The problem with weblogs is that when you’re busy you don’t want to post. You’re having fun.
And when you’re not busy, you don’t want to post either because what’s the point?

My life has certainly fallen into the former category recently: Lou Barlow dedicating a song to me obliquely at his in-store at Sonic Boom (”I’m meeting up with someone later, and he was one of the few people to like the last Sebadoh album) and later remarking “bastard” as a recorded version of myself launches into my diatribe against repeating songs more than once being “dishonest”; Mount Rainier in all its snow-capped glory looming large over the International District as I catch the endless bus to Beacon Hill and a rendezvous with two former Stranger art editors…

Liquid 45s with the girls from kill rock stars, Tobi chortling at the story of my ‘offensive’ live show at the Crocodile with Steve Fisk (keyboards) and Peter Bagge (drums); last night and all the crazed aging drag queens that we had to suffer singing awful karaoke before The Gossip played a set that soaked right through my parka, my sweater and my denim shirt, Beth lithe and inspirational as she strutted out onto the catwalk surrounded by gays and straights of every hue; the hushed, secret sounds of Woelv and Phil Elvrum’s Mount Eerie (two separate occasions - one drowned by idle banter from drinking Seattle ‘hipsters’, the other lapped up and enjoyed by Olympic ’straights’)…

A four-hour conversation with Kurt’s old guitar tech Earnie Bailey wherein anecdote followed enjoyable anecdote - it ended in near tears like all these damn interviews, but there’s kind of no avoiding that; conversations about architecture and a midnight visit to the most expensively built structure, inch-for-inch, in Seattle; classical music association with Matt Ward and his charming wife in Portland: conversations with Corin Tucker wherein she admitted that she could well have remembered an ancient Heavens To Betsy review wrongly…

Train rides through Tacoma and Pleasantville, the scenery breathtaking and heartbreaking simulataneously; the excitement of speaking to Charlotte by telephone the afternoon she discovered the sex of our future child (it’s a boy!); numerous cups of coffee but not too much alcohol, thankfully; Eric Erlandson bewailing the existence of a massive hole in his LA floor; a visit to the EMP with Danny Bland (”I cut a Jackson 5 single off the back of a cereal box in 1972 and I’ve been in music ever since”): my wonderfully patient intern Natalie (Slim Moon: “You do send out your male interns to do your grocery shopping, don’t you?” Me: “I fucking cook for my interns, Slim!”)…

My other wonderfully supportive interns Ari and Abby, and of course bouncy wind-up ‘tonic for the troops’ Bill, and Katie (”How’s the son doing?” she remarks one day, excited to be discovering new stuff about Nirvana. “Son? What son?” I ask confused. “Frances Bean…” she replies); my new iPod and hearing the same Diskettes and Long Blondes and Bettye Swann and Willie Hightower and Specials songs in so many different order…

Lance Bangs giving me a stack of ace Nineties videos (Sonic Youth, White Stripes, Jackass, Spike Jonze and way more; a surreal conversation with Dylan Carlson (Earth, shotguns, drugs) where afterwards he admitted that he couldn’t recall ever meeting me before; Cali DeWitt coming all the way up from LA to hang out and watch his brother’s band Pretty Girls Make Graves (whose singer has sheer animal magnetism); Astoria in all its spooky Goonies glory, where me and Rich and Heide watched an evening of high school poetry that bedevilled and amused us, especially when a girl dressed as a Southern belle came out and ridiculed the entire roster with her spelt-out precise p-o-e-m-s…

An email from Ben Blackwell praising my contribution to The Stranger ‘regrets’ issue and taking me to task for making the role of the music journalist sound “glamorous and exciting, when we all know it’s the exact opposite”; a late night text from Nathan (The Gossip) telling me that The Legend! rules punk OK (or something); Calvin Johnson live on stage, quipping and poking fun at the venue’s owners, so deadpan droll he cracks himself up, and seductive as all hell for unwary ladies; jamming with Leayton Beazer on a Roland synthesizer; being given kudos left right and way the hell out of centre from people I totally respect and love…

Yeah. Sorry. I haven’t really had the time to post.