TOFOG in Portland (Part 5)
Aug. 21st, 2001 01:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperEdited 8/22/01 8:58pm and 8/23/01 6:55pm, and added to LJ as a backdated entry 5/13/03 -- herein being the post-show silliness, and what happened the day after
After the Show, or, "What, Wait, There's MORE?!"
Exhaustedly, Cyn and Rhiannon and I rejoined the others, regained our belongings, and went outside for fresh air and to meet under the Roseland sign in a vague hope that Karen and the rest of the Gruntlanders expected to be on the scene would find us. They did not. But we did at least all get together without hindrance.
We parted company with James and Dana at this point, leaving the rest of us to go pile into Rhiannon's borrowed car, since she'd volunteered to take us back to our hotel. Some debate occurred about whether to crash or whether to eat, and the latter option won out since many of us hadn't actually had any dinner.
Our first attempt at sustenance location proved futile; Lyon's, near the hotel, was closed. So we opted to go to Denny's instead, which proved to be a win on several levels even if Kathryn did bump into a chick in the ladies' room who was apparently tripping (said chick was heard to cry "DON'T LEAVE ME" and then comment upon the weirdness of the color of her own shirt), and even if Jessica was denied her choice of pie on the grounds that Denny's had in fact the previous week stopped carrying cherry pie.
The first upside of Denny's proved to be when a woman in a wheelchair and her husband came in -- in fact, the very same woman in a wheelchair that Cyn and Rhiannon had noticed at the show. We invited her and her husband to join us, and engaged in much merry conversation. She remarked upon how she'd wondered if we were all together at the show, because we were obviously a cohesive group. And when the topic of Israelis being the rudest people on the planet came up, she told us a very amusing little story about being in Jerusalem and seeing six, count 'em, six little old Arabic ladies all crowded around an enormous hookah, getting themselves stoned off their gourds. She relayed to us, too, about how the staffers at the Roseland had gotten her up onto a little makeshift platform so that she could see the show -- so it was nice to know that somebody was looking out for her.
They also proved to be science fiction fans -- or at least anime fans, for they recognized Mimi's Totoro change purse and the little keychain figurine of P-chan from Ranma 1/2 she had as well.
The second upside was my inadvertant providing of amusement value to Kathryn. I was quite tired at that point, with my legs and feet all sore from standing on them for hours and my entire body feeling as though I'd had a grueling workout. When I commented that I was apparently tired enough to be giggling at the smallest provocation, Kathryn tested this out by looking at me and saying, "Bootlaces!"
I lost it. And continued to lose it as she kept firing entirely random words at me, much to the snickers of everyone else at the table.
The third upside of Denny's was the staff. Our waiter was very amiable, apologizing to Jessica profusely for the cherry pie failure as well as for Mimi not getting the right sandwich when our orders came out and going out of his way to get both of those problems fixed. We tried to get him to tell us a dirty joke, but before he could finish his he got trumped by his manager, who came out to rag on his (non-existent) slacktitude. So we got the manager to tell us a joke instead, which was:
Q: "What do you call a woman without an a--hole?"
A: "Divorced!"
By this, we were all very, very amused.
At last, though, we had to leave so that the nice people could close up their nice restaurant. We shook hands with our unexpected be-chaired late-night dinner companion as we left, and we all introduced ourselves to her on the way out. The manager unlocked the door for us; off we went, into the night.
Cyn didn't want to walk back to the hotel though it wasn't very far away at all, but the rest of us opted to hoof it while Rhiannon gave her a ride. Oddly enough we actually beat Cyn back to the Travelodge... and only when she finally showed up and described that she and Rhiannon had in fact GOTTEN LOST and were about five seconds away from going back to I-5 and trying to follow Cyn's printed list of directions to the hotel from there did we realize WHY we beat them back to the Travelodge.
The Lameness Fairy, apparently, had to get in one last *twang* with her wand before she went to bed.
Bed was a very good idea, though it takes five talkative women in one comparatively small hotel room a bit of time to get settled in enough to go to sleep. I was the last of us to actually try, as I wanted to try to write the beginning of my trip journal while I had a head full of everything we'd done and said and seen that day.
So I wrote until my handheld computer's batteries ran out, and only then did I try to get to sleep. Which didn't work very well. My brain kept cycling through the following states:
Repeat ad infinitum, from about 3am till about 8 or so. I am pretty sure I dozed off a couple of times, but never for very long. Physically, I was exhausted, but mentally, I was so wired that decent restful sleep was pretty much impossible.
Postlude, or, "Powell's City of Books and the Great Battery Quest"
It takes five women in one comparatively small hotel room a bit of time to get themselves up in the morning, too. Especially when all of them want showers. But we all got out in time for the check-out of 11am, after which we all went back to the Lyon's we couldn't get into the night before. This time, our objective was BREAKFAST. Which we acquired, and which was quite tasty.
During said meal, Kathryn enthused to me that she had enjoyed herself more than she'd expected at the show -- and in particular rhapsodized about the performance of "Folsom Prison Blues" and Billy Dean Cochran's guitar playing. Kathryn even said that they'd decided that Russell was about as good a singer as Elvis was an actor -- and that this was a good thing, given that they'd also decided that Elvis did some not half-bad acting.
Mimi expressed her regrets that Danielle Spencer hadn't been selling discs at the show, and between her and Kathryn I was asked as well if Dean did any solo work. I knew that Stewart and Dave Wilkins were both in other bands, but hadn't heard of Dean having any work on the side. If I had, I suspect that he'd have a few sales amongst my circle of friends!
It was very gratifying, too, to hear my friends all saying that they enjoyed themselves. And proving to me that even though it is inevitable that my fandom for Russell in particular will spill over into my fandom for TOFOG, I'm not so biased that I'm imagining quality where there isn't any!
After breakfast, we opted to head on over to our other reason for visiting Portland -- to wit, Powell's City of Books, which has got to be the biggest bookstore in which I have ever had the joy of setting foot. The place dominates an entire city block, has multiple floors, and color-coded areas of books. We wiled away a considerable amount of time therein, hitting the science fiction and mystery and music sections... and those were only the ones I visited myself. Since we scattered all over the store, I'm pretty sure we covered a fair amount of territory within it.
I wound up with two books, one by Susanna Kearsley, an author of romantic suspense that I like, and one on the recommendation of Kathryn who told me that if I'd liked Good Omens (which I had; gentle readers, if you like Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and if you haven't yet read this book, do so. Right now! Well, after you watch some Eddie Izzard) I'd love this one too. I briefly considered picking up a copy of L.A. Confidential, but wound up deciding against it since I'd already spent a considerable amount of money at the show and also since Cyn had asked to borrow twenty dollars from me to buy what she wanted. I opted to make her a twenty-dollar birthday present instead and told her to pick out twenty bucks' worth of what she wanted, which turned out to be a couple of fiddle-related music books.
I started to drag fairly early on, though the others were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed -- and Mimi and Jessica in fact wanted more time to browse. So Kathryn and Cyn tagged along while I went out to move my car, and I mused that as long as we were going to go back to the coffee shop in Powell's to wait for Mimi and Jessica, it'd be nice if I had batteries to put into my handheld computer so that I could continue to work on my trip journal.
Kathryn actually had batteries -- but the wrong size, AAA instead of AA. So we wandered around in a radius of a block or two around Powell's, looking for some sign of a place that would sell actual batteries. We did, in fact, see a sign that said in large bright red letters, "BATTERIES"...
... on a Firestone. DOH!
We must have ducked into five different places in search of batteries, all to no avail. Nobody could give us an idea of whether there was anywhere else around that sold batteries, either. Battery-less, we returned to Powell's...
... only to learn from Mimi when she rejoined us that she did, in fact, HAVE BATTERIES IN HER VAN. DOH DOH DOH!
More waiting, while Jessica continued her browsing. We talked about music. We talked about tarot decks. And I had caffeine to try to keep myself conscious, though eventually I finally had to declare that I needed to get on the road while I was still awake enough to drive.
At this point we all parted company with Mimi, who had plans to attend a kite festival rather than return with us to Seattle. We showered her with hugs, and adjourned to my car.
The Grunts had sung Cyn and me into Portland... and they sung the four of us, Cyn and Kathryn and Jessica and me, out again.
This time, though, they had accompaniment.
Because we harmonized on "Judas Cart".
I don't know yet if I've made my friends fans of this band I love -- but I got them singing one of their songs. I'll call that a damn fine start.
Fini
After the Show, or, "What, Wait, There's MORE?!"
Exhaustedly, Cyn and Rhiannon and I rejoined the others, regained our belongings, and went outside for fresh air and to meet under the Roseland sign in a vague hope that Karen and the rest of the Gruntlanders expected to be on the scene would find us. They did not. But we did at least all get together without hindrance.
We parted company with James and Dana at this point, leaving the rest of us to go pile into Rhiannon's borrowed car, since she'd volunteered to take us back to our hotel. Some debate occurred about whether to crash or whether to eat, and the latter option won out since many of us hadn't actually had any dinner.
Our first attempt at sustenance location proved futile; Lyon's, near the hotel, was closed. So we opted to go to Denny's instead, which proved to be a win on several levels even if Kathryn did bump into a chick in the ladies' room who was apparently tripping (said chick was heard to cry "DON'T LEAVE ME" and then comment upon the weirdness of the color of her own shirt), and even if Jessica was denied her choice of pie on the grounds that Denny's had in fact the previous week stopped carrying cherry pie.
The first upside of Denny's proved to be when a woman in a wheelchair and her husband came in -- in fact, the very same woman in a wheelchair that Cyn and Rhiannon had noticed at the show. We invited her and her husband to join us, and engaged in much merry conversation. She remarked upon how she'd wondered if we were all together at the show, because we were obviously a cohesive group. And when the topic of Israelis being the rudest people on the planet came up, she told us a very amusing little story about being in Jerusalem and seeing six, count 'em, six little old Arabic ladies all crowded around an enormous hookah, getting themselves stoned off their gourds. She relayed to us, too, about how the staffers at the Roseland had gotten her up onto a little makeshift platform so that she could see the show -- so it was nice to know that somebody was looking out for her.
They also proved to be science fiction fans -- or at least anime fans, for they recognized Mimi's Totoro change purse and the little keychain figurine of P-chan from Ranma 1/2 she had as well.
The second upside was my inadvertant providing of amusement value to Kathryn. I was quite tired at that point, with my legs and feet all sore from standing on them for hours and my entire body feeling as though I'd had a grueling workout. When I commented that I was apparently tired enough to be giggling at the smallest provocation, Kathryn tested this out by looking at me and saying, "Bootlaces!"
I lost it. And continued to lose it as she kept firing entirely random words at me, much to the snickers of everyone else at the table.
The third upside of Denny's was the staff. Our waiter was very amiable, apologizing to Jessica profusely for the cherry pie failure as well as for Mimi not getting the right sandwich when our orders came out and going out of his way to get both of those problems fixed. We tried to get him to tell us a dirty joke, but before he could finish his he got trumped by his manager, who came out to rag on his (non-existent) slacktitude. So we got the manager to tell us a joke instead, which was:
Q: "What do you call a woman without an a--hole?"
A: "Divorced!"
By this, we were all very, very amused.
At last, though, we had to leave so that the nice people could close up their nice restaurant. We shook hands with our unexpected be-chaired late-night dinner companion as we left, and we all introduced ourselves to her on the way out. The manager unlocked the door for us; off we went, into the night.
Cyn didn't want to walk back to the hotel though it wasn't very far away at all, but the rest of us opted to hoof it while Rhiannon gave her a ride. Oddly enough we actually beat Cyn back to the Travelodge... and only when she finally showed up and described that she and Rhiannon had in fact GOTTEN LOST and were about five seconds away from going back to I-5 and trying to follow Cyn's printed list of directions to the hotel from there did we realize WHY we beat them back to the Travelodge.
The Lameness Fairy, apparently, had to get in one last *twang* with her wand before she went to bed.
Bed was a very good idea, though it takes five talkative women in one comparatively small hotel room a bit of time to get settled in enough to go to sleep. I was the last of us to actually try, as I wanted to try to write the beginning of my trip journal while I had a head full of everything we'd done and said and seen that day.
So I wrote until my handheld computer's batteries ran out, and only then did I try to get to sleep. Which didn't work very well. My brain kept cycling through the following states:
- "Mmmmmmmm RUSSELL mmmmmmmm!"
- "Ow my knees!"
- "Ow my feet!"
- *whine* "This bed sucks!"
Repeat ad infinitum, from about 3am till about 8 or so. I am pretty sure I dozed off a couple of times, but never for very long. Physically, I was exhausted, but mentally, I was so wired that decent restful sleep was pretty much impossible.
Postlude, or, "Powell's City of Books and the Great Battery Quest"
It takes five women in one comparatively small hotel room a bit of time to get themselves up in the morning, too. Especially when all of them want showers. But we all got out in time for the check-out of 11am, after which we all went back to the Lyon's we couldn't get into the night before. This time, our objective was BREAKFAST. Which we acquired, and which was quite tasty.
During said meal, Kathryn enthused to me that she had enjoyed herself more than she'd expected at the show -- and in particular rhapsodized about the performance of "Folsom Prison Blues" and Billy Dean Cochran's guitar playing. Kathryn even said that they'd decided that Russell was about as good a singer as Elvis was an actor -- and that this was a good thing, given that they'd also decided that Elvis did some not half-bad acting.
Mimi expressed her regrets that Danielle Spencer hadn't been selling discs at the show, and between her and Kathryn I was asked as well if Dean did any solo work. I knew that Stewart and Dave Wilkins were both in other bands, but hadn't heard of Dean having any work on the side. If I had, I suspect that he'd have a few sales amongst my circle of friends!
It was very gratifying, too, to hear my friends all saying that they enjoyed themselves. And proving to me that even though it is inevitable that my fandom for Russell in particular will spill over into my fandom for TOFOG, I'm not so biased that I'm imagining quality where there isn't any!
After breakfast, we opted to head on over to our other reason for visiting Portland -- to wit, Powell's City of Books, which has got to be the biggest bookstore in which I have ever had the joy of setting foot. The place dominates an entire city block, has multiple floors, and color-coded areas of books. We wiled away a considerable amount of time therein, hitting the science fiction and mystery and music sections... and those were only the ones I visited myself. Since we scattered all over the store, I'm pretty sure we covered a fair amount of territory within it.
I wound up with two books, one by Susanna Kearsley, an author of romantic suspense that I like, and one on the recommendation of Kathryn who told me that if I'd liked Good Omens (which I had; gentle readers, if you like Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and if you haven't yet read this book, do so. Right now! Well, after you watch some Eddie Izzard) I'd love this one too. I briefly considered picking up a copy of L.A. Confidential, but wound up deciding against it since I'd already spent a considerable amount of money at the show and also since Cyn had asked to borrow twenty dollars from me to buy what she wanted. I opted to make her a twenty-dollar birthday present instead and told her to pick out twenty bucks' worth of what she wanted, which turned out to be a couple of fiddle-related music books.
I started to drag fairly early on, though the others were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed -- and Mimi and Jessica in fact wanted more time to browse. So Kathryn and Cyn tagged along while I went out to move my car, and I mused that as long as we were going to go back to the coffee shop in Powell's to wait for Mimi and Jessica, it'd be nice if I had batteries to put into my handheld computer so that I could continue to work on my trip journal.
Kathryn actually had batteries -- but the wrong size, AAA instead of AA. So we wandered around in a radius of a block or two around Powell's, looking for some sign of a place that would sell actual batteries. We did, in fact, see a sign that said in large bright red letters, "BATTERIES"...
... on a Firestone. DOH!
We must have ducked into five different places in search of batteries, all to no avail. Nobody could give us an idea of whether there was anywhere else around that sold batteries, either. Battery-less, we returned to Powell's...
... only to learn from Mimi when she rejoined us that she did, in fact, HAVE BATTERIES IN HER VAN. DOH DOH DOH!
More waiting, while Jessica continued her browsing. We talked about music. We talked about tarot decks. And I had caffeine to try to keep myself conscious, though eventually I finally had to declare that I needed to get on the road while I was still awake enough to drive.
At this point we all parted company with Mimi, who had plans to attend a kite festival rather than return with us to Seattle. We showered her with hugs, and adjourned to my car.
The Grunts had sung Cyn and me into Portland... and they sung the four of us, Cyn and Kathryn and Jessica and me, out again.
This time, though, they had accompaniment.
Because we harmonized on "Judas Cart".
I don't know yet if I've made my friends fans of this band I love -- but I got them singing one of their songs. I'll call that a damn fine start.
Fini