SMD’s Jameses (Ford and Shaw) twiddled and tweaked knobs on a stack of vintage synths and analog drum machines.

The duo’s live rig was a messy maze of midi cables, digital effects and obscure gear that looked like it would require an advanced degree from MIT to assemble.

Visually stunning to watch? Hardly, but the music made up for it and the crowd was there to dance–or jump in place amidst a sweaty mass of people packed in the club.

Surrounded by towers of pulsing strobe lights the duo remixed many of their best songs (“It’s the Beat” and “Tits and Acid”) while adding flourishes of sequenced arpeggios and phased-out string parts.

The sweat-drenched crowd was having all of it and some.

The Fremont Wine Warehouse (#) is a veritable wine-lover’s paradise that’s tucked in the old Red Apple Market space in the heart of Fremont.

Owner Michael Cawdrey, former owner of the Red Apple Market and Wine Bar, hosts weekly wine tasting events featuring wines by local vintners along with top-notch imports from around the world.

I popped in last Saturday and was warmly welcomed by Cawdrey, who had invited two importers to showcase wines imported from France and Argentina in a sort of head-to-head competition.

The space, which is sparsely decorated and brightly lit, is focused on offering quality wines at an affordable price. Cawdrey seems as passionate about bringing fine wines to the neighborhood as he does about offering them at discount prices.  No bottle is more than $25.

2006 Malbec by Henry Lagarde

I chose the 2006 Malbec by Henry Lagarde from Argentinia over one of the French wines I sampled. The Malbec was priced at $10.96 and sells for $12.99 at most other stores. It was amazing and according to Cawdry the top seller for the weekend. The six wines featured ranged in price from $7.97 to $16.

For this Saturday’s tasting Cawdry has invited Dave Marks of Cascade Trade to present wines that are new to our region from Oregon and California.

Cawdry keeps a log of customers purchases to cross reference in case you enjoyed a particular wine in the past, but forgot the name. He also sends out weekly email blasts to update customers on each week’s coming event.  Included in his emails are tasting tips that make it fun and interesting for aficionados and novices alike.

The Fremont Wine Warehouse, located at 3601 Fremont Ave. N. Ste 212, hosts wine tastings every Saturday from 3-6 p.m. For more information, call 206-632-1110.

(That reminds me; I sure could use a new spatula. Damn! That’s powerful art.)

Seahawks fans, it’s time to stop going nuts over opponent false start penalties; Mike Holmgren’s swan song looks headed for a 4-12 season. On the plus side, that might be enough (when you factor in the tie breaker) to win the division.

My first night at PAX was full of surprises, not the least of which was getting to meet the brilliant Jonathan Coulton while having dinner at Six Arms. I made an idiot of myself, of course, but that didn’t negate the fact that I actually got to shake hands with the man responsible for the Portal theme song that never fails to get stuck in my head. Of course, his brilliant “Code Monkey” song is great, too (#).

Beyond that, and the shock at finding a 30,000 person convention where there was no line at the women’s restroom, I was also surprised by Ken Levine’s keynote speech. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but Levine started by describing his descent into comics (a “geeky gateway drug”) during his childhood, and subsequent involvement in D&D.

“Originally, games were a reason to get together,” Levine said. “After a year, they became an excuse. At 14 years old, I had finally found my tribe.”

As he grew up and moved to L.A., he lost touch with his geeky roots, but when he went to work for Looking Glass Studios, he says he found his tribe once again, and then related that to the audience at PAX- a tribe of another sort.

“What brings us all together at PAX,” Levine said, “is that we’re a giant bunch of fucking nerds.”

As soon as he finished, Gabe and Tycho (a.k.a. Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins) of Penny Arcade took the stage for a Q&A session that turned into a parade of laying gifts at the feet of these nerdy demigods. One thoughtful question came from a 16-year-old gamer who asked the pair if they really thought children were negatively affected by violent video games.

“I think every parent knows their child, and those parents should decide,” Krahulik said. “If the parent thinks their kids are old enough and mature enough to handle it, like I said, it’s something for the parents to decide.”

_{Gabe and Tycho answer questions at PAX 2008}

After heading off to dinner at the Six Arms, where I stumbled onto Jonathan Coulton, I returned for the concerts. The One-Ups were playing musical arrangements of songs from various video games accompanied by videos of gameplay, which was pretty entertaining. They were followed by Freezepop, who were responsible for some of the music in video games like Amplitude and Guitar Hero. While the use of entirely electronic instruments (synthesizers, a Yamaha QY-70) was fairly novel, I found the lead singer’s performance to be a bit lacking in enthusiasm. Fortunately, Jonathan Coulton (and then Felicia Day, from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) came to the rescue with “Still Alive,” and the rest is history, at least until tomorrow.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfyeJ6CX0vI[/youtube]

For some reason, I had expected Asteroid Cafe to be a sandwich and soup place with a retro feel. Instead, it’s a rather upscale Italian restaurant nestled behind Dad Watson’s on Fremont Ave. I joined a couple of friends for a small birthday dinner tonight, which started off with some amazing foraged morel mushrooms sauteed with olive oil, greens and sea salt. Not only can I remember all of that, but so could our waiter, who rattled off the three specials flawlessly and then proceeded to describe half a dozen wine flavors to one of my dinner companions.

Actually, Asteroid’s staff is half of the fun- one friend, who had been there before, regaled us with stories of heated political discussions he’d had with Asteroid’s owner. As I mentioned, our waiter was brimming with knowledge on the food and drink, and towards the end of the night, the kitchen staff broke into a slightly off-key rendition of Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Under the Bridge.”

The food was fantastic- antipasto plates full of olives and almonds and pears and cheese; artichoke and marscapone ravioli; peppercorn-encrusted tuna; and last, but not least, the most amazing tiramisu I’ve ever had. Their mojito and ferrari cocktails were also yummy.

As you can probably gather from the food descriptions, Asteroid Cafe is, well, upscale. Not incredibly expensive (Tulio, I’m looking at you), but edging towards it. Then again, I still think everything in Seattle is expensive, so perhaps you should check Asteroid’s menu for yourself. But this hidden gem in Fremont has a good atmosphere, good food, and a good staff, certainly enough to convince me to return for a romantic date in the future.

When I was walking from the parking deck to my office the other day, I ran into a co-worker who had also just commuted in. He noted that it only took him 10 minutes to come down I-5 from north Seattle. In a normal morning rush hour, it’s usually 20-40 minutes, maybe more. I noted the same thing too — the traffic on I-5 has been a lot lighter the last few months, almost like it’s the vacation season in August, not the middle of a cold, rainy spring.

Meanwhile, the long-route buses are overcrowded.

Are we finally seeing the seeing the effects of gas approaching $4/gallon here? Are people changing their habits? Or am I imagining it?

A shy, middle-aged woman walked up to me with her partner as I was standing in a long line waiting for an autograph. “Excuse me, can I ask a question?” she said in a near-whisper.

Sure, I said.

She looked around for a moment before she spoke again. “Who is Wil Wheaton?”

Well, I said, he’s an actor who played a very annoying character on a Star Trek show, but later got into blogging. Turns out he’s an amazing writer and a very nice guy.

“Oh,” she said. “Thanks very much.”

I didn’t add: also, his patience is legendary. I’m sure today wasn’t the first time somebody else has walked up, looked over the line, and yelled loudly WESLEY CRUSHER? WHAT THE HELL IS WITH WESLEY CRUSHER? THAT GUY QUIT STAR TREK EARLY, THE WIMP!

—

“The thing about comics these days,” somebody said, “is that the comics industry used to assume that they’d get complete turnover in a few years. The teenagers would grow up, they’d stop buying comics, new kids would start. You could run the same storylines every five years or so and it wouldn’t matter. Now you have people like me who have been following comics for twenty or thirty years, and they remember Amazing Spider-Man #121 or whatever. I think the industry is still trying to catch up.”

—

More and more web comics people are showing up at the comic conventions. The Penny Arcade guys are local, of course, but there were many others: Scott Kurtz (PVP), Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content), David Malki (Wondermark), Sam Logan (Sam and Fuzzy), and many more.

(Jeph, by the way, is one of the sweetest guys in the world. Say hi. Just don’t ask him about his bird tattoos.)

—

The cos-players — people in full costume — weren’t as plentiful or imaginative as they are for Sakuracon or Norwescon, but they were around. Several stormtroopers, a few Princess Leia-wannabes. One really good Mara Jade. One really bad Hitler-mustached Imperial admiral.

For the most part, though, it was a relief: unlike some other cons I’ve been to, nobody looked at you funny if you wore a normal shirt and jeans.

—

J. Michael Straczynski is giving a talk tomorrow. You might want to go see it if you can. Geeks know him as the creator/writer of the TV series Babylon 5 and a writer of comic books for Marvel, but the rest of you are about to hear a lot about this guy: he wrote a movie called Changeling. Clint Eastwood directed it; it’s up for the Palm d’Or at Cannes this year, coming soon to a theater near you. Since then he’s sold movies with directors like Ron Howard, Wolfgang Petersen, the Wachowski Brothers, and quite a few more.

How they talked him into coming to this convention, I have no idea. For fans and people interested in writing, it’s an opportunity not to be missed.

What follows after the jump may include some inside baseball, and if you’re not into comic books you might not catch all of it. What is important though is that today was the first day of this year’s Emerald City Comic Convention. Comic creators, fans and press gathered in the Washington State Convention & Trade Center to celebrate this thing we call comics books.

The first thing that a non-comics person would notice when stepping onto the convention floor is the complete range of totally inappropriate style choices for facial hair. We are not as a people a fashionable lot, and while I think most everyone can agree that a t-shirt and jeans is a fine casual clothing option when you start replacing that with a pair of too small shorts and shirt that barely covers the belly button then there are issues, at least when that’s on a guy.

This is not for the faint of heart, I’m glad that I left my fiancee at home, she can deal with me enjoying comics as a hobby, but I don’t know if she could deal with the full force of comic fandom. Can you?

As soon as I arrived I got into line to shake the hand of Wil Wheaton. I enjoyed him as Wesley Crusher back on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but its been his blogging work that had really made me want to shake his hand and get an autograph. Both on his own site [wwdn] and on Metroblogging LA [mbla] he’s been both entertaining and honest, which is hard to do as a writer.

Of course after forty minutes in line I manage to get myself nervous, and when buying his book [mp] and getting him to sign it I end up coming off as unimpressed with the entire thing as if I was buying the book from Barnes & Noble. I’m sure I’ll kick myself about it for days, but when it comes to being a fanboy I hate a great deal of self-conscious self-loathing.

Having learned the last two years that unless you’re wanting to commission a drawing from an artist, it’s generally best to avoid lining up for them, I quickly managed to go from table to table hitting the creators I wanted to get autographs from. My goal was, having finally finished with Wheaton’s line, to not wait in line again today.

My first stop was unplanned, but I noticed Colleen Coover’s [ca] art and having enjoyed it in backup stories in Marvel’s X-Men First Class, I decided to buy a few small prints from her. She was incredibly friendly, and it helped brighten my spirits after feeling an initial bout of feeling completely overwhelmed by the size of the event. She’s done some work for The Stranger, so even if you’re not a Marvel reader you might recognize her art work. In fact everyone I finally did end up meeting was incredibly friendly. Jeff Parker, Gail Simone were both fun to talk to. It’s always nice to know that the comic book you’re reading isn’t being written by a complete asshole.

I finally retreated to one of the presentation rooms for the Spotlight on Tim Sale [ts]. Tim Sale grew up locally, so a number of the people in the audience were either family members or longtime friends. If you’re not familiar with his name you might recognize it from the hit NBC show Heroes where his work is used for the paintings that predict the future, he’s also had successful runs on such comic characters as Batman, Superman and Spider-Man.

Next was the Mondo Marvel Panel (pictured above), which brought together (from left to right) Ed Brubaker, Robert Kirkman, Skottie Young and Jeff Parker all of whom write for Marvel. Brubaker, who lives in Seattle, fielded the most questions since he’s currently writing some of the most popular comics today including Captain America and Uncanny X-Men.

After the panel I left for lunch, realizing it was three and I had yet to eat anything all day. I ended up not going back, since I think I can probably see everything I need to with one day to go.

Anyone else go to the show? Any good stories?

After much delay at the border I arrived in Seattle just as the last of the rush hour traffic was dying off. Driving via memorized Google guidance, I leave the I5 in search of my hotel The Roosevelt. As I’m checking in I get upgraded from a single room to a queen, which upon inspection seems to simply mean that my bed is larger because the room itself is tiny.

I debate phoning down to the front desk to inquire as to which Roosevelt the hotel is named after, I need to know these things if I’m going to dress appropriately for the evening since Franklin and Theodore are very different styles. A Google search lets me know that it is Theodore, so I don’t bother unpacking my monocle.

My friend, also named Jeff, meets me about an hour later. We’re friends from high school, and he’s one of the few of my friends who’ve made a move to the United States and managed to make it stick. He works in Redmond, but lives in Seattle so I trust him with our evening plans.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have, we end up at Von’s a fake New York style bar that’s attached to the hotel. Yes, my local Seattle Sherpa had guided me to the hotel bar.

It’s not that Von’s in and of itself is bad just that it’s over priced, beer costing a great deal more there than at even the sort of Vancouver bars were they have the classy prostitutes. Hungry I look at the menu, but after spotting deep friend brie I put it aside. I might not be a thin man by any accounts, but the fact that everything on the menu involves a deep fryer scares me. More so after a stop at Jack in the Box in Bellingham reminded me that a large meal at a fast food joint in Canada is about the same as a small or medium here.

The beer is good, and after a frustratingly long wait to be grilled by a suspicious border guard who could not seem to understand why I would be driving to Seattle for a comics convention unless I worked in the industry, it was nice to relax with an old friend. A few tables down someone was talking animatedly about the Messiah Complex storyline in the X-Men comics this year, and I had to grin. It was the sort of nerd talk that one could only find in a hotel bar a few blocks away from where they were holding the comic convention.

ESPN was on the television showing highlights from the Red Wings / Stars series. I felt a little lost when Canadian cultural icon Don Cherry came on the television and began discussing the series for ESPN. There are certain parts of Canada where Cherry is revered as a god, but mostly after years of public gaffs and near racism mostly he’s just the comedic relief on the CBC’s Hockey Night In Canada. Seeing him on ESPN is like having Rush Limbaugh do a weekly thirty minute show live from Ottawa about the day’s events in Parliament.

Finished with my beer and his wine we spend some time trying to flag down a waitress. Since we’d moved from the outside seating area to the bar due to the declining temperature we’re orphan customers. Neither our outside server or the barmaid are particularly interested in us, and it’s not until an elderly couple comes up to the bar next to us and tries to order the most expensive liquor on display that we get anyone to notice us.

In Seattle with a few drinks in us what are two young and vital men to do? Clearly they go across the street and spend the next forty minutes browsing Barnes and Noble. I look for one of Wil Wheaton’s books, since he’s at the convention and I want to have something to get autographed. I have a copy of his first book Just A Geek [am] but it got left in Kelowna during my move to Vancouver. They don’t have a copy, and the ordering option is no option at all. I eventually settle on a discounted Nick Hornby novel, which I did not even realize had been released, and Friday Night Lights (the book not the movie or TV show). Books are shockingly cheaper in the US, more so now that our dollars are basically at par and so I spend less than I would have at a used book store back in Canada.

We exit and make plans for the next day after the convention, and he heads off. I travel up back to the small room, with a Queen bed, and try to find a free source for Wi-Fi so I won’t have to pay the $9.50 a day the hotel charges for their internet access. It’s just a bit past 11, but already the street outside my hotel window is barren. I worry that maybe the hotel front desk staff have not told me about something, like that at midnight is when the werewolves feed, but then I remember where I’m staying.

If there are werewolves here the staff at a hotel named after Theodore Roosevelt will know how to kill them. Had it been Franklin then I’d have reason to worry.