We went to Benaroya Hall to see Belle & Sebastian (name taken from a cartoon, not the names of people in the band). We ran into Peter Johnson and his cousin in the lobby, which was a surprise. He said that Reid and Marissa were also there. I should have expected that. We did see them across the hall once we got into the show and texted Reid to say “Hi”.

It was a good show, although our seats weren’t very good. They played a cross-section of their songs, but with so many albums and EPs they’ve made over the years — they used to be very prolific — a 90-minute show seems short. I’m surprised they didn’t play “Stars of Track and Field”. I like the newer albums but I miss the older songs with the trumpet and horns. I didn’t think to bring the better camera, but at least I took some videos with my iPhone.

Continue reading “Belle & Sebastian at Benaroya Hall” →

We had dinner before the show at Lecösho, a place we’ve never been. Since we paid for parking at Benaroya Hall, we could walk to the restaurant from the parking garage, just a block west in Harbor Steps. It was a great evening and we caught the end of the sunset from the restaurant.

We had Penn Cove mussels and beef short ribs for appetizers, I had the salmon (of course) for my entree and Gay had the Porchetta, which was stuffed pork wrapped in pig skin cooked slowly for several hours. For dessert, I had an ice cream sandwich, which was a scoop of chocolate ice cream, a scoop of blood orange sorbet and a scoop of corn and cinnamon (!) ice cream sandwiched between two pieces of shortbread. Gay had the chocolate torte. Everything was very good.I had the Saison DuPont farmhouse ale with dinner, which went well with the food.

The US Government’s TARP bailout of the financial institutions has reaped a 8.2% profit, or $25 billion. The people (I’m looking at you Republicans and Tea Party tards) who say that government can’t do anything right don’t know history. And now we can say that they don’t understand math either.

The bailout of GM and Chrysler will not pay off, we’ll lose $17 billion on those clowns. But the AIG bailout also profited $11 billion. In total, the bailouts not only didn’t cost the US taxpayer a penny, they saved the economy from decades of recession, probably even a depression, and they profited $19 billion. And in less than 2 years.

Giving credit where credit is due, it was the Bernanke and Paulson that alerted Congress to do something, who made it possible for Bush to sign it and make it happen. Aside from the Republicans in Congress who opposed the bailouts, two responsible Republicans and a Democratic Congress worked together. Government solved yet another problem that the private sector couldn’t.