Nor’wester

Seattle

I’m going to write about an incredible little trip I took to the Northwest. Being a Northeasterner myself, I always considered the Northwest as a more rustic, lumberjack version of the Northeast. It’s close enough to Canada to be entirely alarming. I consider Canada to be somewhat like an bigger brother to the US. We can always look up and see him above us, bigger, colder (temperature wise (in Celcius, eh)), a bit more laid back and good natured, fantastically less successful, and utterly unwilling to be anything other than the eternal nice guy.

This is about the nicest thing I can say about Canada and Canadians, as I dislike them all.

I arrived in Seattle on a cloudy Friday to meet my good buddy Minh, the Canadian. To be more specific, he’s a Canasian, that is, he’s a Canadian Asian. I have many Canasian friends, all are special.

There are so many Seattle things I’ve longed to do, like visit the famed Seattle space needle. Here it is:

I’m not too sure what the big deal is, though I hear there’s a wondrously overrated revolving restaurant up top. We decided to stick with some good diner grub.

Minh’s quite the photographer and his food shots rival those found in the best issues of Better Homes and Gardens and The Betty Crocker Cookbook.

For more shots of food, people, oddities, and cartoon boobs, check out his insightful blog.

Gotta give a huge shout out to Minh’s college buddies: Marc and Nicole who let us crash on their lovely floor after a rockin night in Seattle’s bars and clubs. Holla (that's the shout out)!

And there's Nicole to my left at the diner

Microsoft moguls don’t just enjoy C programming and days without bathing, they’re also fond of sponsoring overpriced rock museums. Not rock in the geological sense, though the museum resembles some igneous formation, but rock and roll. I believe it was something like $20 to enter, but free to play the drums in the kiddie area.

Here’s a classic Seattle afternoon spent in Pikes market while raining.

This is the quintessence of Seattle tourism, and being the quintessential tourist I had to see it. Here you can see fish flying through the air as the talented fish tossers fill customers’ orders by yelling loudly and throwing fish into waiting brown wrapping paper. This is, I believe, how one makes flying fish. Squeezing eggs out of the fish as they fly is what creates flying fish roe, a very popular ingredient in sushi. I think the flying aerates the eggs and gives them more flavor. I labeled the flying fish in the accompanying picture. You'll have to look closely, I'm an extremely poor labeler.

When we tired of flying fish (and roe raining on us), we moved on to rotating sculptures. Here’s a rotating, neon ampersand which I feel is an excellent name for an alternative rock band.

This reminds me of my African safari with Colin when we decided that Giraffe Skull would be the name of our band if we ever started a hardcore death/thrash/acid/suicide-promoting/punk/metal band. Here is an artist’s depiction of the Giraffe Skull handsign held aloft by millions of future hardcore groupies.

Artist: Brian

Medium: Microsoft Paint

The inspiration, needless to say, is an actual giraffe skull: