A very busy weekend in Seattle….the dalai lama is everywhere, all the time…..a major green living conference has taken over the convention center….the emp is hosting its annual pop music conference, a gathering of the nations music writers, critics, ethnomusicologists, academics, PhD candidates, random eggheads, a few musicians and the odd curious onlooker such as myself. I spent most of my weekend listening to these talks…..there was a number of entertaining presentations, a fair amount of bullshit, some very dense examinations of minutia, and some genuinely enlightening moments. I particularly enjoyed Jesse Fuchs’ spiel, Greil Marcus’ critique of the Dylan tribute and David Ritz’s testimony to his life as a ghost writer for many great musicians. After 3 days of pop saturation, I hopped the monorail downtown to the green conference and immediately hit people overload….so a quick spin though the crowd and back out onto the street, managed to avoid the Dalai Lama and his motorcade all weekend, so successful on that front….