Oh Dog, you Sleuth!

So I feel the need to apologize to Jami for the really nice box of presents she sent. I didn’t even notice that the copy of ‘True Stories’ was signed. I’m pretty much keeping it. I’ve been pouring over it all day and can’t get over what a truly impressive piece of work it is. Pictured above is my favorite character from the film, the lying woman, who at one point blurts out, ‘I wrote Billie Jean… and half of Elvis’s songs too!’ Oh and I guess those paper clothes were part of an Asian death rituals, that can sometime involve burning paper replicas of cars, fancy electronics, etc. So an apology goes out to ghosts in general.

So for the last few months, we’ve been hearing about this care package that Jami was going to send and started to think it was never going to arrive until we saw it here on Friday. You may have read about an earlier house-warming package from Patrick and Kelly.

Jeremy made out like a bandit, most noteably by receiving a GIANT bottle of Accent food seasoning, which for some reason holds an obsessional interest for him. Here, he is pictured making fun of people who are stingy with their MSG seasoning. He also got a bunch of great records, books and a really scary picture of Santa.

Katherine got all this hooker (!) gear. Ok.

I’m searching through the box, feebly asking, ‘But what about me…?’

Then I read the letter that explained why I didn’t get any presents. Something about life being random and cruel and I just got so angry and ripped that letter up.

Things got better later on at the Hungry Tiger, Portland’s most demographically mixed bar. Donna bought a drink called an ‘All Day Sipper’. It tasted exactly like that orange drink you could get at McDonalds.

It became kind of a group effort to finish it, even though it had no discernable alcohol.

Beautiful, beautiful stone facades are everywhere here.

I found these amazing cups tonight (still in the box!!!) at a thrift store near my house. I’ve been talking about these cups for years and usually people are like, ‘huh?’

Jeremy and I, as former NYers, were really, really excited to drive out to a factory outlet this morning in the suburbs. In retrospect, I’m kinda wondering why that was the case, since it was just a depressing mall that kinda skewed redneck. I swear I overheard this woman warning her son/brother/husband not to get sneakers that were too ’skateboard-faggoty’ (huh?!? I didn’t know that was an entire subculture). But, to digress, we went to the Pig’N Pancake this morning, based completely on me seeing their sign and screaming ‘Stop the CAR!’ It wasn’t bad, though pretty overpriced. There’s a couple between Portland and the coast. Sadly, they didn’t have Pig’N Pancake t-shirts available, cause I live for this whole ‘animals excited about their own consumption’ thing.

Jeremy dug up this sticker from when he lived in Poland. Mr. Beef was a horrible McDonalds ripoff. Take a moment to appreciate the human teeth, dialated pupils and facial expresison that says: ‘I’m tasty!’ I’ve really gotta get cracking on learning how to silk screen t-shirts. Can anyone recommend any books?

So last Sunday night, Jeremy and were walking around this Asian supermarket somewhere around 60th street and Sandy. There was a whole row of stuff for altars. The usual crap, except for all these suits made of delicate tissue paper. We were both like, ‘What the fuck!!!’ And it was only $4. Best part was there were tons of different styles made with various designs of tissue paper. And they all came with these little fakey gold watches. The woman at the cash registar said she had no idea what these paper suits are for. Either that or she was so disgusted at how her culture was being mocked. But we were more excited than anything else.

To my shock, the opened contents revealed a complete three-piece suit!!! There were sleaves to this shirt, but I had to rip them off. Who the hell made this and how and why? There was a navy blue vest, too.

Okay, so it wasn’t quite Jeremy’s size, but it was definitely made to be worn.

Look at the gold piping on the collar.

The jacket was incredible. It even had buttons.

I don’t know, but the idea of clothes that can obviously only be worn once and rip up pretty bad when you’re putting them on just seems really cool. Some research on the subject of paper clothes didn’t help track down much about why we stumbled across this item but it did reveal this: ‘The paper clothes trend actually started in the 60�s when Pop Art was in full swing. Artist James Rosenquit wore a paper suit to many fashionable functions. The fashion is back and Rosenquit is busy designing again. Last year, fashion designer Hugo Boss asked Rosenquit to redesign the paper suit 90�s style. He did, and 50 suits were auctioned for charity after being worn by Dennis Hopper and Samuel L. Jackson. In fact, one of the paper suits is now permanently exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.’ I doubt the Hugo Boss suit costs four bucks. I went suit shopping a couple of weeks ago and you can take my word for it that four dollars is a really good deal. For more, read here

Yeah, it was taped on, like the wallet, and would thus leave an ugly tear, so I recommend just keeping at as part of the facade of the jacket.

So if anyone wants a paper suit, just contact me. I will put one in the mail for you. I’d love to have pictures of everyone I know wearing one. Naturally, it’s going to only be a serious clothing option for Megan (which sends me into daydreaming reverie about Megan wearing a paper suit at one of her art show openings, kinda Dietrich style, rustling past the attendees and seriously avoiding the stray lit cigarette).

Kathy’s birthday was held at her friend’s mansion. I felt nervous the second we got there thinking what we might accidentally destroy. Fortunately, the only bad thing that happened was that Katherine fell through a plate glass window (to avoid tripping into a bonfire) and Jeremy sat on the birthday cake. Not bad for a party where there were fireworks.

There were sparklers going off the whole time. Every second.

Chosing a karoke song is very serious business.

You can’t not look glamorous in the Ambassador.

My mom had a book of cake designs that I STUDIED when I was a little kid. I hadn’t seen or thought about these bizarre Barbie ante-bellum hoop skirt cakes in 25 years. And I still really want one.

This one’s for Chevy.

This is a steakhouse near our house that has amazingly not been ruined (or even worn down) by time. It was mostly just full of heavy-ish old people looking for a good solid steak dinner. There were the little plastic toothpicks in the steaks telling you how they were cooked and they had Lion’s Club mints for sale.

I thought the steaks were pretty decent.

This is near the airport on 82nd street. Jeremy drove past it when he dropped Donna off at the airport recently and I’ve been dying to see it for weeks. Since it’s a strip club, Jeremy said they should paint a big ‘XXX’ on the side of the whiskey bottle. I don’t think the place had a name.

The Roy Lichtenstein army surplus store.

Only walked past this place. Also love the Oregon lottery logo.

A motel on Burnside ave.

A very William Eggleston trophy shop on Burnside, seen when I was stranded last night.

So yesterday I got my driver’s license. It was really stressful cause everyone who took the test before me failed. Afterwards I went to a used car dealership and bought an old Volvo station wagon (that’s Katherine hugging the salesman in the background).

The car made it home but on the two mile trip to work a hose exploded under the hood and smoke started gushing out everywhere. I couldn’t believe I had just bought a car (a mere three hours ago) and that it had already broken down. The guy let me return it this morning and I’ve decided to never leave the house again. Today’s Oprah was super satisfying.

Some interesting items viewed this weekend.

My mom.

So I completely missed Halloween and all its trappings this year. I got my first call to work in Portland and it ended up absorbing the entire weekend. I’m glad I got to work, but taking pictures of people in their Halloween costumes is the only part I like about this holiday.

Apparently, my parents feel very, very differently on this matter. To quote from yesterday’s email: “We did add a few new things including a talking pumpkin hanging from the tree in front of the house. We put a walkie talkie inside a plastic pumpkin and I would call out spooky things to the kids as they approached the house. Then when they reached the porch I would blast them with smoke just as the headless ghoul opened to door with her voice synthesizer! ”

In some brash decision to annoy everyone, Donna, Katherine, Jeremy and I went out to Astoria, OR to see the Goonies house today. In our defense the original plan was to go to Seattle, but I don’t think Donna’s car would make it that far and it barely got us around once we’d reached the coast.

In all the illicit excitement of being there (cause we’d promised so many people not to go without them), I somehow forgot to take a digital photo of us standing in front of the house. I think I took a film shot, but it will have to wait. Like seeing any movie location in real life, it was a little disappointing. Plus is was very sunny and clear today, the exact opposite of the film. If you’re interested in Goonies location scavenger hunting, definitely check out this site.

It was actually a very cute town and I picked up a book at the chamber of commerce that told us how to track down the other locations of Astoria-shot films. Some titles include: Kindergarten Cop, Short Circuit, Some Kind of Paradise and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3. Not bad for a tiny town that contained the smallest JC Penneys I’ve ever seen.

We caught the happy hour lunch special at Gustav’s Bier Stube today and ate a sickening amount of German food. It put my binges at The Chip Shop into perspective. The fondue alone is still killing me.

The waiter we had was really nice, but it would have been cooler to have an entirely costumed staff. Jeremy swore on the spot that when he opens his novelty restaurant all the waiters will be dressed idiotically.

I just hope the dining room looks like this.

I started reading Chuck Palahniuk’s Fugitives and Refugees last night and got pretty excited about the fun Portland stuff there is to do around here. Mostly, I just long for a car so I can really check things out.

Comments are back! This time with a different server.

So the nickle arcade at the Avalon Theater turned out to be great! I went there on Thursday with my friend Karen, visiting from Chicago and Jeremy.

The majority of the games were from Japan and Korea (some still had the stickers on the coin entry telling you how many Yen they took) and then there were a lot of older nickle operated machines.

This game’s main strategy was just to shove your partner into the way of harm. It was kind of hard to figure out what the hell it was about at first.

In this game, kind of an updated version of Simon, you played electric guitar along with the machine. It was very hard.

This was the Korean knockoff of Dance, Dance Revolution.

I think he accidentally chose a song called ‘Oh No Cindarella’ that had a weird beat. It’s funny what a wide variety of bad music you get to choose from in these games.

I know the neon coverage is getting out of control, but it really is unbelievable here. Jeremy told me beforehand that Portland has refused to rip up its old stores and create nothing but Subways and Gaps and Starbucks. Apparently, Chin’s Kitchen is supposed to be really, really gross but I’m still dying to go. It doesn’t matter because the real gem in Hollywood is the Pagoda Restaurant, which will get its own massive photo shoot.

I love that I can walk to an art house movie theater. I saw Claire Denis’ ‘Friday Night’ last night, which was great.

It’s really spooky inside. I know Portland is supposed to remind you of Gus Van Sant and Elliot Smith (RIP!) but last night as I was walking back to my house through Laurelhurst, I couldn’t stop thinking about Blue Velvet and David Lynch in general. The old Americana vibe here really makes you feel like you’re walking around in one of his movies. And of course there’s the Twin Peaks thing. But my big movie thing is I want to visit the town where they shot “Goonies”. We need a car for that, though.

It looks like we’re planning something terrible but this was trivia at Beulahland last night, which was pretty hard and not so much fun.

Jeremy took our low score particularly badly.

Afterwards we went into Chopsticks Express around the corner to Karoke, but the line was too long.

Katherine stayed behind to page some of her friends and we didn’t see her for hours after that.

The next stop was The Ambassador, which is one of my new favorite places in Portland, because of it’s incredibly sleazy 80s coke dealer Miami vice design and it’s liberal policy about turning the reverb on the karoke mike.

Oh, and there’s a smoke machine on the stage.

Jeremy did Yummy, Yummy, Yummy and Sweat Pea.

Leslie, who along with Steven, actually has a very nice singing voice, did a duet of the Boy is Mine, In Your Room and one other song I can’t remember.

The real star was Katherine, who blew everyone away with a re-interpretation of Alice Cooper’s ‘I Wanna Be Elected’.

I stumbled through through Mary J. Blige’s Family Affair and the Shangri Las Leader of the Pack and pretty much massacred Boston’s More Than a Feeling.

Doesn’t this look like a still from DePalma’s remake of ‘Scarface’?

I looked at my web statics tonight and was kinda shocked by this search string someone used and ended up at ohdog.org. Jeez, they must have been so disappointed. And it was strange to see that the site’s popularity really peaked in July and has been experiencing a steady nosedive in the last three months. What can I do to spice this up? Prizes? More celebrity gossip?