Birth-Week!

This birthday has extended itself over the course of the weekend and has been a blast so far.

Thursday night, D and I went out to L.A. and met up with AW and we went to see Nouvelle Vague at the Henry Fonda Music Box (same place D and I just saw OCMS). Traffic was horrific on the 10 and Western Ave was a fucking parking lot, so Adam and I enterained ourselves in the car by strong-arm pumping our way through Twisted Sister songs and punk odds and ends. We saw a guy, as we were incrementally exiting Western, dry-humping the railing in front of a church. High-larious. I kept yelling out the window, "Git 'er done!" I must have been going through some weird white-trash channeling moment, what with the southern idiom and the arm-pumping....

The show, my birthday gift from AW (thank you!!!) was one of the better ones I've seen recently and the venue was (again) perfect for an intimate-though-not-too-intimate gathering of celebratory folks. There was this rather odd gentleman who kept talking to D's girlfriend (not sure where D was for most of the show, but presumably drinking) and then to me (I just ignored him and shifted away). Apparently, he thought we were watching Iron Maiden, as he kept lifting his right hand up and sticking up his pinkie and pointer finger and making the "devil" horn thingy you do at rock concerts. That and hollering "I LOVE YOU!!" Keep in mind that this is a French band that does lounge versions of "alt" 80s songs ("Love Will Tear Us Apart," "Heart of Glass," "Killing Moon," etc). Yeah. They played "Too Drunk to Fuck" (about which the twit D is dating kept asking "Is that possible??") and "Bela Lugosi's Dead." The latter is one of my favorite Bauhaus songs but I am not too fond of it on NV's latest album. However, hearing it live was a different experience and I enjoyed it immensely.

Afterward, we went to a couple of bars in Silverlake. On our way to the first bar, I found this kid-sized plastic fire truck on the sidewalk and proceeded to scoot on it and eventually loaded it into AW's trunk, where I think it is still living... I hope that kid was throwing it away and not just leaving it out for the night. Ooops. The bars were fine but D's girlfriend's whining was not. Adam was out with us, too, and he, AW, and I would slowly pull ourselves away from wherever she occupied space. Patience is essential in these moments, as none of us want to upset D and we all love him, so what is there to do but deal with it? Oi.

A joint birthday party for J and I took place last night and I had a grand time, and it seems J did too! D got me some really cool shit, including a completely unwieldy hand-made Japanese paper crane mobile. I picked out the origami papers and they turned out lovely. The mobile itself is so large I cannot fit it in any corner in my apartment, so not sure what to do. He also got me a vile of unopened "dropsy" medication (dropsy was a 19th century disease that no longer exists and we have not idea what the medication actually is), vintage black opera-length gloves, and a 1938 box of "character" makeup (unopened) that can help you look like an "Indian." The color is labeled "Indian." Yep. My very own minstrelsy kit! Kelly got me this great whale shirt (pictured below), Angela got me a gift card to Red Planet (a great CD/record store in Riverside), Sara painted me a picture, and Michael had a great photo of he and I from the Mammoth trip framed. Our friend "hippy Joe" won tickets to see The Silver Jews on Tuesday (my actual birthday) and is giving me one of the tickets as my gift--yeah!!

So, yes, It has been a fantastic birth-weekend for me! I'm looking forward to Tuesday, when D, AW, Joe, and I finally crack open the bottle of wine from Italy that I've been saving for over a year and then head to see The Silver Jews. Though I miss my nearest and dearest who are currently elsewhere in the world, I am so glad to have had many of the people I love within arms reach.