Bleeding Fiction

The incomparable Erin McKeown's at long last released her much-awaited "standards" album, called Sing You Sinners, last Monday. What Erin calls standards are a series of (now) obscure songs from the 30's and 40's, once sung by the likes of Judy Garland, Cole Porter and Nat King Cole. If you've any sense of Erin, you'll already know how incomparably right she is for a project like this - her voice, her attitude, her love. All of it, sublime.

Just one problem: The album's only been released in Europe as of yet. It doesn't hit the states until January 9th. That's a two and a half month wait!

Now we know I'm not that patient, especially not for something like this, so I set my mind to scheming for a way to get my feet tapping along to this thing before it hit the US. Providence was on my side. Almost as soon as Erin announced the release date, one of my co-workers announced that she was taking a late-October vacation in London.

Lauren got back from London yesterday and came in with my album today. Thirteen songs, only one of which is original to Erin. The rest of the songs are obscure, but familiar; it's the style I recognize, the comfort of something I heard crackling in the background of something starring Lauren Bacall. The whole thing's a bit wry, a bit playful. It's a bit sparer, instrumentally, than Erin's last few albums - there's less a sense of production, though Erin's production is always good, and more a sense of just musicians sitting in a room and playing.

The album grabs me. Not in quite the same invincible-feeling way that We Will Become Like Birds does, but it's a grab nonetheless. I'd advise checking it out - you can catch the title track on Erin's website.

I walked into a strange office conversation today. My cohorts were deciding what animals each of them were. As I walked in, they stared at me. Pondered for a while, if you will.

Finally, one girl said "a horse!" Everyone agreed.

So, I'm a horse. Which is the year I was born in.

They meant it as a compliment, so I guess that's alright.

From writing the Fables, I have a funny perspective on Horses, though.

In the Play

My neighbors are watching the Jesus Christ Superstar movie right now.

Though I know nothing about them save this (and that the dude is named Mitch), my neighbors are now awesome in my eyes.

There's something a little funny going on here in the Pacific Northwest:

It's cold and it's snowing. In November.

Snow started Sunday night and continued sporadically until this morning. I'm not talking a lot of snow, mind you. It's more than we might consider "a dusting," but not by much. I mean, you could still see the grass beneath, in parts. But for Seattle, that's pretty impressive.

Temperatures got below freezing during the day, though they didn't always stay there, which made for a bit of ice on the ground. Funny thing about Seattle, we have a little bit of weather and every jackass in the city forgets how to drive. I walked home from school yesterday - and this is a walk of ten blocks, mind you - and I saw cars that had skidded off into the curb, cars that had rear-ended other cars, cars whose drivers couldn't buy them traction against the ground... It was ridiculous.

Today, a bunch of cars have snow chains on, and by "cars" I mean both privately owned vehicles and the city buses. Since one of the cars I saw in distress last night was actually a near-jack-knifed transit bus, I guess this might make sense, but... snow chains?

I won't say there's no ice on the road. There's some. Not enough to slow down a driver who's used to it (and certainly not enough to make that driver even consider snow chains), but for these Seattle folk? Sure. They don't expect snow here. There are no legions of snow-plows waiting in the wings, no flatbeds full of salt for the roads. And that shouldn't come as a surprise, really. It's Seattle.

In November.

What the fuck is wrong with nature right now?