So, still running on the thoughts of street fairs, a quick one about the Haight Street Fair a couple of years ago…
As I stated before, I’m not a huge fan of the street fair. I guess that I've always known it, but I'm finally embracing the fact that I do not like crowds. Milling crowds buying nonsense and waiting for bad fried food in your neighborhood seems to be that much more annoying. Yet I continued to walk the 5 or 6 block stretch of the Haight Street Fair a number of times. I'm also embracing the fact that my stubbornness is akin to stupidity.
And as I stated yesterday, the thing that would make the fair palatable for me was plastic cup after plastic cup of Magnolia beer. One year in particular, I dropped into the pub on my home to find my favorite girls working, all of them just as drunk on the Juiblee Ale as I was, lots of hugs and kisses... That was nice.
And there have been some great surprise experiences at the fair that I would like to hold onto. Like the day that I ran into Jeben at the corner of Ashbury. I hadn't seen him in some time, he had moved to Los Banos with his wife and little girl and was apparently back in the city. He had that slow and stony, but charismatic smile. He had a way of making a lot of people angry, but through some fluke in the connection process, I loved the guy. He made me feel warm being around him.
Then further on up the road, not far from the one and only Murio's Trophy Room (a great place to have a ten in the morning shot of whisky after perusing the used section at Amoeba), I was grabbed by someone from the throng towards the side of the road. Hussan's drunken grin emerged from the crowd and he pulled me into a rough embrace. He was happy to be back in the country from the Middle East, and he laughed with his entire being. That goofy, drunken grin still makes me smile years later.
So there's good in all of that annoying bullshit, in that pulsing mob of jerkoffs taking full advantage of being able to drink beer in the streets for a couple of hours. It's an important lesson to remember, important moments to remember...
Confidential to kc!: Thanks for the assist last night.
Rocktober song of the day: Just by Radiohead.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Salmon Days Are Here Again
Allow me to introduce you to the new definition of fun, the embodiment of good times in the physical, it's a little something I like to call: The Issaquah Salmon Days Festival!
Nothing against the fine town of Issaquah and it's inhabitants, Issaquah seems like a nice place to live and commute into work from, but your Salmon Days Festival blows monkey ass! It sucks a dead camel's balls.
Okay, okay Billy, settle down now, it's not that bad. It's not like watching The Cutting Edge, an affront to all that's holy, but it does seem to take the idea of "festival" to a drab place that it wasn't meant to go to.
The Issaquah Salmon Days Festival included arts and crafts booths lining a closed down street, booths that peddled sort of fancier county fair foods, (onion blossoms and Philly Cheese Steaks, but no deep fried Twinkies), and a Field of Fun.
By the by, Field of Fun was pretty much a misnomer; a field yes, not a lot of fun. There was the stuff for kids like face painting, radar checked fast ball throwing (the high school pitcher looked particularly bad assed and proud of himself, throwing his all, in between a set of six year olds - way to go tiger) and a rock climbing wall (which admittedly is pretty cool for kids). But as I am not yet a father, there was not a lot of fun for me.
By the by, Salmon Days, also pretty much a fucking misnomer. I was expecting to see salmon! Salmon steaks, and smoked salmon, salmon gum, salmon top hats and salmon silverware, even salmon colored clothing. The stages where bad local bands played their Beatles covers were named after salmon, and there was a hatchery somewhere that we didn't find, and I saw two people carry a fake salmon over them like one of those Chinese New Year's dragons, all the while banging on a cowbell (to Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers), but not nearly the salmon-rama I was expecting.
All right tough guy, what would have made it better I bet you're asking. Well, let me tell you. Rides would have made it better. Cheesy carny rides like The Octopus and the Tilt-A-Whirl would have made it better. Anything else? Oh yeah, some fucking booze! What sort of demented freak puts on a street festival without one beer tent? Who does that?
And I should have stated this in the beginning probably, but I tend to really hate these street fair/festivals. The only thing that allowed me to make it through the Haight Street Fair every year was to get good and drunk on Magnolia's Jubilee Ale, made especially for the occasion.
I don't mean to disparage the salmon in any way, welcome back mighty salmon, spawn like porn stars, but unless you are into corn dogs and watching children throw an irrational fit when their Dora the Explorer balloons fights loose the tethers of gravity, then there is not a lot to the Salmon Days Festival I can recommend.
2 for Tuesday Rocktober songs of the day: See No Evil by Television, followed closely on the heels by Alex Chilton by The Replacements.
Nothing against the fine town of Issaquah and it's inhabitants, Issaquah seems like a nice place to live and commute into work from, but your Salmon Days Festival blows monkey ass! It sucks a dead camel's balls.
Okay, okay Billy, settle down now, it's not that bad. It's not like watching The Cutting Edge, an affront to all that's holy, but it does seem to take the idea of "festival" to a drab place that it wasn't meant to go to.
The Issaquah Salmon Days Festival included arts and crafts booths lining a closed down street, booths that peddled sort of fancier county fair foods, (onion blossoms and Philly Cheese Steaks, but no deep fried Twinkies), and a Field of Fun.
By the by, Field of Fun was pretty much a misnomer; a field yes, not a lot of fun. There was the stuff for kids like face painting, radar checked fast ball throwing (the high school pitcher looked particularly bad assed and proud of himself, throwing his all, in between a set of six year olds - way to go tiger) and a rock climbing wall (which admittedly is pretty cool for kids). But as I am not yet a father, there was not a lot of fun for me.
By the by, Salmon Days, also pretty much a fucking misnomer. I was expecting to see salmon! Salmon steaks, and smoked salmon, salmon gum, salmon top hats and salmon silverware, even salmon colored clothing. The stages where bad local bands played their Beatles covers were named after salmon, and there was a hatchery somewhere that we didn't find, and I saw two people carry a fake salmon over them like one of those Chinese New Year's dragons, all the while banging on a cowbell (to Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers), but not nearly the salmon-rama I was expecting.
All right tough guy, what would have made it better I bet you're asking. Well, let me tell you. Rides would have made it better. Cheesy carny rides like The Octopus and the Tilt-A-Whirl would have made it better. Anything else? Oh yeah, some fucking booze! What sort of demented freak puts on a street festival without one beer tent? Who does that?
And I should have stated this in the beginning probably, but I tend to really hate these street fair/festivals. The only thing that allowed me to make it through the Haight Street Fair every year was to get good and drunk on Magnolia's Jubilee Ale, made especially for the occasion.
I don't mean to disparage the salmon in any way, welcome back mighty salmon, spawn like porn stars, but unless you are into corn dogs and watching children throw an irrational fit when their Dora the Explorer balloons fights loose the tethers of gravity, then there is not a lot to the Salmon Days Festival I can recommend.
2 for Tuesday Rocktober songs of the day: See No Evil by Television, followed closely on the heels by Alex Chilton by The Replacements.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Taxicab Confessions (Brown Version)
We were talking about puking last night, backstage, before the show. Thursday night's show was performed admirably by a cast member who felt like he was going to vomit. Last night, same thing, but it was the lead. Thursday, I spent a lot of stage time very tense and listening for constrictions in the fellow’s voice and hoping he would be fast enough to find reasoning to stick his head beneath the desk on stage and quietly rail. Last night, during a scene with me and noted lead, I heard him start coughing and immediately thought, "Oh sweet glory, here it comes."
Nobody barfed, everything was cool, but it reminded me of a story that I shared with the cast. And a little advanced warning, this story involves vomiting (duh), so if you're one of those faint-hearted softies who can't even read about ralphing without choking up yourself, you may wish to skip this. Also, this isn't a story of one of MY varied journeys into the land of regurgitation, there's enough of those floating around out there already.
So somehow somebody got free tickets to a screening of the final Absolutely Fabulous episode that was being held at the Warfield in San Francisco. There was a big gala party involved, including an open bar. Now a word on open bars: They’re great in theory, dangerous in practice. The prevailing attitude with a hosted bar seems to be get while the gettin's good, myself included. This can lead to an unprepared level of drunkenness that is best left to professionals - people like Bukowski, people like John Bonham, people like the crazed Jamaican who accosted me for twenty bucks the other night during a break in the show, and upon telling him that I was in a costume and had no money on me, proceeded to up his request to 30 and then 50 dollars.
Hell yes, I got good and drunk, no joke. Not to a level of dangerousness that I have been known to dance towards, but toasted nonetheless. Beth's old neighbor from the Chico days on the other hand stepped stumbling to the other side. After she had her time to aggressively hit on each of the other four other members of our little group, she passed into the realm of incoherent.
We led her out to Market Street and hailed a cab. Five of us piled into the car; one in front, three in back, and Drunky McDrunkfuck laid out across the three of us in back. Lucky me, I had her passed out and snoring head on my lap.
The ride up to the Haight was fairly uneventful, but when we were mere blocks away from home, I began to feel small, yet tell-tale tremors coming from the pass out queen. "I think you're gonna want to stop the cab," I told the driver. He either chose to ignore me, or thought I was talking to the other driver in the car.
We were a block away from home now, one frigging block. "Seriously," I started, but then I felt a wetness on my lap that had a certain, shall we say, viscosity to it.
"Stop the cab!" The guy took me seriously, and with a choreography that seemed almost beautifully rehearsed, two ladies got the girl out and I slipped out the other side managing to not spill one drop of slightly soured cosmo from my lap. Corado paid the driver.
I finished the journey home in my underwear, sans pants, and the girl finished out the evening spilling what remained inside of her into our bathtub.
*Side note: Bathtub? Really? Seriously? I'm telling y'all now, if you come over and spill your liquor drenched guts into my bathtub, you will clean it out. I don't give a flying squirrel's ass how hung over you are.
Well, that was the last time we saw, or even heard from, Biffy's old neighbor. Apparently, some people get all awkward and bashful when they're told that they have puked on someone in the back of a cab.
Rocktober song of the day: I'm Waiting For The Man by The Velvet Underground.
Nobody barfed, everything was cool, but it reminded me of a story that I shared with the cast. And a little advanced warning, this story involves vomiting (duh), so if you're one of those faint-hearted softies who can't even read about ralphing without choking up yourself, you may wish to skip this. Also, this isn't a story of one of MY varied journeys into the land of regurgitation, there's enough of those floating around out there already.
So somehow somebody got free tickets to a screening of the final Absolutely Fabulous episode that was being held at the Warfield in San Francisco. There was a big gala party involved, including an open bar. Now a word on open bars: They’re great in theory, dangerous in practice. The prevailing attitude with a hosted bar seems to be get while the gettin's good, myself included. This can lead to an unprepared level of drunkenness that is best left to professionals - people like Bukowski, people like John Bonham, people like the crazed Jamaican who accosted me for twenty bucks the other night during a break in the show, and upon telling him that I was in a costume and had no money on me, proceeded to up his request to 30 and then 50 dollars.
Hell yes, I got good and drunk, no joke. Not to a level of dangerousness that I have been known to dance towards, but toasted nonetheless. Beth's old neighbor from the Chico days on the other hand stepped stumbling to the other side. After she had her time to aggressively hit on each of the other four other members of our little group, she passed into the realm of incoherent.
We led her out to Market Street and hailed a cab. Five of us piled into the car; one in front, three in back, and Drunky McDrunkfuck laid out across the three of us in back. Lucky me, I had her passed out and snoring head on my lap.
The ride up to the Haight was fairly uneventful, but when we were mere blocks away from home, I began to feel small, yet tell-tale tremors coming from the pass out queen. "I think you're gonna want to stop the cab," I told the driver. He either chose to ignore me, or thought I was talking to the other driver in the car.
We were a block away from home now, one frigging block. "Seriously," I started, but then I felt a wetness on my lap that had a certain, shall we say, viscosity to it.
"Stop the cab!" The guy took me seriously, and with a choreography that seemed almost beautifully rehearsed, two ladies got the girl out and I slipped out the other side managing to not spill one drop of slightly soured cosmo from my lap. Corado paid the driver.
I finished the journey home in my underwear, sans pants, and the girl finished out the evening spilling what remained inside of her into our bathtub.
*Side note: Bathtub? Really? Seriously? I'm telling y'all now, if you come over and spill your liquor drenched guts into my bathtub, you will clean it out. I don't give a flying squirrel's ass how hung over you are.
Well, that was the last time we saw, or even heard from, Biffy's old neighbor. Apparently, some people get all awkward and bashful when they're told that they have puked on someone in the back of a cab.
Rocktober song of the day: I'm Waiting For The Man by The Velvet Underground.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Fun With A Lava Lamp
When a lava lamp begins to get boring, and unfortunately with this big, old fashioned, 60's model with clear liquid and red "lava" that Nikki 2 K's was gracious enough to let chill on my desk, it does get boring, there are things you can do to shake things up.
And here's a slight disclaimer: I love me some lava lamp, but there's something about this particular model that just ends up frustrating you. It essentially goes through the same set of actions each time until you wind up with a big blob of thick, red fluid forming a ball on the bottom.
In order to spark some new interest in the thing, I have gone to taking the lamp off the base and allowing the lava to slowly cool. It then becomes a lot of fun to spin the glass and watch the fluid swirl and roil around as if it were in slow motion. It reminds me of the slow motion drop of blood in the movie Pink Floyd: The Wall (which I only remember so well because I obsessively watched the movie continuously for a couple of years). As the fluid continues to cool and return back to its hardened and waxy beginnings, you can spin the thing and form a whirlpool sort of tunnel thing in the middle.
So now, when you put the lamp back onto the light, the thinner part of the "lava" glows a mean red while the rest remains dark. Streams of bubbles begin to rise out of this glowing core, reminding me poetically of 99 red balloons (or luftballons if you're German-minded), gaining the top of the lamp only to fall again into the glowing, molten cave.
It's like a rift into hell, a crack in Mount Doom.
Yes, I just geeked out and referenced Lord of the Rings. I also just wrote a post about the lava lamp on my desk, roll with it.
I'm still waiting for a lamp that contains actual lava. How could you get bored with that?
Rocktober song of the day: Add It Up by The Violent Femmes.
And here's a slight disclaimer: I love me some lava lamp, but there's something about this particular model that just ends up frustrating you. It essentially goes through the same set of actions each time until you wind up with a big blob of thick, red fluid forming a ball on the bottom.
In order to spark some new interest in the thing, I have gone to taking the lamp off the base and allowing the lava to slowly cool. It then becomes a lot of fun to spin the glass and watch the fluid swirl and roil around as if it were in slow motion. It reminds me of the slow motion drop of blood in the movie Pink Floyd: The Wall (which I only remember so well because I obsessively watched the movie continuously for a couple of years). As the fluid continues to cool and return back to its hardened and waxy beginnings, you can spin the thing and form a whirlpool sort of tunnel thing in the middle.
So now, when you put the lamp back onto the light, the thinner part of the "lava" glows a mean red while the rest remains dark. Streams of bubbles begin to rise out of this glowing core, reminding me poetically of 99 red balloons (or luftballons if you're German-minded), gaining the top of the lamp only to fall again into the glowing, molten cave.
It's like a rift into hell, a crack in Mount Doom.
Yes, I just geeked out and referenced Lord of the Rings. I also just wrote a post about the lava lamp on my desk, roll with it.
I'm still waiting for a lamp that contains actual lava. How could you get bored with that?
Rocktober song of the day: Add It Up by The Violent Femmes.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Some Things I Do Like:
I like lists, they're fun to me. I also like the film maker Peter Greenaway, who himself seems to be a fan of lists as they appear in most of his films. This is apropos of nothing, unless I was making a list of favorite film makers, but I'm not. I also like derailing myself with randomness. God bless you randomness.
I was getting a tasty beverage in the kitchen when I smelled someone cooking their Pop Tarts in the toaster and I thought, "Man, I love the smell of Pop Tarts in a toaster." I was then flooded with a variety of other smells that I loved before I could really even stop to ask myself what smells I loved.
For your perusal, Top Ten Favorite Smells (in no particular order):
1) Pop Tarts Cooking in a Toaster
- Particularly the Cinnamon-Brown Sugar variety.
2) Puget Sound
- I always assumed it was the salt water smell of the ocean that I was enamored of, and it is, but I have found in particular it is the Puget Sound that really speaks to me. There's something particular to it, something with the tar of the pilings, or the cold, or the salt, or all of those wooded islands, I don't know.
3) Fresh Brewed Coffee
- If contentment could have a smell, I'm fairly sure it would smell like coffee. It just makes me think of happy mornings even if I'm about to enter into a shitty one.
4) Fresh Baked Anything
- Walking through the streets of North Beach in San Francisco on an early Saturday and smelling the bakeries do their thing made me happy to be alive that very moment in time.
5) Biffy's Pillow When She's Not There
- Not a decent replacement for her by any means, but it's a nice memento to hold onto until her return.
6) Sex
- Something about the sweaty, funky, heavy smell of screwing just makes me want to fuck all over again.
7) Back Stage
- I remember smelling it in high school and thinking to myself that I would remember this smell, and be fond of it, forever; a mad mixture of wood and paint and actor sweat and dust that makes me feel like I'm at home.
8) Garlic
- It reaches in and latches on to a desire and hunger that I didn't know was even there. It reminds me of thousands of amazing meals I've yet to have.
9) Old Books
- Somewhere between musty and spicy. Just makes me want to smile a cryptic smile, wrap up in a long coat and wander around a gray day.
10) Wineries
- It's the combination of the vibrant and wild smells of the wine and the solid smell of the wooden barrels it's kept in. It smells like tradition well worth holding onto.
Rocktober song of the day: Saints (single version) by The Breeders
I was getting a tasty beverage in the kitchen when I smelled someone cooking their Pop Tarts in the toaster and I thought, "Man, I love the smell of Pop Tarts in a toaster." I was then flooded with a variety of other smells that I loved before I could really even stop to ask myself what smells I loved.
For your perusal, Top Ten Favorite Smells (in no particular order):
1) Pop Tarts Cooking in a Toaster
- Particularly the Cinnamon-Brown Sugar variety.
2) Puget Sound
- I always assumed it was the salt water smell of the ocean that I was enamored of, and it is, but I have found in particular it is the Puget Sound that really speaks to me. There's something particular to it, something with the tar of the pilings, or the cold, or the salt, or all of those wooded islands, I don't know.
3) Fresh Brewed Coffee
- If contentment could have a smell, I'm fairly sure it would smell like coffee. It just makes me think of happy mornings even if I'm about to enter into a shitty one.
4) Fresh Baked Anything
- Walking through the streets of North Beach in San Francisco on an early Saturday and smelling the bakeries do their thing made me happy to be alive that very moment in time.
5) Biffy's Pillow When She's Not There
- Not a decent replacement for her by any means, but it's a nice memento to hold onto until her return.
6) Sex
- Something about the sweaty, funky, heavy smell of screwing just makes me want to fuck all over again.
7) Back Stage
- I remember smelling it in high school and thinking to myself that I would remember this smell, and be fond of it, forever; a mad mixture of wood and paint and actor sweat and dust that makes me feel like I'm at home.
8) Garlic
- It reaches in and latches on to a desire and hunger that I didn't know was even there. It reminds me of thousands of amazing meals I've yet to have.
9) Old Books
- Somewhere between musty and spicy. Just makes me want to smile a cryptic smile, wrap up in a long coat and wander around a gray day.
10) Wineries
- It's the combination of the vibrant and wild smells of the wine and the solid smell of the wooden barrels it's kept in. It smells like tradition well worth holding onto.
Rocktober song of the day: Saints (single version) by The Breeders
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Some Things I Don't Like:
I'm just going to come out and say it, I don't like maple. No, the wood's great, big fan, love maple trees, but the flavor maple I do not like. I cannot say why, but the smell of maple syrup on pancakes reminds me of pee; tree pee. I don't know if it's some associative switch I threw as a child, maybe on a breakfast trip to a convalescent home, but I would just rather not deal with maple syrup. I'll take my pancakes and waffles dry if there is no other syrup flavor available, such as boysenberry.
I'm in a major minority here, I realize this. People have made comments that, frankly, border on rude when I disclose this information. "How can you not like maple syrup?" they scream, chasing me with bottles that are shaped like a woman. "Real maple syrup is only made in America and Canada!" they say. "What're you, un-American?" They then threaten me with bodily harm and tell me to "go back to the USSR you pinko!"
I have found that this is not a good time to point out to the maple syrup fans that there is no longer a USSR. But all of this is nothing compared to the reaction I get when I tell people I don't like ketchup.
"You're the only white boy I know that doesn't like ketchup," said my Latin, former housemate Rafael. I don't know why he had to make it a racial thing, but he did have issues with dating underage girls 15 years his junior.
I don't know why I had to make it a pedophile thing though, so I guess we're even.
The ketchup thing is a vestige from my childhood. I don't know what it is I didn't like about it then, but I didn't. It may have been that unexpected sweetness to a hamburger that seems it shouldn't have been sweet. I probably would like ketchup if I had it now, but I sort of figure I've gotten this far in life without it, why incur another habit.
As I like things to come in threes, I will also throw out that in the world of condiments I'm not a fan of relish. Relish can go straight to hell.
As I would like to end this on a positive note, things that I'm a big fan of in the condiment world are: mustard, barbecue sauce and hot sauce (in particular Cholula).
Kelly Bean has specifically requested a Rocktober song of the day for this month. And as I am, and enjoy being, a dancing monkey, so it shall be. Rocktober songs for yesterday and today will be the following 2 song, quick punch of: Beat On The Brat by The Ramones, quickly followed by Janie Jones by The Clash.
I'm in a major minority here, I realize this. People have made comments that, frankly, border on rude when I disclose this information. "How can you not like maple syrup?" they scream, chasing me with bottles that are shaped like a woman. "Real maple syrup is only made in America and Canada!" they say. "What're you, un-American?" They then threaten me with bodily harm and tell me to "go back to the USSR you pinko!"
I have found that this is not a good time to point out to the maple syrup fans that there is no longer a USSR. But all of this is nothing compared to the reaction I get when I tell people I don't like ketchup.
"You're the only white boy I know that doesn't like ketchup," said my Latin, former housemate Rafael. I don't know why he had to make it a racial thing, but he did have issues with dating underage girls 15 years his junior.
I don't know why I had to make it a pedophile thing though, so I guess we're even.
The ketchup thing is a vestige from my childhood. I don't know what it is I didn't like about it then, but I didn't. It may have been that unexpected sweetness to a hamburger that seems it shouldn't have been sweet. I probably would like ketchup if I had it now, but I sort of figure I've gotten this far in life without it, why incur another habit.
As I like things to come in threes, I will also throw out that in the world of condiments I'm not a fan of relish. Relish can go straight to hell.
As I would like to end this on a positive note, things that I'm a big fan of in the condiment world are: mustard, barbecue sauce and hot sauce (in particular Cholula).
Kelly Bean has specifically requested a Rocktober song of the day for this month. And as I am, and enjoy being, a dancing monkey, so it shall be. Rocktober songs for yesterday and today will be the following 2 song, quick punch of: Beat On The Brat by The Ramones, quickly followed by Janie Jones by The Clash.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Welcome Rocktober
I welcomed in Rocktober like a rock star. It was sort of unintentional-slash-stupid choices, but...
They are currently doing a late night show after ours which is like a theater version of American Idol. People come in and do an "audition" in front of 3 auditors and an audience. This audition includes a monologue, part of a song, and a movement piece. The audience votes for their favorite male and female participants who go on to Round 2 for more audition torture and then a winner is picked. The fellow running this had asked a group of actors from our show to come and do it, but honestly, auditions are my own personal hell - I do them 'cause I have to, but I want to rip off my own legs and flail them around the room while blood pumps uselessly from the torn sockets when I go do them, The thought of doing an audition, an audition with singing and dancing no less, in front of an audience is a little too much like being locked in a room and being forced to listen to Journey. Not nice for me, and not nice for the poor person I will kill to get the hell out of there.
But, as members of our cast were going to do this thing, I figured I would go in and watch, I would "represent", as the kids are saying. Erik and I were going to hang out and get drunk, but before I knew it Erik had gone. I nonetheless filled up my travel mug with Maker's Mark ('cause I'm classy) and sipped it in the audience.
Sipped a whole lotta lovin' whisky on an empty stomach. This is an issue that has come up before with me, and I have apparently not learned. Rock stars are not bright sometimes...
The show ended at about 1:15 and we made our way out of the theater and immediately charged to the bar so we could hit it before last call. I was in full rock star mode at this point; drunk, but not trashed, and rallying the troops for more booze while the getting was good. We hit the bar, and as last call was going to be quickly upon us, I ordered two drinks. Doubles...
Whatever, everything was fine. I drank my drinks, I talked, I realized I was fairly drunk and as the bar closed I walked with a cast member half the way back to my place.
We stopped where we were supposed to be parting ways. He was telling me a story that I could not focus or comment on, because it had suddenly dawned on me that I was probably going to throw up and pretty quick here. I was trying to force my eyes to reconcile his image into one, and was pretty much only nodding responses so as to keep my mouth closed and not tempt the regurgitation fates. He finished up, I stumbled away and began taking in those full, gasping breaths the rest of the way home.
Yes, I did throw up - not a lot, remember, empty stomach. Yes, I did fall asleep at the toilet, wrapped in a towel. Yes, I did eventually stumble to the couch when I woke up and attempted to watch a movie only to pass out again.
But, what made me feel like a rock star, what made me feel like I had welcomed in Rocktober with true aplomb, was that I later got my hung-over ass motivated to walk down to the store for milk for my coffee, I left the couch and the apartment well before noon. Yes, I had survived another one of the drunken escapades that are quickly fading into extinction. I was out, walking around on the first day of this new Rocktober, dutiful church goers backing away from my weary smile.
They are currently doing a late night show after ours which is like a theater version of American Idol. People come in and do an "audition" in front of 3 auditors and an audience. This audition includes a monologue, part of a song, and a movement piece. The audience votes for their favorite male and female participants who go on to Round 2 for more audition torture and then a winner is picked. The fellow running this had asked a group of actors from our show to come and do it, but honestly, auditions are my own personal hell - I do them 'cause I have to, but I want to rip off my own legs and flail them around the room while blood pumps uselessly from the torn sockets when I go do them, The thought of doing an audition, an audition with singing and dancing no less, in front of an audience is a little too much like being locked in a room and being forced to listen to Journey. Not nice for me, and not nice for the poor person I will kill to get the hell out of there.
But, as members of our cast were going to do this thing, I figured I would go in and watch, I would "represent", as the kids are saying. Erik and I were going to hang out and get drunk, but before I knew it Erik had gone. I nonetheless filled up my travel mug with Maker's Mark ('cause I'm classy) and sipped it in the audience.
Sipped a whole lotta lovin' whisky on an empty stomach. This is an issue that has come up before with me, and I have apparently not learned. Rock stars are not bright sometimes...
The show ended at about 1:15 and we made our way out of the theater and immediately charged to the bar so we could hit it before last call. I was in full rock star mode at this point; drunk, but not trashed, and rallying the troops for more booze while the getting was good. We hit the bar, and as last call was going to be quickly upon us, I ordered two drinks. Doubles...
Whatever, everything was fine. I drank my drinks, I talked, I realized I was fairly drunk and as the bar closed I walked with a cast member half the way back to my place.
We stopped where we were supposed to be parting ways. He was telling me a story that I could not focus or comment on, because it had suddenly dawned on me that I was probably going to throw up and pretty quick here. I was trying to force my eyes to reconcile his image into one, and was pretty much only nodding responses so as to keep my mouth closed and not tempt the regurgitation fates. He finished up, I stumbled away and began taking in those full, gasping breaths the rest of the way home.
Yes, I did throw up - not a lot, remember, empty stomach. Yes, I did fall asleep at the toilet, wrapped in a towel. Yes, I did eventually stumble to the couch when I woke up and attempted to watch a movie only to pass out again.
But, what made me feel like a rock star, what made me feel like I had welcomed in Rocktober with true aplomb, was that I later got my hung-over ass motivated to walk down to the store for milk for my coffee, I left the couch and the apartment well before noon. Yes, I had survived another one of the drunken escapades that are quickly fading into extinction. I was out, walking around on the first day of this new Rocktober, dutiful church goers backing away from my weary smile.
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