Weep, O Creature of Eye Guy!

I know that Eye Guy has used a variety of paints, markers and whatnot, but this is indeed new territory. Folks, welcome to water-soluble country!

This is at 4th & Wall. With all the rain we've gotten of late, I'd be surprised if it was still there. I'm thinking that his choice of markers was a mistake and not an intentional concession of his creation to the elements. No Eye Guy, you haven't reached that sublime level yet. It was a boo-boo on your part. I'll tell you what I like, though. It's this from 4th & Cedar:

Isn't that sort of interesting? And it's nice that he didn't draw it on everything single one of those anti-skater things. I approve of that. It just has so much more going for it than stuff by other dumbass taggers.

After Hours

Sylvie Vartan. Buonasera, buonasera

Here's Sylvie singing in Italian for some kind of very elaborate TV special. Somebody went through an awful lot of trouble to put this scene together. I mean, it's absurdly well staged. It borders on the surreal. The tune isn't bad either. I don't speak Italian, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with saying "good evening" a lot. The strange thing is that despite the overall good quality of this production, it seems completely lost to time. Nobody in Italy says, "Hey Giuseppe, do you remember that TV show with Sylvie Vartan on it from the late sixties? You don't?? Eh, whatsamattayou, huh???" This is the single greatest thing about the YouTube. It brings all that stuff back. And although there's a whole lot of crap all over the site, it's still one of the greatest repositories of entertainment on this godforsaken planet.

And It Continues...

I didn't think that my dire prediction of more and more and more tagging on the Cristalla would come to pass so quickly, but things happen when they happen. Here is the latest addition:


Yes, this dumbass tagger was in such need to express himself in spray paint and the drab gray south wall simply would not do, so now the facade of the building is fair game. I'm all for it. Dumbass taggers, have at it! The Cristalla management doesn't care. I mean, they've already conceded the entire south wall of their building to you. Anything you put up stays up, so why not start working the front of the place?

It seems that Cristalla still doesn't understand that graffiti accumulates. If they're that dim, then the place deserves to have dumbass tags going up on all 24 stories.

McGuire Scaffold-Watch! Week: ???? + 33

It will never end. By the time the dwarf army finishes bolting and spackling all the McGuire's problem areas, other defects will come to the fore. And when those are corrected, the original problem areas will once again require attention. That's how it works. I had a comment last week that said this repair process started some three years ago. I can believe that. The scaffold is a relatively recent addition; it's been up almost a year, but it'll be up for quite a while, since there are scads of things to fix. And the dwarfs' tiny hands can only heal so many during the work day. Like I said, it's never gonna end.

Security House Scaffold-Watch: Week 8

Golly, I thought this process would be over quickly, but it just drags on. I'm starting to feel sorry for the old folks concealed behind the attractive sheet of plastic. I mean, they're our elders whose views to the outside world are being denied. Unfair! I have no idea what it must be like to gaze out at a sheet of plastic every day for months. It has to be slightly demoralizing and also a bit creepy. It looks like the puppet show that I predicted isn't going to happen. Yeah, I totally made that up. But it would have been cool. Now the weather would freeze the puppeteers' hands if they bothered to show up, which they won't, because I made the whole thing up.

There are other scaffolds up around the neighborhood, namely at the Bell Tower, the Alex and the Terminal Sales Building. But I'll refrain from featuring them, because the Security House is always ripe for parody and derision. You can't say that about the Terminal Sales Building. That place carries a certain amount of dignity with it. So no, I'm not expanding Scaffold-Watch. But you can expect the same "high quality" reporting from Belltown's more prominent examples of scaffolding.

After Hours

Brigitte Bardot. Contact

Back in 1967, this is what they thought the future would be like: we'd all be living in a world that featured lots of rotating sculptures, we would wear heavily-beaded headdresses and we would stare straight ahead. How right they were!

Your Early Mid-Week Squirrel

Gosh, the squirrels were out in force at Denny Park today and they were particularly photogenic. So I ask you: why should a person have to wait until Sunday for another dose of squirrel? Of course, the answer is that there is no sane reason to wait. Here are some photos.

This guy held this pose for more than a minute. I don't know what he was trying to accomplish, but I've never seen a squirrel hold still for that long ever. Here he is:


And here he is half a minute later:

The soft focus effect is courtesy of my zoom lens. It does that when the subject is pretty far away. When I got slightly closer, he moved a little, but then held this pose for a long time, too:

Yes, the sun was shining and the squirrels were merry and cooperative. And that, folks, is my super-bonus squirrel special.

Dead Ringer

I swear to God, that the little Asian lady in the photo below, the one wearing the overcoat...

...looked exactly like Kim Jong-Il. I mean, exactly. For serious.

One-Day Menu-Madness at the 5 Point!

OK, I'm no shill for the 5 Point, but they keep sending me emails of some importance. I still haven't figured out how they got my address, but that cow is out of the barn, so let's move on. Here's the deal: to celebrate their 80th anniversary, new owners Mandy & Dave are rolling back prices to what they were in 1929. This is happening from 9am to 10pm on December 8th. You can score a decent breakfast for 25 cents, a burger with fries for 20 cents and a Pabst Blue Ribbon - the all-time worst beer in world history - will run you just a quarter. If you go, expect to see a lot of drunken people gorging themselves on eggs and burgers. Yeah, there's a pretty picture! And I predict that if the 5 Point survives this promotion, it will last another 80 years. If it doesn't, well, I'll claim credit for predicting its sad demise. End transmission.

Coming Soon to the Moore!

Gosh, isn't the Moore just a bit too small for the entire globe? And what will the globe think of its mildrew-meets-Febreze smell? This show looks kind of terrible, because you get modern, tap, Irish and Mexican dancing at the same time. It'll be like watching something choreographed by Debbie Allen. That stuff might have worked on Fame, but this is Belltown, fer Pete's sake! So yes, I will skip this show and no, I won't feel like I'm missing anything. The only question that remains is this: if it's a party, will there be hats?