Recent Stories in Off-Task

Counterpoint: MoonBreak!

Last night was the "Après Ski Trunk Show" by Sorel, held at the Columbia store downtown. "Glam up your footwear wardrobe, mingle, shop & sip our signature drink, the Joan of Arctic (tm) [Ed. note: srsly] (hot cocoa & butterscotch schnapps)," read the invitation.

As I had sent an RSVP to Seattle Metropolitan, the media sponsor, I went, even though I was sorely tempted to skip it for the Polish poster documentary. I felt like it was my duty to trundle down and report on the fashion "heat" generated by a show featuring models in boots and butterscotch schnapps.

RSVP aside, when the woman ahead of me asked where the check-in was, she was told there wasn't one. "Where do I sign up for the contest," she asked. "The event starts at 5:30 p.m.," she was told. (It was 5:26.) After a few minutes, a blonde model in a black overcoat and black rubber boots--sort of a flasher Holly Golightly--got up on a little pedestal, and I snapped a few pictures until a security guard said brusquely, "No photography!"

Previously, I had been under the impression that people wanted you to take photos of fashion shows? Maybe the rules for trunk shows were different. Fine, I thought, direct me to the hot cocoa and schnapps. Little hiccup there: It was not permitted to serve schnapps drinks, trademarked or otherwise.

I got a half a mug of hot cocoa and sipped it while the models, seeing my camera, vamped in my direction. Even here, things were off: they were young and thin and suited for catwalk work but the Sorel boots looked like their weight might snap their twiggy legs.

A woman loaded with three Columbia bags marched through the store so purposefully I half-thought she might be a plant to stimulate the shopping impulse. The store was not, charitably, full. Desperate, I put in my name for a contest, and walked away with a complimentary Sorel cap with tassel, gray, in the only size they had: women's XL.

Wanna get away? Well, you can't. But here's a 3 min. 53 sec. tour of the Olympic Peninsula that might hold you until a real getaway can be planned. It includes shots of very cute deer, leaves changing color, and a surprising man in the rain parka talking about salmon spawning. Personally I'd replace the new age soundtrack with a Fleet Foxes song, but you know, that's me.

Oh, corn. It's in everything we eat, we hope to power our cars with it someday, and when October rolls around, we even go play in it. Truly, Americans have a corn problem. But of the three, the last really is the best: October is prime agritainment time, with corn mazes opening up around the region offering a fine excuse to get out of the city on the weekend, whether you've got kids or not.

For a lot of people, a corn maze and pumpkin patch sounds like family-friendly hell if you don't have kids, but the truth is, they're actually a great way to spend a weekend day, and an excuse to get a better pumpkin than you can find at Safeway. There's basically three types of people who go to the mazes: horny local teens (who come out in droves for "haunted" mazes nearer Halloween, which are never worth the effort), families, and hip urbanites.

There's a lot of variation between "corn mazes," some of which aren't really mazes at all. And while five years ago plenty of farms offered little more than a roadside fruit stand... (more)

Yesterday I posted a shot a friend took of a man lugging a mannequin around Downtown. Helpful tippers provided more info, including a video. If this is in fact the same guy, his name is Dauveed and he made it up here from Los Angeles, where he acquired the mannequin from Hollywood sex toy shop Bed Behavior with the help of KROQ 106.7's Psycho Mike, who I assume is a DJ. A YouTube video from June of this year shows the DJ helping Dauveed acquire the mannequin and then "marrying" them. Her name is apparently "Clara," and readers say he's perfectly pleasant to talk to. Can anyone else confirm that this is the same guy? (Thanks to readers Poppl and Madelinear.) UPDATE: I have three people via Facebook who have confirmed that the man in the video is the same guy here in Seattle.

Photo courtesy of Sylvia Olveda.

A friend threw this shot up on Facebook this morning of a guy wandering downtown with a mannequin strapped to a piece of luggage. Odd in and of itself, but pretty par for the course for downtown Seattle.

However, at least two other people commented on her post that they'd seen this guy over the weekend as well. What's the deal? Who is the mysterious mannequin man? Some traveling businessman? A new addition to the (politely put) colorful cast of characters that keep things interesting in the urban core?

It's built a web next to my mailbox, and as it's a spider of some size, I'm wondering if a co-living arrangement is in order, or if there needs to be an eviction notice.

It may only be September 21st, and Seattle may be in the midst of a "late September heat wave" with temps tomorrow in the upper 80s, but it's Christmas at the Downtown Macy's as of last Thursday.

THIS I CANNOT ABIDE.

Yesterday we broke a record, with 87 degrees--the old record was 84 for September 11.

At this moment, we're 10 degrees away from today's record of 88. It made for a nice walk in the park. Add Cal Anderson to the list of the things that government has gotten right.

 

• T. R. Reid talks at Town Hall at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, September 8. Tickets are $5 at the door. The Washington Post correspondent and NPR commentator has a new book out, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care.

T. R. Reid argues that lack of universal health care is primarily a moral question, not an economic one. It's estimated that each year we do not offer universal health care, 20,000 U.S. citizens die who did not have to. To my ears, the debate sounds Abrahamic:

24What if there are fifty uninsured people in the country? Will You really let them fall ill and not spare the lives of the fifty uninsured people? 25Far be it from You to do such a thing–to kill the uninsured with the terminally ill, treating the uninsured and the terminally ill alike. Far be it from You! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

I can't pretend not to be biased here--I've been a proponent of health care reform since reading of Harry S Truman's attempts... (more)