News and Special Feelings!

I posted most of this a while ago on the OJ Board. Now I have ammended it slightly for a hip new audience.

So much has happened. This is what it was:
We (that is, Chris Maher and I) flew into Seattle in the dead of night and hit the ground running in that soggy little city. Basically, picture a montage of Seattle-related fun and, short of getting gang-banged by Gary Peyton and Bill Gates, we did it. We went to the Space Needle and won a stuffed lizzard playing ski-ball. We went to Pike Place Market and saw them throwing salmon about. We saw the World's Largest Collection of Giant Shoes. Chris bought some sissy-ass poetry books at a store called "Books Like a Mother-####a". We looked at various art at a museum including Andy Warhol pictures and totum poles and whack glass sculpture. We got tanked at a bar with a midget waitress after having talked of little else but the Verne Troyer incident on "The Surreal Life" since our plane took off which seemed highly spooky at the time. We bought amusing records at groovy indie record stores. We saw Danny and Karen and slept on their floor.

We had to cancel our first show in Portland because it was in the middle of a crazy goddamn ice storm and no one could drive a foot without plowing into either an adorable puppy or an adorable highway divider. Instead we went and got plastered to the frickin' wall and sang karaoke at this super sketched out bar where you had to get buzzed in though a metal grate just to enter because there are so many frickin' crack heads in the 'hood. I sang "Livin' on a Prayer". Chris did a mean "Motown Philly" duet with my friend Scott. We watched "Napoleon Dynamite" the next day and it has changed our conversational patterns forever. Gosh. Then we went to a tiki karaoke bar and this guy from the Shins was there and sang "Kiss" and it was awesome.

Scott and I drove up to this awesome lookout point way up in the hinterlands above, what was reportedly, the beautiful Columbia River Valley. Hard to say what was down there, though, what with all the fog. Might have been a desert or an Indian Casino being run by a giant squid. We couldn't see a foot in front of our faces. And we almost drove over the side it was so icy. Luckily, we didn't. That would have been awkward.

But you know what's not awkward or sucky in any way? Going to see "Team America" at a movie theater that serves beer in the middle of the day! I love Portland! And I love my boozy friend!

Then Chris and I rocked the pipes out of the goddamn walls at this very pleasant coffee shop with Chris's friend Sylvan, who had set the whole thing up.

After that, the only thing to do was go to a titty bar where the drinks were unbelievably cheap considering they were served with a side of fully-exposed vagina (Oregon is the only state where that is legal so we had to go take advantage of it the next day, too, at a way darker bar where the girls were intimidatingly hot and tattooed.)

Then we were at this record store and this rockabilly dude totally remembered me from the last time I was there and gave me a free Rick James button and then this other chick who worked there called on the phone accross the store to tell rockabilly guy that she thought Chris was cute and we totally should have been on the case and could have had affairs with record employees but our games were off.

Then we went to Olympia and were staying at this black metal compound. It's highly filthy and evil. Chris and I both thought we had contracted skabies and I spent a whole night tossing around because my eyelids were itching and I was sure it was the end. But Chris did some research on the little critters and learned that they can't live on their own for too long and that since we weren't totally snuggling round the clock with any of the potential carriers, we would be okay. Actually, none of the metalist even had skabies. It was all just in our minds.
My friends out there (especially the Weaver boys and Aaron's somewhat-recent lady friend) are probably some of the most kind and smart and entertaining people ever created in the history of the goddamn world. I got to see MacDawg, which is always a treat. The Weavers lent us their giant b###hin' van that smelled awful but looked amazing. We got a parking ticket. We were sad. But not for long. The man can't keep down the party. And Aaron made us two of the most amazing meals ever conceived of by man or beast. You wouldn't know it to look at him, with his filthy mountain aesthetic, but Aaron is the world's greatest maker of hollandaise sauce. Fresh eggs from punk rock chickens: that's the key.

We played this show that Danny set up for us at the Eagles Club. It was pretty odd but everyone there was in it to win it and bought cds and all that good capitalist stuff. We went to an indie rock party for a minute and then to Metalfest (which my friends, of course, were organizing) and then back to the compound to drink homemade mead. Gave us the sweetest night of sleep we'd had all trip. Well done, Meghan.

Seattle Round II was a little more low-key than Round I. We played our show on Capital Hill. Chris got rolicking drunk. I saw some old friends from way back in the day. It was a good show and Danny was awesome for making it happen. Kindof a restaurant more than a music club, but once you decided it was cool, (and had a bowl of the ridiculously good pumpkin soup), all was well.

Next day I hung out with my friend that I had stayed with the night before in the morning and then he dropped me off at my aunt's house. My aunt seems like the kind of woman who might not enjoy going to see "Phantom of the Opera", but see it she did. Well, my friend Siri and I had a good time anyway. If you have the chance to see this fine film, I recommend you take it. But bring some cracker for all the cheese! Ho ho!

Last day, Chris and I bided our time buying music and drinking coffee and finally got on a midnight plane to New York. Very dramatic indeed.


I came back with a red electric guitar. Chris got a faux-hand-drawn picture of himself with the lizzard. Now everything's different.

It's a gravy train with biscuit wheels out there. Can't wait to do it again.