file under "NOW I’ve seen EVERYthing"
I grew up with a hatred of pawn shops and Rent-a-Centers because they profit only from the poverty of others. I particularly hate their ad tactics and their placement in places where folks "need" them most.
Today I was walking through a Spendy neighborhood near Leschi, when I saw a white SUV with hot pink "People Pawn" stickers on the sides. It's a mobile pawn shop that will come to your "home or office" to exchange petty cash for jewels, electronics and presumably guns. At what kind of office exactly is it appropriate to have the People Pawn SUV parked outside? What?! I'd already visited the "Yuppie Pawn shop" in Lake Forest Park. (Basically for folks who feel like they're giving too much away when they send their REI jackets and older model Cuisinart to the Goodwill.) I always thought of Pawning something as a kind of desperate act, so I can see how the place may benefit from availability... getting there before you think twice about trading heirlooms to pay the electric bill, but the "office" part just doesn't add up for me.
That said, the org I serve IS in the middle of a big fundraising campaign, and we ARE looking under every rock at this point....
Nah. Forget it, what would they give me for some fingerpaintings and a lego helicopter anyway?
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Radio 8ball
Last night I went to see Radio 8ball... it's a live version of a radio show. On the radio show, the host, a guy name Andras, listens to a caller's questions and then picks a Cd and song at random to answer the question and then he and the caller interpret the answer. This process has also been called the "Ipod Tarot"... tonight though, it was a live show for an audience full of barefoot women, men with facial hair, mood lighting and a DJ and the songs all came from one Jim Page.
(Jim Page is a busker/folk musician here in Seattle who has played really revolutionary and musically solid songs for longer than he cares usually to talk about.)
Everyone submits a question, and then a person's question is picked out of a box and they are invited onstage to read their question, spin a dial that is marked with signs of the zodiac. There's this big sign with the signs next to names of Jim's songs, and then he plays that song to you. Everyone else's job is to hold their own interpretation, their own intention for each question. Jim Page's songs are sometimes political... tonight the owner creator of Fishtales Organic Beers in Olympia got up and asked when she should move to New Orleans, and if she does if she should open a floating brewery there. The wheel turned to jim's song "Petroleum Bonaparte" which is an angry/funny diatribe about Oil and George Bush. Afterwards there were different interpretations... clearly New Orleans is a part of "Big Oil" and the song was saying not to participate in what's happening there... or perhaps the song was saying to wait until George Bush is out of office, or that New Orleans desperately needs more beer right away. (Did I mention that after you ask your question, you're given raw chocolate and an "Herbal Brew" filled with kava kava and yohimbe and raw honey and other herbally stuff?)
One young man (17?) asked "How do I know if I am a good person or a bad person?" his answer was called "More than anything else in the world" and the rest of the chorus was "I'm never gonna let you down". Jim Page is probably in his sfifties or sixties, and his own interpretation of this answer is that one makes a decision to be a good person. I took it a different way, but enjoyed that idea. The young man's friend's question was also picked. His was "How do you go from surviving to thriving?" The dial landed on the special "Radio 8ball" song which was sung (and written) by this Andras fellow, and it was called "I fucked a pumpkin". It was painful to watch as this young man's serious question ( I hear the word "survive" and assume some heavy shit, though maybe he was just talking about how shitty it is to have curfew or something) answered by an obscene Halloween comedy bit. People took the guy with the lost cat and the woman doubting her path of yoga WAY more seriously than this person's youthful angst, which was hard for me personally to take, because I'm crazy about young people who share their angst. I guess the Pop Oracle decided that humor and pumpkin fucking is what he needed... who am I to argue?
Another woman asked if she had a guardian angel, and the song that answered here was "Jesus and the Laughing Deity" a song about a jester-god who jokes with Christ until he finds himself off his cross, leaving behind his suffering. The guy who's cat Fargel had wandered off three weeks before got a song about Julia Butterfly and Taoism and activisim which was confusing for some of us. All the pet owner heard were the words "Jack the Ripper" which didn't bode well for him.
It was such a fascinating evening... my good friend asked her question onstage. I'd told her when we arrived that I was certain one of us would get selected... she was the last one. She asked "In what direction is my vision going?" because sometimes it gets better, but for the last three years it's gotten steadily worse. The song that she spun was about Rachel Corrie, and about not ignoring the suffering in the world. The first four lines or so were about being a really decent, loving person who changes what needs to be changed which reminded me of her partner, a great guy who I think has been the difference between "surviving and thriving" for her. I cried through the whole thing.
Afterwards, there was a great party. Jim Page was wandering around with a huge piece of cake (his birthday was last week) and looking for a place to sit, so I invited him to join us. We had a great talk. I told him I thought it'd be had to play his own music without being in charge of the show. He said that ordinarily, he had to manufacture his conversation with the audience, but in this venue it was understood, impossible to avoid and that he liked that, said it was easier. It was a fantastic thing to behold, and I can't wait to go again.
(Jim Page is a busker/folk musician here in Seattle who has played really revolutionary and musically solid songs for longer than he cares usually to talk about.)
Everyone submits a question, and then a person's question is picked out of a box and they are invited onstage to read their question, spin a dial that is marked with signs of the zodiac. There's this big sign with the signs next to names of Jim's songs, and then he plays that song to you. Everyone else's job is to hold their own interpretation, their own intention for each question. Jim Page's songs are sometimes political... tonight the owner creator of Fishtales Organic Beers in Olympia got up and asked when she should move to New Orleans, and if she does if she should open a floating brewery there. The wheel turned to jim's song "Petroleum Bonaparte" which is an angry/funny diatribe about Oil and George Bush. Afterwards there were different interpretations... clearly New Orleans is a part of "Big Oil" and the song was saying not to participate in what's happening there... or perhaps the song was saying to wait until George Bush is out of office, or that New Orleans desperately needs more beer right away. (Did I mention that after you ask your question, you're given raw chocolate and an "Herbal Brew" filled with kava kava and yohimbe and raw honey and other herbally stuff?)
One young man (17?) asked "How do I know if I am a good person or a bad person?" his answer was called "More than anything else in the world" and the rest of the chorus was "I'm never gonna let you down". Jim Page is probably in his sfifties or sixties, and his own interpretation of this answer is that one makes a decision to be a good person. I took it a different way, but enjoyed that idea. The young man's friend's question was also picked. His was "How do you go from surviving to thriving?" The dial landed on the special "Radio 8ball" song which was sung (and written) by this Andras fellow, and it was called "I fucked a pumpkin". It was painful to watch as this young man's serious question ( I hear the word "survive" and assume some heavy shit, though maybe he was just talking about how shitty it is to have curfew or something) answered by an obscene Halloween comedy bit. People took the guy with the lost cat and the woman doubting her path of yoga WAY more seriously than this person's youthful angst, which was hard for me personally to take, because I'm crazy about young people who share their angst. I guess the Pop Oracle decided that humor and pumpkin fucking is what he needed... who am I to argue?
Another woman asked if she had a guardian angel, and the song that answered here was "Jesus and the Laughing Deity" a song about a jester-god who jokes with Christ until he finds himself off his cross, leaving behind his suffering. The guy who's cat Fargel had wandered off three weeks before got a song about Julia Butterfly and Taoism and activisim which was confusing for some of us. All the pet owner heard were the words "Jack the Ripper" which didn't bode well for him.
It was such a fascinating evening... my good friend asked her question onstage. I'd told her when we arrived that I was certain one of us would get selected... she was the last one. She asked "In what direction is my vision going?" because sometimes it gets better, but for the last three years it's gotten steadily worse. The song that she spun was about Rachel Corrie, and about not ignoring the suffering in the world. The first four lines or so were about being a really decent, loving person who changes what needs to be changed which reminded me of her partner, a great guy who I think has been the difference between "surviving and thriving" for her. I cried through the whole thing.
Afterwards, there was a great party. Jim Page was wandering around with a huge piece of cake (his birthday was last week) and looking for a place to sit, so I invited him to join us. We had a great talk. I told him I thought it'd be had to play his own music without being in charge of the show. He said that ordinarily, he had to manufacture his conversation with the audience, but in this venue it was understood, impossible to avoid and that he liked that, said it was easier. It was a fantastic thing to behold, and I can't wait to go again.
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