the boys of summer

It's been a little quiet around here. I know. It's a little stark too. I'm planning on putting up a fresh coat of paint to make things a little more lively, but the ambiguity works for now, I guess.

Last Saturday, I went to go see my first Mets game in a couple years. I was meeting up with a couple friends who were arriving on the train. I'd gotten the subway before them, and I wanted to get their early to check out the new field, Citi Field, which will open in 2009.

It looked beautiful. It's going to be weird to watch the Mets play in their. Shea's kind of a dump, but it was home for so long. I have a lot of memories there (mostly bad...I've seen them lose a ton in that building), and it does have a kind of boxy charm to it. There's no fancy awnings or rotundas. The outfield doesn't have all the irregularities that have become so en vogue in the newer parks. Shea is just big and round and blue and symmetrical. And it has a giant light-up apple that pops out of a top hat when the Mets hit a home run. I love that thing. I'm happy they're bringing it over to the new place.

I walked around the exterior of Citi Field, which is almost entirely completed, and then tried to find a bodega to get a six pack to drink with my friends in the parking lot. I eventually ended up in a tiny shop inside a gas station that sold either giant cans of Foster or single 12 oz. cans of Bud. There was only one Foster left so I had to opt for the King of Beers.

I brought them up to the register, and the man behind the counter was clearly Middle Eastern or perhaps Pakhistani in origin. He seemed like a pleasant fellow and he had a robust, gray beard. I placed the beers down clumsily and went for my wallet. He smiled.

"No no no no," he said.

I was confused. Maybe I just didn't understand him.

"Excuse me?" I asked.

"No no no no," he answered as he put the beers in a plastic bag and tied the loops in a knot.

"I'm sorry," I said. "How much are those?" I opened my wallet and looked up at him.

He said, "No. No," and pushed the bundle of beers toward me, smiling.

I grabbed the bag and thanked him and walked out.

I would never question free alcohol, so honestly, I don't care why he did it. Maybe ever 10th customer gets free Budweiser. That seems like a bad business practice, but maybe he's not in it for the money. Maybe he just wants to get Mets fans drunk. Maybe he was something of a mystic and realized, just by looking at me, that I've fallen on hard times. The money in my wallet was all I had for the weekend. Perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity. Even though I'm the pastiest Sicilian-Italian-American dude of all time, I have been mistook for an Iraqi, Egyptian and even Indian (not the American kind) on more than one occasion. This has happened even before I started wearing a beard, but now that I do, this has happened even more regularly; so regularly, that I'm thinking of changing my answers to future racial/ethnicity questions on future surveys and censuses. Maybe, he saw me as a kinsman, and as such, extended to me the hospitality he would have a relative. That's admirable, I think, that kind of selflessness, especially in the distribution of alcohol.

Like I said, I have no idea why, but it made my day--especially since the Mets got reamed --but I'm keeping the beard just in case.

the lonliest road/western hospitality

Sometimes things don't live up to their names, but that's not the case with "The Lonliest Road in America." I figured that in this age of Internets and Walmarts and strip malls, that there weren't many places in the country that were untouched by the swift hand of progress.

I'm big enough to admit when I'm wrong.

I pulled into a town called Fallon in western Nevada. It contained--from what I could tell--nothing but fast food restaurant that looked as if they were built just an hour ago. One of which was a KFC/Long John Silver combo that employed around 10 kids, half of whom were sitting in the dining room area bored out of their minds. They each sat in different booths creating the illusion that the restaurant was busy. I had a $5 gift certificate to KFC, so I got a two-piece with some corn and the worst potato salad ever (I only took a bite). The young woman beind the counter was very pleasant and confused by the gift certificate. After about five minutes and consulting two other employees, everything was set and my order was entered into The Matrix.

I had just about over a quarter tank of gas in the car, so I asked her if she knew how far away the next town was. After all, if I was about to embark upon the Lonliest Road in America, running out of gas would create a certain amount of distress. She asked which direction, and when I answered, "East," she started as if to say something, paused, smiled and said, "Oh, I have no idea."

That was enough for me to opt for gassing up in Fallon. I pulled into a Native American-themed MegaGas stop on the edge of town, just a stones throw from Fallon's biggest attraction: a cemetary. And then I hit the road.

Within a few miles, the strip mall town had faded into obscurity, the speed limit on the two-lane highway inflated to a whopping 70mph, and I was quite literally in the middle of fucking nowhere. But I'd found a pretty sweet classic rock station on the radio, the sun was setting over the high desert and everything seemed right with the world.

But then it got darker. The scan function on my car's stereo ran through the FM dial without settling on a single station and I was stuck listening to Helloween's "Keeper of the Seven Keys" over and over again because it's on the CD that's stuck in the radio. Wildlife lurked in every corner, mostly of the benign type, and by benign, I mean dead. I was actually surprised there wasn't more roadkill strewn about this ghostly Autobahn. The few cars on the road zipped by me doing 75 as if I was in neutral and wildlife warning signs included cows, deers and Horned Gods. However, most of the carcasses were just unidentifiable forms of rodent matter.

I did see a few living beasties. One rabbit thought it would be a good idea to launch itself at my rear tire (luckily its aim was off), and outside the town of Austin, climbing to the top of a summit, I encountered two deers in the middle of the road. Since I was only doing 35 at the time, I was able to slow down to a stop. One of the deers quickly slinked into the surrounding brush, but the other dawdled on the road for a little while and walked along side of me as a I rolled to a stop before it darted away.

The bugs weren't so lucky. As my high beams shone across the dark, high desert night, hordes of flying insects swarmed toward the sweet embrace of death. But I pressed on, plowing through the bottom rung of the food chain, because I needed to get to Ely, which as I found out this evening is pronounced E-lee and not E-lie.

The first leg of the trip ended around midnight local time, and I'm currently holed up in the Historic Hotel Nevada, which has also played host to the likes of Mickey Rooney, whose suite is just a few doors down from mine. When I got my room, they handed me a heavy brass key and a coupon to a free drink at the dive bar across the street. When I went to redeem my prize, the bartender filled up a 10 oz. mug. I figured I'd have another, but when I asked her if the place took plastic, she said that it did, but the machine was acting all hokey and she wasn't sure if it would work. She then asked me what I wanted and said she'd fix it for me free of charge, so I got a Jim Beam on the rocks. When I was done, I said good night, and she came out from behind the bar, shook my hand and said, "Hey, enjoy your stay in Eeeleee." When I got back to my hotel/gambling hall, I redeemed my other ticket for a free margarita, and won $6 on the video poker machine built into the bar top. Enjoyment guaranteed.

Best Lonely Road Sing-a-long: "Here I Go Again" by White Snake, which came on as soon as I left Fallon.

Trip Rule #1: If Tom Petty comes on the radio, you must listen to it. One drink must be taken for every instance of "Free Fallin'" (I heard it twice).

[insert song title referring to california here]

I feel that I've done all I can in California, because on Friday, I learned how to Frisbee golf (or disc golf, or, as I like to call it, Frolf, which sounds sort of sounds like a hobbit). You wind through the forest and drink beer (or smoke weed if you're so inclined) and toss discs at little poles with baskets on them. Exactly the sort of things hobbits would do. It was a blast, even though it was really hot. Like really hot.

Last night was my last night in the state as a resident, though I've kinda been homeless for the past week or so. We went to some oonch oonch yuppie party at a local hotel. We had $400 in free booze. I got obliterated. The bartender had spectacular cleavage, and there was a bongo player and a fashion show. I missed the fire dancers in lieu of getting booze, but the go-go dancers were tearing it up inside. Well, one was; she really knew how to shake it. The other one was kind of bland. Thumbs down, go-go girl. Anyway, the good thing about drinking Jameson all night (and I mean all night) is that I never wake up with a hangover, though sometimes it makes me act and speak in a way that's unbecoming of an upstanding gentleman. I think I did OK last night. I looked that bartender in the eye and everything.

Thanks for seven good years, California.

american spirit

The guy at the liquor store isn't a friend of mine, but he might as well be. I see him more than most of my friends. Every time I see him, he gives a big smile and a hearty hello and he's always curious about what beer I'm going to buy. I get a lot of the weirder stuff, a lot of the stronger stuff, which he takes pride in stocking. Once he told me that he wished all his customers had the same taste in beer as I did. I said well, yeah, because it's more expensive, but really, he just seemed bored with the seemingly endless parade of Coors and Budweiser 30 packs that are slapped on his counter. Maybe my sixes of whatever broke up the monotony of his day. I don't know.

Like I said, we're not really friends. I don't know his name. I never ask people's names (I figure they'll tell me if they want me to know), but I do get weirded out when I see someone else working the counter. I think the guy's from the Middle East somewhere. I heard him talking to a younger guy who also works there in a foreign language that could've been Arabic. I'm not a linguist, but he's definitely not a white dude. Today, I picked up a six of Moose Drool and got in line behind these two guys. I wasn't paying attention. Shit can happen right in front of me without me noticing. Once my mind gets going on something, it's really hard to get my attention. It's not usual for the place to have a line, though I know it must do good business. It's just that people usually go in, get what they want, and leave. It's all very efficient. I don't know what grabbed my attention, but I could tell the dudes in front of me were riled up about something. There was a third guy too, ordering American Spirits, but I don't think he was with the two in front of me. The liquor store guy asked him if he wanted a pack or the pouch of tobacco you can roll. That's when one of the guys in front of me piped up.

"You know what he wants," he said.

I was in my own world till just about then. I have no idea what transpired before that even though it was right in front of me. But there was something about the way the guy said it that got my attention. Then I noticed his shaved head, his white wife beater, his pasty complexion and the tattoos on his large triceps that read "white" and "anger" left to right respectively.

Him and his skinhead buddy kept shooting underhanded comments at the liquor store guy, but nothing overt or all that offensive. They'd get snide, and the liquor store guy would just kinda laugh them off. He looked completely indifferent to their comments; he just kept smiling and laughing. After they paid for they're tall boys, the talkative one dropped a penny from the change on the table hard, kinda just tossing it at the liquor store guy, but not so much to hit him with it and said something else I don't remember (I know, I'm doing a great job of telling this story), and the liquor store guy said chuckling, "That's ok, I'll forgive you this time."

I thought he handled it all very well. When I got up to the counter, I joked around with him and told him that I didn't realize the storm troopers were in town. He laughed and rung me up, but the whole time I was standing in line and looking at these guys, I couldn't help getting really angry. I wondered if one of them would notice me and think I was Jewish, because I get that a lot, and try to start shit with me in the store, or wait for me outside. I thought maybe I should hit one of them with a bottle. I figured I could get one real good before the other one pummeled me something awful. As I walked home with my six pack, I got increasingly more angry, like I should've done something, even though I didn't know what or why. Any shouting or bottle clubbing wouldn't have solved anything. They'd still be racist pricks, and I'd still be a whiny liberal (but with some whiny liberal bruises). And even worse, all that hate and anger would've made me just as bad as they were.

domesticated

There was a dusty cobweb hovering over my head as I watched Barbarians II in bed this morning. Yesterday, my roommates' room was open and I saw how nicely neat it was. I switched over to the Food Network and caught Nigella Bites. All of these things (even the barbarians) inspired me to clean my room. I threw out the garbage, riled up the dust, put away the clothes, vacuumed and Febreezed.

It's nice in there now, but I haven't spent much time there since this afternoon. It was the first noticeably nice day of the year. The temperature got somewhere in the 80s, and since we got to turn our clocks ahead one hour a couple weeks early this year, we were afforded an extra hour of warm day time. I really hate having to "spring forward." I'm a night-dweller by design and have never had much use for daylight hours. They're usually associated with working or going to school or running errands or other things I find tedious and unpleasant. Not like night time when I can drink beer or type blogs or go to rock shows.

After cleaning, I took a trip with my roommates to go food shopping. We went to Trader Joe's for sexy stuff (good meat, swank meals in a box, sea salt crystals in a nifty container with a built-in grinder, cold cuts), a local natural food store for tofu (them) and strong beer (me), a decidedly more ghetto supermarket for cheap canned stuff, frozen chimichangas and bulk pasta, and then Target for housewares and the like. I got a colander, AAA batteries, some to-go lunch Tupperware and aluminum foil. When we got home, we unpacked and I made myself grilled turkey breast and artichoke hearts. It was my first meal of the day, and I used too much salt.

My roommates told me about this show they were going to at a cafe around the corner, so I decided to tag along. There were three singer/songwriters playing acoustic and a band that rocked out a bit more. One female performer had an amazing voice that seemed to completely mesmerize the crowd, and the frontman of the band turned out to be an intern at my office who usually plays drums in other people's bands. He played covers of '50s/'60s pop and rock songs and did a version of "Dock of the Bay" with an older black gentleman who had a really soulful voice. A lot of fun for a Sunday night, made better by the pints of Redhook ESB.

When we got back home, it was more beer, snacking from all the food we'd bought and the Food Network. While watching Bobby Flay get in a meat loaf battle, the conversation turned to Ms. Lawson; my roommate heard she had some backlash from feminists regarding her image as a "domestic goddess." I'm all for ambitious, career-driven women. I don't think women belong in the kitchen, but I don't like the view that somehow domestic work is menial. Cooking a meal for myself or others is a hell of a lot more fulfilling than anything I accomplish at my job. Maybe I just need another job. I don't know, but Nigella's got a killer rack.



If you're wondering why things look different around here, it's because I re-did the layout. And I even made that swanky header graphic all by myself in Photoshop. It took me about two hours. And yeah, I know it's super basic looking, but that shit was hard so fuck off. I also resurrected the old "<" icons created by Strange Things' domestic bombshell/makeover artist R. who also did a lot of work on my last Magritte look and never got the credit she deserved because I'm a thoughtless person and a terrible friend who only cares about himself.

twists and turns

Ever since I found the love of my life in Jim Henson's Labyrinth, you can pretty much put that word on anything and I'll want it. I love that word. I like how it's got a "y" in it that you don't really pronounce. It makes the whole thing more mythical and mysterious. I even had this board game called Labyrinth where you had to navigate this marble through a wooden maze. There were holes in the board and it was nearly impossible. I never made it to the end.

Last night I saw Pan's Labyrinth, and it was pretty much more awesome than everyone says it is. It's a mix of fantasy and harsh reality (mostly harsh reality), and if you have a problem going to a movie and having to read subtitles, you should really get over it.

I was pretty much hooked from the first shot, and that wasn't the whiskey's work either. Beforehand, my friend and I went to this bar across the street called, fittingly enough, Last Call, where we got our own dose of harsh reality. It's pretty much the final resting place for this town's many lost, drunken souls. Everyone was chatty. As soon as we walked in, everyone had a story to tell and they were eager to share it, even though we were complete strangers. I bumped into another guy from Staten Island who said he ended up here when he took "a wrong turn on the freeway." He would turn and speak with me, occasionally looking up from the lottery scratch-off games he and his girlfriend were playing. Later, this other guy rambled about how fun that particular bar was the night before. He mumbled something about a band and women, and how he was supposed to be jamming at someone's house right now. I realized it was 8:30 and wondered how everyone was already so wasted.

The final act was a dude with a fresh knot in his forehead. He talked to us about the ease of getting chicks downtown, which is easy for everyone but me apparently. I mentioned something about lines, meaning lines of people, and he instantly took it to mean lines of drugs. He told us that he'd been clean for a while, but just did a few lines of crystal meth the night before. He said he knew what his triggers were, like he couldn't be around straws. Then he confided that his first baby was due in 10 days, and he'd heard about it while firefighting. He told us that he didn't want to be a father, but was going to make good on it. When the mother called him to tell her she was pregnant, he told her that he wanted her to keep the baby. "I'm a Christian," he said. "I don't believe in abortion." It's always unsettling when you're face to face with a stereotype.

bud light for dinner

The last two days have been filled with home and garden magazines, wedding guides, searching for images of Quetzalcoatl and writing someone's engagement announcement. I've done a lot of work--editing, phone calling, e-mailing. I find it best to throw myself into things after the holidays so I don't get bummed out. Unfortunately, our e-mail server's down, and my torrent of productivity hit a violent snag. I was so close to getting everything I wanted done today, but it's going to have to wait till tomorrow. I just proofed an article about framing and picking the perfect frame and matting while listening to In the Aeroplane over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel and spilled a quarter can of Bud Light on my desk.

But, you know, that's why they invented paper towels, and I found this on YouTube.



And this afternoon, when I finally rolled into the office, someone sent me this: Beauty is nothing without brains

the king of kings

The best thing about this time of year, other than the friends and family and whatnot, is that tons of little breweries put out bad ass beers. Winter seasonals comprise some of my favorite beers. They're really spicy, and they're almost always really strong. Last year, I wrote at length about the benefits of Anchor Steam's "Our Special Ale" or Anchor Christmas for short. They switch up the recipe every year, and I'm happy to say, after the past couple weeks of extensive testing, they've once again hit a home run.

Coming in as a close, but devastating second is Brown Shugga by Lagunitas. Not only is this one tasty, but it's a hefty 9.9% alcohol by volume. I usually sip one during the course of a night, in front of my television, and fall into blissful sleep. Tonight, I downed two of them and capped them off with an Anchor Christmas. I could go for a good 12-hour nap. But instead, I'm typing this and wondering what train hit me.

It's been fucking cold here, and not California cold either. Actual frigid temperatures have seeped into the valley prison, and walking to my friend's place for a movie and a couple beers was a treacherous journey. The heavy beers warmed me right up, and watching some crazy amphibian monster fuck up Seoul, Korea, got all of us hollering. Good times. But I'm sleepy. Too much time on YouTube. That Justin Timberlake "Dick in the Box" clip is really funny, but I've been on a nostalgia kick lately, and this is my favorite Weezer song.

brimful of asha on the 45

I probably should have stayed home today, but the draw of pizza, beer and rock music proved to be too strong. I called my favorite cab driver up--he drives a limo now, a plush new Lincoln Town Car, and I get to ride around in it for cheap--and ditched my Final Fantasy XII pals (sorry, guys!) to go see some bands at a local pizza shop that's become a sort of venue.

I don't know why bands would want to play anywhere else in this town. First off, their pizza is pretty damn good for California, they have bottles of Pabst for a buck, and since it's a restaurant, it's able to stay all ages. I paid a donation at the door, got ear plugs, a slice and a beer and had a good time.

Afterwards, my friends took me over to this party. I went willingly. I wasn't kidnapped. But once I got there, I was reminded how I'm becoming increasingly less of a party person. All I do is hide in a corner and leach on to the people I showed up with. I don't mingle. And even to the folks with whom I arrived, I rarely talk.

This was certainly a good party. There was a good turn out, people weren't too wasted, and I actually knew quite a few folks there. Still, I did my best to stick to my social chameleon routine and tried to blend into the walls. One good thing that happened at the party was I heard a song I hadn't in a while.



I've been trying to find I Was Born for the 7th Time by Cornershop for quite some time now. I guess it's really not a chore. I could probably just look it up on Amazon and have it in a few days, but I still like the joy of actually finding something that I want. I guess I'm old fashioned. I've listened to it six or seven times now since coming home in the hopes that I'll get sick of it and forget about it for a while. It hasn't happened yet though.

Rediscovering this little gem led me to reminisce about other '90s one hit wonders. One of the best of that crop was Marcy Playground, who I still think got the shaft somehow. I don't know why this album didn't do better than it did. "Sex and Candy," obviously, was a big hit, but there were a lot of other good tracks on it too, like this one.



I guess that's why Time-Life makes nostalgic greatest hits collections.

the march of time

I've officially had two hangovers at age 30, and both of them have been unbelievably miserable. In general, they've been getting worse over the past year, but the most recent ones have been really bad. Last night, during my sprint home from the bars (it was a really weird night, and power walking felt really good), I acquired a particularly nasty headache. I knew I was in for it.

I woke up, miraculously, on the pleather love seat with the Bloomberg News Network blaring its nauseating mix of headlines, stock market figures and other such stats. I really don't remember putting that on, but I may have knocked into the remote in my sleep. It was 6AM.

Immediately, I moved to the bathroom to take a dump and got really paranoid about whether or not I was about to throw up. I hustled out of the bathroom, put on my shoes and went outside. I'm not sure why, but I've made up my mind that if I am going to throw up, I'd rather do it outside like an animal than inside like a real human being. I found a good spot in the back corner, right by the fence and between two trees. It never happened. I ended up staying out side for a good hour, taking in the morning air like some kind of nature person would. It was really comforting and meditative. I'm staunchly anti-vomiting, so I won't force myself to puke even if it will make me feel better. I'd rather ride it out, which I think stems from my guilt-ridden Catholic upbringing.

I came back in the house to turn off my alarm clock and ended up sitting on my bedroom floor with my back up against my bed. I may have dozed off once or twice before I got on the bed and sat with my back against the wall. Then, I pulled my pillows closer to me and rested my head on them, laying down on my side, my feet, still in shoes were on the floor. I was fully dressed, in a hoodie. I slept, on and off, until after 1PM. When I woke up for reals, I found that all that time outside had caused me to track mud and leaves into my bedroom. I watched some college football and moved minimally.

So yeah, I didn't go out tonight. The shame that would come from spending another day in the same state would be too much to bear at my advanced age. I opted, instead, to play a lot of Final Fantasy XII, which is really coming along nicely. I spent most of the day on the pleather love seat, but around 11PM, my own sloth became just as troubling. I went downtown to get an ice cream Sunday and deposit the checks my roommates gave me for the energy, water and cable bills. I also picked up a six-pack of Lagunitas Brown Shugga', a winter seasonal beer, which isn't going down very well right now. Better luck tomorrow, I guess.

hello

Hi, Everyone. It's me, Jenny Lewis, singer/songwriter from the band Rilo Kiley, and more recently, my own solo project Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins. I'm writing from J's subconscious because he's pretty fried, but he wanted to let the four of you who read this (and all the pervs from Europe looking for Asia Argento n00dz) to know that he's not dead and will probably be writing soon.

Upon turning 30, he sent himself to Seattle to bask in the city's sponge-y fall weather and watch some football and stuff. While there, he was also able to catch a Seattle Sonics basketball game, visit two local microbreweries, get really shitfaced with a couple from Arizona, ate his weight in pizza and hot wings, ogled some real life NFL cheerleaders up close and saw the Dead Sea Scrolls. He also spent quality time with a friendly beagle.

Cute, huh? Upon returning home, stress-free and optimistic, he found out that his heater doesn't work, two of his coworkers are no longer employed and he has been having really bizarre dreams about right-wing Christians and lesbian nun porn (two separate dreams). I'd be worried about him if I knew him and wasn't a figment of his imagination. Luckily, he's sequestered himself in front of his living room television with an ample supply of beer and Final Fantasy XII, which I've never played, but he tells me it's the greatest thing ever. I guess I'll have to take his word for it. I'm awesomely talented and incredibly beautiful so I don't really need to play video games like he does.

Well, that's it for now. It was nice writing to all of you. Oh, I almost forgot. I actually met J once. He interviewed me in San Francisco. I'm not sure if he's mentioned it before, but we drank beer together (I had a lemon in mine), and I laughed at one of his jokes. And though I didn't really pay him much mind at first, I've come to realize that he is the most amazing and attractive man I've ever met. And I'd bet he's hung like a horse.

I hope we can do this again sometime. Later!

are you a girl? is it halloween? part 2

I'm totally going through the motions. I'm sure anyone paying attention would be able to figure that out. I've shaved my head, but left the beard, and i don't care how bad it looks. Slap a hat on it and pull the hoodie up and I'm like the thief from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoons--I can more or less disappear. I got a text message at 11:30AM--I'd been up for a little bit--that informed me some people were down at this sports bar for champagne brunch. I hate champagne, but I was sorta hungry and I figured I could catch the last quarter of the Giants game. The waitresses at the bar all called me by name, but I don't know they are. I'm there enough though. I just don't know their names, and most of them are really cute. I sat with my coworker and her friends (I thought there'd be more people there I'd know), and they were a few bottles of champagne deep. The group was loud and never let anyone's glass go empty. One dude dressed as a pimp kept ordering shots of tequila. I drank water and ate and watched the game. I was having a good time, and they were getting really drunk. Eventually, I broke down and got a can of Pabst. They all invited me to go to see Saw 3 with them, and I would've gone, but I really didn't like the first two. My old roommate called and asked me if I wanted to go see The Departed (apparently everyone I knew wanted to go to the movies today), and I really wanted to see that, so I went. It was pretty damn good, really tense, but the ending, I thought, came up really flat. It's a good movie if you want to see people get shot in the head, though. After the movie, I tagged along to an organic food market and bought London broil, catfish, a boneless chicken breast, a ham sandwich, two zucchini and two ears of corn. I decided to cook half the London broil and save the sandwich for lunch tomorrow. I needed to do something productive. I ate the steak really rare and it gave me kind of a rush--I'm guessing it was E. coli or a tapeworm. Either way, I'll lose a couple pounds.

But really this was all foreplay. The main event was later in the evening at the meathead bar, a costume party/contest. I didn't want to wear a costume, but I went, because I must now embrace my new role in life: dirty old man.



I'm turning 30 and it sucks. I don't care what anyone says. Everyone's telling me it's going to be great, but I know it's not going to be. Maybe it will be come December, or maybe it's because other things aren't going as well as I'd hoped, and I don't know what to do next. Even when I drink, I hardly can get drunk anymore, and I can't afford to step up the dosage, so I just get a slight buzz and then a grumbly stomach, and then a head ache, and probably the shits in the morning. In this town, 30 isn't over the hill, but it's definitely approaching the top of it, and people start to wonder why you haven't left yet and what you're still doing here. Luckily, Guinness still tastes really good, and I have enough drink coupons at enough bars that I hardly have to pay for it (other than tips) and I can still find some small amount of joy in our female population's willingness to don sexy costumes for no apparent reason.



The costume contest was pretty typical. But there's a part of my catholic brain that kicks into overdrive when it's confronted with a fetishistic version of a nun's habit--especially when the woman wearing it is able to fill it out so well. Or maybe she didn't. Maybe all those catechism classes with stern, shapeless nuns just projected a nubile young woman into that costume. Not like it matters to me one way or the other.



My other two favorites were Sexy Alice and Sexy Lil' Bo Peep, and this Amazonian-sized beauty wearing a shaggy Sexy Barbarian costume. I think she was six feet tall. And it was awesome.

Of course there were guys, too. But Sexy Dude costumes don't ever go over well with the crowd. Unless of course the dude wearing it is a large man. A large drunk man, who's not afraid to show a little cheek and shake dat ass. This dude won best male costume, and probably by a landslide.


Work it, Girl.

are you a girl? is it halloween?

I was sitting in this local shitty diner at 2:20AM, which really turned out to be 1:20AM (because of that darn time change thing...still didn't mean the bars stayed open an extra hour), when I realized that Halloween is a good holiday because it's one of the few that gets better when you get older. When you're a kid, it rocks because you can knock on people's doors and they give you Snickers bars. When you're an adult, it means that other adults will have loosened morals and wear skimpy costumes.



There's also a lot of alcohol too, presumably, which is probably why the two dudes down the block are screaming "FUCK YOU!" at each other right now. "It was a fucking joke man! Fuck you! I came here to apologize to you? Fuck you!"

They finally shut up.

I went to some party tonight and there were lots of sexy so and sos, and I was amazed at how there seems that any kind of costume has some kind of sexy version. My favorite this year was sexy Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I chuckled at the first one, but I was amazed to see near a dozen sexy Ninja Turtles strewn about town. One was at the diner, standing in front of me at the cashier, and she was having a problem keeping her tiny shorts in place on her shapely ass. Earlier, when she staggered by us on her way to the bathroom, I assume to puke, someone at another table shouted, "Donatello!" and she snapped back, "Raphael, asshole!" I thought that was awesome.

Some big black dude dressed as a preacher kept falling asleep at the counter, and this other dude dressed as Homer Simpson was having the same problem. He looked like he could puke at any minute. I kept hoping he would until my food came out. I was stone sober most of the night, and being at the shitty diner was even more sobering.

My neighbors are arguing again. Halloween definitely gets better with age.

piss and vinegar

I would have given my left nut if I could've slept through the past three days. I'm not using it for anything anyway.

And I don't know why I buy 24oz tall cans of shitty beer like MGD, which is fine in small doses, but these cans never seem to run out. By the time I get to the end, it's always warm and gross and giving me a splitting headache. I'm persistent though. I'll finish it.

It's fucking still way too hot out and I'm cranky. The other day, someone visiting from the coast told me that she wanted to come up here before the summer ended so she could feel the hot weather, and I wanted to slap her. I wouldn't have, of course, but still. This heat is bound to make a man crazy. Tomorrow, the forecast calls for clouds and low 80s. Friday isn't supposed to get out of the 70s, with more clouds, and I couldn't be happier. If I see the sun again this year, I'll kill myself. And I'll take someone with me.

The weekend after this one, I have to go back to New York again for my friend's wedding. I'm really excited to get the fuck out of town, even though I just got back a few days ago. My parents had to buy me my ticket out, and I haven't been able to get the ticket back yet. I'll get around to it, though. Swear.

I already feel the breeze blowing through the screen windows. I hope I wake up shivering in the morning. I think my pillow is tired of my head sweating all over it. And I hate being woken up by my own perspiration to flip the damn thing so I can go back to sleep.

My grandmother, who's 103, went in to the hospital today to have an operation. I think she needed a tumor removed. I was amazed, to be honest, that she decided to go under the knife at all. She was on pills for the pain when I went home last, and they made her disoriented and loopy. I wasn't sure if she'd make it through. But she did. In fact, it only took about half an hour, and she was sent home the same day. From what I heard, the doctor was stupefied. She's a tiny old Sicilian tank and she makes me realize that I'm probably going to have to get used to the fact that no matter what I do to myself, I'm going to lead a very, very...very long life. I hope I at least get to go to Europe at some point. Or something.

the great northwest

I've been meaning to write about the Bumbershoot/Seattle trip, but I can't think of anything to type. It was a fun trip--maybe one of the funnest weekends I've had. I saw a lot of bands:

1. The Thermals
2. A Tribe Called Quest
3. Kanye West
4. Blondie
5. Jeremy Enigk
6. Of Montreal
7. Erase Errata
8. Nouvelle Vague
9. Atmosphere
10. The New Pornographers
11. Spoon

I think that's it. I also went to a comedy show with Mary Lynn Rajskub, who plays Chloe on 24 and Aziz Ansari who I think does some stuff with the Upright Citizen's Brigade and also stars in one of my favorite YouTube clips.



Aziz was great. I thought Mary Lynn was funnier when I saw her on the Tonight Show, but this one dude from LA, by way of Seattle, who opened stole the show, I thought. His name was Nick Thune. I bumped into him (almost literally) on the floor for the Kanye West show as I was trying to find a good spot near the stage. I told him I thought he was funny at the show. He said "Thanks." Later on, I was nearly trampled by Paul Scheer from Best Week Ever as he was making his way through the crowd. It was really packed. I don't think I've ever seen so many people for a concert, except perhaps for the Metallica/Guns N' Roses show I went to when I was 13. Kanye had an entire string section with him. I thought that was pretty neat. I drank Sierra Mist spiked with Jameson and tried to move to the rhythm. I'm glad no one was watching.

I caught Jeremy Enigk (formerly of Sunny Day Real Estate) at a "secret show" on this "secret stage" that was almost exclusively press only. There was a bout 25 - 30 people there, and it was the first show I saw on the last day of the event. It was probably the best one too. I liked Sunny Day's Diary album a lot, but I hadn't really followed his career since. Shit got emo in that room mighty fast. His voice was kinda otherworldly. He sang and shrieked and screamed and basically poured his heart out for 30 minutes. It was beautiful. When it was over, the Seattle radio personality who was hosting the event said, "I usually make it a point not to cry before 6pm. Me and my coworker turned to each other--we were sitting in the front row about 5 feet from the stage--and giggled, "That was awesome..."

The Thermals sounded unbelievably good in the concert hall with the worst acoustics. I sang along with all the songs from the new album to the bewilderment and aural dismay of the teenagers huddled around me. I didn't care. The place was packed, and they killed it. I think my face hurt from smiling so much.

I saw A Tribe Called Quest on Lollapalooza in '94, which was a long time ago, and I was still just about old enough to vote. That makes me want a beer. They were the first group I heard that made me appreciate hip-hop. Bumbershoot '06 was their first show together since '98, and they were a bit rusty to start off, but Tribe's kingpin Q-tip took over. I spent a few songs on the floor, then made it up to the grandstands where a group of friends of my coworker were sitting. I'd smuggled in a backpack full of wine (liquor stores are closed on holidays in Washington)--like five bottles worth--and was able to get them in without incident because I was wearing a photo pass. We passed around empty Pepsi bottles refilled with red or white wine and watched the scene below. For one of Tribe's more popular jams, Phife Dawg asked the crowd to jump and the thousands packed on the floor below did so in unison, which, from our high perch, was pretty fucking awesome looking.

A group of people from where I live came up for the festival that weekend. I didn't really know them, but they were good friends of my coworkers. We all ended up getting along really well and pretty much partied together at Bumbershoot and around Seattle all weekend. They snuck liquor into the booth for us, which kept our magazine spiel enthusiastic. They all flew up, though, me and my two coworkers had to drive--12 hours--there and back. On the way up, we were able to spend a night in Portland, OR, which is kinda like Seattle on a budget. There's also about 800,000 strip clubs. I, of course, have no problem with this, but they must employ every woman in town, because the bars we hit that night were about 90% dudes. This made my two female coworkers/travel companions very happy, but I was somewhat less stoked. That night we all ended up back at this dude's house. Some random who rolled up to us at this one bar that had some weird Star Trek name. They begged me to come, I guess, because they knew the girls weren't going anywhere without me. I said, "I don't care. Whatever they want to do." I was just happy to be drunk in a new city and not at work. We all packed in the car of one of the dude's sister and she drove us all to this really nice apartment that had some ridiculously low rent. I got free beer out of it. The Portlanders were total stoners and smoked pot out of a hookah while they were passing around a glass pipe. Talk about dedication.

We busted out of there after like an hour. I couldn't tell if these people really liked us or not (I'm pretty sure they didn't), but they were awfully hospitable. When we got back to the hotel, the girls offered to pay my way into the strip club across the street from it, because I was stuck hanging out with dudes all night. At first I was gung-ho, then I was apprehensive, because I wasn't sure if I wanted my female colleagues to see me make a fool of myself in the presense of nubile naked women, then I realized I was drunk and they were paying and I just wanted to see titties. We got to the door, but it was locked. I thought the fact that they offered was sweet, though. Instead, we all went to a ridiculously hip diner with ridiculously good food, just down the street. The quickest way to a man's heart...

That'll have to suffice for now. The whole trip felt like some coming of age story or some unreal teenage party movie, except I came of age about 12 years ago and I'm about to turn 30. Any more good times like that, and I might have to admit that my life doesn't suck all that much, and that would really suck.

delaying the inevitable

I had full intention of writing about my Seattle trip tonight, but I went out and got drunk instead. I drank more rum than I have in quite some time and for no particular reason other than the hot bartender with the shoulder tattoo and the low-slung camo pants really knew how to mix her drinks. I'm a sucker for women with shoulder tattoos...and also women who serve me drinks.

It was a fun night that deposited me at the local watering hole, more fucked up than I wanted to be, and later at the shittiest pizza joint in the universe for a barely palatable piece of pepperoni. As I walked home, a cute chubby girl sitting at the town hall fountain asked me how my night went. I threw my arms up in the air and preached about its unerring awesomeness. I asked her how she did, and she said she was sober, but was yelling at all the drunks who passed by. I threw my arms up again and shouted, "Great!" and she told me I was her favorite drunk and that she loved me and that I should call her. And then she said, "No seriously." But I know she wasn't serious cuz she didn't give me her number.

Like I said, it was a fun night. But I'll credit that more to the fact that I didn't do a lick of work all day as opposed to thanking the alcohol. I did, however, do a lot of surfing and fantasy baseball and football checking. I also checked out YouTube, which, through sheer chance, led me to Ms. Reema Sen. I think she's from India, and she's a very beautiful woman. I think so anyway. And I'm assuming she's a pretty big star in her home country, because, hey, why not?

I don't want to discredit Ms. Sen's fame, because I'm sure she had to work her gorgeous ass off to get to where she is today. However--and I hate to say it--she can't dance her way out of a paper bag, and her unhealthy obsession with mustachioed creepy dudes is really unsettling. REALLY. Check out the clips below, but don't say I didn't warn you.

This one will make you wish you were a beach towel...kinda.



This one brings the pain...



Totally unrelated, but this is my favorite thing right now.

zombie

I'm not dead. Not quite yet, anyway. Back from Seattle where I was preaching my magazine's gospel at Bumbershoot. Yes, It was a lot of fun. I'm sure there are stories to tell, but we had to drive 12 hours to get back home today and I'm pretty tired. I just want to drink some Guinness and fall asleep. Tomorrow, we'll talk.

hail seitan

Just to start off with an aside, I have Photoshop CS thanks to a connection of mine but I haven't gotten around to installing it yet. I made the dandy graphic you see above with the janky but dependable Microsoft Photo Editor. That's my level of skillz. Recognize.

Looking at the graphic, you'll notice a malificent being with horns and fangs on the left, and on the right a plate of a meat-like substance that looks kinda like Fancy Feast cat food. Without gravy. Let's call the horned chap Satan, Lord of the Bottomless Abyss, because that's his name, and the plate of lumps on the right Seitan, because that's what it's called. I pronounce them both the same way because it's funnier that way and inspires me to make stupid graphics in Microsoft Photo Editor for my stupid blog. Everyone has their "kink" or so I'm told. This graphical device is once again stolen from Steve. It's just so damn effective, and I'm so damn drunk--well not really, but I'm pretending to be--that I can't think of anything better.

I guess if you have to explain a joke it no longer becomes funny.

It's been a shitty couple of weeks. I'm not going to lie. I'm officially sick of it, too--completely had it. The only thing that's kept me going is depressing and disturbing movies. I'm totally fucking broke, really fucking bored and good meals have been few and far between. I like to eat. It's one of my life's great joys. So far, I haven't found anything on this planet as good as a warm plate of cheese ravioli when the sauce is made just right. But I've had to go without such luxuries as grocery shopping and rely on free meals at weddings and bars that'll take my beer stamps for food. Tonight when I got home to break into a six-pack I'd liberated from the office and plunge into my fantasy football draft, my roommate emerged from her room and told me she was going to cook dinner. She's a vegetarian, the kind soul, and she confessed she wasn't much of a cook. She returned from the hippie supermarket with a bundle of items she meant to fashion into curry. I love me some Thai food or any free food for that matter, so when she offered, I didn't hesitate to belly up.

She used mushrooms, red peppers, broccoli, long grain rice, coconut milk, some kind of curry paste and a peculiar meat substitute called "Seitan." The curry was really spicy; my other roommate, her boyfriend, added some extra paste, but damn was it tasty.

I'm really carnivorous. I find it hard to consider any meal anything more than a snack if there's not some kind of carcass involved. I know this means I'm living on borrowed time, but I'm not keen on the idea of living much longer than I have to anyway. But this seitan stuff was truly a beguiling substance. I've had all sorts of soy "meat" before, but I think seitan was the closest in texture to actual dead animal. It tasted, as you would expect, like chicken, only if the chicken in question was kinda flavorless.

After the meal, and before we went out, we watched Criss Angel Mind Freak on A&E (it's kinda funny that there was a time when the Arts & Entertainment channel actually had arty stuff, but is now pretty much all dopey reality shows). Criss is a magician/daredevil, and, if you couldn't tell by the photo, is kind of a douchebag. But, for whatever reason, whenever I watch his dumb show, I always end up going from thinking, "This guy is a complete douchebag," to, "Whoa, dude, how did he...WHOA!" I guess I'm kind of a douchebag too. On this episode, he tried to suspend himself via FLESH HOOKS from a heliocopter, which, if you think about it, isn't really some crazy slight of hand, mind freaky illusion type thing, but I'm sure it's something you can parlay into getting yourself laid.

Afterwards, I caught a ride downtown where I bar hopped and got some valuable vitamin B and a healthy buzz via pints of Guinness (no, seriously, it's why the Irish rock) and returned home, quickly, because seitan was having his way with my bowels. Good thing we have a plunger.

wino

I'm pretty sure I'm going crazy. I saw A Scanner Darkly tonight, and that kinda fucked with my head, so I'm sure that's not helping matters. A friend of mine was working the door and he let me in for free. I got the last ticket, too. It was showing at this tiny, old school art house theater here in town with really uncomfortable seats. But the sound is good and they always pick good movies to show.

Anyway, lately, at night I hear all sorts of noises. Our freezer hisses at me sometimes, and there's some cat in the neighborhood who's always getting in some kind of trouble. I can hear it screeching bloody murder after everyone goes to bed. We polished off the bottle of wine tonight, and I was supposed to be in bed about an hour ago. I promised I'd be in at 9:30 tomorrow. I'm still going to shoot for that. I have to cancel an interview because I forgot that I had to resign my lease tomorrow, and I don't want to do it anyway. Not now. Tomorrow, supposedly, I'll be done proofing the magazine and I'll be able to take a couple days off, which is good because Wednesday night my friend is throwing himself a bit of a bachelor party: strip club, bars, maybe gambling? I don't know how I'm going to afford it all, but I'll make do somehow. In the mean time, I should probably get going to bed.

how i spent my vacation 2

Yesterday was too relaxing, I guess, so today I decided to put myself through a good deal of physical and emotional stress.

I woke up to find Encore Love was playing Before Sunrise. I tried to resist the temptation, but I just couldn't. I curled up on the couch like a baby and watched Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke roam the streets of Vienna and got nostalgic for when I first saw the movie when it was released in the theater like 11 years ago. There was pretty much nothing in the world that I wanted to do more than take a train through Europe, meet the European Woman of My Dreams and have a brief fleeting affair with her and then forever pine over what might have been. It would also help if we were both amazingly witty and intelligent and were able to poetically articulate our deepest, most intimate thoughts and philosophies in a thoroughly entertaining sort of way. Of course, my conversations with the fairer sex--of whom I'm sexually and spiritually (whatever) attracted to--usually consists of "So, uh, you having a good time tonight?" in addition to nervous side glances and awkward silences. Regardless, Before Sunrise pretty much defines what I think "love" should be and regurgitates that in under an hour and a half, which is why I find the damn thing so compelling, wonderful and unfathomably depressing. Basically, that fucking movie ruined my life.

I haven't seen it in quite some time and I was happy to see that it stood the test of time (unlike Clerks). Its witty banter and soaring romanticism put me in a sober and ponderous state that really could have only been cured by alcohol. But since it was still mid-day, I decided to walk through the park instead. There, I didn't encounter any charmingly intellectual French women, but I did notice a gathering of Mexicans off the path by the creek. They were singing and clapping and there were a lot of them. When I got around the bend, I strolled off the paved road into one of the dirt paths that lead up to the creek and saw that they were performing baptisms. One of the congregation would step into the water and the preacher would perform the ceremony before dipping the person into the water. Each person's baptism was greeted with one person shouting, "Halelujah!" before the rest would break off into song. They were clapping hands and hitting tambourines, and the whole thing seemed pretty joyous. It reminded me of the scene from O Brother, Where Art Thou, where Pete and Delmer become "saved," but only a lot more exuberant. Something made me want to join them, but I'm sure it's a sin to crash a baptism, so I continued on my walk until their loud rejoicing faded away behind me.

There were a lot of people in the park today, because it wasn't too hot out. But as I pushed deeper passed the swimming holes, the park-goers became more scarce. I walked faster and worked up a bit of a sweat. A lot of the dirt paths I liked to walk during the winter time had become rather overgrown with weeds, so I had to back track a few times. Eventually, I finished my figure 8 loop through the park and headed toward home where I made myself Spam and eggs for dinner and popped in my DVD of the sequel to Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, because, apparently, I was asking for it.

Other than Julie Delpy being ridiculously dreamy, I think the movies strike a chord with me because the main two characters are about my age. I was 18 when the first one came out and the characters were 23, now, nine years later (the movie was released in 2004), the characters have aged as the actors have (though Julie doesn't look like she's aged a day). In Before Sunset, Celine and Jesse are both 32, and I guess it's easy for me to see myself in them (though I'm not nearly as good looking). It's just as good, if not better, than the original. It's nice to see a movie without special effects or plot twists or action--well, sometimes. They just walk, and talk, and they're perfect and I hate them, which is why I'm on Guinness three.

I'm supposed to be at work in a few hours. Tomorrow starts the online proofing of the magazine, which means I basically just click a little button with my little mouse and wait for pages to load and wait for ads that may or may not come in and stress that the whole thing is fucked up and it's going to cost us hundreds of dollars to fix it. I'm not looking forward to it. With any luck, this Guinness will make me sleepy and help me dream of European cafes and beautiful women and interesting conversation and other things I won't encounter in the forseeable future.