Thursday, December 22, 2005

MY HEROINE: I'm only able to write this now because Diane Larson, the veteran UPS driver who services a stretch of Belltown, fended off two would-be shoulder-bag robbers until they fled. Otherwise, I'd be without the computer on which I write this.

That happened around 12:45 p.m. Wednesday. Later, in the Two Bells (where I told Diane I would be after I thanked her for her help), I told a uniformed cop (with a plainchothes detective standing behind him) what had happened.

I'd just been to the bank, and was walking north on Fourth Avenue toward the Two Bells for lunch. I was thinking this solstice day was the first day of the rest of my life--that from this day on, I vowed, I'd have no more financial worries, no career worries, no stress. I would have to say goodbye to my old existence of being waylaid by constant panic.

Then, out of my peripheral vision, a stringy-haired, unshaven white guy person lunged toward me, cornered me against the wall near the Chinese Wok restaurant, and grabbed at my shoulder bag (containing, among many other things, this laptop). I held onto the bag for dear life (no pipsqueak punk does THAT to ME!) and yelled "NOOOO!" repeatedly.

A stocky black guy from across the street ran toward me and the crook, yelling "I got it. I can handle it." Instead of helping me fend off the crook, he lunged for the bag himself. (He might or might not have been a mate of crook #1.)

I held onto it like it was part of me (the computer is, of course, my most intimate tool and even an extension of my mind). A half dozen Chinese Wok patrons came out to yell at the crooks but did nothing more.

Then Diane came, stomped her foot on the fallen bag to keep it in place, and held both crooks at bay until they chose to run off.

That, my friend, is what Brown can do for me.

I learned: For a self-styled lifelong passive weakling/wuss, when I have to I can be as feisty and ornery as my Snohomish County bad-boy upbringing has reared me to be. I'm also good at making a spectacle of myself; my stubborn "NOOO," one of many frustration catch phrases which have often cused others to dismiss me as a weirdo and a freak, effectively helped save my ass. I'm a fighter. I'm a survivor. I triumph against all odds. I'm a "real man," damn it.

While I couldn't give a good enough description of the crooks for the cops (who told me "tunnel vision" often occurs in people at moments of sudden panic), I still remember the steely, desperate, focused evil look of the first would-be thief, and how he instantly turned into a running coward when he knew he'd lost.

Some guy in The Nation a few years back wrote about having been mugged in New Haven, CT. He said that, far from turning his back on urban society and wanting to cocoon in the burbs, he was grateful his crime took place in a city, where passersby were immediately there to help him and where emergency-room care was only minutes away.

I feel likewise today. If I'd been mugged in Woodinville (and, yes, it happens), I'd have been stuck one-to-two against the muggers with no one to hear me for miles. Heck, if it'd happened in one of the nether regions of West Seattle where I sometimes find myself wandering off of buses, I'd have been TSOL.

I also can't stop thinking of the thieves, not as the opposite-race subhumans the conservatives would claim to protect me from, but as right-wingers without resources. These dorks wanted to take my stuff for no good reason, offering nothing in return, just because they believed they had the power to do so.

posted by clark 6:30 PM

THE MIND-BOGGLING MATHEMATICS of Sudoku puzzles are herein explained.

posted by clark 9:45 AM

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

IF THEY GAVE a music festival and nobody showed up, would it make a sound? The Red Bull Music Academy brought dozens of European techno DJs to Seattle from Nov. 7 through Dec. 8. Each year, the "energy drink" people bring assorted mastes and tyros of electronica to a different city.

The academy's workshops and conferences were hidden behind the obscured storefront of the former Beatty Book Store on Third and Virginia, compared to ROCKRGRL's highly promoted events in the Madison Hotel.

Aside from fancy brochures and flyers in the participating bars and nightclubs, the Red Bull event was hardly even publicized locally. Too bad; the local electronica scene's been on stagnant times, and could've used some high-profile events to bring back the local crowds—even if the most famous participant at Red Bull was Eumir Deodato, who'd made a hit disco version of the 2001 theme three decades back.

Even Red Bull's PR packet contained nothing introducing the event to Seattle; only long essays introducing Seattle to the event's Euro performers and reporters. Some excerpts:

"Seattle, while not as large as the American metropolises of New York or Los Angeles, is host to a bustling, shucking and jiving culture.... Seattle has long had a vibrant Asian and Asian-American population, and well-established communities of Scandinavians, African-Americans, Jews, Latinos and thoroughly Native Americans. The city represents the 'melting-pot' that logically fosters around the coastal areas of the United States.

"...The grunge proliferation and later Internet boom created a dreamlike atmosphere in the city. RealNetworks, Amazon, and Adobe populated the Employment opportunities section of newspapers with wanted ads. Seattle-baed Starbucks replicated itself exponentially on a tidal wave of too-sweet corporate coffee to jolt the technologically-inclined into their 12-hour workdays.... While the Internet boom and bust were a manic time of too much wealth and then too much poverty, they did help revolutionize the culture of Seattle. The limitations of the finite world were kept at bay, if only briefly, and allowed dreamers to indulge. The staid American work tradition of business attire was cast aside, and three-piece suits were retired in favor of ratty T-sshirts and Levi's. Tradition was scorned for new invention. It is perhaps for this reason that Seattleites insist on proudly wearing jeans and Teva sandals with white tube socks to restaurants with $200 price fixe menus."

Streaming audio of the Seattle performances can be heard at redbullmusicacademy.com.

posted by clark 8:34 AM

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