My trip to Seattle

I went to Seattle this weekend for a friend's birthday. We were his surprise gift. It was a pretty fun trip. They've recently renovated their house massively and it was interesting to walk through and see how it had changed since the last time I saw it. I also had a lot of fun petting their dog, who was a very sweet dispositioned lab who was very open to me petting him endlessly. I can get a bit odd around other people's dogs and babies. I get very happy if they like me, and will do whatever it is I was doing to make them happy for as long as they stay happy, which means a dog that will stick near me can get pet for like 1/2 an hour or an hour as long as he stays there. Or I'll hold the baby or play peek-a-boo or whatever as long as the baby keeps smiling at me and staying happy. And I get vaguely sad if the dog shows no interest in me or the baby cries when I'm near. Must be some sort of insecure desire to be liked at work there. Kind of pathetic!

Our friends are season subscribers to the Seattle Repertory Theater, and were very enthusiastic about the production of "Twelfth Night" (or "Twelfe Night," as they billed it) that happened to be ending on Saturday, so we all went to see it. It's not a good idea to try to watch Shakespeare when tired, because, at least for me, it requires a certain degree of focused attention for me to follow the dialogue. It was a fun production, though. "Twelfth Night" always requires a suspension of disbelief that I have difficulty with - not that an unrelated actor and actress are supposed to look so alike that no one can tell them apart so much as that they're indistinguishable when one is a head taller than the other. But this cast did a great job of playing the stunned disbelief and slightly scared confusion when Sebastian and Violet were revealed to be two separate people. The cast was very good overall. The production was interesting in that they didn't make any attempt to place it in time - some of the costumes looked period, some more modern, and the sets was rather abstract (the back drop was basically this big wavy wooden deck that looked like a wrecked ship but also just doubled as a hill or the back of a room). The lighting was also really beautiful - they had the whole back lit up like the sky in various colors and achieved some really gorgeous effects with it.

Saturday night, we went to see "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" which was quite a good movie. Very slow paced, very long, but executed extremely well. Brad Pitt made a convincing charismatic yet manic Jesse James, succumbing to paranoia and depression and knowing it. Casey Affleck was creepy and compelling as Bob Ford, torn between his hero-worship of Jesse James, his hopes for notoriety and fame, and his disillusionment and bitterness towards the hero who does not behave towards him as he had hoped. The movie made an interesting but fairly subtle case for the idea that Jesse James both was aware of and welcomed Bob Ford's betrayal, deliberately setting aside his guns and turning his back on him, and not reacting even as he could see the reflection of his shooter. This was supported by Jesse's apparently self-hate for his losses of control and violent outbursts, and just the sense that he was increasingly weary of it all. Don't go into this movie expecting much action, but as a character study and historic piece, it was quite interesting.

We also had some good food in Seattle. For brunch Saturday, we went to the 5 Spot and had a super-yummy French Toast. Instead of maple syrup, they had this caramel sauce and it was really good. Very sugary on a very thick piece of French Toast. For dinner, we went to Trader Vic's, where I had a quite yummy (if very slightly undercooked) duck breast, tried our friend's BBQ rib appetizer (pretty decent), and then split a very good chocolate lava cake, as well as banana fritters with ice cream. Dinner Sunday was at Blue C Sushi which I quite enjoyed. Sushi on a conveyer belt (with booths as well as a sushi bar alongside, which was interesting) makes it very easy to just keep taking and taking (not to mention staring at the conveyer belt instead of talking to your friends) but the prices were quite good (at least compared to the places in SF!) and the quality I really enjoyed. Not a huge, huge selection, but had enough that I liked - good Shiro Maguro, very tasty Sake, interesting Sockeye Salmon (forgot the Japanese name), pretty good Tamago, a yummy shrimp tempura roll, tasty seared tuna, yummy sesame noodles (with a peanutty sauce)... get the impression I ate rather a lot? I think I ate more than twice as much as one of our friends, who apparently wasn't very hungry. I like getting sushi in the Northwest - if you can find the right places the food is often very yummy, fresh, and quite cheap!