the emerald city through the eye of my emerald-ish camera phone

The Seattle trip was great I even smiled sort of...A couple of times. And when I was sober, too. that's some shit right there. That one of the left is over looking the Puget Sound and the Alaskan Highway, Highway 99, which I assume goes to Alaska eventually. You have to cut through Canada, though, but I think they're working on building a bridge over it so Americans won't get freaked out by all the polite people. I think that's just a rumor.

I'm writing this on my friends computer, because I'm out of town again. This time for the holiday. And I always feel weird about using other people's things, but I haven't been writing that much lately, and I kinda obsess about stuff like that. I'll clear out the cache if I decide to look up any pornography. That's only common decency, right?

So, yeah, there was a story too. Seattle was great and I got to meet a lot of cool people from all over the place. The last night we were in town, Saturday night, we were left to our own devices. My interviews were done. Photos were taken. The only thing left to do was enjoy the city, more than we already had been.

A couple friends of mine came into town, the married couple whose wedding gave me the name "Charles," and my photographer knew someone who lived in Seattle and another friend was passing through town that same weekend. We all got together on Saturday night and rolled out with a decent-sized crew.

The Wife stayed back at the hotel to take a nap, so the rest of us had a couple drinks at the hotel bar and then hit one of those peep show strip club places before grabbing food and more beer at the Brooklyn. By the time we got back to the hotel, where we were planning on doing some drinking before going out, Frances Farmer's Revenge hit my intestines with a fierceness, so while everyone was getting drunk in the room next door, I was sitting in my bathroom, groaning on the bowl.

My stomach settled just when everyone started getting antsy to leave. We shambled down through the lobby and grabbed a cab on the corner. I'm not sure where this guy was from, but he was nice enough to take us all in one cab. We headed over to Charlie's on Capitol Hill, which was a bar/pub/restaurant type place that I'd visited the first time I'd visited Seattle with the married couple. It's a nice place, and it had pretty decent food. I figured we'd just start there and go somewhere else, but things deteriorated pretty fast. My photographer and his friend were wasted, the friend moreso than the photographer. The friend was hitting on the waitress even though he could barely sit up, not that I can blame him (hot), and she did her best to take it with good humor.

A table of old rocker looking dudes started to take notice of our drunken debauchery and I'm not sure when it happened, but my photographer shouted, "hey, everybody. It's the Sex Pistols!" to the shock and confusion of many, myself included. I'm not much for making a scene, or talking to anyone, really, but the old dudes at the other table just laughed it off and after my friend bought them a round (I guess to diffuse any ill will, if there was any, and I don't think there was), our two tables merged into one loud, sloppy mess.

Turns out they weren't the Sex Pistols, but one of the dudes was the drummer from LA Guns, some shlocky cock rock band back in the day whose members actually made up the "Guns" in Guns N' Roses. I think he was the drummer. Anyway, It was really surreal. One of the dudes was a comedian named Edsel and he did this really cool magic trick with a cigarette and then showed us how he did it. In actuality, it may not have been that cool, but the pretty waitress kept asking me if I'd like another rum and coke, and who was I to say no to such a nice, pretty lady? With all the talking and yelling and introducing and basically helping to carry the photographer's friend out of the back of the bar, I started to lose track of how many I'd had. People kept proclaiming they were buying rounds, I think, and when I spied over at the computer cash register, I thought I saw that our tab was well over $100 bucks, which wasn't bad considering how many of us there were and that someone had ordered food.

Another one of the old rock dudes called himself "Southside Johnny." I said that I'd heard the name before, but at the time I couldn't place it. After I'd gotten back home, I did a search for him and remembered...the dude from the Asbury Jukes. The dude who'd played with Springsteen; but the pictures I saw didn't look like the dude we met at the bar. I'm not denying that he was in a Southside Johnny, but he definitely wasn't the one I'd said I'd heard of. I got to thinking that there must be a lot of Southside Johnny's in the US, considering that every town, no matter how small it is, does, in fact, have a south side. And John is a very common name.

We never did go anywhere else. My friend told them that I work for a music magazine and kept talking us up, which was really nice of him, but it kinda caused the old rock dudes to suck up to me a bit. That kinda bummed me out for whatever reason. That's never really happened to me before, and after a couple days of having to talk up the magazine, I was just looking to forget about it and relax. I did end up giving out my card, though, because I'm a fucking whore. Southside actually called me on Monday and said he had a great time hanging out with us, and I told him the same.

I like instances like that, when you meet people you're probably never going to see again. It was kinda like my experience on the train. All your stories are new and fresh, you laugh and drink it up, then say goodnight and that's that. I'm sure there's some kind of insight there, but whatever. Here's some more pictures, and they're really really blurry.

• Disco night with bad ass DJ.
• More blurry disco madness.
• DJ spins and sings a great set of soul music.
• Old dude rocking anti-establishment, counter culture folk songs at Pike's Market. He had a great voice and good lyrics. I couldn't afford to by his CD, because the man really does got us down. I listened to his song and shook his hand instead. I guess that gives me another reason to go back.