caught between a rock and a role that i was never really meant to play

Remember that thing last month about pressing one's CD into the hands of a musical idol? Tonight's victim was Adam from Nadine, another band I've been waiting years to see.

Some of you know this: The first time I got up on stage and sang and played the mandolin, it was a song from Downtown, Saturday. And it wasn't because I had wanted to go sing in public and I just needed a song to do it with--the song itself was the motivation to perform. I think it's fair to say there wouldn't be a CD if it weren't for Nadine. So it was nice to be able to express a little gratitude in person.

And also, they were great! I knew they had really good songs and were able to come up with great arrangements in the studio, but I didn't know how tight the band would be, or how fun. So yeah, highly recommended if you find yourself around St. Louis sometime... or in LA on Wednesday, europopkid. It's free! Go!

chicago, 10/2

Chicago provided the worst traffic moment of the trip, when I found myself trapped between three semi trucks in a right triangle, with only the one behind me still moving.

I have to say, though: When I was planning the trip, it seemed like everyone I mentioned it to had done a cross-country trip of their own, and they all shuddered in horror at the memory of the demon trucks. But in my experience, except for Chicago and one Fauber truck that plagued me for a full day of driving somewhere in the South, all the truckers were professional and courteous on the road. They put up with much worse behavior from stupid drivers in small cars.

I was in Chicago to see Kari and Emily, two friends from high school--although, as Emily pointed out, really, we were friends practically from birth. I've known them since before I can remember knowing them, but I haven't seen either of them for at least seven years, and it's been a lot longer than that since we were part of each other's everyday lives.

So dinner ended up being the most emotionally complex experience of the entire trip, which manifested itself as incoherent rambling by me late at night. I won't say much about that here, except that I was happy to see how, well, how okay everyone's life had become--we all have problems, but everyone seems more comfortable in their skin--and kind of sad not to have been part of those lives. Since that night I've been thinking a lot about the passage of time.

The next day, breezing through fall foliage in Wisconsin, looking up at a blue sky made slightly creamy with clouds, I was overwhelmed by the thought: What could we possibly have done to deserve a world this beautiful?

(no subject)

Well, I voted. I voted touchscreen. Strangers on the street know this about me now. Every year I vote, and every year I get a sticker that says I VOTED, and every year I wear it, because hey, I'm proud to be in a country that mostly functions as a democracy. This year the stickers say I VOTED TOUCHSCREEN, and I'm not really proud of the touchscreen part, because I think the rush to new technology is ill-considered, and anyway, who cares what mechanism I used to vote? I don't remember I VOTED PUNCHCARD stickers. I hope Diebold paid for the stickers. But I wore it anyway. I guess I can take it off now.

(Update: Diebold didn't make the machines in Santa Clara County. I don't know who did.)

block of thai

There's a block in downtown Mountain View that's almost all restaurants, and almost all Asian restaurants, and when I moved here had both Amarin Thai Cuisine and Thai-rific, like two doors away from each other, which seemed excessive to me, especially since Amarin had good food and a full vegetarian menu, and Thai-rific had slow service and flies the one time I went in, but hey, if they're both doing okay, who am I to argue? And down on the corner there was a bar and grill that flopped.

Then later Amarin expanded into the storefront next door--same restaurant, same menu, two adjacent but not connected spaces. And down on the corner there was an Italian restaurant that flopped. And then last time I went downtown before the big trip, the Chinese restaurant down the block had closed and Amarin had moved one of its instances into the much bigger space that the Chinese restaurant had vacated, and the old Amarin had been converted to a vegetarian-only Amarin that almost nobody was eating at when I looked inside. Thai-rific was still there, Amarin was three times the size it used to be, and down on the corner there was a steakhouse that flopped.

Anyway, this weekend when I went downtown I was pleased to see that the ill-fated space down on the corner had been transformed into what, really, that block has always been crying out for: Another Thai restaurant. Best of luck to them.