12/20 Show at Owen's House

On 12/20 Disowned was slated to play a show with Active Aggressive, Digne Y Rebelde, and Drugshit (all local hardcore/punk bands) and Malady from Tiajuana, Mexico - but they cancelled. I designed the flyer below, I will scan in a better copy when I get to a good scanner at work.

We had extended our set from a scant five to a meaty eight, plus a holiday favorite - 'Fuck Christmas' by FEAR. The acoustics were pretty off but people enjoyed our new material and extended set.

Fun fact: Owen and Jorge (the lead singer for All Systems Fail/
guy in the background) are wearing the same shirt from this LA
noise punk band Dead Noise we met a couple days earlier at a show.

Michael is hilarious to watch drum - besides being an amazing
drummer he gets really into it and makes faces.

The obligatory shot of me looking goofy and focused.

This picture will make more sense in a paragraph.

Next up was Active Aggressor - a local favorite who play fast, female fronted old school hardcore. Everyone loves them and since they have been around for a while, sing along and get really really riled up.

Which is why while moshing, someone busted through the window that Owen is standing on in the above picture. I fortuitously captured the exact moment of Owen seeing someone go through his ground floor window. Also in the picture - just to the right of Owen - is my good friend Marek, who came up from Austin, TX for the holidays.

Thanks to my quick thinking and Boy Scout training, I was able to make this awesome cardboard sheet by cutting up liquor boxes and interlocking them. Owen is stressed out as hell because it was about -15 C outside and there is a broken window. Marek is also in the picture, looking like a jolly Polack.

Awesomely enough, Active Aggressive kept playing the entire time with people moshing. After the set, and after we had patched up the window, without even asking people got a donation bowl together and in a couple of minutes everyone had pitched in enough to cover the new window and then some. It was pretty cool. It got me thinking about how Salt Lake has a tight knit enough group of people who will:

a) allow a show in their houses for extremely loud, gross, scary looking kids
b) play free shows - I have never been to a hardcore/punk show with a ticket or cover price
c) the moment something goes down - be it someone falling down in the pit, being out of gas/needing a ride, or crashing through a window - there are immediately twenty pairs of hands willing to give everything they have to help out.

I constantly scrutinize people, and can't help but wonder "What is their life worth? What are they doing that is worthwhile to justify their continued breathing?" I am usually pressed to come up with anything. Now, whenever I do that at a show, I can tell myself "These people will be good to each other and help to their fullest extent." It's more than I can say for most of humanity.

Shoe Sniffing Gnomes, Belschnickel, und Der Krampus!

Every family has their holiday traditions, and mine is no different. Every year all the kids get their picture taken with 'Father Christmas' - this awesome old pagan style Santa character. He is super friendly and always remembers our names and what we wanted last year, which for doing this for over 20 years and tons of families is quite some feat. We have pictures of all the children throughout the ages and it is really fun at Christmas to see them all sequentially.

My family also spends time with my maternal grandparents, who are old school Germans. They celebrate a little mini Christmas on the 6th of December, where you leave your shoes out and a little gnome visits your house while you sleep. If your shoes stink, it means you have been committing mischief so the gnome fills your shoes with twigs and pine needles. If you have been good, however, the gnome fills your shoes with chocolates and cookies.

When I was really young - maybe 5 or so - my grandparents filled my shoes with pine needles. When I went to put my boots on, all the pine needles (which were dry and sharp) pierced my feet and I started bawling hysterically. I didn't want to take my boots off because I thought there were snakes in my boots and if I took them off I would let the snakes out, so I just sat there crying with my parents trying to figure out what is wrong and me not wanting to walk. My grandparents came up and started teasing me about the gnome thinking I was naughty and that I should start being good lest 'Der Krampus' came to get me.

About ten years later my grandparents filled my shoes with pine needles and warned me about 'Der Krampus', albiet somewhat jokingly. Looking bewildered at them, they sat me down and explained the ancient Germanic traditions of Belschnickel and Der Krampus.

My grandparents are from Northeastern Germany, a wierd place that ties German, Scandinavian, and Eastern European cultural influences together. Even centuries after the Christianization of Europe, people still carried on Germanic Pagan traditions. One of the most awesome things is their depiction of Santa Klaus - or Belschnickel. He is a master hunter who sneaks into poor people's houses to make Christmas awesome - sometimes he leaves a big goose/Christmas feast or firewood. The best story involves an old miller who had three daughters, but couldn't afford a dowry for them - so Belschnickel snuck in and stuffed their socks with gold.

Now, when Saint Nicholaus/Belschnickel comes around to give presents/firewood to all the good deserving children and families, he wakes Der Krampus. Der Krampus is a demonic satyr who carries rusty chains with bells on them to frighten children, a fist full of birch branches to flog naughty children, and a sack for holding really naughty children to dump them in Hell later. There is a tradition on the 6th of December, when the shoe sniffing gnome comes, that the young men dress up in horns and furs and run around with chains chasing children. Supposedly this reminds children to shape up in the interval until Christmas.

Also, my Norwegian cousin Matthias sent me some pictures of a little hedgehog - or bolla piggsvin - that came to live with him and made it's nest in his recording studio/distro.

HeLa Cells are Awesome

Lately I have been reading about the history of divergent cells lineages within research over the past 75 years. I came upon the HeLa cells (which I had worked with in tissue culture research.) Turns out they initially came from the cervical cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks during the early stages of molecular biology research in the early 50's.

They are particularly awesome because they are biologically immortal - a product an an enzyme called telomerase which keeps the telomeres (repeating segments of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes) from shortening during replication. Repeated telomere wear and tear is one of the leading causes of cell age and death. Beause HeLa cells don't have to worry about it, they can reproduce endlessly given sufficient conditions to do so.

Because they are prolific and adaptive, they have become a major contaminant in most cell strains today - and as large as 10% of any known cell line might have arisen from/has some HeLa cells inside of it. This actually caused a big Cold War hullaballoo after the restrictions on Soviet/US cancer research was relaxed in the 70's. Not having seen HeLa cells before, the Soviets thought the US researchers were trying to conduct biological warfare by sending them infected samples. When they isolated the HeLa cells and saw their unique capabilities they thought the US had engineered some super cell.

So as awesome as all that information is, here's what really blows my mind - that Henrietta Lacks is still living all over the world in different laboratories, and seeing how her contribution to research science has effectively made her immortal.

Awesome.