the tighter the bond once the child is born. It is the children who almost kill us who are closest to us while we are alive.

Karley really suffered when she was pregnant with Leyla. We had been through miscarraiges before, and it looked for a long time like this could be another. Karley spent most of her term in the hospital, unable to eat or even drink without vomiting. She was fed through a vein with some goop that looked like wallpaper paste.

I slept on the windowledge at New York University Hospital, wondering if at the end of all this I might be alone. Would our baby die? Would the pregnancy kill my wife? I would get up on the cold windowledge, walk to the subway, take the subway to Queens, drive to Long Island, work all day as a journalist, wondering if our lives would be joined by new life, or by death.

It occurred to me this week, when our daughter couldn't even hold down water in the absence of her mother, that she was showing the same symptoms her mother went through during the pregnancy. Bearing Leyla almost killed Karley, and being without her mother looked to be almost that hard on the little girl.

Karley and Leyla are so very fortunate to have one another. I would say I envy their bond, but I really don't - it's terrifying enough, this burden of love I carry, which I know is not equal in depth or intensity to the love they share. We are all so very fortunate to have another.

Love is terrible. The only thing worse than love is hate. I love you, Leyla. I love you, Karley. Happy Mother's Day.

The black saint, the sinner lady, and Brian Adkins

Every so often I remember Archive.org, and then that is all I listen to, for a long while. I am in that phase again, now, and the other night I searched the Archive for one of my favorite composers and bandleaders, Charles Mingus.

A playlist came up, titled "Charles Mingus 'The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady'". As I will tell anyone who will listen, Mingus' record of that name is first on my desert island list. For reasons I could never explain, it speaks more plainly to me than any other music about the mysteries of identity and consciousness as I experience those mysteries.

I hit "play" on the archived program, posted by someone named Brian Adkins. From the introduction, it seemed to be a podcast, maybe even a genuine radio show. After an opening tune by Miles Davis, the announcer (I took him to be Brian Adkins) said each week he was "going to try to showcase" a classic record, which suggested this was a brand new show, the archive of an inaugural broadcast, since he was talking about intention, something he was "going to try," rather than a pattern, something he does.

Then, sure enough, he said "for the first week" he would play this Mingus record, the record that best explains me to me, or at least best reminds me why I can't fully understand myself or anyone else in their complete complexity.

This guy - let's decide he is Brian Adkins - speaks pretty well about this complicated composer and this intrictae and challenging piece of music. He says, though Mingus is a bassist, "he was known for his orchestrations," which certainly is true. Orchestration is the facet of Mingus' art that first grabbed me, and that still stays so close to me.

And, then, there is this that Brian Adkins said of The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady: that it is "constantly interesting, always changing, always beautiful": and that is an apt and unpretentious summation of the power of this music.

Something else about Brian Adkins. He sounds like a kid. And, not only a kid, a rural Southern kid, an Appalachian kid. He has used the phrase, "Anyhoo ..."

The Mingus tune from The Black Saint, "Group Dancers", comes to a close. And Brian Adkins says, "Whoa!" I liked that! That is how that music always leaves me feeling, or reeling - Whoa!

And then, check out where Brian Adkins, this Appalachian kid, takes us in his mind:

Every time I get to hear that song it's a treat. Anyways, whenever I listen to it, though, you just sort of get into it, you know?, because it's so frenetic and such. But, every time I'm listening to it, it's always, like, when I'm at work, or when I'm in the library or something, and somebody will always come up and tap me on my shoulder - and I'll jump out of my chair! It's ridiculous!

Whoever he is, this kid actually lives Mingus the way I live Mingus.

And, then, my head begins to spin. He goes right from his giddy account of disappearing in the frenetic nature of Mingus' music while working or burying his head in the library (which, by then, I would have guessed was a college library, and this was a college kid, with a new show on a college station) into a public service announcement ...

... and he is reading some text about "Marshall students and the Huntington Area Food Back" - which wouldn't mean much to most people - but, you see, I once fell in love with a student at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, with a black girl, it so happens, I met on the road, one of very few black girls in that little Appalachian town, and loving her taught me so many things about the identities of black saints and sinner ladies, the same mysteries Charles Mingus is teaching in his songs ...

And I just about jumped out of my chair. It was ridiculous. It made me remember so many things ...

{To be continued}

Inferior manuscripts by dead Beatles come to light

Maybe the eyeglasses give it away - maybe not - but this is a bad sketch of John Lennon, executed by me and by my kid, Leyla Fern, who added the extremities when I wasn't looking.

Our bad sketch is modelled after an earlier work, not much better, in Lennon's own hand, sketched onto a piece of paper that also included a real rarity: something that John Lennon wrote that has not yet been published.

I didn't bother copying down the words, I recall, because they really weren't very interesting. No insult to the dead man. They are not all triples into the right field corner. Sometimes you hit a routine dribbler back to the mound.

The only reason I am publishing this inferior effort by Leyla and myself is because new light has been shed as of this morning on another C-list or D-list product by a dead former Beatle, the late and lamented George Harrison.

On the information IV-drip of Twitter this morning, I am told that "a previously unseen George Harrison lyric, found by author and collector Hunter Davies, goes on display at the British Library today (8 May 2009). Written in early 1967 when George was aged 23 or 24, the untitled song was penned at a time when The Beatles had stopped touring to spend more time in the studio to work on what would arguably become their most famous record, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

I know, that's more than 140 characters, all you can edge into a Twitter post. I like the Twitter posts that are links to longer stories. In the British Library press release, a well crafted artifact in its own right, complete with an audio component of the collector yarning about his find, Davies tells us that he saved many such discarded lyrics from the cleaning ladies at Abbey Road Studios.

Here is the text in question:

Im happy to say that its only a dream
when I come across people like you,
its only a dream and you make it obscene
with the things that you think and you do.
your so unaware of the pain that I bear
and jealous for what you cant do.
There's times when I feel that you haven't a hope
but I also know that isn't true.

The collector, Davis, says that George wrote this when he was a teenager. Kind of sounds like it.

According to Jamie Andrews, Head of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Library, this is now the only manuscript in George's hand in the collection of the national library.

Leyla and I sketched John Lennon's self-portrait, by the way, in that same space, a very beautiful new modern library facility. We were waiting for Peter F. Alexander, the biographer of Les Murray. I was putting the make on Peter to write an essay about Les' poem The Sydney Highrise Variations, which we are scoring this year.

He consented, and Peter's essay is now in the digital archive of Poetry Scores, awaiting us to finish and publish our score.

How I am learning to love Twitter, despite the hype

There is nothing quite as pointess, nor pointless in quite the same way, as forming an opinion about something before you have experienced it.

I am a widely experienced person, and I have earned a living my entire adult life as a journalist, reporting on my experiences and the experiences of others.

I also go through life reflexively asking people who tell me things, "What's your evidence?" or "how do you know that?", always trying to get past the crust of opinion to the kernel of experience.

And yet, I am humbled to confess, I still am capable of doing this stupid, uniqueless pointless thing: I still at times form opinions of things, and even express those opinions, without adequate experience of the subject - almost invariably, when the thing in question is trendy and comes packaged with the degree of advance hype that usually accompanies fraud.

That is the only point in my favor, that I am relying on experience when I do this - namely, the experience of finding hype wrapped around fraud, as it so often is. But still, really, it is uniquely pointless to think you have an opinion about anything, even something that is hyped, when you have not experienced this thing for yourself.

Take Twitter, for example - a subject of almost universal hype at this very moment, a moment which may last as long as twenty status updates, before the next social media platform of the moment comes along and usurps it.

See how I do that? Already I am backing into snark and condescension, even when I am trying to say that, now that I actually have experienced Twitter - for 32 of my own updates, and for six days - I see all sorts of value in it.

Unforeseen value - certainly, unforeseen by me; and largely, judging by the patter I have heard and read about Twitter, undiscovered value - or at least those who have discovered this value are not the ones talking about Twitter in the tsunami of its hype.

I have discovered that, for me - a guy who has been on media lists for half his life, and who depends upon news reports and press releases to earn a living - Twitter is an exceptionally efficient and satisfying way to follow the news, particularly before it becomes "the news" by being reported by someone else in my trade.

In fact, Twitter provides a model that is better than the traditional media model for receiving press releases and news reports. In the old world, the old way, they basically find you (the journalist) and promote you to death, quite often regardless of how many times you asked them to leave you alone.

With Twitter, you go out and pick the people you want to talk to you, and if you don't like what you are getting, or if you get more than you had bargained for, you can drop them as easily as you picked them up.

As a journalist who has asked countless publicists to always put in the subject line of the email a description of the precise subject of their email (novel idea, isn't it?), I learned to love, right away, Twitter's brevity. No prefacing every damn notice with boilerplate - PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - you got 140 characters to make your pitch. Make it good. Make it matter.

I also love the egalitarian nature of it all. I have had the experience of being a media darling; I have written features for The New York Times, reviewed books for The Washington Post, edited a travel section of a magazine with the enormous reach of 1.1 million readers. I know what it's like to get the A-list treatment from media sources - and it can make the job much easier.

But that isn't really who I am or how I roll, in my essence. I am basically a self-taught journalist who fell into the trade as an accident and found, as a working musician, it was a way to pay the bills - an infinitely more reliable way to pay the bills than playing music was!

As such, I have always believed that journalism, like poetry or bread, is for everyone. Twitter recognizes this fact, or at least enables it along with every other kind of use of information.

I have signed up for Twitter alerts (not sure I can get all the way over to using that weird little "tweets") from ... looking at my lastest updates, here ... The American Journal of Nursing, Yale University Press, Pew Research Center, U.S. Sen. Caire McCaskill, the F.B.I. ... and though in fact I do edit an impactful newspaper and do contribute to any number of other impactful publications, most of these people sending me information on Twitter don't know that or don't care.

I could be a gay teen in North Dakota who knows there is a bigger world out there somewhere and wants to listen into it, or a homeless woman using a computer at the public library, or what I actually am, a mid-career journalist for an impactful publication who has interviewed Barack Obama and gotten some good people noticed and some bad people fired. The information is there and it is freely available, for all of us. I like that. I love it.

It's funny, because I know so many print journalists of a certain age (I am 42) who continue to resist Twitter, as I resisted Twitter, and who have no idea that, if used in a certain way, it does nothing but make their job easier. It also gives us a lot more competition, sure, but that citizen journalist horse has left the barn and it ain't coming back.

Let's face it. There is no information priesthood anymore, no more robed monks dispensing the news to the masses in a language they can't access for themselves. Now the news, like the world itself, is an open book, available in all languages, to all people, at all times. It's piling up in my Twitter account right now, and I can't wait to go back and see what I've been missing.

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Want to see how far I have come on this subject? Then read my opinion about Twitter before I had any experience of it, Chris is comparing Twitter to a faded old Polaroid, in which I reduce this polyvalent information system to only one of its uses, the self-absorbed status update. At least I am glad I thought to add this caveat:

I won't rule out Twitter, though. I got over my aversion to cell phones, email, MySpace and FaceBook, so I wouldn't put anything past me.

Yes indeedy.

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Image adapted from iJustine.

Dead, stuffed, plumped, primped animals made to look alive

Even as we browse the internet or gaze outside the window at the day, the masters of death are gathering forces at the Saint Charles Convention Center.

The masters of dead animals, that is: of dead small game birds, dead fish, dead lions, dead buffalo, dead giraffes, dead sharks, dead elephants.

The masters of death, and the combatants in their deadly art: for this is The World Taxidermy and Fish Carving Championships, brought to you by Breakthrough Magazine, the official publication of the taxidermy profession.

They are masters of death and the art of making it look like life, but they respect the feds. "The United States Fish and Wildlife Department has seized birds not properly permitted in prior shows," warns the rules and regulations.

No dead endangered species allowed, yo.

Taxidermists from all over the world, representing 20 nations and all 50 states, will exhibit and strut their stuff in pursuit of more than $25,000 in prize money.

The show will be open for public viewing on Friday, May 8 from 6 p.m. – 10 p.m. and Saturday, May 9th from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children.

For children, too, revel in death and death made to look like life.

Bootblogging #15: Four more from The Funhouse (Seattle punk rock)

Four more free mp3s from The Funhouse Comp Thing, assembled and edited by Seattle superproducer Jack Endino for Brian Foss, who runs The Funhouse, "Seattle's oldest surviving Punk Club," and produces the show Sonic Reducer on KEXP 90.3 FM.

"I Love You"
26,000 Volts

Image from the 26,000 Volts MySpace page.

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"Rat Hotel"
Charming Snakes

Image from the Charming Snakes MySpace page.

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"Come Out and Play"
Dead Vampires

Image from the Dead Vampires MySpace page.

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"Turncoat"
Old Haunts

Image from the Old Haunts MySpace page.

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Thanks to Jack Endino for giving me the compilation CD in the first place, when I visited him in Seattle, and to Brian Foss for letting me post up these tracks. I hope to visit him in Seattle. More like this stuff on the bands' MySpace pages, no duh.

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Also in the Bootblogging series

Bootblogging #1: Three by The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #2: Three elegies for local musicians
Bootblogging #3: Michael Shannon Friedman
Bootblogging #4: Three more by The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #5: Chuck Reinhart's guitar circle hits
Bootblogging #6: The silly side of The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #7: Songs for "Divorcing God"
Bootblogging #8: More songs for "Divorcing God"
Bootblogging #9: Adam Long presents The Imps!
Bootblogging #10: More Michael Shannon Friedman
Bootblogging #11: The Adversary Workers
Bootblogging #12: The May Day Orchestra
Bootblogging #13: Solo Career live in Santa Monica
Bootblogging #14: Four from The Funhouse (Seattle punk)

How Celia saved Poughkeepsie from Colombine

From my hotmail archives, dated April 20. Jenna Bauer writes from Poughkeepsie:

As part of her visit/residency at the campus in Poughkeepsie, NY, Celia was scheduled to play this Monday morning in the meeting room of Oakwood Friends School during a study break from 10:25 until 10:55 a.m. Students had the option of coming to listen to her play - it was unclear how many students would attend.

She and I walked to the meeting room around 9:55 a.m. We noticed police cars on campus.

As we were setting up her merch, the dean of students came to us and told us that there was a "situation", and that all the students, including the middle school, would be on their way to the meeting room shortly.

Apparently, the police had arrived on campus and notified administration at Oakwood that two teenagers were seen getting out of a minivan down the street from the school with duffel bags that suspiciously looked as if they contained firearms.

(Keeping in mind that it's the 10th year of the high school shootings at Columbine.)

All 200 students, staff and faculty were told to come to the meeting room immediately for "security reasons". Meanwhile, police were at the entrances of the campus and building, and maintenance was scanning the grounds.

Students and faculty were clearly concerned and upset at this sudden and mysterious security measure. However, a woman from administration explained that we were all safe, and after a few other annoucements, I was able to introduce Celia.

There was an intense energy in the room - so many questions, a lot of concern, yet Celia rose to the occasion and kept the kids' and our adult minds off of what was a unknown and potentially bad situation for 25 minutes.

Eventually, an adminstrator approached me and asked if Celia could keep playing for the students (and their teachers). I said, "Of course she can!" I let Celia know about the request and she contintued to entertain.

She took a student's request for "I Love Myself" and my request for "You Just Gave Your Love Away". She played "Curly Hair", "Ghost Riders", "Big Brother" and several others. These high school students were way into it.

Eventually, eight or so administrators walked in, smiling. It's an understatement to say that everyone in the room was falling over to hear an explaination for what was going on.

Anna Bertucci, the head of the upper school, explained that the administrators had been in constant contact with the police, and the suspects were discovered to have air rifles in the bag. The campus and surrounding areas had been searched and deemed safe.

The timing of Celia's informal entertainment and this security measure - one that confined the entire school to the meeting room - is and will remain priceless and impossible to forget.

Celia came to our rescue ...

I thought you'd appreciate this story, and I also thought you would appreciate this photo of Celia's costume for this morning's performance. She spraypainted this outfit, a la SCOSAG style, during our Spring Forward Momentum Retreat on Saturday.

Bootblogging #14: Four from The Funhouse (Seattle punk)

When I visited awhile back with Seattle superproducer Jack Endino, he was kind enough to send me away with several rare CDs he had produced. One was The Funhouse Comp Thing, which he had assembled and edited for Brian Foss.

Brian Foss runs The Funhouse, "Seattle's oldest surviving Punk Club," and produces the show Sonic Reducer on KEXP 90.3 FM. The Funhouse Comp Thing compiles one track each by 32 bands that have played in his club. It rocks pretty damn hard!

I contacted Brian and asked if I could bootblog some of my favorites and (in the niceness that seems endemic to Seattle, even its punk scene) he said, "Feel free to, thanks for asking!"

Here are four from the Fun House, with pictures; the above picture of the trio of feet goes with ...

The Unnatural Helpers
"Your Way Back Down"
(Dean Whitmore)

Picture from The Unnatural Helpers MySpace page.

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The Trashies
"Get Daddy a Chicken Sandwich"
(The Trashies)

Picture from The Trashies MySpace page.

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Head
"Sno-King Kung Fu"
(Head)

Picture from the Head MySpace page.

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Gas Huffer
"Midnight at the Apollo 13"
(Gas Huffer)

Picture from the Gas Huffer MySpace page.

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Also in the Bootblogging series

Bootblogging #1: Three by The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #2: Three elegies for local musicians
Bootblogging #3: Michael Shannon Friedman
Bootblogging #4: Three more by The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #5: Chuck Reinhart's guitar circle hits
Bootblogging #6: The silly side of The Lettuce Heads
Bootblogging #7: Songs for "Divorcing God"
Bootblogging #8: More songs for "Divorcing God"
Bootblogging #9: Adam Long presents The Imps!
Bootblogging #10: More Michael Shannon Friedman
Bootblogging #11: The Adversary Workers
Bootblogging #12: The May Day Orchestra
Bootblogging #13: Solo Career live in Santa Monica