Hiatus, self-imposed

We are going on a temporary hiatus. Having taken on far too many projects (each of which deserve our undivided attention at this time) it's only right to stop with the stringing on and just call it off for a bit.

If you would like to recieve an email when Legwarmers is back up and at 'em, please send an email to shesajar dot withaheavylid [at] gmail dot com -- and make sure the subject line is "legwarmers", or that shit will get filtered into the junk pile faster than you can say...

Well, you get where I'm going with this.

Be good. We'll talk soon.

Wheeling and dealing the Big Guy

This guy made a deal with God -- and kept it, repeatedly. (It's really an incredible video -- though you may want to save it for home unless shrieks of agony are acceptable in your workplace, in which case watch away, and I don't want to know what you do for a living.)

While my deals with the good Lord are significantly less painful (If you get me through this hangover, Lord, I promise not to swear/eat chocolate/binge drink for a whole week), I have to say I've also been significantly less faithful to them.

I'm going straight to church this Sunday morning.

...Most likely.

The future is now, and I'm pissed about it.

I went to opening day at Safeco yesterday and watched the Mariners win their first (and likely last) game of the season. The stands were packed with 40 thousand some odd fans all swilling beer and cramming hot dogs and peanuts in their faces. My seats were good - 16th row on the first baseline. It was sunny. Sunglasses were on. Laughs were had. All around a great time.

Halfway through the game, the retractable roof went on. In minutes, tens of thousands of people suddenly had a roof over their head. Which really struck me as funny: we've got the technology to put a retractable roof over a stadium in less than 20 minutes, but it still takes my hot water that long to get from the laundry room to my shower -- a whopping 1-story climb.

What the hell? It's 2007 and I'm still waiting for decent non-static-y in-shower radios to come out and spending hours driving 15 minutes across a bridge in rush hour traffic while listening to CDs -- antiquated, skipping, scratched up CDs! (Which, by the way, are the worst-executed invention ever. Why couldn't we put them in
protective cases like the old floppy disks so they wouldn't scratch after three listens? I mean, doesn't that seem like a pretty obvious solution to you?)

Where is the future everybody was talking about in, like 1979? By now weren't we supposed to be zipping around in spacecars wearing tinfoil suits and telepathically communicating? Where's my damn Jetson's wardrobe? And what about the spacefood? And teleporting? I'm SUPER pissed that we're not teleporting yet.

But oh no, instead of investing in stuff we really want, like the technology necessary to use something other than liquid gold to fuel my car, which I drive to work so I can afford to pay money to watch roofs magically appear on top of sports stadiums, we're spending millions of dollars a minute to stomp around the planet in our Army boots policing the rest of the world, who by the way are getting pretty good and sick of our whole elementary school bully posturing thing and are calling us out as the one trick ponies we are.

Can somebody please explain this to me? And if not, I understand, but in that case, can you just please come over to my house with two to three bottles of wine and some Cheese fish crackers so we can at least get drunk and tell bad dirty jokes and play Scrabble and watch Family Feud reruns and pretend everything's totally cool?

...


Thank you.

Hometown heroism

(Thanks, Ryan, for the image!)

So now I'm starting to sound like a real hometown hero with all this puffing up of Seattle, but did you see Prevention Magazine's list of the top 100 "Most Walkable Cities"?

According to the story, which I saw on CNN,

Factors contributing to the ranking were air quality, the percentage of people who walk to work, access to parks, number of athletic shoes sold, and (believe it or not) weather.

While I'm here singing its praises, I might as well also mention that the city falls on the top ten list of "greenest cities", according to Green Magazine, which takes into consideration not the scenery, but the environmental policy, air and water quality and long-term sustainability strategy of a city.

All this "top ten" stuff got me thinking, though. What lists wouldn't we see Seattle on? I'll open the floor, but will throw a few out there to get the ball rolling:

"Best places to live if you hate hippies"
"Top 10 best cities in which to drive a stick-shift"
"Best places to open up a coffee shop"
"Most dendrophobic and technophobic-friendly cities"

Creature Comforts

I'm lame, (read: SLAMMED) this week, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be entertained. Check out www.revver.com (this year they got something like a cool $11 million in VC - which ain't bad as a Web 2.0 company) for more videos of all categories. Me? I'm partial to the claymation animals. Oh, and musical parodies of Facebook:

The March Mega Mix

Okay, it's been a really long day, so let's just get to it, huh? (Links have been included, because y'all piss and moan when they're not. Please, visit and listen. There's some good shit this month.)

Here we go...

1.Neezie Pleaze Saw him last night at Chop Suey and got one of the first copies of his first album a couple months ago from a guy who helped him put it out. Let me just say that if his climbing status on the college charts and Vitamin D's opinion mean anything, he's going somewhere. A talented lyricist with a style his own (and distinctively NOT the bling-wearing, chain swinging, repetitive shit with some hook about rims you've heard eighteen times before from a dozen different, ultimately forgettable, rappers). If I have to draw parallels, I'd say perhaps there's a touch of Prince Paul or Pharcyde in him -- and a completely diggable hip-hop-alt style. This guy's one to watch. Clipse was the opener and D. Black opened after Neezie, but he was the smartest part of the show for sure. The crowd was lame, but this guy was on and I'll bet he'll remain so. I'll keep you posted. (Email me and I'll send you a track, or just buy the damn cd already).

2. Amy Winehouse.
This girl can blow, and she uses her voice to tweak amazing old styles into modern badass stuff -- calls often back on the 40s and 50s styles of jazz and gospel -- and she doesn't give a damn what you think. "Rehab" gets a lot of play right now, at least on our radio here, but "Back to Black" is arguably a better track. Her first album, Frank, is great, too -- and jazzier.

3. Gym Class Heroes. I can't help it. I first saw them 6 months ago at a local event I attended with a couple friends on a whim, just to get out of the house. The sound quality at the event sucked, so I hardly noticed them. Then I got tickets to a private event hosted by Jones Soda Co. and Gibson Guitars in the Gibson Seattle showroom in a week or two PLUS tickets to their larger public show later that night (what can I say? I know people!), and so started listening to them in preparation for the show. (You can't just go to a show without knowing a bands songs at least a little, you know?) Now I'm hooked. They're fun, and blend a couple genres, and are great to run to. I refuse to apologize.

4. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. I first discovered them years ago, but recently a song came up on my iTunes and I promptly put it on repeat. Just download an album, turn it up, pretend to smoke a bowl, get in touch with your inner rocker hippie, and rock the fuck out, man. (By the way, great news: they'll be at the Showbox the week of my birthday, so I'm pretty much there, front row, with fourteen friends. Okay, I don't have that many friends, but I'm there, at least.)

5. Gary Jules.

Not only did he do one of the most haunting covers of the (awesome) song "Mad World" ever done (in my humble opinion) for Donnie Darko (a film I've seen possibly 73.5 times), he has this voice that's so human its almost heartbreaking and his own material is just... lovely. Like a long drive or a nap on a Sunday afternoon. It's perfectly imperfect, and I dig that. I have no idea why he hasn't been signed yet, but I do predict that one of his songs will be on a Grey's Anatomy soundtrack at some point, which will blow him up (see: The Fray), which will make me happy (though I'll loudly proclaim that I told you so).

Things that make me go "WAHOO!"

1. I'm going on--GASP!--vacation!!

I'll be in sunny Palm Springs in one short month for a grand total of six days. Originally I was going to be away on a work trip during this week on the whole other side of the country, where it's cold and people are angsty and clammy and it's not yet summertime. Then I snapped the fuck out of it and realized that I could, instead, get out of the work trip by pawning it off on somebody else for once, and go where there are palm trees and I can be in a swimsuit by a pool with a gorgeous tan and a fabulous book and a couple close friends and cocktails being delivered to me every 28 minutes by a tall bronzed californian man who calls me "miss" (because I insist he does it every time I tip him) and clearly works out.


2. Holly O'Reilly and Rachek Harrington at the Triple Door. It's my mom's birthday on the 20th, and so I'm taking her to the show, where we'll sip cocktails, have a little dessert, hear some great music and enjoy being two happy women out on the town. Also, on April 22nd, Rufus Wainwright is coming, and I have a ticket, though now they're all sold out. Neener neener neener. I win. And I'm really looking forward to seeing him live.

3. Mochi. This shit is... well... the shit. If you haven't had it, it is going to sound incredibly weird, but go with me for a minute: it's a tiny scoop of ice cream wrapped in a thin rice dough and powdered with powdered sugar, then frozen. And it's seriously the best thing ever. Ice cream is hands down my favorite naughty food, but Mochi takes the naughtiness to a whole new level: now I can eat the naughty food with my hands. Tittilating, isn't it? But be warned: because mochi is already weird on its own, do not attempt to eat it in weird flavors. If strawberry and chocolate are the delight equivalent of a really really good sneeze or maybe a surprise party, green tea and peanut butter are like getting sneezed on, or being hit unexpectedly by a party bus. Very, shockingly bad.

4. Bang Bang Shrimp at the Bonefish Grill. I recently discovered they also have these little buggers at other restarunts, in particular Quinn's Steak, Seafood and Raw bar in Miami (though they call these "Bam! Bam! Shrimp", there, which is weird). These crispy little shrimp appetizers are like heaven. The good news, too, is that Bonefish is a chain (an overpriced chain by the same people who do the Outback Steakhouse). But their happy hours are great and these shrimp are worth looking up the nearest Bonefish for.


5. It was 71 degrees our here the other day. I firmly stand by my position that Seattle is simply the most beautiful place in the country, particularly in the spring and summer months. Everywhere you look, there's either bright green trees and grass (thank you, rain) or bright blue ocean and lakes against which the Seattle and Bellevue cityscapes are set like reflective metal mirages. Plus, people here are (prepare yourself for some sweeping generalizations, now) generally healthy, well-educated, and a little mysterious without seeming sociopathic, which, when combined with the trappings of summer (more live music, less clothes, more dogs on leashes, people on boats, barbeques, and outside patios/beaches/parks with many people on them holding coolers/buckets/frosty mugs of beer) is a recipe for four to six months of some of the most incredible joy imaginable for those in the 18-35 age range.

(I exclude those under 18 for legal reasons and those over 35 because I am just arrogant enough to believe I will always be "young" and therefore needn't worry about those in the old, older, and oldest age groups, unless I am helping an old lady across the street because I recently went to church or flipping off a swerving geriatric in a tank-like Buick who shouldn't still have his/her license).

And it's all so close I can almost taste/smell/see/feel it.