Timecard

Its funny to me that whenever I'm trying to think of a song, in my head I visually look through the stacks at the Record Exchange, trying to remember where I used to file what. I mean, it's not the worst system, it's alphabetical.





Friday: at Bac with Tara, got the Pad Thai which is what I always get because that's what I do, I find one dish at every place and I just order that every time. I would like to know the number of times in the past ten years I've ordered chicken fried rice from Johnny Mango's, no cucumbers, extra lime sauce. It's probably like ten million and two. After dinner, we went to my mom's house to play with the chicks, and Tara put one to sleep in her hand by squishing it. Which makes it sound like she killed it, with her heavy crushing palm, but in fact if you are something light and fluffy, you like to be reminded of heavier creatures sitting on you and keeping you warm, so you go to sleep automatically. That is a true statement that can be applied to multiple life forms.

Saturday: went to Kelly and Krista's joint birthday party. I got there late, because I do that, I get to places late. The other day I was meeting Jere somewhere, and I texted him where I was, but he didn't even bother to check his text because he assumed I would be running late. Anyway, wore sequins, I like to do that the most these days. Spent a large amount of time talking about places and things I hadn't thought about for years, like the Ledges, and psychic vampires, and Brunswick. Turns out that many of the things that shouldn't exist actually take place in one of the places I know don't exist. I Was heartened to learn that I now had a large amount of friends, the majority, who had to have psychic vampires explained to them, that's nice. I've been in weird places in my life. Look, here is the easiest explanation. They are terrible boring people who kill every mood or room they walk into and somehow they have turned that into a delusional belief in their ability to feed off life energy, or some shit like that. Jesus, people are fucked up. They are capable of believing anything.But I guess that's what we get for allowing religion to be socially acceptable.




Sunday: Went to meet Sarah's new dog, Maurice. Afterwards I went to the Grovewood and drank some wine and read Edward Albee at the bar. That place is really more of a restaurant, so I felt a little out of place, but hey, I bought food. I haven't had dinner by myself like that in a while. You'd think at 31 I would be better at it. Then went to the cafe arts collinwood, which will forever be called the Waterloo in my head and really thats for no good reason, for a reading. I got a little lit there, and there was a very drunk guy who sat next to me who made a big deal out of having to go drink someone under the bar at another bar, then left to go do that. He was wearing track pants and had been drinking at the bar down the street from my house on the other side of town. I don't remember much about the readings except there was a story about giving birth to a dead baby that was very long. And I don't mean to belittle this woman's pain, but when you are a little fucked up, and it's nice outside, and it's been a good day? A 20 minute story about something like that is just...well its not okay.



Monday: Jere and I went to the film festival downtown. The first movie was at 9:20am, which is just a ridiculous time to start watching a movie, and even worse the one I chose was this movie about an old woman who has spent the last decades of her life only reading and translating Dostoevsky. And I had to know what that actually did to a person. It was a great movie. But we needed coffee badly when it was done. Went to a shorts program, and then to a bar to drink a little. The last movie we went to was Paradise Hotel, which was this documentary about these Gypsies living in this cold war style concrete slab apartments complex, which had over the last 20 years become completely gutted, so that it really literally was only these empty concrete box rooms one after another. All the plumbing and appliances had been stolen or sold years ago. They were living in caves basically. There was no electricity, so a few of the rooms were hooked up with generators. A mother bathed her kid by pouring plastic bottles of water over him. Everyone just threw their garbage out the window, and there was a moat of garbage around the building, which were then picked through by the men collecting bottles and horses grazing on it. Another older man paid these other guys to pick the okra that was growing by the fields outside on the empty hills surrounding this place. This young woman had slept with this guy, and therefore since she was a virgin, he had to come and take her away from her mother's house in a horse and cart, with her mother screaming after her not to go with the Gypsy! Well she told a story about how the first three days she was there in his apartment, she couldn't eat because it was so filthy. But they were all so happy and smiling as they are telling the camera about living there, because, you know, they're Gypsies! That's what they do. Smile about everything.



In completely unrelated news, I really really want to go to Gypsy, West Virginia. Like, right away.



Tuesday: I don't quite know. I'm pretty sure that's the day I met Laura up at Deagans. Which, frankly, is not a place I go to a lot. The staff is nice and the food is good, but there's something about the crowd in there that gives me the willies. And there's nothing obviously bad about them. It's not like ostensibly full of douchebags or anything. But still. It makes me nervous. Also I really hate parking in the large lots that Lakewood has all over. Also, for no apparent reason.

Wednesday: Went to see another movie at the festival, which was this Polish film about being occupied by the Nazis, only the family is three sisters who are hiding out in their very large well off Polish aristocracy country estate. It is about as awful as it sounds like it should be. I don't know why we didn't figure it out when we read the description, but I suspect we picked it while drinking Monday. Anyway, it was 2 hours long and Jere actually left before it was over, which is shame because the ending was SO BAD, I feel like he really missed out. Later, it snowed heavily, the last hurrah of winter, and we drank whiskey, and I hung out with a friend and stayed up listening to old country vinyl late.



Thursday: Oh! The Books! Were at the Beachland, and I sort of wavered about going since I hadn't had sleep in two days, but then did anyway, and it was fantastic. Pavel from tango was there too, so I tagged along with him, and when we walked in, all these little hipster kids were sitting on the floor of the Ballroom, listening to the opening act. But Pavel refused to sit on the floor for the Books, so during the break, he positioned himself right at the front of the stage, defiantly blocking the floor people. Then as new people came in, they all stood right by the stage too, so then eventually all the floor people were forced to get up, and it was sort of war for a minute. Are you a stage person or do you sit with the floor people? That show was so good.



Friday: Went for drinks with a friend, so he could tell me about his friends bachelor party in Belgium the week before. Ended up talking crudely about snaggletoothed prostitutes and various other sexual proclivities. I'm personally of the opinion that when given the option in Bruges, one should always get a dance from the snaggletoothed young woman in the red booth. Felt myself getting sick, that just a little high feeling and that little nagging cough?

Saturday: full on sick. Went looking in my cabinets for Tylenol PM, and found three bottles of the stuff, cause I just keep losing it and buying more. Ended up doing the whole "take 2 pills and drink a pot of coffee to counteract it" routine. Later went to have dinner with Jay and Dawn and Thomas. Its interesting to think about how your friends decorate their living spaces, especially those friends you've known a while and seen move. Tara, for instance, has a very distinctive put together dark wood bright walls look, which she assembles miraculously in a day. Buddy likes things spare and clean. Marty likes a little bit of clutter, the line of sight broken up. Jay and Dawn lived together so long, they both sort have the same style, though Jay is a little bit more clay and Dawn is a little bit more silk. Now that they are in different places, its funny to see how much their homes still resemble each other. We were supposed to be doing artsy stuff, but instead we just sat around and talked. I was getting progressively more and more sick, coughing constantly. I drove home through E. 55th and was totally impressed by how the city fixed up all the potholes. Got home and went straight to bed, but couldn't sleep. I got a fever, and kept getting up through out the night, in the middle of strange constant dreams, to drink water and brush my teeth obsessively. I hate the way my mouth tastes when I'm sick.

Sunday: Woke up with that cold sweat light headed clear feeling that washes over you when a fever breaks. As if you've been bathed in cold water. But I mean, for instance, I just enjoyed a Chris Isaak song, so I have to still be pretty sick.