wshaffer

So, I've had an ambition for a while to attend a proper European music festival. My first attempt to make this ambition a reality started when I backed a Kickstarter for the ill-fated Alt-Fest. To recap a long story, the festival filed for bankruptcy a week and half before the event, and I had a swell trip to England and Wales that included a nice consolation prize show at Slimelight.

In an effort not to repeat the Alt-Fest experience, I've had my eye on a few smaller, better established festivals - ones that have been running for a few years, and whose organizers seem to have a solid grip on what the audience wants. One of these was Roadburn. It's been running for about a decade, it takes place in an indoor venue (better sound and no standing in line for porta-potties!), and it's focused on doom metal, which is is one of my favorite subgenres. And it takes place in April, which makes it unlikely to land on top of a critical work or FOGcon-related deadline.

What really clinched my decision to go this coming year, though, was when they announced that Paradise Lost would be playing their Gothic album in its entirety.

Also, they've booked so many bands from Finland that they are describing it as the "Finnish takeover" of Roadburn. You all have some idea how I feel about Finnish metal.

Tickets went on sale today. A couple of years ago, the tickets sold out in 7 minutes, so I preconfigured my Ticketmaster.nl account, set an alarm on my phone, and hit the website at noon sharp. And I got a ticket.

So, I'm going to the Netherlands in April.

I'm back from a week of traveling. Spent a lovely few days up at Lake Tahoe with a large collection of Daniel's family. Did some hiking, caught up with what various cousins are doing. Younger Nephew had a bit of an unpleasant time culminating in an emergency appendectomy, but he's fine now.

Then Daniel and I flew to Minneapolis for the 4th Street Fantasy convention. 4th Street confirmed its place as my favorite small con that I'm not involved in running. And I got to spend time with some of my favorite people who I don't see very often. (And some of my favorite people who I actually do see fairly often, but, hey, flying halfway across the country and then having dinner with someone who lives an hour's drive away is just part of the SF Fandom experience. I've decided to stop feeling silly about it. Note that this is not the same thing as actually stopping feeling silly about it, but it's a necessary if not sufficient condition.)

I wore this T-shirt for the flight home, and so had the amusing experience of going through security and being approached by a TSA employee who said, "Okay, I have to stop you here: where can I get that T-shirt?" Heh. I swear, I get more compliments on that shirt than on any other t-shirts I own.

On Friday, we caught a train back to London, and had to haul our luggage rather further than anticipated thanks to the fact that you can't currently get on the Bakerloo line at Paddington. You can get off the Bakerloo line at Paddington, but it's not a reversible operation.

We spent a couple of hours in the afternoon at the British Museum, looking at the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures. It's amazing stuff - I've seen photos of almost all of it, but you can't appreciate the scale of it from a photo. After a while the crowds got to be bit too much for me, as did the tendency of said crowds to put their hands all over the exhibits. STOP TOUCHING THE 3000 YEAR-OLD SCULPTURES, PEOPLE! I really like the fact that so many of the sculptures are not roped off or walled up in glass, and keeping our hands off 'em is the best way to keep it that way.

On Saturday, we had a fancy birthday lunch at Marcus at the Berkeley Hotel. The food was delicious, but the people watching was almost as much fun. Everyone there seemed either to be regulars, or to be celebrating a birthday. There was a woman dining alone who delivered a scathing critique of the potato-fennel bread to the waiter, and was promised that when she came in next, she would absolutely not be served potato-fennel bread. (I thought it was perfectly nice potato-fennel bread.) The couple seated next to us were having an epic set of wine pairings arranged by the sommelier, and got happier and louder as the meal went on. A young man a few tables over was having a farewell meal before he went off to spend a year studying in Chicago. I wanted to go over and reassure him that you can get fancy French food in Chicago, too.

After lunch, I went back to the hotel and got gothed up for an evening at Electrowerkz, where "S.O.S. Fest" - a lineup of smaller bands salvaged from the line-up of the defunct Alt-Fest - was taking place. Electrowerkz is hidden in a side street behind the Angel tube station, and is apparently a metalworking shop part of the time, a goth club ("Slimelight") every Saturday night from 10pm to 7:30am, and an occasional pop-up restaurant and wedding venue at other times. I got there a bit before 5pm, and found the large open space downstairs occupied by folks selling band merchandise, a cocktail bar housed in a disused tube train (signed for "Upminster"), a kitchen cooking falafel and jerk chicken, and a crowd of black-clad figures swilling Strongbow cider and Red Stripe beer while the sound system wafted Fields of the Nephilim tunes over the scene.

I made my way upstairs through a maze of twisty staircases to one of the upstairs dancefloors where most of the bands were playing. I managed to catch most of The Beauty of Gemina's set. They play a very rollicking acoustic-guitar driven sort of goth, and the singer tells silly stories between songs, like about how their song "Mariannah" is allegedly about a woman who refused to marry each member of the band in turn. Even the drummer. "And he had the best chance, really, because girls like drummers, you know."

Next up were The Exploding Boy. I knew nothing about them before seeing them live at this event. They're Swedish, and they wear their Sisters of Mercy influences very much on their sleeve - to the extent that I sometimes thought I could identify which Sisters song they'd taken their drum loop from. But they played a really engaging set, enough so that I went downstairs afterwards and bought a CD from one of the guys in the band, and told him how much I enjoyed the set.

Whispers in the Shadow played a sadly short set due to technical difficulties, but were pretty fun to watch. The singer is of the dramatic hand-gestures and flinging oneself around the stage school of frontmanship, and when their sound was working properly, it was a very epic sounding mix of layered keyboards, guitars, and samples.

Turkish duo She Past Away were one of the bands I was most looking forward to. Judging by the crowd response, I wasn't alone. I'm not sure if the guys know any English other than "thank you," but they were clearly having a great time. Plus, I'd managed to wriggle my way up to the third row. Betcha I'd never have managed that at Alt-Fest.

At that point, I escaped downstairs to get some fresh air and food, and rest my feet a bit. I missed the beginning of Clan of Xymox's set, and had to watch the rest of it from the very back of a packed room. I couldn't see much, but the band sounded good, and there was lots of dancing in the crowd. My favorite moment came during the encore, when they played a cover of "Venus," and I was suddenly surrounded by a few hundred madly dancing goths shouting, "I'm your Venus, I'm your fire..." It was a blast.

There was about a 30 minute break before the last band, Pretentious, Moi?, were scheduled to play. I'd actually spotted Tim Chandler, the singer, several times over the course of the night, and kept meaning to go over and say hello, but he always seemed to be on his way somewhere or deep in conversation, and I didn't want to be THAT fan. So, he rather made my night when he bounced up to me with a huge grin, pointed at my Pretentious, Moi? t-shirt, and said, "I just keep wanting to point and squawk and shout, 'I drew that!'" Definitely one case where I'm glad I broke the "Don't wear the band's shirt to the gig" rule.

I actually missed the very beginning of Pretentious, Moi?'s set because it was in one of the downstairs dancefloors and I got lost trying to find my way there. (Seriously, I'm not sure the Electrowerkz interior obeys the ordinary rules of geometry.) But what I did catch was the highlight of the evening for me. They played two new songs - one called "Turn out the lights," and one whose title I didn't catch - which seem to bode well for the prospects for a new album.

I left at about 1am, and caught the night bus back to my hotel. Only to find the front door locked. I had to ring the doorbell and wait rather sheepishly for the night manager to let me in. I felt a bit like a teenager sneaking in after curfew, which I suppose is a fitting end to a night of clubbing.

I don't really have proper photo editing/viewing software with me here, but I'm going to try to share a few that don't need much tinkering. This is a bit of ceiling decoration from Southwark cathedral - now removed from the ceiling and displayed at picture-taking height. I believe it is supposed to represent Satan swallowing Judas.

Well, we haven't to Bath yet. The weather forecast has been looking a bit chancy, so we decided to stay in London where we could do plenty of things indoors if the weather required it.

Monday morning, we took a stroll through Whitehall and Westminster, looked at the queues at the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, and decided to come back sometime when we'd booked advanced tickets. So, instead we went to the British Library. Which is awesome. They have all kinds of amazing stuff: Jane Austen's writing desk (and the manuscript of Persuasion)! The only surviving medieval manuscript copy of Beowulf (plus some draft pages of Seamus Heaney's translation, which give some sense of how hard he found it to get the opening right)! Handwritten sheets of Beatles' lyrics! Plus more gorgeously illuminated manuscripts than you can shake a stick at.

After lunch and a nap, I went to the National Gallery, to indulge my love of 16th and early 17th century painting. I particularly wanted to see the three Caravaggio paintings there. I particularly enjoyed seeing "Salome receives the head of John the Baptist" - I like the way Salome is looking away from the severed head with a slight expression of disgust, while her maidservant peers intently over her shoulder. I also got a kick out of Domenichino's "Saint John the Evangelist", in which two little cherubim struggle to hold up enormous books for John to write in, while the distracted saint stomps on an irate looking eagle which appears to be thinking about making lunch out of the cherub on the right. Plus, when you enter the room from the entrance opposite this painting, the first impression you get is of being mooned by pudgy cherub butt.

Yes, I love early 17th century Italian painting for all the wrong reasons, but I do love it.

Tuesday, we went to see the Tower of London (having booked tickets in advance). We spent a good portion of the day there. There's a pretty cool exhibit about coinage and the royal mint, plus a really nice collection of royal arms and armor. I hope some of my armor photos come out well. And we stood in line to see the crown jewels. Which are definitely impressive. If I had to pick only one exhibit, I'd choose the armor over the jewels, but the jewels are definitely a one-of-a-kind collection.

Later, we crossed the river and visited the Golden Hinde, a reconstructed Elizabethan sailing ship. We joined one of the guided tours, which was organized around the conceit that we were a batch of new recruits and our guide was an officer showing us the ropes. It was both fun and hugely entertaining. I don't usually go for guided tours, preferring to poke around at my own pace, but in this case I'm glad I made an exception.

Today we took a train to Cardiff. We visited Cardiff Castle, which is an interesting agglomeration of different time periods. Lining one wall of the gift shop/cafe is a remnant of Cardiff's old Roman wall. In the middle of the complex is a semi-ruined Norman keep, which you can climb to the top of for some pretty nice city views. And then you can tour the part of the castle that the Marquess of Bute used to live in. Which is basically an illustration of what happens when a Victorian coal baron with a taste for medieval gothic architecture gets to indulge himself. It's a bit ludicrous. Carved and painted ceilings, stained glass, more coats of arms than you can shake a stick at...I hope some of my photos come out. It's very impressive.

We had dinner at Mint and Mustard, a very good Indian restaurant. (We've been to a couple South Indian restaurants here in the U.K., and the food is like nothing I've ever had in the Bay Area.) Our waitress asked if we were on holiday, and then, in rather mystified tones, asked, "If I may ask, why did you come to Cardiff?" My answer was, "the castle and the Doctor Who Experience," which seemed to be a satisfactory answer.

So, tomorrow we'll see the Doctor Who Experience. And if it doesn't rain on us too hard, maybe do some more sightseeing.

The organizers finally went ahead and officially admitted that they've cancelled Alt-Fest: http://www.alt-fest.com/index.html

Considering that they waited to make this announcement until after 4 out of 6 headliners, countless other bands, a couple of vendors, and the bus company that was running transportation to the site had announced that it was off, it didn't exactly come as a surprise.

Basically, the organizers underestimated the cost and overestimated the ticket sales. The latter surprised me a bit, since I'd have thought that the quality of the lineup would have drawn more people. Perhaps many of those people decided to wait until the organizers demonstrated that they could pull this off. Wisely, as it turned out.

I am a bit peeved about the amount of b.s. the organizers put out about ticket sales during the lead up to the festival. While it's clearly not in their interests to publicize poor ticket sales, they did quite a bit to give the impression that sales were brisk, even claiming at one point within the past month that there were "fewer than 900 tickets left".

Ah, well. We live, we learn, we plan birthday hijinx in London, and we hope against hope that Fields of the Nephilim will tour the U.S. someday.

Hi all! Welcome to 2013! I hope the year is getting off to a good start for you. I celebrated the turn of the year by going to an excellent party, coming home before midnight, and staying up until the wee hours reading a book. Which in a "start as you mean to go on" sense, was about right.

I was looking back, and 2012 was actually a heck of a year for me. That seemed worth commemorating somehow, so I made a list of the coolest things I did this year. In roughly chronological order:
( ten things )

Friday morning I arrived in Florida for a whirlwind quick trip to celebrate my maternal grandfather's 90th birthday. Over the past few days, various members of our far-flung clan have been gathering, so I've been getting to catch up with relatives that I haven't seen in years. And meet a few new ones - I've got two first cousins once-removed, a 3 year-old and a 15 month-old, who I've never met before.

One of the nice things about being on Amelia Island, Florida the day before the time switch is that I got to get up and go running on the beach as the sun rose, without having to get up stupidly early. Apparently, it is a traditional Navajo practice to go running to greet the rising sun. I can see why - there is something really special about running as the sun comes up. Especially if you can arrange to do it somewhere where you've got a really unobstructed view of the Eastern horizon.

Today has had its share of minor drama: This morning my father ended up in the emergency room of the local hospital with what turned out to be a minor abrasion on his cornea. He has antibiotic eye drops and orders not to read or watch TV for a day or two - he will be fine. This afternoon, my 3 year-old cousin, while riding in a golf cart driven by my granfather, managed to put his foot down hard on the accelerator and crash the cart into my grandfather's garage door, putting a sizeable dent in it.

(I took on the task of distracting the 3 year-old while the other grown-ups hammered the garage door into good enough shape to get it to open. We played chase, wrestled on the floor, pretended to be airplanes, played hide-and-seek, pretended to be dinosaurs, played "let's not hide" (a game of his own invention, which involved me announcing, "Okay, I'm not hiding!" while he laughed), and he "helped me make a movie" (which meant that I chased him around the kitchen while filming him with my iPhone). In total, I think I succeeded in keeping him occupied for 10 minutes. Maybe 15. I absolutely do not endorse the over-medication of small children for ADHD, but I totally understand why it happens.)

Anyway, I've got to get changed and help go set up helium balloons for the party tonight. I shall dutifully report if the combination of my 3 year-old cousin and a room full of helium balloons results in mayhem.

So, here's the part that everyone really wants to know about: what did I eat while I was in Sofia?

Bulgarian cuisine has two major focal points: salads and dairy products, especially cheese and yogurt. This is possibly my idea of culinary heaven, but your mileage may vary.

Bulgarians really are crazy about salads. The archetypal Bulgarian salad is shopska salata, made with tomatoes, cucumber, bell pepper, onion, and a white feta-like cheese called sireneh. You can also get more ordinary green salads, Caesar salads, and so on. I frequently had some kind of salad at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Shopska salata is even the traditional food to eat when you are drinking rakiya, Bulgarian brandy. (That struck me as a bit odd, considering that in most parts of the world, the traditional boozing-it-up food is usually salty and/or fatty. I suppose a shopska salata can be both if you load it up with enough cheese, but still...)

Besides the salads, some other traditional Bulgarian dishes that I sampled were:

• Tarator, which is a cold cucumber and yogurt soup. Very refreshing on hot summer days. Many places will also serve it in a mug as a beverage.


• Katok, which is a sort of dip or spread made with yogurt, sheep's milk cheese, walnuts, and roasted red peppers. You can eat it on its own or spread on bread or slices of raw tomato. I need to learn how to make this - I could happily eat it every day.


• Moussaka, clearly related to the Greek dish, but in Bulgaria it is most commonly a dish of diced potato and ground pork with paprika and other spices, topped with cheese and baked. It's traditional to pair this with tarator.


• Kyufteta, sauteed pork meatballs, which I had with a roasted red pepper sauce.


• Mishmash, this is just scrambled eggs with peppers and onions. But seriously, how can you not love a dish called mishmash?


• Bob, which is a bean and sausage stew.

For dinner, I frequently had a piece of grilled chicken or fish with some grilled vegetables on the side. Simple, but tasty.
( More ramblings on foreign cuisine, sweets, and booze )

Yay: My Bulgarian language skills are adequate to purchasing a metro ticket.

Not-so-yay: When I arrived at the metro stop near the VMware offices, I came out of the metro station by a different exit than I'd used previously, and got briefly lost. I was at the point of phoning a colleague to come rescue me when I found a street sign and was able to work out where I was.

Yay: A passer-by asked me in Bulgarian how to get to the metro stop, and I understood and answered. (Mind you, we were half a block away, so I was able to point up the street and say, "tuk" (here). More complex directions would have been beyond me.)

Yay: Successfully negotiated entry into the office building, despite getting a firm "ne" (no) from the receptionist to my hopeful, "Govorite li Angleeski?" (Do you speak English?) (Normally, VMware would have given me a keycard for the building, but they have a lot of visitors this week, and they ran out.)

Not-so-yay: My Bulgarian language skills are not quite up to the task of ordering lunch.

Yay: My Bulgarian colleagues have taken it upon themselves to ensure that I don't starve, and have escorted me to lunch and helped me order.

Weird random factoid: My colleagues inform me that it is customary in Bulgaria to put ketchup and mayonnaise on pizza. And yet they claim to find rootbeer disgusting.