I skipped poker tonight and I'm probably richer for it. My luck seems to run better during the Winter months; I was up a hundred for January and February as I recall. Today I finished an amazing book called-- Cowboy. It's about a young cowpuncher learning the ropes of buckarooing in Arizona and Ron Santee is the author and illustrator of it. He wrote it in 1911. I stole it from my grandpa last month and now I'm thinking of sending it back to him as a Father's Day gift.
Yesterday I attended my 2nd ex-fiance's 29th birthday party. Her name's Nina and she has a lot of friends who love her potlucks and bar-b-ques. I brought a watermelon that didn't turn out too sweet and lacked seeds and didn't get eaten as fast as everything else. The burger I grilled was so big, it took two-and-a-half buns to contain it! A surreal moment occurred when Rebecca Potasnik handed out various, xeroxed Nina masks to the fifty or so revelers while she was inside. When she emerged we sang the birthday song behind our cut-outs. I couldn't tell if she was traumatized or just embarrassed, but she laughed a lot. I was in the front section and when I turned around and saw all those ghosty, paper-faces of Nina I understood her shrieking laughter. Everybody wanted me to stay and hot-tub but I had a rap concert to see.
At the Capitol Theater I wasted four hours wading through mediocre underground hip-hip bands 'til 2 a.m. when the rapper, Busdriver, got onstage. He made the wait worth it, for he is a lyrical titan and the best underground prophet I've seen. Actually, the fellow before him was excellent, too-- an hispanic rhymer named Sleep. His partner, Josh Martinez, was good too, but I couldn't feel it as well.
Have I mentioned that my house-mates, Jen and Pat, gave birth to a little girl named Fiona this morning? Well, they did or at least one of them did. Jen's belly probably isn't so big anymore. Now I have to figure out how to be supportive and useful. I spent the afternoon playing with my 3-yr-old friend, Hollis. He can't get enough of me, which feels good for the first hour but then I get my fill soon afterwards. Parents deserve medals for what they do!
Now I'll briefly recount the last show of the tour in Spokane. Jeremy Hadley greeted me in style by treating me to a delicious meal at the Elk. Then we went to the Tryst coffee house and Larron Wolford opened up the show. He is unique. Then I played for an hour or more and it was over. The crowd was small but generous and I sold many cds and zines. A journalist named Melissa Amos, for the Local Planet, wrote a dandy article. The staff art-director even put my picture on the front of the weekly, in the bottom left corner. The whole Spokane package raised my morale considerably and I'm excited to return in mid-July for another show in that ragged metropolis.
The next morning I drove to my friend Aaron Galloway's house in Cle Elum and spent the day hiking and throwing rocks at railroad signs with him. We laugh hard together and I was pleased to get some tensions off my shoulders before finally arriving back home last Tuesday. The night before I left, he and I enjoyed a hearty meal of pasta and deer meat, which my folks had canned for me. I'd dropped the jar of venison earlier and so we had to pick the shards out, but we both agreed it was well worth our time (and the risk of stomach lacerations). Nothing is better than good venison.
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