Kindle and Bed and Tinkering with the Back End of Moodvane

I don’t know whether I’m on Chris’ death bed or whether he’s on mine, but from the way things seem to be going this week, one of us is going to have to plug our ears to drown out the other’s death rattle. Does anyone else have a weird cold that comes on strong one day and fades the next only to return the again the next? For your sake, I hope not.i think I just had a hot flash. At least my bed is comfortable. I guess everyone on the planet is over at that Gurty exhibit at The Bubble tonight. I bet they’re all having so much fun. Sniffle. I’m just going to stay here and read on my Kindle and play with my blog and feel sorry for myself. It’s gonna all be worth it, though. Chris and I have to be better in time to go back to Mobile for Mardi Gras. No suckers are going to come between us and two days of partying with the Mystics of Time in mid February. I need a vacation!!!
They think we’re really weird up there. They really do. Even though they’re strange people who eat hot piles of crustaceans in hot sauce, they don’t know what to make of South Floridians like Chris and me. They probably wouldn’t know what to do with you either.

Ghosthunting at The Eldridge in Lawrence, Kansas

While I was in Lawrence, Kansas last week to attend a formal ceremony, I met a bunch of my best friend Jess’ other best friends. I know it doesn’t make sense to call more than one friend best, but that’s just the way that it works. On one evening in particular we decided to unwind by pushing a few couches together in the lobby and turning it into our drink table, which led to excessive unwinding, which led to relentless ghosthunting at our haunted hotel, The Eldridge.

We were disappointed to say the least that the hipsters at the hotel’s front desk would not book us into the haunted room, #506. So, desperate for a thrill, we sat around in the hallway like a bunch of college freshman goons who cling too closely to their RA groups. Ultimately we ended up stalking the hallway for about twenty minutes, cracking ourselves up over how stupid we were and trembling with the nervous energy that the possible presence of ghosts brings out in all of us. At one point we all felt that we’d made too much noise, so we ran down to opposite ends of the hallway and stood staring each group at the other as we waited for something to happen.

After a few uneventful moments, we walked back down the hallway toward 506 and planted our butts in front of the door, whispering shooshs that were louder than actual talking. An unsuspecting man in black pants and a long-sleeved blue shirt appeared around the corner, pulled a card key out of his pocket and started to slip it into the lock on room 506! “It’s his room,” we cried out and jumped to our feet, circling A.J. and pressing ourselves through the entrance of his room.”

A.J. was all open-eyed astonishment as he looked around the room at the 7 wobbly figures who’d just made his couch their next stop for the night and listened to our stories about how the room that he’d booked for the night is the most haunted room in the whole hotel and regarded as a portal to the spirit world. He sat down in the oversized chair next to the couch in the small living room of the hotel suite and put his hands through his hair and said, “You’re messing with me. Who are you guys?”
Blithely unconcerned with A.J.’s sheer terror over having to sleep in that room, we started to hold a seance during which I nodded off while trying to count to 5, which might account for the fact that we never communicated directly with the spirits that haunt that room. But, I do have plenty of pics up on my Facebook that we’re analyzing for orbs and strange shadows.
If you ever go to Lawrence, Kansas, you know where to stay. Here’s a news report on the haunting: http://www.eldridgehotel.com/video/ghost_video.htm

My Awesome Weekend in the Florida Keys

Last weekend, we went to the Florida Keys. We crashed at a house down near Looe Key with good friends Russ and Jess, who came all the way from Los Angeles to see us. Then other awesome people, my friends Todd and Stacey and Evie the Evil One, came down to visit with us on Saturday!

Good thing that I had a birthday to persuade them to come out because they are fun with a capital “F”.

We cruised down on Friday afternoon and took a long break at the Islamorada Tiki Bar , which I will never overlook again, for a few cold drinks and some seafood. Our weekend was perfect, but if I could have changed one thing about it I would have left earlier on Friday afternoon so that we could have gone in the water and bobbed around with some frozen drinks in the little roped off swimming area.
Check out the awesome sandy grounds and warm water right behind me. By the time we got to the house we were driving through a Big Fish-style torrential downpour and found ourselves without power for the first hour. Finally, Chris touched his leatherman to the side of the electrical box to open it and voila the power came right on. The next morning, we were up and out on the boat. It was too choppy to go out to Looe Key for snorkeling, so we went on a shallow reef off of Little Palm island. Normally, I am too afraid to go into open water and I usually spend the entire weekend getting sunburned on the boat, but Chris worked me through phobias and I jumped off the boat into his arms for a big hug and then snorkeled the rest of the day away as if I were just another normal person. It was spectacular! We saw all kinds of fish and even a big old ray sleeping on the bottom. I swan close to it, but not too close because I did not want to get gored by that animal.

Todd and Stacey brought their munchkin Evie into our vacation, and she upped the cute factor by like 10 whole points, which doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s pretty good considering that we were doing all right on our own. I snorkeled without overwhelming fear for a whole hour before I went back to that boat and chilled with Todd and Evie. We urged everyone to come back so that we’d have plenty of time to chill at picnic island, but the group in the water was determined to see a shark. After they finally thought they saw one, they came back and we went to picnic island, where you eat lunch, drink beer and sit around in 3 feet of warm water. It’s so awesome.

On Saturday night, we went down to Key West for a bit o’ fun and had drinks at the Hog’s Breath Saloon and made up alternate identities for ourselves with strong accents and embodied them, which annoyed the group standing next to us that was trying to enjoy the tunes of Chris Cook. Then, we went to Garden of Eden, a clothing-optional rooftop bar, where we got some interesting visuals and the guys mentally sized themselves up against the competition. It’s the rooftop on the third floor of The Bull bar.

I can’t believe it’s over. I want to do it again.

Chi Town With Friends Who Put the “P” in Peeps

Dang! I feel like I’ve just been slingshotted through a time warp and across the universe. I spent the weekend in Chi Town, and not only did I get to revisit some of my favorite places and visit with some of my favorite flesh incarnations of greatness (old and good friends), but I had layovers — long tedious and uncertain layovers — that afforded me that soul-searching experience of taking off and landing in an airplane four times. Wowsers! I even had the opportunity to spend eight hours running around the airport trying to get on any standby flight and testing my negotiation skills when my flight got canceled in Atlanta and no one at Delta would help me until someone finally did, and I only cried once. In the last year, I’ve had the fortune of visiting many of the U.S.’s great cities, such as D.C., Austin, Mobile, Los Angeles and Boston — not to mention my days and nights spent in Fort Lauderdale, but there is something special about Chicago. The clean air, the lake, the friendly, super real, and not a little good looking people might might explain why it feels so good to be there during the non-winter months. My crew had such a great time shopping on Michigan Ave., drinking at bars like Rainbo Club and Beachwood Inn and The Pepper Canister and eating at hotspots like Gino’s East (the spinach artichoke dip was killer, but not as amazing as the bloody mary I had. Dang!).There is my gang at Rainbo’s. Darn I wish I could have been in that one. I can’t imagine any vision — even if it were Clive Owen sitting at the bar mouthing my name with a rose in his hand — that I’d rather see when walking into a bar than this gang of sillymakers, my very best friends from high school. There might be one more exceptional vision — har har har: Each and every one of them, on this trip, exhibited the exact same personality quirks, good and bad, that glued us together in the days when PHS ’97 was rocking harder and nerdier than it has ever rocked before or since. Someone met up with us very late and was overly apologetic for always being late and forgot to eat dinner before meeting us at 11 p.m. at night; someone barfed all over the bedspread; someone referred everything that happened back to a cognitive psych self-help book; someone couldn’t stop talking about whether she was going to buy or rent; and someone, as always, is just about perfect. But I’m not saying. We also went to Gino’s pizza and downed some over-priced drinks at the rooftop lounge in the John Hancock building. Was Sweet! There are very few hand-in-glove friends in the world, and I am grateful for mine! Yay!

I’m in Chicago ;( I Hope No One Misses Me Too Much

I’m in Chicago for the weekend. Though it already is and is shaping up to be a total blast for me, I’m a bit bummed to be out of town and away from all of the people who make my world go round. Go see Raffa & Rainer at Dada tomorrow night. That’s what I’d do if I were around!

Mobile for Mardi Gras

Sweet Bronco and I spent the weekend in a state of immense enjoyment. Little baby Ava made us go gaga over her cuteness and the Mardi Gras festivities knocked us flat on our butts — all that I’m going to say is that those Southern folk sure know how to put ‘em away. We played with Ava on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon, and then we headed off to watch Brandon in the Mystics of Time parade. He was on float #11, The Fall of Babylon. The floats were flying by so fast that I couldn’t snap a good shot of Brandon, but I did get this pic of people grasping for all of the trinkets and goodies that the MOT boys were throwing off of the floats. They weren’t throwing all that many beads and moon pies — think it might be on account of the expense of beads and the lack of money going around because of the economy. People were grabbing extra double hard to get that stuff! After the parade, Bronco and I met up with Jeremy and Ashley, possibly the cutest couple on the face of the earth, to change into our ball clothes and grab some drinks at local bars while Brandon and Brandy went to tend to the formalities that precede the festivities (we’re festivity only guests) at the MOT ball. J & A love on a lot of the things that SB&I love on like Eastbound & Down and Flaming Lips and lots of other stuff — Wilco — that we think should be like entertainment peanut butter and jelly to the common folk. They took us to The Garage and to another cool bar that I can’t remember. Then, we went to the MOT ball and found Brandon, finally! He was good and soused, but that didn’t stop me from spilling a cocktail all over him. he was up to his old trick of chewing on beer cans! Brandon wasn’t the only one we found in the party room at the MOT ball. The DJ was spinning some hot classic rock and we got down a little as we found our way to the bar and to this fine-looking group of party animals. The crew we rolled with, below:I snuck away for a few moments to take a peek at the ceremony that was going down on the main stage in the arena (there was the main ball room in the center of the arena and then little parties in each of the rooms off of the hallway that wraps around the building). There was a king and a queen and then some dude with a long beard who was all white. Not sure what they do up there, but they take it very seriously. I have yet to even scratch the surface of the history and rituals that surround Mardi Gras in Mobile. We had a radical time. SB&I thought we were totally done with all of the fun that did not include gazing at the bundle of joy……but we were wrong. The next day we went out to Callaghan’s (the bloody mary’s kill me b/c they are so good…even though they were out of pickled okra that fine day), where Grayson Capps was heading up the Joe Cain day festivities, so we danced around like a bunch of drunken hillbillies for about 6 hours.Then, Sweet Bronco and I were like, ‘Can we go home now?’ and they were like, ‘What’s wrong with you guys?’ So, we took a cab home, which drew boos and hisses from all![/caption]Ninny and Brandon danced the night away at Callaghan’s Irish Social Club, the one and only!

Tim and Terry’s with Sweet Bronco and Ancient River

Sweet Bronco and I cruised up to Gainesville a couple of Fridays past to hang out and play a show with Ancient River at Tim & Terry’s/The Purple Store. How much fun did we have? A whole bunch of it.

First things first, we rolled straight into the parking lot of Leonardo’s pizzeria to satisfy my craving for the addictive salad dressing that no other restaurant on the planet is able to duplicate.

We ate some salad and pizza, and then we hopped on over to Tim & Terry’s/The Purple Store to wait for Ancient River to arrive. It was a very funny little scene. All of the college kiddies and Gainesville lifestyle hangers-on were on the front porch playing guitar, chilling and living life at the slow pace that this Southern college town keeps.

We made our way inside and bought some beers, which are sold in the gas station style and at gas station prices, phew! I started off with a Lambic Framboise – yay! – and Sweet Bronco hit the Sam Adams pretty hard. We headed out to one of the tables in the backyard, which was crowded with stylish, young kids discussing the election and other college town topics.

Jaime, Chad and Zach arrived after a while. We caught up with them over some oversized imported beers and then went inside to watch Hunger Circus perform. I don’t have photos of them, but I have video, which isn’t available yet. Sweet Bronco performed a mix of original and cover his songs on guitar and harmonica. As usual, he was delightful and endearing. What else is new?

After Sweet Bronco performed, Ancient River took the stage and rocked us out. We’re huge fans of Ancient River. Ancient River sounds down home, deep, cavernous, grungy, bluesy. I positively lovies listening to them.

Phenomenal drummer Chad Voight, a South Florida boy who went to Gibbons and played in a band called The Outrights back in the day, favored the crowd with a drum solo. The video will be posted below as soon as it uploads.

After the show, Chris Horgan (Sweet Bronco) and Chad posed for a shot.

Then, we joined Warren in helping Ancient River pack up their gear and headed back to Jaime and Zach’s house to crash.

Here’s a pic of all of the boys who made my night go round. Ancient River, Sweet Bronco and Warren.

Thanks guys! We can’t wait until you come to spread your awesomeness all over South Florida. Videos of performances to come. Photo gallery below:

Inkpen’s Weekend In Fire Island

Whether you’re venturing home from low tea or high, amble with care on this The Boulevard in the wonderfully remote, gay town of Fire Island. We had four injuries in my house alone — a trip and fall knee injury, a poke in the eye from a tree, a slip and fall down the stairs and a foot injury with origins unknown. Beware, you labor day boys and remember, no white after Labor Day. Hugs and kisses on the cheek, Inkpen.

Much like spending lazy afternoons wandering without a care (carelessness is the most important part) through the winding streets of Paris or driving across the United States, one of Inkpen’s lifelong travel dreams (one she’d forgotten she’d held dear to her heart) was to weekend in Fire Island. Well, finally, dramatically and fulfillingly, it has come to pass. What a weekend she had with her whole little heart in her throat!

Above: Inkpen and her bro. No, they aren’t twins, but there is a genetic freakishness in the physical likeness among our clan.

Fire Island Gallery. Enjoy!

Sweet Bronco and The Celestials at Pop Thursdays at ECLiPSE in Jacksonville

Sweet Bronco and Celestials @ ECLiPSE in Jax on July 24, 2008

“S” to the Double “V” Double “E” “T” to the Bronco and I found ourselves back on the road again. More than just living out a cliche from a Willy Nelson lyric, Inkpen and Bronco take to the road, despite gas prices, to see new scenery, keep our perspectives fresh and to meet new friends to drink with, play with and play for. Plus, there’s nothing like seeing the wild pines and winding rivers and cricks of the South.

After an easy 4 1/2 hour drive (and one speeding ticket – thanks to the eternal construction projects, also known as speed traps, in Palm Beach!), Inkpen and Sweet Bronco rolled into Jacksonville around 7 ‘o’ clock in the p.m. We crashed with our (best) friends Ana and Eric, and hung out with Bertha too. There’s the gang right there!

Around the 8 ‘o’ clock hour, we headed over to ECLiPSE for Sweet Bronco’s show with Jacksonville local band Celestials and an evening with the poptastic sounds of DJ Paul Pop — not to be mistaken for Pol Pot, the less-than-poptastic leader of the mass-murdering Communist Cambodian regime, the Khmer Rouge, who may have been charismatic in his own way, but probably couldn’t take a side on life’s truly burning question: Pulp or Blur?

At ECLiPSE, we met Joe Parker, front man for The Celestials, Dan, the sound man, Steve, the cool signmaker, Lisa, ECLiPSE’s booker and scenester extraordinaire, and, of course, Mr. Pop himself, Paul. We didn’t get much a chance to speak with other Celestials members, Sean Irwin and Jason Leader, but there’s always next time! We had a couple of Yuenglings ($2!) and Inkpen took a few little sippy sips on a Capt. Die.

Sweet Bronco played his standards, such as “North Star”, “Out At Sea”, “Permanent Dream” and an instrumental cover version of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” on guitar and harmonica. Below: Sweet Bronco singing like a real champ!

Below: Sweet Bronco performs “North Star”.

The Celestials, a three-piece band that sounds like a four, wowed with their full sound and Mr. Parker’s rich, striking voice. Below: A dreamy pic of Joe Parker from the Celestials.

 

Below: Celestials perform “Strident Trident” live at ECLiPSE on July 24, 2008.

Thumbnail Gallery. Click to open and enlarge in a separate window. Right click and “Save As” them to steal them for your own purposes.

 

 

The Happy Birthday Ana Tour – Orlando

Sweet Bronco and Inkpen met up with this guy named Zach, Tim of PlainsBasic and Sweet Bronco’s long-time friend Ryan and his crew for an evening of music at Stardust Video & Coffee in Orlando. We also met a nice guy named Eric, who studies under the same UF piano teacher that Sweet Bronco used to study under.

Sweet Bronco in the background. Framboise beer in the foreground.

Front to back: Sweet Bronco, Ryan and Bob (?)

Below is a thumb nail gallery from the Orlando Stardust show.

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