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annathepiperEdited 8/22/01 8:58pm, 8/23/01 6:55pm, and added to Livejournal as a backdated entry 5/15/03
Russell Crowe has got the most incredible blue eyes I have ever seen in my life.
One would think that it would be difficult to tell this in a crowded bar with crowded bar lighting, and one would be right. As it happened, I got a very good look at the eyes in question in broad daylight -- but more on this below.
Much more. This is going to be a long story, so as Russell has been heard to say in front of a certain song, "Calm down and have a listen!"
This here is the legend of Anna the Piper's Excellent Portland Adventure.
Prelude, or, "30 Odd Foot of What?"
First, a bit of background. I have been a raving fan of Mr. Crowe's band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, since I discovered them in the summer of 2000, not long after seeing him in Gladiator. As it happened, I came into Grunts fandom too late to even think about catching them at their shows in Austin, but I spent the rest of 2000 and the first two months of 2001 anxiously awaiting the release of the album Bastard Life or Clarity. Once the rumors began to circulate about the tour the Grunts would take this summer, I seriously began to consider actually trying to catch them in Austin -- because by then I had pretty much gotten into the groove of Austin as almost the Mecca of Grunts fandom. Plus, the whole idea of taking a roadtrip rather captivated me, because of this enormous country we live in; the thought of seeing more of it, while having the goal of TOFOG to ogle in the middle, was extremely alluring.
It got more appealing when I sent email to my friend Kathryn (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kathrynt), asking her, "So, semi-hypothetically speaking, what would you say if I told you Russell Crowe's band will be playing in Austin, Texas this summer and I am thinking about going?"
Kathryn, bless her heart, was all over the idea even without hearing any of TOFOG's music. Now, mind you, I had been sharing with her and all of my friends my general opinion of the Grunts, which comes in two parts:
However, the gods pretty much dictated that Austin wasn't going to happen. Kathryn lost her job, and my department's work schedule settled in such that we are trying to get a piece of software out the door pretty much as I write this. Given that I am also taking four days off to go to Worldcon in Philadelphia, I wasn't about to try to take another week just to drive down to Texas just to ogle a band, even if it is fronted by my #1 idol. ;)
On the other hand, happily, the gods also dictated that the Grunts would in fact come to Portland. Which meant that not only would I need only two days for the show, I would also be able to haul along four of my closest friends with me. Only one of them, mind you, is an actual official TOFOG fan -- the rest were either simply fans of Russell's acting, or else were going strictly for the amusement value of seeing me swoon.
They were bribed as well, it must be noted, by the allure of Powell's City of Books, a positively enormous bookstore in which (or so it was relayed to me) it was very easy to lose oneself for hours and hours, due to the sheer number of books on their shelves. I had never before experienced the wonders of Powell's though I had heard tell of them before, so even I was attracted by the prospect of a visit there.
My friends got themselves a sneak preview of my swoonage, for the closer the appointed day came, the more hyper I got. I finally got around to joining the message board on Gruntland.com, with a question about the chords in "Judas Cart". The warm welcome I received from the other posters there helped convince me that these, indeed, would be people with whom I'd be happy to attend a concert -- and their encouragement (along with a direct dare from my local friend Cyn) to actually email the band and ask them what I wanted to know resulted in email from TOFOG's lead guitarist, Billy Dean Cochran. As if I weren't already hyper enough about the band as it was, that kind email threw another log onto the fire, as it were. And I resolved to give Billy some extra cheers in Portland.
I must also recount how my friend and tenant Cyn (ssha) -- the other actual TOFOG fan in my immediate social circle -- made a contribution of her own to the growing anticipation. She made herself a SONG, which went like this:
"We're gonna go see Russell Crowe! We're gonna go see Russell Crowe! La la la! Russell Crowe! La la la!"
The first scary thing about this was that this little ditty of hers (imagine if you will, gentle readers, that she was singing it like a four-year-old) had VERSES.
The second scary thing about it was that she also translated it into French after I found her a website that does translations, which wound up spitting back "Nous allons aller voyons Russell Crowe!" This translates back into English as "We will go see Russell Crowe!" Not a bad job for a translation engine, if I do say so myself.
But I digress.
As the time of the concert began to close in, two of my online friends on AetherMUSH also jumped in on the idea of coming to the show, after listening to the four freebie MP3's I had of Grunts material posted to the previous edition of their web page. Of course, they also gave me nine kinds of hell about the expected swoonage; my friends know me well, what can I say?
And I got a sneak preview of my own, with the webcast of the Onya Awards ceremony down in Australia. I watched it all the way through, not only to see the parts where MaximumCrowe.com got the award for most popular fan site and Gruntland.com got the award for most popular band site, but also to see the Grunts themselves. They were a surprise final act at the end of the show -- and much to my delight they did "All the White Circles", a song I'd been dying to hear all the way through ever since I'd played the partial sample on their web site. Since the only version of this song I know about is on the much-coveted, hard to find CD What's Her Name, I'd had no opportunity before to hear the entire song. They also did "What You Want Me to Forget", but "All the White Circles" was the real treat for me.
On the 16th I got another sneak preview -- the TOFOG appearance on Jay Leno, which was very exciting. I spent half of that performance admiring Russell's arms, and the other half admiring his instrument.
(No no no, his guitar!)
I covet Russell's gorgeous black guitar, and never mind the swoon factor involved in the knowledge that he has actually played the thing, though that swoon factor is considerable. Me, I just think it's a really lovely guitar, and since the guitar is on the list of instruments I wish to play when I move to Too Much Money Land, I figure that particular guitar would do me quite nicely.
But aaaaaanyway, I read after the fact in posts by veteran fans to Gruntland that their Leno performance really didn't do them justice, partly because of nerves and tiredness on the part of the band, partly because of bad sound mixing. Having now seen them perform live, I can safely say that the Leno show was only a fractional taste of what was to come.
Portland drew ever nearer. I started hanging out in the MSN chat room frequented by several of the Gruntland regulars, never staying for long as I am generally always fluttering about from this task to that -- and besides, it's tough to keep up with a chat room when you have a mandolin in your lap and you're trying to teach yourself "Judas Cart" on it. But I popped in long enough to get some snippets about the initial shows of the tour from fans who went to Austin and Chicago, enough to elevate my own level of excitement all the more.
Especially when I heard that TOFOG was performing a cover of a song by my other favorite band -- Great Big Sea!
I about keeled over at this news. The song in question, "How Did We Get From Saying I Love You", is not actually one of my favorite GBS ditties. But the simple fact that one of my favorite bands was doing a cover by another of my favorite bands, along with the corollary that Russell himself must obviously have listened with his very own ears to an album I do in fact own, was enough to make my already high levels of excitement skyrocket. One of the Gruntlanders, Charli, enthused on the message board a great deal about GBS, calling me a "talent-spotter" and sounding half-convinced of the possibility that TOFOG might in fact have heard about them from my posts to the board that had mentioned them. I later heard from other Gruntlanders a rumor that Russell had heard about GBS while filming Mystery, Alaska, but well hey, it was a superkeen fantasy while it lasted!
I started exchanging Gruntland posts with others intending to attend the Portland show, and made the pretty much obligatory Gladiator jokes about "holding the line" and such. And I exchanged email with Gruntlanders headed to the Portland show -- or, rather, shows, for not long after our tickets had been bought, the second Portland show was announced. I hit it off particularly nicely with Gruntlanders Blondie and AlaskaGrrrl; Blondie publicly begged me to bring my flutes with me and play them in the ticket line, and I agreed, though I swore up and down that the mandolin wasn't getting anywhere near the Roseland. Still, it was awfully flattering for her to ask that, and flattering as well to be asked by Jake to bring my mandolin to Austin next year. These people have got considerable faith, given they haven't actually heard me play yet!
My closest online friend from the Another Russell Crowe Club on Yahoo!, who goes by the handle of Boudicca the Red (boudiccathered), regaled me with her account of the Austin show on the 18th. With her glowing review of everything she'd heard, seen, and experienced, I was primed and ready to have the time of my life in Portland.
Portland, Ho!, or, "Attack of the Lameness Fairy"
Kathryn came over the night of the 20th to spend the night at the Murkworks so that she would not have to drive all the way here early in the morning -- and so four out of the five of us were all here and getting up and ready on the morning of the Big Day. Kathryn and Cyn and I all got up and organized with relatively little difficulty; Mimi (mamishka), however, had a mishap with her alarm clock not going off, which we only discovered when our expected departure time of 9am rolled around and Mimi was not in fact upstairs. I called down to her room and woke her up, but since Jessica (jessicac) had not yet arrived it was all well and good anyway, so she had a bit of leeway time while we awaited our fifth traveler.
Jessica arrived, however, with the somewhat disturbing news that she had misplaced her ticket and that we would need to stop back by her house to give her an opportunity to fetch it. After some deliberation, we all agreed on the plan that Cyn and I would drive down in my car while the others took Mimi's van, and that we would meet up at the lobby of the Travelodge at which we'd booked a room if we got separated.
Thus, Cyn and I put our belongings into the car, and off we went.
We played a selection of suitably boisterous music on the way down, starting with La Bottine Souriante, moving on through the Canadian/Celtic collection Fire in the Kitchen, then on to Great Big Sea (naturally, not only because Cyn and I are both raving Great Big Sea fans but also in honor of the TOFOG/GBS musical connection). Last but not least came the Grunts themselves, singing us into Portland with Bastard Life or Clarity, with the closing chords of "Swept Away Bayou" seeing us into the parking lot of the Travelodge at around 1pm.
Once inside the Travelodge, though, we discovered as I tried to check in that Mimi had called ahead and left us a message. The problem was that the person who took the message apparently did not speak English as his or her native language, because the message that was waiting was "disaster structed ETA 2:30" and a number to call -- Kathryn's cell phone. So after Cyn and I got checked in, acquired keys, and dumped our non-crucial belongings in the room, we went to go find a pay phone and call the others to find out what was up.
What was up, in short, was that Jessica apparently had not been able to actually find her ticket at all, and had had to call ahead to the ticket office to see what she could do about that. Since she had purchased her ticket via credit card her name was on file, so she was able to ask for a duplicate and it turned out all right. But still, that turned out to be a bit scary!
I told Kathryn that we'd left their names and our extra key at the Travelodge's front desk. Then we all agreed to meet at the Coffee People on Salmon and Park at approximately 3pm, Cyn gave directions to them on how to get there, and then Cyn and I were off again.
We had to get on the MAX, a light rail train, to get from the location of our hotel over to where we wanted to go for lunch. That was vaguely interesting to me, since I'd never gotten on a light rail train before, and it said impressive things to me about Portland's public transportation system even if the first machine we tried to use to buy tickets refused to cough up the goods. The second one, however, was more amenable; furthermore, it spit back several Sacajawea and Susan B. Anthony dollars in change, and I like to collect those, so there you go.
On the MAX, I spent a bit of time checking out the scenery we rolled past to try to get a visual feel of Portland's general atmosphere -- and some time checking out the people on the streets as well. I saw a great number of teenagers, which matched Cyn's general description of the city as being one gigantic University District (the neighborhood I live in, here in Seattle). One guy I spotted, though, was wearing a blue shirt entirely unbuttoned, revealing a body that really didn't want to be shirtless; he got on the MAX, but fortunately not too near us. A couple teenagers got on close to where we wanted to get off, and I overheard them arguing with one another about whether they could smoke on board. Fortunately we weren't around long enough for it to be a problem.
Once we did get off, though, we had to walk a considerable distance to get to the place that Cyn wanted to take me to buy me lunch, a Thai/Vietnamese place called Misohapi. For part of the route, it turned out that the unnecessarily half-shirtless guy was not only following us, he was hammered, too. He kept begging Cyn to carry him, claiming he couldn't walk, and when that didn't get him any attention he asked her to at least smile. Cyn claims she's been hit on a lot by homeless people; me, I was mostly just happy he didn't do anything more than walk behind us being loud.
On the way, I continued checking out the overall look of the city. It doesn't look like Seattle, and for a little while I had a hard time trying to figure out why. Still, something about Portland seemed familiar to me somehow, and Cyn and I mused about it. Portland is an old city, Cyn says, and unlike Seattle it doesn't have any skyscrapers. It wasn't exactly hilly, though it wasn't exactly flat either. I saw a number of pastel-hued buildings, and at last it was Cyn who suggested that there was something vaguely San-Francisco-esque about the place. Although San Franscisco is significantly hillier, I could sort of see that, at least in terms of building styles.
Misohapi turned out to be everything Cyn had promised. The food was cheap, but also very good, with a rich hot and sour soup as a starter and lunch servings that were pretty much exactly the amount of food I wanted to them. Plus, the onions in my scallops-and-prawns dish were Walla Walla sweet onions, and those are stunningly good. While we were there I happened to look out the window and notice a strange-looking sign across the street on the corner, which had a symbol on it that looked like a person getting knocked off a bike. We didn't get a chance to find out what exactly that sign meant, but it didn't look exactly encouraging!
Cyn also, in the middle of the food, looked at me and said pretty much deadpan, "You know what?"
Me: "What?"
Cyn: "We're gonna see Russell Crowe!"
As I giggled, Cyn pointed out that I was not looking properly excited about this state of affairs, so she felt she had to remind me. Hee hee.
I note as well that the fortune cookie I got with my meal struck me as rather promising. It said, and I quote: "Be prepared to receive something special." I remarked to Cyn upon this on the way out, and then we had a bit of debate between us as to whether to take the bus back to where we needed to pick up the MAX again, or whether to hoof it. As we were both fairly full of food and planning to go to a place that had dessert-like sorts of things, I wanted to burn off some of my lunch; hence, hoofing it won. This wound up meaning, however, that we didn't get to the Coffee People till around 3:20 or so. But Kathryn, Mimi, and Jessica weren't there yet anyway, so we settled in to wait for them while sipping our drinks (a Velvet Hammer for Cyn, which was this espresso shake sort of deal, and a strawberry sorbet smoothie for me). I noticed that they had a whiteboard on the wall with a running set of commentary from various patrons about President Bushlet, so I picked up the pen and scribbled on there, further down the board, "ELVIS NEEDS BOATS."
Because like Mojo Nixon says, there's a little bit of Elvis in all of us. Plus, it seemed like the thing to do at the time.
I overheard this girl asking one of the staffers behind the counter for directions to Powell's, and thought at the time that it was a bit of an odd coincidence that that person was looking for the place since we were planning to go there the next day. But I didn't think anything more of it. Right about then, my AetherMUSH friend James (flashfire) arrived on the scene, bearing with him Tim Tams, yummy chocolate biscuit things from Australia, which he promptly shared around.
Pretty much hot on his heels came Mimi and Kathryn and Jessica, recounting how they had apparently all been hit by the Lameness Fairy -- who was not only responsible for the loss of Jessica's ticket but also for the leaving of crucial items in the room at the Travelodge not once but TWICE, which necessitated returning to go and get them.
Mimi caught my scribble of "ELVIS NEEDS BOATS" on the board, and was amused when I told her it was me who'd written it there.
Introductions were performed, and while the newcomers were all getting the various things they wanted to drink, the staffer behind the counter asked us if we were supposed to be meeting someone. It turned out that the person who'd asked her about Powell's was in fact our other missing party member, my other AetherMUSH friend, Dana (shaylith). DOH!
We all deliberated some about what to do, whether to go to Powell's in search of her or just expect to meet her at the Roseland at our appointed line-scoping time of 5:00pm. The latter plan won out, and so after we all got done with our various drinkables, we headed on over to see what amusing ways to pass our time could be found in the Roseland's vicinity.
Kathryn pointed out that we were not in fact very far away at all from a delightfully eccentric little establishment called the 24-Hour Church of Elvis, where (it is said, or at least by Kathryn) one can get mock-married by a woman who whips through a ceremony in about five minutes, culminating with the pronunciation, "I now pronounce you spouse and spouse, you may kiss the spouse!" This woman apparently will then take you out, march you around the block, and play music to accompany you on her jam box. A selection of music, it must be noted, which will be pretty much entirely random based on her whim of the moment. Kathryn possesses a T-shirt from this place, and Mimi announced a hope to acquire one on the grounds that she felt it'd be a much cooler thing to be wearing than the shirt she had on at the time, and plus, we were all rather entertained by the name of the place in general.
Kathryn says, in her own words:
With a sterling recommendation like Kathryn's behind it, we were all sold. So off we all headed in that direction -- and into a brief encounter that proved that my fortune cookie at Misohapi was not entirely off base.
Russell Crowe has got the most incredible blue eyes I have ever seen in my life.
One would think that it would be difficult to tell this in a crowded bar with crowded bar lighting, and one would be right. As it happened, I got a very good look at the eyes in question in broad daylight -- but more on this below.
Much more. This is going to be a long story, so as Russell has been heard to say in front of a certain song, "Calm down and have a listen!"
This here is the legend of Anna the Piper's Excellent Portland Adventure.
Prelude, or, "30 Odd Foot of What?"
First, a bit of background. I have been a raving fan of Mr. Crowe's band, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, since I discovered them in the summer of 2000, not long after seeing him in Gladiator. As it happened, I came into Grunts fandom too late to even think about catching them at their shows in Austin, but I spent the rest of 2000 and the first two months of 2001 anxiously awaiting the release of the album Bastard Life or Clarity. Once the rumors began to circulate about the tour the Grunts would take this summer, I seriously began to consider actually trying to catch them in Austin -- because by then I had pretty much gotten into the groove of Austin as almost the Mecca of Grunts fandom. Plus, the whole idea of taking a roadtrip rather captivated me, because of this enormous country we live in; the thought of seeing more of it, while having the goal of TOFOG to ogle in the middle, was extremely alluring.
It got more appealing when I sent email to my friend Kathryn (
kathrynt), asking her, "So, semi-hypothetically speaking, what would you say if I told you Russell Crowe's band will be playing in Austin, Texas this summer and I am thinking about going?" Kathryn, bless her heart, was all over the idea even without hearing any of TOFOG's music. Now, mind you, I had been sharing with her and all of my friends my general opinion of the Grunts, which comes in two parts:
- The Anna is an Actual Musician Opinion: "No, Russell isn't the best singer on the planet, but he does have a really nice voice when he uses it right, and furthermore, I really love his lead guitarist and trumpet player!"
- The Anna is a Raving Russell Crowe Fan Opinion: "AIE!" *SWOON* *thud*
However, the gods pretty much dictated that Austin wasn't going to happen. Kathryn lost her job, and my department's work schedule settled in such that we are trying to get a piece of software out the door pretty much as I write this. Given that I am also taking four days off to go to Worldcon in Philadelphia, I wasn't about to try to take another week just to drive down to Texas just to ogle a band, even if it is fronted by my #1 idol. ;)
On the other hand, happily, the gods also dictated that the Grunts would in fact come to Portland. Which meant that not only would I need only two days for the show, I would also be able to haul along four of my closest friends with me. Only one of them, mind you, is an actual official TOFOG fan -- the rest were either simply fans of Russell's acting, or else were going strictly for the amusement value of seeing me swoon.
They were bribed as well, it must be noted, by the allure of Powell's City of Books, a positively enormous bookstore in which (or so it was relayed to me) it was very easy to lose oneself for hours and hours, due to the sheer number of books on their shelves. I had never before experienced the wonders of Powell's though I had heard tell of them before, so even I was attracted by the prospect of a visit there.
My friends got themselves a sneak preview of my swoonage, for the closer the appointed day came, the more hyper I got. I finally got around to joining the message board on Gruntland.com, with a question about the chords in "Judas Cart". The warm welcome I received from the other posters there helped convince me that these, indeed, would be people with whom I'd be happy to attend a concert -- and their encouragement (along with a direct dare from my local friend Cyn) to actually email the band and ask them what I wanted to know resulted in email from TOFOG's lead guitarist, Billy Dean Cochran. As if I weren't already hyper enough about the band as it was, that kind email threw another log onto the fire, as it were. And I resolved to give Billy some extra cheers in Portland.
I must also recount how my friend and tenant Cyn (
ssha) -- the other actual TOFOG fan in my immediate social circle -- made a contribution of her own to the growing anticipation. She made herself a SONG, which went like this: "We're gonna go see Russell Crowe! We're gonna go see Russell Crowe! La la la! Russell Crowe! La la la!"
The first scary thing about this was that this little ditty of hers (imagine if you will, gentle readers, that she was singing it like a four-year-old) had VERSES.
The second scary thing about it was that she also translated it into French after I found her a website that does translations, which wound up spitting back "Nous allons aller voyons Russell Crowe!" This translates back into English as "We will go see Russell Crowe!" Not a bad job for a translation engine, if I do say so myself.
But I digress.
As the time of the concert began to close in, two of my online friends on AetherMUSH also jumped in on the idea of coming to the show, after listening to the four freebie MP3's I had of Grunts material posted to the previous edition of their web page. Of course, they also gave me nine kinds of hell about the expected swoonage; my friends know me well, what can I say?
And I got a sneak preview of my own, with the webcast of the Onya Awards ceremony down in Australia. I watched it all the way through, not only to see the parts where MaximumCrowe.com got the award for most popular fan site and Gruntland.com got the award for most popular band site, but also to see the Grunts themselves. They were a surprise final act at the end of the show -- and much to my delight they did "All the White Circles", a song I'd been dying to hear all the way through ever since I'd played the partial sample on their web site. Since the only version of this song I know about is on the much-coveted, hard to find CD What's Her Name, I'd had no opportunity before to hear the entire song. They also did "What You Want Me to Forget", but "All the White Circles" was the real treat for me.
On the 16th I got another sneak preview -- the TOFOG appearance on Jay Leno, which was very exciting. I spent half of that performance admiring Russell's arms, and the other half admiring his instrument.
(No no no, his guitar!)
I covet Russell's gorgeous black guitar, and never mind the swoon factor involved in the knowledge that he has actually played the thing, though that swoon factor is considerable. Me, I just think it's a really lovely guitar, and since the guitar is on the list of instruments I wish to play when I move to Too Much Money Land, I figure that particular guitar would do me quite nicely.
But aaaaaanyway, I read after the fact in posts by veteran fans to Gruntland that their Leno performance really didn't do them justice, partly because of nerves and tiredness on the part of the band, partly because of bad sound mixing. Having now seen them perform live, I can safely say that the Leno show was only a fractional taste of what was to come.
Portland drew ever nearer. I started hanging out in the MSN chat room frequented by several of the Gruntland regulars, never staying for long as I am generally always fluttering about from this task to that -- and besides, it's tough to keep up with a chat room when you have a mandolin in your lap and you're trying to teach yourself "Judas Cart" on it. But I popped in long enough to get some snippets about the initial shows of the tour from fans who went to Austin and Chicago, enough to elevate my own level of excitement all the more.
Especially when I heard that TOFOG was performing a cover of a song by my other favorite band -- Great Big Sea!
I about keeled over at this news. The song in question, "How Did We Get From Saying I Love You", is not actually one of my favorite GBS ditties. But the simple fact that one of my favorite bands was doing a cover by another of my favorite bands, along with the corollary that Russell himself must obviously have listened with his very own ears to an album I do in fact own, was enough to make my already high levels of excitement skyrocket. One of the Gruntlanders, Charli, enthused on the message board a great deal about GBS, calling me a "talent-spotter" and sounding half-convinced of the possibility that TOFOG might in fact have heard about them from my posts to the board that had mentioned them. I later heard from other Gruntlanders a rumor that Russell had heard about GBS while filming Mystery, Alaska, but well hey, it was a superkeen fantasy while it lasted!
I started exchanging Gruntland posts with others intending to attend the Portland show, and made the pretty much obligatory Gladiator jokes about "holding the line" and such. And I exchanged email with Gruntlanders headed to the Portland show -- or, rather, shows, for not long after our tickets had been bought, the second Portland show was announced. I hit it off particularly nicely with Gruntlanders Blondie and AlaskaGrrrl; Blondie publicly begged me to bring my flutes with me and play them in the ticket line, and I agreed, though I swore up and down that the mandolin wasn't getting anywhere near the Roseland. Still, it was awfully flattering for her to ask that, and flattering as well to be asked by Jake to bring my mandolin to Austin next year. These people have got considerable faith, given they haven't actually heard me play yet!
My closest online friend from the Another Russell Crowe Club on Yahoo!, who goes by the handle of Boudicca the Red (
boudiccathered), regaled me with her account of the Austin show on the 18th. With her glowing review of everything she'd heard, seen, and experienced, I was primed and ready to have the time of my life in Portland.Portland, Ho!, or, "Attack of the Lameness Fairy"
Kathryn came over the night of the 20th to spend the night at the Murkworks so that she would not have to drive all the way here early in the morning -- and so four out of the five of us were all here and getting up and ready on the morning of the Big Day. Kathryn and Cyn and I all got up and organized with relatively little difficulty; Mimi (
mamishka), however, had a mishap with her alarm clock not going off, which we only discovered when our expected departure time of 9am rolled around and Mimi was not in fact upstairs. I called down to her room and woke her up, but since Jessica (jessicac) had not yet arrived it was all well and good anyway, so she had a bit of leeway time while we awaited our fifth traveler. Jessica arrived, however, with the somewhat disturbing news that she had misplaced her ticket and that we would need to stop back by her house to give her an opportunity to fetch it. After some deliberation, we all agreed on the plan that Cyn and I would drive down in my car while the others took Mimi's van, and that we would meet up at the lobby of the Travelodge at which we'd booked a room if we got separated.
Thus, Cyn and I put our belongings into the car, and off we went.
We played a selection of suitably boisterous music on the way down, starting with La Bottine Souriante, moving on through the Canadian/Celtic collection Fire in the Kitchen, then on to Great Big Sea (naturally, not only because Cyn and I are both raving Great Big Sea fans but also in honor of the TOFOG/GBS musical connection). Last but not least came the Grunts themselves, singing us into Portland with Bastard Life or Clarity, with the closing chords of "Swept Away Bayou" seeing us into the parking lot of the Travelodge at around 1pm.
Once inside the Travelodge, though, we discovered as I tried to check in that Mimi had called ahead and left us a message. The problem was that the person who took the message apparently did not speak English as his or her native language, because the message that was waiting was "disaster structed ETA 2:30" and a number to call -- Kathryn's cell phone. So after Cyn and I got checked in, acquired keys, and dumped our non-crucial belongings in the room, we went to go find a pay phone and call the others to find out what was up.
What was up, in short, was that Jessica apparently had not been able to actually find her ticket at all, and had had to call ahead to the ticket office to see what she could do about that. Since she had purchased her ticket via credit card her name was on file, so she was able to ask for a duplicate and it turned out all right. But still, that turned out to be a bit scary!
I told Kathryn that we'd left their names and our extra key at the Travelodge's front desk. Then we all agreed to meet at the Coffee People on Salmon and Park at approximately 3pm, Cyn gave directions to them on how to get there, and then Cyn and I were off again.
We had to get on the MAX, a light rail train, to get from the location of our hotel over to where we wanted to go for lunch. That was vaguely interesting to me, since I'd never gotten on a light rail train before, and it said impressive things to me about Portland's public transportation system even if the first machine we tried to use to buy tickets refused to cough up the goods. The second one, however, was more amenable; furthermore, it spit back several Sacajawea and Susan B. Anthony dollars in change, and I like to collect those, so there you go.
On the MAX, I spent a bit of time checking out the scenery we rolled past to try to get a visual feel of Portland's general atmosphere -- and some time checking out the people on the streets as well. I saw a great number of teenagers, which matched Cyn's general description of the city as being one gigantic University District (the neighborhood I live in, here in Seattle). One guy I spotted, though, was wearing a blue shirt entirely unbuttoned, revealing a body that really didn't want to be shirtless; he got on the MAX, but fortunately not too near us. A couple teenagers got on close to where we wanted to get off, and I overheard them arguing with one another about whether they could smoke on board. Fortunately we weren't around long enough for it to be a problem.
Once we did get off, though, we had to walk a considerable distance to get to the place that Cyn wanted to take me to buy me lunch, a Thai/Vietnamese place called Misohapi. For part of the route, it turned out that the unnecessarily half-shirtless guy was not only following us, he was hammered, too. He kept begging Cyn to carry him, claiming he couldn't walk, and when that didn't get him any attention he asked her to at least smile. Cyn claims she's been hit on a lot by homeless people; me, I was mostly just happy he didn't do anything more than walk behind us being loud.
On the way, I continued checking out the overall look of the city. It doesn't look like Seattle, and for a little while I had a hard time trying to figure out why. Still, something about Portland seemed familiar to me somehow, and Cyn and I mused about it. Portland is an old city, Cyn says, and unlike Seattle it doesn't have any skyscrapers. It wasn't exactly hilly, though it wasn't exactly flat either. I saw a number of pastel-hued buildings, and at last it was Cyn who suggested that there was something vaguely San-Francisco-esque about the place. Although San Franscisco is significantly hillier, I could sort of see that, at least in terms of building styles.
Misohapi turned out to be everything Cyn had promised. The food was cheap, but also very good, with a rich hot and sour soup as a starter and lunch servings that were pretty much exactly the amount of food I wanted to them. Plus, the onions in my scallops-and-prawns dish were Walla Walla sweet onions, and those are stunningly good. While we were there I happened to look out the window and notice a strange-looking sign across the street on the corner, which had a symbol on it that looked like a person getting knocked off a bike. We didn't get a chance to find out what exactly that sign meant, but it didn't look exactly encouraging!
Cyn also, in the middle of the food, looked at me and said pretty much deadpan, "You know what?"
Me: "What?"
Cyn: "We're gonna see Russell Crowe!"
As I giggled, Cyn pointed out that I was not looking properly excited about this state of affairs, so she felt she had to remind me. Hee hee.
I note as well that the fortune cookie I got with my meal struck me as rather promising. It said, and I quote: "Be prepared to receive something special." I remarked to Cyn upon this on the way out, and then we had a bit of debate between us as to whether to take the bus back to where we needed to pick up the MAX again, or whether to hoof it. As we were both fairly full of food and planning to go to a place that had dessert-like sorts of things, I wanted to burn off some of my lunch; hence, hoofing it won. This wound up meaning, however, that we didn't get to the Coffee People till around 3:20 or so. But Kathryn, Mimi, and Jessica weren't there yet anyway, so we settled in to wait for them while sipping our drinks (a Velvet Hammer for Cyn, which was this espresso shake sort of deal, and a strawberry sorbet smoothie for me). I noticed that they had a whiteboard on the wall with a running set of commentary from various patrons about President Bushlet, so I picked up the pen and scribbled on there, further down the board, "ELVIS NEEDS BOATS."
Because like Mojo Nixon says, there's a little bit of Elvis in all of us. Plus, it seemed like the thing to do at the time.
I overheard this girl asking one of the staffers behind the counter for directions to Powell's, and thought at the time that it was a bit of an odd coincidence that that person was looking for the place since we were planning to go there the next day. But I didn't think anything more of it. Right about then, my AetherMUSH friend James (
flashfire) arrived on the scene, bearing with him Tim Tams, yummy chocolate biscuit things from Australia, which he promptly shared around.Pretty much hot on his heels came Mimi and Kathryn and Jessica, recounting how they had apparently all been hit by the Lameness Fairy -- who was not only responsible for the loss of Jessica's ticket but also for the leaving of crucial items in the room at the Travelodge not once but TWICE, which necessitated returning to go and get them.
Mimi caught my scribble of "ELVIS NEEDS BOATS" on the board, and was amused when I told her it was me who'd written it there.
Introductions were performed, and while the newcomers were all getting the various things they wanted to drink, the staffer behind the counter asked us if we were supposed to be meeting someone. It turned out that the person who'd asked her about Powell's was in fact our other missing party member, my other AetherMUSH friend, Dana (
shaylith). DOH! We all deliberated some about what to do, whether to go to Powell's in search of her or just expect to meet her at the Roseland at our appointed line-scoping time of 5:00pm. The latter plan won out, and so after we all got done with our various drinkables, we headed on over to see what amusing ways to pass our time could be found in the Roseland's vicinity.
Kathryn pointed out that we were not in fact very far away at all from a delightfully eccentric little establishment called the 24-Hour Church of Elvis, where (it is said, or at least by Kathryn) one can get mock-married by a woman who whips through a ceremony in about five minutes, culminating with the pronunciation, "I now pronounce you spouse and spouse, you may kiss the spouse!" This woman apparently will then take you out, march you around the block, and play music to accompany you on her jam box. A selection of music, it must be noted, which will be pretty much entirely random based on her whim of the moment. Kathryn possesses a T-shirt from this place, and Mimi announced a hope to acquire one on the grounds that she felt it'd be a much cooler thing to be wearing than the shirt she had on at the time, and plus, we were all rather entertained by the name of the place in general.
Kathryn says, in her own words:
"The place is a Palace of Kitsch. It's amazing. After the marriage, she marches you around the building while you carry a sign with an electrical cord taped to it with tin cans taped to THAT (the tin cans drag on the ground). The sign is surrounded by blinking lights and says JUST MARRIED. While all this is going on, she follows you banging on a pot with a spoon and hollering.
And she writes her own comics. And there's a crank-it-up fortune teller. And a Pageant of Snap-On Tool Girls. And a collection of castoff bridesmaid dresses."
With a sterling recommendation like Kathryn's behind it, we were all sold. So off we all headed in that direction -- and into a brief encounter that proved that my fortune cookie at Misohapi was not entirely off base.