recap central: cross-country kamut road trip, day two: boise, salt lake city.

ACTUAL DATE OF TRAVEL: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2011.
SMALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BY ROSE ON HER IPHONE; LARGE PICTURES ARE MINE.

—

BOISE, IDAHO

Woke up and spent the morning with Brian Baker! He drove us around in his “ghetto” car (he has two) and took us to Boise’s downtown, where I had only been in passing before. He had a 5-panel mirror in his car… could see everything and all angles! Yay! I think every Asian mother should have one of those, maybe

We went to Goldie’s for breakfast. I didn’t eat much; just a side of red potatoes with an in-house seasoning mixture that was not particularly interesting. Thank lawd for hawt sawce.

Walked around afterwards, which included heading to Freak Alley, where a bunch of graffiti (and other) artists had paid money, generally, to draw up on a section of wall. There were a good pieces, but they were few and far between. This would be one of them. I guess it is a portrait of an older shop owner who had died.

This is of Jimi Hendrix, which was put together by smashed-up mirrors. Pretty neat.

We then went to this parking lot full of graffiti. There were some fun things.

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Wasn't the yellow man also in a painting at de nada?"]

[ABOVE] Brian inspecting da fatz; [BELOW] Brian gettin’ low/homoerotic.

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Gideon & mosaic"]

There were plenty of finger-painted handprints. We decided to add our own with nice thin-tipped Micro pen (of which I was freaking out and telling everyone to “be gentle” with )

Fucking hellzaz rad Ninja Turtles mural thing. SOOOO RADDD. Definitely the best thing in the parking lot. The models are doing a great job, too.

Went to the train station afterwards. Apparently bitchez be gettin’ married out tharr. It was a pretty neat place.
After getting out of downtown Boise and getting Brian’s car tour, we just hung around his place a bit and he gave rose a brief introduction to dubstep and the history of dubstep. Got to listen to some of his new tracks, a lot of which are really good! I really hope that he gets something out of his music because dude is so much better than a lot of bullshit that’s out there right now. That and he’s been doing it for-fucking-ever and deserves it, because he is goooood.

Anyway, heading out of Boise, there was this lovely building. We most certainly had a hey-day.

—

BETWEEN BOISE, IDAHO AND SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Not the most glamourous of rest stops"]

—

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Didn't expect to see rain in Utah"]

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Giddy punch!"]

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Another day, another state"]

We stopped by a park that was a teeny tiny nook off of the Salt Lake. As Rose said on her Tumblr, “Millions of mosquitos not pictured.” Yup. Although I had purposely carried around deet for the duration of the trip, I of course forgot that it might be a good idea to actually bring it when we were exploring a swampy park right at sundown. Dammit!! We ended up running from place to place in order to avoid being eaten alive so thoroughly… and while that helped — minorly — we still got eaten alive. Indeed. Bug bites on top of bug bites! Surprisingly, I didn’t get it too bad this time even though I usually am quite loved by those miniature havoc-wreakers. This time, Rose got the brunt of it, and like me, she swells up to infectious states, and I think in some places she had three mosquito bites in one section that made for a reaaaaaaaaaal fun time (sarcasm). She was quite pOofy. Reminds me of the time when I went to Europe as a kid, got a huge big bite on my arm, and then my arm swelled up huge; for the rest of the trip, my parents and brother called me “potato arm.” That’s love, I guess. But yeah, despite the mosquito-y death — definitely worth in on the picture-taking and general beauty arena!

Rose was endlessly fascinated by how beautiful Utah was, cause — I guess — coming from Los Angeles she kept thinking that Utah and anywhere outside of the West Coast was basically really hideous and boring, but I mean, Utah’s one of the raddest geographical states, for sure! She also considered it the Midwest which was really just kind of amusing.

We drove a bunch and got to Salt Lake City that evening, where we were staying with a Couchsurfer. What I knew of the lady was that she was a mom who had a stripper pole in her living room. You know… whatever… that sounds fine. Not judging as some people just enjoy the exercise of it or whatever. But it got real weird kind of fast, and right before getting there I was just major cranky pants (snatched the iPhone out of Rose’s hand when she was reading her own directions to the house and getting a little bit lost and I was certain I knew the directions and thought it would be better if I just told her as opposed to having her look… but it was totally cranky!) from being really, really hungry… and then being stuck behind a train for godamn forever! We also went to Whole Foods after getting lost a whole bunch and bought a bunch of dinner fixin’s, but by that time, I really didn’t care to be shopping and really just wandered around aimlessly cause my brain wasn’t really working. Rose picked out everything and I helped pay for it, barely really knowing what was going on.

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Half mile from our destination, stuck behind the longest train ever. So hungry!"]

[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Welcome to tonights friend for a day!"]

There were three other CouchSurfers in the apartment, and I just kind of like fuuuuuck, cause I didn’t necessarily want to deal with that many people at the time. There was a 19-year-old girl from Montana who had run away from Montana because she had “gotten into trouble,” which on the last straw involved crashing her grandfather’s car into a ditch and then ditching it. She was on a trip with a guy she had just met — another CouchSurfer — who was from Virginia or something and had just graduated from Business school. He was an interesting dude — the type of dude who is probably really sad (as evinced by some details he later let on) and displays it all through this kind of cock-assuredness “I am so smart and witty” attitude that, as he got drunker and drunker throughout the course of the evening, became very obviously just a front he used to make living with himself a lot easier. When I first arrived, he pretty much just played 20 questions with me, which I didn’t mind because the attitude was so direct and interesting. He guessed right off the bat that I had been a Sociology major, and also guessed something else which I have since forgotten, and I was pretty impressed immediately. And then he wanted me to guess what he had graduated studying, after telling me that he had graduated from Jon Hopkins, which I had THOUGHT was a medical school and not just a general school. He got offended when I thought he was a nurse, and then also offended when I thought he had studied some kind of translation thing. (I later found out that he was an English major, which… I don’t know why he would have been so offended by the translation thing. Newb.)

After those fairly OK exchanges, the conversation somehow got steered towards politics (he was a Ron Paul supporter), and he said something really dumb about how Barack Obama wasn’t really African-American because he was born in Hawaii and was only half-black, but how does that discount him from being African-American? Dude wasn’t even talking to me during this conversation because I had removed myself from speaking, but that’s when he really started bothering me a HUGE amount, and I kind of started making faces and being even more anti-social because I just couldn’t stand really being in that room. I was ready to be like, “Hey guys — I’m going to go take a walk and I’ll be back,” but then Rose had finished putting stuff in the oven and needed to go to the car, so I went with her and vented. By the time I came back, I felt a lot better, and just getting slight perspective by removing yourself from the situation helps sooooooooooooo much. But anyway. We went back upstairs, ate food, and I started warming up to the dude a LITTLE bit. It took a very long while, though. I will get back to that later.

The last guy was a very, very large man who said he was in the midst of divorcing his wife and fighting for custody over his child. He said he had another lover and that he was homeless for the time being, but that he wanted to get in on a work trade for shelter thing that was going on in the city — only there was a waiting list for it. His options, I guess, were CouchSurfing or staying in a shelter with 400 other people, and he said that he was scared of staying in a shelter. Freshly homeless, I guess. He said, “You wouldn’t think so, but large guys get scared, too. We beat up other people and then we go home and cry about it.” Although he was very large of the not particularly muscular type, so I’m not entirely sure how many people he beat up. Interesting? Dark past? Wonder who he was beating up, or when it was, and why. (Presently Rose and I are talking about “doing violent things and wanting to cry about it” and she said she gave a kid a black eye once when she was 15. She says, “I’ve definitely now decided never to punch anybody in the face.” I’ve never done anything violent, but these stories remind me of dad, and how my parents used to talk about how my dad beat people up for no reason… such as picking fights with people the bus stop…!!)

Back to the dude who had previously been bothering me. Throughout the course of the evening, dude continued to make a lot of comments about blacks… such as… when he and I were having a deep conversation and a hip-hop song came on, he immediately went to change it and said, “I can’t listen to black music right now. It’s too intense.” (Actually, the word wasn’t intense, but something a little more ignorant than that.) He also got to questioning, “Can you be racist and truthful at the same time?” and it was a good question, I think… just because it showed that he was thinking a little bit about his own actions. Apparently, upon graduation, he had a six-figure job lined up, I guess, but then decided he didn’t want to work long hours every day and be unhappy. He wanted to get out and explore the world and just see things while he was young, and he said that part of his reason for deciding that was that his father had died early, after always saying he wanted to do this and do that, but had never gotten the opportunity to because he was always working. It was kind of heart-warming, but dude was definitely conflicted; he felt bad for hating his father and not getting along with him prior to his death, but also said that he had hated the man ever since he (he in this case being the CouchSurfer) had punched his sister when he was young and his dad immediately punched him out. He said, “Well, at least I learned never to hit a girl,” but he was still mad at his dad — evidently a huge dude — punching him — evidently, at that point, a tiny kid. Which makes sense. But to have that kind of regret can really eat away at someone, particularly when you don’t know if it’s right or wrong… but I hope that he talks to someone on this trip who can help him with that. He said to me, “I guess I’m being really honest with you right now, but I know I’ll never see you again.” I guess it’s good that people are willing to always talk to me about these things, even when I don’t particularly vibe with them well. It has always been the case. And I have felt, especially lately, that I really need to do something with those abilities / tendencies… hrmph.

But yeah. Dude was super interesting, and very confused. You could tell that his rich background and surroundings tainted him from who he really wanted to be; he had been a baseball player in college and touched upon the fact that he had gay friends… and while he was definitely not so familiar with gays he felt it necessary to leave that detail out, he did mention that he was the only one on the baseball team WITH gay friends, and that he got a lot of shit for that because it was such a taboo for everyone else around. So I guess his heart is in the right place, and I have to give him that for being able to tolerate and accept other people when surrounded by such closed-mindedness. And it’s easy to judge him for even being closed-minded to begin with, but the dude is definitely trying to make strides, and if his goal right now is to just follow where life takes him without a worry, and his way of accomplishing it is through CouchSurfing, I can imagine only that he will, even a year from now — if not less time — be a much more mature and actualized dude who will be useful in making positive change. I’m sure all of the remnants of past ignorance will not go away, but I’m positive that he will make huge strides towards more and more openmindedness. We actually also had a conversation after he made the “black music” comment about how that was a bad thing to say, and he acknowledged it, and said that he had had conversations with people before where he was in my position, telling other people that racial constructs didn’t matter — but then said that being mugged and jumped in Baltimore had unfortunately tainted his experience in a way that actually influenced his thinking actively. And I can understand that, surely, as Baltimore is a particularly gnarly place, especially with regards to race relations… but I just hope that he will see soon that being black is not necessarily equated always with bad things. I guess I can say that I went from being his biggest skeptic to his biggest supporter, and I’m really glad I got the chance to hear him and understand where he was coming from. Rose and the CS host were definitely more tolerant of him at first, but also later on seemed more annoyed by him after I had arrived to a place where I thought he was fine and/or going to be fine.

Onwards to details about the CSer herself. I really don’t know how she afforded such a nice apartment, and without working. She had a young child. She was formerly Mormon and married, and it seemed that after finding herself anew (post church-shunning) she had turned from what was probably a typical Mormon lady with typical Mormon gender roles to an extreme opposite, with stripper poles and always making comments about how strong women were. It was almost as though she was trying to convince herself constantly. Which I don’t necessarily blame her for — it was just very interesting. I suppose when you’re in that kind of situation and have been judged for being an ex-Mormon with a baby who is now divorced, it is only natural that you need to rely on yourself an extraordinary amount and prop yourself up, even if that involves hyper-correction. But yeah, I didn’t necessarily feel all that comfortable around her because I didn’t feel like she really understood my kinds of comments or brand of humor, but it’s all whatevers.

Dinner seemed to take forever, with a bunch of hovering piggies pigging out (myself included — there were some of the best fucking local flavored tortilla chips EVER). Although what Rose made for food was very much standard everyone-in-Portland-would-eat-this-and-know-what-it-was-and-probably-cook-it-or-something-similar-fairly-frequently, the people here were absolutely mind-blown. Like, seriously!!! Other than the large homeless man, the other people were just like whuuut about most of the stuff. And granted, I personally had never eaten endives before, they weren’t mind-blowing. The CS host chick actually wrote down directions the next morning on how to cook all of these things, which was amusing just because it was mostly like… sprinkle with olive oil, salt, pepper, and roast. Haha. But I guess everyone needs to learn sometime. Rose’s beets were particularly super ace, though.
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Feast for our four new friends; baked beets w vinaigrette glaze, red wine endives, portabello mushrooms & quinoa w bruschetta"]

There were some neighborly dudes who kept wanting CS host to hang out. They live the floor below her, I guess. As for me, I was not particularly interested in talking to anyone this evening, and was probably being a bit of a quiet butt, but WHUTEVA.
[ROSE'S TUMBLR CAPTION: "Courtyard riders"]

Anyway, after eating and after CSer lady took the 19-year-old (haha) — during which Rose took a nap / eavesdropping break and I had that deep conversation with the kid from the East Coast — we went to take a night walk around SLC. Baby had passed out long beforehand, and mom wrapped her up in a blanket, took the stroller, and departed the hOoOoOoose, baby in tow. The new baby carts are fucking intense pieces of machinery, man. Some have thick wheels as though they’re for off-roading or something. The one she had was maybe not THAT intense but it was fairly intense.
The walk mostly took us downtown to the main Mormon cathedral (?) complex, where Rose smoked a pots cause she thought it’d be funny, haha. It was interesting-ish but not hella, but it was nice to be able to just walk around there for a little. Took a few pics, but they are mostly who cares.

Partway through, baby woke up and started crying and got creeped out by this fleece blanket she had that had a dog’s head on it. Honestly, baby seems a little schizo or something haha. Apparently she sometimes walks by certain alleys and says there are fairies or something. But maybe that’s just how babies are. It was interesting to see her freaking about the dog having a head and being wrapped up in that heady-dog-blanket, but it was pretty much between that and being naked (she seriously had no clothes on), so eventually, after mom telling her she needed to use her “real words” — which, she of course didn’t, since it was like 2am and baby was cranky — baby started behaving and we headed on our way back (but not after walking a few more extraneous blocks).

Interesting rainbow metal thingy installation which CS host had never seen before. I did see later on in the local SLC weekly that it was a new installation and it had won some kind of award. WHUTEVA!

Thus concludes day two!

[ROSE'S TUMBLR SUMMARY OF DAY TWO: "street art tour & crash course in dubstep in Boise. Back on the open road, salt lake sunset, & a feast for our new friends to be followed by a downtown wanderings. & I think I may love Utah."]

las cruces + mesilla + albuquerque + santa fe, new mexico.

I had the luxury this week of taking an incredible duration of time to explore myself and my psyche. During the early parts of the week (March 21st, to be exact) and until early Friday morning (March 25th), critical thought was not entirely present… not that it was particularly lacking, but I was CouchSurfing at the time, or else traveling on busses and trains, and just generally exhausted from never getting that great a night’s sleep. From March 25th through March 28th, I rented a car. I must say that the amount of thinking this afforded me resulted in a lot of interesting thoughts, and I have generally emerged from this with some lessons learnt… whether for better or for worse… generally for better, I suppose, in the long run, though right at this very moment, I am at the Albuquerque airport, feeling like I am in some kind of purgatorial hell of my own creation. What I have, most of all, is all of the time ever to wait and to wait and to wait and to wait. That may be the number one lesson I’ve learned through this week’s-long adventure in New Mexico (with 3/4 of a day in Colorado)… and that is the importance of patience, patience, patience.

(Side note: there is this weird shop in this airport that is selling flavored popcorns with the weirdest flavors ever — including green apple-flavored popcorn. Though I was intending to snack on all of the existing food I had in my bag, I realized I had less food than I thought, and am actually slightly short of snackable foods for dinner, and it is only 4:00pm, and I will be flying through midnight! So, I’d really love to try that weird ass popcorn, but not enough to buy a giant bag for $4.00… I should probably eat a piece of fruit or some broccoli instead. We’ll see what is affordable and not too unhealthy…)

Anyway. I’m going to jump backwards in time and try to recap this past week as best as possible. This will be recapped out of order, and I will temporarily forgo writing about Israeli and Jordanian adventures, as well as writing about my SXSW experience of mega-weirdness this year. I suppose the New Mexico trip feels more immediate, and is therefore easier to write about, and so I’m going to do that, presently.

—

Sunday, March 20th, 2011.
Road-tripped into town with P.Rama (details on that later), from Marfa, Texas. More details on Sunday, as Sunday was pretty extraordinary. I got a CouchSurfing host in Las Cruces, though, and waited outside their apartment for a couple hours for them to get home. I believe I got woken up by sounds of sexy-fun-times a couple times. Which is never particularly pleasant…

—

Monday, March 21st, 2011
Woke up and hung with the roomies a little bit, and then walked around. Had a buncha my stuff but left some at the apartment. Made up half a mind to go to Mesilla, New Mexico, which is a small, quaint little historic old town that is practically part of Las Cruces (though technically not). Anyway. Not too much to speak of here though I had my first New Mexico meal there. It was fairly good, though not astoundingly so. My two other New Mexican meals later on would prove to be much more delicious. Before I went to lunch, though, I did have a really nice conversation with this Japanese guy (or at least he was partially Japanese, as his name was Takeshi) who worked at the Visitor’s Center. I don’t think he could have been more excited to discuss the area. He was originally from the Bay Area, and we talked about things like housing costs and general history of the area… yadda yadda.

Another thing worth noting here was my experience at the Mesilla Cultural Center. I basically stayed in there for a couple hours and stumbled upon it on a completely random whim. I mean… as happens. Wasn’t even entirely planning to go down the street that I did go down to get there, but I’m glad I did. I got there and there were people — the director of the place and another guy — working on some upcoming festival they were having that is supposedly kind of a big deal. They immediately made me feel at home, in a rather formal way, but I poked around while they discussed business. Lots of Native American literature, and lots of just kinda metaphysical and mystical stuff, in general. As well as a lot of non-fiction by a lot of famous (?) female authors. It was a good time. In any case, the volunteer guy who was in there left, and I was left to talk with the director. I felt like she had the kind of human spirit that would be into something like this, so I asked her to suggest me a book based on what she knew of me. I will admit that she did give me a whole slew of books initially… except I’ve been rather into poetry lately, so I had it in my mind that I wanted a poetry book, despite the fact that I didn’t say it outright. Eventually, she fed me some super delicious super traditionally Mexican coffee (which leads me to remember an experience on our Israel / Jordan tour when people wouldn’t drink coffee offered by store owners because they were seriously afraid of being drugged… fucking ridiculous) and I skimmed through a stack of books. Frankly, the only one that –really– appealed to me was this book by Joy Harjo, entitled In Mad Love And War. The director lady who suggested the book put on a traditional Native American record as I was skimming through this stack of books, and later said that she knew I was going to pick this particular book and that is why she had put on the Native music. Whether that is truly true or not is uncertain, but I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway. I typed out a poem in my last entry, but man, did this book speak to me. On so many levels, at the moment… I intended for it to be a birthday present, but I am no longer feeling the magic of that action. I am, however, still in love with the book, and as I have been reading it the past couple days, I have not been able to deny the feeling I have… of just being pretty much astounded… that this book was introduced to me. And that it is so very fitting of my emotions, of my mental state… of my writing preferences. Particularly in poetry. I’m extremely specific about poetry, and very little of it actually riles me up in any meaningful or excited manner. But nearly everything in this book just feels so very clever… anyway. I gave her one of the many bracelets I made for my REDEFINE SXSW show (which I never did end up distributing because I was a madwoman) — which say, “I am a note of the cosmic music + I will go on vibrating forever.” Hippie dippie, but it simply seemed so very appropriate…

Later that evening, I returned to Las Cruces. Just down the street. Spent some time using the internet at WHATABURGER simply because I thought it was the funniest notion ever, but WHATABURGER was not nearly the eavesdropping gold mine that I had hoped it would be. Unfortunate. Later that night, there was a pretty good Burger Records show at the Railyard in Las Cruces, which is a pretty rad hole-in-the-wall venue that is super DIY… hell, they weren’t even charging to let people in, which was nice, and people seriously brought their own 24-packs of beer. And everyone got mega-trashed, and people in Las Cruces (perhaps because it was college break, even) party it the fuck up. There were some ridiculously drunk people, and the general vibe was rowdy as shit. The main attraction was, for me, Thee Oh Sees… and they certainly lived up to the garage rock legendary reputation they have. As for the other bands… I was into them initially, but there were six garage rock bands in total, and by the third, I no longer gave a shit, and it was slight torture to wait out the rest.

Here’s what I wrote in my iPod while being bored by those bands:

“garage rock is becoming rather pointless, a next installment in punk rock, a simplistic outlet that is enjoyable only in the short term, easy to sway to, easy to play, but the ultimate in definiting the ever-growing detritus that is music journalism. how does one continue to write about these bands that may be solid… ish… yet are so very much alike that there is very little setting them apart, save for general charisma? on a 7-band garage rock bill this reality of musical limitation and stagnation and general pointlessness becomes ever-painfully apparent, and moreso with every word shouted through a distorted mic.”

Some funny moments during that particular evening, though, in the form of serendipity… as happens:

[1] A guy — who turned out to be one of my CouchSurfing host’s ex-boyfriends — came up to me when I first walked in and was like, “Excuse me, were you just at a house party in Austin??” Turns out he was at our house show at SXSW because someone had recommended that he go see Moon Duo. Fucking crazy…;

[2] A friend of a friend who I was introduced to, named Aimee (maybe not that exact spelling, but something just as unusual)… knows James Ward, who was from North Carolina, and had stayed on our couch for a while with Jay and Clare… crazy… small world…;

[3] Later that night, when we got back to the CouchSurfers’ place, they had three other dudes there, and they had all just come back from SXSW… and I asked them what the best show they saw was… and they said Casiokids… and I asked where… and they said at one of the housing co-ops near campus… and I was like, “THAT WAS MY SHOW!!!!” … life is crazy… the craziest bag of bullshit… who can even begin to understand…

—

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011
The next day, I got an early ride from Neeshia (who is really awesome and let me sleep in her bed!!) to the Greyhound station, as fucking Las Cruces practically has no bus service. Which is ridiculous, considering it’s a college town… but everyone has their own cars, I guuuuuuessss. (Side note: I want to punch myself in the face right now…)… in any case. I took the bus to Albuquerque. Along the way, there was a “security stop” near Alamogordo, which is where White Sands is-ish. There was a security checkpoint when Koury, Kevin, Tim, and I went through last year for Cash Only, but we didn’t get stopped. We did this time, and security agents came aboard to check everyone’s passports. Felt like when we were in fucking Israel, coming from Palestine to Israel. I mean, same fucking shit, which is INSANE. In any case, they basically checked the identification of all Mexicanos, and it is blatantly racist as shit, as they literally looked at me and the white girl next to me, and were like, “You guys are American citizens, right?” I mean… how the shit do they even distinguish? Does a fifth-generation Mexican-American have to undergo the same kind of racial profiling? I’ll bet he or she does, and that fucking sucks…

Anyway. Got to Albuquerque, and it was fairly late in the day. Right off the bat, some Native guy gave me a bus pass for the entire day… so I saved two bucks, which was really nice. My impression of New Mexicans and their friendliness is solidly through the roof! Good feelings only.

Went to my CouchSurfer Jennifer’s place after taking a romp through a nearby supermarket. It’s kinda funny… I asked some lady with a car where the nearest supermarket was, and she told me it was MILES away. So I declined to go there and headed towards downtown to find one… which I didn’t. Turns out it was less than a mile from Jennifer’s house, and it took me like, fifteen minutes to walk to. Always funny to ask people who drive about directions and distances, cause they often have no fucking clue…

Hanging out with Jennifer was really awesome. I am only her third CSer in the past year, so I’m totally stoked I got to stay with her. We have somewhat overlapping interests… she is quite starry-eyed and cosmic, into gem healing and tarot and other dimensions and ghosts and all sorts of those kinds of things. I am into those things — to a lesser degree, particularly because I have less direct experience with it, too — but it was a lot of really good conversation and getting to see some parts of Albuquerque I haven’t seen before. At the very least, it was WAY better than when we rolled through last year… I mean, what Kevin had to say about Albuquerque last year was: New Mexico Your Bringing Me Down [sic]. This year, for me, it was way better. Apparently, only the downtown is weird, and the other parts are A-OK… particularly the University area. Good to know. Anyway.

Jennifer and I went to this free local film thing put on by Local Q, and while they were making these super amateur announcements at the very beginning, I expected the whole showcase to be pretty downright bad, but there were actually pretty solid films… there was a web series called INDIE which was pretty funny, as was this one really cool short film about eco-friendliness… I forget the name now, but maybe I’ll fill it in later… afterwards, we went to Flying Star in downtown Albuquerque. Flying Stars are a series of 24-hour (or similarly late-opening) diners that serve really amazing dessert (I stole some of Jennifer’s bread pudding, and it RULED) and nice, organic food. It has Wi-Fi, too. Pretty cool place, and I wholly intended to go back to one of them when I returned to Albuquerque, but as it turns out, I didn’t return to Albuquerque in any significant way (more on that later).

One of the things Jennifer and I talked a lot about was past-life regression. I got it in my mind that I would go to this place called Crystal Dove on my subsequent return to Albuquerque. I thought maybe I’d get a past-life regression tarot reading, just cause I’ve been interested in that shit lately and it’s really expensive… more on that later, too…

Later that night, we just chatted, and I slept on a hard wood floor. It wasn’t the most relaxing experience… and it marked the beginning of a series of communication-related feelings of anxiety I would have that would prolong towards the next week, to the present, to the who-knows-how-long-of-a-lasting-duration… these days are long…

—

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011
Off to Santa Fe. Took the RailRunner, which goes back and forth between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Got in at noon. Rob from CouchSurfing picked me up on his lunch break and took me to his parents’ place in the suburbs, which is where he was staying for the week since his parents were out of town! He had barely worked that day, I guess, but we still went to eat lunch. I wasn’t even hungry, but I ended up eating an entire plate of food — best of which was this fucking guacamole taco. Sounds ridiculous, but it was SO EFFING GOOD. I seriously was… astounded… by the fact that something like that could be as delicious as it was. I mean, it sounds like peasant food!! Peasantly!!!

Anyway. While he went to work, I walked around downtown Santa Fe. There honestly is some solid arting there!! A lot of money in that town, though, from lord knows where. I also camped out at a bookstore for a while using their internet, til I was kicked out… but it was my first time REALLY using internet in a while, so it was super nice. And the workers were really kind of fun hipster dudes. Think the bookstore was called CW bookstore or something.

We went back to Rob’s place after he got off work (he seriously barely worked that day… but he is a lucky dude with lots of remote work, like me!!!) and unwound for a sec. Then we headed back out to eat pizza with his friends… only I just drank an ice coffee (no beers or pizza for me, in the interests of watching my figure — I had just eaten a huge amount of Mexican food that morning!!!!! — and just generally saving money). Afterwards, we went to a bar to drink margaritas, but again, I abstained… it was nice, though, and Rob had recently gone to Africa for three and a half months on a crazy road trip… and he had the craziest stories, one of which involved nearly being thrown in jail in Zimbabwe because he didn’t have gas and were trying to cross the border into another country in a “stolen” car, since the van they were driving didn’t have proper documentation, I guess. He was working his entire Africa trip, though, using a satellite internet connection… which I didn’t even know existed… but how crazy, right? You can be in the fucking African bush and still online — granted it costeth a fair amount of $$$$$$$$… but yeah, I guess his van broke down a million, zillion times, and they thought they’d nearly be killed a couple times… but luckily everything worked out for the best! Yay!

On the way home, he and I had a super funny conversation about Jesus and Indian food… with the two topics beginning individually but later — yes — actually intertwining. Good times…

More on New Mexico later. It’s time to get ready to board my fucking flight to Seattle from Albuquerque, motherfucker.

well, alrighty, then.

well, funny day. sleep on sleep needed to determine next course of action. hey, i have a headache. i think i ate too much sugar. funny, it’s not even alcohol-related. ick. gotta wake up at like 8:30am. i should go to bed. yeah.

ps.

skeng.

pps.
whoa, really? i haven’t blogged in two days? weird. felt like i’d been writing daily. to summarize: i was bad. saw 7-minute 48-hour film festival movie michael and homies were working on, and it turned out pretty fucking amazing. went hiking at multnomah falls today. flaked on another friend cause i’m a punk and it was too cold to go river floating (of course, after i said i couldn’t go, the sun came out… fuck, i’m a bastard). roomie and cser hooked up. went to a meditation to live music thing with gina and it was alright, but guided meditation is hard for me to focus on (first time trying).

dream world.

new idea:
[1] find a place to exchange an apartment with someone for a month. doesn’t matter where.
—– [how do i do this?]
———- [addendum thought: i can totally go to taiwan and hole up for free for however long. parents have an apartment. hmm. but i kind of know people there. which makes it less appealing. kinda.]
[2] go. hole up. learn about a new place and culture. write a book.

if this was possible now! right now! right this second now… it’d be amazing! amazingly great! now is not the time, though.

there are some jokers across the street who are fighting and screaming on the porch of some house, being really loud and obnoxious, screaming about throwing bottles and saying, “give it to me!” and stuff.

today our couchsurfer (shawn’s couchsurfer, to be exact) was talking and recalling how andrew and her had gone into laughing planet — a nearby burrito shop — and the worker at the burrito shop had asked the couchsurfer what her name was, for her order. couchsurfer was high, and answered, “julia. that’s my english name, anyway.” burrito shop worker says, “oh, now you’ve made me curious! what’s your real name?” couchsurfer responds with, “youngju.” burrito worker goes off about how youngju is such a beautiful name and julia is such a less sophisticated one because it’s english etc. etc.

that’s some of the dumbest shit i’ve ever heard. youngju is not a super common korean name but it’s not uncommon, and it sounds like a lot of other korean names. so you basically think it sounds good because it sounds “exotic” or something? like, somehow julia is a less meaningful name just because it’s in english and isn’t like, mustafa or something, even though mustafa might be a super common name in another country?? that’s the dumbest shit ever.
.
dummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmb. but not just dumb in a normal sense… dumb in the… ah yeah this is the stereotypical reason portland gets kinda stupid sometimes kind of way.

in the meantime this song is so stupid good…

life devotional.

part one.
dreaming about horrible ants and bugs crawling and creeping like motherfuckers.
part two.
being restless as fuck. going on aimless walks even seems pointless. so aimless.
part three.
wondering why one feels so incomplete despite doing exactly what one wants but what one wants is so vague, and ever vaguer.
part four.
fuckkkkkk.
part five.
trash.

so much writing to do. just been writing. writing. writing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ASCIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

just saw it yesterday and it kind of drove me nuts. it’s amazing, don’t get me wrong, but people are starving (me! well yes me, but i’m kind of joking) and other people have time to make this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!? who da what da how da how what who what why would anyone make this. i don’t even understand.

ping-pong ball of fluctuations. it passes. it comes. it goes. whatever. it’s fine. it’s just coming right now.

been pretty low for the past TWO WEEKS >>>>>>>>> more or less. that’s a fucking LONG ASS TIME. that’s not good. the feeling has made me pretty productive — off and on, anyway — and that’s probably the best part about it, but in terms of social life… meh, not really, don’t care, have had some meetings and occasional hangouts mostly, but i don’t really care all that much for any of it.

also, we have a total of four couchsurfers in town for this week. one is shawn’s — the rest are mine. i fucking. don’t even care. right. now. sounds bad, but i don’t really want to have to deal with hanging out with them right now. ickkkkkkkkkkkkkkk. honestly, i just want to work.

really, though. i’m probably going to have to borrow money from the rents for se asia because i don’t have the funds for all the vaccines and car insurance and health insurance and shit right now. which is really pathetic but man that shit costs a lot of money. was just going to forego the car usage for the summer but now i’m unsure. hate money. hate all. unga bunga. kinda just wanna get blitzed.

vague.

this is my quick post of the day, hopefully, mid-day. we have had a couchsurfer for the past two days (he left today) who was pretty cool, from annapolis. sweet. what else. well, i just had like a two hour conversation on the phone with josh [h]. it was quite an interesting conversation. sometimes i can speak eloquently, and sometimes i’m a complete idiot. in fact, five years ago, i could barely wield an eloquent conversation on the phone with a complete stranger. at least i’m better at that now, thanks to publicity stuff and interviewing bands and all that. but i’m still retarded in person. sometimes. if i overthink it, which is frequently. i never know how to butt into conversations when people are talking to other people, and i never know how to maintain conversations beyond an extremely basic level. i’m horrible at small talk and that really becomes problematic sometimes.

yesterday, i was at some art gallery and some musician was performing and his music was really awesome. in my two-minute conversation with that (if even that) i must have used the word “cool” about five times. pretty retarded. so awkward. life would be much easier if i wasn’t so godamn awkward!

this has been a lame post of the day.

i am a zombie.

but not just a zombie. today was an interesting day. i woke up early. early being 10 hahahahaha and went to a couchsurfer’s house in wallingford for an “eyegazing” party. it was interesting. there were eleven people. the whole concept was to pair up (and rotate people) and stare in each other’s eyes for two to three minutes. it was interesting for sure. you would look at different people’s eyes differently… for the most part, a lot of people were uneventful. one guy i actually got bored by, and started kinda zoning off, which was weird. it was interesting, though — some people were really super intense, some really relaxed, some giggled a ton, some not at all.

there were a few notable things, i guess. i felt like it was not really that uncomfortable with anyone except for one guy. it was kinda awkward with him. not sure why.

another guy — this mexican dude — was my first “dark-eyed” person (six people into the rotation) and it was really interesting to see the marked difference between all the light-eyed people and the sudden transformation into “dark-eyed”. and also there was a window behind him, so it kind of obscured his face a little…………………….

i also had problems focusing on two eyes at once for most people… i would stare at one eye and then go to the other. the last guy, though, i could really easily look at both his eyes at once. not sure why.

most notable for me was one guy who had the same thoughts i did. he was my third person into the rotation, and we thought the same things. for starters, i didn’t blink that much prior to that but i kept blinking when it was him for some reason. don’t think i blinked that much again the whole time. he was wondering why i was blinking so much. i was wondering why i was blinking so much. then, he was trying to figure out what eye of his i was looking at, and i was wondering if he could tell which eye i was looking at. really weird.

anyway.

everyone was really quite nice and it was more comfortable than i’ve felt at previous couchsurfing meetings, for sure, so that was cool. fun!

in any case, i don’t know if it was the result of that exercise or what (most definitely) but i definitely made a point to look in people’s eyes the rest of the day while just walking around. but most of all… today was weird. halfway through the eyegazing thing, i started to feel like i’d met a lot of the couchsurfers before, although i never had. and furthermore, when i went to a show at the black lodge in the evening, i felt like i’d met a bunch of those people before, too. and i hadn’t. w e i r d.

recap central: new orleans, louisiana.

wednesday, september 30th, 2009
headed over to new orleans from washington dc, with a stopover in new york. arrived around dinner time and overheard a hilarious conversation (see here). then got picked up by my couchsurfing host, daryl, and we went rock climbing indoors! it was $10 for like four hours of all-you-can-climb rock climbing. i will admit that it was harder than i initially thought it would be, for sure. i didn’t feel like i was too weak to do it, but the finger dexterity was for sure lacking. but it was somewhere between fun and non-fun, i guess. but yeah, there was a group of people he knew there, and like we got there and i vaguely introduced myself and literally a couple of the people just stared at me. it was kinda fucking weird.

{funny! i’m at this coffee shop in new york’s bushwick neighborhood, and they just started playing this really super epic orchestral music and everyone in the coffee shop is being put on edge, because it was originally this really quiet ambient stuff and now it’s all up in your face, haha. it’s like going through my headphones. funny.}

anyway, went to meet up with daryl’s friends at some coffee shop where they were playing some card game. i’m all for games, but they were quintessential nerds in every sense of the word. like, comic book guy from simpsons style. which is fine. it was funny, though. they were nice enough — well, one of them was. i didn’t care for the other two, really. they were babbling on about nonsense, too, and it wasn’t even funny nonsense, it was just like, “you’re kind of crazy” nonsense, and i happen to like crazy people.

head back after walking around a bit. another couchsurfer chick from france (pictured) was staying there too. daryl definitely had a grudge against her because she is the kind of couchsurfer that kind of stays in a place but doesn’t really wanna hang out with the host, and he’s the complete opposite and pretty much wants to spend tons of time together. that usually isn’t my style, either, but i ended up seeing some pretty cool stuff because of it. but yeah, french couchsurfer chick was funny because she used to work at mcdonald’s in france and she’d been in the states for like, three weeks (or was it three months?) and pretty much ate mcdonald’s EVERY MEAL which is fucking ridiculous, but she said she was doing it to assimilate to american culture, which is even MORE ridiculous.

talked to one of daryl’s roommates for a bit, and she was cool… one of the other roommates had the chillest fucking dog ever! it was like a cat! you could do whatever the hell you wanted to it and it wouldn’t bark or anything. AND it was really cute. jealous, jealous.

thursday, october 1st, 2009

woke up kinda late and went to eat gumbo at this place called coop’s, after dropping off french couchsurfer chick!

daryl! i have to mention that daryl’s house had this message that said basically that you could walk around naked in the space if you wanted to. that being said, he was never naked, and i think it was just so people who wanted to be naked could feel comfortable, but at first i found it kinda weird and later i was like, ah well, probably because he didn’t actually get more naked than underpants.

cool horsehead statue — broken!

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. in the downtown area.

i love old shit. therefore, i love new orleans. seriously, though, new orleans rules. it’s as foreign country as you’ll get in the united states, i feel like. granted there are some section of the u.s. i haven’t been to yet… but still.

street performer (who gave me a business card — going out of character — and wanted me to send him pics that i took… i still need to do that).

go to the farmer’s market and i snatched myself a harmonica, along with some really cool feathery masks that were only like $2 each or something sold by chinese people, of course. they’re always pawning the ridiculous warez.

didn’t even know beads came in so many styles.

who doesn’t want to pull tissue papers out of mr. bean’s ass?

these arent’ the masks i bought, but mine weren’t bad. i noticed after taking these photos that there was a huge sign saying, NO PHOTOS! oops.

need to go to an atm though, and visit an artisan market along the way.

come on, even the grating looks neat.

get driven through a neighborhood called bywater, where some artist has taken it upon himself (i think his name is bob) to name the place “bobwater”. haha. his art and reminders of his art are all over the place. rule.

new orleans = textural old time heaven. i would like to go back, for sure.

went to a store in bobwater and i really fucking wanted this ceramic sculpture. it made me sooo happy. saint with babies for clothes? I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT! unfortunately, it was like $30, and i was pretty sure i’d destroy the shit out of it, so i didn’t get to bring it back. but it was soooo awesome. :{

more cool stuff at the heavily mexican-influenced store.

i was kinda in love with this shit… wanted to take home like, all of it.

daryl with mask. this store was a LITTLE too fun.

old school baby stroller of death. doesn’t that look soooo uncomfortable?

best collection of fucking foods, ever!1!

head on over to the lower 9th ward shortly thereafter. these photos below are from a house that has essentially been left unchanged since the hurricane. it’s pretty insane that four years later so much of this shit is still in shambles. the government, i guess, asked people to board up and strip their own houses, but for people who just left and didn’t do it, sometimes no one did it. i think the reasoning is that it’s a bit of a hazard — which i completely believe, because we were in this house for like less than five minutes and i got fucking COVERED with mosquito bites.

not much was moldy other than this particular painting, it seemed.

that on the floor was mud. it was about an inch thick, i wanna say. daryl said his house had like 3-4 inches of mud on the ground. what’s surprising is that the 9th ward got a really low amount of water compared to many other parts of the city… the thing is just that the lower 9th ward was poorer, so there was less chance of people rebuilding than in other parts. like where daryl lived was a bit better off, i guess, so probably like 70% of the houses there were rebuilt (others were like boarded up and left alone). in the lower 9th ward, most of the houses were pretty much still shit or completely stripped and unlivable.

also in the lower 9th ward: new houses brad pitt is building. this one is just hilarious. most of them are modern in design but none of them really looked like this other than this one, haha. some of them were already completed and people were already living in them. the houses were built on super high stilts so that if it flooded again they’d generally be mostly okay. they also had like styrofoam walls and were super light.

fema dog house! how’s that for social commentary!

this is a sign around this gas station we stopped by shortly thereafter. the gas station owner showed a pic which showed how high the water was… it was completely over the top of the gas station. fucking CRAZY.

a whole strip mall full of stores that are like WTF now.

went to lincoln beach shortly thereafter, which is a former beach that isn’t really used now other than by graffiti people, it feels like. this here is what used to be locker rooms — the walls were these pretty brittle tiles, and remnants of those tiles are pretty much everywhere on the ground.

reminds me of the albany bulb in albany, california. i still need to write a blog post about the albany bulb, shit!!!

locker rooms!

that night, met up with dominique who runs blue lace, a music publication thing based in new orleans. wandered around a while. came across this funny headline. went to this “dad” outdoor concert for a bit and then tried to see what other shows were going on but nothing much really.

people are all bout brad pitt for mayor. this was in a local weekly thing.

went onto frenchman street — where there was supposed to be jazz, but there wasn’t this evening. ah, well. bummer. next time. we ate at a restaurant called 13 where they had tater tot nachos — i forget the name but it was a cute name. and it was REALLY delicious. i think they were called tater-tachos?

funny sammich.

a banksy piece, preserved under plexiglass, cuz new orleans has this guy who has been dubbed the gray ghost, and he goes around covering up graffiti everywhere with gray rollers.

we went along the river walk after that, which was alright, same as any.

popcorn that night. see the cob? the popcorn was just an entire dehydrated cob that you put in a paper bag and it all pops. haha. it cost more than a traditional bag of popcorn, but one would think it costs less to make (asides from the organic crappity crap crap).

daryl kinda gave me a guilt trip for wanting to go to bed after all this, but whatever. i was done exploring.

friday, october 2nd, 2009

went to bourbon street in the morning, and got some yummy croissant. it was weird, though, absolutely nothing going on there in the daytime. i didn’t happen to go at nighttime. it’s whatevers. i don’t party anyway. i’m an old lady. was gonna go see “zombieland” with dominique if she went but she ended up not going. ah, well.

also had the most hilarious mocha i’ve ever gotten in my life. i asked for a small and it was literally in one of those teeny tiny styrofoam cups. like, wtf! it was really, really GROSS, too.

i’m so delirious.

Went to the Mount St. Helens Ape Caves yesterday with Lenny and some CouchSurfers. I haven’t been there in years, when Alex and I went with an Environmental Science. They’re amazing. They’re old lava tubes that are like climbing more than hiking. Love it, love it, love it. One of my favorite places in Washington (now alongside Olympic National Park and The Columbia River Gorge). It was a REALLY long drive and I was definitely dying kinda because I’d only slept like four hours the night before. :L Driving to Portland was closer than driving there. And it wasn’t much of a work-out at ALL, cause I wasn’t even sore today. There were some 8 foot and 12 foot walls to climb and it’s funny, like Lenny mentioned, that people who are small like us can climb those things super fucking easy but anyone remotely big has a really hard time. Interesting. I really want to go climbing… will probably go sometime with Chris before moving out… it just seems really godamn fun. Expensive… like $50 a time for rental and trial membership for the day, but it seems AWESOME. Hope I can work it out sometime soon.

Hanging out with 20 CouchSurfers (wtf, I’m super delirious. Where did I get the number 20? I didn’t even realize I typed this. I think it was more like… 15?!!!) sometimes got super duper messy, but it managed to work out decently, although it’s kind of frustrating sometimes when people don’t do things as efficiently as you can see ways of doing. If that makes sense. They were all very nice, though. I am so delirious right now… there’s a lot to write but I definitely don’t feel like it. There were some interesting people riding in my car — a London couple named Emma and Tom — and a couple from Burien and Tukwila that were really nice and really cool… the guy was named Tin and he was born in Croatia and worked as a caretaker for old people. The chick was named Christina and spoke Spanish and worked as a massage therapist. They were very nice and told good stories. I enjoyed them a lot… and she showed us this elephant she had on her hand because she has this little mole on her second finger that can be folded to look like an eyeball, with her second finger being the trunk. I dunno. Haha. She also told us about how when she was little, her dad told her that teabags had little bugs in them, and that they got put into hot water and then pooped themselves, and that’s what tea was… so she didn’t find out until she was really old that teabags do not have bugs in them. And that she saw a water performance with people dressed up as mermaids and hence didn’t find out until she was eighteen that mermaids don’t really exist. LAWLS.

I’m vegetarian, now. We’ll see how this goes. I think I’m on… I dunno. Four days. Beat my last attempt already!!!

I’ve been living in a dream world, lately. Wonder when I’ll snap out of it.

OH… AND SERIOUSLY?? MY MOM GOT FACEBOOK. SO NOT OKAY.

///

In the nightmare desert stood a building,
Outside, someone was digging a hole in the ground,
They were burying in my luck.

What have you done?

The man in the hole has smoked up all my income,
My better day, his for the take,
And I watched it all –
Him putting pins into a doll.

What have you done?

The man in the hole has carried away the moonlight –
Cupped in his hands,
A dime on the water,
He’s a patient man…
As his careful stepping shows.

Will he take her love?
Will his hands know what mine did?
Will her body like the fit?
Will he take her love?

MINUS THE BEAR – BURYING LUCK.

wow, what a rollercoaster of a day. :|

3:14am.
I’m listening to… La Dispute’s Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between Vega and Altair album.

///

The beginning half of today was fairly uneventful. Rachel came over and we went to Chupacabra, where she watched me eat. I did some work. That’s about it.

Come 7:30pm, though, I headed over to Neumo’s where The Helio Sequence were playing. Hojo had picked up a ticket for me… and you get tickets for free when you buy a drink at Moe Bar. Since I don’t drink myself, this was fantastical…! It was the five year anniversary of Neumo’s.

So, Saturday, I’d gotten a ride down to the Olympic Peninsula in a car with some CouchSurfers. I’d unfortunately left my camera in the rental car they had, but called them immediately, notifying them of this. They said they’d put it in a safe spot, and I could get it from them later. Today, Peter, the driver, told me that he had looked for the camera for two hours and could not find it, and did not know if Nick, the passenger, had it, and that Nick had triple-checked the rental car before they returned it. So, what the fuck? That means they either lost it or someone stole it. Either or those are really unacceptable. Yeah, it was my fault for leaving it in the car, but it’s not that hard to keep track of a camera, z o m g?!! That or someone is a lying ass liar, which I would be really disappointed about… it’s making me think I should not trust strangers. UGH.

I was by myself, but luckily, I ran into Scott, and Kiet, Anthony‘s cousin, and some other guy I kinda forget the name of. Derrick, I think.

The first band, Palmer Electric Co., was unexciting, so I headed off to Caffe Vita to do some writing and to drink a mocha. While I was there, I saw The Helio Sequence’s Benjamin Weikel in line, so I said hi to him and asked me if he remembered me. He said he did, but man, the conversation was awkward as SHIT. He’s kind of a shy guy to begin with, and I also cut in line in front of — I later saw — Brandon Summers, and I was like… oOps. :L They never remember me although I’ve met them like a zillion times, and once was for like an hour! Godammit. Haha. :L Unmemorable, I guess. That was kind of a buzzkill, especially since they were not particularly super friendly. Probably due in part to my awkwardness, perhaps.

So I sat and write up a show review at the coffee shop and then headed back.

At that point, Kiet started pestering me about whether or not I had a boyfriend, what kind of guys I liked, and why I didn’t like his cousin. :L It was like, AWKWARD! I barely remember even meeting you! But it’s all good. I have no taboo questions, although some are hard to answer, is all. He said he was just curious about me, because I’m an enigma. Why do people always say that?

Grand Hallway, Alina‘s band, came on. They were actually really fucking good, with their eight members and mandolin players and violin players and drummers and keyboardists, and holy shit, eight people!!! Hojo had interviewed them a while ago, but I’d never published it, and now I feel bad… it wasn’t because it was bad, but it was short, and I thought I’d mentioned that, but evidently, I just forgot about the article altogether. Not particularly professional.

After that, I decided to move up to the front to get a better view of The Helio Sequence. There was a group of friends who were there together, and three really tall guys were spanning the front area, forming like a wall of tall. Most of them were behind me, but one particularly tall AND wide guy was front and center, blocking everyone behind him. I tapped him on the shoulder, and this conversation took place:

Me: Do you think I can move in front of you?
Him: No.
Me: Are you serious?
Him: Yeah. I’ve been here for like, four hours! (an impossibility, really, since I’d been there since the doors opened and it was NOT four hours)
Me: But you’re so tall…

And that was the end of the story. What a fucking dick. He rendered me absolutely speechless. Like… fuck. There was this other girl, even shorter than me, next to him, and he insisted on standing in front of her, too. They knew one another, but still, WHAT THE FUCK? She was like 4’8″; one would think a friend would let her go in front of him, if not me… unbelievable. I mean seriously. The dude was like, over 6 foot and hella fucking wide. You seriously can’t let a 4’8″ chick and a 5’1″ chick in front of you? What a fucking douche. And the way he said it was just unbelievable.

So later, there was a guy standing next to 4’8″ girl, and he moved. I moved into his spot, cause he hadn’t returned for a while. I figured he wasn’t coming back. I stood there, and the girl said, “You know someone is standing there.” I said, “I didn’t know he was coming back.” Wow, attitude people. Like… gee, I’m sorry you came with a group of 40 people, but this is usual concert etiquette — if someone leaves, he or she leaves. Other people fill in that space. Just because your whole fucking crew took up the whole front half of the venue doesn’t mean that other people can’t stand in your friend’s place. Five seconds after she told me her friend was standing there, she decided that she was a dick and told me, “You know what? Just stand there.” Freak. Where does this sense of entitlement come from? Do you people not go to concerts or what?

It was a weird ass crowd for The Helio Sequence. I dunno why their crowd is like, always comprised of fucking… frat boys and idiots. I swear.

Anyhow.

I was going to meet back up with Scott and co. after the show, but they’d disappeared. I tried to contact Scott, but I think I have his number from 80 years ago.

I went downtown to Trinity to meet up with Jennie and Chol because drum n’ bass DJ Reid Speed was in town. It was cool, kinda, but she played wayyyy too much dubstep. I fucking hate dubstep. Why does everyone like that shit?

At one point, I moved to the front of the drum n’ bass room, and Jennie and Chol and co. left, I guess. Again, they’d disappeared without saying something to me. -__-

On the plus side, I had the opportunity to: a) be hit on by two somewhat greaseball guys — one of whom was more greasy than the other, because he actually left the venue when I left and followed me to my fucking car to ask me for my number. WTF; and b) witness the most fucking EPIC dance-off ever, between two random strangers, a guy and a girl. They were both clearly trained in dance in some way or another, and they were doing crazy turns and flips and shit. I shit you not… there were these white decorative bars on the walls of Trinity, and they were climbing up and down the wall using those, as well as crawling on the floor and doing the splits like motherfuckers. The girl was dancing initially and the guy approached her, and I didn’t actually think he could dance, but he could dance pretty decent. The girl was fucking amazing, though. The two of them together had REALLY good chemistry and they were doing some insane “So You Think You Can Dance” nearly choreographed looking shit. It was really seriously unbelievable, and they had a fangirl there who wouldn’t stop like, talking to them about how awesome they were. At one point, the girl climbed the wall using the bars, all the way to the ceiling, and then did the splits on the wall like ten feet off the ground. It wasn’t like super perfect in execution, but it was kind of cool. I don’t think I’ve ever seen dancing like that ever in my real life. Insanity.

Other than that. UGH.