friends

So, this is woefully incomplete; In fact, it covers only the up-to-the-event story... I almost don't want to post it but I think it's good to get the first part out there. More likely I'll write the rest. I have a few photos which I'll add once I get back to the HC and can get 'em off my camera, and for the latter part of the story I can lean on Stephanie and Andy for graphics. Indeed, the above is an Andy Smith original (some rights reserved). In very brief: I had a great time, and it was actually semi-Important for me to get out of my routine and mix it up. All work and not play is not a pragmatic plan.

Travelling from SFO, Cheney drops me off at the airport, ran into the Girth's lawyerly friend Eric at the terminal. He's delayed on the way to San Diego so we have a beer. It's a little hard to make small talk since we've only met a couple times, but there's basketball, Cavs getting trounced by the Wizards, and that's en entre, and he's a good guy so we pass 45 minutes like that.

Flight in to LA is fast. Julia picks me up. New haircut. We talk about the important things first, how our respective love lives are going. You already know my scene (nada). She's got a man-friend who's got a moustache he likes to wax (to good effect, IMHO) but also says she's really mostly interested in "good sex and working on myself." I tell her that's very LA, but I also think it's great, and tell her that too.

We go out to her neighborhood bar for a couple beers and to catch up. It's the former haunt of the Girth, the Lost and Found. In a strip mall -- like all things there -- but also dark, mirrored, with old-school-classy leather upholstry and a crowd of semi-feral regulars. Things are good, taking family news and the times, being close to thirty years old and still searching, etc.

I like Los Angeles. It's popular and easy to hate, and true there's a lot there to loathe, but this is true of everyplace. I think the thing that gets to people like me is that all the reasons we love LA are difficult to own. They seem cheap, weak, materialistic. The weather is nice. People are beautiful. It pulses with the certain energy and power that only a major global culture node can possess. Reeks of ambition.

Anyway, I sleep on a big old couch, and in the morning we do Starbucks, gossip about college people, and then it's time to pack up and roll. We do a quick stop for me to get some swim trunks at Ross, then to acquire amazing Italian sandwiches involving a long wait for our number to be called, then pick up Julia's friend Heather, a shining example of humanity. She has a pink scooter, a vintage 1945 map of the USSR, a tiny tv that she watches infrequently (much to the derision of the TiVo-praising Julia) and is allergic to sunlight and ibuprophen, which is a rough hand to be dealt. She wrangles an office full of world-class architects (Frank Gehry). We discover much common ground on the theories of human organization, power, and the virtues of being houseless "for a time" and living off the fat of the land.

The last stop out of town is Leonardo's, the afformentioned man-friend. Among many other things, Leonardo drives a FedEx truck so we were picking him up after he wrapped his shift. He's a LA native, a legitimate Lakers fan, and he really does wax his moustache to give it a jaunty point. The effect his that his face looks a fair bit like the Eric from Vagabond Opera, though as a man he's less operatic and more folksy in bearing.

Anyway, we all pile in and eat as Julia fights our way through traffic; downtown LA, into the burbs, a million "Babies 'R' Us"s, a roadside brushfire, the windmills, and finally into the Greater Indeo Area and the festival scene. Several defining things happen almost immediately:

1) We put on sunscreen. The "group lube session."

2) We observe egregious and utterly shameless littering on the part of festival-goers.

3) We begin receiving VIP treatment.

These three things encapsulate much of the experience I ended up having for the first couple days.

Comparisons to Burning Man are inevitable to me. It's pretty brutal out there in the heat of the day, and even though it's not the Black Rock Desert, and it's just April, it's still 90+ degrees and savagely sunny. The desert setting, various ravish overtones, and the presense of several art installations I recognize from the Playa make it all seem familiar. But it's full of kids (Burning Man skeiws older overall) and has a kind of Spring Break vibe at times, which can be unfortunate. And there's the massive amount of littering, which is omnipresent and frankly saps my hope for humanity.

We're also Very Important People for this thing. Via a connection, we're rolling in under the auspices of the owners of the festival grounds -- the Empire Polo Field, which is exactly what it says it is -- and so we park real close and roll in the back way along with a lot of pretty people and Steven Tyler, etc. There's a general "VIP" area of the festival which just takes a more expensive ticket to access, but has some amenities (couches, liquor in addition to beer for sale, etc), and then there's a "Tiki Hut Area" which we have special wristbands for, and also backstage etc.

It's sort of ridiculous. Waiting in a traffic line in the car before we arrive I read aloud the strongly-worded-letter Julia received concerning the access and expected behavior of all parties within the Tiki Hut Area (consistently capitalized as such). Basically they're saying don't be an asshole, so we've got it covered, but it's still kind of funny that they have to write that out in a strongly worded letter. The aforementioned Area itself is a big (15' x 30' maybe) tiki hut with a thatched roof, and professionally-staffed open bar. This is some kind of clubhouse for the Polo grounds, it seems, and is situated in a garden area featuring several large lilly padded pools, lush grass, shady trees, sculptures, etc. It's about 7 degrees cooler than everywhere else. The whole thing is behind a gate and several security dudes, and there's a "viewing area" where you can watch the mainstage, as well as all the people who you are lording it over. Like I said, ridiculous. But definitely nice. This is a feature of the weekend.

We arrive on the scene just in time to catch The Breeders, which Julia's happy about. It feels sort of trippy, being out in the warmest air I've felt in months, big soundsystem going with giant video monitors on the side. There are five big stages there -- two outdoor, three ginormous tents -- and by 4pm on Friday things are in swing. Partytime.

More to come.

I have a lot of stuff to write, but I may or may not get it all written, and so I quickly wanted to alert everyone to a new good thing to read if you’re looking for something to tickle your brain. My friend Anna (or Anita, the first girl I ever slow-danced with) is a real live professional Artist, and is currently spending some time in rural Estonia doing an artist-in-residence thing. She’s writing about it. It’s good! For instance:

I was already surprised to be speaking with my mom on skype- with me in Mooste, Estonia & her in Eugene, Oregon- then it got even more exciting- when Marcel, my younger brother calls my mom from Prison, in Umatilla, Oregon & she puts him on speaker phone and we are all three speaking to each other as though we are in the same room, only thousands of miles apart and each with completely different circumstances. Marcel could ask me about Mooste and I could ask him about how his parenting class is going & other such matters and my mom could intervene at any moment. If only i could have recorded our conversation it would have been an art piece in and of itself- a sound piece. I guess it was recorded through the prison- as they monitor and record all telephone calls- Now to get a copy!

Check it out y’all: A May in Mooste

Also, in one of the best examples I’ve yet found of how other parts of the world are starting to seriously kick our ass in internet access, this village of 500 has total WiFi, as did the bus she drove to get there. Which is what makes this possible. The assumption that US Citizens lead the best life becomes more and more faulty over time, it seems….

We billed our housewarming party as an opportunity to join us in “staging the end of our youth.” The crowd was smallish but high quality, and packed dense enough to make the occupied rooms seem full. Mix in a little SparksPlus, and it felt just about right.

Most importantly, a representative social network sample was achieved: academics from Berkeley, drupal developers from the Mission, lawyers from all over, Sixto, friends from Humboldt county and Oregon, and perhaps best of all Nick’s cousin in a positively outlandish basketball outfit rolling in and supervising the cooking of much bacon. Serious meatboxing. The mix works, and there will be dinner parties to come in the same vein.

Later in the evening, when things got whittled down to the inner circle, the truly regressive behavior began to emerge. There was some unsupervised mixed-martial arts in the living room, and in the back yard the great ritual of “cutting beers in half with a machete.” What started as a feat of immaturity is one cycle away from tradition.

I don’t know what our neighbors thought about this, especially as it was 3am and things eventually moved on from cans to bottles, which is a lot less safe and a lot more messy; but we cleaned things up good in the morning, and it probably won’t happen again soon. Hopefully there are no hard feelings.

I did a riff on Ken Kesey for my outfit, and my friend Molly Keogh came through with an amazing hat for me: the classic pinstripe train engineer number (which Kesey rocked, and has been appropriated and evolved by hipsters everywhere) with a “Software Engineer” emblem on it. Amazing! I’m still wearing it now. LGD dressed as one of the Kingsmen and the Girth simply hicked it up with an Oregon license plate around his neck, Flavor-flav’ style. A surprising number of others heeded our “Oregonian costume” suggestion, and it seemed to be fun.

The final hours were a long drunken singalong — me popping in between brushing and flossing for the chorus of Easy Money — culminating with The Wild Rover:

And it’s no, nay, never! No, nay, never, no more,
will I play the wild rover. No never no more!

It’s been ten years of shenanigans with these guys. I wouldn’t take any of it back, and I hardly think it’s true that we’re through. Not even close. People dip into various pools of nostalgia from time to time, and growing up happens whether you like it or not — tomorrow’s adventures will be different than those of yesterday, for sure — but I’m a big believer in Fun of the Now, inconsistent practitioner though I may be. The best has yet to come.

My man Mike “Smiley” Connery wrote a book! It’s pretty exciting. He’ll be going on tour and doing the whole deal. It’s a natural continuation of the work we started at Music For America, and I’m looking forward to reading the final copy.

There’s more Mike at Future Majority.

It was a slaughter. By the time I got around to buying seven shots of Kessler for the table -- "smooth as silk" -- we were all coloring well outside the lines, flirting with the ladies, shouting half-bright witticisms at one another. Yes, for the Girth's 29th birthday, after a very lovely and grown-up dinner of cayenne chicken and freshly-made pesto, we got drunk.

This is an old passtime, one that brought us together as wild young men, and still serves a bonding purpose, even if the path is now more well-worn and recovery a bit more difficult. It doesn't happen that often, this dionysian fugue, this western tradition of peeling back the civilized parts of our brains. We're more self-conscious and protective; more self-judging too. We've got better things to do a lot of the time. We worry about our health. Still, the ritual persists.

Considerable vulnerability is created, both during and after. This is part and parcel with any loss of control, and it's what we hope for I think, part of the draw. Things will be admitted, attempted, words blurted, action taken. Magical events may transpire, and in the hard light of day, with luck, truth will reveal itself.

The morning finds me shaky, giddy, mumbling rationalizations and pining away over a girl I haven't seen in more than year. The hard light reveals an empty landscape; my cupboard is bare. It's a weak kind of feeling, and I don't like it.

All of this is information, and with that and some will a change is going to come. As the philosopher says, beliefs are habits of action. Mine are in need of refreshment, renewal. I've been numbed-up, stuck in a rut, far less than 100% of who I am. I've been sleeping in late and reclusing on the weekends. This isn't how it's supposed to be.

Somewhere along the way I fell out of love with my life. I stopped taking risks or reaching very far. The stars fell from my eyes, and now I feel both bored and boring, a pedestrian person in desperate need of an attitude adjustment.

Huh. This turned into kind of a bummer of a blog post. Sorry about that. It's not that hard to make your heart beat faster, but it's nigh impossible to force a new feeling.

And life's really not that bad. I aught not to whine. Superbowl was pretty great, I thought.

I suppose I'll close it out with an old good video, in honor of where this all started:

My friend Sarah is on her way to India. She’s among the finest of the people I’ve gotten to know fairly well since moving up to these parts, and an amazingly talented artist. We have a few of her pieces around the house, really great paintings, and honestly one of the main things that set the mood and made me really want to live here.

Now she has some of her work online too:

Paintings By Sarah Finestone.

I really love Sarah’s art. It strikes such a great balance between portrait and pastiche, symbols and subjects. That you can see my friends and roommates in some of them probably makes it more exciting for me personally, but I feel that she’s really in a good spot stylistically, and hopefully will go places with her creative endeavors.

If I were a rich man I would be a patron. Maybe someday I will!

So, I just added a new feed to my aggremataron. Frank is blogging the process of “Pulling A Wine Bar Out Of A Printing Room” in a historic neighborhood in St. Louis. It’s good stuff:

Rented a drill hammer at the Home Depot, like ya do from time to time. Rented it, gave it to someone who in turn busted through some bricks in as subtle a way as possible and then went to return it.

HD Tool Rental Guy: “This is dirty. There’s gonna be a $25 dollar fee on this.”
Me: “Hold on there, I’ll clean it”
HD Tool Rental Guy: “No man, you already returned it”
Me: “I didn’t return it, I just put it on that table over there”
HD Tool Rental Guy: “No, I just put it in the system”
Me: “You put it in the system? WHADDAYA, WRITING ME A TICKET OR RENTING ME A TOOL?”

The guy relented. In recognition of both the 60th anniversary of Alekzander Kalashnikov’s creation and the work of Ice Cube, “it was a good day, I didn’t even have to use my AK.”

Should be fun watching Frank pull this off.

Happy New Year Everybody!

I managed to wing it from Portland to St. Louis without any trouble and even some sleep — thanks to the “economy plus” seating upgrade and my amazing luxury headphones (thx, mom!). I’ve landed in the Robbins’ budding family nest. It’s a cozy brick house in a cute neighborhood with a big basement and a tiny garage built for a model-t ford; very nice.

We had a pretty rad New Years Eve. Laura cooked an amazing rib roast, and a family friend of Frank’s parents had given them a big grip of fine wine (now residing in a rack in said basement) of which the Two Hands Shiraz was a perfect compliment. Their good friends Matt and Narcissa came over and we had a great meal and some good well-wishes for 2008.

My winning slogan/resolution: 2008 — Less Work. More Sex. Flossing.

I also managed to get in on some classic New Years Predictions via phone with LGD and The Girth. It’s a tradition in which we venture guesses on things ranging from the stock market and congressional makeup to who among our friends will have a bun in the oven by the next trip round the sun. They’re fun to look back on.

After dinner we went out to a hip spot with some quality burlesque dancing and an outdoor fire to count down the new year in public. It was good for people watching, and I did at one point have a woman tear open my shirt (cowboy snaps) and give me a little dancefloor humpin’, which is always nice. Bodes well for my slogan. Pregnant Laura was our faithful designated driver, and we didn’t really stay out too late, though Frank and I did get into some loud story telling and scotch-bottle-finishing back at the ranch.

So now I’m here, new year, mid-west, got a big todo list to clear for work before 11am eastern time tomorrow. But tonight I’ll floss. That’s a start.

[Photo by Timothy K. Hamilton, some rights reserved]

My comrade Franko and his lovely lady Laura are preggers. Way to be procreative, kids.

Also, nice to know that years of bike-riding did nothing to deplete Mr. Robbins’ virility. Big ups to the ball-channel.

I’m looking forward to visiting them this New Years. It’s been too long!

That’s the man, back in 2005, about to get told by the Texas law that if he wants to hang out at the Alamo he’ll have to put on a shirt. For the past year, he has been under the philosophically heavy thumb of the Germans — slaving away over a hot data-set at the Max Plank Institute for Quantitative Social Research — and only just last week returned to the welcoming arms of Lady Liberty. We had the pleasure of hosting a few nights of his re-entry tour this weekend.

Luke and Mark and I have a kind of special relationship, one that we’ve all made the choice to maintain and deepen over the years. At this point, getting well into the meat of adulthood, it’s quite something to have someone who went through your teenage fire and blackness years still be a part of your life. There’s a kind of perspective there that just can’t be matched. I mean, who else will bro down with you about various international health care administration tactics, and shift seamlessly to baby fever?

Over and above it being really great to see him again and spend real-time together, visiting with Luke got me thinking about the future in a way that I haven’t done much of lately. I used to have these outlanishly outsized dreams. We like to joke that “part of becoming a man is watching your dreams die,” but it’s not so funny when you wake up and realize it’s happening.

I wrote before about my trip to Mexico, how it got me thinking about life’s possibilities again. This is basically the same thing. The idea of moving to yet another new city, starting yet another new chapter, etc, or even just opening up new avenues in my existing life. Who knows what the next few years may hold, let alone the next decade.

There are a lot of big shapeless things out there on the horizon. I feel a bit chrysalis-like, and not just because I’m re-growing part of my arm. With all the things in my life where I feel tension, I also feel that sharp depression in the membrane, the part that’s just about ready to give way and break through. I feel more than a little itchy for action.

Soon it will be time to cast of the cocoon, but for now it was a good rainy weekend clustered up around the fireplace making hot spicy drinks and reconnecting across big gaps in space and time.