Seattle Klondike Extravaganza

Michael Pontchartrain Ludin had a birthday

2009-01-12T21:13:00.000-08:00

So after the fire starter music video was all wrapped up, we headed over to Mike's place for a birthday celebration. He made delicious bean dip, which I ate a lot of. I brought a photographic recording device with me as well as some flash bulbs. We turned Mikes lifting chamber into a studio! There were even signs made and hung above the portico.

To see the insanity follow the link : flickr photos

Winter Fire Festival - Seattle Center

2009-01-12T20:55:00.000-08:00

On Saturday Kat and I went to see people who do medieval type cosplay with swords and whips, while they are on FIRE! The girls were cool, guys...well not so much. Actually no one was cool, but it doesn't matter. They are playing with fire, and that always wins in my book. Also it was less of a festival and more of a "light things on fire and dance to Godsmack in the middle of a fountain gathering". Maybe I don't really know what it was, but I was entertained and I got a couple good pictures from it.

The rest of the photos are here : flickr pictures

New Vinyl

2009-01-05T03:43:00.000-08:00

Darren took me to a really cool record shop this weekend in Wallingford. My favorite so far is Be-Bop Deluxe Futurama. Minnie Riperton melts my face off with her voice, and the RAM album by McCartney is great.

Grave of the Fireflies

2009-01-05T01:35:00.000-08:00

Directed by Isao Takahata. The movie is an adaptation of an autobiographical novel by the same name. The novel was written as an apology to the authors sister who died from malnutrition during WWII. Grave of the Fireflies is hauntingly real, you forget it is animation after a few minutes in. The movie is set in Kobe Japan towards the end of WWII, when American B-29 bombers sent down incendiary bombs that killed over 8,000 people. A brother and sister are left without parents to fend for themselves, and it is a devastating story about the casualties of war.

For me this is the best anti-war film ever made. Simply because the film focuses completely on these 2 kids, there are no politics involved, no one mentions the U.S., the kids don't care about competing ideologies, they just need food.

While I love films like My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Kiki's delivery service, they all fall short of exploiting the real power animation has to offer. Grave of the Fireflies should be on everyones list. You only need to see it once, it has the power all good movies do of haunting you long after you see it.

Little Christmas

2008-12-25T03:05:00.001-08:00

Everyone gets mini books and book ends!

More and More

2008-12-21T18:05:00.000-08:00

Went out walking earlier. Here are some more photos!

Last Night

2008-12-21T14:13:00.000-08:00

3 more shots from last night. The snow is piling up. rooftop, pine street and butt less chaps

Early Snow

2008-12-20T22:42:00.001-08:00

Some pictures from last Sunday + some from Thursday.

The snow is pretty, but unlike Chicago they do not salt the roads. So everyone is pretty much snowed in here.

I guess it's better for the environment, but it's funny they just let a city shut down like this.

Thanksgiving Photoshoot

2008-12-07T15:50:00.001-08:00

Link to Flickr

Funny

2008-12-07T15:48:00.001-08:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

The Streets Rejoiced

2008-11-05T00:02:00.000-08:00

Election Night 2008 on Capitol Hill in Seattle was something I have never experienced in my life. The last time I saw this kind of community fanfare was in Alabama, of course in the south people rejoice when their favorite college football team wins, here in Seattle people celebrate over their quarterback of Hope. Kathryn and I watched the election on TV, after Obama gave his victory speech we headed out to find some food. But that plan fell apart, instead we just slowly drove up and down Pike Street witnessing these joyous crowds. At work today I had a humorous conversation with friend, basically we decided if Obama didn't win tonight, our neighborhood {capitol hill} would be burned to the ground by morning. I am glad to report instead of fires we had high fives and excited chants of victory. While driving up Pike Street it felt like we were stars in a parade, people were screaming at us, giving us High Fives, I sat on the window of my car as we drove and people patted me on the back, and squeezed my arm like an excited kid might do. While straddling my car door I snapped pics left and right, everyone wanted their photo taken, I could hardly keep up. No matter who you voted for, tonight was historic.

Obama you did it. Now don't F this up.

The rest of the pictures can be found here :
http://thehastingsbrothers.com/photoalbums/election2008/

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Large Update

2008-09-07T17:29:00.000-07:00

word

PAX - a sea of nerds! I secretly wished I was one of them.

PAX - the Exhibition Floor

Darksiders booth for - Will, John and Yan. Sorry, iPhone picture.

Eggs Benedict at Chace's Pancake House

Strawberry Swedish Pancake

My fresh ride.

It has been said I am a gentleman but never a gentle man.

Delicious

Those pots only cost like 3 bucks.

Exquisite.

Handsome.

Enchanting!

Little Babycakes.

headache.

Sorry about all the pictures, there is probably a way to inject them in between paragraphs of text to make it flow more. Someday I will know how to use this better.

Last weekend Kathryn, Darren and I went to Bumbershoot and the Penny Arcade Expo. Bumbershoot was fun, I got to see Darondo live. Imagine if Jim Varney were black man and sang like you would think a homeless man should. This is Darondo. He sang about 3 songs and gave some hilarious yet dirty advice for all the couples in the audience. It was a great show. I also had some delicious corn on a stick. This was saturday. Sunday we all went to PAX. Basically a nerdfest. Sweet delicious nerds that buy our games and xbox hardware. It was actually fun, I ran into the gears of war team, waited in line for Little Big Planet for about 5 minutes and gave up, then took some pictures of the Darksiders booth for my friends at Vigil. The best part was the sea of PC players, all packed nicely in a room.

This weekend the car my Mom gave me arrived. Which is really awesome. What wasn't awesome was waking up early saturday morning and taking a bus from Seattle to Bellevue to meet the car shipper. But Kathryn came with me so it wasn't as bad. Plus I got to check out Bellevue, which isn't anything great but we found an awesome breakfast restaurant and a place to buy plants from. Lucky for me there was a pots store that had everything 70% off. So I bought like 12 pots for like 15 bucks. Then I visited the Bellevue Nursery and loaded up on plants. As you can see in the pictures above I am an expert at planting things. Kathryn was laughing or super annoyed while I was picking out my plants, I was trying to mix colors like I would in a painting. Which means I probably got a bunch of plants that will kill each other, since they all need different soils. Anyway, I am proud since this my first try at gardening, next I want to build some large planters to go along the edge of my outdoor space and go really crazy with some plants.

Sorry I forgot a lot of stories that may or may not have been interesting. Next time I will try and do better.

Until then, peace out.

Oh yeah. Pineapple Express, and Tropic Thunder are both really funny. I recommend them for enjoyment.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

2008-08-25T22:45:00.000-07:00

yep, pretty much.

I eat diamonds for breakfast.

That's racist

Aww. Sorry she will be gone in the morning. But at least you have the A-team!

I wanted to check out a local theater near my new apartment this weekend. There is one down the street called The Egyptian. Saturday night they happened to be playing Breakfast at Tiffany's which I had never seen before so I decided to check it out.
I guess I didn't know what I was getting myself into. For some reason I was expecting a fun romantic comedy, instead I got a really sad and depressing film. Focusing mainly on a girl who just wont grow up. I thought for the longest time people liked this film because the character Holly was someone to be admired, someone other women might want to be in real life. I see now the hype was for Audrey Hepburns' performance, the hype is well deserved, she did an amazing job. The character is someone you do despise though, and if you don't, you really should. Her character hit a nerve all too close to home, and I remember leaving the theater with a very deep sadness. With that said I still would have liked the film, if it had not been for that terrible ending. The problem is, in the morning she will run off again with her same fears and incredibly weak will, this of course the director does not show. Hollywood is funny that way, sadly I know the real ending to Breakfast at Tiffany's and it is not happy at all.

Moving Time

2008-08-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

It's an apartment!

Moving sucks, but I am glad to have my own place again. I will take some pictures as soon as my place stops looking like a storage unit. It is located on Capitol Hill, and close to lots of stuff. Well enjoy the widescreen shot until I get some better ones. And no those are not my rugs, puuulease!

Le Mépris

2008-08-09T01:10:00.000-07:00

New poster for 35mm release.

She is pissed.

Contemptuos!

Tonight I returned to the SIFF to see the film Contempt directed by Jean-Luc Godard starring Brigitte Bardot. I had never seen the film before, but I liked it. It had great style, and was funnier than I imagined. Afterwards, I met up with Kudo at the Comet Tavern, and watched a band called Strong Killings. They were actually really good, crazy name aside.

Le Pichet; haircut + rooftop swimming.

2008-08-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

Haircuts are like magic.

hot.

Gorgeous

9:45 AM was haircut time. Which is too early for Saturday, but it was fine, afterwards I ate at this great french place called Le Pichet. I ordered a cappuccino, and OEufs plats, jambon et fromage. Basically Two eggs broiled with ham and gruyère. It was delicious. Afterwards I found a cool Architecture Book Store, where I got one of these.

Saturday night was fun. I met up with a bunch of friends from work to hang out, and my buddy Andy showed up too, which was awesome because I had not seen him since EA Chicago closed down. Apparently my hair cut and brand new Chuck Taylors brought some attention to others, because while we were all sitting at a table at this place called Cellars this girl walks up and hands me a note. It said her friend thought I was cute. There was a lot of stuff that happened after this, but the highlight of the night was later being at this persons condo we had just met, swimming in a roof top pool, looking out over downtown Seattle. It was a lot of fun. Hopefully Andy will have a better account of that night on his blog. I am just tired and need to get some sleep.

Today Amanda, Shad and I went to a Mariners Game at Safeco Field. I don't like baseball,but I do like bratwurst with sauerkraut. It was also good to just hang with my sis.

Well I am going to bed. I hope you enjoy my cheesy pictures.

Ivar's and Cinerama

2008-08-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

Ivar's in 1939

Cinerama Theater photo from cinerama.com

Sweet!

Friday I ate at a new seafood place on Alaskan Way, along the water of Elliot Bay called Ivar's. I was able to get 2 Stella's and a delicious fish wrap for 11 bucks. On the way back home I found a cool place called Cinerama, really I am just a sucker for 1950's style signs. They were showing The Dark Knight, which I already saw, but I really wanted to check out this theater, so I bought a ticket, and had a great time.

Mt. Rainier

2008-07-27T22:50:00.000-07:00

Foggy Ride up the Mountain

On the Sunrise Trail

Frozen Lake

Sweetness

Naches Tavern - Reuben and Beer on the way down

The full gallery of photos can be found HERE

Since this was the last day I had my rental car I decided to drive out to Mt. Rainier. It took about 2 hours from downtown. I don't have a story, I was alone and just hiked for hours along many of the trails at Sunrise Visitor Center that sits about 6000 feet up this 15,000 foot mountain. There were too many clouds to see Rainiers peak, but the surrounding area was so beautiful I didn't mind.

Seattle Torchlight Parade

2008-07-26T23:41:00.001-07:00

Tini Bigs

Tonight I went with a couple friends to Tini Bigs for some food before they went to the Nine Inch Nails concert. Instead of going home I decided to just walk around downtown and explore. I walked along all the Piers, some cool parks, then happened to come upon this parade. Without paying much attention to the people around me I just stopped at a good location and started watching.

The parade had all kinds of groups, lots of school bands, pirates, corvettes..on and on. About 2 minutes into me standing there I realized I was in the homeless section on the sidewalk. They had set up chairs, a home camp you might say, where I decided to stop. On either side of us there were families with kids. The first thing that made me realize all this was when a bum shows up { who we will call Archibald} and starts arguing with another bum about his seat{ who we will call Chauncey}. So Archibald finally yells at him enough to get out of his seat. This seat I am talking about is 2 inches from me..so I am right next to him. Archibald gets his seat and Chauncey has to stand like I do. I am like..well that is solved, back to the parade, I think at this point there were some young cheerleaders doing their thing so one of the bums kept saying things like "hey! you want to get with me!! ok ok...I will meet you around the corner", then he would wave them away with his hands. Which I thought was kind of funny.

In front of Archibald, there were 3 seats, all filled with bums as well. 2 women, 1 man. Well Archibald has a kazoo around his neck, on a string. I don't know where he got it, but he was going to town on it. Just blowing that thing as hard as he could. This annoyed one of the women sitting in front of him, so she turned around and said something along the lines of cut that out, but instead he just turned to her and starting blowing it in her face...without taking a breath. I was laughing pretty hard. She wasn't. She start hitting him which made him blow harder, and start dancing in his chair. Once she gave him a few good hits on the leg she gave up and just came and stood behind me against the building. As soon as she did Archibald gets up and takes her seat. I was thinking to myself..hmm...pretty smart. At this point Chauncey who was too drunk to make a good argument with Archibald about how annoying he was with that kazoo, started making motions towards the back of Archibald's head like he was going to hit it. Archibald was too busy blowing his kazoo at every person who passed in the parade to notice. Which in turn just made me laugh, but seemed to have an opposite effect on the bums around him.

I forgot to mention bums would come and go, they all knew each others names. One of the best moments during this time was when this one bum walks up to Archibald, he had just come from down the street and proceeds to tell Archibald a story : "Hey Archibald!" they slap hands "I was just down there { pointing down the street} and I was trying to help this guy park, and you know what he said to m".....KAZOOOOOO!!! Archibald started blowing his kazoo while the guy was trying to tell him this story, and the guy keeps telling it while Archibald keeps blasting away at the people marching in the parade. The guy thinks well he will quit in a second, so he keeps talking....nope. Soon the bum realizes Archibald is just gonna keep going and produces the biggest smile on his face, as if he is thinking - is this guy for real? Yeah, Archibald is for real, so the bum quits his story and just laughs, which makes me laugh even more, then he pulled a Budweiser out of his jacket, took a swig and kept walking.

Candy was the weirdest part. Clowns and other performers would walk by with candy and the bums would go nuts...me me me!!!!! Some, well actually only Archibald, would go out into the parade and ask for the candy face to face. It was like gold. But they didn't treat the candy that way. As soon as they would get some they would distribute it to those around them. The first few pieces Archibald got he walked straight back to the female he pissed off earlier and gave her a bunch of it. They would even give it to the families around us. Another funny side note was the cussing. Archibald would sometimes let them fly, and direct them mainly towards Chauncey who would constantly remind him of how annoying he was with that kazoo. Well every time Archibald yelled a cuss word the other bums would be like..hey hey!! there are kids right here! don't say that stuff!". It is funny how kids can tame anyone. Wouldn't matter who was around them normally, but if there are kids, they have to follow rules. I mean your a bum, you don't answer to anyone, except kids.

The bums had their own opinions about the different companies that sponsored the floats coming down the street. I remember when the local Seattle Masons float came by, one of the bums said something like, "those are all rednecks!". Archibald turned around and said, they have really good apple pie. You don't make fun of anyone who has good apple pie. So just be quiet." Then he sat back down.

Archibald continued to entertain me as well as the other bums. He would interact with every person who gave him attention in the parade, in between the groups he would get in the middle of the street and dance and blow on his kazoo. When bands passed he would blow louder than them. The most frequent chant from the bum section was " give me some money!!!". Which over time became hilarious, one would yell "give me some of that moneeeyyyyy!!!" "where is some money!!!!!" "give me yo moneeeyyy!!"..or something similar. It wasn't so much what they were saying, but the way they were saying it, it was like watching an SNL skit with Tracy Morgan playing Archibald.

As much fun as I was having it was getting cold so I headed out, but I remember thinking, this is the best night I have had in a long time. I laughed non stop sitting in the bum section, they know how to have fun. In fact I don't know if the parade would have been worth mentioning if I had stood just 2o feet in either direction. I hope there are more nights in Seattle like this one.

Seattle Center

2008-07-26T14:30:00.003-07:00

The Space Needle

Some Metal Crap

Huge Water Fountain @ Seattle Center

SIFF - Seattle International Film Festival

The Space Needle at Night!

Before and after the film I took photos of the surrounding area.

Enjoy

Seattle International Film Festival

2008-07-26T13:56:00.000-07:00

Roman Polanski circa 1978

Last night I bought a ticket to see the opening screening of Marina Zenovich's film Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. It was an intersting film about the directors life, but focused mainly on him fleeing the U.S. in 1978. Polanksi directed Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, and more recently The Pianist.

The SIFF is located in the City Center with the Space Needle only a couple blocks away. Chicago didn't have the film community that Seattle seems to have. It is really nice to be able to see foreign and indie films without much effort.

13 Coins

2008-07-24T23:00:00.000-07:00

I ate here tonight because I ran out of groceries, and it was about 2 blocks away. I loved it, its open 24 hours, and the food was great. Even better than the food was the atmosphere. I will have to visit there again. I had manicotti stuffed with steak, a cabernet from california, and this made to order custard. The fun thing about sitting at the bar is the kitchen is right there, so you can watch them make everything.

Lake Washington

2008-07-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

So yeah this post is titled Lake Washington, but really I just have pics of me on Lake Washington. If you want some pics of Lake Washington use google and shut it.

It was a fun day, a bunch of us took a boat out on the water, did some swimming, and some wave ramping. But really all you get is a couple goofy pictures of me.

take that suckers!

love, Ryan

Fremont Outdoor Movies

2008-07-20T01:03:00.000-07:00

I found out about this place by searching for cheap / free things to do in seattle.

It is pretty cool, tonight they were showing Ghostbusters. Before the show starts they have games they play with prizes. There was one game called "don't cross the streams". They dressed up people from the audience as ghosts, then picked other audience members to come up and spray them with silly string. it was a fun little time.

Alki Beach

2008-07-18T00:46:00.000-07:00

Homefront Smoothies

On the way back home I stopped and bought a smoothie from Homefront Smoothies. It was delicious. It was right on the beach, where groups of people had bonfires and were dancing about. hippies are fun.

Alki Beach Panorama

2008-07-18T00:26:00.000-07:00

After work today I decided to drive around and explore. I ended up on Alki beach and there were some sweet spots to take pictures. Next time I want to bring a tripod so I can get some proper pictures of the seattle skyline..but these will work for now.

Some Restaurants

2008-07-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

A couple of restaurantsI have tried so far

Cafe Presse - serves french food and belgian beer

Elliott's Oyster House - First place I ate, the night I arrived.