well i already pulled out the obligatory jeff lewis quotable quote, for this post over at mincetapes - the new 'satellite blog' (of the, er, non-pathetic variety) - which i retroactively entitled "preEMPtive" (howdylikethat? and how much longer can i make this sentence appear in the editor than it actually is?) ...but are there any other songs that rhyme with seattle? "smells like nirvana", of course, has the immortal line "well it sure beats raising cattle." gotta be something with saddle, right, in one of those infinite c+w songs with place names in the lyrics?

anyway, there i was. i was, there. golly it's a nice place. i'm working my way through the dirty details of the conference itself in the music-discussion-sanctioned venue, so i thought i'd tell you guys about the other aspects of my trip.

sarah kelly was my enthusiastic and able host, with special bonus thanx to addie c. who i got to see for a chat and cookie before she took off to boston and left me her bed to sleep in. not that it's that different from west philly, but it was still cool to see people living in a real, life-sized (albeit purple) house, with a yard and all that (and two quite purty cats even if one of them was having some trouble on the rug.)

the first part of my seattle trip went something like - airport - bus - house in a grassy residential neighborhood - bus - conference (rooms in a building, albeit, oh look, a wacky psychotic and playful and basically ve(h)ry gehry one) - so i wasn't getting too much local character. i did see the local critical mass (massive indeed - as per request, a thorough exploration of the meanings at play in this name will be forthcoming in a future post) impressively mucking up friday evening traffic as i waited for the bus. and the strange experience of having our waiter (at coastal kitchen, celebrating "venezuela month") casually explain to us, halfway through dinner, that somebody else was going to serve us the rest of the time because "he had just been dumped." (by whom was not clear, nor if this was a euphemism for fired.)

on sunday afternoon, my only large block of non-conference time, skelly took me on a bit of a seattle snacking tour, with stops at a mexican place that got my order bizarrely wrong (fried egg instead of fish taco?), a yummy belgian frites joint, the fabled bauhaus coffeeshop (where i had a couple of sips of latte which i actually appreciated and maybe even enjoyed a little), and the bakery where she is employed as cupcake-froster. and a few thriftstores (where i failed to find shoes but did get a shirt and another "texas is for lovers" for angela, which seemed like an appropriate souvenir) and the watertower in the olmstead "capitol" hill park (where we finally glimpsed some mountain, and the emp looks confusing.)

in conclusion, i have to say that seattle seems to have better and more extensive funky-hip shopping'n'hanging out districts than philly or possibly new york (manhattan at least.) and the used record stores may not necessarily have better prices but there sure are a lot of them. i only checked out one, easy street, which is impressive, but then aka just has me spoiled. (a half-point off for not marking as such the edited version of late registration which i subsequently returned.)

so that was all great. but truly the best non-conference-related part of the trip was the opportunity to hang out with sarah for substantial period of time, and some great chats about music and cultural politics and the ever-popular post-collegiality. so yeah, thanks again sarah.

everything is effed up straight from the <3