Monday, April 6, 2009

Memories, all alone in the MOONLIGHT

The North Hollywood library smelled like farts this morning. Not sure why that is.

I had two friends from Pittsburgh in town visiting me -- well, actually in town for a meeting and then vacation, but I like to pretend they came only for me, glorious me! -- this weekend. So I forced them to do things I like to do: namely, eat Thai food and go see Vaud & the Villains.

The Thai food was delicious and copious -- we had eaten until we were bursting, eaten until our ears were turning inside out and tea was trickling into the leftover spaces of our stomachs, and then the lovely little Thai waitress came out and said, "Just few more minutes, barbecued chicken, okay?" and we realized we had forgotten AN ENTIRE DISH. We stared at it mournfully and each ate a bite before having it wrapped up and then ordering some mango sticky rice, because everyone has room for mangos.

I love going to see Vaud & the Villains for several reasons, like: they are amazing, they are amazing, and they are amazing. A show like they put on would be $50 and playing to a packed crowd anywhere else in the country, but instead they are in this dripping-with-ambience Parisian style cafe every Saturday and/or Sunday night for something like ten bucks (although every time I come the price is higher, ostensibly because there is some Special Event, but I think someone just told them There's a Jew coming, let's make sure this is physically painful for her!). There are seventeen of them (although the pictures on the website show and I seem to remember there being an eighteenth, a blonde singer). They sing and they play everything; they are like Lynette, if she were seventeen people instead of one, and had classical operatic training. They sang Paul Simon covers and old Negro spirituals; they sang musical theatre songs; they tapdanced. Only one of them.

At the first intermission, Jake and Erin turned to me and I said, "Eh?" with the rising inflection that means, "So? You like?" and both of them just stared, blinking in bewilderment, and said, "Wow." Afterwards, Jake said, "I would have been very sad to miss that. Only I wouldn't have known I was missing it, so I wouldn't have known I should be sad." I couldn't hear him, though, because the sound was making my ears ring. I sang, "Oh, Mary don't you weep no more," in the car all the way back to the house, and fell asleep to dream of angels.

The next day we all went to Venice. And Santa Monica. It was a sweltering hot day, a summer day, and we were repaid by seeing lots of hot dudes with their shirts off, and girls in flip flops and bikinis looking disdainfully at you as though you shouldn't be staring at their barely covered bits instead of putting some clothes on. We went in the freak show and saw the 5-legged dog, and the two-headed turtles; I was mostly amused because it seemed to be a family business, with dad doing the barking, mum showing of fthe dog, daughter showing off the turtles, and disgruntled 12-year-old son playing Tetris in between taking fistfuls of ones from punters.

We watched a Thai man slowly lift his body until it was perpendicular to the ground, hanging off some bars, and we watched an ancient-looking man swing himself gleefully from ring to ring in the playground section. A bunch of circus performers/acroyogis were practicing on a patch of Astroturf. Small children screamed at the water. Everything smelled of burnt sand and cotton candy.

I love making memories.

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