2003-06-16 - 2:56 a.m.

Remember list:

Got outta work on Friday, met the Roommate at Lechmere, walked to the Overdraught, ate a really, really awesome barbequed porque choppe. (I don't know how to spell barbeque, so I figured I'd missspel prok chop.)

Got an awesome coffee at Dunkies which was also in a convenience store, which was also in a gas station. Which was awesome. And also my downfall.

Saw the Brett Rosenberg Problem at the Abbey. Spent $7 each to get in, spent most of the show on the bar side, which would have been free. I'm absolutely committed to spending money at this bar, because I want it to be around forever and ever and ever and ever, but I learned a valuable lesson, and on the heels getting shafted to the tune of five bucks on an Asa Brebner show where it wasn't even just Asa, and it was populated by a gaggle of garish 445 year old women dressed like Brittney Spears grotesques from a wry Italian zombie film. The lesson? Feel the band out by drinking a $2 PBR barside, and then pay only if you actually wanna see the show.

Sorry for saying it, Abbey, but when you get a Bostonian like me who gets a little pissed at outta towners making fun of the accent, who goes to a show and then decides that the best band was the opener for the opening act, and only because the best song he heard all night was by a chowdahead with a wicked accent, and only because the name of the song was �Shark Attack� (go on, say it out loud with the accent), then you know you got a show which is not memorable in a good way. (Did watch the Sox win a good come-from-behind game and had a townie tell me that I�m �his type of guy� �cause I knew the score and could relay game highlights.

Walked home to the Cosby Brownstone, fulla beer and coffee--very bad combination. Realized that somebody had stolen V--The Final Battle--DISC TWO (from Netfux) from the mail corner in the vestibule. Disc two. Fucker. Like the very last V thing I had to watch to be done with it, which Netfux is NOT gonna have another copy of lying about, and which is (barring a stunning coincidence) of absolutely no use to the person who stole it from me.

Asshole.

Drunkenly lectured the Roommate about being more assertive with the landlord (we're the bougeroiseeee of the apartment, but we're too timid to ask for things which are perfectly reasonable--like our buzzer being fixed (when friends visit, we have to keep constant vigil by the windows of our apartment, as well as ask friends to shout at our building when they arrive).

Oh, and the Roommate wears the pants when it comes to dealing with the landlord people--who are nice. It's just that she has her shit together more than I do (in that one tiny, miniscule in fact, regard).

Got up ridiculously late on Saturday afternoon. I didn't have to work that day, but I had a full Sunday looming. No Saturday work=get haircut, which was long overdue.

Long n' free... Remember that? Of course you don't. But I was so proud of that joke--I loved that joke.

Anyway, felt a lil' hungover, foreshadowing, really. Went to Kenne Highland�s yardsale--he�s some dude with a band and a CD. Extremely charismatic, though. It was a nice walk there, and not far. Maps.yahoo.com, baby (I actually spend hours on that site, imagining what it would be like to be in Sandusky, or Brockton, or Winchester Center, or Chattanooga, or Worcester, or Provincetown, or Portland Oregon or Maine, or Flint, or Peoria, or Baltimore, or Ketchican, or Spokane, or Grand Rapids, or Little Rock, or Philly, or Tacoma, or Somerville. But never NYC.)

I got a the Fox by D.H. Lawrence �cause I woulda felt bad leaving empty-handed. The Roommate got a couple of Jane Austin novels �cause they had good cover art. We both wanted to help the guy. All in all, four books and a movie. We were going to pay separate, I was gonna give the guy a buck for the book (it said $0.25 in pencil--obviously from another yard sale--in the inside cover), but he insisted on charging the two of us together, and because of it, he�d �throw in� his CD (his words). I offered him four bucks for the four books and the video, and that was when he stopped talking to me and started talking width the Roommate�s conservatively swaddled chest. Which I don�t blame him for, but it would have been a struggle for him to be more obvious about it. Like pretending to see an imaginary bird perching on a nip and then flying skyward and oh, you didn't thin it was that, did you woulda been a stretch for him. Yeah. But at this point my name was Mark to him, and the CD is ten dollars, and let�s make it fifteen so it�s tens and five's. The Roommate and I both had ones, but that deal just seemed too convenient to pass up. Then he got in name drop mode and for some reason I can�t explain, I mentioned my old band�s name, which he insisted he had heard (but not seen), even after I downplayed the number of shows we played. I swear to God, that man is a harmless black hole. I love that man and his moldy �goth room� (where the hapless yardsale took place), and I have no idea why. The Roommate and I didn�t realize the extent to which we had been amicably played (lecture about being more assertive, my ass) �till we were far outta the way, and we had a good time discussing it on our walk to Harvard.

Where we caught the 66 right away, a plus since we were way behind schedule. We had haircut appointments. Yup. Simultaneous haircut appointments. At the same place. Yup.

Yup.

And we ended up being a little early, which is the child of good planning. It was cpm, and neither of us had eaten. Boca Grande took care of that. I miss College Corner.

Unfortunately, when my hair was done being shorn, the Roommate, who was tall and such, as some girls are, was still bountifully having her hair shorn. I, unfortunately, sat on a bench outside, unfortunately not having any coffee. I smoked a cigarette with longing haste. The happy girl came swarthily bounding out from the orifice and tapped my shoulder, her wide eyes shining in the murky sun. I put down my D.H. Lawrence book.

From there, a walk to Allston. With a little bit of spending money. Fly Rabbit had a we�ll be back in fifteen minutes sign, and we didn�t wanna waste time. We went to the antique shop by what used to be the Avenue Gardener (I don�t remember the name of the store. Pardon me--I don�t believe in the sunby the Magnetic Fields just came on the lo �puter, and I�m going to listen. I also would like to add that this is another one of those entries where I had no intentions of writing for this long, but I just couldn�t keep the pace of the unfolding story in check. The words �remember list� at the top of the entry mock me, I�m exceeding the time limit responsible me imposed before bedtime, I have absolutely no time to edit when I finish this, yet I feel like I�m not doing anything justice in this hurry-up offense, feel guilty like I�m squashing creative impulses and experiments that could lead to experiments which could lead to breakthroughs if I just gave them five goddamn seconds, and I gotta keep it in check so I can turn this thing in without it being a disaster, every third word misspelled, every fifth sentence needing more attention than was given, the whole thing, as always, needing the editor that lives inside me who went on vacation two years ago, and that includes not writing this paragraph or sentence if I�ve gone that long sans period and Shady Lane by Pavement is playing right now and I still love it even though I see now how I was duped by their slickness too, even though I just wanted honesty in my music but clever too so I searched and know that it�s all a dungaree and straw hat con, but then what what was I saying? I ate sushi at Tokyo City with the Roommate and talked about the stupid war in public and wasn�t scared about doing so. For hours and four big Sapporos between the two of us and the sushi was so good and so cheap and we ordered so much of it that I was momentarily afraid that I�d throw a little up and never be able to enjoy sushi again, but those last two pieces, a moist half hour old, looked so good.

We left Allston (by the way, I got a cowboy shirt with shiny buttons in the store I started talking about earlier, and for a song). We caught that 66 in a somewhat timely manner, and by timely I mean that we had to start worrying about time again--we had Wigfield tickets for 10pm, and still so much to do.

But the whole time, the frantically doing of the things which needed to be done, I knew that we�d make it in time, and I even had for a coffee at the hippie coffee store (which you can bring in to the Somerville Theatre), and a smoke afterward, holding it, my downfall, the thing that I knew would keep me up �till the wee hours despite the slowly de-cloaking presence of work tomorrow, my fourth coffee of the day.

Wigfield was absolutely hilarious--jokes for smart people done perfectly, and the Roommate and I loved it. We had balcony tickets, first row, leaning over the railing, we thought, but Ticketmaster fucked up and the front section of the balcony is the mezzanine. But the show was an added show, so there there were empty seats we could snag. And we snagged them. And I was proud of that--almost everyone in the second floor of that building could have claimed a better seat, but we did that show in fucking style--show up two minutes late, wait �till there was no chance that we�d be causing a commotion by snagging free seats in a seat-rich area, and we traded up the right way. And had a better time �cause of it.

What goes on at a party stays at the party. And I�m tired. So I�ll just say that I had a fucking awesome time at V52, always nostalgic, and that it was a good party. Parties shouldn�t be remembered moment by moment anyway. Parties are like a video game. You play for awhile, you save the game when you�re done, and then you live your normal, boring life where stuff isn�t happening all the fucking time. Then, when you�re ready (and if you can find the game), you take off from where you left off, and hope you do well. It helps to have a friend play with you. Drinking enhances the experience. If you do well, you�re rewarded.

Today was a horrible day--I joked with the Roommate at the party that the real rules of tomorrow are that it�s not tomorrow �till you wake up (and so on), and she argued that it�s Saturday and then it�s Sunday and everyone agrees on it, so that�s the law.

I fought the law and the law won.

To begin my day, I drank a PBR with my lady at a party in Somerville. We had just finished talking about the laws of tomorrow. Five hours into my day, I was walking up Broadway with her. A cab got us the other half of the way home. I went to sleep for a couple of hours, apparently a �nap.�

I got up in horror and disgust and obligation, as I will tomorrow. And had a bad day at work, as I will tomorrow. Unless it�s not. Sometimes, I get off. Either way, it�s bad.

But the Roommate met me for lunch, which I took, and then waited in the waiting room for one of her friends to arrive so that they could meet downtown. I convinced a co-worker that I was making my girlfriend wait for me for the next six hours so that she could take me out for a drink. My reasoning? If I don�t get a day off, she doesn�t. Besides, I�m letting her come in late and I�m letting her read. The shitty thing is that joke was somewhat plausible given the current cultural climate of the Big Company.

The Roommate brought me a beautiful framed mini-print of my favorite painting at the MFA to cheer me up. That made my day, as did the breaded scallop dinner, with potatoes (with cream cheese), broccoli, and corn-on-the-cob.

That girl can get a lot done when I remove her red mouth ball with the leather strap, and her ankle shackles. I�m both amazed and horrified. I�d do it more often, but horrible, horrible freedom has its price, and she has a way in the kitchen.