Tag: travel

Weekend Trips not to Take

#1

Leave The Hague at 12:30 PM, Drive to Paris. Eat. Sleep. Carry all belongings down 3 flights of stairs. Drive back to The Hague. Leave girlfriend and all belongings at a gas station. Carry all belongings the few blocks from the gas station, through the pedestrian area, to apartment. Move all belongings up steepest flights of stairs ever. Wonder why knee hurts.

#2

Cut Friday classes. Go to train station. Take train to airport. Get on plane. Fly to San Francisco. Borrow Car. Drive to Santa Cruz. Eat. Get drunk. Go dancing. (awake for 26 hours!) Collapse. Awake. Eat. Get lost trying to find beach. Drive to Berkeley. Eat. Sleep. Drive to Santa Cruz. Watch brother get married. Eat. Drive to San Jose. Eat. Drive to Berkeley. Sleep. Try to buy tuba shipping case. Give up. Buy bubble wrap. Wrap sousaphone in bubble wrap. Get ride to airport. Fly to Amsterdam. Get on wrong train. Wander around train station of small town in Holland while carrying bubble wrapped sousaphone. Take train to The Hague. Carry bubble wrapped tuba to apartment. Fall asleep. Miss classes. Forget lab time.
This weekend, I’m thinking of going to Amsterdam to get my hair cut.
Um, anyway, my brother got married and I came back for it and went to the Bachelorette party (my first and last, I think). And I now have the worst tuba in Holland, I think. I didn’t worry about breaking it because who could tell. It sounds like a wounded cow. I want to use it to work out how to do some stuff which I will later do with a real tuba.
My stomach still hurts from the antibiotics that I took in July. This is ridiculous. I go offline to find a medical person to whine to.
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Boston

Yesterday, Jess, Angela, and I went to Boston for a day trip.
We left kind of late, which is fine with me because I was mostly into clubbing, but it disturbed Jess. She used to live in Cambridge, the suburb (?) of Boston which contains Harvard. She did not go to Harvard, but went to Brandeis (where she got her first masters), which she commuted to. She did her undergrad at Columbia. When in Connecticut, she likes to go to New Haven and hang around Yale. She clearly has an Ivy League fetish.

So we went and hung around her old haunts from her year in the area. She was intent on showing us everything cool. When some members of our group had to go to the bathroom, for example, she declared that she would take us to the public restroom voted “best place to pee” by a local free newspaper. (It was considerate, but I think the place voted “closest place to pee” might have been better suited to the occasion.)
My goal was to go hang around the gay district. Her goal was to take us to museums, but we left too late, so in liue of that, we went to the best coffee shops and bookshops in the area. She took us to a cafe called “the Other Side,” which was very granola-crunchy and actually had really good beer. There is good beer on the East Coast! Hope returns to a cold, dark world.
We rode the MTA, but they kept raising the faire by a nickel, so we could never get off of it.
Ahem. We rode the MTA around and ate and drank coffee and visitted bookshops and esteemed restrooms and actually got a pretty good tour of Boston. It was kind of dark out and very very very cold. I was wearing two swearters, thermals, a ski jacket with a scarf inside and another scarf outside and a ski hat and the hood of the jacket and ski gloves and was feeling only a bit cold. Angela was suffering.
We went to a lesbian dance club at place called Club Hollywood Boston, that I found listed in a free weekly newspaper, but I dunno if it’s the one giving out restroom awards. We showed up around 10:45 and left around 12:15, so thigs were pretty much just getting started as we left. This was because Jess wanted to park by Harvard and ride transit around, which was logical as she’s new to having a car, etc. But like other transit systems that I can name, the trains stop running pretty early.
Anyway, I danced with Jess a few times which was fun. I realized that it was not going to help my goal of picking up chicks, as people would think I was with her. And furthermore, I’m much too shy to pick up chicks, they have to come for me. I know I’m awkward and not a great dancer and somehwhat (ok, very) nerdy looking, which is truth in advertising. But I also realize that there are women on earth looking for nerds. By which I mean that I’m much older than the last time I was single and I know I don’t have to pretend to be something much hipper than I really am to get chicks. Not that I wouldn’t mind being hipper. What am I trying to say? something about self-esteem, probably.
But this doesn’t cure my shyness. The only stranger that I talked to, aside from telling someone that I was in line for the bathroom, was the coat check woman. And the bartender. Someone cute approached me and asked if I had dropped a sock, since there was one lying on the floor near me. I laughed. but I had to leave and spoke to her no more.
The dance club scene might not be the best place for me to cruise for chicks, but it is super-fun dancing with Jessica and I’d like to go again.
We got home around 3:00 am.

Gone Daddy, Gone, My Love is Gone Away

So what’s new? The phone number, for starters: 1-860-301-2508. And the local bank account is new. and . . .
The president of the grad student government had a party for all the new grad students. Christi, Xena and I went. There were oreos and fruit salad and water balloons, but since nobody knew anyone, they were tossed very politely from person to person. I became acquainted with two ethnomusicology (aka: musical anthropology) MFAs. Deborah plays the hammer dulcimer. She’s well-traveled and lived in Egypt for a while among the Coptics and studied Arabic music while she was there. She had a book coming out shortly of Arabic music adapted for hammer dulcimer. She is tri-lingual. Angela plays clarinet. She already has an MFA in clarinet performance and won an award for being the best performer of the Artie Shaw Clarinet Concerto. She went to “klez camp” to study Klezmer performance and her own Klezmer band has toured the east coast. She speaks German and Russian and is learning Yiddish.
I’m in way over my head, here, I think.
Saturday, the four of us (Deborah, Angela, Christi and I) drove the bug to Concord, Mass. This is where Concord grapes came from. Angela wanted to go to Walden Pond. First, we went to the cemetery and located the graves of Louisa May Alcott, Emerson, Thoreau, and another writer who – I’m ashamed to admit- I can’t recall the name of, but who is also high prestige. Anyway, Then we went by the home of Louisa May Allcott, where she lived when she wrote Little Women and the home of Emerson. Walden pond is actually a very short jaunt from Emerson�s house. Thoreau wrote that if you preach a better sermon or build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door. This is especially true if your door is conviently located. We did not actually see Walden Pond. Because more than 600K visitors come every year, Mass has made it a state reservation and outlawed all dogs. There was a long list of prohibited items and, alas, Xena was on it. Apparently, many years ago, E.B. White wrote that the touristy Walden Pond sucked. While I can’t say if it does or doesn’t, I can say that I savored the irony of a state official telling me I couldn’t take my dog there.
Since we couldn’t get to Walden Pond, we went further down the road to Salem. We went to the Witch Museum there and perused the semi-informative exhibits. Actually, there were pretty uninformative, but the staff let us in free, so I can’t complain too much. And the gift shop was highly amusing. We walked around the town and saw a very spooky looking statue of the first colonial resident. Spoooooky! Spooooky! Pagan stores were everywhere. One could buy tarot cards, have her palm read, visit the “Official Witch of Salem,” who we saw, but did not visit. It was late so all the pagan shops were closed or closing. I peeked in the windows looking for Polly’s CDs, but didn’t see any in the gloom. We walked to the House of Seven Gables, which is another literary sight, but not one that I know the story about.
On Sunday (our world is soooo exciting), Angela, Christi and I went to New York City and left Xena at home with Deborah. We went to the hippest record story in the whole city (according to Bernard), called Other Music. It was very hip, but very small. Then we went to Strand Books, which calls itself the world’s biggest used bookstore. It should perhaps be reclassified as the world’s most disorganized bookstore. You�d think that if I looked in the photography section of the world’s biggest used bookstore, I ought to be able to find a book by Judy Dater. Well, maybe they had one and maybe they didn’t. The store could have been the very institution that inspired Dewey. They had a big shelf of music books, but my bank balance was safe because they were completely disorganized. Opera was intermingled with pop and jazz. Biographies lurked next to theory. Christi pulled out a book about thirteenth century French motets. French motets from the time of Joan of Arc! But it turned out to be about texts and not musical at all. It didn’t even belong in the section. Powells Books is bigger, has more titles and you can actually find what you’re looking for.
People kept telling me about east coast / west coast differences and told me that I’m very mellow by East Coast standards. Everything out here takes a long time. It took two hours to get my new cell phone number. Everything is super-slow. Finding anything at that bookstore would have taken days because of its disorganization. I find myself often frustrated, wishing things would hurry up. I’m trying to become mellower. So if East Coasters are in a hurry all the time, maybe it’s because everything will take at least twice as long as it ought to. I feel frustrated just thinking about it.
What we did find at Strand was a children’s book by Lynne Cheney, wife of Dick Cheney. As far as I can tell, the book is not a joke. It�s the American ABCs. ‘D’ is not for Democracy. ‘E’ is not for Elections. I didn’t memorize the text or buy it, so the highlights here are from memory. ‘E’ is for Equality. But E gets less than one full page, because ‘F’ for flag spills over on to its neighbor. ‘G’ is for God in whom we trust and whom doesn�t have to share a page with anyone since G gets two pages. ‘H’ is for heroes, who include fire fighters, police, the American military (but not anyone else’s) and elected officials. Another letter has role models. The two non-white historical figures were African American. There was a woman tennis player and Louis Armstrong, a musician. The whites (who may have all been men) were inventors, statesmen, industrialists, etc. ‘X’ doesn�t have anything. Neither does ‘Z’. ‘Y’ is for You, which included illustrations of mostly white kids that had future occupations written under them. One of them was future agribusiness CEO. The whole thing had a very rough quality, as if it was hastily scribbled on a cocktail napkin and then turned over from that to an illustrator. (‘P’ is for Patriotism!) It is unsubtle. It is an anachronism. It is alarming. It does not appear to be a joke.
After looking aghast at Cheney’s book, we escaped the frustrating bookstore and rode the subway. The subway is a lot more like the London Underground than it is like BART or even MUNI. It�s amazing. We went to Central Park and saw the spot there Lennon was shot and where Yoko Ono still lives, according to Angela. We walked across to Strawberry fields. There is a big mosaic on the ground that says “Imagine.” It has flowers on it. We ate ice cream bars and then got back on the subway and walked back to where we had parked. It�s a neighborhood that is really a whole lot like the Mission, but instead of Mexican flags, there are Puerto Rican ones. We dropped Christi off at the JFK airport. I am very sad.
It took more than 4 hours to get back to my empty house
Today was grad student orientation. The recurring theme was that if one has a problem, she should call the grad student office, since the people working there know all. That look a decidedly Orwellian turn during the public safety presentation when the grad official explained that they would be called if we had any noise complaints and that we would be talked to. “We know everything that goes on.” one of the women explained. Great. You could feel resentment emanating from the assembled masters and PhD people.
My stuff is supposed to arrive tomorrow. Classes start Tuesday.
Calendar

Went to the chapel, got married eventually

Well, the largest power blackout in US history had some sidefx. for instance, many east coast states have no backup for water pumping, so many people were without water! As a californian, I’m shocked. systems here are not robust and nobody conserves. they all made fun of us when Enron was looting our power system and causing political rolling blackouts. they actually have infrastructure problems and still use incandescent lightbulbs.
anyway, when the power went out, it screwed up the phones. I could call folks around michigan, but I couldn’t call california and apparently could not receive calls from Canada. So when we showed up at the chapel, we had no marriage license and could not get one until Monday. We decided to go ahead with the ceremony. In attendance were Christi’s parents, my dad, Matthew, Jenny, Owen, Xena, A video taper, a photographer, a minister and an Elvis impersonator. The chapel’s website boasts that they have London, Ontario’s best Elvis impersonator. This is not an idle boast. Recently, there was an international Elvis impersonating contest in Vegas and the London guy won. He was offered a contract to stay in Vegas and perform but, as a city hall worker later pointed out, he couldn’t keep working at our Ford plant and have a contract in Vegas. However, this was not the Elvis impersonator who was at our wedding. We got the understudy who did not go to the Vegas contest. A contest had been planned for the previous Friday in London, to finally settle who was London’s best impersonator, but was cancelled due to the power outage. thus the answer to who is really London’s best Elvis Impersonator remains unknown. Our guy did resemble Elvis, if Elvis said “aboot.”
Our dads walked us down the aisle while Elvis sang an appropriate song. We said some vows, signed some paper work. Elvis sang another song. The minister said that we could kiss our partner (no “you may kiss the bride.”) and our families giggled for some reason. then Elvis sang another song while we walked outside and everyone came out after us blowing bubbles instead of throwing rice Nobody had brought any rice except for Owen who is eating rice cereal flakes these days.
afterwards, we went to a restaurant/bar sort of thing and ate some food. My dad left to head back towards Detroit. He got a red eye to see us get married and then took a red eye back. Jenny had a migraine so Matthew drove her and Owen back to Anne Arbor (the locals say a^^2). Christi’s parents and us went on around the lakes towards Niagara Falls. We did some wine tasting and got a few bottled of very decent Canadian wine. I lived an hour from Napa for many years and never went wine tasting there, but in Canada. I got a flyer for the Niagara wine harvest festival thingee. I’ll post more about that later, if I decide to go. I really like Canada a lot. The next day, we saw the falls. It was like our honeymoon, except that Christi’s parents were there and we weren’t actually married. We drove back to London that night so as to keep our 9:30 AM appointment with the minister to sign the paper work.
Matthew, Jenny and Owen returned to London to be our witnesses. Matthew called us early the next morning to inform us that London’s city hall was closed. He heard it on the news. All of Canada was experiencing rolling black oots. We drove to a nearby town whose city hall was open and made a later appointment to see the minister. the chapel called to say that because of the blackoots, they would have to mail us the pictures and video rather than give it to us. We got to St. Thomas and got their first same sex marriage license ever issued. apparently, they’re supposed to cross out “bride” and “groom” and write in “partners,” but the city clerk didn’t get the memo, apparently. For the record, Christi was the groom. Anyway, after many many many small, boring glitches involving differences between Us and Canadian ATM cards and other impediments, we finally got married. Christi and I are now legally wed.
then at 2:00 in the afternoon, we left London and drove all the way to Middletown. We got a hotel and then, the next day, yesterday, we got an early call from Luoi. the city of Berkeley is working on 5th street, where my truck was parked and put up tow away signs and she can’t find the key anywhere. We called 411 and asked for any towing company in Berkeley. No dice. then christi called AAA and explained our story many times to several service representatives who all explained that since we weren’t members, they couldn’t really do anything for us, but since we were in such unusual circumstances, they would pass the call along to someone who might be able to help. finally, someone read us a list of phone numbers of towing companies. the first one said they could tow the car provided we could find a friend to stand there and vouch it was ok to tow it. Luoi had gone off to the dentist or something, so we woke up Jean and asked if she would do it. she said yes, so we called back the towing place and they told us that she would need to have a key. If we had the key . . . Our theory is that the first place we called is the place that gets the city contracts to tow away cars and they probably get paid more by the city than they would get from us. the next place required nothing from us but a visa number and towed the truck into the parking lot. yay
after that excitement, we got the keys to my new place. I found out several important things about it that my real estate agent didn’t tell me about. First of all, my bedroom is much larger than the 8 by 8 measurement that she faxed me. the whole place is 1100 square feet. Second, it comes with a clothes washer and dryer. third, she negotiated a lower rent in addition to getting Xena allowed in. Christi was very relieved when she saw the house. It’s three stories and I have the whole first floor. It looks a lot like a dorm room in Orchard Meadow at Mills College with it’s wood flooring, white walls, high ceilings and dark wood molding around all the doors and large windows. some of the windows don’t open, but, having experienced both, I’d rather have windows that didn’t open than didn’t close. It’s a nice looking place and the neighbors seem friendly. First things first, we went to the town’s espresso shop. It has gotten better since I first went there, on it’s first day of business in April. then I checked in at school. then we went to buy a bed. the room is actually large enough to accommodate the bed that I already own, but it’s already taking three week for my stuff to cross the country. the bed would have to be shipped after Christi returned, so I would go a couple of months sleeping on hard wood floors. So we went to a bed shop and asked for aloft bed with a desk underneath and they gave it to us cheep because they’re not stocking them anymore. Joy! then we got more household supplies. I got a nice call from Polly. We ate at a local vegan restaurant and went to sleep. Yes, vegan in Middletown. Definitely geared towards very wealthy student hippies.
We puttered around in the morning. the bed got delivered and then we went to the hippie store attached to the hippie restaurant to buy food, stuff to mop the completely filthy floors with. Yes, my new place is great and I should have no difficulty getting my cleaning deposit back, cuz it’s dirty. First one credit card got declined. Then the other one. then both of Christi’s the ATM was no help. I called Wells Fargo. they put a hold on the funds I deposited before I left. My checking account is overdrawn and my visa bill is overdue. I tried to convince the customer service person to take the hold off my my money. No dice. It will be another week. I asked her if she could extend my visa payment thing another week, so I could keep using it and buy food and stuff until my funds cleared. Instead, she gave me a lecture about paying my bills on time. I have automatic bill pay. It didn’t get paid because they won’t let me have my money.
Yeah, so the day before I left, I thought I should deposit enough money to cover my existing bills from getting married, cover some rent, cover spending two weeks traveling and cover moving costs and thus avoid the problem I’m now experiencing. the bank decided my deposit was rather large and so is holding the money just in case… just in case of what I don’t know. the check cleared. Maybe they’re busy reporting me to homeland security or something. god only knows why the funds are blocked. So I spent a lot of time on the phone with bank people today explaining that I’m in another state where I have no food and no friends and no funds except what petty cash I have in my pocket. I have been a customer of Wells Fargo for years. I called my local branch and they said they would try to help, but they explained that they would need to request a copy of the check from the central archives and it would take at least a week. they were very pleasant and as helpful as they could be, but it’s still a week away.
I called the bank that I wrote the check from. they transferred me to the branch manger where I have the account. She was friendly, helpful and told me that the check had cleared and gave me her contact information so wells fargo could contact her. I called Wells Fargo again and talked to the supervisor at the Reno call center. He said that he would personally call my other bank and see if the check had cleared and thus the funds could be unblocked. He promised me a call back either way. It’s 9:00 at night now and I have not received a call. I tried calling back the service center a couple of hours ago, but they said the supervisor would contact me directly.
this could happen to you! you could be in another state with money, no friends and no access to funds if you bank with Wells Fargo. their customer service people at their central call centers are rude. when they are not rude, they’re just trying to get you to hang up. apparently, they’ll make promises with no intention of keeping them. they don’t care that you’re three thousand miles from home and do not have enough cash to wait out the one or two weeks that everything is supposed to take.
I’m furious. I am so closing my account as soon as this mess gets straightened out.
So, in short, it’s been one disaster after another. I used the phone system bill pay to send funds from my other, nice bank to my credit card, so that should be online again in a couple of days, unless Well Fargo decided to hold it too because it comes from the same bank or because I called them too often or because somebody is having a bad day and wants to mess up my life. In the mean time, I have some cash money and half a pizza. Food here is actually pretty cheap, except that I can’t afford to get hippie citrasolv at the hippie market and it was very embarrassing to have to leave without being able to pay for the things I grabbed from the shelves.
On a positive note, I’m very happy that Christi made us buy a bed first. And we’re legally married! yay!

Greetings from Ann Arbor

We’re in Michigan and we have electricity here at Jenny’s house. The trip here was mostly uneventful. Most car accidents happen within five miles of home. With that in mind, we slammed on the brakes, stopping short of hitting a car right after we started. The dog had been scrambling for a perch on top of the highest point of our stuff, the cooler. So when we hit the brakes, she hit the windshield. Fortunately, she was unhurt and we re-packed the car so she would like her spot better and stay in it, instead of climbing on things.
We stopped for lunch in Reno. I’ve seen a lot of Nevada now, I think. I like Reno better than Vegas, but just because of the Peppermill. This is a restaurant/casino chain. There used to be a restaurant in Cupertino that my grandmother thought was very fancy and took people often. The girl from Kansas would be amazed at the Peppermill. Even the Cupertino restaurant had mirrored ceilings, fake plants, and a “fireside lounge” which featured a gas fireplace over a small pool. The casino is the same but more so. It’s dark. You can’t tell what time of day it is. It’s got mirroed walls and ceilings and carpets which feature a loud solar system motif. There is more neon than is beleivable. Flashing lights abound. Some of the casinos that I visitted in Vegas were mildly disorienting, but they had nothing on the Peppermill. Concepts like time, space and direction melted away in the rediculously ostentatious furnishings. It was fantastic. Nothing there stopped half way. It embraced everything that a casino should be. It was awesome. I want to go back and get disoriented again.
We stopped for the night in a town that was on the border of Nevada and Utah. It’s funny that the state of pretend sin is right next to the state of pretend piety. We got breakfast in another casino that turned out tgo also be the peppermill. it was smaller, but just as amazing. Then we set out across the salt flats. We stopped at a truck lot that I’d like to think is the very same truck lot that Tiffany and Luoi sat in when they were hitchiking home last summer. Because there was no cell phone coverage through most of Nevada, I had the idea that we should get CB radios to communicate with Matt and Jenny in the other car. So we got two CBs there. It’s a bit dissapointing that we didn’t get them at the start, since I’ve heard that certain professional ladies in Nevada will chat on CBs, trying to lure in truckers, but as Christi’s friend Peter pointed out, all that will still be there whenever we go back through. After we’re both gone, even.
The days sort of blend together in my mind of flat driving and rolling hills of the Rockies or whatever we crossed. We stopped for the night in Wyomin one night. Christi said the steak there was great. There is nothing in Wyoming except the continental divide . . . twice. I guess the water in between flows towards the middle? On the border of Wyoming and Nebraska is a thrity foot tall statue of Jesus. Country song (the only available radio station there) lyrics have been created to celebrate the holy icon:


You can’t do what you pleases
In front of the tall Jesus
You have to do what the Lord doth say
At least until you drive away

We stopped for gas in Laramie in whatever state it was. No pilgramage was made. Christi and I did not hold hands. We drove across Nebraska and it was flat and boring, but had a better classical station that San Francisco does: NPRN. And then more and more states. We went to Iowa and visitted Christi’s friend Peter Balestrieri, who told us about all his many life events. He was Christi’s admin at Intuit. He’s working for a writer’s center in Iowa City and plays with an improv group that that he described as “secret clubhouse” like. They have their own club and don’t play out anywhere. The club puts up three flyers for ever show and sends out stuff to an email list. Often, no one shows up.
We said goodby and drove by Chicago-land. It’s huge. It was super hot and humid and the road was completely packed with trucks. There were more trucks that I’ve ever seen in the same place. The steam-room enviroment was getting to them. The CB was alive with chatter. Every truck stop that we passed had an altercation occuring. “Get out of the tuck, you bastard and I’ll kick your ass! Yeah, you at the pump! Get out!” All the places with parked trucks there wanted to do each other violence. The driving trucks were no more calm, shouting insults and obscenities across the CB. It was completely profane. As we got further away, the truckers became clamer, but no more thoughtful. One driver was explaining that he had picked up an anchovy pizza three days ago and not found a dumpster to throw it way in. “It’s been stinking up the cab for the last few days, but I’m so hungry now. It’s probably still good right? It wouldn’t spoil after just three days. I just want to eat around the edges.” he explained to the world in the 90 degree heat. Then another talked for a long time about a prostitute at a rest stop. She was young enough to be his daughter. He wanted to take her back to her parents. All the other drivers wanted directions to the rest stop.
My mom told me that truckers used to be called “knights of the road.” I swear. She said deregulation changed everything, but I’m skeptical, although deregulation was a bad idea for sure. The truckers were talking about the lights being out, so we switched on the radio and learned of the large east coast power outage. then Matt and Jenny called to say that the lights were out in Ann Arbor, so we got a room in Kalamazoo.
This morning, I tried to call several VW repair folks because a part fell off the car. I finally got a dealer in Chicago who said it wasn’t a problem. So we came up to ann Arbor and the lights came on at Jenny’s apartment just as we arrived. We helped her get her stuff from storage and move in to her new Apartment. then met some of her friends and went for sushi. tomorrow, we’re going to London Ontatio to get married. I don’t know if the lights are on there. I don’t know how long it will take to cross the border and to get there. Wish us luck.

More Gigs, Tatoos, etc

Thursday, Peter, the guitarist in the flute band, called to say that we couldn’t use his SO’s SUV after all. So Friday morning, I rushed out to get an oil change for the pickup truck and then we loaded all our equipment into the back and the three of us squished in and drove all the way to Eugene. We bonded. Talked about all sorts of things. I drove the whole way.
On the way up, I had shared Christi’s shark story. When Christi’s grandpa was a boy, his family drove to Florida and he caught a shark. He was so prous of this accomplishment, that the family was persauded to tie the shark to the roof of the car and drive back to California. Persumably, they planned to get the shark mounted or something. But it was summer and someplace right in the middle of the country, the smell of rotting shark became unbarable and the shark body was dumped in a stream. This story intrigues me. What happened then? Did someone find the hark? Were children henceforth disallowed from swimming in the stream?
Polly got excited about Black Butte, a small cinder cone next to Mount Shasta. There will be a song about this soon, I think. We got to Eugene and met Polly’s friend KC, with whom we were to stay. He explained that he just purchased a rental property and took us over there, where he stocked the fridge and said we could stay. Nifty. Then he took us to dinner at a good Thai place and give us an advance on the door for the Saturday gig.
KC and Peter stayed up talking into the night, while Polly and I slept. I woke up the next morning around 8:00, which is early for me, and went walking with Polly, trying to find the venue. We walked a long time and finally, I got some breakfast and she asked where we were going. We had passed it and so doubled back. And founf the bookstore Foolscap Books, our venue for the evening. It’s next door to KC’s new age shop. It was still too early for either place to be open, so we crossed the street to a Just Desserts-style bakery. Half of the things they sold were vegan. They had vegan muffins, vegan german chocolate cake, vegan parfait, vegan ecclairs, vegan cheese cake tortes, vegan everythign you could think of. The clouds parted overhead and angels sang and blew trumpets. I got a pumkin muffin. It was the best muffin I’ve ever encountered, vegan or non vegan. It was awesome.
finally, the bookstore opned up and we looked around and saw the PA. Peter finally woke up and came to look at the PA too. then KC’s shop opned, so we looked at that. Peter was full of questions about everything. The shop co-owner showed him all the ritual knives and explaine dhteir meanings and showed us a replica of the Sting prop from Lord of The Rings. Apparently, some neo-pagans want to rituals with short swords pictured in movies. The shop people showed us some stuff about cleansing rituals and a huge, heavy, shap sword that was for sale. Then Peter and I went with KC to Guitar Center while Polly went out to lunch with her friends from Portland.
I Peter needed strings. I just wanted to see if I could get a sales-tax free minidisc. No dice. I realized that I forgot my instrument cable, so I purchased one. Then we left so that Peter could string his acoustic guitar. We went back to our house and he unwound the lowest string and pulled it out of the groove in the nut. The nut broke. (The nut is the grooved piece of bone or plastic at the top of the neck that holds the strings over the finger board (and frets).) He and KC went back to guitar center to buy a new nut. I stayed behind and stared at charts, trying to memorize them better until I fell asleep in the living room. Polly returned and I told her about the nut and she looked highly alarmed. She had been getting progressively more nervouse about the gig through the day. So she went to meditate. Peter came back and started trying to pry the old nut out of the guitar. He spent maybe an hour. It wasn’t budging, so he and I went to a pro-level repair shop with his wounded guitar and the new nut.
The repair guy took out a tool and had the old nut out in two seconds. He looked at the new nut and declared that it wouldn’t fit. He went to a box of old nits and started fishing around for one that would fit and explained that he was doing Peter a favor, since they never fit, you always had to make a new one for the guitar. Nut sizes vary from brand to brand, from model to model and even from individual guitar to individual guitar. Apparently guitars have not yet experienced the industrial revolution innovation of interchangable parts. The repair guy said that he needed to make a new nut. It was approaching 5:00, the shop didn’t rent guitars and we didn’t know anyone to borrow one from. The repair guy had no leads on rentals. doom. the repair guy took pity and kept looking through his nut box until he found one that kind of fit. It was too short. He super-glued some stuff to it, shimming it up until it was almost tall enough. It was still too shot and too wide, but it was playable. Peter promised to send some repair work his way and we went back to the house.
I was trying to remember how to play one of the songs and it wasn’t coming to me. Polly was more mellow from meditating, but I was getting to be highly concerned. We wet up some speakers and did a run though. It was ok, so I felt better. I think we prolly all felt better. We loaded our gear into the truck and went ot the bookstore and set up. I was hungry, so while everyone else was sound checking, I went next door to get vegan tacos. Eugene is more vegan-friendly than Berkeley, I think. the Mexican place was selling big, one kilogram bags of Mate, just like the one Tiffany bought me several weeks ago. But they didn’t sell individual cups. I was still nervous. I knew mate would help. Should I buy a kilogram?
I went back Mate-less to sound check. We finished checking ten minutes after it was suppossed to start. The place was desolately empty. The openning act, a poet, was on her cell phone, calling up her friends, trying to get them come listen to her poetry. The organizers decided to wait half an hour in case more people showed up. A couple did.
The poet was awesome. I forget her name. She mostly talked about scoring chicks.
Then we were on. It went mostly without incident. I got off in the set list and had a refrain of panic where I didn’t know what song we were playing, but managed to get back on track. Polly introduced Peter and I. She said that I was a mills alum and that Peter had many other projects. We played songs. Polly did some solo stuff. By the time we finished, there were three audience members: Polly’s two freinds and one stranger. I made a resolution a few weeks ago to go to at least one concert a week. I’ve been falling behind on it, but I think I need to renew that resolution. People need audiences. The bookstore owner was apparently pissed to have made $8 on the show.
The sound guy, Sleeve, was excited that I went to Mills because he’s into noise music. Cool, a contact in Eugene. We broke down and went over to the dessert place and then went to a bar with just is three and KC’s neice, who was into Peter. After one round of drinks, we went back to our house and slept. It was around 1:00.
I woke up at 7:30 the next morning. I heard Peter and Polly talking to each other. Peter is not a morning person. I sprung out of bed, since it must be time to leave. It was 7:30. Peter crawled back to sleep, but I was up, so I had breakfast at a greasy spoon with Polly’s Portland friends. The woman was a wesleyan alum. She gave me her email address. She’s going to try to get her frat (it’s a co-ed frat) to host us in September at Wesleyan, so we could play a gig (or a few) after I left. Pretty cool. She gave me her email address She seems nifty.
And so we went back to pack up. While we were putting things in the truck, a barefoot guy with a banjo was walking down the street. I said I loved the banjo and he played a song for us and then went on. Eugene is a weird place. We left a nice note for KC and piled into the pickup truck and drove and drove and drove. It was much warmer on the trip down. we passed a thermometer that said it was 91 degrees F. No airconditioning. No radio. No room to move. We talked less on the way down.
Peter suggested we get off the freeway and drive though historic Dunsmuir, because he was curious and it would be a nice change of scene. We drove past the muffler man from Zippy the Pinhead. The one that Zippy goes to have talks with. There he was larger than life! My bandmates were not as excited as I was.
Finally, we got back to the bay area. We came over a crest and saw the twinkling of lights below and cool breeze washed over the car. Home! The only place with decent weather outside of the Mediterranean. We dropped off Peter at his home in Richmond with his stuff. Then went to Berkeley, where Polly dumped her stuff into her car. And there was christi, who I had been pining for all weekend. I told he that I saw the Muffler man. She said, “Really?? That’s awesome!” I definitely married the right woman. She had a cold and I was exhuasted, so we went to bed.
I slept past noon. Got up, ate some food, check my mountain of email, then went over to Precision to get a tatoo of a bass clef on my arm. It took around two hours. It’s black and blue and shaded. Now I look like a real bass player. It matched a tatoos of a peace symbol, that Christi got on her arm in the same spot, during my absence. Peace through music. Or something. I came back for Tennis Roberts rehersal. We waited around for Ed to show up and then called him and went for Pizza. We called him back after Pizza and he said he was too tired to practice, so we played as a trio for maybe an hour. the mics were still set up from flute back practice, so I tried singing and playing bass for a while. “New tatoo. Black and blue.” Not good at making up words on the fly and really not good at multitasking singing and playing at the same time, but I think I could get it with practice.
Tiffany came home and was tired, so we quit playing. Everyone left. Christi and Tiffany went to bed. I posted in my blog. I was instructed by the tatoo artist to take a hot shower, so I will go do that now. Then bed.

Top 4 free things to do in the East Bay

  1. The Albany Bulb
    Located right next to Golden Gate Fields, this old dump now holds a ton of art made out of junk. There are paintings, sculptures, mosaics, installations and more. Even a very small castle. See it now before the city of Albany buldozes it. Open during daylight hours. Indy Media Artcile
  2. Chapel of the Chimes
    Located in Oakland on Piedmont Avenue. This is a big building, designed by local architect Julia Morgan, that holds the ashes and remains of many, many people. It’s seperated into a bunch of rooms. Some are tiny. some are medium-sized gardens, some are large chapels. The walls are display cases filled with urns. Floor to high ceiling. Many of the urns are shaped like books, with the name of the person who is inside on the spine like a title. The ceiling is glass, so sunlight filters in. the rooms are very echo-y, given all the hard surfaces and very interestingly resonant, with obvious resonant pitches. some of the glass ceilings slide back to let in a breeze. Many of the garden rooms ahve fountains. Parts of the place are maze-like. Part is big open rooms. There’s something for everyone and it’s really interesting to wander through. Not all of the rooms are accessable. Open 9-5 daily. Official Website
  3. Doggie Diner Heads
    This is the largest tourist attraction in Emeryville, except for the Ikea. the dog heads sit on a trailer, just off Ocean avenue, between Hollis and San Pablo. I think they might be in New York right now, though. The Doggie Diner, a local restaurant chain, closed in 1976, but it’s emblem, a mona-lisa like weiner dog head, has enduring fame and is often featured in Zippy the Pinhead. These dog heads used to sit on poled in front of the restaurants. They’re big. They’re weird. They will make you laugh. You can go see them anytime, but they do travel and there’s nobody to call, so it’s hit or miss. Roadside America Article
  4. Indian Rock
    It’s a big rock in North Berkeley. Some people practice rock climbing on it, but there’s also a couple of stairways carved into it. It has a terrific view, so you can climb to the top and look at the entire bay area. It’s a great place to look at sunrises (although facing the wrong direction), sunsets, eclipses, meteor showers, stars, whatever. Technically, it’s open during daylight hours, but I’ve seen plenty of people there after dark, especially for unusal celestial events. The rock itself is not accessible, but the park has a little path through it that is. And the route there takes you through one of Berkeley’s three roundabouts. the biggest one! It has a fountain or something in the middle. Berkeley Parks Department Offical webpage about the park

Back from the South

So Thursday afternoon, Christi and I drove down to LA. We were down to visit my cousin, the 86-year-old nun. This time, we decided to get a hotel room instead of staying at the convent, which was good because we didn’t get in until 11:00 and the convent locks up at 9:00. But the convent lodging is free and actually, the beds are more comfortable, which is not what one would expect. The hotel room had a gigantic king or perhaps emporer sized bed. It was bigger than Mitch’s boat. Anyway, the convent does not offer beds that sleep six, but I’m digressing here.
On Friday morning, we found Catherine, my cousin. If you ever ask her what she wants to do, she says, “Walk.” Her vision is very impaired, so she can’t walk very quickly by herself, so she likes it when folks take her hand and take her jogging around. So we walked around the grounds of the Carondelet center and then took a lunch break. She then required a nap, so Christi and I talked to some of the other nuns in the convalescent wing of the convent. Christi was wearing a T-shirt that said “Oakland” on it, so one nun kept repeating that she loved Oakland and wished she was there now. This is actually a common theme among many of the women there. My cousin used to also frequently express a desire to be in Okaland rather than LA. Strangely, I feel the same way.
We took my cousin out to dinner at a place called Hamburger Hamlet. The food was better than the convent food and there were actually a lot of disabled people patronizing the place, so the waiter was cool. Catherine ate a ton of food and talked about how her last visitor took her to the beach and they rented a tandem bike. I can’t quite picture it. And Catherine ordered a martini with dinner. As we went back to the convent, she instructed us to not let anyone catch on that she had this martini, so I shouldn’t be telling you this (keep it quiet), but she was totally loopy. It was like sneaking into a college dorm. Actually, it’s exactly like a college dorm, since the convent is attached to Mount St. Mary’s College, which the nuns run (ran?). It seems like everyone at the convent now went to the Mount and my cousin tuaght there. Many of the sisters were her students. Catherine did research on disease carrying insects, mostly ticks but also misquitos. One of her former students reminisced about volunteering to let the skeeters bite her. Apparently, Catherine had asked for volunteers to feed them. Anther sister said she had taken logic from Catherine, which was not her normal subject. Catherine had told them that next she was going to teach the chior because her mother played the organ.
Anyway, she has a half a martini limit and it was 5:00 and she was going to bed.
Christi had picked up a copy of the LA Weekly and we looked for music listings. They were very very sparse. To read that paper, you would think there was no music in LA. I know that’s not true, but I have no idea how to find out about music. We probably should have gone to a play or something, since that what’s the region’s forte, but instead, Christi proposed that we go to Amoeba music. This destination had the advantage of being on Sunset Blvd. We knoe how to find Sunset. We have no map of LA and for some reason are never going to acquire one, even though it seems like having one might be a good idea.
We drove all the way down Sunset from Brentwood to Hollywood. This takes one past Bel Air, UCLA, the Sunset Strip and a few other landmarks.
The Sunset Strip seems to be a part of Disney Land that escaped and decided to cater to grown ups. And how many valets work in the LA region? Why do LA folks love their cars so so so much when there’s no room to park them and they have to hire other people to do it for them?
The Amoeba in Hollywood is extremely huge. The 20th Century Classical section, however, is smaller than the Berkeley store. There is a section dedicated to Daniel Lentz. To find Alvin Lucier, you have to look under the shelves in the back. So went back to our hotel.
The Denny’s attached to our hotel had a C rating from the health department. the best thing about LA is that all the restaurants get grades from the health dept and then have to post them. I wish we had that around here.
Saturday morning, we went back to the convent and took Catherine to Santa Monica. We walked on the beach and rode the ferris wheel and then bought a giant box of jube jube candies. then we decided to go to an Indian place that Christi knew about, but alas it was closed. Catherine was disappointed. “I’ve only had indian food once before.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Well, I had a lot of it in Kenya, but I’ve only had it once before in the US.”
So I asked her about Kenya. She’s been there twice. Mostly, it’s best to let Catherine reminisce on her own rather than ask questions, because it’s easier to follow when she’s just telling a story. She’s been to forty countries in Europe and Africa doing research. She discovered the existance of pheremones in ticks. When she was teaching in Prague, she had special dispensation nto to wear a habit, was not allowed to talk about God, belonged to the underground, and suffered a massive stroke, but didn’t come home because she didn’t want to abandon her students. One of the nuns is recording Catherine’s stories and transcribing them. I’ve very glad to hear that.
We went to another restaurant and Catherine ate a mountain of food and then went back to the convent so she could nap. It was graduation day at the Mount, so there was a lot of extra traffic and protesters.
The Sanchez sisters, some local politicians, were giving the commencement address. A bunch of white protesters, many of them men, were holding pictures of white dead babies (not fetuses, they use real, murdered babies for those photos) and signs explaining that the Sanchez sisters were in favor of abortion and shouldn’t be speaking at a Catholic school. I talked very briefly with a cmpus administrator and she said that the protesters felt like the school was hipocritical and insufficiently Catholic.
You could see the protesters from the convent, but not from the school. I don’t know much about the Mount, aside from talking to many elderly alumnai and former teachers, but I have a hard time beliving it could be insufficiently Catholic. The nuns are intensely, completely spiritual. They pray constantly. Everything many of them do is thoughtful and prayerful. (There was note on the announcement board asking them to pray for the Lakers to win.) Anyway, while my cousin napped, Christi and I went to sit away from the graduation and the protesters in a little garden. One of the nuns, clearly stressed out from being picketted, came and told us to leave. She thought we were wayward protesters and apologized when we explained that we weren’t, but we left anyway to go get coffee.
when we came back for dinner, most of the protesters had left, but one white guy in a suit was holding a sign that said that Kathy Ireland opposses abortion. I often get my moral direction from super models. Also my financial advice. How does she feel about my mutual fund?
The nuns were all abuzz about being protested. “I think it was a bunch of pro-lifers.” one said. There is a big banner on the front of the convent (which you can’t see from the road, where the picketers were gathered), which announces that the Sisters are for peace. I imagine that few of the “pro-lifers” were for peace. Real-live humans aren’t as important as unborn ones, I guess. I strongly suspect that the majority of the nuns are pro-choice. Anyway, apparently the TV news was giving a lot of coverage to the protest. And we talked about mother’s day. Prayers were offered for everyone’s mother. I mentioned that mother’s day used to be “Mother’s Day for Peace,” where pacafist women marched sayin that they weren’t raising their children to be killed off in wars. I dig it a lot. So did they.
And then we left, to drive back in time from band practice today. My cousin is the happiest person I know.

Old News, New News

Ok, well, at some point in Seattle, I think near the last day there, I went to a concert festival to see, or rather hear and see a collaboration that Ellen did with some dancers. It was very groovy. Ususally, I feel clueless about dance, but I totally “got” that one. And the sounds were cool. the next piece, I didn’t get as much. It had toys in it.
then there was an installation/performance art thing before the second part of the show. It was groos. It was supossed to be “deep.” something about economics and war, but it looked like a gross parody and mocking of homeless people.
then came the second part of everything, which I could try to give a review of, but it was several days ago and I don’t feel qualified. anyway, also at this event, Ellen’s missing teeth video was shown as a lobby installation. I have now seen pictures of many of my friends and acquaintances (and even perfect strangers) without all of their teeth. Ellen is a master of photoshop. She should work for dentistry jounrals and ads.
after all of this, we went to a piano bar, but neither Christi or Ellen (or me) could be persuaded to sing.
I left Seattle on sunday night, but not before having dinner with Ellen at an Ethiopian restuarant. fun was had by all. then Christi took me to the airport to fly overnight to Hartford Connecticut. Everytime I travel overnight, I swear that I’ll never do it again. anyway, I had to run through the airport. I was in the second to last row in the plane and didn’t want to recline my shair too much, because the row behind me couldn’t recline at all.
for some reason, despite the late hour of takeoff, they decided to show movies for hours and hours and hours. and since the folks behind me couldn’t recline to sleep, they yelled advice at the people in the movies. after a while of this, I decided that it would probably be ok for me to recline my chair back as far as it would go.
after one plane change and a long nap in Newark, I got to Hartford and rented a car. I drove one half hour to Middletown. folks tell me that it is imparative to have a car there cuz you can’t get anywhere without one. the transit situation must really suck if there’s no bus to take the half hour ride in. Of course, I’ve now seen middletown and I beleive the people who say there’s no transit.
People in Connecticut are very friendly. The airport people wanted to tell me how to get where I was going and the students wanted to tell me where I was going and it was all very nice. but where are the outdoor drinking fountains? I saw two drinking fountains in the whole state and both were indoors. also, the gas stations are not immediately visable. How do they find gas?
One of the first people I saw on campus was Judy‘s friend Anne. She very helpfully suggested that I stay in some grad student housing and the grad boys there very thoughtfully put me up in their house. It was really very kind and hospitable of them and I’m very grateful. It must be exciting living in such houses, since I was living in a stranger’s room without his knowledge or consent. In fact, he came home the last night I was there, at 2:30 AM, to find his room occupied. And so he slept on the couch. He’s a visitting artist at the university and he didn’t seem to be at all angry that I had been in his room.
So I met some teachers and walked around. The buildings are interesting and mostly underground and all connected underground, which I hope isn’t because of the weather, but I think it might be. apparently, it snowed less than a week before my arrival.
so I signed the paperwork and that’s where I’m going in the fall. And I decided to go home, rather than New York, cuz I couldn’t find a place to stay from any of my meager east coast contacts. Not that they’re individually meager, just that there aren’t many of them. So I fly from Hartforn to Columbus and from Columbus to Vegas, over Texas cuz of weather problems. the couple next to me lived in Columbus and tried to get to Vegas whenever they could. As we were getting to the airport, they started pointing out casinos to me, surprised that I didn’t know of them. “See that red and purple one, that’s the [whatever].” I didn’t have much to contribute, so I said, “did you know that Vegas uses five times as much water per capita than any other place that gets it’s water from the Colorado River?” they sat in silence for a minute and then said, “see that? that’s the replica of the Eifel Tower.”
The vegas airport is loud like a video arcade, but, of course, the games are for adults only. were the gamblers just passing through? Were they anxious to get started or wanted just one last chance before leaving? What makes people want to feed coins into a machine? I mean, I play arcade games sometimes and they eat my quarters. I think maybe it’s like trying to save the princess, but no particular skill is involved, so it’s relaxing and exciting at the same time. but what would I know?
there’s two different competing groups of men who take off their clothes. One is the chippendales. I think the attraction and fantasy of the Chippendales (this is gleamed by looking at the poster in the airport) must be that there could be men in leather pants and bowties who aren’t gay. Straight women hold out hope for men who care about their appearance, like musicals, wear leather pants and are stright. good luck. there’s also an austrailian groupd. they all have long hair like Fabio. Is Fabio straight? With his name and appearance, he should be in a pulp novel dating a guy named Rod.
By the time I got to Oakland, I was convinced that I had taken the wrong flight to the wrong airport. None of it looked familiar. Where was I? but the Christi lead me gently home. And I slept all day yesterday, except for waking up at 9:00 PM to see a movie with Jenya called Chaos. It’s French. It may be a comedy. All ends well. there were some problematic aspects to it. Clearly, French culture is having some problems dealing with immigrants. But it’s not a bad movie. The Sf international film festival apparently likes it. I went back to sleep after seeing it.
and now, my gosh the house is messy. There’s boxes full of drums and a beat up sousaphone and luggage all over the place. the end.

Connecticut

This will be brief. I dunno if somebody will tell me if I’m not allowed to use this computer. So I flew into the east coast overnight a couple nights ago. Yesterday I was a bit of a basket case from that two hours of sleep I received. This caused me to corner the medieval music teacher and fire at her questions about the Burgundian school of music during the hundred years war. What would posess me to tell her I had an avid interest in writing motets?
Anyway, I met Alvin Lucier. He told me how to make Boston Baked beans. First, soak the beans overnight. Put a quartered onion in the bottom of the bean pot, then put in your drained, soaked beans and honey (or maple syrup), water and dried mustard. You also stgick in a bay leaf or salted pork. Cook in the oven at low heat for a long time and then take the top off for the last half hour so they brown on top. We also talked some about music. I asked if I could be his assistant, as I could tell that the semi-random bit of conversation I was having with him would sometimes contain musical information as well, and he’s good to talk to anyway. Judy was his TA when she was here. She said it involved hanging out a lot and doing writing work for him.
I also met Ron, the computer music guy. He told me that the community here was warm and not competitive (like some other schools), and from what I’ve seen, he’s correct. His TA would do kind of cool stuff. Fixing electronics, doing computer maintaence, soldering, etc. Stuff I kind of want to more about. But stuff I haven’t done because of laziness, not ignorance, if you know what I mean. I have a soldering iron at home, I just rarely use it. Anyway, he also said that Christi could get her music done by the student orchestra. Judy told me that the orchestra isn’t that great, but Christi might be able to get an ok recording and would get money from ASCAP this way. There’s also a pipe organ. Every spring Alvin makes his students write a pipe organ piece and they get played at a midnight concert that is somehow connected to the gay pride festival.
The campus seems kind of queer friendly. There’s an upcoming drag prom or something. A sign in the music building stairwell advertises a men’s group to talk about men’s issues. It says it’s for all self-identified males, which makes me feel better about it. I saw one anti-war sign in the student center. The school newspaper is probably considered to be on the left, or maybe moderate. It has an editorial that worries about embedded journalists, perhaps they’re endangering troops. right. ok. Middletown has a lot of flags. This is Joe Lieberman’s state. Lots of military. A lot of flag poles fly POW/MIA flags below the US flag. There are a lot of flags just around. The Italian Catholic church is St. Sebastian parish. They have a statue of St Sebastian standing at attnetion (not shot full of arrows) outside. An engraving says that he’s the parton saint of Catholic vetrans (my emphasis). Er… yeah. At first this pissed me off. But then I remembered that St. Sebastian was murdered heniously by his own army after refusing to commit an atrocity, so maybe he is a good war saint. On the other hand . . .
In counterpoint to all the flag waving, the Episcopals have a US flag with a dove carrying an olive branch. No stars on the blue. I guess that’s flag waving too, but it makes me feel better about things. The town is um, what berkeley would be like without Telgraph Avenue and without any of the towns around it like Albany and San Francisco if there were no gas stations and it didn’t have Peets or Codys or the gormet ghetto or hills or . . .. I don’t get small towns. This is suburban for sure. It’s only two hours from New York though. If it were SF, it would be one of those outlying suburbs that people insanely commute from, like Davis kind of is. But a two hour commute must be consdered long here or something. A lot of people said hi to me on the streets of Middletown, but they might all be crazy, I have to ask somebody. Yeah… well, there’s a nice looking playhouse which isn’t part of the school. And a new espresso shop. I had a dismal macciato this morning, but at least it was coffee and had soymilk, even if it was just a bitter wet cap. Maybe they’ll get better. And there’s a ncie fruit shop. A lot of itallian markets. Apparently an entire Sicillian village relocated here several years ago.
I must go try to meet with the department head. I think that I could spend two years here without going insane. And if I do, there’s a large mental institution in town.