Computing is the new Prohibition

Sorry folks, I spilled beer on my laptop. I'm now sans computer. I will be minimizing my presence on these here Internettings for the forseeable future. Once I am able to fix my doohickey, however, I may just be chock full of half interesting anecdotes to recount.

Until not so soon...

2 Live Roo

Bonnaroo! Such an epic start to my summer of 2009. Manchester, Tennessee in mid June is like Mecca in the year 600 or so.

Highlights of this year's festival include a little known band called Hockey, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were sharp. The guitarist, Nick, either broke his electric guitar or it was out of tune for Maps. He ended up swapping instruments and they played the acoustic version. Then he broke his electric guitar at the show's end. TV on the Radio rocked the house. They started the set perfectly by going right into Love Dog. Phoenix is a band full of rock stars. They know what the fuck they're doing. Listzomania is also a very appropriate way to start a show. The lead singer ended the show crowd surfing (right by me). I missed the Crystal Castles who followed Phoenix (I hear their show was even better). Girl Talk finished up. CRAZY! Jessica Lea Mayfield autographed my t-shirt. The Heartless Bastards played a masterful Sunday afternoon set. Moe. rocked until 6 in the am. MGMT was packed to the gills. Booker T. made a fat white guy in the bleachers say "Damn!" And Vertigo made everyone shake like the Parkinson's ward during the '88 earthquake.

I got more shit to throw up here, but this is it for now.

Gone Phishing

Dearest reader. Your fearless egocentric blogger (that's me) is road tripping into the wilds of the US Interstate system and won't be back for well over a week. I intend to be 'off the grid,' as those of us in the know say, for at least a couple of those days.

Fear not, upon my return, I hope to whelm you with tales of forlorn love and skulduggery. Until such time, feel free to click on all the masterfully contrived links to the right.

Godspeed.

Staying outta trouble

So it turns out bike co-op volunteer is Papa Smurf. She likes to caution folks to "stay outta trouble." Such good stuff, she is. We hung out all day yesterday. We ended the day drinking a beer in the park, Boris Bold no less. And we chatted and laughed and made fun of things. I wish I were 23. I'd have asked her out. Did I just type that?

Yeah, yeah. And I meant it too. She's just so smurfin' cute and cooooool. She wanted like a hand shake or some shit when we left the park, but I gave her a big smurf instead. Seriously, she makes Montreal so much sweeter... and she's an American.

Alright, enough with the dreamy shit. Montreal seems to be in full festival swing. The Jazz Festival starts soon, and they've got a beer festival going right now. So as part of the beer fest, which you can assume I'm all about, I show up to hang out with this other chick. She's crazy, and a wreck. So I get there when the thing ends and we Metro it to her place for an indoor bar-b-que (that's how much of a WRECK she is). The beer fest, in case you're wondering (which, for obvious reasons, you weren't), was not warranting of my visit. They pour about 2 ounces of beer per $1 ticket. That's just highly inconceivable. I'd only ever go to check out drunk Quebecoise chicks. Anyway, the indoor bar-b-que was in a part of town called Snowdon or something. I live in a part of town called Verdun. Google Map it. In fact, Yahoo! Map it! Because, inevitibly, the metro closed on me and I had to walk that distance. With plantar faciistis, no less. Good thing I was sufficiently drunk.

Damn! I just wrote, to one of the most aloof human beings I've ever met (who is a teacher) that one has to be, in the classroom, more Hillary Clinton than Albert Einstein sometimes. In other words, I was suggesting she temper knowledge with diplomacy. Man, can I toot my own horn!

Alright. So I know I'm no good for anyone. I'm marginalized by weak self efficacy, advancing age, and a lack of charm. But I have a crush on a girl and it feels so good.

The Creature Feature

What a fiasco!!!

So I had my first shift as a bike cooperative volunteer. There's bound to be some sort of gaffe, right?

Of course I'm expecting NOTHING to run smoothly. Yeah, ideally, I'd be in this dimly lit room with a bunch of grease monkeys toiling away for a few hours and working those wrenches. I get there on time after sucking down a cup of coffee. I throw on an apron. People throw bikes up on the racks and know most of what they're doing. I point, nod, agree, etc, etc.

Then the problems strike. Women! They show up, they grab tools, and they go to work on their bikes. Problem? Yeah, they're all so cute. Wait. Wait! They're way cuter when they've got grease all over their hands and grit on their cheeks. It's problematic. It's Chernobyl. Free Tibet!

One of the volunteers is so super cute and mentioned something about me being cute (which was obviously her way of being funny), but super nice and it was all exactly what I envisioned of my trip to Montreal (see tags, below).

So, problem? Yes! Yes, yes, yes. So very, very troubling. I'd ask, rhetorically, for someone to shoot me, but Canadians don't wield guns the way Americans do.

Home Slick

Wow! Bonnaroo is fast approaching and the folks I'm traversing the US Interstate system with to get there are completely excited. I'm more excited about my couple hours return to Brooklyn, but the adult obligations of my Bonnaroo pals are severely limiting my time at home. Alas, my car IS the red eye.

I get a hunch mother dearest is a bit bored or lonely from our phone conversations. She lingers on the horn and grasps at new topics to chit and chat about. I miss my cats. I often find myself playing with the cats at the homes I visit here in Montreal.

But one thing that remains constant between the two, both Brooklyn and Montreal: the miscreants. My first week here, waiting for the night bus that never came, I stood in a bus shelter in the pouring rain next to a homeless man smoking crack out of a pipe. I don't have that keen a sense of smell and couldn't tell you what it smelled like, but had I not seen the rock sizzling in his apparatus with my own eyes, I would have enjoyed my first ever contact crack high.

The peddle crank of my free bike broke yesterday, and today I start working at a bike cooperative. I know zilch about bottom brackets and how a crank set can make a bike better. I went to a meeting of the co-op yesterday and they were bandying bike mumbo jumbo about and cracking bike nerd jokes and all I could think to myself at the time was; "this IS why I came here."

Sunday was free museums day, apparently. I took it upon myself to visit a couple of the city's most obscure. The Darling Foundry and the DHC/ART Museum of Contemporary Art. Seriously, the day was packed with deleriously cute Francophone girls. Now if I could only find it within myself to be more... "forward" with these specimens...