Today: the wrap-up of the Stern Grove Festival, and the first weekend that I wound up making it there. ( Read more... )

I did not even try to keep track of the set list. Someone, or several someones, will have; the results will wind up getting posted on This Might Be a Wiki's page for today's show, at some point. There were many high points. I wound up headbanging for a bit (and got dizzy and had to sit down). With waist-length hair, this is a bit of a Thing. They played Spider at one point; within a 5 minute window of that, I realized that there was a spider in my hair. I found this absolutely hilarious, and blew the spider out unharmed (I was unharmed, and it was just a really good day). There were a lot of good songs. Josh had wanted to hear "Dr. Worm". He got his wish. At one point a bubble was flying overhead; I blew at it; it swirled and separated into two bubbles. This was entirely accidental but got me some approval from those around. At one point one of the Johns mentioned that they were growing woozy from the secondhand smoke. Indeed, there was quite a bit of it, this being Stern Grove Festival. They played "We Live In A Dump". I like that one a lot. There was patter about how they are from New York, and thrive on New York hostility; California is way too mellow and loving.

They peered up into the far reaches of the grove, and saw that there were people going about as far back as could be seen. This picture is from early on, before the crowd actually arrived and got things crowded.



John addressed us as Ewoks, and mentioned that he had never considered old growth redwood forests as being a potential hazard for concertgoers before. We were Ewoks for the rest of the show.

They said they were done, and trooped off. There was applause until they returned. They played another set.

They ultimately closed with "Triangle Man" -- perfect end to a perfect concert.

( Read more... )

In the last 24 hours, I posted the following to Twitter:

• Friday, 0042: I'm at Mission St & 16th St - http://bkite.com/03LA9
• Friday, 0045: station agent belaboring the point that anyone east bay bound is way... - Mission St & 16th St, San Francisco, CA, - http://bkite.com/03LAi
• Friday, 0052: Despite that the dude got into a disagreement with a dude who missed... - Mission St & 16th St, San Francisco, CA, - http://bkite.com/03LAC
• Friday, 0101: http://twitpic.com/13ccd - PictureMail
• Friday, 0102: I'm at Daly City - http://bkite.com/03LBh
( read the other 15 )

Follow me on Twitter.

A good time had by all. Had a Hemingway. Ran for BART as I overshot my departure time but made it.

I went to the 1994 and 1995 Center for Talented Youth camps run by the Johns Hopkins University. There's a crazy little youth culture that springs up out of CTY with heavy traditions and music and cult happenings taking off like wildfire. "Bizarre Love Triangle" is one of the canon songs, the music that always has to happen and stays the same from year to year, site to site. I don't remember it from then, but I was collecting the canon songs in late 2000 and early 2001. This song was new to me when I was first falling in love with Darkside. This song was new to me when my heartsister and I both fell in love with Darkside at the same time. The title of the song spoke to me, and brought back memories of all the bizarre love triangles I've ever been in, starting with pyrogenic and boojum and the Lady E.

This song follows me everywhere. It's one of my desert island songs. A lot of canon songs are desert island songs for me. They stick with you.

Since CTY came up in the last post, I had to poke around Google. digiclan.org has a whole lot of old stuff on it. It wasn't my clan, not really; I was just one of the offshoots. Sort of. I wonder if there'd be any interest in an argh-and-spink wiki. That could be fun. I was poking around the digiclan site, and I had my hand over my mouth and nose in that way that women do when we're not sure if we're going to cry or not. It's been so long. So, so long. Trust in Snapple.

There's just this sense of loss and longing all rolled up into one. That exceptionally geekycool teenager is not me, anymore. If I'd been less focused on Shawn, would I have been more of a part of them? What if I'd lived in another state, any other state? What if I'd had the freedom to roam about the country to go see them all? What if I'd stayed with the Lady E and married her? What if I'd gotten an e-mail address sooner? Unless I unhinge my mind enough to go skipping between potential universes (again), I'll never know. I don't want to leave my life-that-I-have. Interests/Hobbies: listening to woeful (or, less often, gleeful) tales of people's lovelives OMG that was me vs. Shawn; I don't even think I have half the e-mail archives that I had of all that rich intertwined text where our hearts & souls were laid bare... "It's called nostalgia, dear."

The media. The traditions. The people. Oh, the people. My people. My friends. There was the time before CTY when I was always an outsider. When CTY came, I became an insider. And it wasn't the kind of thing where you had to change your whole personality to like what the popular people liked. It was getting people who liked the same things, so once we connected, we were automatically cool. We shared around more cool stuff. I'd never really thought about black nail polish until we started wearing it. There were all these things I'd never done before, things that were excellently cool, that automatically became enshrined above and beyond their inherent coolness just because I'd never done them before and it was us. Insane injokes. Self-referential references.

Sugar high hair dye kamikaze fruit fly. ... It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel...
it's the end of the world as we know it ...

LIVE! LIVE! LIVE!

Argh & SpInk missed our ten-year reunion. Josh and I got together for a bit in the winter and it was great, but it ... it wasn't ...

I met a girl who sang the blues / I asked her for some happy news / but she just smiled and turned away...

...I'm not sure if I'm going to start with laughing or crying or both. Either case, I'm going to curl up in bed soon, with my nice safe rocks and my nice safe shoe lightsabre.

pyrogenic did this one, and I just have to jump onboard, though I may skip tagging specific people.

Flood, by They Might Be Giants ~ 1995/6

Picture a 15-year-old Lunatic, wearing a black ribbed tight-fitting t-shirt (back when those were just starting to come in) over a long flowy straight pink skirt. Picture her chin-length brown hair flying around as she dances barefoot, barely aware of her surroundings. You can't go back to Constantinople / It's a long time gone, Constantinople...

pyrogenic was there. moonberryq was there. Alice was there, and Emily, and Dave, and oh! So many of us. Kathy. Amol. Jimmy. Gella. Rebecca/Gertrude. boojum was an invisible presence. She'll be waiting in Istanbul. I know I'm forgetting people. But we were there, and it was timeless, and how we danced. (I got the album somewhat after coming home, and played it endlessly.) It was the album of friendship and quirky humor and noticing that lyrics that read dreadfully on paper just worked in the music.

It's nobody's business but the Turks.

Document, by R.E.M. ~ Late December, 1995

I slip the CD caddy all loaded up into Majel (the pretty Quadra 660 AV named in honor of the noted voice actress Majel Barrett, as the computer could speak in a calm female voice and take voice command), and select my favorite songs to repeat themselves several times. It's a party, with the adults downstairs, and me holding quiet court upstairs in my new room with the screensaver and my new lava lamp lighting up the room. I am dating -- almost engaged to -- the most beautiful girl in the world, and I am so very happy. I giggle and whisper with Dad's co-worker Glenn's daughter Sara. Sara is a year younger than me and a year older than my baby sister Tay-Tay. We've had such fun in the past playing together, and I want to tell her my secrets.

I've been testing to see who I can tell about my girlfriend. So I tell her about my friend Savil who's dating a girl who goes to the U. "Eww, gross," Sara says. I go silent, and eventually Sara wanders off to re-join the party.

It's the end of the world as we know it. I'm drifting away from the people my parents have chosen to populate their lives with. I am making this conscious disconnection from them. I can't make them accept me. I have to just step back, lest my wiring and my love disrupt my parents' lives. But. I feel fine.

Parallel Lines, by Blondie ~ 1997

I'm sitting outside Austin Lathrop High School after the Driver's Education class with Mr. Bodle, with the tape player that's been in the household for years in my hand. It's got fresh batteries. It's only monaural, but it's what I have. I'm snuggled up in the battered brown leather jacket with the vastly inaccurate map on shredded silk lining inside. The jacket was from a thrift store, and I love it so much, because it makes me look so vastly cool (I fondly believe). It isn't black, but it is leather. "Fade Away and Radiate" is in my ears. I am alone, for the moment, and waiting. I do a lot of waiting alone in these moments, but I'm singing to myself, loud and proud and strong. Sometimes it's for joy. Sometimes it's to shout out the pain. But I'm always singing.

That's a Shawn era, with Shawn a silent presence just in front of me. I trailed after him like a guardian angel, and that's how Death Child always saw me. Shawn was turned on to the TV culture, and I wasn't.

Aquarium, by Aqua ~ 2000

This is the album of my relationship with BJ, the good times and the surreal times. It might not have been, except George left it on for three days straight on repeat, sort of to counteract the fact that BJ and I were having noisy sex. "Good Morning, Sunshine."

George. BJ. BJ's scary little brother. Sue-bug and John. The whole crowd at work. Bonnie the little red car and long drives at night for the sheer joy of the road and motion. My virtual aunt renting us her little cabin. Independence.

Country Grammar, by Nelly ~ 2001

I moved in with Sis in April of 2001, and our musical tastes clashed. She loved rap. I hated it. I loved R.E.M. She hated it worse than she hated country music. We eventually worked out that she couldn't take twangy minor chords, and that I did not do weaponry and lip service to "no drama" that worked out in practice to shooting anyone who tried to start drama. She conceded that she liked some of their covers that didn't have the problematical chords. I conceded that the beat and sound of nonviolent rap songs could be all right.

Think of a hazy hot evening in late April or early May, with two white girls in a beat-up old used Buick Skyhawk with about three weeks more life in it cruising down the streets of Phoenix, windows down with no AC, belting out the chorus of "Ride Wit' Me"...

980102.1033, Fri

Waking up later and later. Was up too late for New Year’s. I exploded to both Kim and Shawn. I can’t consider Shawn a potential mate yet. He needs to learn some lessons. If I consider him that now, it’s going to be like injecting him with poison. I can’t let myself do that. Therefore, I must bide my time before I can even think about biding my time. He’s still not trained yet, even though he says that I’ve already trained him. *sigh* I’ve trained him to excuse himself when he burps. I now use him as an example for the little neighbor kids, telling them that Shawn excuses himself when he burps, so they had darn well better excuse themselves. I told them the cautionary story of Little Mikey, Hazlett’s little brother, who burped loudly and on purpose, and got beaten up. He always gets beaten up. Not very roughly, except when DC's involved, but…it’s still a form of picking on the freshman.

I went to the library on New Year’s Eve, and I finally got The Monkey Wrench Gang, the book that Shawn, Ben, and Chris had recommended. I haven’t gotten to read it yet, however, because I set it down on the table for five minutes while I snarfed chips (which are a rare occurance in this household, and I wanted to get my share, and I didn’t want to get the grease on the book), and my father picked it up, then started reading and eating chips as well! I was annoyed, but read Storm Breaking instead; I hadn’t been fool enough to get only one book from the library.

The party I was allowed to go to. However, it was somewhat of a disappointment. It would have been a perfect success if only Shawn had been happy the entire time. Shawn was upset about DC not being there. River was surprised to hear that I could only be happy when I knew that Shawn was happy too. River had seen me sad and wanted to know why. One of the reasons was the song "Always", which I love…but it makes me think of things I’m not always comfortable thinking about in public. Shawn. To quote Bujold, "Still. Always." Miles and Elena. Still. Always. He still loves Anna. I think Anna’s very pretty.

I wonder what would have happened if I’d never met Shawn. I don’t want to think about it; Shawn’s right: it’s too alien to think about. He’s part of my life as inextricably as I’m part of his, and it’s always going to be that way.

It’s not time to play hard-to-get. It’s time to be hard-to-get. Either River or being a lesbian for a while. Or Matt. But he’s fifteen. So? So’s Joshian-haired Mike. So? I don’t know. I’m strange. I get to call River again today, because River asked me to! That’s a cool thing.

When Shawn was thinking about his own butt, I was trying very hard not to tell him that he has a very nice butt, and I know, because grabbability is one of the things on the list of criteria, and that it is, and I know this firsthand, from River's last party. I was trying to dance, and his butt was in the way!

I made up a list of New Year’s Resolutions this year. One of those things that one must not neglect in the proper performance of one’s duty…and I needed to do this. Notice how the drum sound…okay, enough Bugs Potter. Notice how Shawn’s name appears and re-appears. Some of the items are joking. Some are most definitely not. All of them are carefully phrased so others may read the list without danger.

Joanie’s New Year’s Resolutions for 1998

• Don’t get Shawn mad at me. Ever!!!!!


• Learn better ways of managing classmates than babysitting them.


• Allow DC to teach Shawn some lessons


• Teach Shawn respect for women (or apply above).


• Get along with Narcissa.


• Lose weight & get in shape.


• Keep my stuff/room organized.


• Save some money.


• Keep in touch with distant friends.


• Don’t be aggravated by local-Josh-the-twit.


• Tame Shawnlet.


• Keep in touch with Joshling(!)


• Learn to talk to Shawn again.


• Get laid.


• Maintain a caring and stable friendship w/Shawn.


• Draw/paint more.


• Allow realizations of true love.


• Write more poetry.


• Refrain from inflicting poetry on others.


• Write more stories.


• Finish the stories I start!


• Do my schoolwork!


• Practice drawing other faces.


• Shush Shanna silently.


• Learn how to play the guitar.


• We have a sketchbook or three for a reason. Let’s start seeing some creativity!


• Do not get any grade below a C.


• Attain and maintain a 4.0 next semester.


• No More Bad Hair Days!


• Be nicer to squirrels.


• Always stand up for Shawn.


• Write to Gretta.


• Write to Alice.


• Write to *sigh* the Lady E.


• Write to Joshling.


• Keep in touch with local friends.


• Write in my journal. Succinctly telling the events of the day, preferably with less mush.

Shawn scoffs at my chances of attaining the first one. I have ways of pissing him off that he may not show, I guess. Just like he gets me incredibly mad without his ever learning of it.

I’m going to be like BJ for a while: the perfect computer who says everything or nothing. I’m not going to save up venom; that would be giving him poison. But I am going to save up arguments until he asks me for my opinion. Then he’s going to get it. He’s going to get raw, uncensored opinion. That itself may be toxic, but he asked for it.