One Wedding, Zero Funerals, A Million Homeless, and One Husker Du Reference.

So let's see, what's happened since I've last written?  Oh yeah.  I got married in Tucson.  It was a real whirlwind of a romance with a pretty little filly named Louise.  It was truly love at first sight.  She had the shiniest coat I'd ever seen.  And an ethereal whinny capable of calling all the sailors to port.  I just had to have her.  And 90 minutes after meeting, we were married.  Or so I believed.  Fortunately for me, my friend, Liz, had decided to remain sober that afternoon.  She said that I became infatuated with an old wig tied to a broom handle that I had fished out of a dumpster.  Apparently I was dancing around with it and swooning in what she thought was Germanic gibberish.  After some time, I stopped and engaged in some bizarre ritual in front of a mailbox for several minutes.  And now that I think about it, that minister was a bit short and stout, and blue.  In any case, I'm glad that it wasn't a legal ceremony.  I don't have no lawyering money.  And I sure couldn't afford to pay any ponimony.  Let that be a listen to you kids.  DMT is a helluva drug…

So, I did make it out of Tucson alive.  Liz was a lovely host.  And I got to meet her beau.  A guy who goes by the moniker, Hadji Banjovi.  I almost HAD to like him because of that.  And I got to see him perform in a puppet show.  At least I think it was a puppet show.  It's hard to say as I had ingested the DMT right before that was supposed to start.  Anyway, later on, we all hung out in the grand backyard where Liz was staying.  Hadji played the banjo, I beat a drum, and Liz sang along.  It was a wonderful night underneath the desert sky.

                    Liz's backyard                                       

When I made it back to Phoenix the next afternoon, Jeff had returned and was already several vodkas into his day.  Ann was not far behind - she never is… I played catch-up until the Grammys started and then we all played drunken Grammy picks.  I think Ann won, simply because all she kept saying was Adele, Adele, Adele.  I picked the Starland Vocal Band a few times, even though they hadn't been nominated.  Stupid rigged Grammys… And fuck them for not remembering Gil Scott-Heron.  Sure, he was no Whitney Houston.  But his influence on the hip hop community can't possibly be overstated.  Could have at least thrown his picture up there on the screen for a second.  I guess he was right about important events not being televised…

                                               Santo, my Phoenix bunkmate                                                    

San Francisco.  What a trip.  I saw a play called "52- Man Pick Up" the night I rolled into town.  I couldn't recommend this show more.  I almost went back and saw it again the next night, as the show changes on a nightly basis from a random draw of cards.  It's poignant, gut busting funny, and if you bring a date, you will get laid.  Absolutely fantastic.  I also had the pleasure of spending the night with the star and her friend, as we were all staying at the artistic director's place.  We drank until the wee hours of the morning and then I passed out on an air mattress for a few hours.  Then I got up, re-inflated the mattress and slept for a few more hours.  We all ventured out in the late morning to a cafe fittingly called, Brainwash.  Desiree and Brady got some food which looked delicious.  I had a peanut butter/oatmeal/chocolate chip cookie, which was delicious and the most my stomach could handle at the moment.  Afterward, I ventured forth into the city on foot.  Unfortunately, it wasn't until a bit later that I recalled all the movies I'd seen that were set in San Francisco.  All the cool car chase scenes came rushing back to mind as I traipsed up streets at a 45º angle.  All of a sudden, a mile and a half seemed a bit more than I had bargained for.  But I wasn't on any schedule, and my legs weren't broken, and I need the exercise like a fish needs water, so…

I made my way to the cable car museum, and after a quick tour inside, just wandered about.  The sights were just amazing.  The architecture, the grand cathedrals, the epic amount homelessness.  I still can't pinpoint just what it was about the homeless situation that struck me so.  But these folks carried themselves in such a way that was unlike any other urban center I've ever witnessed.  There seemed to be a strong sense of unity, and most definitely dignity, among these masses.  Their faces so rich with character as to bely the scarcity of folding money in their pockets, extruding an air just short of pride and settling into a bold matter of factness.  It just floored me to the core.  And now I'm hardly getting over it.  They're hardly getting by…

This was a makeshift domicile, assembled the night I'd arrived and photographed the morning of my departure.                                         

I took a fair amount of pictures, but too often the brilliant moments in time slipped by before I could click the shutter.  Aside from life itself moving so quickly, the constant weather shifting altered the brilliant scenes of just moments prior.  I think it would take a solid decade to properly photograph San Francisco.  And if I had a pile of money and a reason to go there, I would do just that.  

The Grace Cathedral.  By the time I got into position for a good photo, the moment was lost.  But the bells were spectacular.                                          

My friend, Courtney, drove down to the city from Santa Rosa.  We spent the day, along with her boyfriend, Jared, shuffling about town.  We took in the Haight/Ashbury district with all its record stores, smoke shops, and bookstores.  Then we headed over to the infamous City Lights bookstore.  We all got lost in there for a good hour.  Somehow I came out empty handed.  We attempted to do the wharf, see the seals thing.  But what a touristy fuckhole of a mess.  They both were willing to endure it for my sake, but I wasn't about to subject them or myself to such a scene.  So we headed toward the Golden Gate and made the journey back north to Santa Rosa.

Leaving San Francisco                                        

I stayed with them for a few days.  They've been a couple for quite a while, but this was the first time I'd actually met Jared.  And we quickly bonded over, I dunno, kinda everything.  He cooked some amazing meals, and we all drank some quality beers.  And he let me beat him at bocci ball before I left.  As they were driving me back down to Oakland to catch a flight, I started to realize that although I'd come this way specifically to see Courtney (one of the few people capable of talking sense into me), I think it was Jared I was supposed to spend time with.  Hopefully, we'll all cross paths again before too long.  Good people are good…

Jared, with Harold on his lap.  Maude is in the background at the table, along with a small portion of Courtney's head...                                                    

And now I'm enjoying Portland.  I haven't run into Fred Armisen yet, but there's still time…

We were mostly high at the time...

In the middle of my Freshman year of high school, my mother finally came to the conclusion that after having spent K-9 attending parochial schools, I may have had enough of the "religion thing" and relented to let me attend the public high school which was exactly 3 minutes from our front door.  However, tuition had already been paid for Freshman year.  So I was forced to endure one more semester of pompous rich kids, rampant drug dealing, and an art teacher who seemingly abhorred God's creation of the feminine form and thought all good art emanated from precisely duplicated bowls of fruit.  

I met Jeff my first week in the big old bad public school.  He was in my Geometry class alongside Ron, who was the only person I knew at the school when I walked through the door that first day.  Ron introduced me to Jeff and a few other screwballs sitting around us, and the shenanigans started brewing.  Around this time, Ron and I had watched some bad horror flick that featured a weird demonic voice.  It was something in the vein of Froggy belching hardcore prose.  Ron and I started goofing on one another in that voice and were getting some good laughs.  It wasn't a hard voice to mimic and a few others joined in the chorus of stupid.  Unfortunately, the teacher turned around right when Jeff finished saying something and issued a stern warning directed at Jeff, that he didn't want to hear that voice ever again in his class.  Even more unfortunately, before the teacher's head fully snapped back around to the board, I let loose a full throated, demonic, "Fuck you."  The room fell silent for a split second, and then the teacher turned around and started a tirade against Jeff about how he never wanted to see his face again in his room and expelled him from the class right there.  All Jeff's cries of, "It wasn't me," fell on deaf ears.  Well, I had made it nearly a week in the new school, and if the look Jeff shot me on the way out the door was any indication, I was about to get into my first fight in the very near future.  However, I did manage to avoid Jeff for a few days, as Geometry was the only class we "used to" have together.  When we finally did end up at the same place in time, I wasn't sure what to expect.  I figured I'd just take the punch.  After all, if you dissected the situation far enough, or really even just a little, I completely deserved it.  But instead of a crack to the jaw, I just got a, "Hey motherfucker," accompanied with a chuckle and a grin.  Fortunately for me, when Jeff was sent to another Geometry class, he was seated next to a girl named Andi, whom he quickly began dating within those few days.  Unfortunately for him, she was early on in a string of bad decision making as far as dating was concerned.  But that's a story for a different time.

Not too long after this, I found out that Jeff had his license and a car.  And not just any car, but a beast of a car that went by the name "Blort."  A '76 Vista Cruiser wagon, the color of bad mayonnaise, replete with fake wood paneling and a Delco tape deck mounted on the hump.  Well, that marked the end of campus lunches for me, and the beginning of a life-long friendship.  Jeff and I became thick as thieves.  And the Blort became our weapon of mass destruction.  Mailboxes and street signs were taken out with precision fish tailing technique.  Well, most of the time.  Eventual miscalculations led to the removal of all the handles on the passenger side.  But in the end, that sort of balanced out the fact that you couldn't get out on the driver's side.  Man, if that car could talk, the stories it would tell… But mostly it would probably just say, "Ouch."

Jeff and I ended up going to Columbia College together.  But then I bailed after the first year and went back to Indiana because I stupidly thought Business school was a good thing to do.  I lasted for a year at IUSB.  I realized quite quickly that I could no longer live in Indiana.  Growing up there, I had nothing else with which to compare. But living in Chicago for a year had exposed just how much South Bend was devoid of culture and filled with overt racism.  I got out the following summer as soon as I could land a job in Chicago.  However, being young and desperate lead me to agree to a wage of $5.50/hr.  But Jeff let me stay with him in a shitty little studio apartment for 6 months until I could get on my feet.  And we still didn't hate each other.  Well, at lest he never showed it…

Eventually, Jeff moved out to Phoenix.  His girlfriend, now wife, had inherited a house out here, and he decide that he'd had more than enough of Chicago winters.  And said house, is now where I find myself.  I've been hanging out with his wife, Ann, for the past week and a half.  Jeff is a freelancer and had to take some work, something I understand all too much.  But he'll be back on Sunday, so we'll get some quality hang time.  We've already been reminiscing on the phone during his nightly calls to Ann.  But for every two or three things I can remember, there's one that just sounds like a movie I've never seen.  But Jeff just shrugs it off by saying, "Well, we were mostly high at the time…"  Indeed…

Ann has been lovely.  I think she get's lonely without Jeff, and enjoys having somebody here.  Fortunately for me, she doesn't seem too picky about who that somebody is.  We went to Jerome this week, which is a quaint old copper mining town up in the mountains a couple of hours north of here.  Last week Friday, I went to an arts walk event that happens every month in downtown Phoenix.  I saw some amazing work at the various storefront galleries.  And I had some delicious street meat at an open-air market.  Right next door to that was an independent record store that had a band playing out front.  I spent a solid hour in the store and mustered enough restraint to only spend a little over ten bucks.  It was no small feat.  There was some good stuff there.  An original Superfly soundtrack, a German pressed Peter Gabriel III (Melt), and a pristine best of Funkadelic from '75.  But then I spotted the half price bins and found some things that I wouldn't feel compelled to take with, and instead just add to the collection at the house here.  Purchased items:  Jethro Tull - Stand Up (original press with pop up gatefold), Led Zeppelin - Presence (the forgotten Zep album), and the first New Order 12" single of Ceremony on Factory Records.

The bonus factor of not having Jeff around is that I have use of his car.  I'm about to get in it and drive to Tucson to hang out with my friend, Liz.  She and I are musical compatriots.  (Her old band used to open up for the band I was in with Sean.)  She's another Chicago transplant, and an amazing artist.  It should be fun.  And it's time to change the pace from just Ann and I watching cooking shows in between watching each other get drunk.  

In other news, Santorum.  Ha, haahaahhaa haahahahah...  Shit's funny…

PS.  That tweed blazer I'm wearing there did indeed have the obligatory patches on the elbows.