Inspired by Kate O. and her efforts over at the Karate Kid-fueled Effing the Ineffable, here's a photographic rundown on my 2010:

January

As you might recall, both myself and sixteen of my coworkers got the boot from Comcast in November of 2009 when the company decided to ax our department for reasons still unknown. I had just celebrated my seventh anniversary at Comcast. Two of my coworkers were expecting and another had just bought a house. It seemed like the end of the world at the time. Not only was I out of work, I could no longer afford the rent on my cottage over near Tryon Creek. But the Flying Spaghetti Monster never closes a door without opening a stove vent. I wound up enrolling at PSU for a second degree. At first, sitting in lecture halls alongside students five to ten years younger than me was intimidating. Then they started inviting me on their radio shows. Pictured above: the on-air booth at KPSU.

February 2010

I spent a few days up in Vancouver during the Winter Olympics with my sister Shanna and her finance Kyle. It was awesome. There were roughly 500,000 people roaming the city and the surrounding mountains dressed like this. Did I lie about my nation of origin a few times? Maaaaaaybe. Hey, it was the only way I managed to slip in among the locals watching the US v. Canada hockey match in a rowdy downtown bar.

March

Nuthin' says "spring has sprung" like grease-covered hippie gents in the Park Blocks.

April

I celebrated Songkran, the Thai New Year, with my friends Pete and Nong down at the Wat Buddha Temple in Salem. This involved lots of food and washing both Buddha statues and the hands of monks.

May

Olly and Rhi, two pals, decided to tie the knot in Akron so a bunch of us flew over for their nuptials. This allowed me to tour such legendary Ohio locales as a "world famous" Bible museum, White Castle, Pancake House and the always lovely, always post-apocalyptic Cleveland! Here's a shot of my friend Bryan passed out at the airport next to a Tauntuan that was purchased at a vintage toy shop...in Cleveland! Cleveland! Cleve...

June

"M" from Bubbly Red Stuff came to town and I wound up tagging along with her on a tour of the Oregon Outback. We ate ice cream in Ashland, got attacked by a vicious swarm of mosquitoes in a ghost town and blazed around the Alvord Desert Knight Rider-style. This blurry snapshot of my guitar at a campsite outside of Lakeview doesn't even come close to doing the trip justice.

July

Here's the belly of a woman I found myself sitting next to on a bench at the Oregon Country Fair. "Tykes" seemed to be the theme of my summer. I volunteered at an educational day camp out in Tigard. You haven't lived until you've had to lead a dozen 6-year olds on a nature hike. You've heard the term "herding cats"? This was more like herding cats with the attention spans of Animal from The Muppets.

August

I wound up back in Black Rock City as a volunteer for the 2010 Burning Man Festival. I worked on/got-in-the-way of a project organized by a group of Portland-based artist and served as a staff writer at The Black Rock Beacon. My assignments included an investigation into the police presence in BRC and constructing an art bench covered in parodies of daily comics. I also got the opportunity to fly a small stunt plane for ten whole minutes, compliments of Pedro, a pilot from the Bay Area.

September

I wasted away a miserable few days in Amsterdam in 2007. I received some terrible news about a family member, got searched by the police and nearly had my passport stolen by a fishy hotel clerk dressed in a Reservoir Dogs suit. I vowed to never return to the Netherlands. Three years later, I ate those words when "M" invited me over for a few weeks. With her watching my back, things went much smoother this time around. We even managed to pull off a long weekend in Istanbul. This photo was taken at a lamp shop in the Grand Bazaar.

October

Dang, another photo of Bryan? Well, this time he's dressed as Columbo. This blurry shot was captured on Halloween night at Roadside Attraction in SE Portland. It's become my favorite bar in town. The front yard is a great place to pass a sunny summer afternoon or a winter night. A large fire pit manages to keep things toasty. The decor inside is one part opium den, one part limbo and the jukebox is killer. On Halloween right around midnight, the place felt downright supernatural. The back room, which features a blood-red pool table, an old piano and eerie portraits, looked like various revelers had been kidnapped moments before we got there. Two full pint glasses sat at a table in the corner. A shot of whiskey was left untouched on a stool. Someone had abandoned a homemade proton pack on the floor. Outside, a guy tripping on acid while dressed in a creepy seahorse costume was posed for photos by the fire.

November

I spent the fall months interning for a US senator. Among my tasks: inspecting mail for anthrax, volunteering for Obama at the Convention Center, shaking hands with Sam Adams and contending with the never-ending slew of strange "regulars" that called in to the Senator's office everyday. This snapshot? It was taken on Election Night at the downtown Hilton moments before John Kitzhaber's speech. That night he was still locked in a stand-off with Chris Dudley for the governorship.

December

Last but certainly not least, a "cock monkey." Three of these bad boys showed up in the mail in a package sent to Portland direct from the Red Light District in Amsterdam (via Leiden). I kept them stored away in a foot locker until the holidays, when they were given to Pete, Nong and Kyle. You can imagine what's hidden beneath all that "No Peaking!" ribbon. A squeeze of their left paws gets these monkeys, well, "excited." One of them did a hell of a job as a back-up singer during a stint at the Voicebox karaoke lounge a few days before Christmas. Another was last reported getting on a plane to Thailand, where he's hopefully entertaining plenty of Nong's relatives and colleagues.

Labels: photos

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Labels: dawn, photos

A few weeks ago, I was called upon to drive some folks to PDX at 4 AM. On my way back, I realized that I hadn't seen a Portland sunrise in years. I headed towards Mount Tabor and captured some iPhone snapshots along the way. It was eerie and serene to see normally jam-packed streets empty. The typically packed tables at the Belmont Stumptown were entirely empty. The calmness was equal parts awesome and unsettling and, yeah, this sentence is pretty pretentious. On to the photos!

Labels: dawn, photos

Here's an iPhone snapshot of my little corner at "Nuts, Bolts and Slabs of Steel," a gallery show devoted to all things bridge-related. It continues through September in the lobby of the Olympic Mills Conference center down at 107 SE Washington St. If you go, please, be gentle. This is my first time (at having any of my photos displayed on a wall in a public venue that isn't right next to my high school's dark room in the year 1997). My three photos are tucked over by the bathrooms.

Also: here's a photo someone took of a gal ignoring my photos at the grand opening back in July. It should go without saying that this image currently serves as the background on my laptop.

Labels: photos

The photos that appear at the top of the blog always have a Portland-connection but this one could probably use some context. It was taken at Ground Kontrol in Chinatown and it's a screen shot of The Simpsons arcade game. I figured it was fitting since Another Portland Blog recently survived its own near-death experience.

Thanks for nothing, old server.

Labels: photos

Please enjoy this Flickr gallery of snapshots I took in and around San Francisco and Monterey a few weeks ago. They include photos of things like creepy modern art, Mission District murals, annoying alarm clocks that roll off nightstands, a post-modern pirate-shop/after-school writing center, a dog in a coffee shop, bars of Alcatraz-brand soap, a Golden Gate Bridge-themed GEICO ad, a cigar chomping, talking-cat fortune teller machine and a painting in the bathroom at a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurant (see above).

If you ever find yourself at one I recommend the fish and chips. Also included: photos of that gigantic, garish mansion where, if I remember correctly from the tour, Citizen Kane hung out with Charlie Chaplin and Bob Hope (that's the one up top there).

Labels: off-topic, photos

This photo was taken way back in September of 2006. Can anyone out there tell me what local business currently or once served as the home of this toilet-seat emblazoned with the image of what I think is supposed to be Jerry Garcia? My memory is fuzzy.

Labels: cell, phone, photos

A shadow on the wall at the Crystal Ballroom.

Labels: cell, phone, photos

Crime:

These posters are all over NW Portland right now. Based on Potato's MySpace page, they've been up for a while now. Apparently, she was stolen when her owner let her outside to, er, um...how should I put this? "Use the facilities"?

Dog-napping a pit bull as she's trying to tinkle? That takes cojones of solid rock. Here's hoping Potato will make it home soon.

Punishment (?):

There was an evidence tag attached to the door. There's a story here but I don't know what it is but I'm sure it can be found over here.

Labels: cell, phone, photos

This could very well be the blurriest, most worthless entry in the neverending, perpetually blurry and, more often than not, worthless series.

What you're looking at here is a poster for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull spotted in the lobby of the Pioneer Place Stadium 6. I was there to see a third-sequel to another '80s action classic. Rambo doesn't hold a candle to its First Blood predesessors but it does finally give the series' killing machine namesake a chance to set off a very large, possibly atomic, bomb.

Rambo contains a shocking amount of completely unnecessary depictions of rape, torture and brutality that have no real place in what is, for the most part, a big, dumb action movie. There's scenes in it far uglier than a hundred much more serious war films. To be honest, I was expecting 90 minutes of ridiculousness along the lines of Rambo killing a helicopter with a bow and arrow ala part 3. Despite it all, I'll be quoting the incredibly cheesy "quick, give me your Claymore!" line for weeks to come.

Labels: cell, phone, photos

Nearly a week between blog posts? Yeah, it happens. Things have been both boring and busy 'round these parts. Here are some cell phone photos from my recent travels:

A display in the Side Street Gallery down the street from Holman's Bar off Burnside.

I've seen a lot of cars driving around town with menorahs on their roofs this holiday season. A caravan was rolling down NW 21st on Saturday night with the occupants honking their horns and shouting out the windows. Hey, it beats staying home to play with a dreidel.

And here's a photo of the clock tower at Beaverton Town Square. I think. If you're in the market for buildings for a Dickens-esque Christmas display, I recommend a shop called The Mole Hole located next door to the square's Trader Joe's. They've probably got the largest selection of tiny plastic street lights in the Portland metro area. There's also a large village display up for grabs complete with a miniature ski lift.

Labels: cell, holidays, phone, photos

This doesn't seem like the sort of bumpersticker you'd typically see on the back of a VW van. I spotted it down at Cannon Beach a while back. Maybe the owner's advocating the welfare state because they receive a monthly check? I can't tell what level of irony this sticker is supposed to be working on. Perhaps that Swedish flag offers a vital clue...

Labels: cell, phone, photos

It's been a while since I've done one of these. This one comes from the Grand Lodge in Forest Grove.

Labels: cell, phone, photos

If only every day was Robot Sale 20% Off Day. Sigh....

Labels: cell, phone, photos, robots

Everybody,

Cheers to you all, scattered throughout the Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and Southeast/East Asia. Despite what the calendar says, it's 69 and overcast here in Portland. As is typical on days like this, it's either going to start raining or the sun is going to come out in the next five minutes.

And I'm sitting here on the porch at the Goose Hollow Inn, leeching off a stranger's wireless router so I can read about the movie version of Underdog on what has proven to be an incredibly unproductive Monday. Wish y'all could be here doing the same. Not reading about Underdog so much as drinking outdoors on a weekday afternoon, regardless of the weather.

My laptop battery's about to go dead. Something ought to be done about the lack of electrical outlets in Portland's lounge-around establishments.

Anyway, cheers.

-Brandon

Labels: cell, phone, photos

A foosball table at a movie theater in Salem. 50 cents buys a match and the winner takes home a superball dispensed from separate containers over the goals. Neat.

Labels: cell, phone, photos

Melancholy theme mostly unintentional.

I don't know the story behind that destroyed beach cabin. It can be found on the south end of Cannon Beach, about a half-mile up from Hug Point. I pass by that spot at least once a year but, for some reason, I had no memory of it until this summer. I don't know if its collapse recently happened but the cabin looks like it's been sitting there, in that condition, for years.

As for the gent in the bottom photo, he walked down to the ocean from a house overlooking the beach dressed like that on a 75 degree evening. He stared at the ocean for a bit and then turned to head down shore.

Labels: beach, photos

Yup, it's a cellphone picture of a cellphone.

A colleague in DC stood in line for over two hours yesterday to buy an iPhone and found himself in the middle of a shoot for a foreign documentary. After a few hours of playing with it, his only complaint was that the keyboard will take some getting used to. Meanwhile, out west I found myself wandering into an Apple Store to kill time before a screening of Ratatouille.

My verdict: the iPhone is super neat but talking into one isn't exactly comfortable. I tried a phone call and it felt like my face was pressed up against an iPod instead of a cellphone. Still, the interface looks fantastic and the various menus are easy and quick to navigate. The internet even moved along speedily, no doubt aided by the store's AirPorts. I could see buying one and never needing to look at the instruction book. It's that easy to use.

Further gripes from another user can found over here.

Labels: cell, phone, photos

Taken in the Raleigh Hills location of Hot Lips Pizza.

Labels: cell, phone, photos

Ok, so this wasn't taken with my cell phone but I still think it's worthy of this endless W2B photo series. If you're ever in the Tacoma area and find yourself hungry for "antique sandwiches," look no further than the Antique Sandwich Co. They're located in Rusthon.

Labels: cell, phone, photos