I wasn't there, I know nothing.

Meg Lasswell writes about comics sometimes. She'll also be your friend, if you bring her coffee.











 

Reading makes your brain go "ping"



People I know say the darndest things

Other people are okay too, I guess






















 
Archives
<< current














Dude, not my fault
 

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

The Weekend (and then some) of Living Meggishly Un-Meggishly

I've spent most of today, among irregularly surfacing bouts of work, thinking of a graceful way to introduce a post about my weekend. I'm a little skittish about blogging, you see. I like the words to sound good, and, like, stuff. So here I sit, in a dry patch between workish activities — mind you, I've got things I could be doing, but I don't feel like doing them — and the proper introductory sounds came and whispered themselves into my ear. I've got a cup of tea (my kidneys are already quailing at the prospect of more caffeine) and I'm ready to say my piece.

I had a fine weekend. I awoke Saturday to a vague feeling of unease, and wondered what I was forgetting to remember. Of course! The KCRW concert! My two tickets (one for me, one for an as-yet-undetermined guest) had been purchased and waiting since September. It's actually kind of a miracle I remembered at all. The concert was supposed to be in November, see, but then Chris Martin (who would have been performing unaccompanied) asked the station to postpone the show until March, with the promise that all of Coldplay would be there. He had unfinished album business.

So I called the Lorax, but I couldn't get in touch with her, so I called Lil Bro and asked if he wanted to see "Robots." He said the Lorax had just asked him the same question on IM, and was on her way. So I jumped in my car and flew up to Culver City to intercept them. Lil Bro remembered too late that the Lorax had said she had other things to do in L.A., and would not be by until later. So we hung out for a while. The Lorax finally showed up and I shanghied her off to the Universal Amphitheatre, where I had two seats waaaaay up high and to the left of the stage waiting for us.

The show was great, which was what I expected, really. Coldplay blew everyone away, which was what we all expected, I'm sure. I had no idea Chris Martin was so personable and buoyant while he sings. He skipped and twirled all over the stage, and clearly knew how to handle a crowd of thousands, all singing along. They played "Yellow" as the last encore, and it was amazing. Everyone was standing, and Chris demanded the crew turn up the theater lights, and we all sang along, bathed in yellow light from the stage. Yee ha. I must must must see them do a whole show next time.

Anyway, that is not the point of my story. As the Lorax and I entered the building, we saw the merchandise booth, and there were shirts that said "Aqualung." Aqualung? He hee! The crazy band names kids come up with these days. But here's the thing: Aqualung is a British dude who plays piano and sings, and he's brilliant. I mean, really. You know how it is when you hear a great song for the first time, that feeling that's part flying and part falling in love? It was like that. Astounding. Watching him play was like watching something deeply personal, the way he leans so near the mic with sleepy, half-lidded eyes. And then they'd run out of CDs by the time I made it down to the merch booth. Stupid merch booth.

BUT

Monday morning, still kind of dreamy and wistful for the weekend of awesome, I turned on my radio and there was Aqualung! They (piano dude Matt and his equally hot brother Ben) were doing a live set on Morning Becomes Eclectic. Sweet. And then Nic Harcourt, in that mellow British way of his, mentioned that they'd be playing another show at the Hotel Cafe that night before heading to Austin for SXSW. And I thought: Ooh.

Then, in a totally un-Meggish move, I went out. Yes, folks, I was actually moved to go somewhere I'd never been before, on a weeknight, in the dark, by myself. Well, I invited Jason G. along, and he met me there, but I drove there alone. The Hotel Cafe is neither a hotel nor a cafe. It's kind of a coffeshop/bar in an alley, actually. It is long and narrow, like a hallway with a stage at one end. There are no windows. Anyway we were early (Aqualung was on at 9) but there was a line out the door, and we waited for about fifteen minutes with a growing sense of unease. Word along the line was that the record label had a list of 80-odd people, and the place was packed. The doorman said not to hope, but we hung on. We'd been talking to a very hip girl named Tracy (with fancy turquoise-striped hair that matched her jacket exactly), who said that she'd been there an hour and a half early for the show in January but never got in. The line gradually shrank as people gave up and left, and then the opening tinkling of "Tongue-Tied" (streaming link) started and I was sad.

But then! Then the door guy must have taken pity on us fools out there in the cold (there were very few of us by then) and said "Okay, fifteen in." So we got in! I couldn't see a thing over people's heads, but I could hear, and that was the important part. We folded ourselves against the wall of the very, very narrow spot we were in, and had beers and listened to the wonderful, beautiful, soaring music. Jason seemed impressed, which gratified me. We then wandered a bit and had late-night pizza and dissed Green Day, but that is a story for another time.

I had an adventure, and it was awesome. I should be wild more often — clearly all I need is inspiration.

 

Monday, March 07, 2005

Because pink is healthy, right? Not when it's the color of your eyes ...

I recently complained to my optometrist about how my eyes are always dry, and how by the end of a day of staring at two (that's right, two — my office is sweet) monitors, my whites are not white. They are pink, like pretty, pretty princesses. So she gave me a $1-off coupon for some brand of eye drops. When you get a whole dollar off something, you better believe that something is not going to be cheap. These are the Cadillac of eye drops. I stood there at the Rite-Aid, wondering if something that cost $11 for a half-ounce could possibly be worth it. I'm not averse to paying for quality, but come on. Anyway I rolled my poor dry eyes and shelled out the cash, and let me tell you: Ooooo. Imagine a bottle of pure soothing that you can drip on your eyes up to four glorious times a day.

Now if I could just figure out what's up with my face getting pink as the day progresses ... somebody told me recently it could be because of chemicals in the stuff I smear on myself to keep the acne at bay, which sucks. I get a choice between looking like I'm 15 and looking like I've just run a mile? Maybe I will try some Aveda or Burt's Bees stuff and see how that works.

Oh, and go read The Front, because it's awesome.

 

Friday, March 04, 2005

What you don't know can't hurt you

Sometimes (a lot of times) I mean to write about things that I never end up writing about. It could be because I'm lazy, or because things just aren't as compelling as they seemed at first, or because my goldfish-like attention span has flitted off to some other bit of flotsam. (Shiny! Shiny!) I compose posts in my head almost every day on the way home from work, can you believe it? What half-formed thoughts would I end up shoving, drooling and shy, before the invisible Intarweb audience if I wasn't distracted by other things, like lint and comic books? Anyway here is a list of some junk that I never got around to talking about. Use your brain to stuff it in the cracks between my legitimate brain dumps, and you can fill my long blog silences, eh?
  • I tailed the same blue car down Beach Blvd. two afternoons in a row, trying to catch a glimpse of the driver, who had stared at me with beautiful mellow eyes in the rearview mirror at a stoplight once. It turned out to be a middle-aged lady.
  • The DJ on KLOS rambled for about fifteen minutes one afternoon about a long-awaited Led Zeppelin concert he'd gone to in the summer of 1978. He was thrilled because someone had just given him a bootleg recording he hadn't known existed of that very concert. "Like a window to the past," he called it. His description of being there as a teenager was so palpable that when the crowd started to cheer, and Robert Plant shouted "Hello!" I was practically there myself. Time travel.
  • One day at lunchtime I saw a girl done up in full goth regalia, with a pirate hat, riding down the sunny street on a black bicycle with a tattered pirate flag flying behind.
  • Speaking of pirates, there was a wild-west dinner theater thing (one of those cheesy theme restaurants you find in touristy areas like Anaheim) that closed near work recently. It reopened as a pirate dinner theater. The giant cowboy still adorns the front of the building, but now he holds a pirate flag. He could use an eyepatch.
  • Here is a secret: If you want to avoid getting a parking ticket on street-cleaning day, park in front of the garages by my building. I stuck my car there last night after driving hopelessly around the block three times, figuring I might as well have a good spot if I was going to be ticketed anyway. This morning? No ticket! Rock on.
I can totally see now why I don't end up posting this crap. Man, I love stories with no point.
 

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

What do you suppose the chances are that I could get people to call me "Little Lady Fauntleroy"? Anyone? Not very good, probably.

Did you see that Kelly Vivanco commented on my last post? Now I am like a rock star. I told her she was a Webcomics rock star when I met her, but she pshaw-ed me. It's true, though. I've been calling lots of people rock stars lately, although nobody seems to believe me. I told Magic Boy he was a rock star, but he said he was more like a well-respected indie band. Which is true enough, I suppose. He was on the cover of a magazine, though, that's got to count for something.

See, now you're all "Who the heck is she talking about? Enough with the code names!" But what if the Russians are reading my blog, and they want me to spy for them, and their plan is to kidnap all my friends and hold them for ransom? You don't want to be kidnapped by Yevgeny and Boris, do you? I call Sara herself, though. I don't mind if the Russians get her.

Anyway, Magic Boy is the guy I'm dating. He was perusing my blog the other day and asked why I never mentioned him, and I explained that I never talk about people I'm dating because, well, I'm not into soap operas and you're probably not either, and I don't want to inflict my private life on everyone like I do to poor Sara (who is probably already in a closet in Moscow somewhere, sorry Sara).

"Sara, I met this guy! He's great!" (two days later) "Sara, that guy was a jerk! But I met somebody else!" (and so on) To soothe M.B.'s ego, though, here is his and my whole sordid story:

I dated Magic Boy for a while and then totally left his ass for somebody else, kind of on the theory that I wasn't getting any long-term vibes from him, so somebody else might be better? But somebody else turned out to be a jerk (where do I find these people?). M.B. remained in the background the whole time, however. Did he know I'd regret my decision? Maybe he's psychic. That might help with the magic business. Anyway we're giving it another shot. He's not like anyone I've ever dated before, with the possible exception of a certain Dutch fella some of you will remember that I was in love with. I'm not in love with Magic Boy, but he's fun, and he drives a sexy, sexy Honda hybrid. And that's all I have to say about that.

 
 
This blog is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?